He had a been science fiction fan his entire life and was always fascinated by cyborgs, robots, and androids, but never thought that years later, at the age of 82, he himself would end up only having contact with others through the use of a mechanical device.

He felt there was something innately ungodly about interacting through machines, but there wasn’t much choice if he wanted companionship. After his wife died last year, he was left alone and completely isolated out at their farmhouse.

He sighed unhappily, and once again, logged onto Chatzy, a social networking site for the elderly.

Author’s note: I had just declined an invitation to join a social networking site.

Categories: Fiction, Maggie Denton | No Comments »

Simon pulled the swivel lamp forward, steadied his trembling fingers, and used tweezers to lift up the tiny creature. He examined it with a magnifying glass and was dumbfounded with joy. It was authentic.

It was given to him as a joke. He worked as a low-level clerk, and one of his nastier co-workers dropped it, alive and squiggling, into his soup during lunch. It was disgusting.

Simon now whispered a prayer of thanks, then took another look through the magnifying glass. Yes, it was the real thing: a thought-to-be-extinct, cancer-curing space beetle, valued at just under a million dollars.

Author’s note: I read about a rare postage stamp worth over a million dollars and imagined a collector, teased for being “nerdy”, stumbling onto that!

Categories: Fiction, Maggie Denton | No Comments »

I knew that I had died. My body was lying in a widening pool of rainwater and blood, the casualty of a hit and run. I hovered above the road and surrounding fields.

“So this is what death is. It’s actually pretty cool, but what now?”

Even though I no longer had eyes, I was able to blink out the scene. When I perceived it again, I saw a coastal city and a large swathe of ocean.

Blink.

The blue-green orb of Earth looked just like a fortune-teller’s ball.

Blink.

A trillion stars.

“Interesting! But what now? Where to?”

Blink.

Author’s note: I banged my head hard once on something and momentarily was looking down on my own body.

Categories: Fiction, Maggie Denton | 1 Comment »

I jerked awake, scared out of my wits, and leaped out of bed. The sound was coming from somewhere on the first floor.

There it was again! An echoey, hollow-sounding bang. Baseball bat in hand, my heart going like a trip-hammer, I tiptoed through the house. Once in the kitchen, I realized it was being caused by something smashing, over and over, against the inside of the closed refrigerator door.

I stood staring at the door in pants-pissing terror, wondering what exactly that horrible banging, and now low, eerie snarling could be, because there was nothing in there but eggs.

Author’s note: One day, I heard a really strange sound come from my always quiet refrigerator.

Categories: Fiction, Maggie Denton | 2 Comments »