In the Wall

by Rod Drake

Banner knew there was a rat in the walls, a big one from the sound of it, probably an escapee from the test animals kept in this section of the laboratory. Considering the painful things done to them, it was not surprising to Banner that they would try to escape. Lots of enhanced amino acid combinations, refined pituitary gland extracts and dangerously unstable steroid cocktails were pumped into the helpless lab rats daily; he felt sorry for them, but after all, the goal, to develop age-delaying concoctions for humans, was important. That was odd; Banner noticed that all the lab rats in all the cages were suddenly quiet, eerily still, no scurrying movements, no furtive scratching. Then the wall cracked open loudly behind him, showering Banner with plaster chunks and dust, and the rats went crazy, squealing and running with purpose, pounding their little bodies against the glass walls of their cages until they tipped over their prisons or knocked them down to smash open on the tile floor. From out of the hole in the wall came a rat as large and heavily muscled as an alley cat, who used his monstrous fangs to rip open Banner’s throat, and as he lay bleeding rapidly to death, the army of freed rats, along with its giant leader, hungrily lapped his blood as it quickly spread across the white laboratory floor.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Snowy's Smackdown, is now the Offical Author of "Friday the 13th" here at Six Sentences. From now on, anytime the 13th day of a month falls on a Friday, Rod’s work will be featured. (He decided at an early age that real life was too scary, so he retreated into the world of fiction. Check out his longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.)

If Looks Could Kill

by Rod Drake

The Bette Davis robot turned her head mechanically and fired crimson laser beams from her inhuman eyes. The Joan Crawford robot followed Bette’s lead and blasted optical laser beams at me as I scurried to avoid being vaporized. In this ersatz movie set dressing room from the 1940s, I had one chance for survival; tossing a jar of makeup forced the robots to track and shoot it, which gave me the break that I needed. Grabbing the large hand mirror from the dressing table, I pointed it at Bette, angling it slightly so that her laser beams reflected off the mirror and blew Joan’s head to smithereens. Then the Barbara Stanwyck robot entered the dressing room, analyzed the situation in a millionth of a second, tilted her head and laser blasted Bette Davis into a pile of wires, circuits and rubble, some of which shattered my hand mirror. With a quick roll, grab, aim and manual fire, I used Joan’s loose eyeball as a laser gun to punch a hole through Barbara, hoping she was the last of the evil movie queen robots.

6S

Rod Drake is a time traveler, who is currently enjoying 1940s Hollywood. (And today is his birthday! Happy Birthday Rod!)

An Eye for an Eye

by Rod Drake

The Great Dictator’s imperial helicopter lowered itself to the battlefield, now empty of life and littered, that was the only word to accurately describe it, with pieces of human bodies. Heads without noses or ears, crushed, bashed in, hands and arms, feet and limbs together and separate, mutilated torsos, a ghastly and limitless field of these bloody remains. The Great Dictator, hands proudly on his hips, stood defiantly surveying the human carnage, his latest massacre for ethnic cleansing or some such invented, insane belief. He laughed loudly, enjoying his triumph over these helpless, pitiful people, now no longer whole or a threat to his iron hand rule. A hand near the Great Dictator’s feet suddenly twitched to life and grabbed the dictator’s pants hem; then a foot and leg hurled itself up at the dictator’s back, knocking him off-balance as two different arms took hold of his legs and pulled him down to the ground where heads waited with mouths open and teeth ready to bite. As countless heads, hands, arms, feet, legs and torsos piled on the struggling, screaming Great Dictator, gouging, clawing and chewing savagely away at him, the helicopter lifted up into the sky and flew away.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Debt Repaid, thinks about a lot of different things, and some of those thoughts get turned into stories. You just read one. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Making a Point

by Rod Drake

Kurt had not seen his ex-girlfriend, Lucy, since she’d left Satan’s Cell Phone, the rock band they had formed together, he writing the music and playing lead guitar, she writing the lyrics and singing, over a year ago. After their third album, Selling My Soul for Pocket Change, peaked at number five on the charts, the band, the tour and Kurt and Lucy fell apart; Lucy felt Kurt was getting too much of the credit for the band’s music, and she let him know it in a screaming, ugly onstage breakup. Lucy nodded at him across the crowded album launch party, thrown for her solo effort, One Size Fits All Is Not True!, which was becoming a huge hit; Kurt smiled shyly in response. She was on her way up, while Kurt’s career was at best, uneven, and he was currently without a band, record contract or even interested music industry executives; obviously, Lucy had been right about who was the real talent in Satan’s Cell Phone. The party eventually thinned out, and Lucy noticed that Kurt was finally walking over to her, having stood alone, looking lost for most of the night, hopefully coming to congratulate her; maybe they could now both leave the past behind them and be at least civil to one another again. As she leaned forward to give him a quick conciliatory hug, Kurt pulled a knife out of his suit jacket and jammed it into her throat, so hard that it pointed out the back of her neck.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Turnabout, believes that the best thing in life is, well, you know. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Turnabout

by Rod Drake

Hard times had fallen on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but then no one stays on top forever and in today’s world, you’re old news before the headlines are running on the crawler of CNN. So they tried to adapt as best they could, given their abilities, limitations and lack of familiarity with the 21st Century. Pestilence decided he could be useful at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and happily worked in a lab coat to find a cure essentially for himself. War, well, he could always find himself a battle to join, but the automated, distance technology of modern warfare pretty much took the fun, the visceral aspect, out of it for him, so he chose to be a field surgeon and confront the gore directly like in the good old days. Famine was confused; the women most admired by society looked as though he had already starved them, and others either praised his name in one failed diet attempt after another or were so obese he was completely unknown to them; thus he started a California health club chain, enjoying great success as tv spokesman “Mr. Slim.” Death, naturally, was so shocked at his casual worship by angry heavy metal bands, black-eyed goth teenagers, climbing suicide rates and overdose deaths that he got out of the death game altogether, creating a 24-hour suicide hotline and spending his free time auditioning “sunshine and smiles” pop groups, hoping to turn the tide, since that was what the Four Horsemen were created to do, even if they now had to turn it in the opposite direction.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Hocus Pocus, writes to live, lives to write, so the relationship works out well. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Nuclear Physics Nightmare

by Rod Drake

Clive was, as usual, in over his head, but this time, he was in over everyone else’s head in the whole Cambridge LINAC Center as well. It had seemed like a neat idea initially, popping a microscopic piece of silly putty into the linear particle accelerator to see what would happen. But somehow it had all gone wrong, horrible wrong. Something in the putty, maybe a smudge of Clive’s DNA, had combined with decaying ions and developing antimatter in the accelerator, and the result wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t anything remotely from this earth, solar system or galaxy; it was a totally new life form, if that’s what it was, growing geometrically in size and appetite, absorbing everything in its path like a black hole. As Clive and the lab staff were stretched out and sucked into the dark matter center, he wondered if maybe he had gone too far this time.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Sex or Syntax, lives in over-the-top Las Vegas and has decided that work is less fun than it was advertised as being in college. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Sex or Syntax

by Rod Drake

Scott was in love, actually in lust, with the desirable Chloe. He loved Chloe’s incredible body totally, fully and frequently. And Scott loved what she could, and would, do with it to him. But she peppered her conversation with endless inane expressions like “let’s meet around 3ish” and “it’s so kooky-cute” and ”wait just a min-min” and “swinging the old ick stick” and “that’s so awesome-mendous,” which bugged him no end. And he just couldn’t get Chloe to stop saying them, no matter how hard he tried, which finally made him weigh phenomenal sex against annoying syntax. So Scott broke up with her.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Pigeons Dropping, hoped to grow up to be a cowboy, fireman or space explorer; a writer is kind of all those things. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Break On Through

by Rod Drake

Something went wrong, terribly wrong, probably caused by that nuclear particle accelerator in Switzerland. I don’t know exactly what happened since TV and the Internet are spotty at best in trying to explain it, but the live feeds are pretty interesting. In a nutshell, space-time sort of burst at the seams, and different time streams leaked into 2009, so the past and present became like an airport when all the flights are canceled and everyone from everywhere is jammed together in a too-small terminal. Now there are Roman legions marching on downtown Paris, Phoenician trading ships running into yachts in the Mediterranean, Vikings raiding the coast of Holland, Japanese zeroes strafing Beijing commuter trains and Neanderthals grabbing women for mates at Bryn Mawr. Everything is a mess; mayhem and madness, to say nothing of one bizarre confrontation after another, are exploding across this overcrowded globe with the various governments helpless to bring any kind of order or peace, but I don’t really care. I would just be happy if I could just get out for some groceries, but that damned pterodactyl keeps circling the house, and my shotgun is empty.

6S

Rod Drake, whose full catalog is here, is the Official 6S Author of Friday the 13th. (Click here to make a donation to Rod, half of which will support 6S.)

Debt Repaid

by Rod Drake

It was a strange, eerie fog, coming out of nowhere, swirling its ghostly way rapidly through the little town of Pyrite, Missouri, covering everything in minutes. Ben Morgan had a feeling that the fog was a sign, and not a good one; the diary of his great-great-grandfather had mentioned this day in 1872, 135 years ago exactly, when his ancestor, who was the same age as Ben was now, had shot Jesse James in the shoulder. It was during a bank robbery in Pyrite that Ezra Morgan put a .44 slug into James’ shoulder, a wound that history indicates bothered James the rest of his life, and one that he swore repeatedly he would like to kill the man who did it. But Ezra lived a long and full life, and Jesse James was shot in the back in 1882 by his “friend,” Bob Ford; it was a curse that James didn’t live to keep. From out of the fog rode seven riders, the James Gang, Frank and Jesse, with the Younger Brothers and the two Miller brothers, as though they had just stepped out of the Old West, but with the hard look of hell on them. Jesse James swung down painfully from his saddle, Colt .44 in hand, smiled a ghastly grin from the inferno itself and fired, killing Ben as he stood on his front porch, the debt repaid at last, then the outlaws vanished back into the fog which suddenly lifted and disappeared.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Nuclear Physics Nightmare, lives in the neon fantasy city called Las Vegas where he can visit Lake Como, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, a 14th Century castle and a pyramid every day. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

If Looks Could Kill

by Rod Drake

The Bette Davis robot turned her head mechanically and fired crimson laser beams from her inhuman eyes. The Joan Crawford robot followed Bette’s lead and blasted optical laser beams at me as I scurried to avoid being vaporized. In this ersatz movie set dressing room from the 1940s, I had one chance for survival; tossing a jar of makeup forced the robots to track and shoot it, which gave me the break that I needed. Grabbing the large hand mirror from the dressing table, I pointed it at Bette, angling it slightly so that her laser beams reflected off the mirror and blew Joan’s head to smithereens. Then the Barbara Stanwyck robot entered the dressing room, analyzed the situation in a millionth of a second, tilted her head and laser blasted Bette Davis into a pile of wires, circuits and rubble, some of which shattered my hand mirror. With a quick roll, grab, aim and manual fire, I used Joan’s loose eyeball as a laser gun to punch a hole through Barbara, hoping she was the last of the evil movie queen robots.

6S

Rod Drake is a time traveler, who is currently enjoying 1940s Hollywood. (And today is his birthday! Happy Birthday Rod!)

Pigeons Dropping

by Rod Drake

After the fact it was named Black Tuesday, the day the pigeons in New York City stopped being pushed aside, kicked and poisoned, and finally took revenge. Like well-trained winged commandos, having waited decades for this moment, the pigeons swooped down on the startled populace with vengeance and blood on their tiny minds. Thousands of New Yorkers were killed in the surprise assault, tens of thousands more were wounded, blinded, missing ears, nose tips and patches of hair as wave after wave of dive-bombing pigeons in teams and solo unleashed a savagery and bloodlust never before observed in pigeons. Patrolman Mitch Brenner emptied his pistol into the sky, dropping several pigeons, and then retreated inside his bombarded police car on West 58th Street to reload, wondering why this happened and how long it would continue, and where his partner was. The aviary terrorist attack that no one could have foreseen or understood hit all five boroughs simultaneously, forcing pedestrians to hide in subway cars and cower in glass-cracked stores as the heavy aerial siege continued for six horrific hours, without stop, without mercy, but with plenty of human blood. Then as the sky darkened with rain clouds, the pigeons simply stopped the attack as suddenly as it had begun and went back to being cooing, waddling, begging pigeons again.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Party Trick, is pretty sure this is not his first life, nor will it be his last one probably. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Hocus Pocus

by Rod Drake

A phenomenal stage magician and illusionist, the Mystifying Munroe performed magic that was simply astounding, always leaving his audience thoroughly entertained and completely dumbfounded. Two months ago he recruited a new assistant, whom he named the Dazzling Denise, a young woman who was dazzlingly beautiful in face and figure, a handy distraction for his audience as he conjured his various magical tricks. One thing led to another, and soon the two were sleeping together, a rapturous time for a couple of weeks, until Denise started making demands; a bigger role in the act, a cut of the money not just a meager salary, better dressing room, less revealing and tight costume, and on and on endlessly. It was a big headache for Munroe, who suffered in silence, hoping the situation would get better, but when it began to affect the act, he knew the Difficult Denise, his secret name for her, would simply have to go. One night, instead of using an audience member, Munroe switched the routine and asked Denise to step inside the Disappearing Box. Smiling and blowing kisses to the audience while she scowled angrily to Munroe, Denise was dramatically shut inside the box, which was opened seconds later to reveal nothing but empty space; where Denise vanished to that evening remained Munroe’s mystical secret, but she never bothered him or his act again.

6S

Rod Drake, author of An Eye for an Eye, is thinking about giving up writing and becoming lead singer for Satan’s Cell Phone. Then again, he writes better than he sings, so maybe he should stick to what he does best. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Party Trick

by Rod Drake

Up-and-coming artists and aspiring writers were all in attendance at Bill and Joan’s latest wild and drunken party. As the party spun out of control, someone called for Bill to perform his famous “William Tell” routine, and soon everyone joined in, clamoring to see the legendary stunt. After some half-hearted protestation, Bill loaded his .38 Colt long-barrel, and Joan gamely put an apple on her head as she had done countless times before. Bill waved for silence, cocked the hammer and aimed while everyone held their collective breath in anticipation. Then one drunk girl laughed suddenly, shattering the quiet and Bill’s focus; he fired, hitting Joan in the forehead, who dropped to the carpet dead as a mackerel, a smile still on her lips. The party-goers scattered like startled birds and Bill, after calling the police and coroner, took off for Mexico.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Genesis 4, used to think he was a fictional character in a story, but discovered he was the author instead. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Genesis 4

by Rod Drake

Kane Tiller knew what he had to do; it might not be legal or moral, but it was the right thing. When the deputies led the grinning, manacled murderer from the courthouse, due to be released on a technicality, the result of a police procedural mistake, Kane stepped forward from the shadows. Moving like an avenging angel, Kane put the barrel of his 7mm Glock in the prisoner’s left ear and fired before the deputies could react. The prisoner’s head exploded and he collapsed, almost simultaneously, sudden dead weight, pulling the surprised deputies down with him. As the crowd lunged inward, news media pushing their cameras and microphones close, Kane pulled back and slipped through the crowd which was straining forward, curious to see and figure out just what had happened. Walking calmly around the corner of the courthouse, Kane pulled off his rubber face mask and wig, dropped them in the trash with his gloved hands, saying to himself, “Now my brother will never hurt anyone again.”

6S

Rod Drake, author of Sisters, often wishes he were someone else. This is not one of those times. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding and MicroHorror.

Sisters

by Rod Drake

If looks could kill, my ex-girlfriend’s hate stare would be a death ray. We see each at work every day which is a good reason not to date coworkers, but at the time, it seemed like a great idea. My ex-girlfriend thinks I cheated on her with her younger sister. She’s wrong; I didn’t. It was with her youngest sister. Lost again in Lolitaville.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Trust, mourns the closing of Flashing in the Gutters, a really cool flash fiction weblog. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding and MicroHorror.

Trust

by Rod Drake

Gina waited by the phone, nervous, chewing her lower lip. Frank would call; he just had to. Otherwise what would she do with all the stolen money, the dead body and the still-smoking gun in her hand? Lisa jumped when the phone finally did ring, grabbing the receiver like it was a lifeline from a rescue ship. “Hello, Frank, thank god you called,” Gina rambled on, “I was getting worried, waiting here alone all this time, afraid the cops might be getting wise and …” But it wasn’t Frank; it was the police, informing Gina that the building was surrounded, that Frank had given her up as part of his plea bargain.

6S

Rod Drake, author of Mental Chess, watched too much television growing up, which obviously warped his imagination. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashing in the Gutters, Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding and MicroHorror.

Mental Chess

by Rod Drake

“So you claim you can read people’s minds?” “That’s right.” “What am I thinking right now, old friend?” Rick asked. “You’re wondering if I know that you’re sleeping with my girlfriend.” “My God, that’s incredible, unbelievable; look, I’m sorry that you found out like this, but, well, Gwen loves me more than you, so that’s that, I guess.” Greg smiled a funny little smile: “Oh, by the way, I also have another ability -- I can shut down minds permanently.”

6S

Rod Drake, author of Suppertime, enjoys watching Heroes, Veronica Mars and Smallville when he isn’t writing flash fiction. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashing in the Gutters, Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward, MicroHorror and AcmeShorts.

Suppertime

by Rod Drake

When Carrie walked into the small but tidy kitchen, her husband stood by the sink, grim faced and holding a revolver. She looked at the gun, then up at Wayne and wondered if he intended to kill her or himself. Or maybe her and then himself; murder-suicide Carrie had heard it called on the news. Wayne looked at her, his eyes full of pain and regret. His left hand was shaking a little, but his right hand, the one holding the revolver tightly, was steady and set. Carrie could only think of one thing to say: “So you don’t want any supper, then?”

6S

Rod Drake. Las Vegas. His name, his byline. He writes them like he sees them. Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashing in the Gutters, Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward, MicroHorror and AcmeShorts.

Snowy's Smackdown

by Rod Drake

Snow White was prepared when the queen, now transformed into an unattractive, mean elderly woman (politically correct substitute for witch), showed up to offer her a poisoned appletini. Snowy knew the drink was poisoned because she had read ahead in the fairy tale and saw what was going to happen unless she revised the story. So Snowy took the opportunity during gossip about Sleeping Beauty’s rumored sleeping around to switch the drinks, watching with relish as the elderly woman downed the cocktail in a gulp, her drinking problem as the queen still evident despite her change in appearance. Once the woman was out cold, Snowy had the seven little people (politically correct substitute for dwarfs), who had been living in the woods without work since the Grimm Brothers Circus and Exhibit of Differently Abled People (politically correct substitute for freak show) had folded, haul the comatose body into the Afro-American (politically correct substitute for Black) Forest to a partially eaten gingerbread house. Swapping the queen for the misunderstood child molester (politically correct substitute for child-eating witch) in that fairy tale, Snowy left the queen’s fate in the sticky hands of the two hopped-up-on-sugar little brats, Hank and Gertie (substituted names for Hansel and Gretel due to their underage protected status), who would later push her into the fiery oven. The misunderstood child molester owed Snowy a big favor, which she collected in the form of a boob job, naturally blond hair and a fat recording contract with Flaming Dragon Records (a subsidiary of Disney), allowing Snowy to live happily ever after.

6S

Rod Drake, author of On the Bus, had a dream that he was Hemingway, until Hemingway made an appearance and said “No, you're not.” Check out Rod's longer stories in Flashes of Speculation, Fictional Musings, Flash Flooding, Flash Forward and MicroHorror.

Odds

by Rod Drake

It was raining pretty hard last night when I stopped to pick up a soaked young hitchhiker; he got in quickly and thanked me so much for rescuing him on such a miserable night. After he warmed up a little, he asked me how did I know that he wasn't a criminal, or even a serial killer? I just smiled and said that the odds of two serial killers being in the same car were, well, astronomical. He laughed at the joke; it was no joke. Then I killed him. He was never missed or found.

6S

Rod Drake thinks about a lot of different things, and some of those things get turned into tiny stories.