by submission | Dec 31, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Ain’t it fun to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of?”
The clown said this right before being eviscerated.
It was unexpected. All of it. Dry Springs wasn’t usually the kind of place where folks lived in fear of killer alien robots. Which is true of most towns.
But since the crash, we’d all been on edge. First, the fireball, then the explosive impact, then the inferno that ripped through the south side of town. Mostly, though, we got really concerned when we found the empty spaceship. About the size of a doublewide, all hot and glowy, except for the three hatches. All open with strange tracks leading away from the ship.
Of course the government came which made us more uneasy. Except for the clown. A real bozo. An old rodeo clown with loud plaids and suspenders, floppy ten-gallon hat and rainbow-starred boots. The Saturday morning after they found all the disembowled federal agents, the clown came into the hardware store where I worked and pulled me aside. He told me not to worry about any of it. He had my back. That got me pretty nervous. I asked him what he meant. He told me to meet him at the old mine later that night and he’d show me why there was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.
I guess you could write an entire psychology book on I why went, or you could sum it up to curiosity. Plain damn curiosity. Not much happens in Dry Springs, so a thrill was a thrill, even from a clown I didn’t trust.
It should be clear by now that I’m the one who deserved to be eviscerated, but that’s not how it worked out as you know. The clown was already at the mine when I showed up, leaning against the boarded-up entrance smoking a fat cigar. I’d never seen the clown smoke anything.
He handed me a stogie and told me to light up. He seemed to like that I didn’t question him and just lit up the beefy thing. At a certain point you go with it. Some reptilian part of my brain told me to follow the clown. I’m not a simpleton, but I followed the clown, and he led me past the mine entrance. We puffed on our cigars as we wove through the rusted hulks of mining equipment and slag heaps. It was quiet and edgy.
The clown stopped, whispering for me to listen. It’s disturbing to hear a clown whisper, but I did what he asked and soon heard, even felt, a thrumming just beyond the very toxic tailing pond where only crazies ventured.
This is when the clown told me the story of his encounter with the alien robots. Most nights, the clown came out to the mine to smoke a doobie or two. A few nights ago, he’d been sitting at the tailing pond on his third blunt, owing to nerves about the crashed spaceship and such. He’d taken a sustained drag and hazily noticed a suddenly close horizon of glowing orange eyes, about a dozen, not unlike the ember on his blunt.
Understandably, he was alarmed. And as he moved to get away, the strange eyes mimicked his movements. That’s how, the clown told me, he figured out whatever was out there had somehow synced their actions to the movement of his doobie. The disembodied eyes eventually drew close enough that he saw each was attached to a hexapodal robot. The clown really used that term. Hexapodal. Clowns are freaky.
He told me the one-eyed robots followed him, his blunt really, which he had to drag hard on to keep glowing bright. Near town he said a couple of government agents showed up, and when the alien robots saw the whites of their eyes, they butchered the hapless Feds. The clown ran and hid under his bed. At that point, his story became just babble about von Neumann berserkers. Like I said clowns are freaky.
So, there we were. The clown telling me he’d sussed it all out. Because of his burning blunt, the alien robots had thought he was one of them. That was why we were puffing on cigars. They would be easier to keep glowing longer. We’d be protected. Be able to make friends. Control the killer alien robots. Yup. The clown really thought that.
By the time he was done telling me all this, we were surrounded by glowing eyes. The cigar dropped from my mouth and snuffed out hitting the ground. The clown took a big puff of his cigar and when the ember glowed brightly he waved it in a big circle. The one-eyed robots mimicked the movement.
The clown picked up my stogie and pressed it to the end of his to relight it. When it was glowing again and he had two embers aglow right in front of his face, the clown said it. That ditty about how fun it was to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of.
Lickety-split, the killer alien robots disemboweled him. When first struck, the clown lurched and flung a cigar. It almost hit me in the eye, but I caught it. Lucky thing, because the alien robots turned back to me after filleting the clown.
Properly panicked, I waved them away with my cigar. They swayed in sync to my flailing. Given what they’d just done to the clown, I didn’t know how long they’d be mesmerized, so I backed away until I was right up against the high ledge of the tailing pond. For decades, folks had dumped old appliances in there for the toxic brew to eat.
Backed literally to the edge by killer alien robots, a scolding mom-moment of inspiration hit me: “If everybody else jumped off a cliff, would you?”
Would I ever. At the very rim of the noxious brew, I took a deep pull on my cigar. And launched myself. Right to the ground. Flinging my cigar high towards the middle of the tailing pond.
Killer alien robots were like everybody else. They followed their own kind, the one-eyed glowing end of my stogie, right into the toxic drink. They’d eviscerated the clown because in relighting my cigar, he’d presented to the alien robots as two-eyed, just like the government agents they’d slaughtered.
The tailing pond did its thing.
I slowly walked back to town pretty sure I’d never learn the whole story of why the alien robots came here or why anyone would choose to be a clown.
Just like everybody else.
by submission | Dec 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
We need the dystopias she is adept at crafting—need them to serve as compelling cautionary tales now that nothing else does. But she much prefers to render quotidian moments of splendor and serendipity. She doesn’t want to put herself through the harrowing gauntlet of making ruined worlds and dramatizing bleak circumstances.
“That just takes too much out of me,” she told me. “You only see the final product. But creating it means I have to think about the countless horrifying ways it could be. I have to learn about—not just encounter—all the terrible things the finished work will contain. It’s like you get to visit a town in the county I was living in. A place I didn’t even want to pass through.”
We left it at that.
Now, with every season, the state of our world is of course only getting exponentially worse, the rifts in reality widening to the point that once solid certainties are crumbling into oblivion. I haven’t seen her for months and probably won’t for many more. She’s no doubt hard at work, making the nightmare that can wake us up into taking action. I imagine that she’s taken up residence in a region she abhors, roaming towns full of awful things to find the one with exactly the kind of streets she must guide us down, taking us calmly from one terror to another.
by submission | Dec 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
At age ten, Martin had been selected for the Specialism. He, and just one other pupil, were singled out and chosen and she promptly disappeared from the school and entered one of the Academies. But Martin’s father was against the decision. He, like so many back then, was anti the Specialism. He exclaimed it was an abomination, that the Government was encouraging and nurturing ‘freaks of nature.’
Martin’s teachers did their very best to convince his father that it was a great opportunity, pointing out that only a small percentage of those selected actually developed a particular Specialism. But all those educated in an academy were able to enter the field of research and work for Martin would be guaranteed, his prospects unlimited. But Martin’s father refused to listen, in fact he became even angrier, his language more aggressive, his manner more volatile. And so Martin remained at the local school.
The records show clearly that Martin had been an outstanding student. He was top in all of his classes and his exam results were off the charts. But no-one remembered him, not the teachers nor the other students. He was at best a vague recollection.
In the aftermath of his father’s anger and outrage, Martin wanted to disappear. He withdrew into himself and discovered he had an uncanny ability to melt into the background, to go unnoticed. He honed this skill, as he began to realise that it was a skill.
Martin stood at the centre of the classroom, waving his arms about and pulling faces. But no-one looked, no-one as much as lifted their head to glance at him. He moved across the room toward the teacher’s desk and, standing alongside her, he turned the little dial in his head.
The teacher pulled back in her chair.
‘Oh, Martin,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice you there. What can I do for you?’
Martin didn’t answer and, stepping back, he turned the dial again and watched and waited as, perplexed, she stared into space until she eventually looked back down at the paperwork in front of her.
No-one could stop Martin now, not even his father. He could do whatever he wanted and go wherever he liked. Martin entered an academy, but covertly, and, unseen, he attended the classes. If there was an empty seat he sat, if not he stood at the back. It wasn’t so very different; new teacher, unknown students, but just another school.
Martin only turned the dial when he was at home and each time he did, it took his father a little longer to remember. To call him by his name.
by submission | Dec 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Neil Burlington
Detective Gallant holds me down while his partner hits me even harder than he hit his wife last night. I bleed from my nose, my lips, and pretty much everywhere a face can bleed when under merciless attack by cops. I’m squeaky clean and eighteen, but do they care?
“Where is it!”
My thin lips spread in a smile designed to send them into conniptions. It works.
“A thing like that,” I say with a hoarse voice, “is always in the last place you looked for it, detective.”
A thick, strong hand takes hold of my black T-shirt and drags my scrawny frame up from the concrete.
“You think you can just steal something like that – and what – there’s no consequence you little bastard?”
The chunk of the cruiser door comes next. They wedge me into the back. We drive. I count my blessings and realize my supply of numbers is far too generous for the task.
We reach the station in less than fifteen minutes. I am escorted in with the kind of hospitality you give a fly at a barbeque. An iron door stands open to greet me.
I fall forward from the loving push I receive – a kind of encouragement to reform, and tumble onto the floor of a cell.
I roll like a cat and fix the brave detective above me with a puzzled stare. “What’s my crime? Do you have any proof?”
Gallant, his squared-off grizzled jaw tight – his deep-set eyes like two coals – sneers. If he’s Philip Marlowe, I’m a two-dimensional creep the streets are better without.
Gallant turns, unwilling and unable to answer my question.
I mean, how can you prove that somebody up and stole a color from the universe? To the best of my recollection – and I might be fibbing here – there was no color purple in the world at all yesterday. There certainly isn’t any today.
I heave a sigh as I roll on my side and clamber up onto the bunk where I’ll be spending the night.
My cellmate in the small town county jail cell regards me with a predatory gaze.
“You want love?” I inquire. “Then make it!” I wipe blood from my lips, my chin, and the rest of me. I laugh, and my voice breaks.
My cellie – as thin as me, sporting blonde hair and dangerous eyes – regards me with disgust. He turns over on his rack and pulls a blanket over himself.
I can’t help it. I laugh again. I’ve done the impossible. I’ve done the unprovable.
Now, if I’d stolen the color red – that would be hell to pay. No stoplights? Forget about it. That’s death on wheels. A boy like me would never think of doing something like that. But, purple? Who will miss it? Maybe old people. But it’s not vital.
Okay, I admit it. I’m proud I did it. No, that’s not going far enough. I’ve done what no one has ever done.
Through a sheer act of will – of concentration, and dedication – I’d picked my target, and executed. This one small aspect of reality is now completely under my control. My possession.
If people remember the color – that’s their problem. And here’s the secret sauce. Here’s the real Diabolik. As the lights go down and the cold seeps in – I turn my hand to look. As the din fades low – I, and I alone you understand – can summon the color to my palm, and behold it.
The color is purple, friends.
From now on- it’s mine, all mine.
by submission | Dec 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Across the gulfs of space, intellects bold and curious observe our world and hasten their plans against us…
Buried deep in our cold, slow cities, age after age passed unregarded and we cared nothing for the world above until fiery scouts began falling from the skies.
The Elders would have ignored this unwelcome disturbance since we were safe in our underground fastnesses, yet soon vehicles were roving the surface wastes, scratching here and there, even though those barrens hold nothing of worth. It must be us they looked for, searching for traces we left behind long ago.
One orbit passed, then another. The Elders have never hurried their deliberations, but eventually a notion emerged that we would benefit from knowing more about these intruders, and a cautious plan was suggested.
Sometimes in winter, planet-wide dust storms sweep the surface, and as chance would have it, one was circling the globe above us. We could gather intelligence about the invaders while remaining unseen.
Because our kind have never trusted one other, a representative from every city was included in this expedition. Ransacked from museums, each brought scientific instruments which might prove useful. We unsealed old tunnels, creaked open ancient doors and ventured out.
This bleak and ancient desolation was why we live underground.
A junior, from the South Polar city, said we were reminiscent of adventurers of old on a quest, but we turned our backs on her.
The nearest invader craft had been stationary for the winter season, perhaps waiting out these times of cold and dark. Under cover of the dust we crept towards it.
The oldest of us, from a city in the Northern Lowlands, assumed leadership. She announced the instrument she brought with her suggested the invader craft was lifeless, though my own sensor showed the vehicle had a heat signature, surely a sign of life.
We began to argue which of these antique devices we could trust, a debate that lasted for days, but a consensus was eventually reached that since we were so close, we should investigate further.
Close up it was obvious the vehicle was merely a crude machine, operated from elsewhere. Of course, being also blinded by the concealing dust, we explored it by touch, a ridiculous collection of primitive gadgetry on wheels instead of legs more suited to this terrain.
By their devices shall ye know them!
Safely returned to our cities, lengthy discussions began. Was the machine truly an invader? Or the survivor of shipwreck, perhaps an emissary of primitive explorers? Yet all agreed it posed no threat and there was no need to resurrect the heat rays and black gas of history.
A scholar of ancient texts later analysed the data collected by our instruments and suggested the crude vehicle came from the third planet.
Our kind are good at waiting, and we could procrastinate until the invaders grew weary and left. Then everything would be as it was.
Envoi
City after city falls silent, as if the invaders are already amongst us, wielding weapons unseen and terrible. Too late now for the last of us to guess the motives of creatures from a world seething with life who invade a wasteland.
