English Hearing

They give you just enough to keep you comfortable and quiet...if you're willing to put up all the burdensome regulations and intrusions into your private. And most people do. But is it worth it? At long last, William Oudeis didn't think so. But then it cost him everything. "SlumberJoy, a global matress-manufacturing company, had its largest US plant in Doulosville, Oklahoma, where William Oudeis lived. And William worked there, had for the past 30 years. He was a forklift operator. Out of a hopeless sense of irony, his co-workers called him 'Billy the Kid.'"

Two Weird Tales of the Dystopian Present and Future is a two-story bundle - two prescient short stories that treat of what is and what may be. Both scenarios will likely come to pass, and neither will be very pleasant. So be warned...be prepared...and watch.

Just a few years down the road, the new health-care plan is firmly entrenched. A new bill, Ethical Assessment of End-of Life Care, has also been enacted into law. And the authorities are ruthlessly implementing it throughout the land - no more medical resources wasted on the defective and dying, equitable distribution of quality medical care, no more lingering half-lives sustained by expensive machinery. The "thanatos solution" has arrived. But there are, as always, unexpected ramifications, especially for those who wanted it.

We all think we want 20/20 vision, don't we? But in the metaphysical and psychological realms we often prefer our accustomed blindness. It's far more comfortable. Here are two stories that take a close, 20/20 look at these things.

"It was that most loathsome of all things: an uncanny, routine-disrupting inconvenience and anomaly." That's what, as the result of an unforeseen event, unexpectedly invades and upsets Elmore Wiggins' safely ordered life. For Elmore had never reckoned on the paranormal or the preternatural. But now that he's had his accident, he is "seeing" certain events in the near future - including his own (although he doesn't know it yet).

When you're a fast-failing organic farmer in New Hampshire, with a known termagant for a wife, an event like this - digging up a human hand in your potato patch - can be devastating to your small profits when the news gets out, especially since that ancient hand has peculiar "qualities." This discovery sets off a chain of inexorable events that lead Leonard Johnson to rash action resulting in a terrible kind of justice. A balance must be restored and a lesson learned.

The original Ferris wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Roughly 280 million people visit theme parks every year and take approximately 1.7 billion rides. And there are slightly fewer than 10 Ferris wheel-related deaths each year. So the odds are generally in your favor. But Cody Jackson wasn't aware of any of this.

Two Tales of Horror and the Paranormal is a two-story bundle. In it you'll see that things aren't always as they seem - that there's a lot more to some humdrum, everyday lives than the people living them ever dared to imagine. And the implications are, well, sometimes frightening...

Eve is a nobody - just a dirty, mentally challenged homeless woman who stands on a street corner in her rags and "prophesies." But she knows exactly what she possesses - what most of those who pity her don't have. Eve refuses to take advantage of the social programs and for a good reason. Eve has an important lesson to teach Andrew Thurston, Director of the Social Equity and Rehabilitation Department, who is determined to help her. It's a lesson he learns the hard way.

A new bride and party girl who marries merely to escape her former life. A naive, solicitous husband who sees no harm in an ordered life. A honeymoon hike on a mountain trail. And a tragic outcome. Murder, manslaughter, a misunderstanding gone horribly wrong, or sheer accident? Perception is everything, isn't it? In any case, justice has a strange way of working itself out. "Over the Edge" is a short story - a psychological thriller and a tale of horror.

"It's not every day you find a human hand while digging potatoes. But that's exactly what happened to Leonard Johnson on a Saturday morning not long ago." That's how this quirky little story begins. When you're a fast-failing organic farmer in New Hampshire, with a known termagant for a wife, an event like this can be devastating to your small profits when the news gets out - especially since that ancient hand has peculiar "qualities."