Short stories – Renegade Writings

The Flying Fish

They call her the Flying Fish. You can see from the sleekness of her lines that she used to be fast while she was in the water. But that was a long time ago. Now she lies on her side in the meadow on windward side of the pier, just above the high water mark. Her hull planks are cracked and dry, her paint is peeling off in sheets, and what remains of her sails are spotted with mold. It was the old harbor master who had her moved to this spot after she drifted ashore during the great storm all those years ago. No one knows what happened to her owner, Tom Collins. Of course, the most reasonable explanation is that he got washed overboard during the storm and drowned. However, some people, the harbour master among them, believe that he is still alive somewhere out there. They say that young captain Tom, as they would call him, was the best sailor, not just in our village but the entire north west coast, maybe even the entire country. If anyone could have survived sailing through that storm, it would have been him....continue reading

Weather Station 74

Data Log 4:57:00 Am: Hello?

Data Log 4:58:00 Am: Can anyone hear me?

Data Log 4:59:00 Am: Where am I?

Find out what happens

January 11, 2024 0

The Cloud

One day a cloud appeared above Joseph K’s head. He didn’t pay much attention to it at first, most people don’t care about such things. As the day wore on however, he started to notice it. It was a small, fluffy white cloud, casting an irregular, light-gray shadow, roughly centered on Joseph. What he paid most attention to was that shadow but, he thought to himself, it might just be a big cloud very high up. On the second day it was raining and the cloud was there of course, cause that’s where clouds are supposed to be when it’s … Read the rest

April 26, 2023 0

The Sound of Glass

The most terrifying sound that I know is that of slowly cracking glass. That long, drawn out crunch as the fissure propagates across the pane, which tells you something is about to go wrong and the worst thing about it is, there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. I did not have this fear two weeks ago...read the rest

December 1, 2022 0

Angels!

”Angels! They're real!” the old man slurred, his face inches from mine, his breath stinking of alcohol. ”Is that so,” I replied in a flat voice, turning away to avoid the stench. ” 'as right, as real as you or me,” the man said matter-of-factly, ”but they're not what you think they are.” ”Uh-hu,” I mumbled, taking a swig of my beer. ”Just ignore him,” Miriam hissed beside me. ”God and The Devil are real too,” the man continued, seemingly oblivious to my disinterest, ”but their roles are reversed.”
”What do you mean?” Continue reading

August 16, 2022 0

The Unfinished Story

Everyone remembers their first drop. The feeling when you're standing there on the tower, a hundred meters up, the wind whistling around you, even if it's calm down on the ground. You're too low for any parachute to deploy properly and too high for safety ropes to be effective; you have to rely on the Impact Protection Rig (Impro Rig for short) strapped to your back. Even knowing that thousands of drops are made safely every year, there's still that tiny grain of doubt at the back of your mind; what if the rig fails this time? You've practiced the motions hundreds of times at lower heights: make sure the ground below is clear, find a stable posture on the edge, grab the trigger handles tightly, take two deep breaths, then inhale and step off. Once you're in the air, exhale slowly and pull the handles. By now it's next to instinct, you can do it, the rig will work, all you have to do is drop. Read the rest...

February 10, 2022 0

God’s Build Log Part 2

This is a continuation of God’s Build Log, a kind of story-esque thought experiment asking the question “if God were an engineer, how would he go about building the first human being?” I want to reiterate the disclaimer I made in my original post that while this has some basis in the bible – and is somewhat satirical in nature – it is not meant as an insult against God, Christianity, or religion in general. With that out of the way, let’s continue where I left off the last time.

Build Log Day 37:
It’s been a little over … Read the rest

November 30, 2021 0

The Agency

There was something wrong with Sara's husband. The change in his behavior was subtle, but after being together for ten years she could feel that something was wrong. She asked him about it but he insisted that everything was fine. She tried to let it go but the feeling persisted and after two weeks she couldn't stand it anymore; she needed to find out what was going on...read the rest

June 16, 2021 0

The Arm

The four young men had been casually observing the stranger at the bar for over an hour. Jared gave Simon a nudge:
– You should go talk to him.
– Why me?
-Cause you’re fecking starin’ at him.
-Nah, I don’t wanna be rude.
-Come on, you wanna know about his arm, just go and ask.
-I can’t, it’d be too weird, even for me.
-Don’t be such a wimp, just do it.
Simon took a swig of his beer and thought for a moment then he got to his feet. “Alright,” he said giving Jared a look, “I’ll do … Read the rest

February 25, 2021 0

God’s Build Log

Build log day 1:
I'm hereby starting a new project. The aim is to build some kind of machine that is able to operate completely independently without any tether. This means an onboard power source as well as a fully embedded control system. The task for this machine is unimportant but for the sake of proof of concept, I have set the goal for the machine to "moving around without crashing into anything". If I can succeed in that, I plan to make it interact with the environment in some way but I leave the specifics of that to the future. I thought about calling the project Dog, as in my own name backwards, but after thinking about it for a while I settled on Man as short for Mechatronical Android... continue reading

August 21, 2020 1

The collected writings of a Renegade Tourist

Category Short stories