A girls red notebook compelation 2025 version by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

A cemetery world

My husband and I were at the family plot, with the plain old fashion donuts for the three. Both of us always discuss the latest jumps. Unlike his first wife, jumps are no longer to find riches.

We have more than we could ever use. Jumps are now for vacations. We have children to raise.

There are the jumps to rescue and free slaves. We often go to the goblin planet where we are treated, much to our discomfort, as royalty. A visit from the gods.

While we talk to our parents, my mother was buried there on the insistence of all the brothers, I remembered one of the elderly man’s last tales in my book.

He wrote

Sometimes my wife would just set the watch to random. The only parameters that are set into the watch is that the planet has human breathable air. Other than that, when you chose random, you are not going to know where you end up.

This time, wanting adventure, she set it at random and we made the jump.

The air was fresh, the sky was crystal blue without a cloud in it. All you can see is that there seems to be no mountains. The only things moving are automated solar powered lawn mowers that continually mow the lawn to perfection.

Singularly, the one thing sticks out are ornate railings that cover what appears to be surface windows. There are stairs that lead down.

We walk over to the nearest railing and look. There, looking down through what appears to be thick clear glass, were multiple rooms of the same size. There were quite a few vacant rooms.

Our attention was brought to the first occupied room that we saw. Curiosity drew us down those stairs. The front wall of all the rooms are made of the same thick glass. There in that room was saw was a tableau of what one would see in a Victorian parlor. Lace doilies covered the end tables that had stain glass table lamps on them. Seating was wood framed, deep red velvet upholstered parlor chairs and matching sofa. Ceiling to floor matching drapes that are closed over what would be a window.

With the appropriate time rugs and wall paper, it is scene that rivals any museum with the exception of the two occupants. The man was in his chair reading a book and the woman was working on a needle point.

Thinking that they are mannequins, we are ready to move on to another room in this complex, when my wife notices that the woman’s hands appear to be slightly desiccated. Looking at the man, you can see other telltale signs. They are real people but they are dead. That’s when we saw carved in the stone floor their names and dates.

The two have been dead for over a hundred years.

In the next room were a family at the dinner table.

Another room, a woman surrounded by her amassed wealth. Her arms were extended with gold coins piles on both palms. My wife is drooling and tried to get in but that’s why the glass is thick. After prying, poking and downright hammering, the glass isn’t even smudged. She gives up and we go back above ground.

When we emerge, we see that there is a very large drone carrying one of those rooms. They are completely sealed glass cubes. It can only be assumed that those cubed are vacuum sealed to slow down the process of decay.

The top glass cover tilts up and what we thought was a vacant room was just a space. The cube was lowered into that space and the top cover goes back in place.

When we go to that area and descend the stairs into what we now know as a mausoleum, we see the room that was just installed. It looks like it was always there but we see that the stone now is deforming the show lettering. The person’s name and dates are forming.

We laugh, there is a man sitting on the edge of a bed, in his boxers, in what seems like a brothel room. It looks like he is waiting for the door to open because he is looking at the door. I remarked that he would have a long wait.

This was one of his last stories that he wrote to me. At age eighteen, I thought that it was funny, but I told my husband about the story then asked if he thought that it was his father’s intension to have us put him, his first and second wife there. He just laughed at the thought. The three of them, what would the room look like?

We had, after that, visited the cemetery planet. It is interesting on how stuck we are with our mortal remains that some people would go to this length. It was then I told my husband that the family plot was exactly the right spot for us.

The section of the cemetery that our family had bought was a seventy six plot section. The dirt was the right way. No matter how you look at it. Those on that cemetery planet will only be seen as they are portrayed in their cube.

By the way, we did find that room and the man is still waiting looking at the door.

Author’s note: growing up, my father had a side job at a funeral home. Almost all of us children worked there at one time or another. I still have dreams of dead people. The burials described here were from those dreams. Each time a different scene. Some are completely desiccated. The man waiting was not part of the dreams. Sorry

Fly paper

I remember when my mother and I went to visit a recreated old time village. They had houses, church on the center green and various trade workshops. We watched the blacksmith making something and I think there was someone making shoes for people. He clearest memory was the general store.

Of all the things that aren’t clear in my memories, I can still see that there was a long strip of sticky looking paper hanging from the ceiling. On it were insects of various sizes. Most appeared to already be dead but there was one rather large fly struggling to free itself. The more it struggled, the more it was being caught in the glue.

That memory can be triggered by something as simple as the sound of a fly buzzing around the room. Every time I beat back the childhood horror by remembering a tale the man wrote when I was in my early teens.

He wrote.

One time, when my wife and I went on an adventure on a very lucrative planet. It had an abundance of jewels in the raw state. I wondered why no one had been there to pick it clean. They were, at times, just lying in the river bed.

There is an indigenous humanoid life form but the plants are the most dangerous thing on the planet.

The humanoids have confined themselves to a large area on one side of the planet where they have a shield that prevents most of the plant life from coming into their area. But they are too nice, too understanding. If anything shows intelligence, it is allowed to pass through the barrier.

Most humanoids did not travel into the half that was dominated by the plants. They did have a few adventurers that would trek into it. We ran into an area that was carved out of the jungle. There was a lodge there and was being visited by a family.

They were friendly an we talked. They had a little girl who looked like she was nine or ten at the most. She asked about our adventures. My wife held that young girl’s attention for what seemed like hours. She told that girl about some of our most thrilling adventures. Saving lives, finding riches and just plain experiences of wonderful sights.

The young girl was eating it up but the time came that we had to part. As we left, we heard the mother tell her daughter that those were fantastic fairy tales. The young girl hardily agreed. Sometimes I still wonder what happened to that little girl.

It is that planet’s idealistic policies that are allowing the most dangerous plants into their living zone. To them, the basic requirement to show intelligence was walking and manipulating.

The best example of that planet was a dryad. They walk, act, talk and think. They are sentient.

The worst is a grabber. A grabber is a plant that has vines that can grab, hence their name. Once they grab a flesh type they drag that victim into a pool of bio liquid that is sticky. That liquid then slowly dissolves that victim for nutrients. Even if someone helps that victim out of the pool, the victim continues to dissolve.

You need to chop off the vines to free the victim before it is in the pool.

When there is a shortage of food for the plant, it will move to a better location. With that, it conforms to the basic and thus can cross the barrier.

When we visited and collected the gem stones, we were able to cross through the barrier and sell them for a really good price in gold. No sentient in its right mind crosses to the other side so raw stones only come from us crazies.

My wife liked the thrill of evading the grabbers until they caught her. I was able to chop the vine but told her that it was the last time for this planet. The gems and the thrill she got was not worth losing her.

In remembering that fly strip with its struggling fly and the result of my trying to free it. I got sticky on my fingers but the fly got ripped apart. Every time that I think about all those gems ripe for the picking, I remember that fly. Like the elderly man wrote, not worth the risk.