by submission | Oct 6, 2020 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Justin clenched hist fists, then slowly unfurled his fingers. “See, the little finger of my right-hand sticks; it’s not as flexible, as quick, as my other fingers. These gloves are no good to me if one finger lags.”
The technician stared down at his tablet, rapidly entering data with his stylus. He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Looks like your warranty has just expired. Sorry—but we can either take those gloves on discounted trade for new ones, or we can send them back to the factory for custom repair. Which will be expensive. I suggest the trade-in option.”
“Naturally.” Justin crossed his arms to tamp down his rising frustration. “Listen, I’m a working composer and I need functioning gloves—I don’t have time for repairs. Trade these busted gloves in for a pittance towards a new pair? Yeah, that sounds like a great deal, all I have to do is mortgage my piano to pay for it.” Justin turned on and stormed out.
Once home, he peeled off his gloves, and threw himself down on the sofa, looked around his tiny townhouse—what could he sell to raise money? How could he compose when his glove was busted? For the first time, he regretted buying the things. The technology behind them was brilliant, he admitted—slip on a pair of sheer, clingy smart gloves, merely think of your melodies, your harmonies, your chord progressions—and viola! your fingers danced over the keys (or strings) before you! You didn’t even have to know how to play the instrument! And the gloves recorded the music, as well, then uploaded it to your personal account in the ether.
The downside? Now everybody and their dog was a composer. Some of these ‘dabblers,’ as he called them, were good enough to compete with him for work, threatening his livelihood. How dare they! In a sudden decision, he called his cousin Morey—who was a bit shady, but would have a notion as to how to raise some quick cash.
“Yeah, Cuz, I can connect you with a guy who’s looking for a piano player at his club in Vegas—”
Vegas! Justin sniffed to himself, that white trash paradise! He took a deep, calming breath. “Okay, hook me up.”
* * *
“You start tonight,” the sweaty man in a tuxedo two sizes too small said. “Put these on.” He slapped a pair of scarlet gloves onto the bar between them.
Justin pulled them on. “I’ve not seen gloves like this before.”
“That’s because they’re, ah, custom made.”
Justin shuddered. The tuxedoed man chuckled, “Sting, don’t they?”
Justin pulled at the fingers on one hand, trying to get the glove off. “Nuh-uh, won’t happen,” the man pointed out, “not until you’re through working for me. Now, get over to that baby grand. Tonight I want to hear the great love songs of the 1970s.”
Justin sat down on the padded bench and raised his hands—which were immediately yanked down to the keyboard as if by a great magnet. He scowled. “I don’t know any love songs from the ’70s, so why don’t I—”
But he was interrupted by the movement of his own fingers gliding over the keys, playing a voluptuous version of Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love.”
“Atta boy!” the tuxedoed man chortled, looming behind Justin. “Ya know, including tips, you’ll earn enough money for them fancy composer gloves in about, oh,” he straightened his back, stuck an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth, and scanned his half-full nightclub, “ten years.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 5, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Miguel Jarvis Wong had lived on three continents before the age of thirteen, and been a trouble-finder on all but the first. To this day he doesn’t know exactly what his father did for a living, only that it meant making home in more rundown areas than on military bases. His mother did her very best, but Miguel was his father’s son, clever and opinionated from an early age. That precociousness transmuted into arrogance after this father died, then drowned in guilt at the manner of his mother’s passing. Standing over her grave, he swore to do better with what he had.
Twenty years later, Professor M. Jarvis Wong straightens up from the lectern, waving his hand to send the displays from local holographic projection to the screens that dominate the arena.
“My father drilled many things into me. One of the useful ones was the concept of ‘intelligent searching’. Which, for my long-suffering students, results in my demands that they seek at least two independent sources for every fact.”
A surprising number of the younger audience nod with resigned familiarity.
“On a higher level, it made me sceptical of research after the theory. When you go looking for things that support your theory, it can lead you to ignore potential discoveries because they don’t fit with what you expect. I believe that you should take what is, then explain why and how. From that belief came the reason for my latest tranche of papers: just because we can’t detect it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
He nods and waves his hands placatingly.
“Yes, I know I’ve been framed as the crazy scientist looking for faeries and ghosts. I’ve been accused of wasting grant monies better spent on conventional research, and have lost valued colleagues who became disenchanted with my aims.”
A bearded man stands and waves a fist toward the lectern: “You’re an egotistical lunatic who should be rejected by the scientific community!”
Miguel points at the man.
“Your work on the detection of anomalous energy effects in inanimate materials was one of the foundations of today’s presentation, Henry.”
The bearded man sits down, shaking his head.
“While I acknowledge the value of Professor Daldene’s input, his reaction is also a reason for today. The demands for something of substance from my work have reached a point, where, to be blunt, I have to ‘put up or shut up’.”
There’s scattered applause, along with shouts of “about time” and “fraud”.
Miguel gestures to the screens about the arena.
“What you see on the screens are simplified explanations of that work. Now, before we progress, I have to admit that today’s discovery came about by accident. I was looking for a way to detect the human soul. I’m still doing that, but what I had been working on was the wrong approach. What I found instead,” he pauses, “is this.”
A dozen huge lights come on, bathing the arena in an eerie off-white glow. There’s laughter that swiftly dies away. Screaming starts.
Miguel extends a hand to rest against the gigantic, scaled head that rests next to him on stage. A stage that many had said was ‘barely big enough for his ego’ is now filled with something that looks a lot like a very large dragon.
“This is Kresdall. He is the First Envoy to Humanity from the Nineteen Realms. Other races of which I gather, from the loud reactions, have been spotted amongst you in the audience.”
He nods to Henry.
“Let us see who and what is rejected, shall we?”
by submission | Oct 4, 2020 | Story |
Author: Joseph Sidari
“Is that a Shih-Tzu?” She reached down and petted the puppy.
It sniffed her hand, looking up with intelligent eyes.
“Kind of a mix,” he said.
“Oh, right. So many genetically engineered breeds these days. Maybe a Shih-poo?”
“No. That’s Shih-Tzu bred with a poodle.”
“Or a Shorkie?”
“No. That’s with a Yorkie,” he said. “For this pup, we spliced in human DNA.”
“Ha!”
“No, seriously. We recovered it from a seventeenth-century poet. It’s a Shih-Speare.”
“You must be kidding.” She laughed. “Will you have it write plays?”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Sonnets first. But if those sell…”
by submission | Oct 3, 2020 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
Far from the city center, where the lights are so dim that stars can be seen, lies a rare view, a stand of trees. The trees, of which kind had long been forgotten, poked their yearning branches high above the squat gray monotony of the surrounding tenements, tendrils of living fire that suggested life could thrive, even among the concrete and asphalt.
To the locals, the trees were a source of great civic pride. The sheltering branches provided everything they needed. During the summer, it was a cool place to gather. In the winter, it was the setting for great snowball fights. Regardless of the time a day, people could be found, meeting, discussing, playing cards or chess. As heated as any discourse may have run, always, always it was followed by a handshake or a pat on the back. Not the least amount of romances began beneath the gentle boughs; the trees heard many voices whisper sweet nothings, though not a single tree was blemished by initials carved in a moment of passion. Under the trees was where people gathered when one among them passed. The trees were the heart and soul of the community.
“What took you so long, where’s your crew?” barked the dark-haired man in the blue suit, despite the sun being hidden by the surrounding building, he wore sunglasses.
“No crew.” The foreman announced, holding his hands up.
“What do you mean no crew?”
“None of the locals are willing to do the work. Say the trees done belong to anyone.”
“They belong to me.” The man in the suit barked back. “I have a deed right here that says so.”
He stomped around for a few minutes.
“Fine get a crew from out of town.”
“No can do.” The foreman replied. “The union rep told me he would make our lives very difficult if we tried to go around him.”
“Get me a chainsaw. I will do it myself.”
The foreman retrieved a chainsaw and a can of gas. The man in the suit snatched it from him and skulked off into the trees.
The moment he stepped beneath the swaying leaves the noise of the outside world faded to silence. A car passed on the street beyond, but for all he could tell it was a ghost. Undeterred by the sudden change, the man in the suit marched on until he found a small tree, barely a sapling. All he needed was one. Once the community understood that he meant business about putting up the off-tracking wagering parlor then they would play.
He took off his jacket and hung it on a branch, before kneeling over the saw.
“Can I help you?” A voice asked, it seemed to come from every direction.
“I know how to work a saw.” The developer replied.
“That’s what I am afraid of.” The voice replied, now right in front of him.
“Listen, pal.” The man in the suit started. He began to rise, but stopped. He was staring at someone who looked exactly like him, putting his jacket on. The man reached for the inside pocket and retrieved the deed. He looked the papers over and smiled.
“Hey you can’t…” the developer started, but was cut short as he felt himself lifted up into the canopy.
A few minutes later, a man in a blue suit emerged from the trees, carrying a chain saw and gas can.
“On second thought,” he explained to the foreman. “Maybe its better these trees stay here for a while longer.”
by submission | Oct 2, 2020 | Story |
Author: Liya Akoury
Names are strange things. Back on Earth, we inherited our fathers’ names, but there are no fathers here. We’re twelve women and twenty-four girls. So, we’ve done away with them. We also used to have ranks. Yael was “Captain”, then “Levinsky”. Now, she’s just “Yael”. I was “Officer Cohen”, then “Doc”. Now, I’m “Agnessa” when my services are required and “Aggie” otherwise. The others decided that “Agnessa” is their psychotherapist, and “Aggie” is their sister-in-arms.
Bafflingly, Yael still calls me “Doc”. I’ll spare you (“You”? Who am I writing this for exactly?) the psychoanalysis. Yael’s maintained her pathological distrust of “shrinks”. She’s the only one who’s never been my client. To her great credit, from the beginning, she’s trusted my ability to see the crew through the initial years. She simply, categorically, didn’t trust me to see her inner self. This told me more about her than any therapy session ever could.
Enough circumlocution! Granted, you, dear reader (a distant grandchild?), don’t know that I’m stalling. Yael came over last night, after putting the kids to bed. We often meet alone and usually in the evenings. When Yael was “Captain”, she needed to keep a pulse on the group, get input from me. By some inertia, we’ve maintained this habit, though she’s not, strictly speaking, our leader any longer. So we talked of this and that, the schooling of the eldest daughter-dozen (“DD-ones”, Hannah calls them, ever the engineer), and the teething of the youngest (“DD-twos”).
Yael joked, as she often does, about how deserving we all are of a nice, stiff brandy after a long day of building, harvesting, breastfeeding, and cleaning up various bodily fluids. I don’t disagree, but I can hardly remember the taste of alcohol, let alone the exhilaration. In a decade, we might have enough spare resources for wine grapes. We’ll be plastered from the smell alone, from the thought of it. Imagine the girls’ reaction to their twelve mothers, incapacitated, deranged by a fruity drink! I told Yael this, unabashedly. Despite her high castle walls with archers and a crocodile mote, we’ve grown close. She proceeded to feign intoxication, stumbling around my room, slurring her words, paying me bawdy compliments. It wasn’t half bad, at least to an audience of one. I laughed, she kept stumbling.
Then, she sat on my bed – a breach of protocol. We both felt it at once and froze, two fawns in the headlights of this unexpected, unprecedented proximity. Of course, we’ve been this close before. We’ve slept in the same tent, cuddling to fight off the desert chill in our inadequate sleeping bags. We’ve bathed from the same bucket, when the fog harvests yielded enough water. We’ve shat in the same latrine, when Reina fed us spoiled rations. But we’ve never sat on my bed, in my room, alone. The moment stretched out, heavy and charged. We sat, awash in its awareness. Yael met my eyes.
“Aggs…” she said.
That was all. Writing this now, I want to laugh. I’m a psychologist! I’ve carried all of these women through hell. I should be able to predict every word, every micro-expression. I treat them from the comfort of my little ivory tower, but not Yael, never quite Yael. With no apparent warning, she lowered the draw bridge (forgive me, dear granddaughter for these endless medieval metaphors, which probably make no sense to you!). She pierced through the walls with a single word. And not just any word, with my name, releasing it from her lips for the first time, carving it to be special.
So we made love.
by submission | Oct 1, 2020 | Story |
Author: Steve Bailey
Mr. Goebbels sits on a shelf in the kitchen of Roger’s apartment. It is a virtual digital assistant that displays pictures, answers questions, reports the news, and plays music. Roger gave it the nickname.
Whenever Mr. Goebbels shows pictures of his wife Diane just before cancer killed her, with her gaunt face and bald head, grief grabs Roger and holds him for a few minutes. But there is an image of Diane that makes him happy when it appears. It is an old black and white photo from their college days, her thick curly hair poking out all over from a bandanna, her clenched fist in the air.
He is fixing dinner for his pets one evening when a female voice comes out of Mr. Goebbels.
“Remember the Wilis, Roger?” it asks. “The dance is on.”
Roger looks at Mr. Goebbels and sees Clara Simpson, his girlfriend from high school. He has never seen the picture before.
Startled, he asks. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” calls out the voice of Clara Simpson. “I’m the girl you ditched, and I died from a broken heart. This is the dance of the Wilis.”
Frightened, Roger unplugs Mr. Goebbels. But the picture of Clara reappears.
“Dance!” Clara commands, and Mr. Goebbels begins playing Twist and Shout.
Roger responds. “This is madness!”
A drawer holding cutlery shoots open, and knives begin flying around the kitchen. One impales the cat’s tail to the wall. Roger rushes to the aide of the screaming cat that scratches him deeply on both forearms.
He begins to dance the twist, and the knives all fall to the floor. One song immediately follows another. Every time Roger stops, the knives go airborne. He is becoming tired.
Suddenly the music stops, and the black and white photo of Diane appears.
“If she is a Wilis, I am Giselle. You and I will do a dance of dialog.”
“Where are you?” Roger asks, “Heaven? The Underworld?”
Diane’s picture immediately disappears.
Bye, Bye Love blasts out of Mr. Goebbels.
Roger tells Mr. Goebbels to show the picture of Diane. But the virtual digital assistant is unplugged to the living, and Clara Simpson is on the screen.
“Dance! Dance faster!” Clara shouts in a shrill voice as Roger struggles to keep up with the music. The cat-inflicted wounds on his forearms sting and ooze blood.
An hour later, the music stops, and Diane is back in control. She begins a discussion on modern art, and Roger sits down at the kitchen table to rest and respond.
“This ends at sunrise,” Diane tells Roger. “By then, either we will have defeated that tormented spirit, or you will have joined us in death.”
As the night wears on, it is back and forth between the two dead women. Clara’s choice of music remains locked in the era of their high school years. Diane’s selection of discussion prompts include political theory, philosophy, and art history. Their conversations become lively, and Diane gains control of Mr. Goebbels.
The pale blue predawn light shows in Roger’s kitchen window. The dance is coming to an end. Clara is gone, Diane is on the screen.
She plays their song, and when it is over, Mr. Goebbels’s screen is dark.
Roger takes the virtual digital assistant out to a scrap yard and pays to have it crushed.
Back in his apartment, he rummages through old boxes and finds the original black and white of Diane. He frames it and places it on the kitchen shelf where Mr. Goebbels once stood.
