The Spaceship and the Budget Committee

I was on an abandoned space station. How did I get here? Where was the meeting? I had a crew of six - and we were all out searching this abandoned facility. We were told to meet here by the federation of the planets to go over some budget changes that would affect our missions.

I motioned to my crew to spread out. I went into this room and saw there was no one there. I was hesitant to turn on the lights, should that attract unwanted attention.

Before I could leave, I heard soft crying. I followed the sound and found a little girl. The girl was smallish in size and couldn't be more than eight. She was huddled in a corner of the small room, hidden behind some linens. I grabbed her hand and put one finger over my mouth to tell her to be quiet. There were monsters orbiting around this station and the last thing that we needed was to attract attention.

I crept down the hall, still holding the girl's hand. I found the hatch where our spaceship was docked. I was about to sneak the girl onto the ship when a monitor flickered. Then, a hologram popped up. It showed a space ship, shaped like a shark. The biggish shark shaped ship was surround by smaller, shark shaped ships. They were approaching rapidly. My crew must have set off a silent alarm. We were going to have to fight our way out of this. I would have to hide the girl somewhere else because the first target would be my ship.

I maneuvered the little girl into a closet nearest to the ship. There was no point in being quiet anymore. I tapped the communicator button on my shirt and spoke to the other crew members.

"Hold on guys, we've got company!"

Then, we heard an explosion on the lower levels of the station. I made sure that my gun was loaded and motioned to the others to double check their guns. Then, they sprung the fight on us. There were gun blasts, death cries, and blood everywhere. I managed to lose one crew member already.

"What do I do now?" I asked myself while still firing my gun.

Just then, one of my crew members Justin, came out of the ship on his motorcycle. He started riding in circles and blasting the enemy with the missiles on the side of his motorcycle (which turned out to be shark shaped aliens with water helmets that allowed them to walk on dry land).

This was our chance. I grabbed the little girl's hand and picked her up. I would hand her off to Justin so that he could get her to the ship. It all happened in slow motion. When I handed her off to Justin, while both of us had her in our arms, she was shot in the stomach twice by one of the enemies. Louise, part of my crew, saw this and shot the alien in the face, rupturing his helmet which made him suffocate.

The little girl started gurgling blood.

"No! No! NO! Stay with me! You hear me? STAY WITH ME!"

I shouted at the girl. I put her on the ground and I started CPR. Justin came up behind me and put his blood stained hands on my shoulders.

"She's gone. There's nothing you can do. Let's go."

I looked at the girl. She was turning a pale blue. Her eyes were open, staring at me, empty.

Rival Gangs

I was not myself, I was someone else. I was following around a dignitary as a field reporter. This dignitary was from South America and was very important. He took us to see a top secret bridge that was being built in America in his honor. We passed by the bridge and strangely enough it was made of trees. I'm not saying it was a wooden bridge, it was made of actual trees. The pine trees were entwined together to make a bridge. This was the top secret bridge they were working on? It looked like something Keebler Elves made. The dignitary then took us to a building close by where the engineers were gathered together to plan the bridge. We were all told to grab an ID card and other badges before we could enter the hallway. Two of my friends and I hung back from the dignitary and his crowd. One of the other girls hung back with us. She had been spending time with the dignitary as a private call girl. She placed her ID in the trash and looked at us. "If you know what's best for you, you'll leave. Kendra's coming." Then, she was gone. A photographer passed us and told us that she had to run to the hospital, there had been an accident in her family. She gave me her really expensive camera and her card and said that she would retrieve her camera later and then left in quite a hurry. The dignitary called to us and told me to take his picture. He posed with two more of his girls and I snapped three pictures to be safe. I looked at my friends. I was starting to get scared. Kendra was renowned as a head of one of the worst gangs in the area. She was Hispanic in origin, about 140 pounds, 5'6", and she wore the worst wig. It was cut in a 50s style, dyed auburn, with pink highlights. She was dressed in a pink tube top with white hot pants. It was painful to look at. The girl to her right was younger, about seventeen, and stopped to look at me. She said, "You're holding that camera wrong and that's a crime. Let me show you how to properly hold it." And she proceeded to correct me. I thought they'd just walk by and leave me alone, but I was so, so wrong. Kendra stopped in front of me as well. Why didn't I just leave when that girl told me to? I should have listened. But no, I had to stay here because I wanted a damn promotion. Kendra looked at the dignitary. "You have some nerve showing your face around here, Juan. I thought that I told you to stay out of my fucking territory! Since you can't seem to follow simple directions, I think that I need to teach you a lesson." She started with the lesson. She pulled out a couple of guns and shot all of the girls the dignitary had around him. The younger girl, the seventeen year old who had corrected me earlier, came up to me and smiled. She whispered into my ear, "Because I think you weren't involved in anything that Juan did, we're going to show you and your friends mercy. Kendra will deal with you herself. Be strong and you'll earn her respect." Then, Kendra came over. She looked at me and then charged at me. There wasn't a gun for me - it was physical violence. I had not been trained to fight physically, so I just defended myself. I got a punch or two in and I even tore out some of her wig. I hated that damn wig and attacked her with everything I had. My friends weren't as lucky as I was. One of my friends didn't defend herself well enough so the girl she was fighting broke her neck and killed her. My second friend ended up being paralyzed from the waist down. I managed to only get away with a fractured wrist, broken elbow, and cuts and bruises. Kendra lost hair, had black eyes, and I broke her leg. After all of the fighting was done, Kendra pulled a gun and shot the dignitary in the head. Then, she looked at me while I huddled against the wall, dialing 911 on my cell phone in my pocket. "You've got guts, kid. I'll give you that. Stay away from the likes of these people or you may not get so lucky again."

The Forensic Pathologist

It was a dark, cold, rainy night. I was working alone that night. I had just finished an autopsy and was finishing closing the Y incision when I received the call that I had two more patients on the way. I sighed. This was going to be a tough case. The officer told me that there was a family in a car crash. The wife was driving with the husband in the passenger seat and the newborn baby in the car seat in the back seat of the car. The wife had hit a tree and then the car burst into flames. The husband and daughter burned to death but the woman escaped with third degree burns. She was being air lifted to this hospital. However, I had to stay and preform the autopsies on the rest of her family. The doctors had put the woman in a medicine induced coma. The bodies arrived from the ambulance and were transferred to the slab that I worked on. The small burned body was so tiny. There was barely anything left. The man, if you could call him that, was burned beyond recognition. There was hardly anything left of him either. There was a stale, burnt pork smell. I started my job. I decided to start with the baby first. As it turned out, the baby died of smoke inhalation so she had a bit of a merciful death. The husband suffered more. He burned for a long time before he finally died. I recorded my findings in the official report and scrubbed up. I went downstairs to deliver the report to my supervisor. He looked miserable and then informed me that the wife was awake. He told me that I would have to be the one to explain about her family. She didn't know. My mouth dropped. How do you tell someone that their whole life had changed? She lost everything ... her husband and her newborn daughter, and I had to tell her. I walked into her hospital room with my file. I tried to smile and ask how she was doing. She wasn't interested in small talk, just how her family was. I told her as gently as I could that her family was dead. I told her that they didn't suffer and died quickly. I knew it was a lie but she deserved some kind of peace. She told me that a dog had run out in front of her car and she tried not to hit it. She lost her entire family while trying to avoid a dog. She started sobbing. All I could do was just go up to her and give her a hug. What else could I do?