Her Basement, by Rajah Dodger Copyright (c) 2001.  All rights reserved, except that electronic not-for-profit reproduction rights only are explicitly granted with the stipulation that this authorship and permission note must remain attached.     The animal in the basement was whimpering again.     My next-door neighbor kept some sort of animal, I thought perhaps a dog, in her basement.  For the last month I would be...

Sticky Afternoonby Rajah Dodger (c) 1994, 2009     It was a sticky afternoon, and Karl was tired of waiting for the bus, tired of looking for work, just plain tired.  He tapped his fingers impatiently against his briefcase as he slouched against the building in the July heat.  He grumbled to himself from time to time about the short-sightedness of personnel managers who seemed to want fresh young (read: cheap) applicants...