The Trailing Edge

              Did you know that the earth was created square and looked like a cube?  When God created the earth, He took the stuff of the universe - see Big Bang Theory or On the First Day, God created Fireworks - and began to knead it. Every time He kneaded it, He would slap the earth on His workbench, creating a flat side. Knead, slap, knead, slap, creating flat sides as He worked. When God was done kneading and slapping, the earth was square.   God placed the earth in the Heavens above. He created a Garden and filled it with plants and animals. The plants put down roots and were happy. The animals were not happy because they kept falling off the edge of the earth.  God noticed.  God grabbed the earth, cupped it in His palms and rounded the edges. It worked and the animals were happy. Then, God created man.  Man then made the world flat. The world was not really flat but man thought so. I don't know wh...

                                    Hunter spied the jackrabbit ahead. His third jackrabbit. I can do it, I can do it. His legs tired and hurting but he swung his arms harder and ran a bit faster. His chest and stomach heaving in unison, desperately working to get air in and out to meet the increasing demand. A stitch ached in his side. I can do it, I can do it. And, the distance to the rabbit was smaller. The rabbit heard the footsteps coming up behind. Faster, Faster, I can do this, I can do this. The rabbit, lungs hurting, legs hurting, bit his tongue, but kept up his pace. Hunter focused only the back of the rabbit. The hard whoosh of air surging through his mouth, in and out of his lungs, filled his ears. Knee up, knee up, knee up, knee up. Hunter was on the heels of the jackrabbit. Only a leap, only a leap, wait, wait, NOW! Leaping, Hunter broke the tape, the f...

               One fine sunny day, a royal herald tacks a royal proclamation, announcing the King’s Ball, on a tree by the forest road. The tree is a sweet Honeysuckle named Cinderella. Cinderella is unhappy. Her evil stepmother and her wicked stepsisters are Ginkgo trees. Cinderella's family likes tormenting her. The evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters bloom pretty but have really really stinky flowers, shedding them all around, hiding Cinderella's lovely honeysuckle fragrance. A Tree Fairy passing by stops and reads the royal proclamation. She chats with Cinderella as tree fairies like doing. Cinderella tells of her tale of woe. The Tree Fairy takes pity and grants a wish. Cinderella wishes to go to the King’s Ball. The Tree Fairy Godmother transforms Cinderella into a human girl - her green leafy canopy into long reddish hair, her branches into slender arms, her trunk into long legs, and, her brown rough bark into a glittery...

                 Antonia Potter, the Wand Duel champion of the Wizards, and Donovan McGreggor, the Jedi Knight champion, bowed to each other in the battle arena. They were the finalists in the Galactic Protection Forces Psi Combat Championships. The Psi Combat Championship was a two rule contest - only extra-powered humans of the Galactic Protection Forces were allowed and Do Not Kill Your Opponent . Contestants interpreted the Do Not Kill rule to permit near lethal wounding with the unwritten proviso that the wound should not hamper the combatant's future military career. Antonia stood at attention, wand in hand and Donovan in en garde pose, light saber glowing and ready. The  en garde  pose inspired Antonia to commence the combat with a saber attack. She whispered Lux Gladio Lumina and a blade of green light grew from the end of her wand. Donovan leaped into the air at her. Antonia twirled to the right to parry. ...

         " I have foreseen a time when cities of glass and steel towers supplant our forests. Fear not! A new place will be created where our trees will be reborn, to live in their paper form, and we will remain their guardians. We will be known to the world as Librarians." -- The Unknown Works of Grand Druid Athelstane First Librarian Athelstane stood on the double yellow line in the center of 42nd Street, outside the New York City Public Library, staring westwards. An uninterrupted view across the City to the Hudson River. The streets were empty, no people, no cars, no trucks, passing by. COVID-19 quarantine in effect. She raised her staff, chanting in an unfamiliar language. The upper curve of an enormous yellow orb appeared at the far end of the street, floating over the Hudson River. The orb rose upward filling the space between the skyscrapers until hovering a woman's height above the horizon. A yellow glow emanated from the orb, reflecting o...

It wasn’t the half-eaten heads littering her backyard that upset Grandma. Nor the splintered backdoor. It was the bad manners.    "Ugg!" shuddered Grandma. She retrieved her lace fan from her bag and with a disgusted look on her face, cooled herself. "Those unruly zombies ate with their hands. There is no call for them to be eating with their hands at all. I shall teach them the benefits of knives, forks, and napkins." "Grandma, I don't think zombies are interested in improving their table manners." "Pish," she said. "They are in dire need of training." Pointing her fan at me, "I am appointing you as my Aide-de-Camp. Go get the bear traps and shotguns. We are going recruiting students." I scrunched up my face, "What's an Aide-de-Camp, Grandma?" "It's a fancy name for a ten-year-old granddaughter helping her grandmother catch zombies." I couldn't help but smile. Me, an Aide...

An excerpt from a chapter of my amazing autobiography that I have yet to write I have been reading a lot of Dystopian novels during this COVID-19 outbreak, so much so that I am now tired of the books. For those who don't know, Dystopia is a genre of sci-fi/fantasy where the world ends by some disaster --  a plague, zombies, alien invasion, or government run amok, and the world can only be saved by a teenage girl. Light reading indeed. The Hunger Games trilogy is the most popular series of this genre. Basically children killing children for material gain. It was made into a movie that did very well. The Divergent series looks to be the next most popular dystopian novels. I am tired of dystopia because the stories are the same. Just change the disaster and the name of the teenage girl as well. Worse, I have started to dream dystopia. Last night, I dreamt that the lady who sits next to me at work and I were chased all over the country by zomb...

It started on May 1st. In a hospital, in Seattle, in the middle of the night, a baby girl lay in her bassinet playing with her toes. She was quiet and had a smile on her face. Her name was Sheryl in honor of her mother’s mother. The doctors declared Sheryl a normal healthy newborn and they were right except that now she floated in the air two inches off the bassinet's mattress. There were nine hundred and fifty-six floating babies born that year.  Mysteriously, all babies were in the United States, in famous places as New York City, Los Angeles, Nashville, and little known places as Forney, Texas and Beach City, Ohio. The Parents, while changing diapers, discovered their beloved babies floating mid-air. An alarm ensued. The parents called their doctors, who called the University hospitals, who called the Center for Disease Control, who called the Army, who called the President, who called Congress, who, having no one to call, set up an Oversight Committee. Fear, inspi...

“ Hey, look! Windmills," shouted Emily as she bounced up and down in her seat and pointed out the bus window. The Eiger family, Winston, Jennifer, and their young daughter Emily, were touring the Midlands. The tour bus arrived at Windmill Alley, so named by the Tourist Board since it was a mile long row of medieval windmills straddling the Ghrent Canal. The tour was a multi-cultural program sponsored by the Ministry of Magic. Impressed with the view, Jennifer turned to her daughter, "Can you tell me why non-magical people built windmills?" Emily scrunched her face and after a moment, shook her head, "no Mommy." "Well, it gets very hot here in the summer and in the ancient times, there was no air conditioning. So the non-magical people living here built windmills to cool the farmers working in the fields. Windmills are giant fans," said Jennifer, nodding and thinking of her Non-Magical-People Anthropology training. "Wow," replie...

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                  Sherlock Holmes puffed on his pipe as he scrutinized the scene. The naked man lay face down on The Ritz London hotel's bed as if sleeping on his stomach. Six knives were sticking out his back. "Murder most foul," said Holmes shaking his head. He turned to his companion, "My dear Watson, what do you see?" pointing at the bed with his pipe. "A puzzle," replied Joan Watson looking around the room. "A locked room and no disturbance to the body." "Use your nose, woman and all is revealed," said Holmes. Watson sniffed and sniffed. "I smell some," sniff, sniff, "sulfur?" "Surely now it is quite clear to one as dense as you how this crime was done." "Well no," replied Joan in a quiet voice. "Sulfur is the body odor of a demon. A demon appeared over the sleeping body and thrust the knives into the man's back." "You have overtho...