by submission | Jun 1, 2019 | Story |
Author: Keith Downey
Crammed as he was into the middle seat of Row F between two gargantuan human specimens, Zim wasn’t sure that he could even reach the tesseract in his pocket, let alone activate it. Excess tissue, barely contained by overworked athletic pants, reached across the border that should have divided the narrow seats. The oversized humans seemed unaware of their encroachment into his territory.
Across the aisle, a dirty minor with a mop of uncouth hair alternated between sticking its tongue out at Zim and shoving candy into its gullet. Its parental units, unconcerned, stared lifelessly at their electronic devices. A male wearing the headdress of a cattle herder shouted demands at a disinterested flight attendant. A small canine inexplicably occupied a seat and added its yips to the cacophony.
The dingy flying machine should have soured Zim’s mood. The rank smell of compressed passengers and their greasy foodstuffs should have stoked his anger. Two surprise fees, one for possessing luggage an inch longer than regulation-size and another for having the audacity to check in with a human representative of the airline, should have driven him to the precipice of rage. The utter lack of in-flight entertainment should have pushed him right over that precipice.
But none of those setbacks managed to damage his disposition, because Zim was, at long last, heading home. It had taken months of tinkering to determine the precise altitude, velocity, and solar flare schedule to guarantee the tesseract’s effectiveness. That so many dreadful samples would be unwittingly coming along was an added bonus.
Zim finally freed his arms from the confines of his neighbors’ girth. He checked the watch-looking device on his left wrist and smiled; almost there. He pulled his hat more snugly over his antennae, then reached into his coat pocket. Caressing the small silvery cube for a few moments, Zim re-familiarized himself with the intricate patterns on its sides.
Checking the readings on his wrist once more, Zim sighed as he pushed the requisite combinations to activate the tesseract. A faint vibration was the only immediate sign that it had worked.
Several moments later, the commander of the flying machine ordered the attendants to repair to the cockpit, anxiety penetrating his voice even through the tinny speaker. The dirty minor was the first to notice the change in scenery outside the tiny portholes; the purple domes of Xilibander-6, Zim’s home planet, shone brightly in the morning suns. The minor’s sticky appendages tried but failed to rouse the concern of its parental units.
Aghast, the juvenile looked wildly across the aisle. Zim winked at it, a smile now blooming on his face as the minor’s mouth made several fish-like movements. Such expressive features would be most interesting to the research committee. He looked forward to pointing out the peculiarities of this species to his colleagues; the wide disparities in weight depending on sugar and fat intake, for example. Or the ability to sit sloth-like for hours while viewing images flashing on screens of various sizes.
As the minor continued to sputter incoherently, Zim felt a brief pang of guilt at resigning the humans to a life of observation chambers and scientific instruments. Then one of his gargantuan neighbors broke wind, quickly reversing Zim’s train of thought. Advancing the knowledge of a superior species would be a most appropriate fate for these humans. A kindness, really.
After all, the lab cages to which the passengers would soon be transferred were much roomier than the seats on Flight 437, and the probes were hardly more intrusive than a TSA pat-down.
by submission | May 31, 2019 | Story |
Author: Irene Montaner
She wandered along time caring for the dead. No galaxy was too big, no planet too insignificant. Everything that had ever lived within the boundaries of her universe was worth of her attention, regardless of whether it had existed for eons or nanoseconds.
She found us right in the middle of a singularity, if there’s ever such a place. A point in time and space where the nothing converged with everything, the darkness with the light. A point where the energy clashed with the vacuum.
She found us and released us from the black hole that had swallowed our stellar system. Her long, thin fingers surrounded us, felt us, searched for any sign of life, as feeble as may. Millions of millions of millions of heartbeats reached the strings of her consciousness at once. It was us calling for help, from the first bacteria that ever swam in our oceans to the last human that ever walked the earth. It was us asking for mercy.
She listened closely and heard beyond our heartbeats. She heard us screaming and yelling, crying and lying, abusing each other. She heard the clash of the battles we fought, the crash of the dishes we broke, the bang of the bombs we dropped. She heard us failing at life and hoping there would be a tomorrow for that very same reason. Because we had failed and wanted to try again.
She brought us closer to her, her lips almost touching us. Every string that made her up vibrated as she insufflated part of her life into us. Quarks, hadrons, atoms, molecules formed again in less than what it took for the universe to be born. It will take a much longer time before our hearts start beating. But they will beat again.
by submission | May 30, 2019 | Story |
Author: J. David Thayer
I lay in my hospital bed with both arms crushed and my face and eyes cut to pieces. A loose timber from a logger swatted my Jeep into a drainage ditch. The accident should have killed me, but I survived. Didn’t feel like it. Well-meaning people, when void of anything useful to say, often proceed regardless.
“Well, it could have been worse.”
True. And it damn well could have been a whole lot better.
#
I was once a gifted artist. My right hand would never regain the dexterity that earned me a scholarship to NYU, but that hardly mattered now. Color was fading memory. One day Dr. Gregory Perkins visited me in my new darkness. He had an idea.
“We have found a suitable pair of eyes to attempt a radical double transplant! It may result in the full recovery of your eyesight. The eyes of an artist, as I understand it.”
#
The nurse unscrolled the gauze like an archeologist undressing a mummy.
“Alright, Jonathan, tell us what you see?”
My lids fluttered. The new pupils began to orient themselves. My first dose of light since Highway 61. Light! Precious light!
I began screaming long before I recognized my own voice.
“Purple! Why are you all purple?” I looked at my hands. “Why am I purple? What the hell is this?”
#
My donor, whoever she was, saw in a completely different spectrum. All was alien and awful. When she said, “blue” did she mean “orange”? My green sure as hell wasn’t her green! There were also other colors I never saw before. Neat, huh? I couldn’t take it. None of it. I screamed like I was on fire every time I opened my after-market eyes. They would not reboot. This was my world now.
“You Quack! What the hell!
“No one really knows for certain that we all see things exactly the same. Maybe we just have a relative vocabulary for describing relationships. The idea’s long been on my mind. My father’s color blind. He can tell whether something that is red or green, but his brain only sees distinctions of gray. He doesn’t know green grass—not like the rest of us do. As an ophthalmologist, I know that color blindness affects the cones and rods. Even so, I’ve always wondered if colors are absolutes at all! Seems they’re not.”
“Well! Good for you! Get out.”
#
After ten days my new left eye began to reject. The right eye soon followed. I was actually relieved. I couldn’t accept Jane Mincy’s world. That was her name: Jane Mincy, age 23. Dad pulled some strings and found out that much.
#
After leaving the hospital, I started working clay with my left hand. NYU honored their scholarship, and they were rewarded with a promising new artist who tells an incredible story. Crowded lecture halls. People wanted to hear what it was like to see through another set of eyes. At least they thought they did.
‘It’s a good thing I didn’t end up with the eyes of a cubist!” This line always killed ‘em. “I probably would have fragmented instantly and never recovered.”
#
After graduation, Dad drove me out to a cemetery in Rochester to find Jane Mincy. I made a small sculpture to place it on her headstone. Funny thing about my work now: I refuse to let anyone tell me the color of the clay. Just give me a lump of anything and keep your mouth shut.
Why not? You don’t really know what color it is either.
by submission | May 29, 2019 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
Another excursion. Another plane flight. Another jungle.
He called Stacy his heedless girlfriend because she didn’t care what anybody thought. Probably not even him. She didn’t want vacations like your average girlfriend. Never a weekend in the Hamptons or trips to Disneyland or a relaxing cruise. No. Stacy wanted African bush tours, third world village slogs, and deep tropical rain forest treks. Places he had to get shots to go to. Shots! The only shots he desired were shots of ‘Jack.’ Not hypodermics. Then, they had to get exams when they got back to get checked for diseases. Vacations shouldn’t require a doctor’s referral.
But here they were again waiting on line in some remote location, worlds off the beaten path, with a bunch of other nutty tourists waiting to cross a brown river in a pole pushed skiff, operated by some half-ass native boat captain. Where were they even going? He couldn’t remember. Stacy had made it sound so thrilling when she showed him the pictures of their little getaway on her laptop.
Oh, I can’t wait for you to actually see this ancient ruin or some monkey habitat or the like.
Well, he could wait.
An awful lot of people had already gone across and they all shuffled about waiting their turn, at the end of the queue, for the boat to pull up to the rocky shoreline. The thing appeared to be a flimsy means of transport and the other side of the river looked none too inviting either. Something over there would probably bite him, stab him or sting him and then he’d be rushed to a backwater hospital. Another doctor. Another shot.
Not this time. He was going to tell his heedless girlfriend that he wanted to go back to civilization. Back to a legitimate hotel, take a shower, have a drink, sleep in a regular bed and have coffee and tons of free bacon at the continental breakfast in the morning.
Just then the boat beached itself onto the river bank with a horrendous screech and everybody started chain-gang walking forward and he followed…with trepidations. The first person to get on was a guy in a gray pinstripe suit. What was his deal? Next an elderly couple, old-style camera in hand. Then a family; mom, dad, and two kids. There was a woman in a blue jumpsuit, name tag on the upper left breast, with a yellow kerchief knotted loosely around her neck. And it was right then and there as they all gingerly stepped into this flat-bottomed canoe that he got up his nerve and decided, ‘No way, man.’
He was about to tell Stacy that he wasn’t going, and at this point, it probably wouldn’t matter to her, when she took the proffered hand of the local and climbed aboard. She thanked him for his help, tipped him a coin and joined the others on the wooden pews. The boatman hesitated and looked him dead in the face, waiting for him to choose his path.
‘No’ he decided and started moonwalking away. Unconcerned the guy shifted his posture, dug his pole into the ground and pushed off from the shore and began punting to the other side. He watched Stacy vanish into the mist that shrouded the river and he felt an icy chill and he turned away.
And opened his eyes; still strapped into seat 23D, on a burning mountainside strewn with ripped aluminum and shredded fiberglass batting, seated next to his headless girlfriend.
by Hari Navarro | May 28, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
She slides the ornately embossed door aside and enters the first-class stall. It’s empty but for a man, he barely stirs as he reads aloud from a menu.
“Calvados Glazed Roast Duck with Apple Sauce.”
“William.”
“Miss White.”
The train wheels clatter and shake and the man smiles as he cranes his head up to take in a vast undulating sea of blue-tinged snow. A perfection of ice that scoops up to a high jagged peak, a finger of sheer rock that rises and points to the crisp moon that dominates the tranquil ink pond above.
“You believe you’re not to die here?”, she asks.
“Quite the opposite. I know it with certainty. I know the bullet you primed just moments ago will enter through the corner of my right eye and then expand inside of my head.”
“I will kill you and he will come.”
“Do you know who you work for? They who come to you in the fog. These guardians of the future who feed your dreams and clap as you wolf it all down.”
“Be careful, Mr. Starr.”
“I’ve no need for care. You’re to eliminate me because I pose a severe threat to the time-line, correct?”
“You’re a very dangerous man.”
“Then, shoot me. Why afford me even the barest of opportunity to overpower you or pollute your conviction with my words? You can’t…”, he says taking the gold fob-watch from his pocket, “… not just yet.”
“Go on…”, she goads raising her weapon to his face and pleading with her finger to contract.
“Your visions say I’m responsible for the coming saviour’s death…”
“He was to die. Today but 400 miles south of where you now smirk. A forgotten name aboard a great ship that even you could not find. A colossus hidden in plain sight.”
Mr. Starr flips the menu to face her. The letterhead, a two-pronged red burgee, a white star and in sweeping elegant font beneath: Royal Canadian Pacific Rail Car – Titanic.
“He was to die at 2:27 a.m, April 15th, aboard the RMS Titanic. But times they are a changin’.”
“What did you do?”
The carriage jolts as a massive sheet of ice detaches from the mountain above and unfurls, building in speed and mass as it crashes toward the longest and fastest steam train the world has ever known.
“We’ve lived this life many times over. Sometimes I’m you and sometimes I’m me. But each time it is only I that knows this fate. I’ve tried to end this spiral. The rope snaps at my neck, the knife slips harmlessly at my wrists… remember this, Catherine. It’s too late now but next time. Together we’ll escape from their grip”, he screams into the roar of torquing steel and the searing crack of the gun.
2:15 a.m, April 15th, 1912. HMA Titanic
The world’s largest airship glides like a leaf along the gentle air-stream that rises up the edge of the Mahalangur Himal range and spirals into a brilliantly moonlit sky.
A woman in a thick fur-rimmed jacket approaches a man with sad eyes. He grimaces out through his view-port at just how very close they’re getting to the highest peak on the planet.
She thrusts what appears to be an overstuffed suitcase into his hand.
“Billy. Don’t think. Just put it on… time to leave.”
by Julian Miles | May 27, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The pavement shimmers gently in the afternoon heat. The baristas have been reduced to serving nothing but iced coffee.
“944,013.”
Alec looks up to see someone with a vaguely familiar face take the seat opposite, then a waft of cigarette smoke makes him sneeze.
“Ah, you’re sensitive.”
The man now sharing his table stubs his cigarette out in the sugar bowl.
“Do I know you?”
Eyebrows raise: “Username ‘Peacemonger’. You did say to come find you.”
Alec sighs. Another troll. Will he be able to get rid of this one without police intervention?
“Peacemonger? I thought you were joking.”
The man frowns: “Disappearing people is no joke. Ergo, when you disagree with my contention and issue a challenge, for me to ignore either could be taken as tacit agreement. Therefore, here I am, and… 944,013.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“The number of humans who disappeared without trace in the last year, worldwide, as of the last midnight in this time zone.”
Alec saves his document and closes his laptop.
“That’s precise. I doubt even the various interested organisations could provide that. Especially for anyone who disappeared yesterday. How can you be sure they’re gone for good?”
Peacemonger smiles. Alec sees he’s had cosmetic dentistry: his upper outer incisors appear to be canines.
“Surely the question is ‘how do I know’ rather than ‘how can I be sure’?”
Alec grins: “I presume you’ve come to prove it.” Under the table, his thumb hovers over the ‘Call the Police’ icon on his mobile phone. He’d written the app himself after a previous troll hunted him down.
“I am, and by using one of the theories you challenged. See the corner behind me? It’s the one Susan Ceczyks rounded a minute ahead of her boyfriend, nine years ago. When he rounded the corner, she was gone. You contend she ducked into a vehicle. I say a dimensional anomaly whisked her away to fight for her life in the Sleastax system. I also said the anomaly is cyclic, and selective. Therefore, if I venture round that corner in six minutes time, I will vanish. All I ask is that you follow one minute behind to witness my proof.”
Alec stares at the maniac in an ill-fitting three-piece suit. He’d known that alien abductions and unexplained disappearances had a dedicated, factionalised following. He hadn’t realised the number of lone nutters who regarded logical investigation of their pet disappearances worthy of offline confrontation.
“So, if I tail you round that corner in a few minutes time, you’ll be satisfied?”
“Yes. I shall simply leave you to work out how to report the revelation I will have shown you.”
Alec shakes his head slightly and he finished his frappé. If necessary, he can run back here. The server collecting the empties and the one cleaning the floor look beefy enough to fend off this lunatic.
They sit in the sun, Alec pretending to busy himself with his phone to avoid further conversation.
“It’s time.”
The man gets up and walks to the corner, then stops and looks back at him.
Let’s get this over with. Alec walks to the corner, stopping a couple of metres short when the man raises a hand.
“Remember: you follow in one minute.”
Alec nods.
The man turns the corner and disappears from view. Alec waits a little while – less than a minute – then follows.
Peacemonger lights a cigarette and walks off, a wry smile on his face. Works every time.
Alec sprawls in maroon sand, his laptop embedding itself nearby. The crowd hoots and howls, waving their tentacles enthusiastically.
