Boots Read online

Boots2

  By Phillip Donnelly

  Copyright 2014 Phillip Donnelly

  Second Edition

  About the Author

  After completing a psychology degree, the author realised that he was profoundly misanthropic and set about travelling the world looking for aliens to take him to another planet.

  Unable to speak any foreign languages and almost incapable of holding a conversation in his own, he decided to teach English as a foreign language because this was the only job that would allow him to travel widely without any marketable skills or noticeable intelligence.

  He has unsuccessfully searched for life from outer space in classrooms in the following countries: Spain, China, Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Beirut, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Lebanon France and Vietnam.

  In the future, he hopes to continue his search for alien life forms in different countries, and he would be obliged if any aliens reading this could spirit him off to an altogether more exotic planet in a more harmonious dimension.

  All of the pieces in this book have appeared online.

  Message from the Author

  If you enjoy these stories, please feel free to tell me so at [email protected]. If there’s something you didn’t like, or something you feel could have been better, I’d like to know that too.

  If you can’t face the idea of communicating via e-mail, then just answer three questions at Survey Monkey:

  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6L5FYV8

  More information, videos, and assorted odds and ends can be found on my website.

  www.phillipdonnelly.net

  For Sandra

  Table of Discontents

  Short Stories

  Historical Fictions

  Blitzkrieg Revisited

  If Walls Had Ears

  Last Orders for Churchill

  Conversations with the Reaper

  The Undertaker’s Complaint

  Proppland

  The Guest in the Attic

  The Last Blog and Testament of the Shui Gui

  Virtual Dystopias

  Necronet Explorer

  6 Hits from the Safe Zone

  Can Websites Commit Suicide?

  Debt, Death and Deletion

  Animal Farms

  Shep’s Last Day

  Dystopia 101

  The Interactive Classroom

  The Future Perfect Continuous

  Soul Chips

  The Mission

  The I-SAD

  The Smartphone Addicts and Precinct 9

  Book Samples

  Samples from Novels

  The Headless Chicken (from Letters from the Ministry)

  The Office Trinity (from The Screen)

  The Post Modern Prometheus (from Kev the Vampire)

  The Inaction Man and the Sandwich of Doom (from The Inaction Man)

  Samples from Travel Writing

  Vietnam – Saigon

  India — In-Flight Commandments

  China – Riding the Dragon

  Lebanon – Baalbek

  Articles

  Stale Heroes tell the Same Old Story

  Barack Backs Beans

  Vampires — From Ghouls to Teen Idols

  Acknowledgements

  The following short stories and travel writing first appeared on the following websites. All rights remain with the author.

  Bewildering Stories

  The Office Trinity, The Future Perfect Continuous, The Mission, The Interactive Classroom, Shep’s Last Day, Necronet Explorer, Debt Death and Deletion and Can Websites Commit Suicide?

  Foliate Oak

  Blitzkrieg Revisited, The Undertaker’s Complaint, and The Headless Chicken

  Quantum Muse

  6 Hits from the Safe Zone

  The Cynic

  Barack Backs Beans

  Weirdyear

  Proppland

  Word Machine

  The Guest in the Attic

  Literary Hatchet

  The Smartphone Addicts and Precinct 9

  EtherBooks

  The Last Blog and Testament of the Shui Gui, The Intelligent Sexual Attraction Device, In-Flight Commandments and Baalbek

  Bent Masses

  If Walls Had Ears

  Linguistic Erosion

  The Beach Dream

  Circa

  Last Orders for Churchill

  Piker Press

  Saigon, Riding the Dragon, and Inaction Man and the Sandwich of Doom