by submission | Dec 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
We need the dystopias she is adept at crafting—need them to serve as compelling cautionary tales now that nothing else does. But she much prefers to render quotidian moments of splendor and serendipity. She doesn’t want to put herself through the harrowing gauntlet of making ruined worlds and dramatizing bleak circumstances.
“That just takes too much out of me,” she told me. “You only see the final product. But creating it means I have to think about the countless horrifying ways it could be. I have to learn about—not just encounter—all the terrible things the finished work will contain. It’s like you get to visit a town in the county I was living in. A place I didn’t even want to pass through.”
We left it at that.
Now, with every season, the state of our world is of course only getting exponentially worse, the rifts in reality widening to the point that once solid certainties are crumbling into oblivion. I haven’t seen her for months and probably won’t for many more. She’s no doubt hard at work, making the nightmare that can wake us up into taking action. I imagine that she’s taken up residence in a region she abhors, roaming towns full of awful things to find the one with exactly the kind of streets she must guide us down, taking us calmly from one terror to another.
by submission | Dec 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
At age ten, Martin had been selected for the Specialism. He, and just one other pupil, were singled out and chosen and she promptly disappeared from the school and entered one of the Academies. But Martin’s father was against the decision. He, like so many back then, was anti the Specialism. He exclaimed it was an abomination, that the Government was encouraging and nurturing ‘freaks of nature.’
Martin’s teachers did their very best to convince his father that it was a great opportunity, pointing out that only a small percentage of those selected actually developed a particular Specialism. But all those educated in an academy were able to enter the field of research and work for Martin would be guaranteed, his prospects unlimited. But Martin’s father refused to listen, in fact he became even angrier, his language more aggressive, his manner more volatile. And so Martin remained at the local school.
The records show clearly that Martin had been an outstanding student. He was top in all of his classes and his exam results were off the charts. But no-one remembered him, not the teachers nor the other students. He was at best a vague recollection.
In the aftermath of his father’s anger and outrage, Martin wanted to disappear. He withdrew into himself and discovered he had an uncanny ability to melt into the background, to go unnoticed. He honed this skill, as he began to realise that it was a skill.
Martin stood at the centre of the classroom, waving his arms about and pulling faces. But no-one looked, no-one as much as lifted their head to glance at him. He moved across the room toward the teacher’s desk and, standing alongside her, he turned the little dial in his head.
The teacher pulled back in her chair.
‘Oh, Martin,’ she said. ‘I didn’t notice you there. What can I do for you?’
Martin didn’t answer and, stepping back, he turned the dial again and watched and waited as, perplexed, she stared into space until she eventually looked back down at the paperwork in front of her.
No-one could stop Martin now, not even his father. He could do whatever he wanted and go wherever he liked. Martin entered an academy, but covertly, and, unseen, he attended the classes. If there was an empty seat he sat, if not he stood at the back. It wasn’t so very different; new teacher, unknown students, but just another school.
Martin only turned the dial when he was at home and each time he did, it took his father a little longer to remember. To call him by his name.
by submission | Dec 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Neil Burlington
Detective Gallant holds me down while his partner hits me even harder than he hit his wife last night. I bleed from my nose, my lips, and pretty much everywhere a face can bleed when under merciless attack by cops. I’m squeaky clean and eighteen, but do they care?
“Where is it!”
My thin lips spread in a smile designed to send them into conniptions. It works.
“A thing like that,” I say with a hoarse voice, “is always in the last place you looked for it, detective.”
A thick, strong hand takes hold of my black T-shirt and drags my scrawny frame up from the concrete.
“You think you can just steal something like that – and what – there’s no consequence you little bastard?”
The chunk of the cruiser door comes next. They wedge me into the back. We drive. I count my blessings and realize my supply of numbers is far too generous for the task.
We reach the station in less than fifteen minutes. I am escorted in with the kind of hospitality you give a fly at a barbeque. An iron door stands open to greet me.
I fall forward from the loving push I receive – a kind of encouragement to reform, and tumble onto the floor of a cell.
I roll like a cat and fix the brave detective above me with a puzzled stare. “What’s my crime? Do you have any proof?”
Gallant, his squared-off grizzled jaw tight – his deep-set eyes like two coals – sneers. If he’s Philip Marlowe, I’m a two-dimensional creep the streets are better without.
Gallant turns, unwilling and unable to answer my question.
I mean, how can you prove that somebody up and stole a color from the universe? To the best of my recollection – and I might be fibbing here – there was no color purple in the world at all yesterday. There certainly isn’t any today.
I heave a sigh as I roll on my side and clamber up onto the bunk where I’ll be spending the night.
My cellmate in the small town county jail cell regards me with a predatory gaze.
“You want love?” I inquire. “Then make it!” I wipe blood from my lips, my chin, and the rest of me. I laugh, and my voice breaks.
My cellie – as thin as me, sporting blonde hair and dangerous eyes – regards me with disgust. He turns over on his rack and pulls a blanket over himself.
I can’t help it. I laugh again. I’ve done the impossible. I’ve done the unprovable.
Now, if I’d stolen the color red – that would be hell to pay. No stoplights? Forget about it. That’s death on wheels. A boy like me would never think of doing something like that. But, purple? Who will miss it? Maybe old people. But it’s not vital.
Okay, I admit it. I’m proud I did it. No, that’s not going far enough. I’ve done what no one has ever done.
Through a sheer act of will – of concentration, and dedication – I’d picked my target, and executed. This one small aspect of reality is now completely under my control. My possession.
If people remember the color – that’s their problem. And here’s the secret sauce. Here’s the real Diabolik. As the lights go down and the cold seeps in – I turn my hand to look. As the din fades low – I, and I alone you understand – can summon the color to my palm, and behold it.
The color is purple, friends.
From now on- it’s mine, all mine.
by submission | Dec 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Across the gulfs of space, intellects bold and curious observe our world and hasten their plans against us…
Buried deep in our cold, slow cities, age after age passed unregarded and we cared nothing for the world above until fiery scouts began falling from the skies.
The Elders would have ignored this unwelcome disturbance since we were safe in our underground fastnesses, yet soon vehicles were roving the surface wastes, scratching here and there, even though those barrens hold nothing of worth. It must be us they looked for, searching for traces we left behind long ago.
One orbit passed, then another. The Elders have never hurried their deliberations, but eventually a notion emerged that we would benefit from knowing more about these intruders, and a cautious plan was suggested.
Sometimes in winter, planet-wide dust storms sweep the surface, and as chance would have it, one was circling the globe above us. We could gather intelligence about the invaders while remaining unseen.
Because our kind have never trusted one other, a representative from every city was included in this expedition. Ransacked from museums, each brought scientific instruments which might prove useful. We unsealed old tunnels, creaked open ancient doors and ventured out.
This bleak and ancient desolation was why we live underground.
A junior, from the South Polar city, said we were reminiscent of adventurers of old on a quest, but we turned our backs on her.
The nearest invader craft had been stationary for the winter season, perhaps waiting out these times of cold and dark. Under cover of the dust we crept towards it.
The oldest of us, from a city in the Northern Lowlands, assumed leadership. She announced the instrument she brought with her suggested the invader craft was lifeless, though my own sensor showed the vehicle had a heat signature, surely a sign of life.
We began to argue which of these antique devices we could trust, a debate that lasted for days, but a consensus was eventually reached that since we were so close, we should investigate further.
Close up it was obvious the vehicle was merely a crude machine, operated from elsewhere. Of course, being also blinded by the concealing dust, we explored it by touch, a ridiculous collection of primitive gadgetry on wheels instead of legs more suited to this terrain.
By their devices shall ye know them!
Safely returned to our cities, lengthy discussions began. Was the machine truly an invader? Or the survivor of shipwreck, perhaps an emissary of primitive explorers? Yet all agreed it posed no threat and there was no need to resurrect the heat rays and black gas of history.
A scholar of ancient texts later analysed the data collected by our instruments and suggested the crude vehicle came from the third planet.
Our kind are good at waiting, and we could procrastinate until the invaders grew weary and left. Then everything would be as it was.
Envoi
City after city falls silent, as if the invaders are already amongst us, wielding weapons unseen and terrible. Too late now for the last of us to guess the motives of creatures from a world seething with life who invade a wasteland.
by submission | Dec 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Cal Wallace
“So,” Ftk’al said, slithering gently down the steps next to his friend. “You were cancelled.”
“Yeah, man,” said Karl, chewing gum and spitting nothing despite his best efforts. “That’s how it goes out here. Dog eat dog.”
Ftk’al tried to shrug, all tendrils pumping. Karl seemed to understand. He said, “You gotta be careful, these days, what you do or don’t say. I said some dumb shit-”
“About how Taurons aren’t people?”
“Yeah, yeah. I take all that back. Taurons are people just like you and me, and I was wrong, but-”
“But you wish you could go back and remove the hurtful things you said?”
Karl glared at Fkt’al. “You’ve learned a lot from me, following me about and acting human, haven’t you?”
Fkt’al tried to present his tendrils in a smile, but ended up retreating into his shell slightly.
“I apologise for chagrining you, Karl. You are my friend.”
Karl relaxed, patted his friend on the chitin. “It’s okay. Sometimes you say or do something stupid, and all you want is a chance at redemption.”
“Is this Christmas spirit, Karl?”
Karl looked at his many eyed, tentacled and altogether alien friend. “Yeah, man. This is Christmas, It’s not all death and glory and random shit we find odd about each other. Sometimes it’s just a message of love for other beings.”
Fkt’al looked at Karl with all eight of his eye stalks. “I have strong and complex emotional capacity for you, Karl.”
Karl chuckled, and hugged Fkt’al’s carapace. “I love you too, man. Merry Christmas.”
Merry Christmas. I love you.
