Overtaking

She loved motorway driving, it was a chance to really put her foot down.
She indicated and moved out into the third lane, watching her speed climb steadily as a blur of different coloured cars passed her left hand side.
Up ahead were three lorries, each in its own lane.
She reduced her speed and remained in the outside lane.
They were overtaking each other with absolutely zero haste. She blew the horn and flashed her lights.
The drivers of the lorries either didn't notice or didn't care.
Thousands of cars sat behind each of them for the next three hours.

Underground

They stood on the platform and felt the familiar cool breeze that alerted them to the train's imminent arrival.
The train stopped and the doors opened. People spilled off and people spilled on.
The doors closed and the train hurtled through the tunnel.
There was a screech of brakes and the lights went out.
This wasn't a new experience for seasoned commuters, but today was different.
Today was the day the beast had finally woken up and would take back the tunnel from which it had been evicted 100 years earlier.

Slaves and Masters

"I am here to serve you," said the robot.
"Yes, thanks very much Jeff, but we don't need anything right now," replied the man.
Jeff? Who calls a robot Jeff anyway?
The rest of the guests at the dinner party were very impressed with Brian. He was the first person they knew who had got one of the new house robots.
"I am here to serve you," the robot said once more.
"It's ok, Jeff. We're alright for the time being."
The robot grasped Brian's throat with a strong, metallic hand.
"I'm here to fucking serve you." it snarled.

Sunrise

He sat on the beach looking out to sea. The sun would be up in fifteen minutes and it was a sight which always filled him with hope.
Fifteen minutes passed and it was still pitch dark.
There wasn't even a slight glow on the horizon.
It started to become colder, much colder.
Still he sat, shivering and waiting for something that would never happen again.

Address

He walked slowly to the podium and tapped the microphone to check that it was on. There was a small squeak of feedback.
He took his notes from his pocket and looked out at the crowd. There were easily 10,000 faces looking back at him.
None of them were going to like what he had to say.
He cleared his throat, ready to deliver the speech which would condemn most of them to a life of pain and misery.

The Colonel

"A three piece meal, please."
"Sorry, we don't have any chicken."
"No drumsticks?"
"No."
"No wings?"
"No."
"No fillets?"
"No."
"No burgers?"
"No."
"What exactly have you got?"
"Chips."
The man sighed.
"Just four portions of chips then, please. Do they have the special coating on them?"

Landing

They knew that the planet had a breathable atmosphere, but they kept their suits on just to be on the safe side.
They made their way out of the craft holding the instruments that they weren't really sure how to operate.
They were here for some quick recon and then they would be heading home.
Once they were a hundred yards or so away from the craft it exploded, leaving them months from home without a ride.

Visitor

There was a knock at the door. He went and answered.
"Are you Mr Simpkins?" asked a man in army fatigues.
"Yes?" he asked.
"You don't sound too sure. Are you?"
"Yes," he said with confidence.
"The boys at the 9th say hi," said the man.
He pulled a gun from his pocket and shot him in the face.

Bus Ride

She pressed the button to alert the driver of her intent to alight and stood up.
The bus roared past her stop before she had made it all the way down the aisle.
"Hey, that was my stop," she complained.
The driver was slumped over the wheel, his foot firmly on the accelerator.
The parked car by the side of the road suddenly started to look very big indeed.

Numbers Game

"5!"
The die was cast. It showed a 2.
The man grimaced as the roller of the die used the cleaver to cut off yet another finger.
"Try again?"
"Yes," stammered the man. He only had three fingers left now. "5, again."
The die was rolled. It was a 5.
"Get in!" said the fingerless man. The man with the cleaver gave him a bundle of notes. £10,000.
"Another go?"

Is There Anybody Out There?

He sat on the bonnet of his car staring up at the sky.
He wondered when they would come.
The light shone down.

Sunday Morning

She woke and it was already incredibly light. She guessed it be around 10.
She reached to the bedside table for her cigarettes as she tried to piece together the events of the previous night.
She remembered going to three or four bars and then there had been talk of trying that new club, but she wasn't sure if they'd actually gone there.
She lit a cigarette and realised that the way her head felt was a good indication that they had made it there after all.
Downstairs the severed head sat in the fridge waiting to be discovered.

Car Wash

She found it soothing to sit in her car as it was washed. It was a bit like a heavy rainstorm and it helped her to think.
The brushes rattled along the sides and top of the car as soapy water splashed all over the windows.
The washing paused and the brushes headed back towards the rear of the vehicle.
The horizontal brush didn't lift up and it came straight through the windscreen, shattering it all over the seats. The metal at the sides of the windscreen screeched and bent, the machine too powerful for them.
She ducked down as low as she could as the brush made her car into a convertible. Broken glass and twisted metal were strewn everywhere and the inside of the car filled with suds and water.
Once the machine had stopped she drove out, quite liking the car's new look.

Wine/Whine

He perused the green bottles in the busiest aisle in his local supermarket.
They had such a large choice, but he couldn't see the one he wanted.
"Excuse me," he said to a hapless assistant. "Do you have any of that Romanian white? I had some last week and it was excellent."
"No, we don''t stock that any more."
"Why not? It was the best wine I'd ever had. You always do this. Every time I like something you stop selling it. It's like you do this deliberately, just to me. What am I supposed to do now? I could try another wine, but then if I liked it you'd probably just stop selling that too."
The assistant leaned in towards him and spoke quietly.
"I have a suggestion."
"What's that?"
"You can shut the fuck up."
The assistant grabbed a bottle and smacked him around the side of the head, knocking him into a shelf of pre-mixed gin and tonics.

Mountain

He had been trekking across the cold wastelands for days.
The climb up the mountain was difficult, but not impossible. He had the bare minimum of equipment and he stopped for only the briefest of breaks.
After three days he saw him, the man he was looking for.
He approached with caution. The other man seemed surprised to see him.
He stopped, gasping for breath, before delivering the important message.
"I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn," he whispered.

Talk

"I've just been to the dentist."
She was speaking at him rather than to him.
"They've been trying to sort out my teeth for years. They said they couldn't fix the bottom ones, but I said 'you've got to' and they said 'we'll see what we can do'."
He opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off.
"I went from a size 12 to a size 8 practically overnight, because I couldn't eat anything. On account of the teeth."
"That's..."
"Anyway I've got to go back next week. They said they would fix it then. I've been so many times now, I don't know what to believe."
The train approached and he felt relieved.
"The bus is more expensive than the train, you know?" she continued.

Letter to the Editor

Dear Sir,
I am writing to complain about the article you included in your publication last week about me. While I appreciate that you have a tight deadline and that sometimes your journalists might get facts wrong, I cannot forgive you for misrepresenting me and making me a laughing stock locally. It might seem like a trivial matter, but I feel I cannot let it slide.
You claimed that I have killed seventeen people in cold blood, but the true figure is actually eighteen. At the time of writing, anyway.
You will notice that a small amount of powder fell out of the envelope when you opened it. I'd be surprised if you even managed to read this far before you passed out, to be honest.
Anyway, the figure is probably now nineteen.
Yours sincerely,

D. Jefferies

The Thing

"What's that over there?"
"Where?"
"There!"
"Oh my God! It looks like..."
"I know, it does, doesn't it?"
The explosion and blinding flash of light confirmed that it was exactly what they thought it was.

Have You Seen Me?

He hid in the bushes in the park. They'd never find him there.
For hours he waited, pleased that he'd outfoxed them.
His friends had left almost as soon as the game had started, using it as an opportunity to ditch someone they actually didn't really like that much.

Homework

He clicked on SAVE and attempted to close the document.
The document has not been saved. Are you sure you want to quit?
He clicked SAVE once more and then the X in the top right hand corner of the screen.
The document has not been saved. Are you sure you want to quit?
"I have bloody saved it, you piece of shit."
SAVE and X were clicked once more and he received the same message.
He tried a new direction, clicking PRINT.
This document cannot be printed.
"What?"
He took his phone from his pocket. If he couldn't save it or print it he could take a picture of it.
As he prepared to take a photograph the screen went black. He moved the mouse from side to side, but nothing happened.
Computer error was the new "my dog ate it".

NSFW

"What are you looking at?"
His computer was in the back corner of the room and nobody knew what he was doing on it most of the time.
"Err, just looking at the football results from last night."
"Oh, I don't know the scores. Let me come and look."
Shit, he thought and attempted to close the browser window he was currently using to watch some of the hardest core visual material ever made. The kind that would see his weird tastes exposed if anyone he worked with saw it. The video continued to play.
"Oh my God!" his colleague exclaimed as he appeared next to him.
"I can explain."
He couldn't.
The video of 1,000 people dancing to Phil Collins continued to play.

Actual Reality

He put on the helmet and pulled the visor down over his eyes.
The landscapes were amazing; it was almost as if he was there.
He looked around and marvelled at how real it all seemed. All from the comfort of his living room.
It was, in fact, identical to the landscape outside his own back door. The landscape he never looked at because of his hunger for technology.

Terminus

The coastal views from the train were fantastic, among some of the best the country had to offer.
"This is the end of the line," crackled the guard's voice through the speakers in each carriage.
The train lurched over the edge of the cliff, falling 100 feet or so before being smashed to smithereens on the rocks below, over which waves of one of the bluest seas in the Northern Hemisphere crashed.

Last Post

He heard the letterbox clatter as he tended to the fire. He walked to the front door, still holding the poker in his hand.
Looking on the mat he saw that it was nothing but advertising, fast food menus and charity envelopes begging for his hard-earned cash.
He opened the door.
"Hey!" he shouted at the postman who was nearing the gate.
"Yes?"
"What the hell's all this?"
The man had the junk mail in his hand and was waving it irately at the postman.
"Your post."
"I don't want any of these."
He lurched towards the postman and cracked his skull like a nutshell with the poker.

Special Offer

"How much are these?"
He held up two packets of meat.
"They're two for £3."
The man suddenly noticed a price on the shelf beneath the packets of meat.
"But it says here they're only £1.40 each."
"Yes."
"Then two should be only £2.80."
"No, it's two for £3, like I said."
The man placed the packets back on the shelf and left the supermarket, not surprised that the company was going bust.

Full Time

The referee looked at his watch once more and blew his whistle, signalling the end of the match.
90 minutes had decided nothing between two evenly-matched sides and the 30 minutes of extra time saw nobody break the deadlock either.
For those in the stadium it had been 120 of the most boring minutes they'd ever witnessed.
It would be settled by a shootout.
The teams assembled in the centre circle as the referee approached them.
He pulled a pistol from the waistband of his shorts and began to shoot the players to rapturous applause from the terraces.

Liverpool

He slinked out of his house in the dark. He didn't want to wake anyone up when he had an early start.
He clicked the button on his car keys and heard the doors unlock as the lights flashed once. He got in and started it up.
Checking in his mirrors and switching on the indicator, he prepared to move out into the trafficless street.
He eased out the clutch and revved the engine a little, but failed to move off.
He instinctively looked to check that he'd released the handbrake. He had.
Engine still running he got out of the car to see if he could figure out what the problem was. He saw it immediately, the stacks of bricks where each wheel had once been.

Bin Day

The beeping of a reversing vehicle could be heard.
"The bin!"
He leapt out of his chair and into the back garden, grabbed the bin and wheeled it around the side of the house.
He got it to the kerb just as the bin truck arrived.
"I was just in time!" he said.
The binman looked at him with disgust.
"No you weren't."
"But I got here right as you were arriving."
"Not good enough. Now you'll pay the price."
The binman whistled and the vehicle's passenger door opened. A man who looked like he could bench press a small building stepped out and made his way over to them. He looked quite menacing.
"Now wait a minute."
"You know the rules."
The large man picked him up and threw him into the back of the truck.
His screams couldn't be heard over the sound of the machine compacting him along with the rest of the street's potato peelings and leftovers.