by submission | Mar 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Thomas E. Simmons
The rooms are less than luxurious. Indeed, there are no rooms as such. Instead, an assortment of squalid pup tents greets each visitor.
Pitched there haphazardly among the campsites nearest the inclines are numerous corrosive mists of carbon dioxide. There, in the fog, one almost stumbles upon them – the tents; rows of them but none too straight. Bent. Tarpaulin triangles with lightweight poles thrust harshly through ringlets in the canvas and lightly scratching the surface. Those poles will scrape away the gills from the fishless tourists – even the casual ones. (As if there are any other kind.)
The cheeky hurricanes overpopulating the less attractive neighborhoods are as insufferable as the boulders masquerading as maître d’s. They’ll tire you out before you’ve escaped the train depot. On a positive note, however, they rarely demand a tip.
Leave your gills at home or at least secured in your Samsonites with their adorable little locks and charmingly undersized wheels since the surface temperature exceeds the highest setting on most household ovens by 400° or so and the atmospheric pressure is a crushing 90 bars, making the possibility of palms trees, coral, or even seraphs remote at best. A consular mocking at worst. It’s hot.
One’s luggage locks will be replaced by soldered teardrops before one resets one’s wristwatch. And the wheels will drop out of their chassis like pregnant pits. There are no flies in the ointment because the flies are bits of ash. Torn muscle. Poorly crafted limericks. Jots. Invariably, they’ll stick in your teeth. Bring floss.
The black and white photographs of the country’s navel reveal something like the inside of a backyard grill that’s been left on all night to cook itself to death, while the color photographs disclose yellowed tints from the smeary mustard sands. Smeared vindictively. It’s as if she’s cooked her own navel and served it to herself on a platter too hot to touch and then finger-painted on herself with a slightly rotted flaxen rouge. It’s as if she’s shoved a moth into a candle’s flame and held it there, cauterizing her clenching.
It’s all rather banal. Like a mud-covered lantern, the coastlines are ignored by the locals and for good reason.
And it’s warmer than a blast oven – if its climate was a kiln it would bust itself apart and spill open like a gourd. Hotter than an apogee furnace into which someone might cram an accidentally suffocated corpse – to remove any trace of it. To make it go away. To make bones be bygone.
Cooking long after the springs are punched out. Cooking and cooking – roasting without rest.
So, consider sandals, a few smart linen outfits, a sun hat for the ladies or a rakish pith helmet for the gentlemen. Leave the wool blazers in Amiens. You won’t miss them. Even the evenings are stifling. They turn one’s crotch and armpits into soup. A soup without any seasoning and fit only for savages. And don’t even think of inquiring about croutons. They’re seldom available.
Indeed, culinary options are limited. A rival travel guide warns: ‘Unpacking, you’ll find only a too-thick-hot-gelatin or overcooked magma on the room service list of options’ (tactfully omitting the wrench-like mercury-filled bread sticks, despite their repetitive prominence on every menu).
Another hisses: ‘Spare, terse, desiccated, uncompromising.’
“A life-changing destination for the suicidal,’ wisecracks the last.
Accordingly, we recommend arranging one’s exit visa prior to arrival. Don’t rely on the expertise of their functionaries. The agents are irredeemable. It’s almost as if custom and immigration forms haven’t beset – or been invented there – yet.
One and one-half stars.
Editor’s Note: ‘Ms Lonely Planet’ was previously published by Rue Scribe
by submission | Mar 28, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kim Farrell
The thick foggy sky seemed to press down on her in the empty lot. A tangle of leaves and branches scraped across the vacant space where the kitchen used to be. She could she her mother standing before the hot stove, stirring a large pot of bubbling tomato sauce, as she and her four siblings waiting anxiously around the table—plates piled high with naked spaghetti.
Tears pricked the back of her eyes at the memory, but she was not grieving. A jumble of emotions fought for dominance in her heart, but grief was not among them. Those were joyful times that she would carry with her forever, no matter which houses stood or fell. Glancing around the lot she imagined where the living room would have been and stepped into it. The space looked so much smaller from this perspective. Without the definition of the room itself–all its colors, smells, and sounds–it was just a twelve-by-twelve-foot square of dead grass. To think this exact spot held such significance for so long. She pictured herself laid out on the pink floral couch—a decorative piece that she had always mocked, but her mother adored for its vintage qualities. She was leaned up against her older sister, holding open the page of a picture book with one hand and clutching a teddy bear with the other. She could almost feel her mother’s presence—walking into the room with two bowls of ice cream and smiling softly as she observed her daughters enjoying the lazy evening before bedtime.
Only when the calls of her own young son behind her jolted her out of her daydream did she notice she was now crying freely. Tears brimmed from her eyelids and rolled down her cheeks like an overflowing kettle. And she smiled.
by submission | Mar 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
“It started over a year ago because I couldn’t find a pair of wireless earbuds that worked.” Tom began telling the stranger sitting next to him his story.
He paused, looking around. The diner was crowded for a Wednesday. There was a youth soccer team, four business types in suits of varying shades of grey, and a couple of bikers milling around the door, arguing over whether they wanted the seats near Tom at the counter or the booth in the back by the can.
“You were saying?” the stranger’s voice was soft, with a melodic quality like a puff of verbal serotonin. Tom calmed noticeably; he came here on Wednesdays specifically because it was always dead.
“Sorry,” Tom apologized, “I ended up going through seven pairs of wireless earbuds. The cheapos, after that the brands you heard of, then the expensive ones no one’s ever heard of, each time the left channel was fuzzy. I was getting frustrated because I like being able to walk around the house without having to have the phone on me, all that radiation.”
Tom paused and took a sip of water. He glanced over at the stranger, but couldn’t tell what he looked like. Maybe it was both the bright fluorescent lights washing out his features, and the broad brim of the man’s Stetson casting his face in a deep shadow.
“Just when I think all is lost, my friend John gets this idea and asks if I have a metal plate in my head. He explains that he knows a guy at the VA who picked up a couple of grenade fragments back when he did a tour through Kosovo. The docs told him that the metal in his head was distorting the signal.”
“And then…” the stranger asked, laying a hand on Tom’s arm, just above the wrist. Tom watched the hair on his forearm stand on end in undulating waves that rippled up and down his arm. The stranger’s touch was both clammy and electric and Tom felt a mild uneasiness at the pallid skin sticking to the strangers’ emaciated fingers.
“Then,” Tom continued, “I said what the heck and talked to my doctor. Surprisingly, he humored me. I guess he makes good money ordering MRIs. Yada, yada, yada, they find something just below the skin attached near the base of my skull.”
“What was it?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Tom scrounged through his fanny pack. After a few minutes, he removed a glass vial four inches long and an inch in diameter. Inside was a metallic object the length of a paperclip and as thick and round as the lead in a number two pencil.
“Once they removed it, my earbuds worked fine, every pair of them.”
Tom admired the object in his hand, set it on the counter then took a bite of pie. He savored the flavor for a long time.
“Wait, Rita, where did it go?” he blurted out.
“Where did what go?” she asked irritably.
“The thing they took out of my head. And where’s the guy I was talking to?
“You’re the only person here,” She replied, giving him her patented you’re crazy look. “Have been all night.” She stomped down to the other end of the counter to fill the salt and pepper shakers.
Tom sat dumbfounded, slowly chewing the last few bites of his cherry pie, lamenting that in a few days he would have to go back to headphones.
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.
