My newest creature arose from its slab last night.

I was a little shaken, especially since it had been two days since I routed three lightning strikes directly into its lifeless body.

As quickly as I could, I prepared a sedative and braced myself for a rampage.

My creatures almost always go on rampages.

I even pay extra on my laboratory insurance policy just for that reason.

This time, though, the hideous creature opened his jaundiced eyes and sat up before turning its baleful gaze in my direction.

“Yo! Scientist dude,” he said. “Wazzzuuuuppp?”

Two minutes later, I fired Igor.

Author’s Note: We’ve all seen the hunchbacked lab assistant, Igor, return to his mad scientist master with a substandard brain for transplant into the monster, but I wonder just how many times the mad scientist will put up with Igor’s incompetence before making a major personnel change.

Categories: Fiction, William A. Veselik | 1 Comment »

Zombies got into my trash last night.

I should have twist-tied my garbage bags and made sure the can lids were on tight.

Can’t really blame them, though. Since the apocalypse died down, the walking dead don’t get much attention. Hardly ever hear of them biting anyone or swarming shopping malls in hordes.

They’ve lost interest in brains, too. Haven’t heard them moaning that word for months now. Most of them finally fell to pieces and the ones that are left just don’t have that “drive” that made them such formidable adversaries.

They knock over trash cans instead.

Lazy zombies.

Author’s Note: To me, this is the logical culmination of any exciting zombie apocalypse, when the walking corpses stop being a threat anymore and become, instead, the boring equivalent of raccoons.

Categories: Fiction, William A. Veselik | 1 Comment »

She was dating a vampire when she had an affair with a werewolf.

She abandoned the bloodsucker to live with a zombie.

When that relationship fell apart—about the same time the zombie did—she took up with a mad scientist.

But the scientist’s anger soon faded, as did his love for the woman.

Her next lover was the Invisible Man, though after a few months she could no longer see what about him had attracted her in the first place.

Eventually, she married a machete-wielding serial killer and they were happy together.

Until the first time she nagged him.

Author’s note: You’d think after having flings with a variety of nasty monsters, she’d avoid nagging the one lover who is never without a machete in his hand…

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They say there are occasions in your life when time seems to stand still.

Unfortunately, that is my life.

I won’t go into detail, but I found this magical pocket watch: used it; broke it; time stopped. ‘Nuff said.

Sounds like a bad Twilight Zone episode.

I can move, but everyone else is frozen, so there’s no one to talk to. Time stopped at 1:29 a.m., so it’s always dark now and all TV stations are stuck on infomercials.

I found a magical watch repair shop in the Yellow Pages, but it won’t be open until tomorrow.

Oh, wait. Nevermind.

Author’s note: This is the downside to being able to freeze time, and what are the chances there’d be a magic watch repair shop in town…that will never open?

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My brothers threw me onto the dock today.

They never warned me how bright the sunlight was.

Or how hot.

Or dry.

“He’ll learn to flop back into the lake or he’ll die,” one of my brothers gurgled from below.

My jaws worked soundlessly as I struggled to breathe. My fins flexed. My one eye blinked blindly.

But I was suffocating in the air.

I screamed in panic and terror, but only a silent trickle of fetid, green water escaped my gaping maw.

My life flashed before me: Egg to pup; pup to lake monster. Three weeks.

What a ride.

Author’s note: My late father always told me about how his brother pushed him into a lake to help him learn to swim. I imagined what would happen if something from the lake got thrown into the air to learn to flop…

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