Third Short Story

John did not know who the package was from, but the labelit claimed to be from a relative of his. John did not recognize the name at all but it did have his last name, which was not a common last name, so he assumed the package was not lying. John found the package one morning when he was about to go to work. The package looked as if it had been sent over six decades ago, which made John wonder how it managed to get to him. When John opened the weather beaten box he was surprised to find another metal box. The metal box had the appearance of being made in a factory. After a few minutes of inspecting it John noticed that there was absolutely no way to open it and it was in fact just a metal cube.

John had no idea what to do with the cube and realised that he had spent about an hour looking at it. He was going to be late for work. He tossed the cube onto his couch and ran out the door to his car. When he got to work he saw his boss waiting for him and John reluctantly approached him. This had been the third time John had been over an hour late to work that week and his boss told him that if it happened one more time he would be fired. The rest of the day John didn’t do anything productive besides sit at his desk, stare at his computer, and thinking about his life.

When John got home he felt exhausted. He collapsed on to his couch, and after a couple of seconds John realised that the metal box was no longer on the couch and that his whole house was in ruin.  All of his electronic equipment was gone and there was things that should have been in closets all over the ground.  John’s first reaction was to stare blankly at the mess around him, and then call the cops.

When the police had finished searching John’s house they told John that there were no fingerprints they could find to suggest how a person might have got in. All they found was a letter that seemed to be from the intruder. The letter that the police found thanked John for returning the cube to its rightful owner. It explained that the reason most of his electronic devices were gone was a payment by John to the intruder for it taking such a long time for him to give back the cube. When the police finally left John’s house it was late at night so John went to sleep very quickly.

When John woke up the next morning he was startled to see the metal cube at the foot of his bed. John decided the best thing to do was to take the cube with him to work so that if somebody wanted to take it from him they would not break into his house to do so. John put the cube in the passenger seat of his car and started to drive to work. While driving John would glance at the cube every once in awhile and noticed that it started to disappear slowly as he got closer and closer to his work. By the time he got to his work the cube was gone, but there was a letter on his seat threatening him to not take the cube again.

Short Story 2

It had started centuries ago, nobody remembered who caused or why it happened anymore all they knew was that things were supposedly better before it happened. They were so use to it being how it was that they even lost meaning to what being better than it was event meant. Their minds were now incapable of imagining such strange ideas such as that. They did not think their world was perfect or even good, they just couldn’t think of anything else. If given enough time one of them could probably think of ways things could be better, but of course there was no possibility of them acquiring this amount of time. They were not unhappy because they were never given the opportunity to develop emotions they just worked stopped for a little while at random intervals and then continued to work. Some claim that somewhere in the back of their mind they thought it was wrong, but this was a lie seeing as that part of the mind was blocked off and forgotten about a while ago.

            They had no idea what it was they were working towards all they knew was to do what the rest of their family did which had supposedly been assigned when it first started. Sometimes a person would wonder what it was they were building and what the end of result of it was but those people disappeared and were returned a few months later with their minds relocked off and put under extra guidance just in case the lock came lose again.

            Every once in a while there would be a sign that had a picture of someone and old forgotten word on it that was spelled r-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n, these posters would usually be there for only one cycle of working then resting and occasionally the person on the poster would appear working next to someone else in the line next time work started.

            When it started to change again they were confused. All they had done for their entire life was work then rest repeatedly so when they no longer had to do that most of them just stood there. They all had basic knowledge and language skills but they had never used them before and had no idea how to react or what to say. They did not know if it was a good thing or a bad thing all they could tell was that they now had the ability to think about if it was a good or bad thing.

Their decisions were about half and half. Half of them went to explore the world to see if they could find more information while the other half decided to continue to work. After a few days most of the half that continued to work had collapsed because there was no longer anything telling them when to rest so they just kept working. The half that went exploring soon found ruins of odd places that appeared to be different from the work stations they were at. They did not know what these places were but they looked comforting so they decided to try to rebuild it and to stay there. In the ruins they also found things that appeared to be digestible even though it was not the paste like substance they were accustomed to eating.

Eventually some of the explorer found some books, they were surprised to find they were able to understand what the text inside the books said. A lot of the text in the book had faded away but from what was there they realized that the places they found had been called cities and the people in these cities were also able to think like them and were not forced to work. There was still no recording of what happened and they accepted the fact that they would never know what happened and decide to try to just forget about it and move on with their new lives. 

Short Story

He had always had the mind set to kill but never actually did it, and the one time he tried to he failed miserably, was caught and then sentenced to death because even attempted murder was deserved death where he lived. The people that knew him well were not surprised by what he had done but wished they knew how to stop him from wanting to do it. The people that believed that he would kill felt so strongly that he would that they sent him to a therapist to try to prevent it. The therapist could have helped if he had been more open to it but he was not open to it because by the time he went he had already made up his mind to kill and was just working out the details.

He chose his carefully method; he wanted to make sure they would be missed when they were gone. He stalked many people. He learned their schedules, their hobbies and even why they made the choices that they did.  For each person he followed he thought of a different way to kill. His imagined methods included shooting, stabbing, burying alive, drowning and other things of that nature. After about a week of following each person he would realize that the method he had planned to use was flawed but he could not make himself think of a different method to use when following the same person so he would switch people.

After he had followed twenty three people he decided which method to use. The method he chose he came up with while following close family. He knew the method was flawed but after thinking through all his options he decided it would have the biggest emotional effect while still being able to kill. He decided he would stab his victim at least three times.

As he though more and more about it the people around him started to notice that something was up so they made him see a second therapist. The second therapist was different from the first. The second therapist demanded instead of asked and was very pushy. The second therapist made him say his inner emotions and said that at one point in time he had felt the same way. He pretended not to know what the therapist meant by felt the same way but the therapist did not justify this with a response. Instead the therapist asked why he would want to do something like what he planned to do and told how he would regret it instantly. He left the therapist feeling like he may not kill but as he got further and further away he remembered all his reasons to and decided to go through with it any way.

He decided to follow his victim for a few more weeks waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. He needed to wait until people were angry at his victim so that they would feel bad for hating the victim the last time they saw him.  It all happened quickly, one day when he saw his victim he could tell he was upset. As soon as his victim got to school his victim started studying for a test, as his friends approached him, he told them to leave him alone to study. Saying that annoyed his friends, so they insulted him and walked away. For the rest of the day nobody talked to his victim and when the victim got home his parents yelled at him for doing poorly on the test.  A few minutes later he broke into his victim’s house with a knife and sneaked into his victim’s room he quickly stabbed his victim in the chest five times and then escaped leaving his victim to bleed out.

The only thing he did not account for was his victims unexpected want to live. The victim was taken to the hospital where he told the police exactly who had done it. There was no trial because he admitted to doing it when the police asked him.  Where he lived any attempted murder was punishable by death, so that is what his sentence was. The day he walked into his execution chamber he saw his victim sitting in the front row and felt like he was there sitting with his victim instead of in the chamber. As he started to die from the poison rushing through his body he smiled and only one thought went through his mind he had succeeded in killing his victim.

Old Money, New Money and Everybody else

   During the time that the great Gatsby took place money was not the only thing that determined what economic class you were in, it also mattered how long you had had your money for. People who inherited their money were called old money and people who just recently earned their money were called new money.

   Its interesting that people with old money thought that people with new money worked less hard for their money. This is odd because the old money inherited their wealth and did not work for it at all while new money had to make it for themselves and could not rely on their family for it.

   Old money and new money were not only separated by  social standings but also new money lived on west egg while east egg was considered more fancy and is where old money lived.

   Although people seemed very prejudiced against each other for how they got their money they are still willing to go to parties of the other people as seen in Gatsby's parties. 

   Overall new money and old money both think of themselves as better than others and neither side seems that good in the end.