by submission | Jan 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Brooks C. Mendell
Every few days, I tote a pail of apple cores, carrot peels and coffee grinds to the steaming compost bin at the far end of our grassless backyard. The chore takes twelve minutes roundtrip.
“That’s a minor inconvenience in the name of sustainability,” I said, delegating this task to my son. “And it will count towards your allowance.”
“Deal,” said Daniel, staring out the window at the darkening sky.
Minutes later, four inches of rain muddied our yard. To save Daniel from wading to the bin, Mom tossed the rotten cabbage from our fridge into the bushes alongside the garage.
I heard her talking to Daniel in the kitchen. “Your Dad isn’t going to like this,” she said. “If he sees it.”
The aliens living in the back of the fridge didn’t like it either. Ever since we picked up the compost bin at a yard sale, we halved the veggies lost to neglect by cycling out old produce. This kept the fridge from smelling like a rent-by-the-week kitchenette. It also cut the food supply to the Meagerbytes thriving in the shadows.
“Eh, Mischa, the mother took your favorites.”
“Aye, Moska, perhaps it’s time we move to the suburbs.”
“Yes.” Pause. “How do we get there?”
“The boy will take us.”
#
“Look, I don’t pay your allowance so Mom can throw old greens in the yard. Will you please put these in with everything else and haul it to the compost bin like we agreed?”
“Sure thing, Dad,” said Daniel, looking down into the pail. He winked at Mischa and Moska before dropping the rotten cabbage between them and carrying out the moveable feast.
by submission | Jan 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Dean was amazed that he had managed to hold off for so long. He had decided to languish with the minority, but not because he was in any way pious or had some overly zealous agenda. Dean was a user, had been for all of his adult life, for as long – no actually, it was for longer, than he could recollect.
He remembered the illegal and addictive substances and had been a part of that world. It was a hard place and survival was a constant struggle. It was a shady and murky world and Dean did not want to go back.
For him the transition, like of most of his generation, was effortless and there had been no withdrawal. At first he had to buy the State sponsored substances but once he was working and earning enough they became part of the package and substances were simply something to which he was entitled. That gut-wrenching pain, the all consuming need, quickly became a part of his past and Dean was thankful and appreciative.
But the Grade was different and although not sponsored by the State it was not illegal. Almost everyone was using it and it was accepted. There was no stigma attached to it and no risks involved. It was just adding another pill to the State sponsored cocktail.
Perhaps Dean had held off for so long because to begin buying again felt to him like a step back toward the dark world from which he had managed to escape.
Dean was in the Works canteen, his colleague sitting directly opposite stretched out his hand and nestled in the centre of his palm were two pills.
‘Go on,’ his friend urged, ‘take one, what have you got to lose?’
Dean reached out and snatched one of the pills almost without thinking. He knew of course that it was the Grade. There wasn’t anything else it could be, that a friend could hold out in his hand and proffer.
‘Go on,’ his friend repeated. ‘Try it, you won’t regret it.’ Dean popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed.
But he did regret it, instantly. And throughout the day he became increasingly more anxious about how the Grade would affect him, what would he feel? Would it be something new? Different? Or would it be something old that he had forgotten?
Dean thought about the life he had managed to carve out for himself. The tiniest of slices in the largest of pies and for so long he had felt safe and secure. And then the Grade began to take effect and it did feel like something new and he felt different and he began to forget.
by submission | Jan 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Tam McDonald
“Cara, can you hear me?”
I opened my sticky eyes to see a doctor standing over my bed. A nurse stood next to him looking concerned. “I know you must be confused, and I’m sorry to rush you but we haven’t much time.” he said. “Do you remember before you went to sleep Cara? You were very ill and your parents put you to sleep, until we could cure you. Do you remember that?” I didn’t remember, but somehow I knew it was true. “We can cure you now Cara, but we haven’t much time.” The doctor’s voice was urgent and the nurse was fiddling with something in the background. “We really are very short of time to do it. We didn’t wake you until the last moment, until the theatre was prepped, so you need to be ready now Cara? Are you ready?” I nodded and felt a jag in my hand. The doctor told me I was going to sleep again, but this time only for a few hours.
When I awoke for the second time I was in a nicer room with a window looking out onto some trees and this made me remember trees and the outdoors, which in turn made me remember going inside the capsule, to go for my very long sleep. I remembered saying goodbye to everyone and I remembered being scared. The trees were nice so I tried to shift myself to get a better look at them, but there was a sharp pain in my lower belly and I flopped back onto the pillows, exhausted. Also, there was a very old man sitting in the chair next to my bed. Between the pain in my belly and my fuzzy thinking, I didn’t have a chance to be frightened of him before he smiled at me. His face trembled and his eyes watered but he looked deeply happy.
“Cara, you’re awake, we’ve been waiting so long for you.” He reached out to me, but then stopped and put his shaking hands in his lap. “How do you feel? Can I get you anything? Something to eat or drink?” I gestured to the water jug next to the bed and he stood and fussed with it for some time before passing me a slick glass, half-filled with water. “I’ve had decades, a lifetime really, to think about this moment and how to tell you everything. I’ve imagined this so many times, rehearsed it in my mind, but now that it’s come, now that you’re here, I can’t think what I was going to say.” He smiled, and then laughed. “I’m sorry Cara, you must have so many questions, so please just ask me.”
I did have questions; about my family and friends, about my illness, about how the world was now. Going by his face and the way his hands shook I had been away a long time. As we talked memories flooded back and when we talked through the good ones he would laugh and also cry a little. After a while he leant forward, his elbow on the bed, took my hand and just held it. I was sure then it was really him, and I felt safe, finally, so I fell asleep again. A real sleep this time; from tiredness, not from medicine, or from that awful capsule.
We were both sleeping, still holding hands when the nurse came in to check my stitches. But when she woke me, the old man, my brother, he stayed asleep.
by submission | Jan 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rohan O’Duill
Dylan strained as he twisted the rusty locking mechanism. Ever so slowly, the door groaned open, and the golden glow of the setting sun crept in through the widening crack like a shaft of light into an ancient burial chamber.
The young man stood silent and still, transfixed within his protective yellow suit. I waited a moment, allowing him to drink-in his first image of the Up Above.
I tapped his shoulder, motioning for him to get moving. He nodded and struggled his arms through the straps of the haversack before walking hesitantly out through the breach.
I didn’t miss carrying all that gear. Heedless to my objections, the council had insisted I bring Dylan along. It sounded like kindness, but I knew they were just scared the old man wouldn’t return.
Dylan had spent hours studying the map, but still, I had to keep him from veering off the pathway in this world, so alien to his eyes. The council didn’t understand that there is no substitute for experience, of which I had plenty. The annual journey to the station had been my responsibility for over thirty years now.
We left the stony track and squelched carefully across the toxic mire in the fading light, the muck sucking at our boots, thick as honey. We navigated the safe route with some difficulty and paused a moment before starting the ascent to the station.
Soon I could smell the delicate perfume of aged rubber and body odour accosting my nostrils as the rubber suit became a sauna, every breath steaming up the plastic visor.
I struggled to keep up with the younger man, but I was determined not to let him see my frailty as we converged on the summit together. Dylan dropped the pack and crouched down, catching his breath before standing up to survey the world. It didn’t take him long to spot the lights and smoke in the distance. He pointed excitedly. I nodded enthusiastically — like I hadn’t seen them the past eleven years.
Unpacking the equipment, I started servicing the battered monitoring station. It hadn’t functioned for at least fifteen years, but I had to make a show of it for my companion. After fifteen minutes, I stowed the gear and noted down the seized readout.
Dylan looked over the readings and raised his hands questioningly, pointing towards the far-off lights. I shrugged my shoulders and pointed down the hill. He reluctantly complied, marching back the way we came.
I drew up close behind him as he entered the mire, I tapped his shoulder, and as he turned, I drove my razor-sharp blade deep into his stomach again and again. I thought it would be tougher, but his soft and doughy belly accepted the knife readily. Bewildered eyes stared out through his visor.
‘Sacrifices have to be made to keep us safe. It’s for the better.’
I let him fall face-first into the mud and removed the pack before the swamp swallowed him whole.
‘RIP, my friend.’
They better not send anyone with me next time— those born below never survive the trip to the Up Above.
by submission | Jan 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The doctors head swirls and vomit pisses from the swelling inside of his head and into the corners his eyes. He blinks and the moistened windows clear and he looks down upon his manacled hands and then along the stretch of table that leads to the dark form that settles at its very end.
“Welcome to the Fairfield Woman’s Correction Facility and Spa… Mr You.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Found. Beaten and just to the left of dead.”
“My briefcase…”
“Black carbon-fibre with blood-red details and a shield emblem featuring a rearing horse?”, the dark form offers as it decides to form into a young woman adorned in a jutt-breasted Nirvana smiley-face T-shirt.
“It’s full of cash money… Maybe I’ll buy you a new shirt?”
“Nothing of that description in the report. Be sure to let you know if it turns up…”
“This is outrageous!”
“Isn’t it just. Cash? It’s now only used to stoke the barbecues on not-Nude Wednesdays. You been… in a cave?”
“Basement”
“The swam ceased three years ago…”
“Large basement. I seek sanctuary. I can more than pay my way. I want in.”
“We’ve very strict criteria for entry. You’re not a DJ are you?… We’ve the summer festivals and nobody to spin the discs.”
“I’m a cardio-thoracic surgeon”
“Oh…”
“Oh?”
“We’ve a doctor… anything else?”
“I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from eighteen different medical boards…”
“So, that’s a no to the DJing?”
“I’m… a… specialist.”
“Only REALLY good at one thing then… diversity is key here.”
“I’m a better surgeon than any doctor you could possibly have…”
“Dawn is actually a vet, but she’s pretty damn good on the ol’ hoomans too…”
“Seriously?”
“Basement was a bunker… right?”
“May have been… no use to you now, destroyed it…”
“As you do.”
“Electricity gone. Entrance seal-door stuck in open position…”
“Terrible. So, you killed it?”
“Didn’t want people getting up in my shit.”
“You shared this enormous throbbing bunker with…”
“My wife.”
“And she is…”
“Dead.”
“Kill her?”
“No.”
“Not even a wee bit, when food ran low?”
“Food… would have lasted years had it not been for that damned reactor malfunction.”
“Reactor?”
“Cold fusion… Supposed to last a lifetime…”
“Cold fusion is my favourite fusion. Do you have any… hobbies?”
“Wine.”
“You’re a vintner?”
“No, I collect fine wine. Considered to be amongst the top five private collections in the world.”
“Had? No more?”
“I smashed them all and left it a hole of cinder. What’s mine is mine.”
“So, you killed your wife?”.
“Cancer. Life support systems stopped when the reactor stopped”.
“But, you’re a doctor… oh, that’s right…”
“I am a cardio thoracic surgeon…”
“… a specialist, I forgot. Branch into Oncology maybe…”
“I’m perfect at what I do. I m going to be a part of this little new world of yours… you cannot afford to pass me by.”
“May… may, take a few weeks to process but we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as well would you look at that… Decision already confirmed. Sorry better luck next time”.
“You cant send me back out there… who the fuck are you… some lowlife convict to judge me?”
“You presume to much, doctor… I’m no inmate. I was an outmate just as you. I sat in that very chair. But I didn’t have handcuffs because I’m pretty and not an asshole”.
“What are you?”
“Me… I’m a preschool teacher…. got to know a wee bit about a fucking lot. Backbone of society right here my friend… and when the sun falls be sure to watch for the razor-hook backs of their fingers… that’s what will end you. Next!… please.”
