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?
by submission | Aug 31, 2010 | Story
Author : Andrew Hawkins
The meeting was in a small stale office of the Pentagon, the two crisp suits shifted in their seats as I came in. I was tall clean shaved in a comfortable cream jacket, silk shirt, tie and custom leather shoes worth more than minimum wage makes in a year. They looked at me with uncertainty, no doubt I defied their expectations.
I opened with confidence, catching my interviewers on the back foot “Good afternoon, I am Mr Ross, you would be Agent Adrian Cole and Agent Maria Fernandez, shall we begin?”.
Adrian was hesitant but to her credit Maria took me in her stride, she must have been a few years older than her partner, clearly the more experienced of the two.
“Of course Mr Ross, now I just want to make certain you know what’s involved here. Your duties will include…” I cut her off with a wave of my hand, damn I love freaking out these Yale types.
“Agent Fernandez, I am perfectly aware of what is involved, the documents on the project were quite comprehensive. You are already aware of my previous employers, so let me cut to the chase. Finding highly trained government agents with high level access is easy. You can throw a brick in DC and hit a dozen. I have Graceful level clearance, two grades above your own. I am certified to know national secrets that would start wars if they got into the wrong hands and I have 20 years with a flawless record for my tact not to mention intensive torture resistance training with the US Marines and the British SBS, I am a rare commodity.”
I slid a crisp white sheet of paper across the table with a 6 digit number on it and relished the looks on their faces.
“Finding janitorial staff with the same clearance is significantly harder, hence my fee. Trust me Ma’am none of those suits will be willing to clean up alien substances off the laboratory floor or unclog the toilet that the Head of Project 12 was using yesterday and your average cleaning staff won’t be able to keep sufficiently quiet about the work involved or be able to spot a class 1 bio-hazard leak. I think you will find my services and record for discretion are well worth my fee.”
Agent Cole scowled in silence, but Fernandez simply nodded.
After a long pause staring at the number she met my gaze “Your fee will not be a problem, It will be a pleasure to work with you Mr Ross.”
by submission | Aug 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Fred Coppersmith
He calls her beautiful but he doesn’t mean it. He is in love with someone else.
He feels his hand stroke his wife’s back, hears himself whisper I love you, you know that, go back to sleep. He rolls over on his side towards the window. Through the half-opened blinds he can see the moon, full and round and orange, in the night sky.
He thinks of her, the woman in his dreams, waiting at the station, eyeing the watch he gave her as a birthday present. He imagines her there, waiting for the shuttle that will take her to Tranquility. She will be going on holiday to visit her mother. She has talked of almost nothing else for several weeks. The gray lunar mountains are just visible through the opaque shielding behind her, and the Earth, if she can see it at all, will hardly register: just another gray speck in the sky. No one lives there anymore where she comes from.
He feels himself fall asleep then, and when he wakes he does not tell his wife about the dreams. He does not tell her about the Earth, dead for centuries, or about the woman he is meeting at the station on the surface of the moon. He does not tell his wife how beautiful this other woman is, or how this world has become more and more like a dream. She would laugh, and then he would have to smile and say, you’re right, of course, I was only joking, what’s for breakfast? He would have to say, you know you’re the only one. He would have to say he loves her.
And he is growing tired of the lie.
