The Complete Third Season

By Alex Scott

The third out of four collections of short stories written as part of a challenge to write--or at least publish--a story a week for a year. Includes a toy tyrannosaurus, a crop circle, a superhero's son, a holy fool, a deserter, a haunted football field, castaways, a cursed painting, a water elemental, a demon, a kaiju, an alien flower, and a creepy doll.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Scott
• Release date: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005399597

Alex Scott

Alex Scott is a graduate of the University of Tennessee. He currently lives in Chattanooga.

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THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON

by

Alex Scott

© 2021 Alex Scott

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition.

Portions of this book are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a collection of previously published material. Some portions have been revised since original publication.

The painting Naughty Naughty is © Julia Morgan-Scott. Used with permission.

Printed in the United States.

First Printing, 2021

ALSO BY ALEX SCOTT

Thresholds of the Grand Dream

Unheard Of

Four Seasons of Short Stories:

The Complete First Season

The Complete Second Season

CONTENTS

Introduction

Tyrannosaurus

Specific Codes toCommunicate Vital Info

Whirlwind and Gust

The Fool in the Falls

The Survivor of Ornhuist

The Field

Olafson's Medal

The Painting

Melusine and the Missing Shoe

The Accuser

The Wrath of Dencorah

Invasive Species

A Room With AmandaJane

INTRODUCTION

Ray Bradbury recommended writing a story a week for a year, saying that you can't write fifty-two bad stories in a row. More recently, the cartoonist Anthony Clark put out a series of Bad Comics, small comic strips that weren't concerned one bit with quality, and turned out to be pretty funny. In 2018, I decided to take up Bradbury's challenge with Clark's sensibility, just putting the words on the page and letting the stories speak for themselves.

I burned out in six weeks.

But then I started it up again in July, loosening myself up a little, and modifying it into something closer to musician Jonathan Coulton's Thing a Week series. He put out fifty-two songs in one year. I figured if I couldn't write fifty-two stories, I could at least publish them.

So I did. With minimal revisions—mostly for clarity—I put a story on my blog every week, and didn't stop until I got through fifty-two.

This collection features the stories written from November 2018 through February 2019, and are printed here in the order they were written and originally published.

For prompts, I originally used the website can-i-get-a.com, which gives suggestions for improv comedians. I mixed and matched various settings, relationships, and keywords, and these stories are what resulted. However, starting with The Survivor of Ornhuist, I began instead brainstorming with word-association exercises to develop stories.

Tyrannosaurus is inspired by a painting of me my mother did when I was little, which I'm using here as the story's illustration. The Fool in the Falls and The Accuser are quite possibly my first overtly religious stories—I have been a member of the Orthodox Church since 2016. Melusine and the Missing Shoe uses characters from an as-yet-unpublished novel. And A Room With Amanda Jane features a doll that's circulated among girls in my family for many decades, and the illustration is very closely modeled on the real-life version.

With the exception of Tyrannosaurus, the illustrations were all drawn in October 2019 as a personal Inktober challenge. They were drawn in Clip Studio Paint. This truly bore fruit, as it forced me to learn some aspects of art (especially linear perspective) that had frustrated me for years. I added these illustrations to the stories on my blog as I went along, and some have been modified a little for this collection.

I hope you enjoy this as well as the other collections. The stories are once again given with minimal revisions. If you like them, be sure to leave a positive review wherever you like to leave positive reviews. If you don't like them, well, maybe this introduction will explain why.

TYRANNOSAURUS

Principal Timothy Haller entered the teacher's lounge for a cup of coffee, and found Ms. Simone Ulrich, one of the kindergarten teachers, on the floor. She was down on her hands and knees peering under a desk in the corner. Is there a problem? Mr. Haller said.

Oh! Tim! So glad you're here. Ms. Ulrich sat up. I need your help.

Sure. You lost something?

I had to confiscate a box full of dinosaur toys from one of my kids this morning, and I lost the tyrannosaurus.

All right. Mr. Haller knelt beside the couch and lifted the flap. He found a plastic fork and an old magazine, but no dinosaur. Why'd you confiscate them?

"Well… They weren't exactly your usual toys."

Too noisy? Mr. Haller said. I'll bet the kid couldn't leave them alone. You know how children are about dinosaurs. In all his years since childhood and since becoming an educator, one thing had never changed, and that was children's fascination with dinosaurs.

Ms. Ulrich got to her feet. No, that wasn't it. How do I put this… She crawled across the room to a bookshelf with a gap at the bottom. "They moved."

Remote control?

No. They… You're not going to believe this. They're… She moved her hands as if trying to grasp for a different word. "Alive."

Mr. Haller got to his feet. Alive?

They're plastic, but they're alive. Living miniature toy dinosaurs, all in a box. He let them out during show-and-tell, and I didn't want wild animals running loose in my classroom. I brought them in here for safekeeping when I took the kids to lunch, but then the T-rex got loose.

Where are the rest of them? Mr. Haller said.

Over there, on the desk. She pointed to the cardboard box sitting next to the computer.

Mr. Haller opened the lid. He saw a triceratops, a pterodactyl, a pachycephalosaurus, a stegosaurus, and a brontosaurus, and conspicuously, no tyrannosaurus. They were also very conspicuously still. These are just regular toys.

I'm sorry?

Mr. Haller took the triceratops out of the box. Just a plain, ordinary, plastic toy dinosaur, just like what I had when I was a kid. It's not moving at all. His old dinosaur toys hadn't been quite so naturalistic, but then he did grow up in the days before Jurassic Park.

That's impossible, Ms. Ulrich said. They were walking around and interacting with each other. The T-rex even bit the brontosaurus.

I imagine that's why it has the bandage on the tail.

Yeah, I had a few kids cry over it. The boy who brought them gave the T-rex quite the talking-to. And muzzled it. But why aren't they moving?

Because they're just regular toys.

No! They're alive. Just take a look! Ms. Ulrich got out her phone and pulled up a video. It showed her classroom, with the kids sitting on the floor in a circle, around the same dinosaur toys Mr. Haller was holding in the box.

This time, they were moving.

The dinosaurs padded around among the kids, taking a closer look at them, as if trying to determine whether they were friends or potential predators. Some of them let out squeals that were probably more imposing at full size. The T-rex snapped at one girl, and a boy shouted No! The T-rex jerked its head back and skulked away. It seemed to know who was the boss around here.

It passed by the triceratops, which yelled at it, and the stegosaurus, which swung its tail at it. It then managed to sneak up on the brontosaurus, which plodded across the floor, its tail swaying side-to-side. The T-rex opened its mouth and caught the tail in its jaws.

Then the screams started. That same little boy shouted No! Bad rex! Very bad rex! He jumped into the circle and pinned down the T-rex as the camera swung away and went still.

That's when I went to grab some bandages, Ms. Ulrich said. Crazy thing was, even when they were moving, they still felt like plastic. I don't know how he did it. I'm not sure I want to know.

The box began to rattle.

Yeah, you can't fool us anymore, Ms. Ulrich shouted. Now, you gonna help me look for the T-rex or not?

Mr. Haller said, Sure.

He checked under the other couch, but still didn't find anything that resembled a tyrannosaurus toy. With any luck,