Dale Lehman

“Looking In” by Dale Lehman

Submitted to Contest #97

“Join me in the hot tub.”Other new arrivals laughed at the greeting, but she and I had a history. The words weren’t a tickle but a jab. It had been eight years, seven months, and sixteen days since we parted in the Florida sun. Another time, another world, almost literally. Then was Kennedy Space Center, now Mars-on-Earth, Devon Island, home of Haughton Crater and the Haughton-Mars Project, where for half a dozen decades international teams had tested and trained for red planet excursions.Which wasn’t why she was there. Nor was I.The “hot tu...

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“All Backwards” by Dale Lehman

Submitted to Contest #89

An explosion filled his ears. His chest burned as a dark shade began to fall over his blurring vision. He felt no surprise, only a curious confusion: this wasn’t meant to happen. It was all backwards. “Sorry, Nate.” Karyn spoke the words as she pulled the trigger, and there might indeed have been sorrow in her voice. But for what? They had won, hadn’t they? Erik was dead, the money was theirs, happily ever after beckoned. Why had she turned the gun on him? Somehow during his tumble into death, he had time to watch it all again: Erik clutchin...

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“Ill-Gotten Gains” by Dale Lehman

Submitted to Contest #68

It didn’t seem right, threatening such a pretty young woman, but Harrison’s plan allowed no room for sentiment.The bank teller—Samantha, so her nametag said—glowed in the fluorescent light. Her dark hair and pale skin, her brick red lipstick and white smile topped with a cheery greeting nearly derailed his resolve, but he refused to melt. He had his note at the ready, simple instructions written left-handed with a number two pencil. He had but to slide it across the counter and wait. Returning her smile, he did just that.She read it, frowned...

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“Goldenrod Is Here” by Dale Lehman

Mark remembered two things about that night, one being the fog creeping up the slope from the distant riverbank, slinking like a gray cat among the trees, slithering down the narrow streets, creeping around houses with their curtain eyelids drawn in slumber. The other was his cell phone, guzzling electrons on the faux Jacobean nightstand while warbling the quiet tune that meant Stacey was calling. The music woke him, but oddly he remembered the silence of the fog preceding it. He reached, grabbed, and answered, eyes clamped stubbornly shut. ...

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“Oops” by Dale Lehman

Submitted to Contest #24

The explosion blasted a million obols worth of cometary material into the oblivion of space, a disaster even without their ship being parked at ground zero, but what really rattled Jacey Komarov was the destruction of her entire set of Space Kitchen Deluxe™ radiant cookware, which had been safely stowed on board. She’d bought the set on Callisto twenty-three years before and cared for it like a child ever since. To her, it was more precious than platinum. You couldn’t find gear like that here in the Oort Territories. Standing beside her in h...

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“Count to Ten” by Dale Lehman

Submitted to Contest #13

The black cat shot from the Kowalczyk’s hedge across my bow like a cannonball. At the same instant, the crack of a bat sounded, and ten-year-old Brian Kowalczyk nearly beaned me with a line drive hit off his younger brother Steve’s pitching. As Steve scrambled after the ball, Brian grinned sheepishly and waved. “Sorry, Mr. Stevens!” After my years in Nam, I don’t startle easily, and anyway, no harm had been done. I waved back and said, “Nice hitting! Who’s cat was that?” Brian shrugged and took a practice swing as Steve scampered back to the...

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