by Julian Miles | Jan 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“We all call it ‘safe space’. The inventors of the concept called it ‘social distancing’. It was only two metres back then. They used it, along with increased ventilation and personal masking, to slow some respiratory epidemics. Sociologists still argue about the long-term effects on everything except health.
“But I digress. Which is something you’ll get used to it if you choose to enrol in this course.”
The scruffy woman standing by the lectern looks out at the packed hall. Standing room only. Every person verified to be in good health by the scanners at the entrance to the venue. She knows more than half of the attendees are here simply because it’s an authorised proximity gathering. They just want to feel a crowd about them.
“So, here you all are, crammed in like venues used to able to do all the time. No screens, no grids, just a mob and a speaker. I know many of you don’t really care about what I have to say.”
She sees rapid movement. The security team is pushing through the crowd towards the front. With a swift double blink she drops monitoring lenses over her eyes.
There! Third row back, next to the aisle. A seated body is already at ambient temperature.
“Okay, folks. We have a little situation and I need you to do what I say. This is a Compliance Directive for the entire Grantham Hall Complex.”
That gets their attention. CDs are instant emergency laws, applicable for no more than four hours, and only for clearly delineated areas.
“Everybody standing, please stay where you are. I know it’s going to be difficult, but please do so with a minimum of moving about.”
Liaden, the security lead, reaches the figure. He quickly checks the body, then looks her way and nods.
“Your attention, please. Looks like we’ve had a narcodeath. Please follow the instructions of our security personnel and you’ll be on your way in no time. Tonight’s presentation will be rescheduled.”
She sees accepting shrugs and resigned looks. Overdoses and poisonings from self-medication with black market pharmaceuticals are on the rise. You only get advice for free from the NHS, and dealers are always ready to peddle cheap remedies.
It’s a bitter irony. NHS sites and lines are always busy. Medical personnel in other countries contact them when they need accurate recommendations. Treatment advice that often results in deaths here frequently saves lives abroad.
Tonight, the drugs are actually beneficial. A useful cover, because a body gone cold that fast has been drained.
Pholmor have lived among human populations for millennia. After learning how to restrict their energy stealing so they didn’t grow to outlandish sizes, they just blended in, faded from history, and then from mythology.
They are the precursors of vampires, succubi, incubi, and every other legendary thing that steals life from humans. An energy transfer that only needs skin to skin contact. They can consume everything we do, but their rudimentary digestive systems extract no nutrients. They sustain themselves by bleeding energy from us. The authorities keep their existence secret, because the toll of erroneous killings that would occur should they ever be revealed is hideous to even contemplate.
For anyone weakened by illness or another condition, an unexpected loss of vitality can kill: like tonight.
A scuffle breaks out. There’s the crackle of a suppressor, followed by an inhuman scream that makes heads turn. Another Pholmor for the fenced valley below the research centre in the Scottish Highlands.
“Please stay calm and co-operate, folks. There’s no reason to get excited.”
Not tonight, anyway.
by submission | Jan 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Justin Anderson
He watches her tiny arms cast the line again. She’s already working the makeshift fishing rod with ease. She beams a proud smile up at him, one with all the warmth of a miniature sun. A foreign little star. He smiles back, and she continues fishing.
Ripples play across the water. A tug on her line elicits a happy squeal.
“Fesh! Fesh, Dabbee!”
She plants her feet, arches her back, and heaves with all of her tiny might. Triumph! A shimmering fish wriggles in the air on the end of her line. Rainbow trout. Impossible. The fish shakes and bounces, as much from her quivering arms as from its own struggle. Her feet shuffle with excitement as she waits for him.
He removes her catch from the hook, and her wide eyes watch the treasure plop into their tall reed basket. Done. That fish isn’t going anywhere.
“Daddy,” he corrects, touching his chest with his finger. “Dah. Dee.” She watches his lips, soundlessly mouthing the word along with him.
“Dah… dee.” she finally whispers.
“Good.” He tucks the rod under his arm, holding it steady to bait the hook again. The instant he takes his hand away from the reed pole, she squeaks and casts the line back into the water. She giggles happily as the warm sun plays all about them.
How old is she now? Years pass so strangely here.
“Daydee! Fesh, Daydee!”
Impossible. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that was another rainbow trout. Anybody would.
Fish comes off the hook, goes into the woven basket. He manages a numb smile. She waits for him to place another worm on the hook.
How long have they been here today? Feels like hours, but the sun’s still hanging so high above the horizon.
“Fesh!” Another beautiful catch that isn’t quite a rainbow trout. Not here. Another hook, another cast. He stares off at the mountains. This place is just like home, and yet… he knows it can’t be. He closes his eyes and hears the trees rustling, insects buzzing, his daughter’s giggles.
The giggles stop.
“Dab! Dabbee!”
“Dad. Dee. Dad-dy,” he corrects, his eyes still closed. He won’t tend her fishing pole until she gets it right.
“Dad-dee.”
“Good.” He opens his eyes.
It’s heavy for her, but she’s doing her best to hoist her latest prize: a once-white boot smeared with green algae and brown mud.
The metal fasteners are corroded, but he knows them. Knows how to attach that boot to the rest of a white Mark 6 EVA-rated spacesuit. A spacesuit from a planet orbiting a similar but very, very distant star.
His hand scratches the self-inflicted scar on his shoulder, the one covering up a tattoo of his old unit.
“Good fesh, Daddee? Feshhh?”
“No,” he shakes his head, fighting to keep his voice calm. “Bad fish.”
Her eyes water. She’s scared, about to cry. The hanging white boot dribbles muck onto her little toes.
“It’s okay,” he says, taking the pole from her little hands. “Just a bad fish. Yuck.” He pantomimes eating the boot and then clutching his belly, tongue out in playful mock anguish.
Pole and boot and tears are quickly forgotten. She proudly strains to lift the basket of not-quite-rainbow trout. “Home!” she announces and begins marching.
“Right.” He nods and looks skyward… but levels his arm instead at their shack on the hillside. “Home.”
Eventually, another villager will find his ship. Can’t stay hidden here forever.
Once she’s looking away, he hurls the white boot back into the water, as far downstream as he can.
by submission | Jan 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Andrew Dunn
I called her Jingle-jangle. I told Christiane she reminded me of the way it felt to hear the sound spare change made in my pocket whenever I was fading, and I found a machine that would take coins and give me a soda or candy bar. My hands were on the front pockets of her dungarees when I said it. I was stroking Christiane’s hips, thighs; she was giggling, straddling my waist and unbuttoning chambray. Christiane was sweeter than the scent of jasmine breezing in through the window, and we were hoping nobody heard us in the spare bedroom.
I loved Jingle-jangle.
I carried heresy in my pocket – a collection of coins minted years ago. Artifacts of better times. Coins nowadays are cardboard, bearing history on their fronts and complex designs on their backs. Steganography. Code is embedded in those designs so machines can complete a sale when the code validates, or call in drones when it doesn’t. Drones are everywhere.
Why cardboard? Fair question. We learned the hard way a bomb will turn pocketfuls of metal coins into shrapnel, so they were outlawed three years ago. The contents of my left front pocket? Barely enough to buy chewing gum at the vending machine’s price, but enough for a collector to give me a two-grand, or enough to put me away for a decade. It was risky business.
Collectors were paying big money for old coins, mules like me were hiding them in pockets behind leather wallets and cellphones. I got coins from all sorts of places. Buyers didn’t care where they came from, as long as I delivered.
Jingle-jangle would have hated me if she ever knew – she was my love, my competition. She thought I made money running 3-D printers at an artsy place downtown. I didn’t have the guts to tell her the truth.
I glimpsed Christiane through a seam in plywood nailed over an abandoned storefront. Deserted stores were good places to score old coins if you knew where to look, and Jingle-jangle knew. She was in there, orange hoodie loose on her lithe body, searching nooks and crannies dropped coins disappeared into years ago. Orange because she was an activist, part of a credentialed group that gathered old coins, and called in drones to spirt them away. Christiane was as proud of her work as I was ashamed of my own.
‘What if Christiane’s called for a drone?’ I couldn’t ignore the thought – not when the whir of propeller blades was growing louder than usual. Drones carried sensors that could hone in on things like artifact coins if enough of them were together in one spot, like my left front pocket.
I started jogging. I needed distance between me and Jingle-jangle, so the drone would find her and whatever she’d scrounged instead of me; so that if the drone’s sensors locked on me, the only girl I’d ever loved wouldn’t see me face down on pavement, busted.
The whirring was growing louder behind me. Ahead, a crowd was spilling from an underground train station on to the sidewalk as the drone activated its siren, an unnerving klaxon infomercials taught us to recognize – that wail meant explosives had been detected.
A hundred people panicked, some pushing their way back down into the subway, others darting down alleys and into building lobbies. I broke into a sprint.
‘If I can get a block down.’ It wasn’t strategy, it was desperation.
And then I was fading, ears ringing and body broken by shrapnel that jingle-jangled in my pocket, before I failed Christiane.
by submission | Jan 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ed Nobody
The last day goes by unfelt. No change. Time turned glacial under rubbled roads in thick tar, sticky black thick leaking sun of dead summer.
I didn’t breathe and felt nothing.
Wind stopped bothering; leaves not leaning, unswayed by final wind to grace God’s grey earth, before all turns rot-orange, stand-still, decay in place.
I’m flat ground, inert, weathered. No illness, ceasing, death felling each blade of bad grass past hollow trees and fields uncut, shaggy seeds split off fallen flat in mud, unkept, unloved—song of sick birds—wheel waiting to topple.
Can’t feel—breath stuck—blanked thoughts—dry sponge—brittle break—There! A hint of wind sweeping moldy panes dirty grey with grease and stains, bitter coffee tang, lukewarm tongue, morphing garlic gag swish mouth bitter bad and then blank.
A plain van streams a slippy-line swiiii then gone into more ghost lost to who knows where—
Fading.
My spoiled in ground corpse won’t be found in this fallow field, yielding last living cells to promise of new day—new smell, new chirping birds flitting through woods of willow, chirp drowsy and mellow, life once more before last end, don’t let go, heat turning to chill—
A small shiver up spine, ground’s or mine? Ah, ache, pain, reminds.
Tight vines cover lost parts—red death shroud covers broke bones, blood-blemished clods of dead clay, some resting place. Who cares? The earth, stopped turning, lies flat.
We once kept the will to fight, dreams of war, delusions bored and unaware of terror—forgot or didn’t know the worst this land has to offer—woke up with blood in gutter—
Then too late to matter.
There. Maybe sweat, stale weeds, low rumble grunt of aching tree to weep tree, shadows blot out sky greyed regret, poor souls not knowing what hit—en masse grumbles, sky-liquid liquor not quelling whine of wind—still there, waiting to whistle through empty streets when the earth breathes out—
Will it?
Grand visions traded for frustrations, gurgled constipations of desire, once wild blazing fire now feckless ember throbbing in leaky guts, whining bellyaches of thousand slaughtered men shakes through clouds, raining on my rotten body stirring wake from death dreams, sweet death uncoming, mute non-death stretching out pale white blades, taunting me with specters of what was.
No raging waves thrash within—flat horizon, sun not coming—all red shadow—lumber to land—scraping behind—Rabbit? Or wind giving last blow, shake of the limbs before it goes—
Or a rabbit that wants grass still green to root, cawing rooks happy harping, creatures scurry squirming, trying, no denial, no need to convince themselves the world’s more than a ghost-shadow, doubt—
But maybe, unknowing, works. Turn into a worm beating happy fat tail in dead mud. Dirt feeling. Wake up to dirt air, sooty smoke of clogged chimneys, dry rain, numb ground, still wind, nothing, nothing, nothing, no vast mirage, no pining, ignoring now’s gnawing, forgetting rusty rot eating through to the bone. Here and gone.
by submission | Jan 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
Twelve years ago, during the first year of the Ultimate Crisis, the Special Problems: Organized, Researched, Explained and Solved (SPORES) think tank was presented with the perplexing Adjoining Door Conundrum. Our scientists knew about a spot near Mars where there was a curious portal to a parallel universe that was thought to be very similar to ours.
But it was an adjoining door between the two worlds. Advanced civilizations on both sides would need to unlock the door for either to gain passage through the portal. All the Prime Speaker of the Assembly of the Solar System wanted us to do was recommend whether we should unlock our side or not.
We discussed the risks and rewards. If we unlocked but the other side was locked then nothing would happen. However, if the other side was already unlocked then angels or demons might rush into our world. Also, the matter and energy or whatnot from the other world might be incompatible with our dimension with unknowable consequences.
You must appreciate the situation was dire, our solar system was on the brink of a quark subnuclear war between the Red Faction and the Orange League that might have destroyed most of humanity. Worse than the subnuclear threat was the Horrific Blight, a novel fungal disease that was spreading throughout our solar system, destroying all plant life in its wake.
Animal species were going extinct at an alarming rate. It was estimated that the total human population would fall below a hundred thousand in just nine years and be virtually extinct in less than fourteen years. Famine was already a problem on the poorest planets and moons and even on Earth food was already being rationed to prevent hoarding.
Eleven of our members thought the potential reward outweighed the very disturbing risks. We were despairing of any salvation and unlocking offered a glimmer of hope. Only Emma objected. She believed we could somehow solve our problems by ourselves, and unlocking would only divert urgently needed resources and bring down certain ruin on humanity.
Emma was put to sleep yesterday, and I’ve opted to be euthanized tomorrow. It’s important to understand our decision to unlock was made out of sheer desperation. To our surprise and relief, the other side was unlocked also. Probes were dispatched to make contact with any advanced civilization in the other dimension and request their assistance.
Based on excavations and atmospheric chemistry, we estimated the last advanced civilization in that parallel star system died out about a million years ago. Perhaps they unlocked their side in the hope that we’d save them. Apparently, they were disappointed too.
by submission | Jan 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I pressed “play” on my digital recorder.
“See doc, I wasn’t always a hoarder. Yeah, I know what my place looks like right now, but if I didn’t have clutter, I’d have nothing at all.
I was up late watching a classic movie from the 80’s. I noticed during one scene, they had the same mug as I did. I laughed and went to get a cup of noodles thinking I’d use that same mug. But I couldn’t find it. No big deal. Moved four times since I got that mug. I didn’t think too much about it. “Three moves equals a fire,” as my Auntie always said.
About two weeks later, I was watching a stupid sit com re-run and noticed they had the same platter on display I had. I got up and went to where I keep that platter and it was gone. Thought I’d drop a load right there but shook it off ‘cause even I knew what I was thinking was crazy.
Then all sorts of things went missing- a pen holder with pens, and hole punch. Wound up on an episode of “The Office,” on the receptionist counter. A framed Currier and Ives print from my hallway. That one I saw in a bar scene on “Law & Order.” Then my Mom’s sewing basket disappeared. It went to “Golden Girls”. My Grandmother’s silver tea service- “Downton Abbey.” I was getting desperate. I moved all I could out to the shed, especially the real valuable stuff, heirlooms and the like. That worked for a while. Until I went to put more out there, and everything was gone including the plywood flooring. Two days later the shed was gone. Saw it on a “Brady Bunch” episode, exterior shot.
Finally, I figure out if I just stacked things in jumbles around the house, they couldn’t find things to take. They didn’t catch on… for a while. Then stuff started disappearing again. I had to get even more complex and disheveled. You know the rest. Nieces and nephews dropped by and now here I am in the looney bin. Can’t say I blame my family. Actually, I’m glad to be here. The stuff I took with me is safe, and I can breathe easier.”
I pressed “stop”. Now, after his death, I was here to help the family process their feelings as they emptied the contents of his home. I was first to be at his house, secured since his committal. A 30-yard dumpster in the driveway, another set for delivery the following day. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the door and walked in. The air left my body as if I had been punched in the gut. The place was empty. I ran from room to room in the entire house, including the attic and basement. Nothing. No furniture, curtains, bedding, paper goods, not even cleaning supplies under the sinks. Nothing. When his relatives arrived, all of us shared our shock, our utter disbelief. Thieves. Obsessive-compulsive ones, at that.
Two days later I reported the theft of a family heirloom to the police- my great-grandmother’s wedding veil. It was set in a display case on my mantel. I filled out a report. Gave them pictures. Never thought I’d see it again.
But I did.
Last night, 1939 B&W classic, “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.” The Queen herself, wearing great-grandmothers veil. To her left on a table, the display case. I began packing stuff into boxes, hoping I wasn’t fighting a losing battle.
