Strangers and Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

book — tales told by children for adults and the mentally unstable…
    Anyway, Charlie swears that two people really did come out of his closet.  I told him that he was probably just dreaming at the time, but he was insistent, more so than usual when he’s spinning one of his tales.
    He went on to describe how they smelled, what their voices sounded like, even the funny clothes they were wearing.  He said that the woman’s voice reminded him of his mother’s.
    God, I miss Carol... but it’s getting better.  Three years, and the pangs of grief finally aren’t there anymore whenever I’m reminded of her.  Off track again... anyway... Charlie was convinced that it wasn’t a dream, and it was time for him and Jill to leave for school, so I told him to hurry up and finish eating while I grabbed his backpack.
    This is where I began to wonder if it was a tale after all.  I still don’t know what to think of it.  When I went up to Charlie’s room, I grabbed his backpack off the floor, and  the closet was directly in front of me.  I began to think again of how silly Charlie was to insist that he wasn’t dreaming , when I saw muddy footprints coming out of the closet.  There were two sets, a larger one and a smaller one.
    I checked, just to be sure, but there were only foot prints coming out of the closet, not going in... It’s the strangest thing.  Charlie must have staged the whole thing, but he’s never gone to such lengths before.
    I’ll have to ask Jody about it at our next session.  Crazy...it still gives me chills to think about it.

One Fare Day
     
    Jack Spade was stuck in traffic again.  He couldn’t believe his luck, the first customer he’d had all day, and now he couldn’t drive him anywhere.
    “Hey, Mister,” the passenger said.  “How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”
    “Couldn’t tell ya buddy, construction’s been a bitch all week.”  Jack was thinking about how nice it would be when the city of New York finally finished building the sky lanes.  Of course, that would mean saying goodbye to his faithful taxi, with it’s ever-wobbling four wheels.
    Growing up, Jack would look out his windows at night in his family’s run down apartment on the lower levels of New York and watch the hovers fly by.  He remembered thinking how one day, he was going to be a pilot and fly far away from there, maybe to go visit the upstarting colony on Mars.  He couldn’t help but laugh now, as he considered where he’d ended up—in the past.  He liked to think of it as the Wild, Wild West .
    On the plus side, being stranded in the world a thousand years before you were born, let you see all of the history first hand that you used to watch in the vids when you were a kid.  So there was that.
    Traffic was going nowhere fast, and Jack decided he’d had enough.  He turned off the engine, which was threatening to overheat, told the passenger to get out and walk, and settled in for a nice nap.
    He woke to the sound of screams and breaking glass.  His heart immediately began to race and his breathing quickened as his body dumped a massive dose of adrenaline into his bloodstream.
    People were running down the street in a panic.  Jack checked his rear view, and soon saw the reason why.  His heart sank into his stomach as he realized what today was.  How could he be so stupid?  He’d known about this day since he was seven.  It was the start of the Sky Lane Worker Riot, and , presently , a giant construction bot was bearing down on his car.
    Shit, shit, shit .  The construction bots were used for both demolition and building.  They needed to be mobile and durable at the same time.  With six legs, cranes, wrecking balls, and powerful lasers capable of cutting through anything but diamond, the bots resembled something akin to an alien-insect-dinosaur, covered in armor.
    Driving was not an option as the street was still grid-locked, so Jack quickly got out of the car and began to run.