Dory's Short Stories

All Alone In The Tropics  When the Maribel went down, it did so with dignity. The storm had been large and scary with violet lightning splitting the sky, rain lashing the deck like thrown pearls, Captain Alejandro Vargas shouting commands no one could hear over the wind. The ship groaned, tilted, and surrendered to the sea as though fainting. By dawn, five survivors washed ashore on a strip of blinding white sand somewhere in the indifferent blue of the tropics. They lay scattered.  The island was extremely beautiful. Palm trees arched in welcoming curves. The water glittered in shallow aquamarine sheets. Parrots shrieked from the canopy as if gossiping about the newcomers. A waterfall shimmered in the near distance, decorative as a stage prop. It was not the sort of place one was stranded in. It was the sort of place one escaped in. Captain Alejandro was the first to stand. His once pristine uniform clung to him in damp ruin, epaulets torn, and dignity barely intact.  “W...

The Picture Of Dorothy Gray (based on "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde) Chapter 1: The Master Copy In the spring of 1986, when the jacaranda trees were shedding purple like confetti across the sidewalks of Los Angeles , Dorothy Gray decided she was a masterpiece. She did not arrive at this conclusion suddenly. It had been forming for years, through the careful angling of her chin in bathroom mirrors, the slow blink perfected at parties in the Hills, the way men straightened their jackets and women straightened their spines when she entered a room. But it was not until she saw herself framed by the cool, rectangular eye of a camera that she understood: she was not merely beautiful. She was archival. Dorothy was twenty two and luminous in the way only certain Californians are luminous, like they have been edited for brightness. Her hair was a sheet of honey blonde gloss that spilled over the shoulder pads of her white blazer. Her lipstick was the red of a stop sig...

 The Day God Took Away Free Will For millennia, God watched as humanity stumbled through existence, making choices that led to war, greed, suffering, and self-destruction. He had given them free will as a gift, hoping they would use it wisely, but instead, they used it to build weapons, lie, exploit, and turn their backs on Him. One day, he had enough. "This experiment has failed," he muttered, watching a news broadcast of yet another war breaking out, politicians lying through their teeth, and corporations bleeding the planet dry. "If they refuse to do good on their own... then I will make them." With a divine wave of his hand, free will ceased to exist. The effects were immediate. People around the world froze mid-action, their minds suddenly blank, waiting for guidance. A Wall Street banker, who had been seconds away from insider trading, suddenly stood up and declared, "I will donate my fortune to charity." He did not know why, only that he must. A sol...

A Time Machine In the year 2028, when debates felt more like divorces than disagreements, a political moderate known simply as the Mediator grew tired. He had watched talking heads on Fox News and CNN speak as though they were describing two different countries rather than one. He had read endless threads online where compromise was treated like treason. He watched debates online where it felt like it was more about proving someone is wrong than explaining why you are right. And after finishing with online and TV politics, he reread his favorite classic novel, “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells and wondered whether its warning had gone unnoticed. He wanted to prove whether the human species will evolve and split apart because of class or because…of something else. So he built… a time machine. He spent months and months building the machine. He begins finishing the machine during stormy weather. Lightning strikes outside and thunder boasts loudly. He finally finished it. He finished…his ...