a fabulous collection of weird, extremely bizarre short stories, as well as some highly strange but very interesting poems, written by author and poet Arturo Hernandez.
One day, I will awake to superpowers:
Like flight
Invisibility
Elasticity
Impenetrable skin
Super strength like Power Man
The ability to read minds
To move objects with my thoughts
To stick to walls
Manipulate the time stream
Move faster than Barry Allen
The means to transport
Myself one point to another by just thinking about it
Super genius mind
One day.
A Hernandez 11 8 2023
I invited Gand and the earthman to my place,
So Gand could meet the earthman,
And to show Gand I had not been on any herbs,
Or that I had not been drinking from the homemade refreshment down in my mother’s well.
Do you trust this man? The earthman asked me as
he stared at Gand.
Yes. Why do you ask? Why wouldn’t I trust this man? I have known him all my life?
The earthman scoffed, experience has taught me many things and one of them is to never trust a person who wears funny hats.
Gand, grimacing, replied, what is wrong with my hat?
Something not sure what yet.
Zais says you come from Earth? Gand asked the earthman, there was a look on his face that expressed distrust. That you crashed landed in his mother’s garden? Is this true?
I was on a mission for Earth, yes. My ship struck some
Space debris that sent me hurtling here. I did not ask to come here or to crash into this man’s mother’s garden.
Earth you say. Interesting.
Your friend says you think I am nuts. That Earth
Is only found in mythology blogs and paperbacks.
Zais is a trusting Landian. We are all trusting Landians. Me, not so much. I’m only partly Landian. Trust does not come easy for me. My mom was Landian. My father is not a Landian at all; he came from the outer moons of Peacelandia.
2 17 2024 a hernandez
Humans are not real Zais.
They are myths. You know that.
This person you speak
Of is just some Landian who most likely stumbled onto your mother’s
Garden and perhaps had smoked
All the herbs in your mother’s
Garden.
<Of course, you can easily gather
From this newly conversation that
No one, not even my best
And only friend, Gand,
Believes me>
Gand. Please. You know me.
I wouldn’t lie to you.
I saw him crash
Smash
Dash the flower bed to
Smithereens.
He came out of his metal
Ball i believe a ship from
Space.
Then you have been in the garden
Sniffing your mother’s poisonous
Herbs that now have you seeing and imagining
Things.
A.Hernandez 2 3 2024
Most of the time, i find comfort in the blue eyes of the ocean and
I seek only comfort in this ocean of blue eyes.
Those eyes peer into my soul, those eyes of blue, and most of the time, find only love and happiness. But on July 3rd, 2014
Those blue eyes looked into my soul and, for the first time, found a weakness and, without mercy, prepared to end me.
And so waves of blue eyes, huge waves, came over me over my head, and I swallowed some eyes of blue, and I thought to myself, this is the end.
Those beautiful blue eyes are all around me sinking me scaring me and I am sinking more deeper, more blue eyes still around me huge waves of eyes blue and unfeeling currents of unending eyes pushing me down into the blue ocean, big blue waves all around me and I am sinking sinking sinking and sinking. And for the first time in my life, I found no comfort in those eyes of blue.
9 6 2014 a Hernandez
Santa And His Zombified Elves (A Christmas Story)
They come at him at all directions, wanting his brain, and or his flesh.
He does his best to kick them away, slashes them with his two swords, but they keep coming, they’re relentless his once nice elves.
He is tiring yet they are not.
“I am Santa and they will never take me down,” he thinks grimly to himself, as he continues to slash away at the tops of their heads, blacken blood and brain flying in all directions.
“Christmas shall not be delayed!” he screams at the horde. “Not today!”
A. Hernandez 12 19 2023
My OCD will not allow me not to write a poem or short story for Halloween. It’s my personal monster, telling me to do things others would laugh at about doing. Don’t be silly Art!
Trick or Treat
there’s a monster at my front door
growling “Trick OR Treat”.
Should I open the door?
It is growling even louder “Trick or Treat”.
I cower backwards, into the shadows,
hoping the knocking would go away.
“Trick or Treat” it continued even more loudly.
I was shivering, not from the cold.
Some minutes had gone by
and the knocking on the door had gone
bye bye.
I was again able to breathe without care.
i was once more able to move, and I did.
I strode towards the backside of my home
where the beer in the frig lived.
and when i strode into my kitchen, my lungs suddenly stop working
for to my surprise the back door that opens into my kitchen was wide open,
and was letting the cold October air in,
and again i started to shiver, but not from the cold.
I closed it, turned back towards the beer and heard in the other room
the sound of a deep hunger like devouring, sloppy sounds,
chomping, chomp, burp, gasp, chump, chump chump.
I peeked into the living room and saw the monster
stuffing his face with the candy i had placed in a big orange plastic bowl,
shoving wrappers and all into it’s very large mouth with very large teeth.
chocolate was running down it’s face like blood would if it were flesh
he was biting into and not milky way bars.
It stopped to peek at me, and smiled with the ugliest look on it’s chocolate stained
face, “Trick or Treat.”
A Hernandez 10 31 2023
We meet on an expedition while traveling through the jungles of Kiri Tikanawa searching for the elusive ancient Temporalis of Anaki. On the middle part of our expedition we were taken prisoner by the Anaki tribe and put in pot full of sliced carrots and tomatoes to later be cooked slowly over a very low heat.
Thankfully, we escaped the Anaki by making them believe we were the godly keepers of the Temporalis by showing them videos on our cell phones of cats attacking shoes of unsuspicious people. We told them (using our parrot translation machine) if they did not let us go that we would be forced to set the cats on them and their families.
Horrified by this threat they quickly freed us. We became great friends from then on.
I told my Bogeyman, “I told
My therapist about you.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I said you were somewhere in the
dark just spying on me.”
“And what did she say?”
“To shoo you away
with the grounding techniques
She had taught me, the other day.”
“And so, what’s the problem then? Did it
Work for you?”
“I wish I had thought of the techniques at the time. But instead
I let you rule me.”
“Do I need to pay your therapist a visit?”
“It will do you no good. She doesn’t
Believe in you.”
“Oh Well. All that matters is that you
Still believe in me. Right?”
I nodded, quickly turned to my bed in the darkness (I know it is there) and crawled back into it; with the dark still in power, surrounding me and my every move, I closed my eyes to go back to sleep, thinking of my Bogeyman spying at me from his safe corner in my dark, dark room.
A. Hernandez 2 1 2023
I dreamt the world was flooding
And the animals had gone mad
Our roof was collapsing
And my dad had gone mad.
What a nightmare.
Watching my dad drag us into the flood,
Watching a pack of leopards eating animals on a bank,
Eating a person alive,
It was a horrific dream.
There seemed no hope for my family
There was no safe scheme
To get us out of this doomsday scenario.
a. Hernandez 2 14 2023
Poems by Arturo Hernandez 