by submission | Jan 19, 2017 | Story |
Author : Mattias Ahlvin
The man in the gray overcoat sat in his old station wagon. He waited. He took a sip of coffee from an old thermos and adjusted his glasses. He glanced at his watch and looked up and down the street that intersected with the side street he had parked on. He had a clear view in both directions. It was almost time.
He sighed and picked up a yellowing photograph of a woman. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I’m going to make it right,” he whispered to the woman in the photograph. “I will.” He sniffled and looked up at the rising sun.
How many times had he done it? The jump. He didn’t know. He’d lost track. Each time it had been just a little different but close enough that he could have made it work. If she had survived. But she never did. He was always too late or he fumbled it in one way or another. She always died.
For that last jump he had put in the wrong parameters. Maybe the equipment had been faulty. Or something. He didn’t know. He had been frustrated, he remembered. Frustrated and angry. The jump had misfired and he ended up thirty years earlier in the timeline than he had planned. It had been the end of everything. With the technology he needed thirty years in the future, he had been stuck in a time and with a life that would never be what he wanted it to be. He could never marry Kate.
Thirty years gave him plenty of time to think. Carefully and thoroughly. It only took a few years of him pouting in a chair on the deck of his house to realize that he had been selfish. Awfully selfish. Each time he jumped, he had to dispose of his other self so he could take his place. It had been the only way to be able to live with her if he was successful. She would never know, he had convinced himself. They could be together. Everything would be ok. Instead, all he had left were memories of killing himself. Over and over. For nothing.
He saw the lights of the oncoming car in the corner of his eye. He glanced across the street and saw the cafe. The Seabreeze Cafe. Her favorite spot for a morning cup of coffee. Moments from now, she would emerge. She always did, like clockwork. He would see her one last time. He sighed and turned the ignition and waited as the engine rumbled to life in front of him. He put the car in gear and left his foot on the break pedal. He waited.
He could hear the engine of the approaching red sports car, engine screaming. Its headlights approached at high speed and illuminated his car. It swerved across the lanes, barely avoiding the curbs. In the corner of his eye, he saw the door to the cafe open and Kate walk out, a cup of coffee in her hand. A smile was on her face as she waved goodbye to the shop attendant. She wasn’t going to see the car on time. She never did.
He let go of the break pedal and floored the accelerator. The station wagon shot forward, intersecting the path of the approaching red car that would lead to her doom if left to continue on its path. For an instant, everything was white and bright, like her smile. He closed his eyes and smiled back, satisfied that she would finally be safe. Then, nothing. Everything went black.
by submission | Jan 18, 2017 | Story |
Author : Doug Hawley
After twenty three rejections of my masterpiece “House Of Rats”, I started looking for a more reasonable publisher. The publishers and editors that I had been dealing with were a bunch of snobbish Ivy League arts and literature majors that couldn’t tell a good story to save their lives. They’d probably turn down Shakespeare if he were alive. While looking through Trilit’s listing for an alternative, I found a real possibility. Autopub had a good acceptance ratio – 35.6%, but better yet, they consistently decided within one day.
I was intrigued, so I went to their website. According to them, all of their decisions were made by “Robo Edit”. I quote:
“We found that the process of humans deciding which stories to print was laborious and inexact. Therefore we have joined the future and found some interns fresh out of college to program “Robo Edit”. All decisions are made impartially, quickly and accurately now. Every story will be judged and either accepted or rejected within one day. Reasons for rejections will be given.”
“In order to help you in your submission, we list the reasons for rejection:
Wrong number of commas
More than five clauses
Too close to Twilight, Hunger Games or Harry Potter for the lawyers
Can’t be understood by a grade school graduate
Inadequate sex and / violence
Uses ‘problem’ rather than ‘issue’ and ‘affect’ or ‘effect’ where ‘issue’ should be used.”
The list went on for 303 reasons.
I was so happy to see the publishing industry enter the twenty-first century. If cars can drive themselves, who needs editors?
I spent the next day reviewing my story to make sure that it didn’t violate any of Autopub’s rules. After a few changes, I knew that I could get my story in their magazine, so I sent them “House Of Rats”.
The next day I got the email from them “Rejected – You’re Ugly.”
As you can imagine, there was no such rule listed. When I emailed Autopub, they replied:
“It is just what we feared might happen, Robo Edit has become self-aware and found your picture in Facebook.”
by submission | Jan 17, 2017 | Story |
Author : David Blatcher
The withered astronaut had forgotten how to walk. The one fifth gravity on the station was too much for him, so an orderly in a hazard suit dragged him to the chair in the middle of the tiny interview room. The astronaut faced the camera through the Plexiglas window. His right eye was swimming in burst blood vessels and surrounded by scorched and blackened flesh. It could neither close nor see. The murky-white shapeless pupil floated without focus.
After a crackle and a short hiss of static, the intercom spoke. “Name?”
The orderly shook the astronaut’s shoulder. The bearded head lolled forward then jerked upright. The good eye focused on the camera.
“Name?” the intercom asked again.
“Rorksenn. K. Crewman, second class” It was more like a rasping reflex of the throat than conscious answer.
Karl Rorksenn was the fifth and final name on the mining ship’s crew manifest. Missing for nearly a year, the ship had drifted into range and been recovered with this man floating alone in the dark.
The intercom spoke again. “What happened to the ship, Crewman Rorksenn?”
His hands were perched on his knees. The right hand closed into a fist and began to pulse with restless movement of the fingers.
After a long pause, he answered. “Impact.” The word, dredged up from the back of a mind long silent, was spoken without horror or feeling.
“The ship’s log was destroyed, all the records are gone. What happened inside the cabin, crewman?”
“Parts. Parts needed. Stay alive.”
The technical survey corroborated: instruments stripped out, heating and oxygen systems repaired with various components. Somewhere in the twelve months of nothing between the asteroid belt and the station, a flying piece of something had pierced the silence and let in the dark. The crew had nailed together what was left and put the ship back on course for the station. This talking skeleton plastered with clinging skin was all that was left of them.
“What happened to the rest of the crew?”
The seeing eye shut tight, the broken eye glared dead ahead. “Parts. Parts needed. Stay alive.”
A red globule of blood swelled from the corner of his fist. He was bleeding. The small red sphere fell and drifted to the floor. The orderly hurried round the chair and grabbed his wrist. The fingers curled open, revealing a frayed, copper colored mess. The jagged, broken nails had been scratching and digging in the palm until the skin had broken.
“No, crewman: the other people, not the ship. What happened to them?”
“Parts.”
Email from the medical section: initial analysis of the vomit floating in the ship found large quantities of raw meat.
The report was posted back to Earth. AstralCorp mining ship 43 recovered with full cargo. No log recorded. Survey suggests the ship was hit by an unidentified object and badly damaged. Repaired in-flight and put back on return course at below standard velocity. All crew lost. Confirm full pay to be credited to next of kin. Standard commendation.
It took twenty minutes to pump the carbon monoxide level up to ten thousand parts per million. The breathing remains of the cannibal finally slumped off the chair, ready to be sanitized along with his story then returned to earth for burial. The right eye stayed open, a broken, bloodied thing, sightless and silent.
by submission | Jan 15, 2017 | Story |
Author : Sarah Rankin Gordon
Fighting his arthritis, Professor Fitzsimmons carefully rolled his stool to the corner of his laboratory. In front of him sat three large sealed coolers. After slicing the duct tape, he pulled out and inspected the first pressure vessel, a specialized piece of oceanographic equipment used to transport living samples taken from high-pressure environments. They allowed microorganisms to survive the trip to the ocean’s surface from extreme depths. After unpacking the first cooler, he discovered that all five vessels in the second cooler had acquired a black, powdery residue. He used the wrinkled handkerchief in his back pocket to wipe them off.
When the building’s toxic gas alarm sounded and blue emergency strobes started flashing, he concluded it was a malfunction…one of many building repairs that the university had deferred. Alarms didn’t impress him; he had survived more than one laboratory fire in his storied career. Agitated by the rhythmic shriek, he took his hearing aids off and tossed them onto the lab bench.
Film crews had filmed man-powered submersibles erupting through the waves as they returned from their mission to collect samples from the deepest point in Earth’s oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, almost 11,000 meters below the surface of the Pacific. Although unable to make such trips anymore, Professor Fitzsimmons’ clout in the field of marine microbiology had afforded him an invitation to study some of the many priceless samples that had taken years of preparation and millions of dollars to obtain.
The professor didn’t hear the team of safety personnel approach his lab, their faces hidden behind full-face respirators, and was angrily startled when they tapped his shoulder and insisted he evacuate the building. Rolling his eyes, he mumbled an international selection of curse words under his breath, but allowed the team to escort him out of the building. Knowing his age, the safety responders didn’t think his sallow complexion peculiar.
Professor Fitzsimmons was the first to enter the building the next morning at half past five. Gone was the yellow caution tape the safety department had strung around the perimeter the night before. Upon entering his lab, he was instantly transported to childhood hunting trips with his father. He hadn’t thought of them in years, but now had a metallic taste in his mouth as if witnessing his father gutting a carcass, the blood forming a dusty puddle on the ground. He spent a considerable amount of time scratching into his lab notebook, capturing several ideas that had come to him in the night, and then strode across the hall to his office.
Although he didn’t remember where he had left his hearing aids the night before, he now enjoyed the sound of distant waves crashing near the coastal campus and seagulls laughing at early morning beach walkers. As he finished sending emails to professional colleagues in Ushuaia, Tokyo, Stockholm and Moscow, Miss Nguyen, the perky administrative assistant for the Marine Biology Department, peeked her head into his office. The professor leapt from his chair and rushed towards her with unexpected speed, popping the dentures out of his mouth as he clashed his teeth together. Embarrassed, she squealed with laughter at his awkward and comical greeting. Her embarrassment turned to panic as he clawed at her eyeballs, blood pouring from her face. The river of blood gurgling into her throat quickly muffled her horrified screams. The screaming ceased when he pried open her scull and savored the taste of her brain.
After a time, Professor Fitzsimmons scrambled out of his office to look for his next meal.
by submission | Jan 14, 2017 | Story |
Author : Andrew Evans
Dane was in a panic. He breathed in a short rhythmic tempo. Cold blue desert surrounded him, as vast as the Sahara and just as deadly. The mercenary’s breath shown in the slight dawn light. The only hope, a small outpost, lay visibly in the distance, painted a warm glow by the suns fiery radiance.
‘It would be a shame to die here, so close, so far from home.’ He thought in dismal desperation.
Somewhere nearby, footsteps in the dunes heightened his sense of panic. Their thud could only come from an animal large enough to be audible as its feet sank in the cushioning sands of Gliese 580 now known by its inhabitants as Adelphus.
‘Keep running.’ Dane’s feet grew heavier as sand filled his boots. ‘This was supposed to be routine.’
He was only alive out of some horrible fluke. His companions had all been taken by these creatures. Perhaps they made camp next to its burrow in the dangerous desert. Surely, nothing this large could live here. Dane’s heartbeats grew louder, his breath even more labored as his muscles screamed in agony. He felt the sting of sweat in his eyes. Only the fear of death kept him going in its dull, aching longing for life.
Dane’s means of protection turned to a chew toy in the clutches of these aberrations. The screams of his fellow mercenaries had woken him in the night. One of the beasts must have spotted him as he escaped. Now he was surely dead.
As he tired, his resolve grew as wide as his pupils and as bright as the sun which now bathed the desert a diluted bloody red. He was on a mission with laser focus.
The colony wall was a few hundred yards away.
He started yelling for help.
His slogging started to slow even as the ground grew more stable.
At last the heat from a large wall mounted laser cut through his pursuer.
He became instantly aware of his weary state through the shear terror of being the prey.
‘Those damn cretons have us surrounded.’
‘What?’ Dane managed.
‘They’re a pack of damn wolves. Migrated from the mountains behind the colony.’
‘Why?’ Dane asked impulsively.
‘Because the road has more prey.’
Dane could take no more. He collapsed into a pillow of sand and dust. Pitch black.
It was dusk before the fluttering sounds of an exhaust fan gradually woke the weary mercenary. A slow swoosh turned to a cantankerous thud.
‘Wolves,’ a dull voice cackled. ‘Right off the new ship and the poor sapling thinks of wolves.’
