For lack of a better place to store these things, here is a sample of my new short story, Fear of Gravity.
FEAR OF GRAVITY
BY PHILIP HANSEN
No one noticed the birds. Forty-two years of watching Jessica Tandy scream in terror as The Birds shattered the glass of her phone booth had numbed us to the idea that these were intelligent animals and we should be watching them, the way they were watching us.
A hundred pair of black eyes turned as Jackson walked out of Starbucks.
“Shoo,” Jackson said, taking a gentle kick at a gray and white pigeon that refused to renounce its place in the sidewalk. He felt his vanilla café latte slosh inside the cup.
“Crap.” Jackson dropped his cinnamon role onto the sidewalk. He and the pigeon both made a beeline for the roll. Jackson was quicker. “Mine, you little bastard.” He took another kick at the pigeon, which finally moved.
Satisfied by his win over the pigeon, Jackson stepped off the curb…
…and into the path of an oncoming bus.
For Jackson, there was no screech of rubber on asphalt or the sudden scream of a shocked bystander. He didn’t hear the triumphant cooing of the dozen pigeons that rushed out of the path of his falling form. He had been struck deaf by the sudden blow and given the power of flight.
He sailed soundlessly through the air, over the trunk of a parked car, his back and shoulders silently shattering window glass. Safety glass spider webs traced his outline and sagged slightly inward, cradling him.
Jackson tried to focus and found that his eyes still worked, even if his ears were struck dumb. He could clearly make out the astonished face of the bus driver and the mannequin stillness of passerby’s who had stopped to stare at him. Amid his eerie silence, he could clearly make out the thousands and thousands of birds. Watching.
Watching and waiting.
* * *
The blanket of birds covered every surface, except the sky, which remained a cloudless cerulean blue. The sky was an intense blue, bright in way Jackson had never experienced. It reached down at him, causing him to squint against its unnatural brightness.
The sky was so bright and so blue that Jackson never saw the first plane that fell from the sky.
It was a single engine Piper Archer, a small four-seat plane often used by airline pilot schools to train commercial pilots. Reeling from having been slammed into the back of a parked car, deaf from a jarring blow to the head and half-blind from the shining blue sky, Jackson still found he had the clarity of thought to be shocked when the Piper Archer slammed into the bus (the bus that had just hit him, no less) severing it in half.
The bus driver was instantly turned to red paste, his intestines exploding out the small driver side window and the open passenger door in thick blue/gray ropes. His head whipped forward and flattened across the windshield, still wearing the curiously astonished look he had adopted after sending Jackson flying through the air.
* * *
After a brief period of submission and rejection, my short stories: Fear of Gravity, The Quick and the Undead and The Claws That Catch will appear on a new website dedicated to my horror and western writing.
-Philip
Contact me at: philip.hansen@gmail.com
"Philip Hansen's writing is a lot like driving a fire truck. Only the fire truck is on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas, and the ninjas are all on fire too."
-Stefanie Mire
BY PHILIP HANSEN
No one noticed the birds. Forty-two years of watching Jessica Tandy scream in terror as The Birds shattered the glass of her phone booth had numbed us to the idea that these were intelligent animals and we should be watching them, the way they were watching us.
A hundred pair of black eyes turned as Jackson walked out of Starbucks.
“Shoo,” Jackson said, taking a gentle kick at a gray and white pigeon that refused to renounce its place in the sidewalk. He felt his vanilla café latte slosh inside the cup.
“Crap.” Jackson dropped his cinnamon role onto the sidewalk. He and the pigeon both made a beeline for the roll. Jackson was quicker. “Mine, you little bastard.” He took another kick at the pigeon, which finally moved.
Satisfied by his win over the pigeon, Jackson stepped off the curb…
…and into the path of an oncoming bus.
For Jackson, there was no screech of rubber on asphalt or the sudden scream of a shocked bystander. He didn’t hear the triumphant cooing of the dozen pigeons that rushed out of the path of his falling form. He had been struck deaf by the sudden blow and given the power of flight.
He sailed soundlessly through the air, over the trunk of a parked car, his back and shoulders silently shattering window glass. Safety glass spider webs traced his outline and sagged slightly inward, cradling him.
Jackson tried to focus and found that his eyes still worked, even if his ears were struck dumb. He could clearly make out the astonished face of the bus driver and the mannequin stillness of passerby’s who had stopped to stare at him. Amid his eerie silence, he could clearly make out the thousands and thousands of birds. Watching.
Watching and waiting.
The blanket of birds covered every surface, except the sky, which remained a cloudless cerulean blue. The sky was an intense blue, bright in way Jackson had never experienced. It reached down at him, causing him to squint against its unnatural brightness.
The sky was so bright and so blue that Jackson never saw the first plane that fell from the sky.
It was a single engine Piper Archer, a small four-seat plane often used by airline pilot schools to train commercial pilots. Reeling from having been slammed into the back of a parked car, deaf from a jarring blow to the head and half-blind from the shining blue sky, Jackson still found he had the clarity of thought to be shocked when the Piper Archer slammed into the bus (the bus that had just hit him, no less) severing it in half.
The bus driver was instantly turned to red paste, his intestines exploding out the small driver side window and the open passenger door in thick blue/gray ropes. His head whipped forward and flattened across the windshield, still wearing the curiously astonished look he had adopted after sending Jackson flying through the air.
After a brief period of submission and rejection, my short stories: Fear of Gravity, The Quick and the Undead and The Claws That Catch will appear on a new website dedicated to my horror and western writing.
-Philip
Contact me at: philip.hansen@gmail.com
"Philip Hansen's writing is a lot like driving a fire truck. Only the fire truck is on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas, and the ninjas are all on fire too."
-Stefanie Mire
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