Time Spheres

Palm-sized spheres with deep grooves purposefully incised around the circumference and strange, spongy material insides. A warm tarnished bronze hued ball bearing errant reticulated scabs. The most unlikely of time travel devices, yet... the story is now dead. The spheres have lost their energy. The technology is light years ahead, yet millions of years old. A quick wonder about the choice of such distant antiquity to have arrived and maybe, possibly not returned from. It's frivolous speculation. A dreamer's folly. Folly that stems from belief in physically existing objects. 

There's an object, and an unknown origin, function and intent. This unknown outweighs physical evidence. Time was traveled, then forgotten. Eventually, measuring with increments of time was rediscovered, reinvented. But the applications of manipulating time, traveling the winds between then- now and beyond hide, still denied. Maybe that was the intent, to bury the secrets of time travel, prevent a dark and dour eventuality from millions of years in the future. But that only raises more speculative and unanswerable questions. The dull voice of distant drums echo more dreamer folly.  

Apocalypse Thanksgiving

After the apocalypse, renegade hordes of fake-tan polo players rode their ponies through the streets using their polo mallets to whack decapitated heads with. They rode through the avenues, the by-ways and out around through the countryside. Their long-legged ponies trampled seedlings and sod like buffalo herds grinding grassy plains. The men kept their chins tucked and their white and red helmets securely strapped. Post apocalyptic polo was a serious game. They gave no quarter and took no prisoners. Who ever fell behind, got left behind and no residuals were given to the families of the fallen. 

The mounted gamesmen swung their mallets with acuity, striking any orphaned skull with gusto. Little boys in white undershirts and sun lighten hair watched the cavalier polo riders from behind elm trees that lined matured boulevards. Visions of envy danced in their young, sky-tinted eyes as their hearts beat faster and they unconsciously scratched at their belly buttons. 

The hard ridden ponies frothed around their bits and their manes tangled in the reins. The polo players kicked their mount’s bellies with rich leather boots polished to a high shine. Abruptly, at the end of an unkept park pasture, the players rode up upon an old cemetery. A battered head with it's esophagus trailing was cracked high into the air, over the iron fence, landing with a dull thud in the middle of the cemetery. 

The players pursued, goading their mounts around tombstones and ricocheting the head off marble and granite monuments like a snooker ball. This play occupied their focus for a long time. Long enough for a scant number of spectators to spontaneously gather. Their eyes grew wide at the garish spectacle. If any of the onlookers took sides, they didn't outwardly show it. The game of head polo continued into the early evening, splattering almost every gravestone with stains of blood. No one saw it happen directly, but a player and his horse collided with a tombstone and went down followed by another. 

The still mounted players viciously began attacking the dismounted ones, striking them with their grim mallets. They continued to mindlessly attack each other as more riders went down. The cemetery seemed bent on claiming it's own victory. The post apocalyptic polo player's soon dwindled in number. The sick cracking sounds from their mallets became fewer.  Soon all the polo players lay dead amongst the stone markers, the cemetery lawn awash with fresh, ebbing blood. 

The loosely gathered spectators stood mute. Their boney hands grasped the iron rods of the cemetery’s fence. Then almost as if acting as one hive mind, they entered the hallowed grounds and began dressing out the bodies of the fallen polo players, removing their entrails and dismembering their arms and legs, leaving the heads where they lay.  The spectators then took the spoils back to their hovels and basements and cooked the delicacies in a feast of thanksgiving. 

Stellar Cherry Pie

Six unidentified flying objects descended upon a sparsely populated mountain town. Twelve diminutive aliens disembarked from their ships and combed between the buildings and properties for traces of cherry pie. Cherries were aphrodisiacs to the space travelers, who hadn't had any physical concourse in several light years. Strictly by coincidence the town was having it's annual cherry festival and homemade pie contest.

Spurred on by the pheromones the tiny red fruit exuded, the extraterrestrials zeroed in on the festival held at the river front park. As they neared the area of the homemade pie contest, their shiny silver spandex spacesuits began to display various throbbing bulges and juicy wet spots. An emerald green river ran through town. The residents of the town hunted and fished along it’s banks all year round then celebrated year’s end with the cherry festival. It was in the center of this park that the cherry pie contest was taking place and a mass of people had gathered and brought their appetites. 

The small aliens assembled into a flying wedge formation and used their advanced laser weapons to cauterize an open path through the humanoid crowd. The pie contestants and pie judges scattered away from the long tables displaying the juicy red and sugary brown cherry pies. All twelve aliens jumped upon the tables and gorged themselves with pies, letting the glossy red syrup run down their chins and arms as they ate. Their shiny spacesuits became a sticky, syrupy mess. An orgasmic frenzy began as the aliens performed an orgy of wild sexual positions and acts across red-checkered tablecloth. They ripped their spandex spacesuits off and squealed in high-pitched gibberish as their thin-limbed bodies wiggled and rhythmically flopped atop broken pieces of flaky pie crust and gushing geysers of cherry syrup filling.  

The festival crowd stood back, shocked and aghast. Almost breathless as they stared at the tiny creatures from another galaxy. Mother's shielded their young offspring's eyes while snickering teenagers used their cellphone camera's to record the bizarre sight. Paunch bellied men in camo vests began fantasizing about oozing slices of pie and looked wanton at their wives. The event lasted no more than a few minutes, after which the aliens lay motionless atop long tables dripping with violated pie filling. 

The small aliens purred in a state of orgasmic fulfillment. The shocked onlookers began to shake off their surprise and initial fear. They momentarily looked back and forth at each other forming a mute resolution then all rushed the pie tables. Angered and maddened for the unprovoked laser attack the aliens perpetrated upon them, the townsfolk took advantage of the aliens’ lapse in awareness and wrecked upon the creatures, earthly revenge.

The cherry festival’s homemade pie contestants later made pies filled with alien entrails and held a new pie contest. The residents of the town never touched another cherry again as long as the vision of the mad alien orgy lingered in their memories.