"They Came In The Night." a short story by Craig Zimmerman

They came in the middle of the night as the secret police often do. In just minutes, Michael was taken from his bed to a waiting car and whisked away to an unknown destination.

After about two hours in a dark cell, an armed guard escorted Michael to an unadorned office. Some sort of commander sat behind a desk and he motioned for Michael to sit.

"Do you know why you are here?" the commander asked. "Maybe you should tell me." Michael replied.  The commander gathered together a sheaf of papers and dumped them on the desk in front of Michael.

"Are those your writings?" The Commander asked. Michael looked at the papers. Apparently they had gathered together all of his internet posts for the last several years. Michael nodded.

The Commander shook his head.  "You probably think we are monsters, but we are actually very tolerant. We let you post pro-Bill of Rights crap for years, but lately you have developed a following and now that must end." The Commander said.

"What is going to happen to me?" Michael asked the Commander. The man behind the desk smiled. "You are going to make an emergency visit to a very ill old friend. Eventually, we will put out the story that the visit became a permanent move."

In the next few weeks, Michael's car was disposed of and his house was put up for sale. His employer was sad to see him go, but his position was filled within a week.

A few people thought Michael's sudden move was odd, but even those questions stopped after a few weeks.

"The Hermit" a short story by Craig Zimmerman

When he was thirty five, John Riley bought several acres in the northern Rocky Mountains and turned his back on civilization. In the beginning, John still needed to drive the forty miles to the nearest town, but as the years went by, he became more self-sufficient and eventually gave up even  that last minor connection to humanity.

While John went about his daily routine, the rest of the world engaged in the intrigues and violence that humanity had practiced from the beginning.

One day, the mad plan of a mad scientist went too far and almost every fertile male in the world was wiped out. John didn't now anything of the cataclysm until he received a procession of visitors.

All of the arrivals were women. The apparent leader of the women told John what had happened and that since he was one of the few healthy males left, it was John's patriotic duty to replenish the earth with humans.

John wasn't so sure that was such a good idea and told them so. The women offered him riches and the most beautiful women in the world.

John thought about the offer and added a few conditions of his own.  The leader of the women grudgingly accepted the conditions and that is how John the Hermit became the King of The United States.

Old Photo

I have an old photo that I inherited from my Mother. In the photo, a young man with a bandage over part of his face is standing in front of a severely wrecked car. 

I am assuming the young man was the driver of the car  and judging from the damage done to the vehicle, it is a wonder that he survived.

There is no caption to the photo, but from the young man's expression, I think he is saying: "Look what I survived."

I do not know the identity of the man in the photo. I would like to think that a man with that kind of guts was a member of the family.