Plaidophile

I wrote a couple of short stories for Machine of Death. David Malki! said it's perfectly fine for me to post the stories on my own site in the meantime, so here they are: KILLER BEES HARD VACUUM

Also, here's the story fragment that I couldn't figure out how to turn into a story, but which fed both of the submitted stories in different ways.

ESCALATOR

Lost in thought on the way home from a party, ascending the escalator in the subway station; my mindless reverie was interrupted by a young woman who tripped and fell beside me, hitting her face on the sharp, serrated edge of the ever-rising stairs.

"Jeeze! Are you okay?" I asked, as she laid there, dazed and confused, seemingly unaware of her situation, before I noticed her too-loud earphones that she was now tangled up in.

"Oh my God, am I bleeding?" she asked to a man who was helping her to stand back up.

"A little," he said. I noticed a shallow but painful-looking gash just below her left eye. "Come on, get up," he said, without any sense of urgency. He helped her to her feet, and she limped along behind him, rushing to the top of the mechanical stairs.

As I reached the top, I noticed a white card resting on the stair that she had tripped on. I picked it up and chased after the couple, who were busy looking for a station attendant, asking around if anyone had any moist towelettes or the like.

"Here," I said, "you dropped this," handing it to the girl.

She glared at me, and begrudgingly took it. "Thank you," she said. I glanced at the card, on which I noticed a single word written: "ESCALATOR."

- - -

I hate what those machines have done to all of us. It's like when it rains just a little bit. There are some drivers who slow down and become entirely overly-cautious and slam on their brakes at any littlest thing, and others just become completely reckless, because they have something to prove with how a little rain isn't going to make them get into an accident. What do you want to bet that girl last night had resigned herself to some gruesome death and just runs up the escalator without paying attention to her feet because she's sure that she's going to die anyway? How can she know which escalator trip is going to be her last? And how does she know it'll actually be a moving staircase? Maybe she's on an escalator that collapses suddenly. Maybe the Escalator Corporation issues a government takeover and she's the first against the wall due to her contributions to the Elevator Resistance. Maybe she gets into a shouting match with someone who wants to escalate everything. How can she know? She can't.

Or maybe that gash she opened up gets infected, and because insurance companies now consider death to be a pre-existing condition she doesn't get any treatment and the infection kills her. Maybe she's already gotten Staph B and it's gone necrotic before she even knew what was happening.

Maybe it's too easy for me to look down on people for their fears. It's hard to avoid ESCALATORs and DIABETES and CARs and TREEs, but who needs to really worry about HARD VACUUM in their daily life?

Well, I guess I do, but I don't really come across it very often.