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.
by submission | Oct 3, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The mason aligned the large sandstone block and lowered it onto the mortar he’d just ladled with water against the growing heat of late morning. The heavy block nestled into the mortar resting on the soft metal plugs that would keep the stone level with its neighbors while it set.
This was a particularly troublesome corner of the tower, and the mason knew he would have to humor this stone. He would have to nudge and finesse this limestone block to keep the graceful tower wall he was completing straight and true. For this was the final tower of the mighty wall stretching along the entire border. The wall that was to be an impregnable buttress against all evils trying to enter this promised land. And an eternal symbol of security and sovereignty and lasting national solidarity.
That’s why this particular tower was being built by hand, by him and other stonemasons trained in the time-tested methods of great palaces and churches. For this final tower of the border wall was to be a cathedral of sorts, meant for great dignitaries and emissaries to stand upon and praise what uncompromising rightness could accomplish.
High on the tower, the mason was working, expertly humoring the pivotal stone into perfect position, when he heard laughter echoing up from below. He held his worn-edged trowel before him and looked out over the rampart where a group of extrans, extra-nationals, had gathered near the scrub brush that marked the no man’s land adjacent to the mighty wall.
Their laughter was gentle and confident. From his perch eighty feet above them, he wondered if they had come to mock him. To scorn his work. This tower. He did not care. He was a craftsman, a master builder. The work of his hands would outlast all of them. These stones would stand for centuries, a bulwark against invasion. His stones would have the last laugh.
This thought made the mason smile, and he waved his trowel in their direction. The extrans waved back. They continued to chatter and unload some large backpacks. The mason watched as they deftly assembled something. During his many months working on this final tower he’d seem many attempts by extrans to cross the border illegally, to defeat the mighty wall.
Their attempts had been a joke. The mason didn’t even bother to check with security to see if they were monitoring this latest attempt. It would fail. He tapped his trowel on the limestone block he had humored into place. It was setting nicely. He was about to start lining up the next level of blocks when the extrans below him began a loud, rhythmic cadence.
One of the extrans was decked with a strange harness sporting a number of tubular appendages and apertures. The mason couldn’t make out what they were, but he could see that the extran was wearing a heavy duty crash helmet.
The cadence grew louder, and though the mason didn’t understand the language well, he recognized it for what it was: a countdown.
An electric crackling filled the air, then a furious luminescence erupted from the strange harness, and with a roar the extran arced into the sky, far above the tower, high over the mason’s head.
The primitive boost suit carried the extran half a mile beyond the mighty wall. The mason dropped his trowel and slumped against his proud handiwork, watching as a mylarium parasail deployed and the floating extran caught a thermal, riding a warm rising air current deep into this more promising land.
From above and below the stolid stones surrounding him, all the mason heard was the liberating sound of laughter.
by submission | Oct 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mikki Aronoff
Our vinyl patches proclaim our purpose.
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL
WE WATCH THEM ALL
DECIDE WHO PASSES
We are birthed to serve, groomed to wait and watch, to scrutinize and assess. We follow guidelines. Detractors regard us as arbitrary, but if we were not here to filter, what would this world be?
We send Passersby who fail our test on to The Supreme Cullers in the steel room next door, metal being easy to clean. To know how they build on our work would diminish what we do. We trust the process. Judging Passersby is our reward.
Yesterday, a Passerby clearly struggled. We are not without compassion. We almost let it pass to The Green Place. But there are rules. The Apprentice Watcher could barely hold back the heaving of his chest as the Passerby slowly rocked its way towards The Culling Room, tilting and listing, its ticking diminished, then silenced. The Apprentice dropped to the ground.
We feel different when a Watcher falls away, especially a new one. Watching together forms a Weaving. Uniformed in Nomex as we are, it is assumed we don’t need to worry about unraveling, but we do. This they left in our hearts.
by submission | Sep 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Antonio DIsi
Yesterday, I turned forty, without even realizing it. My life has become an endless sequence of days and nights, of bicycle deliveries, all dictated by an unrelenting app.
Every morning, I wake up not knowing what the day holds. The only clue is my smartphone, incessantly vibrating, announcing new orders to deliver. I am a rider, a modern-day knight. I pedal through busy streets and hidden alleys, delivering pizzas, sandwiches, or Chinese food to strangers who only smile if I arrive on time.
My phone is my clock, my calendar, my employer. I have no boss to look me in the eye, no office to go to. I work for a digital entity, an algorithm that decides my fate. I have no colleagues to joke with or coffee breaks to share. My life has become an endless race, a struggle to survive in the eternal present.
My nights are dark, lit only by the blue glow of my cellphone. Notifications keep coming without respite, and I pedal like a solitary ghost through the city’s streets. The past is blurred, and the future is an enigma. I have no time to reflect on who I used to be or who I could become, trapped in an endless today.
Tonight, I’m waiting for calls on a bench in Peace Square, the red one that seems to call out for tranquility. There’s a lamppost nearby, and during the wait, I can read. I take out an envelope I found in the mailbox this morning as I left home. It’s the electricity bill. I open it and stare at the amount with incredulous eyes. It’s enormous, a debt I won’t be able to pay or justify with my frantic existence.
I sit for a moment, thinking. It could have been the dinner with friends, I tell myself. We were at my place, cooking and joking, laughing like we did back in university. I had the oven on because I wanted to prepare dishes I hadn’t eaten in ages. Eggplant Parmesan like my grandmother used to make it. Lasagna from that restaurant in the Spanish Quarters, and the chef had revealed the recipe to me. That beautiful evening had given me a taste of a different life, of moments that seemed lost in my relentless rush toward the next order.
But the bill also includes the endless nights spent in front of the TV after Claudia abandoned our promise to move in together. It was a painful decision, a lump in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow. We shared dreams and plans, but reality seems to have swallowed them one by one.
And the nights are the worst. Loneliness creeps in, and the TV has become my only companion. When I return home, I turn on the screen and try to lose myself in senseless programs as if that luminous box could be the only refuge from the reality I’m trapped in.
Claudia and I had happy moments together, but my job as a rider has put our relationship to the test. It’s hard to plan for the future when my present is so chaotic and uncertain.
But as I gaze at that bill, I decide to call her. I ask if I can come over, and she accepts without hesitation.
I arrive in front of her door with my heart in my throat. When she opens it, her eyes are full of surprise and hope.
«Hello,» I say with a trembling voice.
«I’s been a while,» she replies, and in that moment, I know I’m in the right place.
We talk for hours about our feelings and fears. We share a hug that seems to erase all the past. And then, slowly, we draw closer, and our bodies find each other as if they had never stopped wanting.
It’s a magical night, a night where our love is reborn with incredible strength. In the warmth of her embrace, I promise her that I will leave that job and that we will build a future together. It’s a promise I know I can keep, a promise that fills me with hope.
But, as I sleep beside her, my smartphone vibrates insistently. A new order to deliver, an urgent request.
I wake up. I’m on the red bench in Peace Square. I get on the bike and ride with the bill flying away. Who knows where.
