by Michael C. Keith
When Nature Changes, Make Lemonade
Throughout the autumn everyone waited for the leaves to change color, but they didn’t. The businesses in New England that depended on the revenue from visiting leaf peepers were in a virtual frenzy. This had never happened before. Even in the worst of situations, there had been some show of color. To make matters even more dismaying, in just a single day all of the green leaves fell from the trees. This caused an assortment of problems, not the least among them clogged storm drains and packed home gutters. Before anyone could deal with the perplexing issue, the skies darkened, temperatures plunged, and it snowed . . . in color, covering all of the fallen leaves in splashes of radiant orange, red, brown, purple, blue, and magenta. When word got out, leaf peepers swarmed north to catch the transformation before it melted. Suddenly retailers were counting their profits while excited tourists rejoiced in the change of season.
***
My Dark Chimera
They could not protect me from the killer who had slaughtered a young mother and her child the night before in my dream. Despite their attempts to keep the murderer from me with bright floodlights and barbed wire barriers, I could see there was a slight opening they had overlooked. The maniac would surely slip through it and slit my throat as he had his other poor victims. Why did he want to get me, I wondered? What had I done to incite his malice? There was no logical reason, because it was a nightmare. And nightmares need no reason.
Category: Fiction, Short Story