by submission | Sep 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Helstrom
The blank page seems to stare at me – it always does. It’s an anachronism. I am of an older generation of writers. I like the feel of keys submitting to my fingertips, the facsimile of a sheet of paper presented on a luminescent screen. It is the only light in the room now. On the desk, a full glass of scotch, and a threateningly empty bottle beside it. Smoke curling up from the ashtray. The little wooden Komodo dragon I bought in Indonesia once.
A bit further off, more anachronisms. Books, lined up sternly on a set of shelves. I don’t have mine for nostalgic flair, I actually read the damn things. Something about the touch of paper, the smell of ink, the actual turning of a page. Writers are supposed to be like that, I guess. I’m not that much older, really, that’s bullshit. I just like the taste of it – “an older generation of writers”.
I think about the tens of thousands of words I have committed to this blank page, only to be erased and forgotten forever. Times like these, I wish I could call them back somehow. There must have been something good in there. Something I could salvage now. Jesus Christ, anything to get this blank page to fill up. Blank pages seem to fill up by themselves once you get them started – getting them started being the trick, of course.
Chasey stirs on the bed, the dim blue of the screen shining on her curves. Chasey? Stacy? Maybe she’s called Charlie, even. It’ll be short for Charlotte but I’ve always been a sucker for girls with boys’ names. Like Charlie or Sam or Alex. There might be some bi-curiosity in that. Given the night we just had, though, I think Charlie would beg to differ. Maybe I should write something about her.
A few words come out but they’re pretty vulgar. Not bad, per sé, but more like something you would start off a racy novel with. The kind they sell at gas stations. The cursor backs over them quickly. I’ll hang myself before I start writing dreck like that. Or at least I’ll stop paying the rent.
I light up another and take a sip of scotch, which I know I’ll regret once the glass is empty and the bottle gives out nothing but fumes. Charlie mumbles in her sleep and rolls over, two soft blue crescents highlighting her butt. I turn away and stare back at the blank page again, hoping it wi—
— Getting back in your own head is a little disorienting at first, but you get used to it —
“Hey man,” I say, tossing the chip on the counter, “What soft shit you call this?”
“You wanted something long.” Says the dude.
“Yeah, something long-time. Fuck is this?”
“It’s good stuff. Don’t worry, has sex too.”
“Right, just after I write the great American novel? Give me something else.”
“Philistine.”
The dude takes the chip back, hands me another from the regular box. I slip it in and right before it starts, I notice he’s tapping at an antique laptop. Idio—
—I’m on a circular bed, must be at least ten feet across. Mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice. Two Asian girls in platform heels, nothing else, walking up to me. This is better.
by submission | Sep 5, 2010 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson
After eight long years in his lush prison Martin finally woke up one day to something new.
A woman for god sake, the bugheads had actually brought him a woman! She wasn’t exactly sexy by his old standards, short cropped hair and quite plain looking, but after this long without setting eyes on another human being she was the best damn thing he had ever seen.
She cowered on the floor beside one of the sofas near the outer window, hugging a cushion to her body. He hopped down off the bed and moved toward her, “Hello,” he said.
She made a startled sound and looked at him as if she had just noticed him there for the first time. Her voice came out weak and shaky, “Who… who are you? What is this place?”
“You don’t remember much do you hon? It’s okay; I remember when the bugheads first grabbed me. It was, and still is the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. And the sad thing is, we aint ever getting out of here.” Martin ventured a little closer to her but she instinctively pulled back as close to the wall as she could. “It’s not all that horrible you know. We’re pretty well cared for.”
She continued to peer at him from behind the cushion, eyes wide and darting. He held out a reassuring hand. “Stand up, look out the window behind you.”
She hesitated for nearly a minute but he waited patiently, his outstretched hand never wavering. And then finally she tentatively got to her feet, refusing his hand, and turned around.
Together they looked out at the bughead home world. They were over a hundred stories in the air and had a fantastic view of lush green swamps stretching to the horizon where an orange sun was creeping up into an early morning sky.
After a time she finally allowed him to show her around the posh accommodations their alien captors had provided. “The best I can figure is we have about ten thousand square feet of living space here, including the gymnasium and swimming pool upstairs. The bugheads haven’t forgotten anything as far as comforts go.”
“But why? Why have they brought us here?”
“Come on,” he said as he led her to the inner window.
There they looked out into the shaft and it was evident to the frightened, bewildered woman that this massive building was a circular tower with a hollow center. And the inside was lined, as far up and down as could be seen, with windows like the one they were now looking through. Then she gasped as she realized what was behind all those other windows.
Martin pointed at a group of green slouching bipeds a couple stories up, “I call those guys the lizard gang.” Then referring to a pair of large, horned, red quadrupeds directly across from them he said, “Morning Mr. and Mrs. Buffalo.” Then he continued for some time to tell her his own pet names for creatures and beasts of nearly unlimited design and description. And as he said, “That fellow down there? I just call him Mr. Ugly,” She suddenly grabbed him and spun him toward her. “We’re part of a fucking zoo?”
“Zoo, collection, call it what you want. At any rate,” he hesitated, sizing her up for a second, “I guess they thought I needed a mate.”
“Sorry,” she said pulling back firmly. “They should have done their research a little better.”
And he suddenly knew exactly what she was going to say next.
“I’m gay.”
by submission | Sep 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Milo James Fowler
The cattle car filled to capacity rattles slowly down its elevator shaft, squealing through a black punctuated only by intermittent amber bulbs casting a wash of rust across steel bars and the small faces between. Eyes blink, unaccustomed to the dark; tight fists rub away sleep. Full of questions, they remain silent for now, carried deep into the bowels of the earth.
Far above them, the world’s nuclear foreplay heaves toward an inexorable climax that will leave nothing in its wake. Nation has risen up against nation, blindly arrogant and afraid — a dangerous emotional cocktail when survival instincts run high and missile launch codes are recited from memory, chanted as fervently as prayers.
“Where are we going?” a boy whispers, clasping tightly to the hand beside him.
“Be quiet.” The girl squeezes his hand and presses her forehead against his temple in the dark.
Strangers, the pair of them, like all of the others crammed into this cold steel basket. In any other situation, they would have done everything in their power to avoid this close proximity. But here, in the otherworldly unknown, they have temporarily forgotten the taboos of their preteen surface life. They find comfort through touch, skin against skin.
“They want us to be quiet,” she breathes into his ear, and only he hears it. He nods once.
There are four of Them, one stationed at each corner of the mesh screen platform beneath their feet. They wear white coats and carry clipboards. They could be scientists or doctors. They stare at the children between them and don’t utter a word. Government officials, someone said as they were herded into the car. Representatives of the United World.
The shaft quakes without warning, rumbling above. Tremors travel downward, and the car jerks side to side, screeching against concrete. The cables hold. Short cries and murmurs arise among the startled children as they regain their footing. The scientists, grasping the steel bars at their sides, recover their composure. For a moment, they looked unnerved as well.
The boy faces the girl in the confusion. “What’s happening up there?”
“Bombs. War. Don’t you watch TV?”
“I was asleep.”
“We all were. They took us in the night. In vans. And they brought us here.”
“War?” he frowns. “But the world’s been at peace for years and years. The United World — ”
The scientists demand silence, even as another quake rumbles downward. They reassure the children and explain how safe they are here, that soon they will reach the bunker below and there will be all sorts of fun toys and games for them to play and more food and drink — candy, even — than they could ever imagine.
“Why us?” the boy asks her.
She almost smiles. “We’re special. Didn’t you take the tests?”
“They never told me my score.”
“I think you passed.”
They all did. These are the world’s best and brightest, their only hope for the future. One day, when the ash clears and the nuclear winters have passed, these children will rise up from the depths of the earth as adults to reclaim the sterile wasteland left by their parents. They will be fruitful and multiply — if they can.
“How will we live down here?” he asks.
“Together,” she says.
by submission | Sep 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Brendan Garbee
My ex-husband shows up on my doorstep on a blustery day in the middle of a sunshower, and he puts his hands in his pockets and sways in a way that tells me he’s a little bit drunk. He smiles at me sheepishly and says, “I heard you didn’t live here anymore. But I guess I knew you’d be here, anyway.”
Fourteen years ago, a Black Hole opened in outer space and everyone started getting younger instead of older. Scientists say that time is getting pulled into reverse by the Black Hole’s gravity. I don’t know about all that, but last year the subdivision where I was living fell apart. The plot of land turned back into an abandoned stone quarry. My ex-husband and I separated 32 years ago, I sold this little house back then and moved away and now I’m 78, I’m physically 46 and I’m living somewhere I never thought I’d be again.
I offer him a seat on the porch, and go inside to fix us some drinks. When I come back out, he’s got his boots up on the banister just like he would have had them when this was his porch, and you can see in his face that he’s thinking about that. He hands me a cigarette.
“You quit years ago,” I protest as he holds the light for me.
“I smoke all I want, and each morning I’ve got healthier lungs than the day before.” He says. “Why not smoke?”
I shake my head. “They’re gonna fix this someday and time’ll go forward again.”
And he grunts and says, “No they won’t.”
He tells me that his niece has gotten so young that she’s in the hospital. “We’re all gonna turn back to zygotes someday. And in another couple million years the solar system will fall into the Hole and that’ll be that.”
“Jesus Christ,” I sigh. “I hope you don’t act that way when we lose our children.”
Distracted, he frowns. “I’m sure I won’t.”
He’s restless, tapping his foot in a way that would have irritated me the last time I was 46. “I quit drinking, you know. Completely quit. I was going to church, really trying to get my life in order. And I stuck with it after the Black Hole.” He sighs. “A few months back, I just stopped giving a damn. I don’t know why.” He grinds his teeth a little. “I tell myself I’m still an 80 year old man. I don’t have to go through all the bad stuff again,” he says, and I think that it sounds like he’s asking a question. I don’t have any answers for him, if he is.
I hug my knees to my chest. “When I got a job offer back here in town, I was astonished. When this old house showed up for rent, I was mortified. I didn’t even consider taking the place until a few months ago. Partly for fear that you’d be here.”
He smiles. “What changed your mind?”
I scoff. “I didn’t change my mind about you, buster.” Then I sigh and stretch my legs out in front of me and I’m quiet for a little while. “You remember that day we went out on Marty Larmine’s sailboat? Molly and him were still together then, and Randy and Cheryl were there. Our kids were just babies.” We glance at each other and then both turn away quick, shy like teenagers.
“I’d like to do that again,” I say after a minute, sighing. And we sit there on the porch watching the puddles collect in the street and ripple and then send their raindrops hurtling upwards into the billowing heavens.
by submission | Sep 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Clint “Father Goose” Wilson
How did I start all this falling? I can’t even remember anymore. It would seem that I’ve been dropping through blackness for a couple of months now. But that would be impossible. How could I have survived that long?
I stopped screaming a long time ago. Except for the odd gust of warmish wind now and then I can almost imagine that I’m merely suspended in the centre of nothingness. Floating in the black void I strain through the fog of my mind. Was I pushed from a precipice? Clipped from a cliff? Mayhap a cyclone sucked me from a Sikorsky. That’s odd. I don’t recall ever having ridden in a Russian rotary powered aircraft.
My mind is starting to wander off and play practical jokes on me. I keep seeing things in the dark.
One day for instance I was falling along through the black like I usually do when I swear a dead body flew by. It was as though it was falling as well but I was falling much faster, so it quickly flew up past me and out of sight, its loose clothes flapping in the wind. THAT made my fuckin’ skin crawl!
But now I am seeing mushrooms, thousands upon thousands of brightly colored mushrooms are all around me. I know with my heart that I am still in blackness, yet my eyes tell me that I am now falling down an endless well with funky fungi covering nearly every square inch of its curved walls. My god the mushrooms are dancing!
Day two-hundred and something I think, maybe. Now the well is lined with long probing lizard tongues. The slimy forked tongues try to reach me as I plummet past. Once in a while one brushes against my arm and I let out a yelp or a whimper.
Day three or four or five-hundred perhaps, who gives a shit? My imagination is so worked up into a lather now that I no longer see the blackness. My mind puts on brilliant displays of color and light. Sometimes I am surrounded by waterfalls, sometimes by tumbling kitty cats. I can even eat whenever I want and have whatever I want. Turkey pot pie anyone? Coming right up! It even tastes real.
Today I am sipping a martini and watching reruns of Hee Haw as I fall through eternity and it occurs to me. Why must I continue to fall? I mean, I can do and have anything I want now thanks to my super developed imagination. Endless months of sensory deprivation have made me into a master at creating my own surroundings. I toss the martini over my shoulder and allow the glass to break upon bricks which are not there. Well that is that. I am no longer falling. Wow, I’m actually walking down Main Street! It feels great to put weight on my legs again. Why didn’t I think to think of this sooner?
But I still have a problem. I still know in my own mind that none of it is real, and that I continue to fall into the pit of eternity. Well, say then, all I have to do is imagine that I forget that I am falling into the pit of eternity and then I will truly be free to live my life once more. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
About what? What was I just thinking?
