by Julian Miles | Sep 24, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“If any can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let them now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold their peace.”
The traditional silence falls. Then a grating voice sounds in everyone’s minds.
“I speak for the dead. Conrad Conal Mulligan, your debt is due. Before whichever god is invoked and these witnesses, they call blood toll upon thee.”
Heads turn as the groom spins on his heel, away from the bride. The best man lunges to catch her as she collapses.
Three white-masked figures stand at the end of the aisle. Candlelight flickers on demonic faces and reflects from the polished surfaces of weapons. The robed giant on the left and the suited midget on the right cradle blasters. The kilted figure between them clutches a long knife in a white-knuckle grip. It lowers the blade and steps forward with left arm extended, clenched fist dripping slow drops of crimson rebuke onto the worn flagstones.
Francesca looks up from where she crouches in Wren’s arms, tears ruining her makeup and voice punctuated by sobs.
“For pity’s sake, Conal. Tell these idiot kitsune they have the wrong wedding.”
He looks down at her and smiles.
“They don’t. Conrad was my name.”
The smile vanishes. He squares his shoulders and turns his attention back to the interlopers.
“Today was to be a new start. While it’s become an end, I dispute any finality.”
The giant moves to one side. Into the space vacated steps a slight figure. Black-tipped ears poke through hair the same shade as Francesca’s. Except this hair moves of its own accord, surrounding a vulpine face dominated by enormous violet eyes.
There’s a shocked murmuring: another kitsune from some Aranoshi Reaches clan, but this one stands bare-faced!
Conal’s skin turns ash-pale.
A reedy voice chimes in the minds of all present.
“You slew my clan to steal my sister, convinced of her affections. When you continued to ignore the truth, my twin chose the void. Still you did not regret. The deaths started as a sad misunderstanding. They became murders when you took Leshtari from our home and drove her to leap into the sunless dark to escape your obsession. Murders capped by an unforgivable act of selfishness. Yet, ‘just another failed romance’ is how you term it. Never revealing it as the reason why you dare not fare off this planet.
When sympathisers sent me the marriage notice containing your picture, I quit the mountains of my home, bought a ronin ship – as they will defy laws to serve honour – and came here to end your charade. My sister’s memory shall not be sullied further. Blithe liar, I contest your dispute with my blood. Blood that stands alone, last in line, by your hand.”
Conal staggers as if struck, turning back to look at Francesca.
His tone is resigned: “The past I told you skipped a few things. Besides, with you, I found the love that damned fox denied me. Couldn’t pass up on that.”
Francesca blinks, tears drying. She looks at Wren, finds him looking at her. They both turn to look at Conal.
Who steps further away, gesturing for the vicar to step toward them, then looks at Wren and smiles.
“Look after her, old son. I know you’d be together if not for my arrival.”
There’s a flash of blinding white light with a noise like leaves rustling. By the time anyone can see again, the kitsune are gone and there’s nothing but a scattering of bloodied dust to mark where he stood.
by submission | Sep 23, 2018 | Story |
Author: John McLaughlin
“Christ, this place is a dump.”
Paul Braun glanced around the offices of Organic Transport, Columbus branch. Dust-streaked fliers pepper the walls:
Fifty-Thousand Credit Reward for Water Smugglers…
“Food Rioters To Be Shot On Sight,” says UN Commissioner…
A single clerk stood behind the counter, fidgeting nervously. “Good morning, sir,” the man greeted. He reached automatically for a brochure, the OT logo casting red flickers across his face. “How about an overview?”
“Yes, I think I’ll need one,” Paul said, fingering his sandy beard.
The man unfurled one leaflet for review, a list of transport options three feet in length. For the discerning refugee, a Platinum Organics plan was hard to beat: sentry guarded full-body transport through fifty years of spaceflight; thawing and reanimation at destination; and nano-repairs for any damaged goods. Paul didn’t even waste a glance at those.
Unfazed, he jumped ahead to the skimpiest Basic option: one and a half kilos of biomass, whatever you could fit in the canister. Just enough room for a brain and some spinal fluid to keep it happy. For an additional fee, the brain would be transplanted into a cloned body at destination.
Perfect. Paul had just enough to cover three Basics.
He opened his wallet to pluck out a credit chip, his last one, and shoved it into the clerk’s waiting hand.
A moment passed. The man frowned, knitting caterpillar eyebrows. “Mr. Braun, I’m afraid we can accept only one cephalon.”
“Excuse me?”
“One brain, sir.”
“How’s that possible?” Paul demanded.
“It appears that BC Ranger will be the last Basic cargo haul out of North America,” the clerk said, “and totally filled to capacity. In fact, I’ll be onboard as well.”
He smiled, punched another key. “You’re quite lucky. This spot opened up just yesterday. Passenger accident–antifreeze failure during the cooldown phase.”
“What good does one spot do me?” Paul grated. “There’s myself and my two daughters.”
“Ah-h-h.” The man dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry but there’s a strict first come, first serve policy. Only a limited amount of tissue can be supported by the coolant system, you see.”
“There must be a way,” Paul mumbled to himself, voice trailing into silence. “Emma and Janice…”
Something came to him just then, a flicker of memory from a high school lecture–the classic case of split personalities. He could hear Mr. Sorrano pontificating: It is a curious fact of human psychology, that an entirely distinct persona can inhabit each hemisphere of the brain…
—
Paul stands in the immense shadow of the cargo liner, squints up at its frame. The few blackbirds left in the sky are drawing slow circles.
When the Ranger’s fusion jet finally kicks in, he turns and winds a path back through the empty lot.
He imagines the human diaspora hurtling towards interstellar space–an expanding sphere of fireflies fleeing a broken homeworld. There would be chaos; war and privation were almost ensured. Whatever fate brought next, the girls would need each other to survive.
He smiled. The bio-canister had been small indeed; small, but with room enough for its precious cargo. Two lifetimes woven through fourteen hundred grams.
Paul steals a last glance at the ship as it burns an arc over the horizon. One thought gave him solace: At least I know you’ll stick together.
by submission | Sep 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
The metaphysical archive didn’t have as many visitors as it used to. Satch understood that. Still, he treated each one with all the kindness he could muster. The past was important to keep alive.
Round about six-thirty on Saturday night, a young couple came in. Nervous and fumbling in their attitudes toward one another, they must’ve been on only their third or fourth date, Satch could tell.
“A pleasant good evenin’ ta’ you,” he ushered them into the lobby and took their coats. “Welcome to the North American substation J2, of the metaphysical archive of planet Earth and its inhabitants. My name is Satchel Johnson. What can I show ya’?”
“This is Ellen. I’m Tom,” the young man said. “We’d like to start off with a personal tour.”
“Sure thing,” Satch said. “We’ll get you to the screening room right away. Just need your full names, dates of birth, and DNA profiles.”
Satch scanned their I.D. cards into the system and went up to the control booth. Ellen and Tom sat down holding hands in the darkened personal theatre and shared a kiss.
“Ready?” Tom asked his date.
“Sure,” Ellen replied.
“Okay, let’s start with the moment I decided to be conceived…”
Up in the booth, Satch located the appropriate recording and ran it for the youngsters.
Tom lent narration to the footage.
“There I am without form in the void. You can tell that my soul-self had grown restless with the lack of physicality.”
“You had such a cute soul,” Ellen commented.
“Watch now, here it comes,” Tom said. “There! There I go into Earthly reality, right into that egg inside my mother.”
“That was adorable,” Ellen said.
Tom shouted additional directions to Satch in the booth: “Okay, could you fast forward nine months, please?” Then to his date: “I want to show you the moment I decided to be born.”
Ellen squeezed Tom’s hand. “Lucky for me you did,” she said, playfully.
Satch grew a smile on his old face. Forty years and nothing changed. Young men still courted potential brides with revelations of vulnerability shared.
Tom toured Ellen through his birth footage and several key moments from his life afterward.
“What shall we view next?” he asked.
“How about the dawn of Man?” Ellen chose. “I haven’t seen that since I was six years old.”
“Comin’ right up,” Satch told them. He didn’t have to search for this footage; it was among the most popular in the archive. Satch marveled again at Humanity’s good fortune, that the Lagonians happened to be traveling past our planet at just the right moment to capture such monumental events as part of their galactic research.
“Look at that primordial soup,” Ellen said. “I’ve never seen a color like that!”
“Wait, there’s the spark!” Tom pointed across the interactive landscape. “The first thought created by what would someday become a human being — just a flash of electricity, that’s it.”
“And everything after has led to us,” Ellen gave herself over to a long, passionate kiss.
Satch grinned, over the wonderful self-centeredness of youth. He closed up the archive after ten, sensing that no other customers would visit tonight. He remembered when the concept was new: Man’s fascination with the notion that each of us created our own reality. Now it had become merely accepted fact. But for those who still felt the wonder of it all, Satch would be there, tonight and every night.
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Rebecca stood in the middle of her little gallery and surveyed her work. She’d hoped her recent direction was going to be different, maybe spark some kind of reaction from this sleepy little town, but the series hadn’t gotten anything more than polite smiles.
Not one piece had sold. She should never have left Chicago.
Her mournful reverie was broken with a crash, as her boyfriend barreled through the front door struggling with the apparent weight of a large plastic bucket.
“Becc, you’ve gotta see this stuff,” he deposited the pail heavily at her feet, causing thick liquid to splash over the sides, “it’s from that meteorite we saw hit the woods.”
Rebecca surveyed the bucket of viscous, deep coloured liquid, and the splatters across the barnboard floor and her sandal-clad feet, a mix of anger and distaste brewing at the back of her throat.
“Lewis,” she started slowly, “what have…,” she paused, the sudden urge to touch the liquid replacing her annoyance, and she plunged one hand into the pail, pulling it back and studying the near luminescent swirling glove of colour that enveloped her to the wrist.
“It’s beautiful,” she turned and wiped a large stripe across one of the closest finished canvases on the wall. Using both hands, she began smearing the material, pushing out to the edges until the surface was covered completely. She was enthralled as she worked the material, at different thicknesses and stroke directions, it became many different colours, like gasoline on water.
“Get it all,” she turned, fixing Lewis with a stare, “I need all of it.”
Lewis simply nodded as he exited the same clumsy way he’d come in.
Rebecca dragged the bucket around the gallery, covering every canvas she could find with scenes that seemed to her to be almost alive; landscapes with people who seemed to sway of their own accord as the material shimmered in the light and shadow. She made portraits of figures with deep shadows where their eyes and mouths should be, featureless creatures whose gaze nevertheless seemed to follow her around the room as she worked.
Over the next few days, Lewis brought several more buckets into the gallery before he stopped coming at all.
Rebecca didn’t notice.
Someone came in and left with a painting, Rebecca too preoccupied to bother about taking money for it, and before long others came and left, each with a piece of her new found art. Word spread, and as quickly as she could finish the paintings, they were carried off to people’s homes, the surfaces not even dry.
When she ran out of her own canvases, she cannibalized other artwork she owned, and when they were gone she tore covers off the hardback books she’d collected and painted those.
Once she’d run completely out of the liquid, and lacking anything on which to paint anyways, she left the gallery for the first time in weeks.
Walking past her large front windows, she caught her own reflection in the glass. Branches had grown from her back and shoulders, pushing through the fabric of her shirt to reach skyward, gnarly and grotesque. Her face a spiderweb of bruised lines, undulating in waves beneath the surface. She paused to straighten her shirt collar before turning back to the sidewalk.
Across the street, she watched as one of the townsfolk sublimated while walking past the coffee shop. He turned to step off the curb into the street and, just as a sudden gust of wind blew past, he simply became smoke.
She made it perhaps twenty more steps towards the downtown before stopping, a desire stronger than any gale force wind forcing her back.
She turned and headed instead, unimpeded, towards the edge of town.
As the ‘Welcome to our community’ sign faded behind her, and the sound of the interstate was carried to her ears on the evening breeze, she knew it wouldn’t be long.
A city was calling.
by xdhz8 | Sep 20, 2018 | Story |
Author: David Henson
I regain consciousness in a small hut made from sweet-smelling grass and blue sticks. A male garbed in the same type of grass stands over me. When he notices my eyes are open, he looks away and begins clicking and whistling. I ask about my crewmates. He becomes silent and, bending at the waist, backs out of the hut.
I take a few moments to rub my arms and legs then walk unsteadily outside. I find I’m in the center of a small spiral of huts. The village is surrounded by fields being worked by people walking behind animals that resemble horses with moose antlers. They must be morse, I chuckle aloud, trying to ease the tension squeezing my throat.
A woman with bright red, green and orange hair approaches me. Averting her eyes from mine, she lays a basket of what appears to be fruits at my feet. Then, bending at the waist, she backs away quickly. When I thank her, she drops to her knees and looks over her head. Yes, I come from the heavens I say, pointing to the sky. The woman flings herself to the ground and begins whistling loudly.
I see, beyond the field of workers and morse, the wreck of my ship. Pieces jutting from the burned-out hull make the craft look like a decaying, beached whale. I walk closer and see men in long, black robes arranging stones around the smoldering crash site. They pause and bow to me. I call the names of my crew. Silence answers.
Feeling dizzy, I return to the hut and sleep. Over the next few days, I’m given more baskets of food, a bitter juice, and something with scales, raw. I gradually grow strong enough to go back outside. When I do, a man with one arm bent behind him approaches me. He clicks erratically, his face contorted.
I touch his back and feel a separated shoulder. I hold it in one hand and grab his arm with the other. This is going to hurt, I say, and jerk. He screams then rotates his arm, falls to his knees and kisses my feet. A crowd begins to gather about me. A lame man and a woman whose face is covered in boils approach. I retreat inside my hut.
A few moments later the whistling and clicking are the loudest I’ve heard. I go back out and see a black-robed man holding a blade to a morse’s throat. No! I shout and snatch the blade. I slice my palm and raise my hand so they can see the blood spiraling down my arm. I’m flesh and blood the same as you, I scream.
The crowd prostrates itself and goes silent. Then a young woman with plain brown hair rises and walks to me. She clicks at the morse, which ambles away. The black-robed man stands. The girl takes the blade from me and gives it to the man. He places it under her chin and looks at me as if waiting for a sign. The throng rises and begins to whistle, the people stamping their feet, clapping their hands, rhythmically. The noise is deafening. Hypnotic. I feel myself wanting to be what the people of the morse believe I am. I draw my finger across my throat.
by submission | Sep 19, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ian Hill
Affin slipped and slid over the lumpy white slopes. Her hair hung clotted with curdy chunks, and irritating crescents of tallow lingered under her fingernails; most of her skin was hidden under smeared wax; her clothes were heavy with clinging runoff. After so much climbing and stumbling, she finally rested and looked back at her sister, who was struggling over greasy wavelets of semi-hardened suet a few meters away.
“They must have used a lot of candles, huh?” Affin called, perching on a rounded knob and crossing her legs.
Pari, one arm outstretched for balance, clambered over a molded timber that had been caught in the sluggish seep years ago. Her long hair swayed heavily in front of her face, and when she tossed it back the weight nearly jerked her over. She was like an all-white specter navigating a surreal, flowing landscape with layers and bumps and licks and flows, all oozed and clodded and whimsical like the congealed ice cream slopes of a child’s dream.
Affin winced as she carved stinging wax from under her nails. “With all the nighttime studying they were doing, you’d think they would have invented a less wasteful light source.”
Pari heaved herself onto a wind-scraped shelf of tallow and ground her eye sockets clean with her wrists. Blinking, she peered down the oily heights they had scaled. The landslide of wax swept lower and lower, like a river of thickened milk, before spilling out and spreading into the foggy fields from whence she and her sister had come.
“Welp,” Affin jumped up and turned her attention forward, up the remainder of the steep, caked-over incline. “Better be going, huh?”
“A minute,” Pari croaked. The inside of her mouth was white, and she winced at the soapy taste.
Affin looked at her pitiful sister and sighed. The former was excited to reach that looming, pinnacled tower whose southern flank vomited molten spillage and whose northern flank blew off equal quantities of handwritten papers. What wonders she would find on those sheets—the recorded thoughts and discoveries of a community of lofty thinkers who, as the waxen wasteland attested, spent so long shut up in their high, windowless chamber, considering, writing. She could see the gray turret now, rising solemnly over its mounded heaps of grossly discharged wax. No warm light came from the coagulate-rimmed vent.
“What’s this?” Pari asked.
Affin turned at her sister’s voice and found her holding a half-charred scrap of parchment in sticky fingers. Affin’s eyes widened and she rushed over.
“Could it be from the tower?” Pari wondered.
Affin snatched the paper and greedily held it up. It was globbed with wax, and, curiously, much of it had burnt away, but she could still make out one passage. She read, “No great breakthroughs have transpired since the mishap. It seems the boys are disheartened. ‘Tis a shame what happened—a mean, crippling shame. We fritter away most of our time at the northern chute, inhaling the crisp fumes of a million million burnt pages. Ah, what cruelty. To think so much and never realize the fool’s game we played until, as was inevitable, one of our candles fell from a table and rolled the wrong way. A single little flame in the wrong place, and poof, our efforts but ashes. A true shame.”
Pari looked at her sister, aghast.
Affin stood still for a while, crumpling and uncrumpling the scrap in her hands. Her expression was unreadable. Then, with a slow exhale, she opened her eyes and smiled. “Oh well. The air in there was probably funny anyway.” She helped her sister up. “Let’s go home.”
