The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

I've grown accustomed to the feeling; the loss of authority over my own body, the fear that I would never experience normalcy.  But the worst was the ever present fear of ending up in some lab, being referred to by a number rather than my name.  I longed for life away from people. A place where I could live alone, and not worry about the next horrible thing I'd be forced to do.  "It" had been with me for as long as I could remember. "It" being the evil that's rooted in my right hand. This wasn't simply an impulse to do bad things on my part.  My right hand lay dormant until it chose to spring forward, causing whatever awful act it sought-after in that moment, before giving me full control once again.  When I was younger it was easier to ignore. I never could control it, but sometimes I was able to suppress it, and most times I succeeded. By my teens I was considered a problem child. I'd stolen from my mother's purse, vandalized the school...

  Some days are better than others.  On this particular day I was late. Mr. Flaherty had asked me to stay after, again. I had wanted to say no, especially since overtime pay was not in Mr. Flaherty’s vocabulary. But I needed this job. I can only imagine how it would look if I lost it. But still, two hours of overtime I wouldn't get paid for. Two hours worth of listening to complaints, and completely redoing the schedule of appointments. I had checked my phone in the elevator after locking up my office. Battery was dead, just as well. I knew there would be messages from Kelly. And I knew that I would have to hear her complaining when I got in. She was always on me about “working for free” and standing up to Mr. Flaherty. "Oliver, you have to learn to say no. How hard can it be!?" I could almost hear her now…. I didn't like having to work late. And I sure didn't want to have to pick up all the pieces at the office when Mr. Flaherty decided to call it a day at 1pm so...

Today was the annual holiday potluck. My office doesn’t really do parties, but every occasion gets a potluck; it’s business as usual except everyone brings food. We work while stuffing ourselves silly. Nothing like working through a stomach ache, right? It’s always a game of food poisoning roulette. Since I was the first one in, I was expected to do the basic set-up. Dutifully, I cleared off the sorting table and got the coffee going. I expected to spend the first thirty minutes of my shift in peace, but it wasn’t to be. The phone started to ring. It’s too early for this, I thought. I answered anyway, putting on my best customer-service voice. At this hour most customers hadn’t had their coffee yet so answering the phone was a crap shoot. Fortunately, it was only Carol. “Thank god you answered. Can you let me in? My arms are full!” She always brought enough baked goods for everyone to have seconds and thirds, it was one of the few things I looked forward to. “I’ll be right over! Hold o...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The “Elf on the Shelf” game is pretty simple: you lie to your kids, convince them that they’re being watched, undo years of “stranger danger” instincts, undermine their basic trust of science, use fear as a weapon, and keep the charade up for a month. The goal is behavior manipulation designed to make life a little easier on us. And if you’re judging me right now, you’ve never had kids. ** “Do you know when the elf gets back and forth between here and the North Pole?” Madison asked me in wide-eyed wonder. “Of course,” I answered seriously. “The Elf on the Shelf is a tradition that’s lasted thousands of years. That’s how Santa knows you like to wake up before you’re supposed to and open up your presents even though we tell you it isn’t time yet. When I was a little boy, I broke a lamp and thought about lying to my parents to stay out of trouble. Right when the thought left my head, I heard a woooosh from the other room, and the elf was gone. You c...

They should have remembered. The ancient secrets, the elder knowledge. The traditions of their ancestors that kept them alive. In their defense there wasn’t much need to remember, since no one of my kind had been seen in centuries. Enlightenment has some drawbacks. For every two things about science, art, or philosophy that they gained, one old thing was lost. One by one the memories and traditions of the past were declared barbaric or outmoded and were forgotten or abandoned in the face of progress. They called it a Renaissance in later years, meaning rebirth. Ironic, because the things they forgot in their rebirth allowed my kind to be reborn as well. They should have remembered. When they found out what I’d done they locked me in a room to live out my days in solitude. A punishment worthy of the crimes I committed while still befitting my station. Well, my father’s station anyway. It would not do to see a scion of such a powerful noble house on the headsman’s block. At first when I ...

My girl and I have been together for about a year. Everyone requests to hear the tale about how we met over and over again – it’s a real meet cute. I first spotted her across the room at a dingy bar, ordering a cheap beer with her undeniably inadequate boyfriend. Being a female myself, he didn’t take any offense when I glided over to her and declared she was utterly stunning. An hour later, we were fucking in the bathroom. I moved her out of her boyfriend’s place. I could practically smell his fragile masculinity as I stuffed the dress I first fucked her in into an almost full box and hauled it down to my vehicle. I loaded the last of her things up and relocated her to my home. For the next few months, we were on fire. Fucking turned to making love, and making love turned to an engagement. I was ecstatic. She was the girl of my dreams, the kind of girl you could only dream of tasting, having for your own. We didn’t just live together, we thrived together. Grew together. That is, until ...

For as long as I can remember, my father has been irrationally afraid of mimes. I've seen him get reduced to a sweating, quivering mess at the mere sight of them. No-one knew why this was as he would always angrily brush it off whenever he was questioned about it and pretend that they didn't affect him at all. While this had become a running joke in the family, I was always curious about the reason behind this odd little quirk of his. Well, this Christmas I finally got him to spill the beans after filling his stomach with copious amounts of cake and wine, and I took his story down, almost word for word, on my phone. It really is something, I can tell you that…. ** You really want to post this on the internet? It sounds extremely unbelievable, so don't be surprised if they accuse you of making this all up, okay? Jeez, where do I even start? So, you know that I came to this country back in the early 90s, right? It was a couple of years before I met and married your mother. Ti...

My name is Peter Turner. For the last few years, my colleagues and I have been working on a specialized Artificial Intelligence for the Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology. We’ve continued on the previous work of the AI department, writing the code for a programme that would hopefully give us solutions to one of the most pressing problems of our age, Climate Change. We fed our code into the most powerful Central Processing Unit the world has ever seen, along with thousands of Gigabytes worth of data on planetary, environmental and human history. The CPU, who we nicknamed ‘Gaia’, would then be able to answer any and every query we might pose to it, in a simple, practical manner. ** Our entire team was beyond excited on the day of the first test session. It had taken months of work, appropriating finances from different departments to fund what some had called a mere “political stunt”. But we had faith in our project, ‘Gaia’ had been designed to think both in and outside the box, so ...