by submission | Mar 26, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alan Moskowitz
It was just a tiny blemish on her thigh. She smiled at the memory and then gave it a few swipes with her fingernail to stop the itching. She went back to work on her computer. Data entry – boring. But it kept her fully engrossed twelve hours a day, to the exclusion of all else.
She never admitted to anyone, even herself that she was lonely. She had done her time trying to find a companion that wouldn’t lie, cheat or abuse her, but it always wound up the same. She’d begun to think it was actually her fault; her ability to choose wrong, so she gave up choosing. And now? Now she had a sweet memory to enjoy.
Her hand slid down to her thigh and she unconsciously started scuffing at the little silvery blemish. Only it wasn’t so little. It had spread, now requiring two fingernails.
As she rummaged around the medicine cabinet looking for some relief she once again thought about her time at the shore. After having to endure yet another staff meeting watching her co-workers bicker, ass-kiss, and undermine each other, a week away from everything, alone with herself, dozing in the sun, was perfect.
The last thing she expected was a naked man emerging from the surf, struggling to walk. She ran to him as he limped across the sand, giving him her hand when his step faltered. She searched the sea looking for some hint of where he might have come from. A shipwreck no doubt; and the ship had gone under the churning waves out beyond the reef that protected the beach.
She led him to her tent, asking questions that remained unanswered. She sat him on the bed, and could not help but admire his exotically handsome face, his smoothly muscled physique, his easy, though troubled manner. And his eyes when they met hers seemed to fill her soul.
He began to shiver. She wrapped him in her arms and laid him back onto the mattress, pulling the covers over their bodies.
She was not a fool. She had read her share of romance novels and seen enough movies to know that she was probably dreaming. And as her body warmed his, so did his warm hers, and if it was a dream she didn’t want to end.
When she awoke he was gone. Her body was still tingling from the memory of his touch. She thanked the God of dreams and spent the rest of her vacation in a stupor of gratification. It had been perfect. For once, even if it was only a dream, she had for once chosen the perfect man.
She sighed at the memory as she massaged the anti-itch cream on ton her thigh. It didn’t work. The spots were increasing in size as was the intensity of the irritation. She rubbed harder, but nothing stopped the spreading patch of what now looked to be shiny scales spreading up her leg. She screamed in panic and pain. She was becoming something else.
It hadn’t been a dream. He was real and not human.
She drove, screaming in pain, her flesh turning into pearlescent scales, her legs fusing together; Her breathing short choppy gasps. She prayed that she can get to the life-saving ocean before the change is complete.
Her feet burst through her shoes revealing a wobbly fishtail; her arms flopped bonelessly to her sides. As the car spun out of control plunging her to certain death she thought, “Another bad choice; I should have insisted he use a condom.”
by submission | Mar 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: I.W.Ray
“Please stop?” I scream. Ten minutes ago, I had the most devastating news one could ever imagine. Everything became worse two minutes ago. A wall of fire is devouring the room that contains diaries and handmade books of children. The enormous room will take time to burn, but once finished the librarian will move to the next book section. “Why,” I bawled.
“You are only mortal.”
“Really, the same words you have spoken over and over for the last thirty-five years?”
“When a planet dies, its library dies.” The shelves themselves came to her one by one so she could light it with the torch that once stood center of the mystical library. I never knew what it was for until now.
“You told me that these are the exact quantum copies of all the books ever made. Please tell me there’s a galaxy library that does the same. A universe one?”
“I do not know.”
“I thought you were immortal.”
“Immortalities are not all equal. Once the supernova blast hits your world in five hours, this library must cease to exist.”
“No, isn’t your job to preserve knowledge?”
“The library came into being when the first words were written on the planet. It will no longer be when no more words can be written.”
Blinded by tears, I run away. I eventually find myself in the main reading room. I drop to my knees staring down at the place that gave birth to me. My insides are crying out in agony as I pound the floor to demand a miracle. I won’t let it end like this. I won’t.
I race toward the classics and I get a cart to fill. This would be the last place to be destroyed but what to select? Luckily, as the assistant, the shelves come to me when I ask. I’m nowhere close to being finished, but I realize nearly five hours have passed by. I rush toward the escape pod and stuff it with the books. There’s almost no room for me. I must be forgetting something, but there’s no time to reflect. Just before I squeeze in the pod, I freeze in terror. I see the librarian. No, she caught me. She has finished burning the last of the books and the library itself is on fire except for the room we’re in.
“You can’t stop me,” I scream.
But she just smiles gently. How odd to pick this moment to radiate warmth and kindness. “Goodbye Zo-Nia Tii. Goodbye librarian.”
Her words sent a shockwave through my gut. I find my voice to ask her to come with me, but within seconds she turns to dust leaving no trace of an eons-old existence. I have to leave now. I have no idea how to use this pod, but somehow I find that my instincts are enough to operate it. So much death and loss to fully comprehend right now. There’s no time to mourn. I’m sure it will hit me fully in the days ahead. Right now, I leave to bless a new world with the best of my civilization.
by submission | Mar 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Robert Beech
There was a snowblower in the living room. If the weather broke soon, they wouldn’t need it much longer, but for now it sat by the door, intermittently belching a spray of fine white crystals over the living room floor. The snow dragon nestled down into the soft white stuff blanketing the floor and dreamt of the day it would be cold enough to go outside again.
In the next room, the wizard melted snow in a cauldron to feed the snow blower. It was an unending process. The snowblower turned the warm water back into snow and sprayed it back into the house to replenish the dragon’s bed then, as the snow gradually turned into grey slush, the wizard shoveled it back into the cauldron and melted it to begin the cycle anew.
Once, there had been no need for any of this. Once, the snows covered the tops of the mountains all the way through the summer and then swept down into the valleys when winter came and the days grew short. Even longer ago, the valleys, too, had stayed frozen year round, humans had fled south in search of warmer climes, and the snow dragons soared freely between the mountaintops and the clouds in a world that was wholly theirs. But now, the tide had turned again, the world grew warmer, and each year the snow came later and melted sooner, and the dragon and his keeper were forced to retreat to their tiny artificial ice age at the top of the mountain.
The snow dragon was bored and hungry. He could go a long time without food, months or even years if he needed to, but the chase was what gave life its meaning, its zest. But there were no ibex now skipping nimbly from crag to crag to exercise his skills. The humans had eaten them all, even as their farms moved ever higher up the slopes of his mountain. The dragon snapped idly at the spray of artificial snow as it arced over him and settled disconsolately back into his bed. He thought briefly of eating the wizard, but he needed the wizard to keep feeding the snow blower. And there would be no joy in such a meal, no thrill of victory after a long and glorious chase among the peaks, merely a sad acknowledgement that the end of an era had come.
Ice crunched under the dragon’s claws as he burrowed himself into the artificial snow. All too soon, they came up against the hard stone tiles of the floor. The dragon shook his head in annoyance. The tiny bit of cold space he could find left him no room to move. At this rate, he would soon be reduced to nothing more than a frozen lizard curled up inside a snowball, waiting for it to melt. The thought infuriated him.
From the doorway to the other room, the wizard watched as clouds of steam began to billow up from the heap of snow in the living room. With a roar, the dragon stood, shaking off his covering of snow and ice. His eyes, once pale blue, now glowed a fiery red, and streaks of crimson began to ripple along his flanks. The wizard opened the door and the dragon stepped out onto the bare mountaintop, devoid of any hint of frost. The dragon spread his wings, which now pulsed with the heat of his re-born fire, and launched himself into the sky to soar over the scorched plains below. A new era had begun.
by submission | Mar 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
To imply his job was monotonous and boring would be an understatement; the work that Jackson did was mind-numbing, soul destroying.
He joined together little pieces of metal, to be precise they were triangles of stainless steel. These triangles were thirty millimetres in length and each had a half moon-shaped cut-out on one side. When pushed together this formed a hole through which Jackson inserted a short bolt. He also attached a washer on either side and a nut which he tightened with the wrench provided. And that was it; a simple task that required a little dexterity and little thought. The finished parts were of course diamond shaped with the washer and bolt at the centre. Jackson had no idea as to what purpose they could possibly serve and he didn’t care.
The job was well paid and the shifts were short, although some would argue that three hours was a long time to sit at a task so uncomplicated and so uninspiring. But it was manageable, it was do-able. And the money was good and if Jackson worked enough shifts it was more than good, more than enough.
The factory was vast but the work rooms were small. The employees all toiled in isolation, each locked in what was basically a cell, with a bench and a chair and space enough to pace but only just.
The pieces were always dumped on top of the bench, an unruly heap waiting to be sorted and the finished parts collected in a grey plastic basket.
Jackson couldn’t help but wonder a little about the others and the work they did. Was it identical or did it vary? Were there subtle differences? But he didn’t ask, he understood instinctively that this was forbidden and wouldn’t be tolerated. And anyhow, it didn’t matter. Jackson really didn’t care.
As soon as he entered the room he sat and set to work. He didn’t dawdle and he didn’t pace. If Jackson didn’t complete the Quota during the allotted time he would be penalised. For every minute he ran over he would lose money but if Jackson ran over it wasn’t ever by more than a few minutes and more often than not he finished before time. Sometimes by as much as ten, fifteen or even twenty minutes’ early.
Jackson wondered if the others were as quick and efficient as he. But of course they were. After all, it wasn’t brain surgery and time was money and time spent away from here was precious.
by Julian Miles | Mar 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“You’re a killer, Jorn. What you’re doing out here? Everybody whispers about it.”
There’s only so many precautions you can take when you’re planning escape routes. Eventually, you will arrive somewhere others know you want to be.
“Why, matey? We were the finest special ops team. They used our missions as tutorials, man. Tutorials!”
Another fact of military life is that you spend your time hoping to meet soldiers who magnify your skills, and for you to do the same for them. The team gestalt is exhilarating. Betraying it is usually unforgivable. Right now, I’m hoping for a miracle.
“Jorn, mate: you’re done. The rest of the company are scattered across this wasteland. I click once and they’re headed this way, covering every escape option you can think of along the way.”
Tino’s already clicked. This is a delaying tactic. My record of escaping has started coming with bodycounts that make even hardened killers and their masters nervous. I see him quickly tap his belt. His comms have gone dark and he doesn’t like it one bit. Give him his due, he doesn’t show me anything other than that.
Time to try.
“Funny thing about Escalanza, Tino. How we had so many go off mission and never understood why?”
“They stopped enquiries after you vanished.” He flicks a finger up. “You found out!”
Four years. It’s taken him four years, and confronting me, to put that together.
“What do you know about the Nineteen Realms, Tino?”
“All the magic crap from kiddy cartoons and fantasy books rolled into a comfy blanky for tree-huggers, headcases, and cowards.”
There’s the heart of the problem. The revelation about the faerie worlds sent mankind into a collective epiphany of denial. Decades later, they’re still trying to erase the hated reality.
“So why are they still hunting Professor Wong? Why are you still stomping across worlds that seem empty, yet kill hundreds? Why do the MIA counts keep rising?”
I see his brows furrow. He’ll either talk or engage.
His elbow flicks outward. We trained for weeks to get the ‘nought to kill’ time down to quicker than most people can react. The enhanced projectile comes from his open-ended holster at nearly twice the speed of sound. It stops eight millimetres from my face.
She does so love giving me a scare.
“Tiny death,
screaming ore,
fall to nature,
and exist no more.”
The lilting refrain comes from the air to my left. The projectile turns to glowing dust and drifts away on the wind.
Tino staggers, eyes turning glassy. Bastard trick, overriding a man’s own body.
“Mathrey, we need to be gone. They’ve puppeted him.”
He vanishes. A tiny creature of midnight hues appears before me, hovering like a hummingbird on wings of molten silver.
“We knew they would. He was your friend. Their best chance to get close.”
Sick betrayal ending a loyal career. Gods damn them all.
“Where did you flicker him to?”
She rests a tiny hand on my eyebrow.
“To the puppeteer’s fortress in the sky.”
That should get their attention. Nothing like your own human bomb arriving in your command centre to make you cautious.
Two squads of former Earth special forces appear about me, each member with one or more specialists from the Nineteen Realms as partners.
“Mathrey, let First Envoy Kresdall know that I waive my objections. The only way to stop this, and to save the Twentieth Realm, is to save the humans that infest it from themselves.”
“That which Earther politicians call an ‘intervention’?”
“No, Mathrey. We go with honesty, as always. This means war.”
by submission | Mar 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Grant Goehrig
Everyone knows not to step foot on Ms. Hellebore’s property. Everyone knows those high peaked gables where the crows go to scream, that rotting balustrade with the termites inside, the black shingles that curl at the ends, the conical witch’s hat turret. Everyone knows that acrid smell that comes from inside and spreads out all over town like a miasmic blanket. Everyone knows about the Hendersons, who used to live next door. However, nobody knows what happened to them after they reported Ms. Hellebore’s overgrown willow to the zoning committee. Everyone knows what Ms. Hellebore looks like, but if you put everyone with a claim to this knowledge in a room with a sketch artist, you’d have as many renditions of her as people in the room. Everyone knows about her dog because we can hear it gnashing and shrieking and squirming and writhing and bleating and crying and laughing every night. Everyone knew the Carter twins, who, graduating from throwing stones and peering into windows, decided to simply go inside one day. But I’m the only one who knows what their faces looked like as they paced the cracked walkway up to that awning shrouded in cold shadow. I’m the only one who saw their pupils dilate past the whites of their eyes, the only one who knows that imploring words have no sway over those who make themselves objects of interest to Ms. Hellebore. Now everyone knows me at the police station and greets me with fake laughs and a reassuring hand on the shoulder. Everyone knows what I told them was the truth, but Ms. Hellebore has a way of twisting the truth, ripping it apart and reassembling it into the walls of her awful house.
