Two Weird Tales of the Dystopian Present and Future

By Michael Hearing

"Two Weird Tales of the Dystopian Present and Future" is a two-story bundle of approximately 6,600 words – two prescient short stories that treat of what is and what may be. Both scenarios will likely come to pass, and neither will be very pleasant. So be warned . . . be prepared . . . and watch.

"Eve's Refusal"
Eve is a dirty, mentally challenged homeless woman who stands on a street corner in her rags and "prophesies." But she knows exactly what she possesses – what most of those who pity her don't have.

Eve refuses to take advantage of the social programs and for a good reason. She refuses to submit to the medical procedure and the progress monitoring, preferring instead to keep what she has.

Eve has an important lesson to teach Andrew Thurston, Director of the Social Equity and Rehabilitation Department, who is determined to help her.
"The Thanatos Solution"
Just a few years down the road, the new health-care plan is firmly entrenched. A new bill, Ethical Assessment of End-of Life Care, has also been enacted into law. And the authorities are ruthlessly implementing it throughout the land – no more medical resources wasted on the defective and dying, equitable distribution of quality medical care, no more lingering half-lives sustained by expensive machinery.

But there are, as always, unexpected ramifications, especially for those who wanted it.

The woman knows her incontinent, disabled father is scheduled for imminent termination. It makes sense for him. But then she learns that her son is afflicted with a terminal condition. And things change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Hearing
• Release date: Dec 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310697852

Michael Hearing

Michael Hearing is a freelance writer/essayist/novelist living with his wife, dogs, cats, horses, and ferrets on a few acres with a small lake in northeastern Oklahoma. There, he tries to grow vegetables, catches quite a few fish, and does his writing.Having lived a fairly desultory life, Michael decided that it’s time for some order and method. So he is finishing up and publishing some books he’s had in the works for many years. But, still, he is likely to be all over the genre map. In most cases, though, he has lived what he writes about, and his works ring true.

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Two Weird Tales of the Dystopian Present and Future

Michael Hearing

Spring Lake Books

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013

All rights reserved. This book may not be used or reproduced in any manner—by any means or in any medium whatsoever—in part or in whole without written permission of the author (except, of course, small excerpts in reviews). Please respect intellectual-property rights and help authors protect what they've created.

The characters and situations presented here are nothing more than inventions of the author’s imagination. If anything in these stories resembles real persons, places, or institutions, it is purely the result of coincidence.

Eve's Refusal

The Thanatos Solution

Eve's Refusal

There she was on that corner again, hair filthy and matted, three ratty mufflers around her throat, oversized coat stained and torn, laces missing from her once red Chuck Taylors. And all of her uneven fingernails had black grime under them, a detail that turned Andrew Thurston's stomach, when he passed close by, almost as much as her vile body odor. He saw that her mouth was flapping open and closed and her arms were flying around in wild, incomprehensible gesticulations. She reminded him of some ragged, noisome marionette whose body had been set in motion by a mad puppeteer. He wasn't yet near enough to hear her inane idiocies, but he was certain she was prophesying again. Why did these people do these things to themselves?

He could, of course, go another block over to avoid all this unpleasantness. But he shouldn't have to. No, not when he and his department did everything they could every day of the week to make sure these derelicts had a decent life. And Andrew should know because he was a supervisor in the city's Social Equity and Rehabilitation Department. He had gone into social work, he kept telling himself, because he wanted to help people. But Andrew was also occasionally aware, when the memory rose to