by Hari Navarro | Jul 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
This is where we end.
Tucked so neatly under the aftermath.
I stare at my now long dead cat as its fur fuses and its stench fills the sill upon which it lays. I see its flesh sag and melt and my mind shifts to the meat in my moribund fridge. I think maybe it is time to have sex, but my flesh is also limp and I can feel as the life at my groin curdles and dies in the shimmer.
Hai rotto il cazzo.
Looking up I can tell you, I can paint for you how it looks. You want to know, right? Then allow me to regale you of this portrait, this abomination we all so clumsily wrought.
The sky is wet and dripping.
The smeared bowl above, after all we have done to it, is done.
It is done and it hangs and it weeps like napalm tears through the cherub puff of newborn cheeks.
It is done and it purges down upon every last one of us; all of the refuse, all that we infused for so very, very long up and into its veins.
Vaffanculo.
It seemed to happen so fast, although of course it did not. This bitch brew had been fermenting for years. But then, on a staggeringly hot Sunday morning last winter it all just — broke.
The weather congealed. Lightning forgot its thunder as rain tumbled as bawling fangs from an acid-loosened jaw. And a black wind did lick all with a most putrid and sticky caress.
There was someone I paid to love me once. I wonder if they are still working? Might even get in for free, being as its the end of days and all.
Genesis was her name, though surely it wasn’t. I think her name was Ane — I don’t know why, I just do.
I remember Ane’s tears as they gathered in the gutter beneath the deep green pools of her eyes as she came. And, the welts as they swam shimmering below the glow of the sweat that glazed and dribbled from the arch of her stomach. Or do I?
I have lesions of my own now, legions of lesions and if we were together again oh, how we would compare. What fun!
I wonder if she remembers me? I wonder… if she managed to find whatever it was she was looking for. Everyone’s looking for something. I just hope that Ane beat this bitch, that she gouged out its eyes and beat this bitch to pulp.
Troia.
Sorry, this is a bit embarrassing… but that’s the end. Of everything, everything that is or will ever be — for us, that is. Not sure how I know, but I do.
All that is left is the bit where my heart gives out and I fall to the floor and curl into a foetal ball like my poor dead cat. I didn’t think I even owned a cat, but maybe my husband did… yeah, maybe it was his.
Anyway, all this is of little importance. What is important is what comes next. What follows as our dick-headed reign finally succumbs to the storm.
Che tadd arriva nu cazz in cap.
Epilogue.
There are two heavily pregnant corpses laying in a cave. Simultaneously their blackened flesh begins to shudder and undulate and bulge and rent. The cave fills with cries of the type of fear that accompanies the swallowing of first breath and life again returns to the plain.
The creatures that slide forth are not infants but rather grown adults and the ruin of their womb-caskets fall away as they claw out and scratch at the stone.
Their wet naked forms inch ever closer until, at last, they meet and outstretched fingers sweep together and interlock and they smile.
“So nice to meet you”, they say at once as a new kind of heat kicks within the furnace that ignites in the pit of their chests.
Vuoi scopare?
And so again it begins…
by Julian Miles | Jul 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tennis-court sized office is lit like a summer afternoon. Everything within is red, but each item is a different shade.
“You must tell me who makes those soft ownership collars for you. I’ve only seen that shade of purple once before.”
Rooney turns to meet the six-eyed gaze of Tokok. Courtesies taken care of, the grey and mauve spider-mantis noble unwinds its five-metre body from the undoubtedly painful crouch necessary to be at eye level with a human.
“We call them ties, Tokok. Would you like some?”
He’d got fifty, part of a bulk salvage acquisition.
“Could you get me twenty? Laktik will be in a frightful rage over my staff wearing her bridal colours as ownership apparel.”
“I’ll send thirty. Her rage might damage some.”
“Thoughtful of you. Would a kilo of green rocks be acceptable?”
Rooney keeps his expression neutral. The Doktup come from a gem world: ‘coloured rocks’ like emeralds mean nothing to them.
“Entirely.”
“This trade is completed.”
He sits in the only piece of human-sized furniture in the office.
“I presume you called about something a little more serious than ties, Tokok?”
The monster waves it’s fighting pincers about: an expression of great mirth.
“Dressing ones staff correctly is terribly serious, dear Rooney. But, in this case, your insight is correct… I have received a complaint.”
“How did that happen?”
“The human female,” Tokok checks a nearby screen, “Wendie Smith, identifier NKH22492, insisted the problem be escalated to the highest level. My staff understand humans assigned here are to be treated on par with full-fledged Notaries of Doktup like myself. Each passed the complaint to their senior, who spoke to this Wendie, then passed the complaint to their senior. I wished to talk with you before speaking to her.”
Rooney pulls out a datapad and looks her up, then does a double-take. 27 complaints against retail staff this year? It’s only the 23rd February!
“When will you be calling her?”
“I couldn’t treat her with such disrespect. She is in reception.”
“Tokok, would it be acceptable if I accompanied you, and handled the opening discussion?”
The flesh-eating predator sags back into its chair in relief.
“Thank you, Rooney. She is apparently quite strident.”
Funny how the screams of captives being dismembered doesn’t disturb them, but being shouted at stresses them out.
“One thing, Tokok? Please come down without holographic disguise. I think the situation will be swiftly resolved when Wendie realises she faces a Notary of Doktup.”
“I will accept your guidance.”
Rooney smiles. Doktup look like upright-walking cartoonish locusts with their disguise fields on. Plus, the ones who serve are smaller: they don’t have the dietary advantages of Notaries.
“I’ve been waiting over an hour! The rudeness of these Dock Tops! Call this service? Hah! This really isn’t good enough! These aliens don’t understand when you order a triple-syrup mocha with marshmallows and sprinkles it has to come in a jumbo cup or the froth leaks out! They ruined my skirt! I expect the insect who served me to be – Sweet Barnabus! It’s a monster! Who let it in? Get it away from me! Help! Help!”
The outside door swings wildly in the wake of her exit.
Tokok looks down at me.
“Does a screaming retreat mean the same on your worlds as it does on ours?”
“You can’t chase her home and eat the whole clan.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. But, it wouldn’t be right to ask any Doktup to engage with one so blatantly defeated. Instruct your staff to forward any further calls to me.”
“Thoughtful of you, again. Many thanks.”
by submission | Jul 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“A synaptic map of the brain.”
“Social media pathways on the Internet.”
“A spider web. If the spider had taken acid.”
The program director waited as each volunteer gave their interpretation of the sprawling diagram being displayed in the research center’s conference room.
“A force much more powerful than any robot overlords we unleash.”
The director prompted, “Go on.”
“Mycelium. The subterranean threads that weave life. The network that links the underland. Fungi. The Wood Wide Web.”
That answer is how I got here. Buried, but far from dead.
I’d been sunk into the ground deep in the Hoh Rain Forest where I’d not be disturbed, except by mycelia. That was the hope which goes a long way in explaining the craziness of the plan. Volunteering to be buried alive.
Not my physical self. That was in a very sterile lab in Olympia, ostensibly doing very well by doing very little, or so the lab monitoring systems reported. No, my flesh wasn’t six feet under. My consciousness was.
For decades we’d been waiting for the singularity. Uploading our ethereal selves into a promised digital land. But, here I was downloaded into the analog underland. My mind melding with mushrooms. The fungilarity.
This was no psilocybic psychedelic trip. I was the program’s first hyponaut, my consciousness inserted into the mycelia of one of the largest temperate rainforests in the U.S. to tap into taproots, sound the soil, and mosey along the myriad subterranean networks that connected all manner of flora, from towering trees to microscopic mushroom spores.
A heady responsibility and a mega headtrip as well. Good thing my head was on ice in a lab. A very good thing because I was discovering how much unnecessary baggage that skull of mine carried.
Yes, humans are social. We crave connections. We search for those forever friends and soul mates, looking to form bonds that transcend–whatever. But, you see, what I really discovered down here in the underland, untethered from my physical form, is that humans have been soul searching in the wrong place. We’ve been raising our eyes and hopes upward, to the heavens, to the celestial depths, when the core of our being is right at our feet, below and within our simple earth. An earth that has been patient with us, even as we smother it.
Now, I was in it, rooted to its roots, connected as no human consciousness had ever been before and all humankind’s fears and myths of inner earth being the domain of the dead were wrong. Dead wrong. Every fiber of the underland was about life. Life bound together and dependent. A true system of survival and revival.
Fungi were among the first organisms to return to the atomic blast site of Hiroshima. From mushroom clouds to mushrooms. That is our way out, to dig deeper, into our earth, into our hearts, into the real soul of our being. If we no longer try to simply bury our mistakes, we can unearth our true potential. Not just as human beings, but as fellow beings.
Partners for life.
by submission | Jul 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Andrew Dunn
They come every seventeenth year. Momma says they are evil, each one a little piece of hell called forth by her ex-husband to torment springtime before summer’s heat dries our corner of Georgia to a crisp.
“Cicadas.” Molly said. “They’re just bugs.”
Molly was unshouldering her bra in my bedroom, and then unzipping her shorts. We were too young to be doing what we were doing. The only thing that could have stopped us would have been momma bursting through the door wailing about how Adam gave up a bone from his rib cage so that Eve could come into this world and tempt that poor boy with an apple. We were well past Adam and Eve. Molly Jenkins was my Salome, dancing her own version of the seven veils as she peeled off socks and planted her hands on her hips.
Outside the shrill piercing sound of the cicadas roiled up in one of those crescendos I imagined washed over everywhere like a sonic tidal wave. Momma was in her room oblivious. She was glued to that news channel where they’re sure whatever any given democrat is suggesting will unravel life as we know it on the third stone from the sun, or least within the bounds of ‘Merica.
I never knew why momma called daddy Satan, and I wasn’t inclined to ask after I felt Molly’s body against my own. I didn’t know whether I was Adam or Herod either, as my fingers passed over her rib cage, sheathed in soft pale skin. What I knew for sure, as my lips found Molly’s, was that I was molting free of childhood as I danced with her toward my bed.
I knew afterwards, me and Molly would find the world outside littered with cicada hides. Where would I hide the skin I was shedding as my body merged with Molly’s for the very first time?
Maybe I’d leave it raw, bare, and evident for momma to find, a mystery easy for her to unravel.
by submission | Jul 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Calum Strachan
It was an overwhelmingly unlikely occurrence. Somewhere at the end of time, as the universe approached uniformity, a localised phenomenon sprung out of the thin and fragile space. Purely by chance, the particles that had drifted alone for so long coalesced all at once with pugilistic violence and grace.
Colliding atoms inadvertently arranged themselves in the form of a functioning thalamus. White matter erupted from nothing, followed by all manner of grey. The inexplicable tissues enveloped and enfolded around an increasingly unlikely mass.
A cerebellum slotted in precisely, as if by design. The deity-less miracle persisted as a spinal cord sprouted and trailed off to nothing.
A stray packet of electromagnetic energy, travelling unimpeded on its random path since the beginning of physical space, happened upon the accident of thermodynamics. It struck like lightening, without the mess. The brain lit up; it was alive.
The improbability of this outcome could not be overstated.
The brain remembered. Somewhere, at this moment and aeons ago, a child stepped one unsure foot in front of the other. The brain felt the grass between its toes and recoiled instinctively from the unexpected dampness. The boy stumbled and the brain jolted with a hypnic jerk. The boy worried at the edges of an apfelstrudel with new, budding teeth, and a surge of dopamine ricocheted around the brain.
The boy, now a young man, attended endless lectures. Memories piled up in waves as the weight of countless hours of study and debate bore down on the brain. In answer to the burden, an imperceptible schism emerged, not from the matter but from the mind. Days and weeks and years spent theorising and calculating, defending and withdrawing; the schism was nurtured, and it grew into a chasm. Prominence and prestige, fame and infamy; the brain lived the life all in an instant. The brain became very heavy, although its mass remained constant.
The rift grew unbearably large, impossibly deep, an invisible spiderweb of cracks through crystal. The brain closed down hard like a fist on its lifetime of memories. For a moment, the mind inside was still. In the near empty dark, ever so gently, the brain performed a pirouette around its axis.
A mercurial mind, first thrust into the universe between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, now floated in the void between nothing and nowhere.
The brain, newly alive, got to work making new memories. The first was a sensation of being outside ones self, but still very much restricted. Reflexively, the brain looked down… and was struck by the full force of comprehension. There was no ‘look’. There was no ‘down’. The brain laughed, or tried to, or tried to try, but something so visceral was far out of reach. Choosing intention over defeat, it resolved to quantify its lonely place in the last of the universe. How long had it taken for a drop of chaos to fall into the sea of order? The brain diligently did the maths. A lifetime obsessed with statistical mechanics had served it well; it did not need pen or paper.
Before long, and before the brain could reach an answer (although it was very close), it did what brains do in the inhospitable void at the end of time. The energy that had grasped the brain for the yoctoseconds of its re-existence now loosened its grip. Thermodynamic equilibrium was reached, and the brain receded back into the universe with an inaudible sigh.
It was likely to be the last such occurrence.
by submission | Jul 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Tanner’s job was to remove the evidence, to wipe away the traces. He considered this task as necessary, that he was an essential part of the system and for more than forty years Tanner’s belief in the system hadn’t wavered. He had remained resolute, diligent and effective.
Although he remembered all the names of those he had erased, Tanner hadn’t ever regarded them as individuals. No, they were part of a collective and anyhow many of them, most in fact, were already dead or imprisoned before his work had even begun.
Some, a few, had escaped and were living in exile, but what they did and said elsewhere didn’t matter. What they were beyond the system was inconsequential. It was the eraser’s job to eradicate those who opposed the system from within. To help establish and maintain the truth.
By the time a name is passed on to Tanner, the bulk of inflammatory material has already been unearthed and obliterated. Underground magazines can’t hide forever and the liars are always captured amidst the lies, like spiders trapped in their own webs.
Tanner is responsible for the minutiae; his job is trawling through old news reports and other archives. When it is decided that someone shouldn’t exist, doesn’t exist, each and every record from birth right up until that final betrayal has to go.
The younger generation aren’t really sure what it is that Tanner does or, more accurately, what it is that he has done. But Tanner has helped to close down national newspapers, the demolition and destruction of institutions, of hospitals, factories, schools and libraries, with the disruption of families, of whole communities, of tradition. But none of this is a part of the truth and he is just an old man with a black marker.
The rhetoric hasn’t changed over the years and Tanner is perplexed by this. Whilst the system has evolved, is constantly evolving, those who oppose it are forever locked in a relentless fight and it is futile. They are able to make themselves heard, yes, but only fleetingly and it seems to him that they are shouting into the void.
Tanner often finds himself thinking about the monolith in that old science fiction film. The film has been banned, of course, and so he hasn’t seen it in years. And it isn’t actually the monolith that preoccupies his thoughts but its surface, gleaming and unmarked.
Protesters and rebels, this is how they are referred to beyond the system. Those who have survived and are still out there, they are dissidents or exiles. Tanner has always been uncomfortable with these labels although he hasn’t managed to come up with any that he feels are better suited. ‘Those who oppose the system’ is too clumsy but that is what they are. And they are still as virulent as they ever were, perhaps even more so and for that brief spell, until they are uncovered, just as vocal.
Tanner remembers the names and also their former occupations. He remembers the carpenter and the school teacher and the plumber and the doctor. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. He remembers what they once were, what they should have been.
