by submission | Jan 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael D. Hilborn
Twenty minutes had passed since the cop had taken Donald’s license and registration back to the patrol car, and Donald was feeling famished.
As if he had spoken out loud, Samantha said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“But I’m hungry,” said Donald to his wife, “and that guy was being a jerk.” The cop had certainly been out of line, screaming at Donald at the top of his lungs for what amounted to a minor speeding infraction. The cop deserved whatever was coming to him. “Besides, you’re hungry, too. I can tell. Do you really want to continue eating that crap?”
Samantha paused, her plastic spork hovering over the cup of coleslaw and bucket of fried chicken she held in her lap. The corner of her mouth skewed upward.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Samantha lay the spork down in the cup and stared right at him. He loved her eyes, those beautiful yellow irises, those slits for pupils. Too bad the cop and the rest of mankind couldn’t see her like he did. They didn’t know what they were missing. “I don’t want to have to disappear again, Donald,” she said. “We have a nice home, some nice neighbors, good jobs, a nice life. It would be shame to lose all of that.”
“It’d be easy enough to start over,” he said, noticing in the rear-view window that the cop was returning. “We’ve done it before, and we’re due for a change. You’ve said you always wanted to live upstate. All we need to do is continue heading north.” He pointed at the sign to Saratoga Springs, and he smiled his most convincing smile.
Her inner eyelids clicked together, a signal she was considering what he had said. Then: “No, Donald.”
He sighed. “Suit yourself.”
“Just be polite,” Samantha said, and rolled down the window for the cop to lean in.
The cop, unfortunately, was not polite. Donald tolerated a minute of the yelling and pejoratives before he flicked out his tongue. It snapped across the car’s interior and planted its spiked tip squarely between the officer’s eyes. The venom took hold in an instant: the victim froze in mid-tirade, his expression not even having time to register surprise. Donald’s tongue snapped back between his rows of teeth.
“Dammit, Donald,” his wife muttered. Nevertheless, she dragged the paralyzed officer through the window. “Those patrol cars have cameras, you know. No way we can go back home now.” Anger laced her voice, but Donald noticed she was already prodding the officer’s fleshy neck with the spork.
“Saratoga Springs, here we come.” Donald grinned, put the car in gear, and continued heading north.
by submission | Jan 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chris Grebe
Armida was no longer thinking completely clearly, of this she was certain.
The Carmine Reaction. That’s what they were going to call it. She was sure of that too, somehow, sure as she was that she hadn’t stopped for a restroom for about two hundred miles, would have to stop soon; sure that she shouldn’t be so sure, because she wasn’t thinking completely clearly.
The Carmine Reaction. She’d left the draft paper in her motel in Navasota. Before she picked up the device.
She couldn’t even afford a Best Western, but soon she would be famous. Her papa would be proud. Would have been. Armida smiled and kept her speed down. Five over. Not attracting any attention—not yet, not anytime before tonight, and no more after.
She didn’t like attention. Hadn’t gotten much at school, nor at the lab when she started. She was never one for Antics as a grown human. She laughed at herself, antics, her father’s word, always made Armida think of something ants would drink. Papa would accuse her of getting up to Antics, swing her in his arms and she would laugh, a little girl with nothing but playtime. More Antics!
No Antics now. The diarrhea stopped earlier in the day, but she knew it would be back, would be worse.
The world has stopped spinning. The highway lights slide past her windshield, the sliver of silky moon above and the world has stopped spinning.
She thought of the radiation from the thing in the way back of her little Subaru, eating her silently and invisibly, a school of carnivorous gamma fish with sharp sharp teeth.
It wasn’t fatal yet but would be soon. No more Antics at all then.
TOYOTA CENTER 2
The sign flashed in her headlights and was gone.
Almost there. Houston had been good for her, for her family. Not as good for the ones kept in the TOYOTA CENTER. Armida was not a patriot. Not an anarchist. Not a socialist. Not a single tweet betrayed her interest in politics because she had none.
She wondered how long to deploy the thing, after she got the cages open. After she set the ones in the cages free.
One more Antics Papa.
The diarrhea was lurking, but it wouldn’t be much longer now. Armida rolled her window down, and let the wind through her hair, until she slowed to take the exit.
by submission | Jan 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jeff Hill
Upon waking this morning, I was surprised to feel no different. Angry with the world (and the lack of funds in my bank account), I begrudgingly took my shower and yelled obscenities as my roommate walked past me, laughing at my piss poor mood.
“Didn’t work,” I told him as I walked back into my room.
“Oh, no. That’s horrible, dude,” he said, suddenly wiping the smile off his face.
I got dressed and went out to the kitchen to make a lunch for myself and start cooking breakfast when I realized that he had already done both of those things for me. He sat at the bar and looked up at me, concerned.
“Waste of money. Completely and totally.” I told him.
He thrust his fists onto the table. “I hate them!” he yelled, a little louder than I would have usually expected for this early in the morning.
“I swear,” I start to tell him, “If I could get away with it, I’d march down to that building and burn the place to the ground.”
“Hold on a sec… I’m on it,” he said, jumping up immediately and running past me to the back of the apartment, grabbing his car keys and putting one finger in the air, signaling for me to wait just one minute.
“Weirdo,” I mumbled, starting to feel a sense of justice in the world.
He returned about five minutes later with a giant gas can, empty, and a look of pride on his face.
He turned on the TV.
“Local pharmaceutical company ablaze downtown,” the reporter said. He tossed the empty gas can on the ground.
“Dear God!” I exclaimed. “What is wrong with you! You are insane!”
“Well, yeah. Now I am,” he said, loading his shotgun from behind the kitchen cabinets and aiming directly for me.
His first shot missed, his second grazed my leg and I realized while he reloaded that the pharmacist was right. The scientists weren’t incorrect.
“My powers. They work. I can’t believe this is happening.”
He reloaded and raised the shotgun to my head.
“I believe you.”
by submission | Jan 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“The old rage in colder ways, for they alone decide how to spend the young.” – Pierce Brown Dark Age
The toy soldier guarded the corner of the commander’s makeshift field desk. The faded tin sentry with chipped red jacket, high peaked cap and bent bayonet stood upon the order.
Especially in the age of cyberwar, such an order was on paper. Hand written. Delivered by flesh and blood. A reminder of what was real and what was to be spilled.
The commander concentrated on the little toy. Its eyes fixed and sure. A plaything of the past, a steadfast harbinger of battles to come. War made fast in the hands of children. It changed little. An order given. Received. A decision needed. A sacrifice demanded.
His tactical screens displayed the grids under current assault. A counterassault had been ordered: a hype and wipe. Jacking systems beyond their breaking points, then a massive takedown of security redundancies and fail-safes.
Homes, hospitals, schools, critical infrastructure and industrial sites would implode, explode. Many would suffer.
Though not the commander. Not his soldiers.
What were soldiers anymore?
In cyberwar there was only the enemy. The other side. Imaginary lines within which the ordinary comforts of modern life—all manner of integrated systems, machinery, devices, appliances, transport—were turned against any and all. Faces pressed into pillows or pushed out windows. Silent and fraught.
That was the commander’s charge: take it down, take them down.
Them.
He imagined them. No different than himself. So much like the teenage daughter he’d lost to them. A casualty of an attack intended to jack fleets of spy-and-die drones. High on a mountain pass in winter, her autonomobile’s systems were collaterally blitzed. Her vehicle accelerated wildly and plunged into a deep ravine. Lost in snow and ice, she froze. He did not know how slowly.
He picked up the toy soldier from his desk, from atop the order. He held it lightly in his bare hand. Felt the chill of metal. A shiver of recognition.
The commander gave his command. There might have been other ways, but he did not know them. There might have been some who did not need to pay, but he did not owe them.
He put the toy soldier back in place. Upon the desk. Atop the order. In the middle of war unlike any other. Still child’s play.
by submission | Jan 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: Lee Hammerschmidt
April 29, 1976, 11:53 PM
“Don’t answer!” I said as I felt the muted phone throbbing in my cargo shorts pocket. “Do NOT answer!”
I answered.
“So, Chalk,” Aurora Nirvana, my boss said. “Would you care to explain to me just what in the name of the Cosmos you’re doing in Graceland? In the Jungle Room no less?”
“M-m-m-me?” I stammered “I, uh, well…”
“Don’t try to squirm out of it. We pinged your phone. You’re supposed to be in Portland monitoring the Swine Flu situation, But surprise, you’re in Memphis. This better not be another one of your souvenir gathering side trips. Like the baseball card incident.”
About six months ago I had detoured from an assignment in Seattle to my family home in Oregon. I knew my folks were out of town at a wedding and the younger version of myself was in California. No chance of awkward or disastrous face to face confrontations. My mom had stored my old baseball cards and comic books in a bin out in their garage. Two years later, when I had moved to out, she gave them all away!
“But they were my cards!” I said. “Mickey Mantle! Roger Maris! Sandy Koufax! And a shitload more! And the comic books. Do you know how much all that stuff is worth now in 2067?”
“It doesn’t matter whose they were, Chalk,” Aurora said sternly. “As an Agent of the Department of Inertial Cosmic Kinesis you are strictly forbidden from profiteering off antiquities picked up in your travels. I don’t need to remind you that you’re still on probation for that offense.”
“No, Ma’am.”
“So, what are you doing in Graceland?”
“I just wanted to see the place before it got all touristy, that’s all. You know I’m a big fan of the King.”
Aurora sighed heavily, not believing me for a second. “You didn’t cross paths with anyone there did you?”
“Nope. Elvis is in Tahoe, and The Boys are out front kicking Springsteen off the property. Perfect timing.”
“Well you get your ass out of there, pronto! You dig?”
“I dig.”
“Good. Remember you will be fully scanned on your return and if you bring back so much as a roll of toilet paper, you will be sent right back for three years. You know what that means?”
Oh, boy did I ever. The heart of the Disco era! I don’t think I could live through that shit again, even with the extended longevity that came with being a D.I.C.K. agent. I’d go mad in a week!
“Comprende, Chief,” I said. “See you in a jiff. I’ll…”
The phone cut off before I could finish. Wow, testy today aren’t we. I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out an old, yellowed copy of Rolling Stone magazine. The date – September 22, 1977. Just over a month after Elvis died. Roughly 16 months from today. It was the memorial tribute issue to the King The cover was a portrait of Elvis, with the dates,1935-1977.
I put the magazine on the piano where I knew he would see it. Sure, he’d probably just think it was a joke. But maybe he might open it up and read the in-depth article on his demise and start making some lifestyle changes. Cut out the fried foods. Exercise. Lay off the pills. Ditch the jumpsuits. Maybe he would live longer and get back to making great music again.
Probably not, but I had to give it a try. Aurora said not to take anything. But she didn’t say anything about leaving something behind.
