Summer Bird Stories

Family-Friendly Short Stories, Cartoons, and Illustrations

Revenge

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Jake woke up when it was still dark out.   Something in his room was hissing softly. It was like a snake or maybe a bomb, but he couldn’t see it. “Mom!” he yelled. He waited for her, trying to hold perfectly still. He wasn’t sure if the smooth weight on his leg was blankets or a snake. Surely he could feel it moving? He whimpered.

His mom shuffled in and turned on the light.   “What’s wrong?”

“I heard something hissing. I think it was a snake!” Jake threw back the covers. There was nothing there. He looked under his bed. He couldn’t see anything unusual. He couldn’t hear anything either.

He looked up again. His mother didn’t look happy. “I have work in the morning Jake. I’ll leave the hall light on. Don’t call me unless you actually see a snake.”

Just as Jake was finally falling asleep again, he heard a tapping sound, like footsteps. Was there someone in the living room? He hadn’t heard Mom passing his room. He grabbed his baseball bat and crept down the hall.   He slowly peeked around the corner.   Nothing was there. He waited a moment, but didn’t hear anything else.

He went back to bed, but woke again thinking the roof was leaking. And again when he thought he heard someone clear their throat right beside his ear.   And when he heard something growl from his closet. And someone crying in the kitchen. And something tapping on the window.

Jake spent all day at school sleeping with his head on his desk. He stayed in at recess and didn’t throw grass in anyone’s hair or smear mud on their shoes. He didn’t claim the jungle gym and chase everyone away or laugh at people’s haircuts. He didn’t even have the energy to sit on the new kid. It was a pretty rotten day. The teacher sent him home with a note and said she’d call and leave a message.

Jake put the note in his collection under the bed.   Mom had about a thousand voice mails to listen to and she never had time, so she never did. Jake didn’t mind at all. He ate bunch of cookies and watched cartoons until mom got home.   “How was your day?” she asked.

“I was tired today,” Jake said.

“Me too. I kept hearing you get up last night. Stay in bed tonight, even if you can’t sleep, okay?” His mom said.

“Alright,” Jake said.

There was hissing and laughing and growling and moaning that night. Creaking footsteps and tapping on the windows and walls. Sobbing and whispering right by his ear if he nodded off.   He couldn’t sleep a wink. He pulled the covers over his head, curled in a ball, and waited for morning.

At school, he laid his head on his desk and refused to move. Not even for lunch. He didn’t tie anyone’s shoelaces together or throw away their homework when they weren’t looking. He didn’t spill glue in their pencil boxes or even trip anyone when they walked by. When the teacher tried to send him to the nurse’s office, he said, “no thank you,” without even looking up. The teacher sent home another note.

At bedtime, Jake didn’t turn his light out. He sat up on his bed and felt a little bit crazy and reckless. When the hissing started, Jake stood up and faced his closet, where the sound was coming from. “What do you want?” he asked.   “Whatever you are, tell me what you want. Please.” Jake rarely said please.

“I was paid to get back at you,” a raspy voice said.   “My great-great-great-great grandchild is not happy with you.”

“How much are they paying you? I’ve got some money!   I’ll pay more,” Jake said.

“I don’t need money. I’m being paid with tickets to the opera. I like having my own seat so that no one tries to sit through me,” The voice said.

“I could buy tickets,” Jake said.

“Nope,” the voice said.

“What if I promise to leave your great-great grandchild alone?” Jake asked.

“That’s great-great-great-great grandchild, and I don’t think that’s enough,” the voice said. The hissing began again.

“I’ll leave everybody alone! I promise!” Jake yelled.

“Fine,” the raspy voice said. “But if you don’t, I’ll know and I’ll be back. I can wait forever, you know.”

Jake suffered a few sleepless nights in the months to come, but he eventually became a fine, upstanding citizen. With an irrepressible fear of snakes and opera.

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Charlie’s Room: The Carpet

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Marianne and Charlie were gone for the week. They were visiting Great-Aunt Bethyl, Marianne’s great aunt. Marianne worked freelance, but Isaac couldn’t take the week off. He was sad to miss the trip. Great-Aunt Bethyl was a little odd, and Isaac liked to hear her latest conspiracy theories.

Luckily, he had a new project to keep him busy while they were gone.   Charlie had spilled ink on his carpet a month ago, and nothing they’d tried could get the stain out. So, Isaac was going to install some new carpet.

He’d read all about it online and picked out the perfect sand-colored carpet over the weekend. After work today, he’d moved everything out of the room and stored it in the living room.   Now it was time to rip out the old carpet.

It was harder than he’d thought to peel it away. It was oddly satisfying though, like picking at an old scab.   Underneath the carpet, he found a beautiful wood floor. Mentally, he changed plans. He would refinish the floor and buy rugs. He hadn’t bought the carpet yet, so he could still change his mind.

After he’d finished pulling out the carpet and rolling it up, he noticed a square-shaped door in the middle of the floor. A crawlspace? That shouldn’t have been covered up. Stepping over the tack strips, he knelt down beside the door.

He pried up the edges and eased it open. It was really dark inside. He returned with a flashlight. There was a ladder that looked like it descended pretty far. How strange. Was it some sort of smuggler’s hiding spot?

He cautiously climbed down, holding the flashlight between his teeth.   Finally feeling ground beneath his feet, he turned and transferred the flashlight to his hand in the same quick movement. He felt like he was in an action movie. There was nothing there but a long, dark tunnel.

“Hello?” he said. Nothing answered. He walked down the tunnel, pointing his flashlight from side to side as he went. It began to look more like a natural tunnel, with an earthen floor below and a few stalactites hanging down from above.

His flashlight seemed dimmer. He worried about the batteries and considered going back. He switched it off, planning to switch it on again and see if that fixed things. Instead, he realized that the flashlight seemed dimmer because there was an eerie blue glow coming from the tunnel ahead.   As he hurried forward, the light grew brighter.

The tunnel opened into a wide room, twice the size of his little house. The ceiling was high above a glowing underground lake. Isaac stepped forward to peer into the water. A few steps away, something erupted from the lake.

Isaac threw himself backwards with a yell, slashing the air in front of him with the flashlight. The water settled, revealing a lady floating in the air over the middle of the lake, holding a giant glowing sword. She didn’t look very impressed.

“Mortal, you do not belong here,” she said. “You must answer a riddle in order to leave.”

That didn’t sound right. “Don’t you mean in order to have the sword?” He’d read fairy tales.   He knew how this was supposed to go.

“Of course not. This is not your sword.” She frowned. The blue light made her look carved out of stone. Creepy.

Isaac shone his flashlight in her eyes and ran towards the tunnel. It was gone, and the wall of the cave was smooth with no trace of any opening. He turned and returned to the lake with a sigh.   “Alright. What’s the riddle?” he asked.

“Foolish mortal. Don’t think I’ll make this easy for you. What travels on wings in the evening, feet in the morning, and nothing at midday?”

That seemed fairly easy. “A butterfly,” Isaac said.

“Wrong,” the lake lady said.

“I don’t think so,” Isaac said. “It may not be the answer you are looking for, but technically my answer is correct. In the morning of its life, a caterpillar walks on feet. In the middle it doesn’t travel, stuck in a cocoon. In the evening of its life, it travels on butterfly wings.”

“That was not the answer I was looking for,” the lake lady said. She tightened her hands around her sword.

“You didn’t ask me to read your mind, you asked me to solve a riddle,” Isaac said. “Let me go home, and I’ll let you go back to swimming around your lake or whatever you were doing before I came.”

“Fine.” The lady said. She pointed and Isaac turned to look. The tunnel was back.   “Don’t come back,” she said.

“Thank you, I don’t plan to,” Isaac said. He left. He stacked some heavy boxes on the trap door and went to bed.

In the morning, he moved the boxes and opened the door. It looked like a shallow crawl space. He sealed it with silver duct tape and called to order the carpet.

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Castles in the Sky

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As long as Jason could remember, his dreams had been architectural. He dreamed of arches and columns, colonnades, cupolas, and decorative shutters.   Some nights he dreamed of gazebos and landscape design.

He didn’t realize this was at all unusual until his third birthday. His grandmother gave him a lovely book of fairy tales and invited him to sit in her lap to be read to. He looked at the castles carefully and was thrilled to see one that somewhat matched a building in his dreams the night before.

“I dreamed this one,” he said. “’Cept it had a pretty building in the center with a round roof and the windows were pretty glass. The outside windows all had shiny metal bars.”

“You are good at remembering your dreams,” his grandmother said. “Who lived in that castle?”

“Don’t know.” Jason said. “I only ever dream the buildings.”

The adults thought this was funny for some reason and laughed a lot. After that, his mother started asking him each morning about his dreams. She would ask all sorts of questions about what people said or what happened next or if there was maybe a bunny or a dragon or a dinosaur. “I told you,” he said each time. “I only dream the buildings.”

The next time he had a check-up, his mother asked the doctor about his dreams. “It sounds unusual, but I wouldn’t worry about it. He doesn’t have any difficulty sleeping, and he doesn’t seem disturbed or upset by these dreams. It may just be a phase.”

She told his father about it at dinner. He thought for a moment. “Perhaps if we feed his interest, he’ll be satisfied and move on. If not, he may just become a gifted architect. It couldn’t hurt. I’ll pick up some books at the library on my way home,” his father said.

Father started to read to Jason in the evenings about porticos, reliefs, and spandrels. Jason now had names for the parts of the buildings he dreamed of, but he did not stop dreaming of buildings. He liked the dreams of castles best. He drew with a ruler to direct his crayons and added ramparts and battlements, turrets and keeps to his drawings.

His mother bought a dream dictionary. “Was there more than one door? How many were opened and how many were closed? You may have some regrets over missed opportunities. Do you want to talk about it?” It was all very confusing.

One day, Grandmother came to visit. “It’s a nice day outside. I brought you some sidewalk chalk. Why don’t you go draw out on the patio in back?” Jason thanked her for the gift and ran outside.

His dream the night before had been especially grand. He carefully drew the details of the castle and was rather pleased with the results. He’d even carefully drawn the portcullis up and the drawbridge down, to show that it was peaceful and happy, just like it felt in his dream.

That night something woke him unexpectedly, just when he had been wandering through a library full of secret rooms. A wispy, see-through person stood at his bedside smiling and waving.   If he was a ghost, he was a friendly ghost, so Jason wasn’t afraid.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked, just to be certain.

“No,” the man said. “I am a cloud person. Thank you for building us such marvelous buildings over the years. You are very talented.”

“I was building cloud buildings with my dreams?” Jason asked. Somehow it seemed true. The buildings he visited in his dreams seemed too real not to exist somewhere.

“Yes. And we finally found you when we saw your drawing of the Grand Duke’s new palace. He’s throwing a party to celebrate his new home and would like you to come.”

“How would that work?” Jason asked.

The man gave him a necklace to wear with a big round flat blue stone pendant.   After he put it on, Jason could see through his hands. They were wispy and ghost-like, just like the rest of him.

The cloud person pulled something out of his pocket. It looked like a handkerchief, but grew after he pulled it out until it was the size of a rug. It looked like a piece of rainbow. The cloud man sat on it and Jason sat beside him.

They flew up, up into the clouds and through a cloud city. Jason recognized many of the buildings and gardens from his dreams. The grand castle he dreamt up the night before was at the far end of town. It was just as lovely as he’d dreamed. The grand duke welcomed him as a guest of honor.

There was a tour of the castle followed by speeches and dancing. Jason didn’t really like the food, but everything else was amazing.   The grand duke himself took Jason home when the party was over and thanked Jason again before he left.

Jason gave him back the pendant and snuggled into bed, hoping to find himself back in the library. He did.   It was a great dream.

“I went to a party at a palace last night,” Jason told his mother the next morning.

She smiled. “That’s great! So, do you think you’re done dreaming of buildings, then?”

“I don’t think so,” Jason said. And he was right.

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The Wisdom of Parker

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Parker heard his sisters yelling in the living room and decided to read at the kitchen table instead. They got angry quickly and calmed down just as quickly if left alone.   They’d gotten better as they got older, and now fights like this were rare.

In his book, Toad had just bought a car.   Parker knew this meant trouble and eagerly turned the page. Something landed on the table in front of him, shocking him out of the story.   Looking down, he saw an old Barbie doll grinning fiercely up at him. Creepy.

He looked up and leaned back a little. Harriet and Annette were glaring at him arms folded.   What now? He looked down again. The doll looked fine. “What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Annette says this Barbie used to be hers, but it was mine,” Harriet said.

“No, it was mine,” Annette said. She glared at Harriet. Harriet snorted.

“I don’t remember anything about your Barbies,” Parker said.

“Of course you don’t,” Harriet said. “You were still wearing diapers when we played with dolls.”

“Then I don’t see how I can help you,” Parker said.   “Have you asked Mom?”

“She says she doesn’t remember and we should learn to share,” Annette said. She flopped down on a chair across from Parker.

“Like that would work,” Harriet said. Annette laughed. Harriet sat down next to her.

“You could ask Dad,” Parker said.

“He’d take it away ‘cause we were fighting over it,” Harriet said. She bumped her shoulder into Annette’s and Annette smiled.

“That’s true.” Parker leaned forward. “And Amy?”

“She said she doesn’t care and Barbies are stupid,” Annette said.

“Like she wasn’t the one inventing those weird soap opera plots for her Barbies all the time,” Harriet said. She scowled.

“So…” Parker began.

“So we want you to help us decide who keeps it,” Harriet said and leaned back in her chair.

“Alright,” Parker said. “So, do you remember anything that can help me decide?”

“It’s not Harriet’s,” Annette said. “She used to cut the hair off of all her dolls.”

“Not all of them! And I stopped doing that.” Harriet sat up straight and began to glare again. “Besides, this one still has its original outfit. You were always dressing yours in weird scraps of cloth and old socks and stuff.”

Now Annette was glaring too. “That’s ridiculous. I changed them back, too.”

“Well,” Parker said. “We could take the head off. One of you could keep the head and play with the doll’s hair, and the other could keep the body and experiment with different outfits.”

Both sisters stared. After a long moment, Annette laughed. “That seems logical. I’ll let you keep the head, Harriet.”

Harriet laughed too. “What would I do with a Barbie head? You keep the whole thing, Annie. I’d hate to see it broken in pieces just ‘cause we can’t get along.”

“I don’t know,” Parker said. “It seems to me that Harriet cares the most about the doll’s well-being. Maybe she should be in charge of it.”

Annette sighed. “I guess so. That’s too bad. It was the last nice Barbie we had left.”

“Maybe we can learn to share,” Harriet said. She picked up the doll and held it out to Annette.

“Like that’s going to happen,” Annette said, but she smiled and took the doll. She straightened its clothes. “Well, okay, maybe we can try. Thanks, Harriet.”

The sisters stood to leave. “Thanks, Parker,” Harriet said.

“Yeah, good job,” Annette added. They left and Parker went back to his book with a smile.barbie-10-29

Vampires on Vacation

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When vampires go to the beach, they go at night.   They like it best when it’s cold and foggy or rainy. They cover up from head to toe in heavy clothes and wear death preservers filled with lead weights so they can walk on the bottom of the ocean. They bring blood in thermoses and sit around a pile of kelp that’s inside a ring of stones. They tell scary stories about kids around a campfire with long sharpened sticks.

When it’s time to go home, they don’t gather shells or bottles of sand. They know that there will be shells and sand the next time they come. Vampires live a long time. They like the beach because it is always there and doesn’t really change, even though it’s a little different every time they visit. The shells may be different shells, but there will be shells. There will be sand and rings of rocks and kelp and waves. There will be moonlight and stars too, if they aren’t lucky enough to catch a storm.

It may be a long time between visits. Vampires live a long time and there are many places for them to see. The beach will wait for them, it always does. And when they return, they will let the fish swim in their hair and look for new shipwrecks to explore. They’ll shiver at the idea of impulsive children with deadly pointy sticks coated in sugar or cooked meat and applaud the fantastic lightning shows. Then they’ll make sand castles and graveyards and churches with crypts. And then they will go home and leave the shells and sand and kelp and rocks for the next time they come.

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The Judgment of Parker

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It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Parker hummed a happy song as he raced out to check the mail. There was a package in the mailbox! Unfortunately, it wasn’t for him. It was addressed to his three older sisters.

When he came inside, all three sisters jumped up when they saw the package. Parker tossed it up in the air so that he didn’t get trampled. Amy caught it.

“Look, it’s for us from Grandma Helen,” she said.

“Well, open it,” Harriet said. She reached for the package. “You’re taking too long.

Amy scowled and hugged the package to her chest. “Back off.”

Annette sighed. “Just open it, Amy. Sit down, Harriet, or this will just take longer.”

Harriet sat, and Amy opened the package. “Look,” she said, “it’s a gold bracelet with a pretty apple charm.   It’s so cute!”

“But who does it belong to?” Harriet asked. She snatched away the packaging. “All three of us? How is that supposed to work?”

“I suppose we can take turns,” Annette said.

Amy laughed. “Like that would work.”

Parker giggled. His sisters had never been very good at sharing. The giggle had been a mistake. His sisters had forgotten he was there, but now they were all looking at him.

“Parker has no claim on the bracelet, and he’s always been pretty fair,” Annette said.

“Yeah, we should ask him who gets the bracelet,” Harriet said.

“Alright,” Amy said. “So who is it?”

“What?” Parker started backing up.   This was a terrible idea.

“Not so fast,” Harriet said. Her eyes narrowed. “Sit down now, Parker.”   Parker sat.

“Pick me,” Amy said. “I’ll make you the prettiest cake ever!”

“Don’t be silly. I’d drive you to school for a month, Parker,” Harriet said.

“I could drive you to the library and help you with your science fair project,” Annette said.

The sisters glared at each other. All at once, they turned and glared at Parker. Parker felt the back of his neck prickle in sudden dread.

“If you don’t pick me, I’ll put bugs in your lunch box and give you a funny hair cut,” Amy said.

“I’ll put ice in your bed and take away your nightlight,” Harriet said.

“I’ll tape mean signs to your back and hide your homework,” Annette said.

Parker couldn’t take it any more. This wasn’t fair. Why should he care about a stupid bracelet, anyways? He felt angry.

“I don’t think any of you should have it. Mom should have the bracelet. If it was Grandma Helen’s, it should have come to her first anyways.”   Then, before his sisters could react, he ran out of the room and hid behind the door. That usually worked when they were chasing him.

But this time, no one followed. “That’s not a bad idea. Mom will let me borrow it whenever I want, unlike you two,” he heard Amy say.

“Unless I ask her first,” Harriet said. “Let’s go tell mom and see she what she says. It’s like we’re starting all over, thanks to Parker.”

“No, I think he did a pretty good job this time,” Annette said.

“I guess so. Let’s go give mom her bracelet,” Harriet said.

Parker smiled. It sounded like they’d avoided having a war after all. He hurried down the hall and out the back door. It was time to play outside for a little while.

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