Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
As If There Wasn’t Enough To Worry About
If you have a fear of the number 13, I have bad news — this year there are two Friday the 13ths! According to EarthSky News (https://earthsky.org/human-world/two-friday-the-13ths-in-2019, the photo came from that site) this is not unusual. Every year has at least one, and can have as many as three, Friday the 13ths. You probably
Why We Walk On Two Legs
One characteristic that sets us apart from many other mammals is we walk on two legs. How that happened is probably not something you think about every day, but some scientists do. And recently those scientists have included astronomers. A paper published May 28, 2019, in the Journal of Geology advances the theory that we
The Third Option
I recently saw this photo on Facebook. Cute! About two days later, I ran across a newspaper article: “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Or compost.” Apparently there really is a third way, although the shredding part is a bit extreme. Legislation has been signed in Washington state to allow human remains to be turned
Reprinted Poem — Advice From a Bat
From the “I Wish I’d Written That Department” — Here’s a clever poem by Michael T. Young that I’ve recently run across and I can’t help sharing. Advice from a Bat by Michael T. Young Hunt only at night. Fly erratically. Defy even your own expectations. Feed on beetles, moths, and mosquitoes, whatever is small
Short Story — The Joy in Forgotten Objects
This story was originally published at BewilderingStories.com in Issue 612, and was an Editors’ Choice in the 2015 First Quarterly Review. I first posted this on December 29, 2015 and thought this would be a good time to post it again. By the way, one of these segments actually happened! The Joy in Forgotten Objects
Original Poem — My Dream House
My Dream House Sometimes wanting is more fun that getting. I have been lucky to have been able to travel to great cities and historic sites and places of great beauty. I admire them all. So someday I would like to build a house to remind me of all those places. A themed room connected
The Day the World Almost Ended
Although there are still some dissenters, the scientific consensus is the dinosaurs died as the direct result of an asteroid hitting our planet. Exactly how would that event have unfolded? I’ve recently found an article on The New Yorker website that discusses the sequence of events in great detail. And according to the best scientific
“I’ll be Back in a Jiffy”
A fascinating part of the English language is the origin of common expressions. For example, all my life I’ve heard phrases like “I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Until recently, I never stopped to wonder exactly what a jiffy was. Now i know — A jiffy is actually a unit of time. But like everything
Are You Running For President?
Have you ever been told “If you don’t like the way the country is being run, why don’t you run for office yourself”? Don’t laugh, a lot of people are. In fact, this includes the presidency. As of this writing, more than 400 people have announced their candidacies to run our nation (http://time.com/5481580/presidential-campaign-filings-skyrocket/). Overseeing this
What’s the Dirtest Place in Your Bathroom?
I hate to start off the weekend with a downer, but being a less-than-fastidious housekeeper myself, I couldn’t help but notice the article “The Germiest Place in Your Bathroom Isn’t Your Toilet” by Julissa Treviño (http://time.com/5514669/bacteria-germs-bathroom/?). And like the title says, it’s not where you think. According to a 2011 study on household germs, conducted