Short Stories

Short Story #11

(This story so early I know)

"No, no. I'm saying that he was perfectly normal before he exploded." I told the doctor.

The doctor stared at me quizzically. "Did he seem to be acting strange. Perhaps he had a trigger device with him?" he questioned. 
I shook my head. "Even if he did, he couldn't have pulled it. He had both hands on the Xbox controller. We were just playing some video games, and then the next thing I knew internal organs splattered all over my shirt. I pointed to a few colorful stains down the front of my shirt.

The doctor sighed. "Well, if he truly did explode, there's nothing we can do about it. You should know that." He scribbled something on a clipboard. "I can't say this is something we can sweep under the rug, but I'm sure that strange things like this will never happen again." He paused. "You might want to contact the forensics department, but you shouldn't be concerned. Stuff like this doesn't happen every day."

. . .

"Honey, what are you doing?" A lively young mother bustled out onto the porch in the backyard. She dusted her hands on the apron, sending small grains of flour into the air.

The small boy crouching in the grass looked up. "Mommy, the dog is broken." He tapped a strange gray figure with his red plastic shovel. It made a quiet ping, and the boy looked at it strangely.

The mother rushed over. "What do you mean? He's still... standing..." She faltered as she saw the dog.
It was a rather strange sight. It seemed as if all the color had drained from the dog, leaving behind nothing but a translucent, furry, gray husk. It contrasted sharply with the lush green grass it was standing on. However, its eyes were still open. The dog's pupils had expanded to nearly the diameter of a quarter, and the mother saw deeply rooted fear within them. She reached out to stroke the dog as if to comfort it. However, when she touched it, she didn't feel soft fur but sharp spikes. She stared in shock. The dog- it had turned to glass!

The dog seemed to be in an aggressive state. His teeth were bared, and his fur stood up.
The mother hustled the child inside, and quickly closed the door. The dog remained in the same state all day.

Later that afternoon, the dog simply vanished. Nothing was seen of the glass statue itself, but a shadow of it was left. The shadow's angle never changed with the sun or moon; it always stayed at the same angle as when the dog first turned to glass, which was at 3:33 AM. 
The next day, the dog appeared again at 3:33 AM and disappeared 12 hours later.
People speculated it might be some sophisticated hologram-like object, but no one knew for sure. Whenever someone touched it, they always felt the hard glass, but they also claimed feeling body heat from the dog.

. . .

The plane slowly cruised over the sparse clouds. It was passing over a city in the US, and everyone on board excepting the crew was fast asleep.
Suddenly, the plane just disappeared. One moment, it was all there; the next moment, it was gone.

The physics community was interested to know how this could possibly happen. Various proposals were made to explain this phenomenon, but that was all thrown out the window after a few measurements of the air temperature at the time.

A small group of physicists had taken the measuring tools and measured the area the plane disappeared at. They'd been intending to see if there was any indication that the air had caused the plane to vaporize there, but they soon discovered something shocking: the temperature of that region was absolute zero.

The upper-level physicists dismissed this claim. It was physically impossible to reach absolute zero due to the quantum nature of particles. But this explanation made the most sense; due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the more accurately we know a particle's speed, the less accurately we know its position, and vice versa. But at absolute zero, a particle's speed would be exactly zero. Since we would know its exact speed, we would know nothing of its position, or, as one person put it, "it could be located in the middle of nowhere- and I literally mean nowhere." In a sense, it would exist without existing. A region of space that has 0K would be devoid of any particles, so the plane must have been blown "into its prime factors", as someone described it.

The scientific community, as well as everyone else, were baffled by this occurrence, but they hesitantly put it behind them. "Absolute zero is physically impossible, so we can only imagine that it's shot off into the cosmos somewhere." People mourned the passengers and crew that had been lost, but it was given less and less attention over time.

. . .

A small fishing boat drifted over the calm expanse of jade blue water. A man sat inside, dangling a fishing rod into the water. A few minutes passed in calm silence. Suddenly, he sat up as he felt a jerk on the line. He began to reel it in, but the ocean suddenly began to churn. He nearly fell overboard as an overly enthusiastic wave hit the side of his boat. His rod fell into the water, and a box of bait plunged into the spray of white water after the reel.

The man stared desperately into the distance. He had to make it back to shore before the ocean tipped his boat, but his concerns soon vanished. The ocean beneath him had turned to ice. He reached over the side of the boat and tapped the surface. It was ice.

He put one foot over the boat and on the ice. He stomped as hard as he could, but the frozen surface did not yield. Curious, he put both feet over the side of the boat and stood up. Even though it probably wasn't a wise decision, he jumped up and down on the ice. Yet he didn't make a crack.

He sighed and began walking to shore. It was a shame he had to leave the boat behind, but he'd choose his life over the boat.

Suddenly, holes in the ice began appearing, shooting large plumes of steam into the air. One opened right behind the fisherman, and he broke into a run. It didn't change much, however, as all the remaining ice suddenly vaporized. He fell several miles through a thick cloud of steam to the ocean floor, but when he hit the bottom, he bounced several times, eventually coming to a stop near what probably was a hydrothermal vent. He was relatively unhurt, but he soon fainted from the shock of what happened. This same thing soon happened to any water on Earth shortly after.

A/N: 1142 words
This story made no sense at all. I'm not sure how I began, and I'm definitely not sure how I ended. I think I'm kind of drying up the already-small pool of inspiration I used to have.

Still, it's not completely bad.