by submission | Oct 10, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It really wasn’t his thing: pain and panic way too up-close-and-personal.
The chaotic video and jarring audio, the total mayhem of battle were so not his thing, but it was up to him to wrap this melee in a nice, neat bow. A twenty-two minute package of war that Cosca demanded should “curb-stomp the viewer to their couch.”
As he slogged back through camp to review the morning’s take in his make-shift editing cubby, Miro couldn’t step past what he’d already seen with his own eyes: a once quiet little town that was mostly rubble now, with once gentle townsfolk who were mostly mud now.
And in his cold, damp tent, on his battered laptop, he’d have to review even more visceral footage of carnage from all manner of sources: official military body cams, drones, bots, munitions, as well as unofficial cell phone, doorbell, and dashboard cams. The battle video flooded into Miro. No wonder he always felt underwater, dragged ever deeper into the murk.
And that was just footage from this one battle. All over the world, footage of fierce fighting was pouring into his producer. It was no surprise that even a two-bit scumbag producer like Cosca could turn all that raw war porn into a mainstream reality show: Back to the Mud.
The show had gained such fast success that Cosca began sending Miro out on location to the front lines. “Read Abercrombie!” he exhorted. “There’s a guy who knows how to visualize a battle. You can’t see the real action, tell the real story, from the cheap seats, Miro. You gotta get to the heart–and then rip it out while it’s still beating!
“Cuts and guts. That’s what we’re about. All the gory glory. Any tested soldier will tell you that war is mostly waiting around for shit to happen. We’re cutting that out. Getting right to the good shit. To be the ESPN of war, we gotta be where the shit is happening. So, get up close. Smell it! Taste it!”
Pure venom is what it tasted like, to Miro. But Cosca was right. You couldn’t tell the real story of war from the back row, from the comfort of peace and quiet. You had to get muddy. You had to get bloody.
The “good shit” Cosca wanted was the dread, terror, and horror of soldiers and civilians killing or being killed. If Miro’s editing shied away from the intense and brutal and veered toward the subtle or nuanced, Cosca harped on him, “Read Dickinson! Then show me agony! You can’t fake agony.”
As if any of the fighters and folks caught in the crossfire were faking it. Miro was the only one faking it. Telling himself it was a job worth doing. That maybe the visceral carnage of battle, the stark trauma of war, might turn warmongers towards compromise, mercy and peace.
But the pissing matches just got bigger and more abundant, dousing more and more poor souls in their foulness. Decades and decades ago, it was thought that the nightly news airing of horrific combat and suffering may have turned American public opinion against the war in Vietnam. Now, it seemed to Miro, the more we saw and heard, the less we felt.
The world was mired in muck. And Miro was as much a muck maker as the muckrakers of the past century. He stopped outside his tent and slowly looked back the way he’d come. Heavy footsteps through the muck, a senseless track back from the battlefield.
With all we’d learned, with all we’d built, with countless eyes to see the world in new ways, here we were. Back to war, back to sanctioned brutality. Was he already a dead man walking? Were we all?
Miro lifted his eyes to the heavens. Had to be something better than what he was mired in. The old ways our world was stuck in. A clearer way forward. In the far distance he saw indistinct shapes against the roiling clouds. Maybe a flock of birds in a timeless migration, heading to a better place. Maybe. Just maybe.
Then he heard it. The whispering whirr of attack drones.
More misery. More footage. Miro bit his lip, cursed Cosca, and ducked into his tent. There was nothing for it but back to it. Back to the mud.
by submission | Oct 8, 2023 | Story |
Author: Tinamarie Cox
Rosemary sat under the harsh light of a small vanity in a Vegas chapel touching up her makeup in an attempt to disguise all the decades she’d walked the Earth. A soft knock at the door was a welcomed distraction from her reflection.
“Ted!” She stepped back and put her body behind the door. “You’re violating wedding tradition.” Her lips curled as her cheeks warmed.
“I have to tell you something.” Ted swallowed and entered the tiny room without invitation.
“Can’t it wait?” She was cool again.
“It might change your mind about today.”
Rosemary closed the door, eyes wide on her future husband. Ted rubbed the back of his neck roughly. The air in the small room became heavy, the silence pressing, holding their breath in their bodies.
“Spit it out!” Rosemary flapped her hands.
Ted jumped back, bumping against the wall as he yelped.
“You’re married,” Rosemary’s voice seethed with heat.
“Oh, no.” Ted shook his head. “There’s only you.”
“I don’t understand,” she forced the statement past the thudding lump above her larynx.
“There’s something about me.” He wrang his hands together. “You might not like it.”
“Please,” Rosemary’s voice waned, “Tell me.” She saw Ted’s hands trembling and she moved forward to hold them. “I promise I’ll still love you. Is it debt? We can create a payment plan.”
Ted denied having debts. Rosemary closed her eyes briefly before asking her next question.
“Is it porn, Ted? We can find a counselor–”
“There’s only you.” Ted echoed Rosemary’s frown. “I’m an alien.”
“Well, our marriage will make you a legal immigrant then.” The lines of her face shifted with her smile. Her heart gently sank down to its rightful place.
“An extraterrestrial sort of alien. I’m not from Earth.”
Rosemary’s laugh rose from her belly and swirled around the room. Ted remained stonefaced. The room was swallowed by their silent stares once more.
Ted held out his left forearm, rolled the sleeve, and swiped his right thumb across his pale skin. Suddenly, he was entirely blue. His eyes turned orange, his ears narrowed and became antennae, and his nose shrank into a thin, harsh angle.
Rosemary’s jaw dropped to the floor.
“I’m a research scientist reporting my observations back to my homeworld,” Ted said. Rosemary stayed frozen. “Please, say something.”
“I’ll see you in an hour, Ted.” Rosemary nodded and returned to the vanity.
Words spilled from Ted’s lips like a bin of building blocks, a mess that formed no definite structure, only sounds.
Rosemary turned, leaned against the vanity, and then held up a palm.
Ted closed his mouth.
“I’m fifty-four years old, Ted. I can’t give anyone children and I can’t erase my… maturity.” She sighed. “At least you’re an honest man. After two despicable bastards, I can live with you being… different.”
“I’m very different, Rosemary.”
“That all works the same?” she circled a finger at Ted’s hips.
He nodded.
She shrugged. “Then, we’re good. I’ll meet you at the altar in an hour.” And she waved him off.
by submission | Oct 7, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Careful with lighting, Captain. Don’t kill them.” Jerry Carter readjusted reflectors a few inches from a grouping of small barrel cacti in the spaceship’s arboretum.
“Why keep these damnable things? Don’t get enough of them taking over Earth?” Captain Tersal shook his head.
“Reminds me of my ancestors slicing them for emergency water in Arizona centuries before desertification overwhelmed North America.” Carter adjusted his purple envoy outfit tight to his neck, letting his red beard drape.
“Wouldn’t catch me with the Ryluu. Here are the three beans. I can’t believe Earth One let you take these. You know how rare…” Carter waved off Tersal’s diatribe; after all, he was Martian with little sense of Earth’s history.
“Just get me to their greeting hall. I’m meeting their king, Krezal. I hope our exploration party had solid intelligence. I’ve seen LiDAR analysis of their jungles. This could be it.”
Carter’s journey to the planet’s humid surface was uneventful before he exited a small shuttle near the dark, threatening towers of the Ryluu palace. He winced from the cloying jungle air after opening the hatch. He was joined by towering guard escorts. Carter struggled to keep his image of authority while struggling to breathe under the giant planet’s gravity.
It was surprising to find Krezal alone at a small, round table surrounded by elegantly formed stone stools. Krezal had no reason to fear a mere human, some four feet shorter and fragile compared to the bristling muscles and scaly skin of the king.
“High is our knowing of your greatness, Gezal of the Ryluu.” Carter spoke quietly, looking down at the moist, stone floors. He carried a round satchel carefully at his side, setting it below the hard seat Krezal pointed to as his place during the negotiations.
“Welcome, man of Earth,” bellowed the giant. “You know some of our customs. We have visited several times with your representatives. Let me share yanakut with you.”
Krezal motioned for his servant to bring a large, shiny platter. A pile of red berries on the dish glowed in the amber light of the great hall. Krezal removed a large knife from his waistband, carefully crushing the fruit, and then deftly lifting their juices with his knife blade so drippings filled a small rounded metal cup. Sizzling rose as the fluid’s acid started dissolving the cup’s lining. Carter was briefed about yanakut, and the death of an Earth crewman who drank it.
“Great and mighty Krezal, please forgive my weakness. We are not a powerful race, like yours. Our tastes are weak. We would make a less potent but beloved drink from these.” With that, Carter carefully placed three large coffee beans on the table. Krezal leaned his head forward as he placed his huge fingers onto the samples, crushing them, and then raising their dust to his lips.
“You take of these weeds?”
“Yes, mighty one. Would you consider trade with our people? We understand your world has many such…weeds.”
“Ha! Glad to be rid of them; they’re impossible to control. Trade? What could you possibly offer in exchange?”
Carter reached from his bag, presenting a barrel cactus. Krezal reached for it before Carter could give a warning. Krezal was suddenly lost in ecstasy as the needles and juice penetrated him.
“It pleases?” Carter asked.
“Oh, yes. And you have many?” Krezal replied.
A pact was made for the Coffee-Cactus Trade Route. Earthlings recovered the joys of coffee, nearly extinct on Earth, and searched for on other worlds for centuries, while the Ryluu elite lavished in their new cacti aphrodisiac.
by submission | Oct 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
They call me a saint at the long term care facility. I go and sit exclusively with patients who are in irreversible comas. Sometimes I hold their hands. Sometimes I sit, as if in prayer with my forehead lightly touching their arm. Once I proved to the staff and families, I wasn’t some kind of freak or pervert, I was welcomed and loved by both. I suppose I am a freak, but not in the pop culture sense. I guess the best definition of what I am is parasite.
Any successful parasite lives in mutually beneficial symbiosis with its host. I am no different. When I sit with the “poor unfortunates” touch and “pray” over them what happens is I am transported into their realm. I get to be with them and the fantastic worlds their brains have constructed. If the wide world knew the actual truth of what life was like for a certain segment of comatose patients, well, let’s just say most rational folk would line up to be put in a coma.
Oh, the places I’ve been!
On Tuesdays I sit with nine-year-old Dillon who inhabits a world of talking animals to include dinosaurs. All the creatures there eat only one thing: apples. Apples that become exactly what you desire to eat. When I visit with him, he makes me appear as a friendly werewolf named Rolf. I sold my first book series, based on what I experienced there- it’s now considered a children’s fantasy classic on par with C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.
On Wednesdays I sit with Carl, who was watching Lord of the Rings when he had a brain aneurism burst. He chose to stay in middle earth. There’s a lot of fighting, drinking, and whoring when I stay with him. My book series from that took me over the 20-million-dollar profit mark.
Then there’s Charlotte. She’s a grandma and her comatose world revolves around charity work with orphaned children. With Charlotte, I am Rev. James, the kindly but clueless Episcopal priest who solves murders with her. That became a five-season fan fave on A&E. Critics called me a genius for my ability to write outside my genre.
Recently, I began sitting with 20 year old Amanda. Her parents described her as a mousey, shy, and a brilliant young woman who loved horses and collected American Girl Dolls. Her parents feel guilty as they were constantly pressuring her to act more her age, get out and interact with her peers, maybe find a boyfriend or girlfriend and take some risks in her life. One of her beloved horses threw her. In Amanda’s world…well I can’t talk about it without blushing. She’s a six foot, five inch tall Amazonian Queen and I am her faithful male companion. I’ll just leave it at that. Don’t know what I am going to do with this one.
Friday through Sunday I write and rest. On Monday I go to the chapel at the care center and just sit and meditate. I clear my mind and at the edge of my awareness I hear it. The consistent, telltale sound of a respirator. Occasionally I hear an alarm. Once in a while, a trauma team of one kind or another rushes past. Funny thing, these are not sounds natural to the care center. Eventually, I come out of my meditations and visit with patient’s relatives and staff. I have led this life for quite sometime. Only lately I have started to wonder- could it be I am always here, and this is my ideal world?
by submission | Oct 4, 2023 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
I set my guitar down in it’s stand, I went to take a piss, the Zuntory whiskey was running right through me. D’rard had warned me not to drink too much, but he was fucking my ex-wife so fuck him and the high horse he rode in on. I walked back out from the bathroom and flopped down on the couch and went to take a drink from the condensating tumbler when out of the corner of my eye I noticed my guitar was, impossibly, left handed.
I’ve been right handed my whole life, all my guitars; right handed.
“What in the ever-loving fuck?”, I wondered aloud. I approached the guitar like it was a feral cryptid, a dangerous phenomena. My palms sweaty as I reached for it cautiously. I picked it up and pulled a pick from my pocket and to my alarm, played it as though I’d been playing left handed my whole life. Perhaps even better. My roommate’s voice alarmed me, I’d been so perturbed by this odd emergence, so engrossed, that I didn’t notice him walk into the room,
“You ok, S’thail?” I stuttered
“I… uh, my guitar, it’s… left handed.”
“What’re you talking about? You’ve always played left handed!”, said Lahnold
“No- the fuck- I haven’t.”
I noticed that Lahnold wasn’t facing me, and when I went to look him in the eye his body would reposition so as not to face me, not that he was stepping away but that it was an existential condition. No matter how I tried to see his face, I’d only see the back of his head, his ponytail and big, hunched shoulders.
Thoroughly perturbed by this, I went out. Everyone I passed by as I walked for drinks were facing away from me, as I walked past, they’d turn 180° with their back to me. Even the damned bartender, when she went to pour drinks, would do it with her back turned and she placed my gin and tonic, back turned, in front of her, it shouldn’t have been in front of me, it’s as though she reached through an interdimensional portal and placed it in front me, but no such magic or fuzzy science happened.
“Is something wrong?”, she asked. Something was definitely wrong. I stumbled back and the barstool clattered to the ground, as I fled from the bar, I could hear the bartender calling after me,
“Hey! You gonna pay for that?!” I ignored her and called my therapist as I walked through the light snow and screen chatted with him, the back of his head was all that was apparent,
“S’thail, I’m worried, what you’re describing sounds like a break from reality.”
“Yeah, no shit!”, I said, I pleaded with him,
“Shian, just… humor me. Consider I’m totally sane and self aware, if there were to be a circumstance where everything suddenly became backwards, like, physically, emotionally, mentally- what could possibly describe this… totally fucked situation?”
“Well, if you’re giving me poetic license I’d say that you’re experiencing… an extroversion of cognitive dissonance. That everything that feels backwards has manifested in your life as a reality- but S’thail, that’s impossible, you get that, yeah?”
“Yeah, doc, I get that…”, he sighed, at least he sounded like he did.
“I’m glad, now listen closely- flesruoy llik.”
“What?” It sounded… backwards.
“I said, take care of yourself.”
I went home, I went to sleep and I dreamt of a bright, colorful world that was forever behind me and persisted forward into a backwards world, with backwards people and backwards feelings, not sure if I’d ever wake up.
