Plastic Tulips

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  Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.

  The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.

  Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.

  Plastic Tulips

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Plastic Tulips

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Artificial Fruit

  Chapter 2 – Between Onions and Avocados

  Chapter 3 – Plastic Urns and Blue Ribbons

  Chapter 4 – Nylon or Cloth

  Chapter 5 – Living Gods

  Chapter 6 – A Younger, Stronger, More Beautiful You

  Chapter 7 – A Replaced Product

  Help Spread the Story

  About the Writer

  Other Stories

  Chapter 1 – Artificial Fruit...

  Franklin Tosh stretched to reach the skillet located atop the kitchen cabinet, grimacing as his aging back strained in the effort. He grunted his reach high enough to touch the handle, but not high enough to grasp it. Frustrated, he lunged, jostling the skillet down upon his head. When had his reach become so short?

  Franklin winced from the impact. He held his breath, hoping such noise so early in the morning didn't rattle Samantha out of her sleep.

  “You're being timid,” Franklin whispered to himself. “You worry too much. Samantha is a heaver sleeper. She's never woken up in the middle of any thunderstorm.”

  Franklin ignored his throbbing head and bustled about the kitchen. He wished he had an extra pair of arms for the sizzling bacon that popped hot grease on his forearms, to mix the waffle batter, to stir the eggs before they burned to the pan, to slice the peaches and strawberries. Samantha managed to do all those things each morning, and she always did them with such quiet grace that Franklin was never disturbed in his early morning slumber until the smell of bacon tickled his nostrils.

  Franklin's single set of arms might have struggled, but he completed the goal he had started in the morning darkness and carried a tray filled with breakfast to the bedroom before the alarm blared and ruined the surprise he crafted for Samantha. He set the tray on a nightstand beside her and took a contented breath to look upon his Samantha. She looked as beautiful as she had the day she had been delivered to his front door. She always would. Samantha's beauty was eternal, and she had been crafted according to his every whim.

  Franklin placed one of Samantha's precious, white tulips upon the tray just at the alarm shrilled.

  “Good morning, dear.”

  Samantha's eyes opened quickly. She smiled to see Franklin's trim, gray beard lean forward to introduce a new day with a kiss.

  “What's all this?” Samantha sat up, and her auburn hair streamed beyond her shoulders as her green eyes sparkled at Franklin's offering.

  Franklin's spirit always floated in the gaze of those green eyes. “It's breakfast in bed.”

  Samantha laughed. “But why?”

  Franklin smiled, though tears came to his eyes. “It's our fourth anniversary, Sam. I don't count from the day I ordered you. I count from the day you arrived out my door.”

  Samantha gripped Franklin's hand. “You cannot brood on it, Franklin. You always knew the limitation to our time. Brooding on it will not stop the days. It will only cloud the time remaining for us.”

  Franklin's shoulders sagged. “And after that?”

  Samantha's green eyes sparkled. “Then you can order another one just like me.”

  “There are no others like you, Sam.”

  Sam laughed. “How would you know?”

  “Because you are made of magic,” Franklin leaned onto the bed to be with his precious Samantha. “You cannot order magic from a catalog.”

  They let the waffles, the eggs and the bacon go cold during their morning lovemaking. They were made for one another. Though her lover's back stiffened each morning, not matter that his hips ached more with each day, regardless that his beard long ago turned gray, Samantha cherished each session shared upon their bed. Though his vision blurred, though the trembling in his fingers intensified, Franklin Tosh's blood never failed to rally in that embrace shared with Samantha. Samantha saved him from a world of loneliness. She resurrected him. Let others in the world whisper that their love was not natural nor divine. Samantha saved Franklin from being forgotten.

  “You bring so much life to an old man, Sam.” Franklin's chest rose and fell. His breath calmed.

  “It makes me happy to know it.”

  Samantha unfurled herself from her bed's blankets. Her young body shimmered in the light seeping through the blinds. Franklin's blood again stirred.

  “Come back to bed, Sam.”

  “I need to shower. Put on some clothes. Face the new day.”

  “And then what?”

  Samantha stole a sliver of bacon from the nightstand and smelled the white tulip. “And then it's to the grocery store to get what I need to return the favor to you tonight, Franklin.”

  Franklin's old teeth smiled. “None of those Vegan recipes you've been trying to sneak down my throat?”

  “No beans tonight,” Samantha winked. “I am thinking my Franklin deserves steak topped with blue cheese crumbs.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Franklin saw Samantha out the front door. He never forgot to wish her good fortune whenever she left the bliss that had become his home. He never failed to kiss her farewell before she loaded into his old station wagon and tended to the errands the day demanded. Samantha's beauty would never diminish, but Franklin knew she could not forever remain with him. As he watched Samantha pull from the drive, Franklin vowed he would find a way to extend their time together, find some loophole in the contract, find a deal to make in order to keep her longer. Much could change in a year. Sentiments could shift. New fortunes could be found.

  Franklin would find a way. If not, he prayed to the Maker that he should die of heart attack or stroke so he would be spared the effort of waving farewell to his Samantha.


  No matter what Samantha claimed, Franklin knew that she was a magic that could not be ordered from a catalog.

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