Fortune Underfoot: Part Five

(reading time: 1 hour, 24 minutes)

E-denta

It took three separate sessions across two days, but E-denta finally succeeded in painting all of Maggie’s toe nails. The idea came to her when Jones asked for everyone to search the surrounding area for plants. The Riches around them were getting so thick that Maggie couldn’t find enough to eat without their help. Oddly enough, Braxton had the most talent for rooting around the money and bringing up the flattened bodies of mostly dead bushes. The elephant didn’t care for them, so Jones had to chuck the limp plants into her mouth and order the beast to chew. Occasionally she would chew three or four times and spray the pulpy mess back out, staining his shirt a rotten green. Continue reading

Fortune Underfoot: Part Four

(reading time: 1 hour, 4 minutes)

Gronix the Spouse Eater

An angry crowd, that was all talk, gathered outside Bee Tower, keeping their distance from the elephant with its head stuck through the door. They grumbled and whined and milled about, too afraid to organize an actual physical strike against Jones for creating a long burrow of destruction through the city with his robot chum. Continue reading

Fortune Underfoot: Part Three

(reading time: 1 hour, 16 minutes)

Jones and Heart

In an almost frightening way, Jones had lightened up. They had traveled for close to two weeks now with a vague destination in mind, stopping here and there when they crossed lush money-free pastures of tall grass and scrub for Maggie to gorge on. After the initial moment of horror and the attempt at forced separation, things had cooled down between the man and robot. The benefits of the connection almost always washed away Jones’s bouts of feeling manipulated. Continue reading

Fortune Underfoot: Part Two

(reading time: 1 hour, 14 minutes)

Jones

After roaming haphazardly for an hour, Jones directed Maggie towards the area where they had found the food store; he still wondered about that glint of robot skin. With no home and no job, the small mystery turned his curiosity into a ravenous school of piranha. It was a ridiculous riddle to waste time on, as if someone died in the middle of a joke and left him no punch line. It was better to investigate that though than pick up where he left off before settling in Brightside. Continue reading

Fortune Underfoot: Part One

(blurb)

Behold the United States after an economic apocalypse; inflation has run wild.  Life is nearly choked out by mountains of coins and dollars in the breeze.  Crazed robots, rogues with coin-shooting guns, and many other strange things roam.  One man,  a rare surviving specimen of optimism, journeys across the wasteland of wealth in search of a place good enough to be his home.

fortuneunderfoot

(reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 7 hours, 20 minutes)

An average of thirty six thousand dollars was crushed under his feet with each step. Technically they weren’t feet, just metal imitations which carried him across wastelands of currency with a speed no real feet could. The patented feet were attached to large square pads that acted like snowshoes, preventing their owner from sinking into stacks of money or getting caught in credit card landslides. His imitation heart ran at full capacity, so sincerely that a real heart would be put to shame. Continue reading

School Supplies

(reading time: 24 minutes)

School Supplies

Breeeeeeek, breek, breek.  Sort of like a cicada, but according to the box it was supposed to be a tree frog.  I hadn’t liked tree frogs in about six years, but when Mom said she was going to keep my room just as it was after I left she sure meant it.  So I was being woken up by a plastic golden alarm clock shaped like a frog.  It breeeked in my face and flashed the lights behind its purple eyes.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and winced when my feet hit the floor.  Pain.  Docs said my leg should be one hundred percent by now.  Liars.  They wanted me to get hurt again; it’s just more money in their pocket.  Miss the family doctor.  Think he was a real family doctor… like a cousin removed a handful of times or something.  You need your blood mixed with theirs to get them to really care. Continue reading