March 28, 2009

The View From Outer Space

I always thought human activity seen from outer space would make Earth look like a busy anthill.

Now I know.

"...and this just in: the Zurich School of Applied Sciences has built a video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period. There isn't much of an application for it, but it sure is cool to look at," the international radio blasted from the forward compartment.

"Hmmm, maybe I should try counting jet routes instead of sheep," Susan wondered.

Being the 23rd female in space didn't garner a big fanfare or even a full paragraph in the News-Leader; just business as usual. She was there orbiting the earth to test the effects of zero gravity on certain plants. It was weird to see the tomatoes floating above the vines like little red balloons.

But her pet project was the Venus Flytrap. It always held an amazement for her, a plant that seemed half animal in the way it consumed live nourishment. She fantasized if the zero grav effects would bring out the 'animal' traits in the plant.

"Guess I've been watching too many Star Trek episodes as a kid...and adult!"

"Huh... What the...?"

Was it her imagination, or did the Venus Flytrap just let out a soft, faint growl?

Susan looked at the plant. And then she slowly floated closer toward it. Was it smiling or had Susan been in zero gravity too long? If it was smiling, it wasn't a pleasant, happy smile. It was more of a wicked, evil kind of smile. The kind of smile that made you want to run and hide. But she knew that there was no place to hide in space - the final frontier.

Yet still she could have sworn she saw Vickie move. That was what she named the Flytrap, Vickie. Why a girl's name? Because men are from Mars and women are from Venus – and it's a "Venus" Flytrap.

Yes, dry humor was Susan's specialty.

As Susan floated toward the control panel of the spacecraft to check the oxygen levels, she told her imagination to stop conjuring silly ideas. After months alone in space, she knew her imagination could run wild.Even so, she kept a wary eye on Vickie. She was pretty sure none of the other plants had grown as quickly as Vickie and none of the others smiled or growled.

The next morning, Susan woke to the sound of the onboard computer announcing: "It's 6:03 a.m. central standard time. All systems are operating within approved parameters. Would you like some coffee? I know I could use some more!"

That last comment jolted Susan into full awake mode. "You can use some what!? Wait a minute, you're not the computer! Oh my ... Vickie? No it can't be."

There Vickie stood in all her green glory, grinning wickedly and offering a cup of coffee with a leafy hand.

Then Vickie started humming a song from the Stevie Wonder album titled "The Secret Life of Plants."

"Susan, be a dear and mix up another batch of your secret Miracle Grow formula. I'm getting awfully hungry," the flytrap purred.Susan slowly looked around the space room searching for the plastic bottle that contained Weed Be Gone. She didn't use it often but decided that it was now or never. Plus she liked the added fragrance of apple blossoms that had been incorporated into each bottle.

She grabbed the bottle, pointed the nozzle at Vickie and squeezed the spray trigger. The spray slowly floated through the artificial atmosphere inside the cabin, and then upward (if there is an "up" in space) toward the ceiling.

"Mmmmm, is that apple blossoms?" Vickie squealed. “I love apple blossoms!”

She leapt up and inhaled all of the vapor floating above her with a loud snort! Luckily Vickie hadn't learned to read in her short animated existence.Then she started to cough, gag and turned a slight pink.

Thinking it was now or never, Susan sprang into action! She leapt across the room straight at Vickie Flytrap aiming at her throat... er... stalk. Grabbing with both hands tight she began to pull.

"S-s-susan... that's ... not .... (cough) ...how you ... do the .... Heimlich.... manuveur," Vickie choked out.

Determined to pull the flytrap out of its vase soil, Susan gives it one more mighty PPUUULLLLLL!

SNAP!

Susan, her hands still clenched around Vickie's throat... er... stalk, plopped flat on her rear as the monstrous plant's roots came out of the vase along with potting soil that floated around the gravity-free cabin.

Susan wondered how it was possible to fall on her butt in a gravity-free environment. Then she realized that she had smacked her butt on the ceiling.

"Oh yeah, that's how," she thought.

Turns out Susan had cheated her way through her gravity class. Susan wasn't one to cheat, but she just couldn't understand the concept of "what goes up, must come down." Passing Gravity 101 was required before she could earn the degree that led her to be selected for the flight to study the zero effects of gravity on plants.

Keeping a strong grip on Vickie's throat... er... stalk, Susan watched as Vickie's green face became a paler shade of green. Vickie's eyes bulged and popped with some force, spreading numerous seeds in all directions. As soon as they started floating more steadily, they started sprouting small growth buds, then little leaves, and then Susan's allergies began acting up. All those seeds! The pollen! The spores!

She coughed and sneezed and gasped.

As she took her last breaths, Susan looked out the window of the space ship back to Earth, which looked like a busy anthill.


The End


Contributors: Susan Wade, Phillip Secca, Lori Anne Locke and RoseMarie Combrinck Coetzee

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March 9, 2009

The Adriana

Captain Sean Belig was startled awake by the sudden silence inside The Adriana.

He reached for his wooden leg and strapped it on, twisted his eye patch back to where it was supposed to be, rolled out of the bunk. Stepping into the lone swashbuckling boot, as he reached back and slapped that vision of loveliness on her firm backside.

“Get up wench,” he mumbled. “It only gets this quiet when we are approaching heaven or hell.”

Pamela rubbed her perfectly heart-shaped behind where Sean had smacked her and mumbled: “Heaven? Hell? What's the difference?”

But it was too quiet. Except for Capt'n Sean’s stumping up the ladder.

Serpents from the seas of Hades were about. No other living thing made a sound. Even the wind was afraid to stir.

“Wench, fetch me coffee while the sea is calm enough for drinkin it.”

Pamela slipped on her red-hot bikini, jumped on the ski boat and raced toward the beachside Starbucks on Islamorada key in the Florida bay.

The captain's addiction to caffe lattes was stronger than his addiction to buxom Pamela, so it irked her immensely that she was so expendable in his eyes.

“I am going to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget,” she thought to herself as she ordered.

“Hey bartender,” Pamela cooed, “How hot is your warmest hot sauce?”

A slight smile crosses the young bartender's face, “Almost as hot as you.”

“Wonderful. Add three dashes to that coffee... and don't leave town, I may need you later, sugar!” Pamela teased as she bounced out the door.

Pamela revved the engine on the ski boat and headed back to The Adriana, her beautiful, bountiful bosoms bound in a red bikini bouncing as the boat skipped over the waves. (Writer's note: I had to look up the spelling for bosom!)

She held firmly to the hot sauce-spiked coffee with one had while guiding the boat with the other.

“Hah, can`t wait to see him turn red, purple, and green! Must get the camera to hand first though,” she said to herself as a diabolical afterthought

She stepped onto the deck with quivering exitement and ducked quietly into the cabin to get the camera, tucking it into her ample cleavage.

“This pirate getup is getting old on this aging Vietnam Veteran,” she thought as she handed Sean the latte and stepped back as she reached for the the camera.

Pamela was not in the least prepared for what happened next! Sean gasped.... sputtered... turned blue...... and collapsed in a messy heap of latte, wooden leg, and black eye patch. She flung the camera aside and tried to revive him, but the hot sauce prevented her from resussitating him. After many attempts, she had to confess to herself that he was dead.

“No, no, no! He can't be dead! What should I do, what?” Pamela said to herself. “I should call someone... the police!”

Then she thought that might not be such a good idea because they would accuse her of ... of... what’s that word? Medication? Mediation? Pre- something, “Premeditation!”

Yep, the cops are always coming up with scenarios and then plugging the nearest available sucker into the mix. They’d accuse her of killing him for his money; you can bet on that. She’d have to take care of this herself. She’d just have to get rid of the body! Yeah, that’s it. So Pamela begins by dragging captain Sean Bluwiskers up on deck and rolling him overboard. Next she’d have to wipe off all of her fingerprints, can’t have any loose ends.

“See, I’m not such a dumb blonde after all, you old pirate!” she says to the floating captain, “No loose ends.”Then panic jumps back into her pretty green eyes, “Loose ends... The bartender!!!” He’s the only connection to her and the coffee! She has to do something about the bartender.

But what?

This time, Pamela was on a more important mission. In the back of her blonde mind, she had started to formulate an idea. She wanted the Adriana and now she was going all out to get it!

She dressed carefully and assessed the degree of promise her attire would hold for the bartender. Not too sexy, but sensual and alluring, because after all, he had already taken notice of her… attributes when she had met him earlier and she was quite sure he could be very useful if she played her cards right!

By the end of the day, he could be her future or just a pawn in her game.

She strolled into the bar and gave the bartender a look that would make the most experienced pirate blush.She said, “Hey Barkeep! I was over at the Scurvy Dog earlier and they said that your coffee is bitter and your hot sauce is weak!”

Then she smiled at him and their eyes met. She leaned in close to him. Close enough for her lips to brush his cheek and said, “I told him that you ran the finest establishment in the bay area. And then, I gave him the stink-eye.”“Is that so?” he said.

Eyeing her cleavage, he stood back a bit so she would have to lean over the counter a bit more, which of course she did very prettily.

He was becoming enamoured with her charms and she knew it would simply be a matter of time for him to do that which she required of him.

Little did the buxom blonde know she was about to take the dive for captain Sean Bluwiskers demise.

“The Adriana will be MINE once again,” thought the bartender, Johnny Depth. “Little Miss Pamela can be part of my future or just a pawn in the game.”

Apparently old Johnny boy knew captain Sean Bluwishers back when he was still known as just plain old Sean Belig, nuclear physicist. After making his small fortune manufacturing nuclear-powered lawnmowers for people with really big yards, old Sean decided to chuck all the scientific mumbo-jumbo-gumbo and live out his boyhood fantasy of being Old Blue Beard the scurvy pirate of the 8 seas. (I know there are only 7, but try telling Mister Pirate Know-it-All that!)

"I had the idea of nuclear-powered mowers first! I should be the one with the big boat and the curvy blonde,” Johnny reasoned. As luck would have it, young miss Pamela provided the perfect solution to the burning question “How Can I Get Rid of Sean, Nuclear Thief?”

Out of greed and lust and lust for greed, he prepared a lethal mix of nuclear-flavored hot sauce with Sean's name written all over it. And better yet, the dame would get the blame!

Realizing his excitement had caused him to wet himself... again, he quickly ran into the back room for a change of rubber underwear.

Meanwhile back on The Adriana, Pamela watches Sean drift slowly out to sea and nostalgically wishes she had put weights on the body so it would sink to the bottom of the sea, never to be found again.

As luck would have it, a really big wave came at just that precise moment carrying a 24.4 pound dumbbell in its wake! The wave flipped Capt. Sean over and the dumbbell lodged right under his chin!Slowly, Sean sank head first into the sea, up to his Lands End tie leg, trousers.

Unfortunately, an air pocket had formed in the legs of the trousers, which held Sean's feet up in the air.Bobbing with each wave, he looked like a lone syncronized swimmer... unsynced.

“Darn it,” Pamela swore. “He was a terrible dancer alive and he's even worse dead.”She watched Sean's feet bobbing in the air, recalling the time he stomped her toe with his peg leg when they were dancing at…

“OMG! Is that a Coast Guard Patrol Boat speeding this way?” said Pamela. “I wish I had shaved my legs this morning. Some of these guys are hot!”

She quickly adjusted her sarong to form Indian trousers and jumped onto the jet-ski to divert them and lead them off into the opposite direction.

“Perhaps I should conveniently fall off the thing on the other side of the boat,” she thought. “They will be so busy saving me, they won’t notice the feet bobbing out of the water.”

When Pamela “fell” off the jet ski into the warm water, her sarong slipped off and sank to the bottom of the sea, leaving her naked except for a cleavage-revealing bikini top ... and hairy legs.

Pamela, a weak swimmer, was kept afloat by her surgically-enhanced boobs that bobbed on the water like balloons.

Captain Wood, of the Coast Guard patrol boat, asked one of the seamen looking through binoculars what he could see. “I can barely make it out captain, but it looks like big boobies bobbing like balloons. Back and forth. Bob...bob...bob...”

"Hmmm, I don't doubt your judgement, sailor, but maybe I should take a look just to be sure,” said Captain Richard Wood.

Captain Wood looked through the binoculars. "Seaman," he said, beaming a smile. “You're right. Those are big boobies bob, bob, bobbing like balloons. Better sound the alarm. We're going in.”

With that, the captain dived into the water and immediately hit his head on the side of the boat.

The crewmen look at each other, stifling laughs, then decided someone better dive in and save the captain before he drowns.

They looked at one another, each expecting someone else to jump in to save the captain. Shrugging, they started a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who would have to jump in after the captain.Meanwhile, Pamela's big bobbing boobies kept her afloat as she drifted toward the Coast Guard boat.

Forgetting about the captain to attend to the more important task at hand, all of them were leaning over the side of the boat in an effort to see Pamela and her big bountiful bobbing boobs being lifted from the water by very helpful hands. They gave her brandy to warm her. They rubbed her hair dry. They got her some dry clothes. They…”

Oh my goodness” one exclaimed “We’ve forgotten about Captain Rick! We have to go back for him!”

There was great consternation when they couldn’t see any sign of him! He had disappeared!

The crew turned the ship around and headed in what they hoped was the right direction. They had to find Captain Rick. He, after all, was the only one who knew the way home! He kept that compass under lock and key, a key very similar to the one Pamela wore around her neck on a thin silver chain.

There was, however, no sign of the captain, so they started to make up stories as to what they would say at the inquiry that would no doubt be in the cards.

By now, it was getting dark, and being well-versed in finding direction by the stars, they sailed directly back in the direction of the city lights, glowing in the distance.

In the meantime, Pamela was trying the key on the box which housed the compass. She and Captain Rick had been associated for a long time, although no one else had ever been aware of their affair.

Meanwhile, Captain Rick was treading water and wishing Pamela would hurry up and bring the canister with her. He had been in the water for several hours, and was beginning to get rather cold, but it had been very neccessary for the whole drowning scenario to be staged.

The FBI would commend them for their fine handling of The Adriana case, and he and Pamela could look forward to a well-deserved break.

In the meantime, Pamela had left the crew to sit and fabricate their stories, while she retrieved the canister and jumped over the side to meet up with Rick on the dark side of The Adriana.

All that was left to do was deal with the coffee Adonis on board, then the case would truly be over and they could hand over the canister.

As midnight approached they would board their beloved Adriana again and do the neccessary!

Pamela and Rick looked deep into each other’s eyes in the moonlight, as they clung to the side of the boat. They were looking forward to using The Adriana for their own again!

THE END
Contributing Authors: Susan Wade, Patsy Bell Hobson, RoseMarie Combrinck Coetzee, Phillip Secca, Lori Anne Locke, Terry Dubbs

March 5, 2009

Billy's Dirty Sneakers


"I don't want to go in there," Billy said, digging the toes of his dirty sneakers into the gravel of the parking lot.

"Lets go," his mother dragged Billy into his private writing lessons. "But she keeps staring at my feet. She has a thing for cheap shoes. Didn't you see what she made me write about last week? And she keeps wiggling her toes at me."

"Well, Billy, let’s just get through this. Maybe the next story won't be a shoe thing. Miss Susan is just working through this obsessive, compulsive, ugly, cheap shoe disorder"

"Mom, can we go to the Incredible Pizza Company when I'm done?

"Yes," his mother replied. "But first, I need to stop by Payless."

With the most incredible boots ever already on her feet - a one-of-a-kind pair she had shoplifted from Dillard's - Melinda pranced into the shoe store with Billy in tow.

Melinda eyed some red cowboy boots and a pair of satin-trimmed, toe-pinching pumps that were on sale while Billy tried to make himself and his dirty sneakers inconspicuous.

"Mom!"

"What, Billy?"

"MOM!" Billy said in a loud whisper.

"WHAT?" Melinda, snapped.

"That lady, at the cash register, keeps taking your picture and calling someone on her cell phone. A bunch of times."

"She's just taking pictures of my sexy boots and telling her friends about them," Melinda said, prancing about so the clerk would get a variety of photo angles.

Billy looked up at his mother and asked: "When can I have shoes people want to photograph?"

Melinda stopped prancing and said to Billy: “You can have shoes people want to photograph when pigs fly. There's only room in this family for one Shoe Queen," Melinda sneared. "And, that's ME!"

When it came to shoes, Melinda was the Imelda Marcos of Springfield, Missouri. Shoe Queen Melinda either pretended or, indeed, did not notice the tears running down Billy's cheeks.

She came to a halt (in a perfect shoe pose) when she noticed her husband and two security guards standing next to the clerk with the cell phone.

Her husband, Alexander, was a man with a shoe fetish so he and Melinda were the perfect pair. (Writer's note: Get it, perfect pair! ha!)

Alexander turned toward Melinda and Billy and said: "My little Shoe Queen, the bank seized our home yesterday; I was laid off today; soon we will have no place to store your enormous shoe collection. The doctor just called with our little Billy's test results."

Billy is living in the garage since his mom turned his bedroom into a stylish California Closets shoe room."OK, OK, let me just get this pair of sexy boots before they cut off my credit cards."

"Honey, I'm going to have to put my foot down," said her husband, Alexander. "The doctor says our little Billy needs corrective footwear."

Melinda paused from shoe shopping for a moment and glanced at Billy's dirty sneakers. She turned to Alexander and screeched: "He doesn't need new shoes. Only his big toes are sticking out. When his pinkie toes break through, he can have new shoes."

Alexander took a look at the sexy boots Melinda was eyeing, then at Billy's shoddy sneakers before nodding in agreement. "You're right, my precious Shoe Queen. No new shoes for Billy. But you, my dearest, can have all the shoes you want, especially sexy boots."

Alexander's infatuation with Melinda's feet and the shoes upon them was stronger than his paternal bond with Billy.

And that was just fine. Billy knew that as long as his parents kept their heads down, focused on their feet and footwear fetish, they would never see what was coming.

Billy had a plan - a get-rich-quick plan - that would leave his inattentive, shoe-freak parents' heads' spinning. He and Susan, his private writing tutor, had worked out all the details. Billy, who would celebrate his 35th birthday next week, and Susan, a drop-dead gorgeous brunette with impeccable taste in shoes, were going to open an eBay store selling his mother’s multitude of forgotten shoes.

Billy and Susan had both been accepted into medical school and were using the eBay shoe sales to pay for their first year.

Enough money was coming into their PayPal account to fill Susan's sock drawers. Susan had a sock fetish matched only by Melinda's shoe fetish. Susan, in fact, had enough socks to some day fulfill her dream of giving a pair of socks to every homeless child she examined at the free clinic. The free clinic that some day she and Billy would open.

Still, you meet some pretty peculiar PayPal people on eBay. Like that one buyer that asked if the shoes had ever been worn, because she was really only interested in buying secondhand Crocs.

She loved Crocs and couldn’t live without wearing a different pair each day! But on one occasion, she had really put her foot in it, when she realized she was wearing a pink Croc on her left foot and purple on her right. She thought back to getting dressed that morning and was sure she'd worn matching shoes but her memory of the hours after were foggy.

Maybe Billy was drugging her so he could secretly donate all her Crocs to "Doc Without Crocs," the international relief effort to smuggle the clunky footwear back into the country of origin.

At least he had inherited his mothers excellent taste in footwear.



The End!


Join the group and add to the stories! Contributing authors: Susan Wade, Patsy Bell Hobson, Melinda Arnold and RoseMarie Combrinck Coetzee

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