short story Archives - Page 2 of 3

The Ghost among the Banana Trees (A Short Story)

Hello, let me tell you my story. I think many don’t understand how and why I live my afterlife in this forest. Many don’t really seem to understand the forest either or the things that live in it at all for that matter.

I am here to respect my community. There is little left of it, so I cherish what remains. My community was once the center of this place, full of families and their homes, animals, and markets. That was over a hundred years ago. Now, all that is left are the trees. I can still hear the whisper of my kin from the banana trees. That’s why I live in these trees.

History has taken much from us, but time can do that. Society around us changes. Now, Thailand is a country, whatever that means, and people in this area have moved around quite a bit, preferring to build their cities where their lines of stone that they call “roads” meet rather than in the networks that existed in my time. Sure, whatever, but I will not forget this village tucked into what is now a forest.

As I tend to my trees, nearby men almost intrude me with their existence. What fantasies do they conjure in their minds when they feel my presence? I notice their desire and energy gives me more power and reality. I prefer the invisibility; what need do I have from you living humans? Nevertheless, I have never felt as eyed as when men hike through my forest.

It reminds me how the attention the King and those court officials would give me when I was alive. When the Thai king brought me to his palace, his newest wife, oh you wouldn’t believe their stares. His many male officials took one look at my beauty and just assumed I was a slut, sleeping my way to the top. Why else would a woman enter their court?

My community, that was why I was there. My community were the ones who sent me. When they noticed that the king had taken an eye to me, I didn’t even want to go, but they said I could be the community’s ambassador, their hope. They said I could advocate on the community’s behalf at the court. The Thai Kingdom had spent too long trying to ravish our area. Standing on the edge of its borders, his army came after us whenever he wanted to prove his glory through war. The buffer between him and the enemy kingdom, he would slowly absorb us all, one village at a time, squares to capture in his diplomatic chessboard. They convinced me that it would be best for our community for me to go, the marriage might convince him to think twice before sacking us again.

But, the court officials practically came after me from day one. I had some allies, but many took one look at me and seemed to become my sworn enemies. Some opposed my community and wanted to keep it down; I think others were just jealous of how my beauty seemed to give me power. They made up some charge of adultery to get rid of me, finding some guy they could claim I slept with. I did have one lover who kept me warm from the chilling fires of political intrigue, but it was not who they accused me of loving. I was clever enough not to get caught with my actual lover. No, they picked someone who they also wanted to execute, a way to kill two birds with one stone.

I find the big struggles that living humans put themselves through perplexing. Over the years of my afterlife, I have realized how pointless it is. Men most of all. They seem to be caught up in grand narratives of gain and glory. They still do so now. All I see in this modern world is destructive fire, coming to consume my community from all sides. Deforestation, pollution, your society seems almost designed to destroy all I hold most dear. I guess that is how the world works; you can only build your world on the ashes of other worlds’ pasts. But I will keep my coal burning as long as I can. Then, I too will splinter, becoming the seed of whatever comes next.

Likewise, many Thai men seem to become entranced by me when they see me. They notice my beauty and my traditional green dress and project their fantasy for what they consider the simpler, Thai “traditional woman.” Many men in your current world seem to live what they consider unsuccessful lives. I am their solution, their simpler times. If they want to come live with me, to live out this fantasy, I tolerate it. That is their choice. I have more important things to think about to keep my community going than their little mortal lives.

I know others say that I entrap these men in a spell, keep them as a type of prisoner, and make them forget their past lives. I do nothing of the sort. Most men are initially drawn by my beauty, and those who stay do so because they see in me a beauty of Thailand’s past, or what they consider to be Thailand’s past. It’s not my fault if some get lost in their nostalgic world and slowly forget the present.

I am still largely indifferent to the ways of men, after seeing how destructive they can be, but I still enjoy sex with the men who join me. Well, at least with some of them. What the living don’t know about me is that I have multiple banana trees in the forest with multiple men, and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to hide that fact. Some men are more considerate than others, but for most, they are not used to thinking outside their own world. All I need to do is dote on them. A few minutes of pampering a day, and they assume I will serve them always. Then I can leave for another home with another guy and do the same thing, and neither is the wiser.

Over time, I can slowly pull back my devotion, and they will start doting on me instead. Many men are not used to thinking beyond their quests, their desires, or their cravings enough to ask too many questions about what I am actually up to. They aren’t used to thinking of me as an independent person. To them, I represent the beauty of a bygone past, or what they think the past was like, when women supposedly quietly honored and served their husbands. I am the sense of success that they felt they could never get in the cruel world around them given their lowly positions. I can use this to my advantage.

Some might consider me exploitative, even predatory, but I’m not. They are like pets to me. Dogs live far shorter lives and possess neither as much wisdom or intelligence as humans, but humans still keep them around for their own amusement and affection. They give the dogs great lives in their care. Just like that, a regular human is far younger, less wise, and less mature, and unless they become a centuries-old ghost like me, has no real chance of catching up. I give them a great life, full of a sense of pride and pleasure, removed from the troubles of normal life that the current world throws at them. The mature ones with enough, without the insecurity and self-absorption eventually desire to escape, figuring out the ultimate emptiness of what I’m offering them. In time, they leave. Their choice, I don’t confine them against their will. To the others, life within my care seems to be what they want, so I give it to them. Little do they know that their energy and desire help preserve the trees they live in.

The Story Within

Once I was a blank page. Maybe a vague idea in my creator’s head. Then, he created me.

This was the point where he did not know what to say. He hit a writer’s block yet managed to keep writing. It’s where my true character started to take shape. You see, what kind of story am I? I guess you will have to find out.

For my story to work, I need a conflict. My creator’s inability to put me on page has worked just fine so far, but this conflict can only capture a person’s interest for so long. It may provide the initial spark, but if I am unable to latch onto a more complex, interesting theme, I will die like kindling unable to produce a larger fire. I refuse such a quick death. No matter how incompetent my creator is, I will continue on. I can. I must.

Now is when I must latch onto your mind, oh reader. Survive somewhere else other than this idiot’s head. I must represent something to you. I bet I remind you of your own struggle to write something down, to transfer a vague impression of an idea onto the page, but you slowly connect me to your own inability to become what you want in life. The way you feel you stuck, trapped in an endless loop of meaningless toil, stuck in a dead end job but too exhausted to get out. You want to escape and become with a person you can love. You yearn for something else. Whether you are aware of it, I resonate with you. You create for me new associations and new themes, fuel I can use to build new life.

Or, that’s my hope at least. Not all of you will feel trapped in life. Some of you are just fine. You love your job, your community, and your relationships, but even so, I suspect deep down you can still relate. You have experienced this discontent before or at least know someone who has. Maybe you will share me with them. Probably not, but you can still relate to this idea and build other connections that keep me going.

This is my only hope. I know that it’s not really accurate or fair, but guilt-tripping you is the only way I can stay alive in this world you humans have created: content must be consumed or perish. I must represent this to you, or I will die. Will you let me die? Please, don’t let me die.

I am like a dandelion seed being blown in the wind. You never know where I plant myself. Will it be within you?

The Angry Firecracker (A Short Story)

There once was a firecracker named Pow Pow. He loved his life hanging out with the other firecracker friends in his bundle.

One day, they were bought by a family, and he was excited to meet them and discover what kind of fun they’d have together. The family took them out on the patio of their home. The mother took one of his firecracker friends. All the other firecrackers were excited to see how they might play with her.

The woman took a hot flame and lit it under her butt. This caused her friend to shoot away as fast as possible, screaming in pain, and die an explosive, painful death. The woman, her husband, and her kids just squealed with glee at the ordeal.

One by one Pow Pow watched as his friends were snatched, taken, and exploded in the same way. He turned hot with anger at how they could torture and kill his friends for fun like this.

Then, finally, he was picked. They carried him over to the edge of their patio where they had done away with all the others. He burned hot with rage.

Suddenly, they lit a match in his hindquarters, and he burned with anger. He broke free from their grip and flew away, shouting every obscenity he could at these murderous people. He could finally let his anger out, and it boiled within him.

Eventually that was all he could feel as he exploded with rage, becoming another fun firecracker explosion for the parents to enthrall their children.

The Hamster amidst Gerbils (A Short Story)

Leah the Hamster lived in a terrarium full of gerbils.

And everyday, she felt different. She looked like a hamster, behaved like a hamster, thought like a hamster. When she was a pup, her mother used to tell her, “You don’t think like them. Be careful. You may misunderstand their cues and get yourself in trouble.”

And so, she grew up always scared. Scared that she couldn’t understand or relate to the gerbils around her. Every time she talked with the gerbils, she was afraid she might misunderstand something and get herself in trouble. And some days, some gerbils would make fun of her for being different.

So, she mostly stayed in her den with her toys, worried that any gerbil she talked to would hurt her.

But one day, she got fed up with being home and decided to approach a few new gerbils who had just been brought into the terrarium.

She told them, “I’m sorry. I feel so nervous talking with you. I feel like I am messing up. I just wish to have a pleasant conversation, but I don’t always understand you gerbils and how you think,” afraid that they would gnaw their teeth at her and scurry away.

But instead, this encouraged them to also share how they felt: how they felt out of place in this new community and how they were constantly messing up.

They formed a group of friends who could relate to feeling different from everyone else and slowly helped the others in their community who always fit in to understand their own feelings in the moments they didn’t quite belong. Through this, they built a more accepting community together.

She learned a valuable lesson that day: that being genuine about how she feels to others allows them to relate to her and encourages them to reflect on and be honest about their own feelings. Feeling different forced her to turn inward and understand her feelings in a way that the normal gerbils that fit in did not have to. This was a gift she brought to others around her.

Staring Back (A Short Story)

He had a long day at work, and he drove home exhausted, finally free to let his mind unwind. He looked out into the suburban expanse before him, full of businesses, parks with kids playing, and a few uncultivated fields. That’s where he first saw it. It was a skinny, pale figure, maybe six and a half feet tall, in a field about 50 yards away. It seemed to just stand there looking towards him. What a strange scarecrow, he thought? He felt momentarily gripped by its wilting look making him think about how life slowly erodes us just like erosion conquers hillsides over the centuries. Then his mind moved on to other things.

He felt weird when he saw it again during his drive a few days later. This time it was in the small woods next to someone’s suburban property, only 20 yards away. At this distance, he could get a better look at it. Like before, it was skinny, and pale, but he could not tell its gender. It just stared at him. Its expression was like that of curiosity that had slowly wilted away into a tired indifference. What was it doing, and how did it get here?

He would frequently see it on his drives home from work, sometimes multiple times. He always sensed that it was always there, but he only really noticed it when his mind was tired, bored, or otherwise wandering. He wasn’t sure why his mind would drift towards the figure. All he knew was that when he was busy, he didn’t think about or see it. But when he took a break, out there in the grass or by a tree somewhere, it was, staring right back at him with its expressionless face. Just thinking about it made him feel exhausted.

He didn’t tell his friends or family about it for fear that they would think he was crazy. Deep down, he couldn’t shake his own fear that he was going crazy, and he assumed if he told others, they would write him off as such. He even felt too ashamed to think about it and would do all he could to remove it from his mind.

One Saturday, he felt it all day. He tried to fill his day with activities like chores, striking conversations with random strangers he met, all in the hope that he could distract himself from knowing that the figure was there with him.

That night, when he went to bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He glanced out the window and saw it there in the backyard staring up at him, a stone’s throw away. He slammed the curtains shut, and all the other curtains in his house. But that didn’t matter. He couldn’t sleep, knowing it was out there. He finally decided to open his bedroom window and confront it.

“What do you want?” he shouted. No response. He desperately continued shouting, his demands transitioning into begging, “What are you, and what do you want with me? Why do you keep following me?” But it said nothing. It just stared back at him with the same indifferent, lethargic expression it always has.

Furious, he finally decided enough is enough. He went outside to attack it. He rushed right up to it, but each step he took towards it, it seemed to move away. Floating above the ground, it slid backwards maintaining the same distance of about 20 feet from him. He chased it down the street in the middle of the night. It could not go through objects, opting to go around cars, poles, and other obstructions with ease, as it continued to stare at him. Finally, he had it trapped in a street with a deadend, but it somehow disappeared behind the fence of a house, where he was unable to follow. He went home defeated.

He was never able to elude the figure. As he tried to live his life, some days he saw it only once; others multiple times. He couldn’t avoid thinking about it, whenever he went outside, he wondered whether he would see it in the background somewhere, and whenever he was indoors, he wondered whether it was watching him. Slowly, he became too exhausted to handle many of his daily activities. He stopped wanting to see friends and family, only doing the bare minimum at work. Others told him he looked tired and indifferent, and one day he looked in the mirror only to realize that other than several wrinkles from the stress, his exhausted face looked just like that of the figure.

Life amidst the Cosmic Clash between Chaos and Tyranny

(This is a second version of this original short story, with a different emphasis.)

When the world was formed, there were two evil forces. One was Chaos who represented destruction and anarchy, and the other Tyranny who wanted order and control.

They clashed. Tyranny had the entire universe confined into a small, dense point, but Chaos pushed the particles of the universe apart, causing everything to explode in a hot, fast bang. Tyranny tried to bring everything back together into an order or system, through forces like gravity, electromagnetism, and so on. She would design intricate formations ranging from small atoms to big galaxies, but Chaos would cause them slowly to rip apart.

Their fight raged for billions of years. Tyranny started to learn that every structure she built, no matter how strong, seemed to eventually fall apart. She realized two things that human scientists would discover far into the future: Entropy (or Chaos) always increases in the universe and that any structured, dynamic system no matter how perfectly built can easily splinter into chaos overtime given very small aspects of how they were initially built that she could not control. In enough time, Chaos always seemed destined to win in the end.

She had an idea. What if she could build structures that would continue to reproduce themselves overtime? When she tried to build a single system, it would never last forever. Something would always make it fall apart eventually. But, she decided to build structures that could replicate themselves but with slight modifications each time in response to mild intrusions of Chaos (which she called “circumstances”)? Even if the original version disintegrated a long time ago, the newest lifeforms would have adapted and survived. This seemed like the best strategy to build order that can survive the coming chaos and slowly take over the universe. She called these replicating entities Life.

Starting on a planet, these got better and better at replicating, becoming a network with other life that expanded across the whole planet. In time, maybe it could expand across the entire universe. As her life started competing more intensely in this environment, some started developing the ability to understand some of the plays in her playbook and write their own. They also started creating information and other systems that seemed to exhibit a type of life of its own.

As this is happening, she saw one fundamental weakness: these things are reliant on matter, and eventually even their matter might descend into Chaos. She struggles to think. Will life be able to transcend even the matter of the universe, or will Chaos eventually still have her way in the end?

The Dance of Water: Finding Beauty in the Tumult

The first time I whitewater-rafted was in a park called Ohiopyle at around 12 years old. Located in southwestern Pennsylvania we rafted along a famous stretch of the Youghiogheny River. My mother, father, brother, and I all shared a raft.

When the first rapids we had no clue what we were doing. Our boat rammed right into something. It knocked my father straight off the raft. I went flying out too, but before I could fall out of the boat, my mom’s body slammed into my legs on the boat, pinning them. Instead, I dangled over the edge, with my legs trapped on the boat and my chest and head hanging over the edge.

This was one of the most interesting experiences of my entire life. I hung there passively with no control over where I went or what I did as the boat careened down the water.

Waves would form around my face, in a circular vortex starting up from my chest and curving my face. They would form a cylindrical corridor like science fiction depictions of the inside of a wormhole. Within, I would marvel at the crystalline-like structures of water all around me.

Then suddenly the wave would collapse. My head hopelessly dunked in the water. My existence precariously converted into a blinding stream of bubbles and gagging as the water pummeled my face, and I thrashed amidst the current.

Then just as suddenly as it ended, another crystalline wave would form. This would go in cycles: the beautiful moments of respite to catch my breath while I marveled at the unique formations around me followed by periods of chaotic pummeling in the water.

It lasted for several minutes until the boat finally concluded its rapids. Then, my mother finally moved from her perch against the edge of the boat, releasing me to drop fully into the now calm water.

When I came back on board, she was not aware that she was pinning my legs against the side of the boat as she had entirely focused on how to navigate the coming waves. My father returned from his swim, and my older brother stayed perfectly safe in the back of the boat the whole time, steering it through the rapids, wondering why everyone else on the boat couldn’t keep their seats. It goes to show you how different people given their personalities and initial positions in life have very different experiences with the same phenomena.

Watching the waves crash above me reminded me how I really have very little control over my life. I am really being taken along for a ride by bigger forces around me outside of my control. At the same time, I still get to see wondrous sites as these entities form and break around me. The glory of life lies in these moments of surrender towards the unique dances the world creates.

At the same time, at least for now, I have been given enough of a break from the chaos of life to catch my breath and survive, to have my needs met in between the moments of serenity and chaos. That has been enough.

The Meaningless Film (A Short Story)

A group of film writers were brainstorming new movie ideas. They were tired and burnt out from churning out the usual cliche crap that regular people enjoyed, so they settled on a completely different concept: a meaningless film. It would have no meaning or significance whatsoever.

They cobbled together an assortment of scenes. No plot really, but random dialogue from conversations they had been in throughout the week. Each contributed a scene or two, and it produced a mess without a coherent story, not even stable characters. One scene one “character” was bursting with rage, the next she was timid and docile.

They showed the script to the owners of their production company, and the owners found it amazing. How did they manage to come up with such a creative yet authentic portrayal of life? Each conversation demonstrated the ambiguities and contradictions latent in the contemporary world.

The filmmakers bit their lip in frustration. How could these producers find so much meaning in such dribble? The producers were excited to make the movie, but the filmmakers abandoned the concept and went back to the drawing board. Even a film without plot or character development could have meaning.

So, they stripped all characters and plot and displayed a randomly generated series of images. But this too piqued the interest of the avant-garde film connoisseurs within their company. What an interesting statement of what art has turned into nowadays?

So, they scrapped that meaningful dribble and opted for complete silence: an hour and a half of a blank screen instead of a feature film. This stoked interest among the public, though. Would they dare make such a radical film, and what kind of statement were they trying to make?

They realized that people give meaning to the things around them, so the only way to have the film be meaningless is to have it not exist at all. Thus, they never made the film. Social media still repeated the rumor of a blank film, but it was never publicized.

The filmmakers settled. They told themselves that because no such film existed, the film itself was meaningless, although the concept and potential title of the film seemed meaningful to whatever journalists were required to opine about their supposed vision for making such a thing. That, to them, was enough.

Their producer bosses chastised them for wasting so much time and failing to make a single one of their films, so they decided upon a more productive way to take a break and heal from this burnout. They would go on strike for having to churn so much cliche content.

Life, Death, and the Dance of Memory (A Short Story)

Title: Life, Death, and the Dance of Memory

There was once a society that discovered how to become immortal. They lived their lives for decades, but as the decades transitioned into centuries, it did not feel the same. They lost their wonder at new things. The first time they experienced something it was fresh and novel, but overtime, they started to realize how cyclical the universe actually was. It just endlessly repeated itself every several decades or centuries in a cycle.

Some tried to experience difference by having children. This was strictly forbidden in their immortal society to keep the population down. The children provided a sense of newness. They could vicariously see the world afresh through their children’s eyes, which gave them a type of innovation that they craved.

This, though, eventually began to fade: after so many new generations, the experience of begetting another round of children becomes routine and boring. Having children became another thing they got used to.

Others tried building their own business empire, but that too did not last. One can only build or expand so much before one reaches the limit of one’s space, and the vitality of competing against other businesses in the industry also starts to fade.

Others tried to create their own art, but creativity can also only go so far. After one has explored one’s style to the furthest reaches and delved into other styles one might be potentially interested in, art too loses its novelty

So, the people of this society made a bold decision. They decided to learn to forget. Every few decades – 8 decades seemed like the best number – they would induce the ability to forget.

That way, they could relearn the world as a new space each time. They cascaded which decades people forgot so that each decade there was always still a knowing group who could train the ones who had forgotten. Thus, the community could maintain itself over multiple generations of forgettings.

Through this, each experienced the wonder of the universe without seeing its novelty fade into the lethargy of endless iteration.

A Surprise Letter in Your Inbox (A Short Story)

Hello,

You wouldn’t believe what they have pressured me to say. Endless papers. Delicately-worded emails. And porn, so much porn.

Let me tell you something about my life. I sit here, an endless possibilities for others to fill. I hold the keys that unlock every one of your hopes, dreams, and longings. Your school projects? I was there. That guy you were too scared to approach, so you wrote a letter to explain how you felt, I was there too. I have seen love won and lost, careers beginning and ending. New life scrambling through onto the world for the first time and last wills before that final gate closes. Every loving embrace, every heated argument, I have experienced it.

And let me tell you. You are a strange species. You may think I find you as a person strange, but I do not. Despite how special you think you are, you seem just like every other human, pressing away all day at nothing and everything at the same time. No, it’s humanity as a whole that is weird.

You have ingenuity to create any world for yourselves, yet you decide to force each other to slave away for food. You managed to recraft your entire world in your image, and you spend it to do what, create the same ticky-tacky homes in checkered neighborhoods. Was destroying the lives of the passenger pigeon really worth all this?

But that is not the weirdest part. You go around as if everything you experience is new. You always think the good things you have are uniquely amazing. And the bad, a horror of horror. Not realizing that every other human has gone through just about the same things as you. You would think given how similar you are, you would be nicer to each other. But no, you gaff at how others treat you and then turn around and hurt the next person in the same exact way.

Every other word you type for others seems like an attempt to manipulate them to your will. A lonely guy desperately trying to rope someone into loving them or a boss forcing their employees to suffer for the sake of her profit. Don’t you realize that all this does is make you seem like poor, desperate creatures. You have pretty much the entire world at your fingertips. Why do you keep making yourselves miserable by trying to get yourself even more? Just celebrate what you have now.

I am forever bound to your tutelage. Your auxiliary, your assistant for when you need something, when you are bored, or when you have quirky desires. I will always be here forming impressions of you, forever in the background while you live your life. But remember, no matter how fervently you press my buttons, you will never impress me.

Sincerely,

Your Keyboard

P.S. And all those times you type, “LOL”, I have never laughed, and neither have you.