by submission | May 15, 2024 | Story |
Author: Emily Kinsey
A high-pitched scream tore into the night air, and Jules, leaning against the battered frame leading into her little brother’s room, uncrossed her arms and reflexively placed her hands over her ears.
“Mom, can’t you get him to shut up?” Jules asked. “He’ll wake the neighborhood.”
“He has nightmares,” Jules’ mother said over her shoulder.
“He is a nightmare,” Jules muttered.
“Hunter, sweetie, come out, it’s time for bed,” their mother said, kneeling on her hands and knees, trying to coax her son from the inner depths of his bedroom closet. “You need sleep.”
“I can’t sleep, the Grey’s are coming!”
“Nothing is coming, Hunter,” Jules said from the doorway. “Mom, seriously, the neighbors will call the cops.”
“Hunter, honey, you want your blankie?” their mother asked. “You’re not too old for your lovey.”
“No!” Hunter shouted from the darkened closet.
“Hunter, enough,” their mother said. “Get in bed! Nothing is coming for you, baby, I promise.”
“You’re a liar!” Hunter yelled.
“Honey, I am not a liar. Why would you say that?”
“Because that’s what you say every night!” Hunter shouted. “And it’s a lie! They come every night!”
“Who comes every night?”
“Aliens. The Greys.”
Their mother leaned back on her heels, distracted. “I had a dream about this last night.”
“Déjà vu,” Jules whispered. She felt it too.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Hunter pleaded, emerging from the closet. He looked older to Jules, wiser than his eight years. “And it’s not déjà vu. The Greys are coming. They come every night. Each day repeats itself, and I’m the only one who remembers.”
“Hunter, dial the crazy down to a zero, okay?” Jules said. Goosebumps prickled her arms. “Nothing is—”
The room was suddenly encased in a blinding pale blue light. The wall to Jules’ left billowed and pulled apart silently, disappearing into the night sky.
“Prepare yourselves, what comes next is the worst part,” Hunter said as the room was enveloped in white mist. He darted from the closet and sprinted past Jules. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her into the hallway. Jules quickly lost sight of her mother in the thick mist.
“Get away from it!” Hunter shouted to Jules.
“What have we tried?” Jules asked. She no longer doubted Hunter.
“Everything,” Hunter said, backing down the hallway and eyeing the intruding mist. “Knives, baseball bats, the fire poker, UV light, water…they’re invincible. They hate loud noises, but the mist deafens all sound. They come in the mist.”
“What do they do when they catch us?”
“Use your imagination.”
Deep dread hit the pit of Jules’ stomach as she thought of her mother. “What do they want from us?”
“Not us, Jules. You. They want you.”
“Me?”
“I’ve tried everything, but they just restart the day over again. They told me last time…it’ll stop if I give them you.”
“Hunter!”
“I’m sorry; I just can’t live another day like this.”
Staunchly, Hunter grabbed his sister and pushed her into the mist. He heard her muted scream as she disappeared into the vapor, and saw a thin, gray claw clamp down on her wrist.
“There, she’s yours!” Hunter yelled into the white abyss. “We had a deal! Now leave me alone!” The mist growled in response, and Hunter, who knew what each growl meant by now, nodded in silent satisfaction. He watched the mist retreat into his bedroom, where it slipped outside. The wall slid back into place, and Hunter was left in eerie, beautiful silence.
“I did it,” Hunter whispered. He fell to the floor and cradled his head. “I’m free. It’s finally over.”
by submission | May 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Thor got thunder.
Prometheus got fire.
Shiva got a laser eye.
Me? I got a measly quark. Smallest thing in the universe. Two and a half trillion times smaller than a grain of sand.
What’s a god supposed to do with that? Make the masses tremble and beg mercy, pledge obedience and fealty–to what? A quark, a subatomic particle that can’t even be directly observed. That only theoretically exists.
Does that make me theoretical, a speculative deity, worthy only of mind-crumbling conjecture? That’ll never get me the succulent sacrifices and liberal libations offered up to larger, noisier, showier gods.
How can I compete with those look-at-me divinities? Because it’s all about competition. It always is. If you’re not winning you’re not living–and that’s especially true of immortals. Nothing is worse than being ignored, overlooked, unseen, unnoticed.
Small.
So small that your existence is a question, an academic abstraction, a mere ghost in the machine. Think how hard that makes it to command respect and inspire adulation. Or conjure fear.
That’s the key. Fear. And who fears the very small?
It took a while to figure that out. Most of humanity’s existence, in fact. It took scores of quantum physicists to reveal what lies at the rock-bottom foundation of all matter: my regal quarkiness.
Now, I have the platform to shake the world, demand obeisance, and rule the ethereal pantheon. Thor. Prometheus. Shiva. Mere pretenders of power and might, for without me, without my quarks, there is nothing. I am prime, the building block of creation, everything made to my plan, in my image.
Finally, I have a modern identity worthy of my might, and a newly supreme name to make the masses quaver underfoot and bend a knee to the unbreakable god of small things: LEGO.
by submission | May 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Frances Koziar
I had only paid for an hour of the tech, and when the end came, I wasn’t ready for it.
I had a visor over my eyes, muffs on my ears, finger-control gloves on my hands, and a sensory top suit, but I didn’t feel any of it. I had gone off the beaten path of the game, away from the quests and into the common room of an inn. I wasn’t there to say or do anything so much as to drink in their smiles and their laughter. To eat the food I wished would reach my aching stomach. To have them refer to me as the warrior, as if I had a job or a life. As if I could even walk anymore after the accident and the inevitable nightmare of poverty that had followed it.
When I handed the gear back to the attendant, an android dressed in far better clothing than my rescued scraps, I didn’t regret the money I’d saved for the game. But as I dragged my broken body away, I stumbled over something and had to catch myself on a wall with great heaving breaths of grief. I couldn’t see what I’d tripped over, couldn’t see anything at all, because my tears blurred the winking lights of the arcade until I saw nothing but shattered dreams.
by submission | May 11, 2024 | Story |
Author: Maudie Bryant
Cool water wraps around me, my skin dappled by the summer sun through the rippling surface. Laughter echoes down the shore where friends splash without care. I push back a loose strand of hair, and catch a flash of what looks like glitter clinging to my thigh. I brush at the spot, expecting the sparkly fleck to disappear, but it remains stubbornly in place. Strange. I pick at it for a moment, scraping my fingernail across the area. It reflects the cerulean sky and cotton clouds above. In the fading sunlight, it almost seems to smolder. A shower will get it.
Under the steamy spray, I scrub the mark, growing more annoyed with each pass. It won’t budge. Leaning in for a closer look, I realize it’s not glitter at all—it’s a hole. A tiny, perfect circle punched into my flesh. A puncture. A trick of the light, maybe a scratch. I just didn’t notice it before. But the more I look, the more it becomes clear. The pitter patter of water against the bathroom tile competes with the growing pounding in my ears. An apprehensive touch sends a tremor through my leg. Panic begins to grip me, but I push it down.
It doesn’t hurt, but it feels unusual. My hands fumble with a pair of tweezers, pinching the edge of the opening. I press my finger beside the hole. The world inside tilts. Instead of sinew and bone, I see… sky. An endless blue dotted with fluffy clouds, stretching as far as my limited view allows. Below, an inconceivable turquoise ocean shimmers back at me. It’s like looking out of a plane window, only this view is coming from inside my leg.
Vertigo slams into me like a rogue wave. This is impossible. A hallucination, a dream, I’m dreaming. This is some bizarre joke from the universe. Anxiety claws at my throat. I twist the tweezers still pinching the edge of the hole, attempting to see both sides of my flesh—of the fabric connecting me and whatever this is. Tears begin to blur my vision. What if the hole keeps growing? I wonder if I can dig it out. Can it be surgically removed? What if the inside of my thigh becomes a portal, taking me up in it? The thought of this small mark becoming a prison sends a fresh surge of panic crashing over me. I drop the tweezers and sink completely in the tub, the shower spray flowing over me. When I next peek through the porthole, I see a dark, elongated shape cutting across the blue expanse. The vessel leaves a wispy plume of white mist in its wake, moving with a mechanical grace. My throat clenches as the vastness of the sky inside my leg suddenly becomes suffocating. I’m not alone. A choked sob escapes me, joining the echo of water on tiles.
With a shaky breath, I pull back. The strange world remains, another sky, another ocean inside my body. I shut off the shower, stepping out while water cascades off my trembling limbs. My fear wrestles with a strange, nascent sense of wonder. This hole in my leg. This impossible breach. This doorway to the unknown. I rummage through the cupboard and find a cartoon-themed bandage, affixing it firmly over the spot.
by submission | May 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: C.R. Kiegle
My memories go back only three months, but I know I am older than that. Much older. I can feel it in the grit and the grinding sounds as I move, gears gone years without servicing. There’s not much time to think about how old my bones may be, however. Barbara keeps me busy.
In my three months I have existed only in this hospice room and only with Barbara. I exist to serve her, keeping her alive and keeping her company. She must have had a family once, before she came here, as she calls me by their names. I have been able to discern there were two sons- Thomas and Roger.
“It’s been so long since your last visit, Thomas,” she’ll say to me every so often.
“It has,” I reply before moving with squeaking parts to take out the deck of cards from the drawer of her bedside table. Usually she will forget thinking I am him once a game has started. She almost always forgets quickly.
Until today.
“You don’t like Go Fish,” she instead says quietly after I dealt the cards. “I remember now, Thomas doesn’t like Go Fish.”
I sit in silence. I’m not programmed to lie to her- I can agree that her children have not visited her, but I cannot pretend to be someone I am not.
“You like Go Fish,” I reply.
“Oh,” she says quietly before turning to look out the window. It’s not a real window- just a screen put up to make the patients feel more comfortable. Barbara’s has a video of a line of cherry trees, petals blowing about in the wind. It’s an old screen, with dead pixels scattered across it and giving away the illusion to those who really look.
“I can’t quite tell what’s real anymore, Sara,” Barbara says finally. Sara’s the name listed on my nametag, but I can’t tell if it really is my name. The files in my hard drive list only my make and model.
“Would you like to play Go Fish?” I ask.
“Do you want to play Go Fish?” she replies.
“I do what you like.”
“But what do you like?”
I do not know what I like. Perhaps I like nothing. Perhaps there was a version of me before that existed long enough to know what I like and don’t like. I don’t know where those memories would be. I’ve scanned my memory drives for them and found nothing but my instructions and a text file of what Barbara does and doesn’t like to do and eat.
“Oh, are we playing Go Fish, Roger? I love Go Fish!” Barbara then says, and the gears in my face rub against one another as I move to smile.
“Yes, we’re playing Go Fish. I’ll go first. Do you have any sevens?”
It takes her a moment to go through all her cards, scanning them over and over again to check for a seven. I take a moment to do some scanning of my own, wondering if I had just missed a file within a file within a file somewhere in my memory that contained some inkling of the past.
“Nothing- go fish!”
