by submission | Sep 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : C. Chatfield
“Shoot it.”
“Shut up, Jim.”
“It might be dangerous.”
“A bear wanders into my yard, I call Animal Control. I’m not gonna shoot it just for being here, Gabe.”
“Sure. You got the number for Alien Control?”
“Quiet. It’s probably not an alien.”
“You ever see goo move like that?”
Next to the three men, a patch of rippling orange goo extended probing tendrils into the surrounding underbrush. There was a sizzling sound as the creature began to sink through the vegetation. After a moment of contemplation, it trembled and assumed the shape and texture of the dissolved grass and bushes: a flawless disguise, if not for the stubbornly garish shade of orange.
“What do you think you’re doing, Jim?”
“I’m just gonna nudge it.”
Jim eased up to the phony grass and poked it with the toe of his brown boot. He let out a yelp and fell backward, abandoning the boot, as the ooze reared up in one flowing motion. By the time his friends lifted him off his rear, all that remained was a bright orange boot sitting in a circle of dirt.
“Christ!” Jim grasped for Gerry’s gun, his eyes the size of golf balls. “Shoot it!”
The creature ballooned upwards until it towered over the terrified men. The pillar of ooze collapsed squarely onto Jim, cutting off his screech.
Gerry and Gabe stood frozen while the goo twisted and writhed into a humanoid shape. A moment later, the new Jim was shaking out his limbs and humming, surveying the empty meadow with satisfaction before turning to the two men.
“Weapon?”
Gerry nodded numbly and handed over the gun.
“Truck?”
Gabe gave him the keys.
The new Jim drove the car in a meandering arc before rolling down the passenger window to speak to them in a halting voice, choosing each word with painstaking care. “Thanks, guys. I gotta say, I’m sorry about your friend. If it helps, he’ll live on inside of me. In one way, I’ll give him a new life. It should be very exciting.” He paused and cocked his head, “You two probably don’t have much information about this planet that I didn’t already get from your friend, so I’m gonna leave you here. Go ahead and try to tell someone what happened, but I don’t think anyone’ll believe you.”
He waved and drove off, leaving Gerry and Gabe to gape. When the taillights had disappeared and the dust settled, Gabe sank to his knees. “Dear God, what’s going on? No one’s gonna believe us. They’ll probably say we killed Jim, if that goddamn maniac hasn’t taken over the world by tomorrow. And, oh Christ, Jim is gone, Gerry. Gerry? Are you okay?”
Gerry shook his head, his entire body racked with silent, hysterical giggles. He waved a shaky hand in the direction of the truck and the unsuspecting town,“D’ya think it knows it’s orange?”
by submission | Sep 7, 2014 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
My body was worn out. My organs were failing because they were simply too old, older than any human had ever been before. I would never speak again, and I had hours, maybe minutes to live. I asked the doctor to leave, and grabbed a pen and paper. Then I reached for the little red button hanging from a silver chain around my neck. I held It a moment, then pressed it down.
Today I woke in pain. It was nearly half an hour before I was up and dressed. Before I could leave my bedroom I found myself face to face with myself. I was familiar with the experience, and I waited for him to speak or act, but he did nothing. He looked into my eyes for a long moment, then reached into his pocket and handed me a slip of paper. It read simply, “It’s time.” I watched him press the button and disappear.
I recalled the day that I had met my guardian angel. I had just woken to another morning of my youth, and finding myself wide awake, I rose and dressed immediately. As I turned to leave my room a man appeared before me.
He was very old. His skin was wrinkled and his hair was thin and white. But he stood very straight, and his shining blue eyes spoke of intelligence. His jaw was set in a solemn expression and a single tear slid,almost unnoticed, down his wrinkled cheek. He stared right into my eyes for a long moment before I could look away.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Suddenly the man smiled. “I’m your guardian angel,” He said cheerfully. He took two long steps towards me so he was looking down at me, and reached for an unseen necklace beneath his formal attire. It was the button I had since come to know so well.
“This button,” he explained “Will destroy me when it’s pressed. After that, whenever you press it, It will take you back in time to the moment you desire. In that moment there will be two of you, one who has traveled back and one who has not. You can then act quickly but you must not linger. Soon, you must press the button again, and the version of you who has traveled through time will be destroyed. Have I made myself clear?” I nodded and he put the necklace around my neck.
“Never take it off.” Tears were streaming down his face now, but he was still smiling. “Now go ahead, press it.”
I tried to say something but I didn’t know what to say. I looked up at him and he nodded encouragingly. I pressed the button and just like that he was gone.
Later that day I met him again, in the youthful body that I recognized as my own. He was covered by sweat and soot. He walked purposefully over to me and stamped out an ember at my foot that had jumped from the fireplace unnoticed. Wordlessly, he had pressed the button and disappeared.
At last, I thought. In all my years he had visited me many times, but I had never pushed the button. Slowly, I had come to understand. Now at last, It was my turn. I closed my eyes and a tear rolled down my cheek. I opened my eyes and stood up as straight as I could, and pushed the button.
by submission | Sep 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
The thing inside Tabitha Sandor twitched. She tried to move, make herself more comfortable, and it did not approve.
Stop. The word danced in her head. She wondered for a second if she had even heard the thought, but she knew she had. Since the scientists had discovered the alien DNA was compatible with human DNA, and inseminated her with it against her will, she knew.
It knows, too, she thought.
She looked around the 6-foot cubicle that they had placed her in for observation. The walls were glistening stainless steel. Only the camera in the corner interrupted their smooth surface. The scientists were watching her.
She ran her hand along her stomach. Two weeks ago, her belly had been flat and muscular. But, then they came in the middle of her sleep shift and hauled her off to a lab. They drugged her. She awoke to find them between her legs, syringe in hand, injecting her with an alien’s seed.
“It’s for the greater good,” one of the scientists told her. “We need to know what this alien race knew.”
Her personal freedoms were secondary to them.
To them, she was disposable.
She stood and walked to the wall. For the millionth time, she ran her hand along the smooth contour, hoping to find the exit.
There, it thought.
She paused, dumbfounded. Over the past couple of days, she had come to realize that the thing growing within her was not only alien, it held all the knowledge of its race. It somehow retained the knowledge of a long dead alien race; the abilities of that race were in her stomach. It was showing her, in brief glimpses, the majestic world, now turned to ash, below. There was a war that had wiped out its people. They had used weapons that made nuclear fusion look like a cap gun. They incinerated their entire planet. It was that planet from which they had extracted the alien’s DNA and impregnated her.
They are coming, It thought.
Tabitha backed away from the wall and, a second later, two white-coated men stepped inside.
One of them stepped toward her.
Tabitha felt a strange sensation and then her mind went blank. When she regained control, the scientists were laying on the floor, both of their necks broken.
She gasped.
“You killed them,” she said.
It was necessary, It thought. They were going to stop the experiment.
It flashed a thought through her mind. It belonged to one of the scientists. In the thought, she understood that they had come to the realization the alien was communicating with her. They understood that some form of muscle memory or genetic memory was telling her things. They also knew that the seed they planted inside her belonged to one of the scientists who helped destroy the alien world. They had managed to decipher some of the alien language.
They feared the alien’s power…and they wanted to kill it, lest they unleash the dragon again.
We must escape, It thought.
Tabitha wanted to protest, but a sharp, agonizing pain shot through her.
Do it!
Then, it took control again, and everything went black.
##
When she returned, she was in an escape pod. Through the window, she could see the massive ship above. It was burning silently in space.
As she watched, the ship exploded.
She gasped in horror.
It had to be, It thought. They wanted to stop us. I could not allow that.
She wanted to fight, but knew fighting was futile.
It was in control.
She fell back into the cushiony seat and watched as they dropped to the scorched world below.
by submission | Sep 3, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jedd Cole
This kind of epilogue ends with a beginning, just as Homo sapiens began with an ending in the dark garden of forevers past. They believe it is AD 2476. They march through empty space with their idols under their arms. Earth burns behind them along with the little unnamed ones–the poor and the needy. Being unnamed, they are soon forgotten. The small unsponsored flotilla presses on towards the people’s recourse: a cold red rock, the shell of an empty colony, and other idols.
[#]
Heléna bends over with arms outstretched, holding her little daughter far away from herself in a corner of the compartment where the mob has been herded and penned. The child empties her bladder onto the hard metal floor. The stream makes unpleasant smacking sounds and splashes onto Heléna’s shoes. Twenty feet away, people pretend not to watch with their faces.
Heléna thinks about what happens when the royal are made refugees. She remembers with unidentified feelings the flat she and her daughter fled in such a hurry, leaving everything behind to save their lives so they could pee in the corner of a starship compartment. Cargo ship. It has never tasted human flesh before, nor does it wish to. Two months ago it was full of tiger nuts out of Valencia. No one will be interested in tiger nuts anymore. All the little wrinkled tubers were left behind.
Heléna’s husband used to eat them plain. He was also left behind.
There is a preacher in the midst a while later, speaking soft and confident words to the people. He meets Heléna’s stare. They talk about the disaster and where they used to live and what it is to be lonely among so many people. It turns out the preacher had owned a house just a few kilometers from Heléna’s flat. He tilts his head towards her and asks if she has been saved. She looks around and says yes with some confidence.
Heléna loses sight of her daughter among the thousand people in the compartment and never sees her again. She thinks about Baal and Moloch and passing children through the fire. She and the preacher are making plans for their future together when she gives birth to a new child three days before the ship reaches Mars. They name him Esperanto, speaking strange things to him.
Their new home will become ancient.
Heléna writes a story about the flight from the old place, and how everyone was saved, especially from the large countries. She writes from the carefully airtight hovel. Esperanto plays in the hydroponic garden. The preacher works in the chapel made of red dirt. He dies several years later of complications from AIDS.
[#]
Esperanto keeps Heléna with him in his pocket. She’s been dead for twenty years. She dwells in the paper, the story about the old place, the earth that perished. He contributes to the making of a new old world here. Planeta rojo.
Heléna had written of the burden of the removed generation.
Esperanto speaks strange things to his daughter, whose mother he does not know. There’s a former preacher’s son who lives in the hovels a block away and with whom Esperanto’s daughter plays for eternal segments of time.
Forever comes and goes. Esperanto thinks about what happens when refugees are made royalty. He turns it into a thesis, and the thesis will burn some people alive, including, eventually, himself.
Before that happens, he becomes their leader in the dark. Renovations are made. Rages aimed. Governors deposed, but not for good. The seeds of change wrinkle in the sun atop fallow Martian soil, where new men have proclaimed old things, and triumphed over the mere words of scribes.
[#]
Esperanto has died, his daughter has been lost, and new ones have been born in the interim to continue the unspoken religion. The epilogue remains an unwavering line that begins with Heléna’s manuscript and shoots into space along the route of the ancient fleeing ships. The fresh, sprouting heads write their own stories. The people proclaim themselves Genesis, the beginning of creation, and they cover the red planet with origins and fables. By inertia, the descendants of Heléna, Esperanto, and their daughters become the writers, builders, priests of the new old, of Baals, of Molochs, of fires. Children passing through them, most unnamed.
by submission | Aug 31, 2014 | Story |
Author : Sarah Vernetti
“Am I comfortable? No, Amelia, not particularly. I feel like I’ve washed out to sea. Maybe I’ll return. Or maybe I’ll end up in some far off land fifty years from now, only to be discovered by a child and be featured on the evening news. So, no, I’m not comfortable.”
He struggled to catch his breath. His hands gripped the arm rests with such force that his knuckles looked like they might burst through his skin.
I sighed. How was I supposed to respond? I never did understand his brand of metaphorical nonsense. If only that website hadn’t insisted that we meet.
Things went well at first, but there were always additional demands, more requests, further attempts at forming some kind of bond. But I needed my space.
“Goodbye, Pete. See you on Mars,” I said as I closed the door to the space vessel. I leaned over the control panel, ignoring his muffled voice. I entered the launch code, sending him into oblivion with only my newest invention and his own histrionics to keep him company.
The capsule shot upwards with such force that I was thrown back against the guardrail, peeling paint finding its way into the palms of my hands. Right through the fate line. Pete would have appreciated that detail.
Once the rumbling stopped and the smoke cleared from the room, I grabbed my phone. Under relationship status, I toggled over to “single.” It was all too easy.
