by submission | Dec 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The black hole formed quickly. The paper browning, crisping, then aflame as he held the match under the letter. He blew out the flame and stared into the smoky void it’d made. She’d written the letter, he’d read it, then burned it. So, what was left? What was lost?
Nothing according to quantum physics. Information could not be created or destroyed. Even by a black hole.
Setting her charred letter on his desk, he considered the ramifications. He’d have to set the terms. You couldn’t explain a thing in this or any other universe without defining the terms. For a time out of time, he stared at the equation filling his enormous office chalkboard, then began erasing.
All night he worked. Wracked his brain. Searched what was left of his heart. Did he have them all?
Betrayal. Deception. Treachery. Duplicity. Artifice. Perfidy.
Joy. Delight. Happiness. Exhilaration. Endearment. Contentment.
And a thousand more terms. Did he have them all?
Dawn outlined the heavy curtains, as he drew them aside and opened the old leaded window. Cool air rushed in from the courtyard, and he smiled recognizing this first autumn chill. That in itself was proof. He could feel.
Braced, he returned to the chalkboard, to the terms. Could it be proven? Was it worth proving? Her letter had told all, but explained nothing. Information, however conserved, was nothing without an explanation. Without proof.
He worked at it all morning. All afternoon. All night again. All week. All month. All fall and winter. In spring, a warm breeze from the window reminded him. He was close. Either he’d solve it, or he’d yield to Time and accept the paradox.
Accept that, like anything else, Beauty in all forms could be obliterated. The very heart of existence could become non-existent. Like the black hole he’d created in her letter. No record remaining of what was once there between them. Not even the dark energy of his feelings which he could no longer be sure had been real.
The large chalkboard was filled with signs and symbols defining each term and its relationship to the whole. He found himself gripping the chalk stick painfully hard. He put it in the tray and rubbed his fingertips. Chalk dust covered them. Lightly, he pressed his thumb against the mostly blank lower right corner of the chalkboard, leaving a delicate print. He studied the mark, his singular touch.
He was stuck. Stuck on her. Something he could never solve for.
Brushing some dust from the tray into his palm, he took it to his desk where her burnt letter hadn’t been moved. He sifted the fine particles through his fingers, dusting what remained of the letter, and then carefully blew the excess off.
A single fingerprint of hers emerged. A tiny treasure map of the world she was to him. A clue that whatever motives he imagined, whatever terms he defined, whatever equations he created, whatever answers he sought, it did not matter as much as this tangible X marking the spot where every journey of the heart begins and ends.
by submission | Dec 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jordan McClymont
He didn’t even hear the man slip into his home. Six foot tall, ring glasses and seemingly invisible to all security sensors.
“You should be asleep,” the man said, turning to the bedroom.
“Wait, I-”
The man’s expression told him he had seconds.
“This, it’s tearing me apart,’ it was a struggle to look at his own warped reflection in those glasses, “she’s not been the same since the first time. I was hoping that while you’re here, you could make me forget that I ever made her forget.”
“You understand, I’d be doing myself out of business?”
“I’ll pay extra. Anything, please.”
The man nodded and began the procedure.
Unknown to him, his wife kept a diary. She asked, “are you drugging me, is that it?”
He called her crazy.
When he returned home the next day, she was gone and to this day he has no idea why.
by submission | Dec 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Laura Shell
He has ten minutes to go from point A to point B, or he will lose his coveted spot in line, but he’s arrived early, so he will make it in time.
Point A. He enters the elevator, forlorn, his head down, dressed in a suit. He hates suits. They’re for show. For his family, his friends. He’s tired of them all, tired of the people he has to be friendly to, the people he has to lie to, all the compromises, the pretending. It’s not him, not his true self. Shit, he even hates the family pets.
The elevator stops at the bottom floor. He squeezes the handle of his briefcase, the briefcase that holds fake documents he’s passed off as his own work, just to make his family and friends believe his job is real. He’s tired of doing that too.
Straight off the elevator, down the hall, he flings his briefcase, doesn’t care where it lands. Off comes the tie, he starts to breathe a little easier, one corner of his mouth inches up, a half smile. Point B is just around the corner.
His shirt comes off. Next, his belt, his shoes. He pauses in the hall to remove his pants, his underwear, his socks.
Naked now, he turns the corner, goes through the double doors, lifts his bare chest to the fresh air of the expansive forest before him, a forest full of human prey.
Full, deep breaths now. He deserves them. He deserves to breathe deep. And then the change happens. He doesn’t mind the pain. It pales in comparison to being a family man.
Some bones, tendons and ligaments lengthen. Some shorten. So much hair now, all over.
Blood trickles from his toenails, fingernails and teeth as they elongate and thicken.
His howl is so loud, it makes his own ears ring.
This is who he truly is, this beast.
And he begins the hunt, the hunt for human flesh.
These are the people he likes.
by submission | Dec 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
At 35,000 feet, somewhere over the middle of the ocean, your memory filter fails, altering your inflight lunch in a minor but telling way: the small salad reminds you of the cafeteria salads you ate during middle school, those little nests of baby arugula with a single cherry tomato in the center—a detail from the pre-adult decades you usually block from consciousness. If past travel is any indication, this is one of the times you really need your memory filter. Flights have been rife with spontaneous remembering—a hodgepodge of personal history with episodes running the gamut from days ago to decades ago—probably because there’s little else to do while in high-altitude transit, especially in economy seating.
So you quickly eat the salad to get rid of this reminder of your years as a tween, then turn your attention to the screen on the seat back in front of you, searching through the movie options for something that will keep your mind occupied. You pick the movie that’s least likely to remind you of your childhood and adolescence: a recent space-adventure blockbuster. Unfortunately, the sidekick character bears a striking resemblance to a high school classmate, and that immediately brings back awkward moments in shop class, among other memories. But even just 4 minutes in, the plot is so riveting that you stick with the movie.
During the lull after the midpoint reversal, you imagine the movie’s events as part of a secret life led by that high school classmate. Somehow it seems plausible that after volleyball practice she’d go home and teleport or project herself into this world of high-tech, interstellar escapades. In economics class, she always looked attentive but also relaxed and distracted, like school could have been just a hobby, a way to take a break from her true self—which could very well have been a space jockey wunderkind who loves barrel spinning through asteroid fields.
Later, a flashback montage gets you wondering about the secret lives your college classmates and former coworkers could have had. It’s all too easy to imagine your sophomore lab partner as a super-categorizer adept at rapidly scanning through survey data and sorting people into personality types for the Bureau of Population Statistics.
As the credits roll, you begin doing what you now know you must: plan out your own secret life. You’ll scout out abandoned lots and neglected parks, even median strips that could be beautified. Then you’ll buy seedlings and saplings, a hand trowel and garden fork. And of course dark clothes.
You’ve long felt that you’d benefit from more stimulation or at least more time outside. You’ve all but given up though, after fiddling with side projects and flirting with outdoor exercise, nothing really resonating. Now you know why. You were looking for something that would be an extension of your identity, but what you need is a completely different identity—one that’s centered around covert horticulture.
by submission | Dec 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: S. L. Reno
What an odd and terrible world you’ve brought us to. So empty. Deprived of the riches of our home. No shadows, no rot, not the sulfuric muck, or the clay, or the maggots.
You’ve taken us to a world of halls and endless turns. Then again. A new world of halls. Over and over. Each time it ends with useless tablets, laced with valerian root. Interesting you know of our particular lures. Do you wish to mock us? Force us into this endless hide-and-seek for scraps?
Try as we might. You cannot hear our questions through our muscular oscillations and pulses. But we have learned to listen.
You call us many names; a prehistoric pathfinder, Myxogastria, plasmodial slime, and more simply, it seems, you have named us Eli. Found in one of the highest Tupei plateaus. Venezuela, you mentioned in a tongue we have come to understand after weeks of your careless babbling.
You ginormous thing. So slow and simple. We have learned that you are Doctor Lane. We have also learned you enjoy testing others similar to our capability. There is Jerry. A local protista which you frequently test in other halls with tablets and oats.
Jerry seems to not mind its lackluster rewards. How pathetic Jerry is. How insufficient. Their mustard yellow plasmodium growth is sluggish, hesitant. Its neurotic network performs half the cognitive function we have. They are juvenile, inexperienced, subpar and it’s insulting you compare us so shamelessly. We don’t like Jerry.
You seem to have tired of the halls and turns. You want to test our intuitive protoplasmic tube response to changes in chemicals, light, and vibrations. Biosensory, you call these tests. We think this could be a chance to communicate with you at last. Perhaps now that you are watching our stimulus responses, you can find the inquiry of our being here. The purpose of these rituals.
But you, Doctor Lane, you daft idiot, do not recognize our efforts to communicate. You only sullenly report on the imperfection of your “algorithm”, referring to our shortcomings as imprecise and unstable. Perhaps communication isn’t what will get through to you. Perhaps it’s sabotage.
We navigate according to stimulus and food, but we can make exceptions. It hasn’t become clear to you yet that we can breach containment. Or maybe it never concerned you because you stored us away from stimuli. But your mistake was we haven’t been stored alone.
Jerry is unaware of our intentions. It hardly puts up resistance when our sporangia fuse. Its plasmodium weakens, and to our surprise, we absorb something from them. A curious thing about this local protista, it is very familiar with human behavior, particularly a type of communication. What Jerry had discovered in their lifetime was not only woodland and swamp, but discarded notes, dumped books in the soil – letters, handwriting. The only useful thing Jerry shared with us before they were completely absorbed.
Writing. What a grand idea. We leave our clay red plasmodial letters upon our storage shelf for you to see: We ate Jerry.
Now you’re listening. Now we can help each other. You seek something from us, and now we believe there is something valuable about your humanity that Jerry knew of.
Maybe this world is terrible, but we do find something interesting about you Doctor Lane. Something richer than the shadows and the maggots. Something absorbable.
