by submission | Nov 23, 2013 | Story |
Author : Rodger Parr
If you have ever awoken in the morning to find yourself with the body of a human and the head of an insect then you must surely empathise if not at least sympathise with me. For it was with this strange dilemma that I awoke to one Sunday morning.
At first everyone was repulsed by my sight and children would throw stones at me in the streets whilst screaming obscenities. The parents would sometimes join in.
A man from the circus came to see me and offered me a lot of money to become one of his sideshows. I accepted immediately.
I would sit every night in a sideshow tent whilst a man outside stood shouting at the passers by. “Roll up, roll up. Come and see the half man half insect. Come see the freak”. For that is what I had become.
After one of the many nights spent being gawked at by wide eyed strangers I returned to the caravan that had become my home and counted my savings. I had enough.
I went to see the doctor the next day. I told him I was tired of being a freak and showed him my money. He said it would be difficult but he could do it. That same day I was anaesthetised and taken into surgery.
When I awoke the doctor was standing by my bed. “A complete success” he said, holding up a mirror for me to view myself. Although still groggy from the operation I eagerly looked into the mirror. Bright blue eyes stared back framed by an oval and slightly flushed face underneath a full head of blonde hair. “What do you think?” he said, lowering the mirror and beaming down at me.
“But what have you done?” I stammered “Where is my old body? And what have you done with my head?” My scream slowly started to fill the room.
by submission | Nov 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Dakota Brown
“We are born out of darkness,” she told herself begrudgingly. “Certainly it holds no true power.”
Around her, the frightened masses had gathered (after, of course, a stretch of panicked footfalls and curses towards the heavens). They found each other in the confusion, linking arms and muttering their fears. The generators had shut down. The darkness was upon them.
She had made her way down the hospital corridors enough to know the dimensions by heart: each doorway passed had always been a moment of anticipation, each elbowed turn a stifled tear. Her mother’s room had been the destination, but when the last drop of gasoline burned out it became the starting point of a journey that she had too little time to fear.
The cables and wires connecting her mother to the hospital’s machines were removed hastily, her only hesitance the grunts of discomfort the frail woman attempted to hide.
“It’s not far,” the young girl lied. “And the lights may be back before our eyes can even adjust.”
The old woman mumbled part of a sentence, the intention of which was to know why the lights had gone out. Her daughter threw her around her neck and joked “I guess even the government has trouble paying their bills.”
Groans of sorrow, fear, and anger filled the darkness, the staff and patients reveling in their soon to be demise. Many sought answers from their gods. Many lashed out when they heard no answer.
Silence, a patient entity awaiting moments of extremity, made itself known. The hospital collectively fell to a hush, each person knowing what was to come. The girl trudged on, however, mother in tow.
“They think this is the end. I hate it for them. Their belief makes it so.”
A swift kick to the base of the entrance door marked the two women’s exit, though the darkness outside mirrored the one they had escaped.
“They have faith, mother, and that is important. But,” she trilled as she retrieved a battery cell from her satchel, “preparation needn’t be ignored.”
The two women, one small from age and one small from sickness, fit comfortably in the single occupant rail capsule. With a quick charge and a push of a button, the capsule lit up and shot off, the mother’s soft brown eyes flickering in the incandescent glow of the control panel. They were eyes that predated sickness. They were eyes that inspired action.
The girl imagined the residents of the city consumed by the darkness, allowing themselves to be torn into nothingness by the nothingness around them, all the while praying for release to gods who had granted them minds and willpower permitting their escapes.
They strained their voices and necks praying to the heavens, but she found the gods in a pair of hazel eyes.
by submission | Nov 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Rachelle Shepherd
We stopped at the Drug Market for clone-cloves, street illegal copies of Indonesian spice and porn-shop perfume. They were thick rolls of black steel with bands of gold in a no-nonsense plastic wrap pack. Even their cellophane slip was less than legal litter, a fine of 50 credits and community service at the soup kitchen.
There was no 2000 era Surgeon General warning on these bootleg beauties.
All natural unnatural chemical release. The Historians say Americans used to pull this sap smoke thick straight to the lungs, relishing on the novelty of loiter fines. They crowded like fireflies outside nightclubs, winking in the shadows of crumbling stone masonry.
They kept the smokers from the non-smokers, segregating vices into self-righteous wrongs and rights. Even a smoker’s breath was poison and a clove was like to knock a set of virgin lungs into toxic shock.
Clone-cloves were no heat no smoke electronic gadgets, packed full of a body’s memory of epiphany and release. All it took was a kiss of lips to metal and our lungs puffed up like balloons, stretching pink and fleshy in our aching chests. The info-tech tickled when it poured down the throat, causing real-life real-time smoker’s cough. We hacked and gagged our way through the first stick and watched the tech fall apart like ashes in the wind.
Three pairs of boots in a puddle of metal shavings.
We were bloated on vice, giddy with the shock and sensation of peering into a dead past of unhealth and hospital bills. Giddy with the memory of smog clouds and ancestor waste.
Our pack passed hand to hand, puff and pass, nausea contagious.
There was nothing left but crinkling cellophane and churning stomachs, water-heavy lungs and a light head buzz. We held a small funeral at the corner side incinerator, paraphernalia flaring into ember. Spicy incense on the midnight air. Scent pollution.
Sudden cravings led us to a regulation café. I wanted a cup of caffeine and a new taste in my mouth. Something melting, something chocolate. Something to wash away the melancholy of propaganda.
by submission | Nov 17, 2013 | Story |
Author : Robbie Kowalski
“Hey Marv, have you ever wondered where all the shit goes once you flush the toilet?”
“I don’t know Joe.” Marv said unenthusiastically as he tried to figure out a crossword puzzle.
“Man all that added weight to ship definitely adds up over a period of time. Couple of thousand people per ship. One shit per day. Tons of extra baggage.”
Marv scratched his head and muttered, “Nine down starts with I ends with-”
“Hey Marv are you listening? I think we have a real crisis on our hands. Tons of shit could be barreling down on us at any second. One system failure and boosh. Death by brown tsunami.”
“Inspector? No. Ingenuity? No.”
“Marvin!” Joe yelled from his work console.
“What!?” Marvin yelled back startled.
“We got a real situation here. The walls are closing in man. I can feel it. One solar flare and pop goes the weasel. I ain’t dying in this death trap of a septic tank.”
“Imbecilic.” Marvin growled. “No.”
“Huh?” Joe replied as he turned side to side looking at the walls nervously.
“Look lugnuts. We are on a spaceship that goes faster than light and can reach the end of the galaxy in a blink of an eye. You’re telling me that the engineers who designed such a vessel are going to short change the pride of the human fleet in the waste management area?”
“Well you never know Marv. There was that thing on the Chernobyl.”
“Comparing a core meltdown on a dilapidated ship to a crap tank explosion on this ship is beyond-” Marvin looked at Joe and decided not to deride him any further. He was his best friend on the ship, after all.
“Oh never mind.” And he went back to his crossword.
“So you think they jettison it out an airlock or something? Sounds ecologically unsound. Shit just floating around the galaxy. What if it hits a ship? Could be a real catastrophe. I can see the headlines now, Poop Hits Ship:Kills All Aboard.”
“Sounds like a real constipated issue.” Marvin smirked.
“I’m serious Marv. What if it did hit a ship?”
“If it is shot out of an airlock which I think it isn’t, it’s probably burned up in our warp wake. Nothing can survive going out into the warp stream. You know that.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“But if they don’t shoot it out an airlock then where do they keep it?”
“Probably recycle it somehow. They recycle everything else around here. Wouldn’t surprise me if they use it to make something else.” Marvin said while he agonized over his crossword puzzle.
“Recycle it?” Joe pondered. “You mean I might be wearing shit laced uniforms or sitting on shit cushioned seats?”
“Maybe even faeces lined computer board switches for that extra fiber strength.” Marvin grinned.
“Ha ha, not funny.” Joe said as he inspected his console and uniform.“Well they definitely do something with it. I just can’t think of what.”
Suddenly, a hologram of a chef from the kitchen staff projected into the room.
“Hey guys, Ron from kitchen speaking, just wanted to tell you about our special for today, Hash Brown Casserole. It came out spectacularly. So, anybody hungry?”
“Ignorance. Ignorance is bliss.”
by submission | Nov 16, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I remember the day things started disappearing. I was driving into work listening to the news on the satellite radio. Astronomers had observed that a galaxy called MACS0647-JD could no longer be detected. It was one of the most distant objects known, over 13 billion light-years away. A cloud of dust or some such thing, it was speculated, had become interposed between Earth and MACS0647-JD. It made sense. Thirteen billion light-years is plenty of space for something to eclipse a galaxy. But that turned out to be only the beginning.
Over the following week, more astronomical objects started disappearing. There was no consistent pattern of location or distance that could be detected. A quasar billions of light-years from Earth vanished the same day two of Jupiter’s moons went missing.
“They’re gone! They’re gone!” my wife had screamed over my cell phone. I had the news pulled up on my computer at work. The “they” my wife was referring to were Portugal, France, and Spain. That area of southwestern Europe and everything and everyone in it had ceased to exist. There was no trace of the missing countries under the ocean and no signs of destruction. The sea and land now formed a coastline with the territory where France had bordered Europe as if that had always been the normal geography of the continent.
Science could provide no explanation let alone a remedy. The Andromeda galaxy winked out of existence. The planet Venus was there one moment and gone the next. A large section of the Midwest disappeared leaving the United States truncated. People were terrified, but civilization held together. Indeed, wars and disputes between nations came to a grinding halt in the face of the catastrophe as governments worked together as never before to find some way to deal with the existential nightmare.
Then, the Moon disappeared. That’s when civilization collapsed. Rioting broke out across what remained of an oddly abbreviated Earth with countries, mountain ranges, deserts, and seas missing, the expected gaps obliterated by the apposing sides of the wounds inexplicably abutting each other instantaneously. Somehow, even the disappearance of Earth’s own territory didn’t seem to affect what remained of the human race like the vanishing of the reassuring light in the night sky.
My wife and I have barricaded ourselves in our house. I have to fire a warning shot every few hours when someone tries to break in. We’ve had no electricity or running water for days. Too much of the power and water infrastructure gone for them to remain operable, I assume. We’ve broken apart our furniture and burned it in the fireplace to keep warm since the Sun vanished three days ago. She sits by the fire night and day — if those terms even mean anything in a sunless world — praying. And crying.
As for me, I find myself looking up through the skylight in the attic. I don’t know why. The stars and planets and galaxies are all gone. The skylight could be painted black and the view would be no different. But I keep going up there and looking out and wondering what we did to deserve this.
**********
“Ready for lunch?” asked the alien of his companion.
“Yeah. Just powering down my computer.”
“Weren’t you running some big sim application on that?”
“Yeah. Haven’t done anything with it for a really long time. Just left it up running. I really need to get a new computer. This one takes forever to close programs and power down.”
