Losing Face

By C. W. Smith

Losing Face
What would happen if you were in a bad accident, your face was burned beyond recognition, and the doctors put a new face on for you? What would happen if your memory was gone too? Now you are indirectly connected to a suicide or is it a homicide, mistaken identity and just when your life starts falling back into place all hell breaks loose.

Bug Killer
Greg thought he just struck gold as he headed home with his prize. He originally went to Loews to buy some ‘Lawn & Garden Insect Killer’ and found that a ten-pound bag was a little more than twelve dollars and he figured that he needed fifty pounds. He didn't have the sixty plus dollars to spend, but he saw a pickup truck parked on the side of the road across the street from where he was.

11 short stories for to enjoy with mystery, intrigue, humor, twists, horror, drama, science fiction, fantasy, and murder. Now including the new short story Déjà Vu.

The title story will pull you and and make some twists and turns that will surprise you. The other 10 stories will give you more twists as you read and enjoy the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. W. Smith
• Release date: Nov 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465878557

Book preview

Losing Face

C. W. Smith

Copyright 2011/2013 by Charles W Smith

Smashwords Edition

Contents

SPACESHIP

THE MESSAGE

THE YOUNG WOMAN

MY SUBSCRIPTION

RATS

THE END OF MY TRIP

THE VESSEL

EARL AND WALTER

BUG KILLER

LOSING FACE

DÉJÀ VU

Spaceship

Kylie woke up early, as she knew that today was special. For the first time in fifteen years, there was going to be a new space launch - and she was going to watch it. This meant it was going to be the first rocket to go into space since she was born fourteen years ago, a year after the space program stopped because of the many accidents that belied the program. The taxpayers demanded that if they could not make it safe, there would be no more trips into space.

Now finally they were going to do it; after years of research and hard work, they were finally ready to start again. Not only was this going to be the first venture into space in years, they were going to go to that beautiful bright globe in the sky and land the space ship on it. There were stories about the space program from years before when this was a common practice. Then there was the big war and it became too dangerous to send a rocket into space, let alone away from this world. That was over fifty years ago, then after the war, they only sent spaceships up to explore close to home and perfect the ships again. That was when they started having problems and the program stopped - until today.

Today was going to be the start of a new adventure for the entire human race. They were going to go back into space and land somewhere besides this world. The place they were going to land had many stories about it that Kylie had read since she started school at six years old. She thought many of them were silly, but she wanted to know about each leg of the journey just in case even the smallest part of one of the stories was real. Some of the stories told of colonies all over the little bright disk in the sky; she thought that this was silly; they talked about it brimming with life! This was just very unbelievable, as there were even stories about how human life came from that place.

As the space ship took off, she watched the flames of the rocket as it took off into space heading for that little blue planet in the sky that they call Earth.

The Message

Who I am is of no importance; what I have to say is. I'm not even sure that anyone will find this message, and even then, I'm sure whoever it is will not be of this world. As I write this, I know that our time is running out, as our world is dying.

I can speak for all of us and say that, even though we don't want to die, we all know we had a full and long life, so don't feel sorry for us; your sympathy is not what we want. I'm writing this in hope that the mistakes we made might be viewed as a guide to learn what not to do.

Our kind was created in one area of our world; that much we know. Soon we started taking up more area and our population expanded. The more resources that were used, the further we expanded, reaching out to areas we were never in before. We were literally taking over our world, to areas that a few would migrate to, and then it seemed the population exploded and the new areas were overcrowded. We knew that we needed to slow down, or we would we would destroy or damage our world to the point of compromising our existence.

Everyone knew or had heard our very existence was in danger if we didn't do something to limit our expansion. Many turned a blind eye, and others said it was a myth and there was nothing to worry about. We had all we could ever need or want and there was nothing to fear.

Then it finally happened. We were running out of room in our world. We started building on top of what was already there. We built tall structures and huge colonies to hold more of the ever-growing population. Our colonies merged to where there was no space between them anymore. There were no more rural areas, as they were swallowed in the ever-growing expansion.

Nobody expected what happened next. Portions of our world were destroyed and almost all of the population was gone from those areas. Those that did survive died slowly and painfully, or gained newfound strength, dug in and started to rebuild, trying to reclaim the areas that were now empty.

We were not sure what was happening to our world. There were still those saying we have been destroying ourselves, and this was proof, while the others stood their ground and pointed out that this came from outside of our world and even though it happened, it wasn't because of anything we did. We needed to rebuild and do it even more aggressively than before. The areas of our world where our large colonies had been destroyed were once again being rebuilt, bigger, stronger, and being put together even faster than they were originally.

With the rebuilding came new problems; the population again exploded in the newly rebuilt areas and spread to limits beyond rationality, though burrowing deep down instead of staying on the surface, and still reaching to new heights to accommodate the ever growing population.

There were attacks that seemed as if they were coming from an outside source, from somewhere away from our world. Flashes of terrible heat to bombard the colonies, causing some of the population to die and others to change, adapt for survival. This is where