“I’m looking for Stepford,” Brad said to the heavily armed guard at the town’s entrance gate.  “My notes say it should be right here.”

“I never heard of Stepford,” said the guard.

“That’s where guys turned their wives into mindless, cookie-baking robots.  It happened about thirty-five years ago.  When the government found out, they imprisoned all the men for life and destroyed all the buildings.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.  This town’s called Scriptopia.”

“That’s odd.  It doesn’t show up on my map.”

“It’s a very exclusive place.  They keep it off maps and the Global Positioning System.”

“That’s what they do for Area 51,” Bret said.  “Is this one of those hush-hush research centers?”

“No.  All our residents are fiction writers.”

“Any chance of my getting inside to have a look?  I’m Bret Harding.  I teach History at Santa Buffoona College in California.  Here’s my ID.”

After scrutinizing Harding’s ID, the guard said, “We usually discourage visitors.  But, since you’re a college teacher maybe the Sheriff will let you in.”

The guard mumbled into a cell phone.

“Sheriff Spitz says you can enter under certain conditions.  Are you now, or have you ever been a writer of poetry, limericks, greeting card jingles, nursery rhymes, or song lyrics?”

“No,” Bret lied, figuring they’d never heard of his three books of esoteric, cryptic, noxious poetry.

“I must warn you:  poets are strictly forbidden in Scriptopia.  Violation of town ordinances carries extremely stiff penalties.”

“I understand.  Can you point me to a coffee shop?  I could use a good cup of brew after driving so long.”

“Sure. This is Dostoyevsky Drive.  Go about a mile, then turn left at Steinbeck Street.  It’s on the corner.  Hemingway’s Hashery.  Oh, the Sheriff said you can stay for only an hour.  Better set a timer.  He’s one mean SOB.  By the way, he writes sock-o detective novels.”

Bret blurted, “Me too,” a fib of monstrous proportions.  He couldn’t write a piece of readable prose if his life depended on it.  But when it came to iambic pentameter, he was a master.

When the gates swung open, Bret drove down a tree-lined avenue.  “Get a load of that,” he mumbled when he saw lampposts shaped like fountain pens.

Beautiful brick homes came into view.  Some chimneys emitted puffs of gray smoke.  He had to glance twice when a smoke cloud suddenly formed a bubble in which appeared the words, “THE ZOMBIE’S EYES GLOWED, AS HIS POWERFUL PUTRID FINGERS GRIPPED MISS POTTER’S CREAMY NECK.”

“Holy smoke!” Bret yelled, chills running down his spine.  He couldn’t wait to get inside the restaurant for a sanity check.

The restaurant was shaped like an old-time, manual typewriter. Once inside, he noticed the place was as quiet as a graveyard.  Everywhere he looked, customers were eating with one hand and scribbling in notebooks with the other.  Even the kids.

“Mommy.  What do you think of this sentence?” a boy asked quietly.   “The werewolf grabbed the vampire and twisted his head off.”

“Very nice,” said a blonde woman, patting the boy’s head.  “I think you should add some dialog.  Tell us what the werewolf said.  And maybe you can include what the vampire was thinking as his head was being twisted.”  Then she quickly added, “Better finish your Fiction Fries before they get cold.”

When Bret chose a counter seat, he noticed the waitress writing furiously in a notebook.

“I’ll be with you soon as I finish this paragraph,” she whispered.

After several minutes of utter silence, he absent-mindedly tapped keys on the counter.  Customers immediately bombarded him with shushing sounds and hostile stares.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Finished,” the waitress whispered.  “Sorry to make you wait.  Didn’t wanna break my thoughts.  Been struggling over that paragraph all morning.”

Her happy-face nametag announced, “Becky Bunkee.  Author of The Moiling Mob.  10 weeks on the NY Times Best Seller List.”

“Wow,” he said. “I see, Becky Bunkee, thee art she who wrote a bigee.”

“What did you say?” she snapped.

Oh, hell! I goofed.   “I said that I see you’ve hit the big time, with your book being a best seller.”

“No you didn’t.  I distinctly heard you say something that sounded like a poem.  Are you a poet?” she yelled loudly.

“No.  I teach history.”

Suddenly, customers surrounded Bret. “Are you a poet?” they chanted in unison.

The Sheriff stormed in. Handcuffing Bret, he yelled, “You were warned at the gate, Harding.  We don’t want any damn poets around here. We’re all refugees from that abominable trash that uses countless, meaningless, mind-bending words to say nothing.  It’s five years since somebody tried to sneak in here and convert us from prose writers to poetry hacks.  Do you realize what you’ve done?  Look at all the innocent kids here munching on Homonym Hamburgers, Simile Sausages, and Personification Pancakes. You‘ve contaminated their malleable minds.  Do you think we want them running around yelling, ‘Rosy-posy-chewy-dewy-hokey-smoky?’  It’s downright pornographic, you sleazy malefactor!”

The Sheriff searched Bret and found a petite volume of sonnets in his coat pocket.  “Here’s proof!” yelled the Sheriff, elevating the book for all to see.

Women shrieked, men blanched, oldsters threw up, parents shielded children’s eyes to prevent trauma.

That night, citizens gathered to watch Bret walk barefoot across ten feet of white-hot iron  rails.  Wearing a dunce cap, on which was written, “POET,” Bret never got past the first few inches.  When his feet burst into flames, he toppled headfirst into a blazing pit.

“Look,” somebody yelled, as a cloud of smoke rose from Bret’s charred corpse.  Inside the cloud appeared the words, “A POX ON THEE FOR KILLING ME.”

“What does that say, Mommy?” asked a kid.

“Nothing.  It’s just a stupid poem.”

“What’s a poem?”

“The ravings of demons,” she snapped.  “You better forget you ever heard that terrible word.  If I ever hear you saying it, I’ll wash your mouth out with acid and sell you to the gypsies.”

—
© 2009 Michael A. Kechula

Michael A. Kechula is a retired tech writer. His fiction has won first place in seven contests and placed in six others. He’s also won Editor’s Choice awards four times. His stories have been published by 124 magazines and anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and US. He’s authored a book of flash and micro-fiction stories: “A Full Deck of Zombies–61 Speculative Fiction Tales.” eBook available at www.BooksForABuck.com and www.fictionwise.com. Paperback available at www.amazon.com.

Holly Beth was scared of monsters. The way they smelled made her shiver, and the sound of their long claws, scratching the floor made her gasp with fear. But by far the biggest problem with monsters was that you never knew where they were. They hid in garbage cans and closets, narrow alleyways and in cupboards; they were everywhere. And all it took was one second of carelessness for them to get you. You were never safe from monsters.

Luckily, Holly Beth was smarter than most other kids. She was only five, but she already knew almost everything there was to know about monsters. You would never see her seeking help from an adult. She knew better than that, she was smarter. Grown-ups ignored the monsters around them, either because they were too busy or too set in their ways. If you told them you saw a monster, they would laugh at you and call you silly before walking away. No, adults were of no help, Holly Beth knew that.

She also knew that monsters could take any form; they could dress like anyone, even your uncle or the pre-school teacher. And now a monster had dressed like daddy.

Her father didn’t live with Holly Beth and mama anymore, but he visited once in a while. He was always nice when visiting, smiling and giving Holly Beth presents. But the man that had knocked on their apartment door this evening was not nice, not at all. He looked like daddy but he smelled like the homeless you saw in abandoned bus stops and he talked nonsense like them, too. He told Holly Beth to go to bed because he and mama had stuff to discuss and as soon as the young girl closed her door she heard screams and angry curses. That was how Holly knew something was wrong: her daddy never cursed when he came to visit; he was always nice.

As she peeked from her room, the suspicion that the man in their living room was not her father became a certainty. It was the way he stumbled and slurred his words as if he was speaking a foreign language. Holly Beth was certain he was a monster, it was the only explanation. But what could she do about it?

The young girl watched the living room, biting her lip. She hated the monster yelling at her mom more and more with very second that passed, but she was too scared to move. What could she do? He was so much bigger and he looked insane, spit hanging from his contorted mouth. What could a little girl do?

As she watched, the monster grabbed a vase and smashed it on the floor. He grinned as he did so, screaming more insults. He then ran his hand through the small shelves where mama kept her books and tumbled everything on the floor. Holly Beth twitched as each book hit the ground. She heard her mother crying and the monster laugh and she knew what had to be done.

She carefully snuck out of her room, into the kitchen. At every step she expected the monster to notice her but he was careless, too distraught with his slurred curses. The girl reached the kitchen much more easily than she expected. Once there she reached to the top drawer, the one were mama kept the knives. She took the largest one and carefully hiding it behind her back, snuck back into the living room.

The monster was holding mama down and yelling at her. He was red in the face and his fists clenched with barely controlled anger, but Holly Beth wasn’t scared anymore. She felt calm and even somehow happy; the fear that ruled her was finally gone.

With a quick slice she cut the monster’s right leg, right above the knee where she knew it would hurt most. The monster screamed and collapsed on the floor, grabbing his blood stained jeans. The knife sliced his throat open with surprising ease. Holly Beth watched him die with a smile on her lips. The monsters were smart but she was smarter than them and she would never be afraid again.

___
©2009 Alex Moisi

My name is Alex Moisi and I am a Chicago based horror and SF author. My work has been published or is upcoming in the following anthologies: Northern Haunts by Shroud Publishing, Malpractice by Necrotic Tissue, Desolated Places by Hadley Rille books and various magazine and e-zines. For more informations about me please visit dracken.co.nr