by submission | Nov 15, 2015 | Story |
Author : Sam Larson
Dr. Oliver, tall and with thick, perpetually smudged glasses perched on the end of his long nose, leaned over Seth’s back and pushed the tip of his forceps into a gash on Seth’s shoulder while Seth, stripped to the waist and streaked with sweat, moaned and squirmed on the examination table.
“This is the last one, Seth.” Dr. Oliver placed a hand on Seth’s back where his latex gloves smeared the blood oozing from the boy’s shoulders. He gave the forceps a sharp jerk and Seth squealed. The forceps clanked loudly into a waiting steel bowl and, still holding Seth down, Dr. Oliver reached for the antiseptic, pouring it sloppily across the boy’s upper back and mopping it with a wad of cotton. Seth’s shoulders were pocked with a constellation of scars, some nearly faded and some fresh, red, and tender. Seth lay limp on the bed and waited, sniffling. Dr. Oliver bandaged Seth’s shoulders tightly and offered a hand to help the boy sit up on the bed. Seth snatched his arm away from Dr. Oliver and cast a furious glance up at the raggedy adult. Tears ran down Seth’s face and angry red rimmed his obsidian eyes, a rich solid black like India ink.
Dr. Oliver sat on a stool in front of the examining table, removed his stained latex gloves, and tossed them towards the waste bin. Reaching long fingers into the pocket of his shirt he dug out a crumpled envelope of tobacco and a collection of tattered of rolling papers. He carefully splinted the torn rolling paper with more scraps dug from his shirt pocket until he had a crooked cigarette pinched between his fingers. Dr. Oliver lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, the layers of rolling paper flaring and smoking in the still air of his office.
“You were very brave today, Seth.” The boy sat hunched on the edge of the bed, sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes.
“Hurts,” mumbled Seth, “Hurts lots.”
“I know it does, Seth. But we’ll make you better.” Dr. Oliver stood, flipped his cigarette at the trash can, and walked to a large wardrobe in the corner of his office. He rummaged through a pile of clothes and emerged with a large, faded men’s shirt. Back at the examining table Dr. Oliver handed Seth the shirt and helped him struggle his way into it, rolling the cuffs when they fell down past Seth’s wrists.
“Now, be careful with your bandages for the next couple of days. And come see me if you need my help. You know I’m always home.” Seth rolled onto his side and scrambled off of the table, catching his breath with a soft hiss when the impact with the floor made his wounds sting. He hesitated near the examining table, staring bashfully at his feet and fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt. “Out you go, Seth. Tell your mother hello for me.”
Laying a gentle hand on Seth’s back Dr. Oliver ushered his young patient out the door and into the deepening evening, watching him walk down the street until the boy had rounded the corner. Dr. Oliver swung the door shut and secured it with a pair of heavy deadbolts. On his way back into the examining room he gathered up the steel bowl from its spot on the bedside table and upended it where Seth had been laying. Dr. Oliver picked up the forceps from where they had fallen and gently stirred the ragged fistful of white, blood-speckled feathers that lay scattered across the examination table.
by submission | Nov 14, 2015 | Story |
Author : Wayne Adams
Ralph Church received a bonus today. It was his reward for being the top salesman of the quarter. He was proud of his achievement.
“You ready to hit the road again, Ralph?” His manager Bruce Clark asked.
“You bet,” Ralph answered, “There’s nothing that stirs my juice more than being gung ho on sales.”
“Someday, you’ll have my job,” Bruce said.
“No way. I have to have the freedom of the road.”
“We’ll persuade you.”
“Ok boss, I gotta go.”
Ralph shook hands with Bruce and walked out of the office. He entered the admin section where he heard accolades of “Get’em tiger,” and “You’re the man!”
He stepped out into the hallway and looked in both directions. He checked his watch. It was almost time for the portal to open. He rushed to the janitor’s closet. Any second now. He opened the door and stepped into the darkened closet.
A blue halo of light appeared. Ralph stepped through it. He was in. The light appeared every 14 days. Perfect for him to live 2 separate lives in 2 separate universes.
He checked his watch again. Brenda would be outside waiting for him out in the parking lot with the girls.
He stepped outside and there she was in all her glory. Brenda was beautiful as always with her blonde hair and glowing skin. Just like his other wife.
He rushed to the driver’s side and kissed her with a kiss that could rival any movie.
“Hi handsome,” she said.
“Hey beautiful,” he said, “Daddy’s home. What’s for dinner tonight?”
“Me,” she said with a dreamy look in her eyes, “Oh dinner,” she realized what she had said and hoped the girls didn’t hear her answer, “It’s your favorite. Spaghetti with meat balls.”
“How’s my two good looking daughters,” he asked Brandi twleve and Cindy ten.
“Daddy!” They said in unison.
He stepped into the passenger side and sat down.
“Do you have a dessert planned for tonight?” He coyly asked, looking at the girls hoping they wouldn’t understand.
“Oh for sure,” she said with a wink.
Ralph spent 2 glorious weeks with his family on this side of the portal. One morning he was dressing in the bedroom. Brenda was in bed watching him.
“My man,” she cooed softly.
Ralph smiled at her. He was the luckiest man in both universes.
“Do you have to go poopsie?” she asked with a purr.”
“Duty calls my sweets,” He said, thinking of his other wife Sarah in the alternate universe.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she said.
“Time to go beautiful.”
He crawled on the bed and planted a huge kiss on her. If a microphone had been nearby it would have rattled the windows.
Ralph entered the company office and once again he was a celebrity with the staff. He said goodbye to his boss and walked out into the hallway. He looked at this watch. Almost time. No one was around. He opened the janitor’s closet. There it was. The blue light. He closed the door and stepped into the light. Seconds later he was in the alternate Earth.
He knew that outside, in the parking lot, Sarah and the girls would be waiting for him with open arms.
He didn’t think life could get any better than this.
by submission | Nov 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
It had been the perfect plan. Throw spitballs at the substitute English teacher, get sent to the assistant principal, spend an hour after school in detention, and walk home in peace. For once, he would make it through a day at Central High without being pummeled by the school bully and his gang of five. And the plan was working.
The hallway was empty. He didn’t head for the front doors, of course. Billy might be waiting at the bottom of the steps. Instead, he took a side exit and walked towards the gate to 12th Street. But half way there he saw the gate was locked. Could he climb over that chain link fence, at least twice his height? No. It might have been built to keep people out, but it served to keep him in. He’d have to use the front doors after all. Turning around, he saw Billy and his gang approaching. They split up to cut off his escape routes. Two of them came ahead to to grab him, one on each arm, and hold him for Billy.
He was in a panic as Billy’s face filled his field of vision. He felt his heart pounding and heard his quick breaths and the hiss of escaping atmosphere on one side and a rush of air filling the vacuum on the other. Hoses and cables detached and he felt a mild shock, which awakened him from a deep sleep. Arising, he bumped his head on the lid, which was opening slowly, and tried to remember what he’d been dreaming. As always, he could not.
“You have visitors,” a soft voice intoned.
Climbing out of the pod unsteadily, he was momentarily chilled and confused. Realizing that he was completely naked, he donned a one-piece jump suit hanging by the opening to his chamber and slid his feet into a pair of slippers. As he warmed, the voice said, “Follow the arrow,” which had appeared on the floor and begun moving out of the chamber and down the hall. He saw no one as he followed the arrow past other chambers and through open doors which closed behind him. Finally, he entered a room in which two people sat at a table. He sat on the opposite side.
“My, but you have grown,” he heard himself say to his daughter.
“Why don’t you have any hair, daddy,” the girl replied.
He knew that. He closed his eyes and remembered. The voice had told him to rub a cream all over his body that first day and then to shower all the hair away. He had watched it go down the drain, never to return. Then he had been dried by blasts of warm air, after which he had followed the arrow to the medical…
“Did you HEAR me, daddy?”
“Yes. Hair. ‘Nobody here to impress, no need to bother with hair,’ the voice told me, so they, or he, well, actually I…”
“You look well,” his wife offered, helpfully. “better than you did before.”
It was true. The combination of nutritional infusions, along with drugs and electrical stimulation, kept his body trim and toned.
“Was it the same voice that talks to us, daddy?”
“I guess so. I’ve only ever heard the one voice here.”
“Welcome to Acme Detention,” it had said in its soothing way to the small group of visitors just minutes before. “This ultra secure and fully automated facility houses 1,984 inmates, all sentenced to life without parole, in a hygienic and safe environment. Acme does not punish. It merely encourages reflection and contemplation.”
by submission | Nov 12, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“I’m tired of hearing about Mars!” said the Russian envoy. It was a sentiment the other diplomats in the room could understand. A year earlier, a dozen nations had collectively decided that the Martian colonists’ repeated attempts to secede from Earth had gone on long enough. The colonists had begun with appeals which had progressed over time to demands and then to acts of violence. Some called them terrorists and some called them freedom fighters. The leaders of the nations represented in the room had called them a security risk.
“We’re all tired of it,” said the American diplomat. He looked to the window with annoyance. Even now there were protesters outside the building chanting that the great powers were guilty of genocide. “But the Mars Expeditionary Force’s after-action report is almost complete. And it contains something potentially disturbing. We may not have had the last of our trouble with the colonists.”
“There were survivors?” asked the Russian. “Even if that was the case, they would be in no position to–”
“There were no survivors,” said a voice from the far end of the table. It was the Chinese representative, a middle-aged woman. “The strike was quite successful in destroying both the habitation domes and the underground facilities.”
“No one survived,” said the Indonesian envoy. “Our ground forces confirmed the orbital bombardment was totally effective.”
“Then I do not see the problem,” said the Russian.
“A team of American and Chinese marines were sent to Deimos to see if there were any colonists manning the mining facility’s mass driver. The marines discovered it was gone.” The American sighed and sat back in his chair.
The Russian leaned forward. “How could they have relocated the driver to another location on Deimos? Something that massive–”
“He didn’t mean the mass driver was gone,” said the Chinese woman. “He meant Deimos was gone.”
“You’re telling me Mars’ outer moon is missing? Why would–” The Russian stopped speaking. He turned pale. “Bozhe moi!”
Just then the building started to shudder. The angry chants in the street below turned into shrieks of terror. A fireball redder than the sands of Mars rose on the horizon.
by submission | Nov 10, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
Routine tapping of useless, dilated, vestigial nostrils against thick glass…perhaps a hope for release. Considering death, but they won’t allow that. Not now. I swim to the tank bottom, again, praying someone, once human, will join me. I remember land life.
Sheila glowed at Elephant Butte Lake. Not an oasis, but watering holes in the high desert are blessings. Dust devils trashed our blue tent. We saved gear that didn’t fly off. “Just for one night,” I kept telling her, convinced that moonrise over sparse mesquite and rabbit brush would be worthwhile. We rested by sleepy firelight as three visitors arrived.
My first response was to shoo them away, but Sheila was ever empathetic, always reaching to anyone like lost puppies. The two men were older than we were and rough. I knew the signs of biker gangs frequenting Albuquerque. My old man was a truck driver for the feds when they built Manzano Peak base. He warned me about felons. They gathered around us, the two bikers on either side of me, as their pet whore sat behind Sheila. It seemed odd, until she grabbed Sheila’s chest and covered her mouth. The bookcases beside me rushed in, but I swiveled past, heading for the tent where my dad’s pepper gun was stashed under sleeping bags. He warned me about the curse, the black inlaid handle made from a meteorite. “It will never wound,” he scolded, as he passed it to me days before his entry into hospice.
They were already on me as I rolled out the pistol. It happened in seconds. Two dead men lay face down in grit and sand. My feet automatically sped toward the fire. Sheila’s throat was slit open before her attacker charged me. After that, it was a blur. I remember horrifying photos at the trial. It didn’t matter Sheila was dead…it was what I did. “Such inhumanity requires the death penalty.” By then I had already been beaten twice and knifed in jail, until confined in solitaire. DARPA people visited a week later, beginning my watery journey.
What did I have to lose? Military medical volunteers wouldn’t face the gas chamber. Soon I was underground near Dulce. Researchers tested me, took blood, and held rigorous exams. In a month, I was escorted to a brightly lit room with panels of lights monitored on a far wall. Unchained and lifted into a hexagonal booth made of thick Plexiglas, I saw perforations on stainless steel flooring, while above a fan whirred. The observers adjusted instruments and then pulled a throttle bar. A turbulence of red, blue and black particles exploded upward, spinning throughout the containment. Minute shards struck, and then invaded. I collapsed into darkness from excruciating pain.
My waking was dreadful. There was no air. The doctors and nurses above me held a dripping intubation hose as I flopped helplessly, choking. “Better move him in now,” directed the doctor. “There won’t be time for an adjustment. They’ll either work or not, but open air will kill him.”
The nurses rolled me over a plastic sheet I struggled on, and into a horse-trough sized tank. It bubbled with oxygen feeds. I found instant relief, but shock, as my lungs failed. I panicked; sure of drowning…but no…I felt my throat oscillating gently. I reached up with webbed fingers to discover gills wafting fresh water over their red surfaces. That was the beginning—proof an aquanaut soldier could be developed. The beginning, only they know how long ago, as I age with my land memories in this crystal bowl, alone, but alive.
