by J. Loseth | Oct 17, 2005 | Story |
The snow falls on my smile like that old fairy tale—you know, the one about the dwarves and the cannibal queen, the one with the apple. The tableau would be better if it was sunset, because I always liked sunsets best, but you take what you can get.
I’m drinking in the buildings, the river, the empty streets where cabbies used to curse at pedestrians who never bothered to listen. I’m eating the silence that comes with snow. Everything is filling up white, though there’s a grey cast to the new blanket, not like the picture books I used to read about Christmas when I was a kid.
I know they will have missed me by now, but no one will come back. The overseers won’t let them. It’s too dangerous now. I can’t feel it, though—my body’s still strong, still perfectly capable of walking and talking and breathing in the last of my home. They’ll say I was crazy, I’m sure, but I love this city, this state. I’d go crazy for real if I had to leave it all behind. I never got how people could live underground. It’s the air, I think, that would get me. I can’t live without the wind on my face.
The snow is thick now, and I think I can feel a little of the numbness setting in. That’s the way they said it would be: slow but painless. I did the research. I knew what I was getting into. My body feels stiff and I can’t quite tell if the snow is cold when I pick it up with my bare hands. It’s so beautiful. I know what it means, but all I can think is that it’s beautiful.
I throw my handful in the air and let it fall down with the rest, laughing out loud as it brushes my fading skin. In all my life, it has never snowed like this in New York.
by J. Loseth | Oct 9, 2005 | Story
First it was the blacks. That one was easy, like a warm-up. They’re a cinch to pick out after all. Then it was the commies. They were harder, but with such catchy slogans, who could pass it up? Then came the terrorists. That one must have been fun. I mean, when you think about it, who isn’t a terrorist? But that one blew over too. Then came the gays, but we all expected that. I mean, really, they were asking for it. I didn’t care one way or the other, but I knew they had it coming.
Then there was a while when they didn’t go after anybody. That was our finest hour. It took two thousand years, but finally everyone believed that the fisherman was right: we really could live in peace. For us, it was Heaven. For them, it was Hell. Peace was bad for business.
Now it’s the preachers. Not the way it used to be, when one set of preachers went after another—priests, lamas, rabbis, gurus, whatever—but in the new way, where anyone who admits to a higher power is punished. We were asking for it, too, I guess. It’s ironic, but then, irony has always been God’s purview in my mind.
Now we meet in basements, back alleys, fields, or barns in the middle of nowhere to muffle the noise. All the symbols are lit up inside with Christmas lights from before Christmas was forbidden. It’s a celebration paying homage to something greater than ourselves, something that flows inside of us and can’t be stopped. I watch from the edge of the room, sitting cross-legged on an old crate and feeling straw poke through my habit. The dance is a circle of laughter, warm and fluid, more beautiful than any sermon I have ever heard or given. No one argues over whether they get to dance with the cross, the star, or the moon; they’re just glad to have something to show that they care. We don’t bother to call Him by names anymore.
by J. Loseth | Oct 6, 2005 | Story |
“This place is a dump,†Headley muttered, for what must have been the thousandth time. Foxworth rolled her eyes.
“Of course it’s a dump. It’s our job. If it wasn’t a dump, we wouldn’t be here.â€
“Yeah, I know,†Headley replied, “But look at this place. I mean, really look at it. One guy can’t make buildings rot like that, even if he is a zapper.â€
Foxworth’s eyes took in the crumbling foundations, the sagging walls, the rust, the dirt, the mess. Her hand drifted to the triple-cycling proton gun in her side holster. It was there for her protection, but how could she protect herself against time?
“Well, this is a class 15 if I ever saw one. Definitely uninhabitable. No clue where anybody could be hiding in all this mess, though. Even zappers gotta eat.â€
Foxworth nodded her silent agreement. Sometimes a mutant like this would turn tail and run off after it had killed so many people, attacked by some parody of conscience. They’d have to file a pink form, and while Foxworth hated that, it was better than sticking around this dump any longer.
“All right,†she said at last, turning towards Headley. “Let’s pack up and get out of—â€
“What are you doing here?â€
Both partners turned towards the new voice, wide-eyed. Foxworth’s hand went immediately to her gun, though she noticed that Headley’s did not. He frowned instead, kneeling down to speak to the boy, no more than seven or eight, who faced them solemnly from the rubble.
“We’re here to help,†Headley assured him. “Are you hurt? Did you lose your parents?â€
A cat meowed and Foxworth jumped back, her hand clenching around her gun before she registered the source of the noise. The animal drifted out from behind the pile of debris, making it only the second living thing they’d seen today, and rubbed against the boy’s legs. He picked it up, still frowning at the two government workers.
“You shouldn’t be here. Go away.â€
“We just want to make sure you’re okay,†Headley told the boy in that maddeningly reasonable tone, the one that adults used on children and men used on women when they were feeling particularly superior.
“Go away,†the boy repeated, holding the cat close to his chest.
“Look, kid, you’re gonna have to come with us.†Hadley was frowning now. He didn’t like being contradicted or disobeyed.
“I said go away!†The child’s face contorted at the same instant that the cat hissed, flattening its ears back against the top of its head. The veins in Headley’s forehead exploded like overripe grapes, spattering blood everywhere, just like the rest of the corpses they’d seen in this wreckage. He barely had time for a yell of pain before he collapsed, lifeless.
Foxworth was frozen solid. She knew she should be drawing her gun, yelling, crying, running away, doing anything but standing dumbly in the rubble, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“Come on, Bugaboo.†The child held out his arms and the cat, after a last look at Foxworth, ambled back and jumped into them. The child frowned at her. “Go away,†he repeated. “Don’t ever come back here again.†Then he turned away.
The cat’s green eyes were mesmerizing, and Foxworth caught her breath. For one irrational moment she thought she could get lost in those eyes, like a labyrinth, and never come out.
by J. Loseth | Oct 3, 2005 | Story |
There was nothing special about Ming, nothing unique. She had no exceptional talents, no carefully-kept secrets, no inventive thoughts, no special intelligence. She liked to go to parties and shop for clothes and wanted to be a good mother someday. Her face was pretty, her hair and skin smooth and well-kept. She was generic, shaped just like a high school girl was supposed to be, completely normal.
The other kids sneered at her in the hallways, looking down their noses at the girl who was so average she didn’t even have a zit. They whispered about her behind her back, how her parents were Old World, backwards, people who didn’t believe in gene-picking and liked to let nature take its course. It was like they’d never left planetside. Ming hid her face behind her books, burying herself in her carefully-done hair and manicured nails, shrinking away from the crowds of unique faces, people who didn’t look like the perfect model of a human being.
At night Ming would kneel by the side of her bed and clasp her palms together, eyes squeezed tight shut, praying that God would break her nose so that it would be bent like Terri’s; or give her birthmark like Shelinda’s, that looked like a crescent moon; or stunt the growth of her arm like Belline’s; or even just make her eyes glow in the dark like Marie’s. She knew better than to ask for a lisp or to shrink her height overnight or for her fingers to suddenly start bending the wrong way on command. God didn’t like people who were greedy.
Ming prayed with all her might, but every morning she would wake up to a perfectly symmetrical face in her mirror and cry. She would always be normal, always look just like the generic pictures in the history books, the perfect human standard of beauty. She would never be different like everyone else.
In the lunchroom Ming hid in a corner, eating silently off of her tray, afraid to get up and throw her trash away because the other girls liked to trip her and make her spill. She didn’t notice Eleanor until she heard a whispered “hey†and looked up, to find the most popular girl in school sitting across from her. Eleanor’s left cheek was sunken in, the skin over it smooth and taut like a scar, never tanning or moving. Ming looked down at her plate, knowing she would never have something beautiful like that. She didn’t speak.
“Hey,†Eleanor repeated, “hey, look at me.†Eleanor was looking at her with fascination, almost reverence, entirely different from the rest of the girls in school. Ming frowned.
“I heard you’re normal.â€
Ming swallowed and nodded, feeling lower than dirt. She felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach.
Eleanor didn’t sneer, though, or scoff like the rest of the girls. She just looked at Ming, wide-eyed, her half-smile unable to reach the sunken side of her face, but trying. “That’s so cool.†The smooth, beautiful skin of Eleanor’s left side pulled against one eye, making it seem sad even though it was shining with wonder. “I wish I was normal,†Eleanor whispered. “I’m so tired of being just like everyone else.â€
by J. Loseth | Sep 28, 2005 | Story |
“Any personal belongings you’ll need accommodated in your craft, Mr. Mercer?â€
“Nope.†John shook his head at the distribution agent before him. “No baggage.â€
It was John Mercer’s last day on Earth.
He’d lived here for thirty-eight years, give or take a decade or so spent on Luna or the nearby outposts. Never once had he gone out of the solar system, not even on vacation. John Mercer had spent his life working, just like everyone else. He’d been a paper-pusher, a street cleaner, an asteroid skimmer, a window-washer, a cheap thug, and even a postman for a few months, but no matter where he went, she followed him. There was nothing he could do to escape her. Nothing except this.
As John climbed into the small craft the distributor had assigned him, he felt the weight of those thirty-eight years shifting, readying for flight just as he was. Her face lingered in the back of his mind, stern and matronly, as it had since he was a child hitting baseballs into solar panels. He grinned to himself as he closed the hatch and flicked the switches to prepare the in-ship lights for flight mode.
After today, he’d never see the face of the Earth again. After today he’d no longer be a paper-pusher or a street cleaner or an asteroid skimmer or a window-washer. He’d be a pilot, somewhere in the outer colonies—goodness only knew where. John hadn’t specified. He’d just asked for a first assignment somewhere where he’d never be able to come back.
The base doors slid open and John met the field of stars with the white of his teeth. He could feel the rumbling of the ignition through his entire body and made sure the IV drip in his arm was secure. He wouldn’t want to wake up during the jump, after all. As the outpost’s bulkheads fell away beneath him, he stared a challenge back at the blue-green planet he had once called his home. So long, Earth. Nice knowing you.
The drip started right on schedule, just as the engines shot him away from everything he wanted to forget. His consciousness dissolved in time with the drip of the IV, and he could feel her face dissipating as well, fading away as surely as the planet behind him. With his last moment of coherence before the three-year jump, John Mercer grinned.
No baggage.
