by submission | Jan 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Tam McDonald
“Cara, can you hear me?”
I opened my sticky eyes to see a doctor standing over my bed. A nurse stood next to him looking concerned. “I know you must be confused, and I’m sorry to rush you but we haven’t much time.” he said. “Do you remember before you went to sleep Cara? You were very ill and your parents put you to sleep, until we could cure you. Do you remember that?” I didn’t remember, but somehow I knew it was true. “We can cure you now Cara, but we haven’t much time.” The doctor’s voice was urgent and the nurse was fiddling with something in the background. “We really are very short of time to do it. We didn’t wake you until the last moment, until the theatre was prepped, so you need to be ready now Cara? Are you ready?” I nodded and felt a jag in my hand. The doctor told me I was going to sleep again, but this time only for a few hours.
When I awoke for the second time I was in a nicer room with a window looking out onto some trees and this made me remember trees and the outdoors, which in turn made me remember going inside the capsule, to go for my very long sleep. I remembered saying goodbye to everyone and I remembered being scared. The trees were nice so I tried to shift myself to get a better look at them, but there was a sharp pain in my lower belly and I flopped back onto the pillows, exhausted. Also, there was a very old man sitting in the chair next to my bed. Between the pain in my belly and my fuzzy thinking, I didn’t have a chance to be frightened of him before he smiled at me. His face trembled and his eyes watered but he looked deeply happy.
“Cara, you’re awake, we’ve been waiting so long for you.” He reached out to me, but then stopped and put his shaking hands in his lap. “How do you feel? Can I get you anything? Something to eat or drink?” I gestured to the water jug next to the bed and he stood and fussed with it for some time before passing me a slick glass, half-filled with water. “I’ve had decades, a lifetime really, to think about this moment and how to tell you everything. I’ve imagined this so many times, rehearsed it in my mind, but now that it’s come, now that you’re here, I can’t think what I was going to say.” He smiled, and then laughed. “I’m sorry Cara, you must have so many questions, so please just ask me.”
I did have questions; about my family and friends, about my illness, about how the world was now. Going by his face and the way his hands shook I had been away a long time. As we talked memories flooded back and when we talked through the good ones he would laugh and also cry a little. After a while he leant forward, his elbow on the bed, took my hand and just held it. I was sure then it was really him, and I felt safe, finally, so I fell asleep again. A real sleep this time; from tiredness, not from medicine, or from that awful capsule.
We were both sleeping, still holding hands when the nurse came in to check my stitches. But when she woke me, the old man, my brother, he stayed asleep.
by submission | Jan 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rohan O’Duill
Dylan strained as he twisted the rusty locking mechanism. Ever so slowly, the door groaned open, and the golden glow of the setting sun crept in through the widening crack like a shaft of light into an ancient burial chamber.
The young man stood silent and still, transfixed within his protective yellow suit. I waited a moment, allowing him to drink-in his first image of the Up Above.
I tapped his shoulder, motioning for him to get moving. He nodded and struggled his arms through the straps of the haversack before walking hesitantly out through the breach.
I didn’t miss carrying all that gear. Heedless to my objections, the council had insisted I bring Dylan along. It sounded like kindness, but I knew they were just scared the old man wouldn’t return.
Dylan had spent hours studying the map, but still, I had to keep him from veering off the pathway in this world, so alien to his eyes. The council didn’t understand that there is no substitute for experience, of which I had plenty. The annual journey to the station had been my responsibility for over thirty years now.
We left the stony track and squelched carefully across the toxic mire in the fading light, the muck sucking at our boots, thick as honey. We navigated the safe route with some difficulty and paused a moment before starting the ascent to the station.
Soon I could smell the delicate perfume of aged rubber and body odour accosting my nostrils as the rubber suit became a sauna, every breath steaming up the plastic visor.
I struggled to keep up with the younger man, but I was determined not to let him see my frailty as we converged on the summit together. Dylan dropped the pack and crouched down, catching his breath before standing up to survey the world. It didn’t take him long to spot the lights and smoke in the distance. He pointed excitedly. I nodded enthusiastically — like I hadn’t seen them the past eleven years.
Unpacking the equipment, I started servicing the battered monitoring station. It hadn’t functioned for at least fifteen years, but I had to make a show of it for my companion. After fifteen minutes, I stowed the gear and noted down the seized readout.
Dylan looked over the readings and raised his hands questioningly, pointing towards the far-off lights. I shrugged my shoulders and pointed down the hill. He reluctantly complied, marching back the way we came.
I drew up close behind him as he entered the mire, I tapped his shoulder, and as he turned, I drove my razor-sharp blade deep into his stomach again and again. I thought it would be tougher, but his soft and doughy belly accepted the knife readily. Bewildered eyes stared out through his visor.
‘Sacrifices have to be made to keep us safe. It’s for the better.’
I let him fall face-first into the mud and removed the pack before the swamp swallowed him whole.
‘RIP, my friend.’
They better not send anyone with me next time— those born below never survive the trip to the Up Above.
by submission | Jan 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The doctors head swirls and vomit pisses from the swelling inside of his head and into the corners his eyes. He blinks and the moistened windows clear and he looks down upon his manacled hands and then along the stretch of table that leads to the dark form that settles at its very end.
“Welcome to the Fairfield Woman’s Correction Facility and Spa… Mr You.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Found. Beaten and just to the left of dead.”
“My briefcase…”
“Black carbon-fibre with blood-red details and a shield emblem featuring a rearing horse?”, the dark form offers as it decides to form into a young woman adorned in a jutt-breasted Nirvana smiley-face T-shirt.
“It’s full of cash money… Maybe I’ll buy you a new shirt?”
“Nothing of that description in the report. Be sure to let you know if it turns up…”
“This is outrageous!”
“Isn’t it just. Cash? It’s now only used to stoke the barbecues on not-Nude Wednesdays. You been… in a cave?”
“Basement”
“The swam ceased three years ago…”
“Large basement. I seek sanctuary. I can more than pay my way. I want in.”
“We’ve very strict criteria for entry. You’re not a DJ are you?… We’ve the summer festivals and nobody to spin the discs.”
“I’m a cardio-thoracic surgeon”
“Oh…”
“Oh?”
“We’ve a doctor… anything else?”
“I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from eighteen different medical boards…”
“So, that’s a no to the DJing?”
“I’m… a… specialist.”
“Only REALLY good at one thing then… diversity is key here.”
“I’m a better surgeon than any doctor you could possibly have…”
“Dawn is actually a vet, but she’s pretty damn good on the ol’ hoomans too…”
“Seriously?”
“Basement was a bunker… right?”
“May have been… no use to you now, destroyed it…”
“As you do.”
“Electricity gone. Entrance seal-door stuck in open position…”
“Terrible. So, you killed it?”
“Didn’t want people getting up in my shit.”
“You shared this enormous throbbing bunker with…”
“My wife.”
“And she is…”
“Dead.”
“Kill her?”
“No.”
“Not even a wee bit, when food ran low?”
“Food… would have lasted years had it not been for that damned reactor malfunction.”
“Reactor?”
“Cold fusion… Supposed to last a lifetime…”
“Cold fusion is my favourite fusion. Do you have any… hobbies?”
“Wine.”
“You’re a vintner?”
“No, I collect fine wine. Considered to be amongst the top five private collections in the world.”
“Had? No more?”
“I smashed them all and left it a hole of cinder. What’s mine is mine.”
“So, you killed your wife?”.
“Cancer. Life support systems stopped when the reactor stopped”.
“But, you’re a doctor… oh, that’s right…”
“I am a cardio thoracic surgeon…”
“… a specialist, I forgot. Branch into Oncology maybe…”
“I’m perfect at what I do. I m going to be a part of this little new world of yours… you cannot afford to pass me by.”
“May… may, take a few weeks to process but we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as well would you look at that… Decision already confirmed. Sorry better luck next time”.
“You cant send me back out there… who the fuck are you… some lowlife convict to judge me?”
“You presume to much, doctor… I’m no inmate. I was an outmate just as you. I sat in that very chair. But I didn’t have handcuffs because I’m pretty and not an asshole”.
“What are you?”
“Me… I’m a preschool teacher…. got to know a wee bit about a fucking lot. Backbone of society right here my friend… and when the sun falls be sure to watch for the razor-hook backs of their fingers… that’s what will end you. Next!… please.”
by submission | Jan 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael D. Hilborn
Twenty minutes had passed since the cop had taken Donald’s license and registration back to the patrol car, and Donald was feeling famished.
As if he had spoken out loud, Samantha said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“But I’m hungry,” said Donald to his wife, “and that guy was being a jerk.” The cop had certainly been out of line, screaming at Donald at the top of his lungs for what amounted to a minor speeding infraction. The cop deserved whatever was coming to him. “Besides, you’re hungry, too. I can tell. Do you really want to continue eating that crap?”
Samantha paused, her plastic spork hovering over the cup of coleslaw and bucket of fried chicken she held in her lap. The corner of her mouth skewed upward.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Samantha lay the spork down in the cup and stared right at him. He loved her eyes, those beautiful yellow irises, those slits for pupils. Too bad the cop and the rest of mankind couldn’t see her like he did. They didn’t know what they were missing. “I don’t want to have to disappear again, Donald,” she said. “We have a nice home, some nice neighbors, good jobs, a nice life. It would be shame to lose all of that.”
“It’d be easy enough to start over,” he said, noticing in the rear-view window that the cop was returning. “We’ve done it before, and we’re due for a change. You’ve said you always wanted to live upstate. All we need to do is continue heading north.” He pointed at the sign to Saratoga Springs, and he smiled his most convincing smile.
Her inner eyelids clicked together, a signal she was considering what he had said. Then: “No, Donald.”
He sighed. “Suit yourself.”
“Just be polite,” Samantha said, and rolled down the window for the cop to lean in.
The cop, unfortunately, was not polite. Donald tolerated a minute of the yelling and pejoratives before he flicked out his tongue. It snapped across the car’s interior and planted its spiked tip squarely between the officer’s eyes. The venom took hold in an instant: the victim froze in mid-tirade, his expression not even having time to register surprise. Donald’s tongue snapped back between his rows of teeth.
“Dammit, Donald,” his wife muttered. Nevertheless, she dragged the paralyzed officer through the window. “Those patrol cars have cameras, you know. No way we can go back home now.” Anger laced her voice, but Donald noticed she was already prodding the officer’s fleshy neck with the spork.
“Saratoga Springs, here we come.” Donald grinned, put the car in gear, and continued heading north.
by submission | Jan 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chris Grebe
Armida was no longer thinking completely clearly, of this she was certain.
The Carmine Reaction. That’s what they were going to call it. She was sure of that too, somehow, sure as she was that she hadn’t stopped for a restroom for about two hundred miles, would have to stop soon; sure that she shouldn’t be so sure, because she wasn’t thinking completely clearly.
The Carmine Reaction. She’d left the draft paper in her motel in Navasota. Before she picked up the device.
She couldn’t even afford a Best Western, but soon she would be famous. Her papa would be proud. Would have been. Armida smiled and kept her speed down. Five over. Not attracting any attention—not yet, not anytime before tonight, and no more after.
She didn’t like attention. Hadn’t gotten much at school, nor at the lab when she started. She was never one for Antics as a grown human. She laughed at herself, antics, her father’s word, always made Armida think of something ants would drink. Papa would accuse her of getting up to Antics, swing her in his arms and she would laugh, a little girl with nothing but playtime. More Antics!
No Antics now. The diarrhea stopped earlier in the day, but she knew it would be back, would be worse.
The world has stopped spinning. The highway lights slide past her windshield, the sliver of silky moon above and the world has stopped spinning.
She thought of the radiation from the thing in the way back of her little Subaru, eating her silently and invisibly, a school of carnivorous gamma fish with sharp sharp teeth.
It wasn’t fatal yet but would be soon. No more Antics at all then.
TOYOTA CENTER 2
The sign flashed in her headlights and was gone.
Almost there. Houston had been good for her, for her family. Not as good for the ones kept in the TOYOTA CENTER. Armida was not a patriot. Not an anarchist. Not a socialist. Not a single tweet betrayed her interest in politics because she had none.
She wondered how long to deploy the thing, after she got the cages open. After she set the ones in the cages free.
One more Antics Papa.
The diarrhea was lurking, but it wouldn’t be much longer now. Armida rolled her window down, and let the wind through her hair, until she slowed to take the exit.
by submission | Jan 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jeff Hill
Upon waking this morning, I was surprised to feel no different. Angry with the world (and the lack of funds in my bank account), I begrudgingly took my shower and yelled obscenities as my roommate walked past me, laughing at my piss poor mood.
“Didn’t work,” I told him as I walked back into my room.
“Oh, no. That’s horrible, dude,” he said, suddenly wiping the smile off his face.
I got dressed and went out to the kitchen to make a lunch for myself and start cooking breakfast when I realized that he had already done both of those things for me. He sat at the bar and looked up at me, concerned.
“Waste of money. Completely and totally.” I told him.
He thrust his fists onto the table. “I hate them!” he yelled, a little louder than I would have usually expected for this early in the morning.
“I swear,” I start to tell him, “If I could get away with it, I’d march down to that building and burn the place to the ground.”
“Hold on a sec… I’m on it,” he said, jumping up immediately and running past me to the back of the apartment, grabbing his car keys and putting one finger in the air, signaling for me to wait just one minute.
“Weirdo,” I mumbled, starting to feel a sense of justice in the world.
He returned about five minutes later with a giant gas can, empty, and a look of pride on his face.
He turned on the TV.
“Local pharmaceutical company ablaze downtown,” the reporter said. He tossed the empty gas can on the ground.
“Dear God!” I exclaimed. “What is wrong with you! You are insane!”
“Well, yeah. Now I am,” he said, loading his shotgun from behind the kitchen cabinets and aiming directly for me.
His first shot missed, his second grazed my leg and I realized while he reloaded that the pharmacist was right. The scientists weren’t incorrect.
“My powers. They work. I can’t believe this is happening.”
He reloaded and raised the shotgun to my head.
“I believe you.”
