Outback

by deviantArt Contest Winner | Mar 9, 2008 | Story

Author : Phillip English

Dust swirls past a naked lightbulb and out amongst the wire-brush scrub. There is an old man, mid sixties, seated on the verandah. In his lap lies a twelve gauge shotgun; it is broken open, showing two empty barrels. A cache of shells nestles in the flannelette next to the gun, rolling back and forth with each deep breath he takes. The only sound is the continual plink of a moth impacting against the glass of the bulb.

A shuffling wakes the old man up, and he starts as he regains consciousness, spilling shells onto the hardwood slats. It’s the dog, a kelpie cross. It stands at the edge of where the greasy shine from the lightbulb fades into the night. Its back left leg is trembling and ticking. It stands there for a minute or so, and the old man stares at it. Eventually the dog lies down, sitting like a sphinx in the dirt and watching the old man bending down slowly to pick up the shotgun rounds.

There is silence once more; the moth has flown away to chase the spark of stars. The verandah’s joints creak as the man stands up. A puff of dirt floats in the now-still air between them as the dog springs to all fours. The man loads his gun and snaps back the barrel. The dog’s ears prick. He brings the rifle up to his shoulder and fires both barrels straight at the dog’s head. The dog is kicked back, and its body tumbles out into the darkness. The man swallows, licks his lips, and reloads.

He finishes tucking two more shells into their home just as the dog staggers back into th light again. Its lower jaw is stripped away, leaving a palate peppered with slivers of fang to pool bloody saliva onto the dirt. Added to this is a small string of silvery liquid, like mercury, dripping from the remains of its nose. It appears to be fighting against the flow of the blood; some of it succeeds in regaining its place within the confines of the dog’s skull.

The old man flips the barrels closed again and takes aim. The scratch of the gun against his stubble reminds him of the animals that he has destroyed. And not just animals. He fires once more, and the dog’s skull explodes in a silver streak, twisting the lightbulb’s feeble glow into a neon fuzz that settles slowly to the dirt.

He relaxes slightly, drops the gun from his shoulder, and stomps back to the seat on the verandah. There is time for sleep now; the flies will take until morning to discover the corpse and lay their eggs, before springing off in a perfectly controlled formation; a silver speck residing in each of their tiny brains, searching for its next, stronger host.

Arwik Razy

by Kathy Kachelries | Mar 7, 2008 | Story

Author : Kathy Kachelries, Staff Writer

He’d always known about them.

When it snowed, Arwik lived in abandoned buildings. He slept in the rusted creases of abandoned subway tunnels to escape their satellites, and he ate whatever he could forage. He found a lot in disposal bins, but he’d never tried to eat it. People poisoned that stuff, he knew.

They injected tracking devices into his skin when he slept. Often he’d find an unexplained pockmark on his body, something that looked like an insect bite, but he knew what was inside of it. He used to try to gouge it out, but he soon realized that they’d used nanites. Thousands of silicon creatures, eating him from the inside out.

No one believed these things.

At first, he’d tried to warn people. He tried on the subways and on the streets, but everyone walked by with their eyes firmly on the ground. They could come for anyone, he said. They could come for you. Arwik hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt.

Now, it was about survival.

Sometimes he saw the cops on the street and felt their sideways glances. Sometimes he couldn’t see them at all, but felt their eyes as they watched him through the scope of a sniper rifle. Arwik had seen those rifles, watched them in movies as a child. He knew the power of invisibility.

Once, they’d cornered him on the L train. The trackers, he knew. The goddamn trackers. They always knew where to find him. They offered help, but he knew what help meant. Scalpels and brainwashing. His eyes held open with wires as he would be forced to watch propaganda. Drugged with truth serum and forced to confess to everything he knew about them. He’d be executed in an electric chair, or shot at point-blank range in a seedy alleyway. Sometimes he wished that he hadn’t been smart enough to figure them out. If he hadn’t known the truth, they might have left him alone.

Arwik ran, dashing up slush-covered subway stairs until he found a dumpster in a trash-filled alleyway. The metal lids scrambled the signal, and surrounded by fish bones and plastic bags, he knew that he was almost protected. They could have used dogs, but they didn’t. That time, he’d gotten away.

It’s impossible to know who’s real. Some of them are brainwashed, or have given into the nanites. Some of them might even be cyborgs. Arwik has nowhere to turn. No one is ever safe.

Angel of Time

by submission | Mar 5, 2008 | Story

Author : Jacinta A. Meyers

A man lay limp in my arms. The body of a little boy was sprawled a few feet away from us, his young face motionless against the blood-stained earth.

“I will stay with you through this.” I said, stroking the man’s face very gently. “I won’t leave you.”

He coughed a little, grit his teeth.

This was my least favorite part. I had only seen an unmaking twice before this. It’s different from death. In an unmaking, the body disintegrates before your very eyes. The DNA in every cell actually unwinds, each reverting to a more primitive state until they cannot hold a recognizable form, cannot continue to function as a complex whole organism. It’s a relatively quick process compared to the amount of time it takes a human being to develop over the course of a lifetime. The rate of change is comparable to the development of a fetus, only in reverse. I watched the wrinkles fading from his face.Very soon this man would be nothing more than a puddle of inert, inorganic matter.

His eyes roved slowly over to the boy still lying in the grass. “Why?” He managed.

“Because I had to.”

He sputtered a bit. “I only came back to tell myself I had a future to be hopeful for. I can remember being so… so despondent then…”

“I had to kill you. That is our job. The past must be protected at all costs.” I said it as I had been trained to. “Through it, we are protecting our future.” He would understand, if he still could.

He was shrinking in my arms. Growing lighter, growing limper. A small trail of saliva ran down his chin. He shuddered. But something in his eyes hardened. “You…are wrong. There is… no way you can be sure.” He was fighting it. “You… may have damaged the future worse… than I might have. Worse… than you could ever know.”

But I was smiling. I held his diminishing body close. “There will still be a future for us to be hopeful for.” I said. “Shhh, it will be over soon.”

“You… you broke the rules… you and your kind…”

“Perhaps we did.” I whispered gently to what was left of his ear. “But you broke them first.”

Constant Cravings

by submission | Feb 27, 2008 | Story

Author : Catherine Preddle

Wheeze.

I struggle to snatch a breath, wondering with each one if I’ll get the chance to have another. Life’s never felt so fleeting and basic as I fight with its raw elements, breathing and trying to keep the blood pumping round my withered body.

Wheeze.

Another tortuous intake of vital air and another rasping death rattle from my sunken chest. So this is it, my last moments of life. My mind is foggy with the pain, I can’t remember how old I am, but I know I’m only middle-aged. I’ve had a full life, but it’s been cut short; I haven’t finished yet. There is so much more to accomplish, experience and appreciate. Like seeing my children have children, like watching the sun setting behind the pyramids in Egypt, like catching the new Bond movie due out on Friday. Panic sets in – “I haven’t finished,” I shout out inwardly, “I haven’t finished yet!”

Wheeze.

I look up into the worried faces of the visitors clustered around my bed. All going through their own personal anguish: shame at how they treated me sometimes in life, guilt about things unsaid, anxiety about one day meeting the same fate that confronts them in this hospital bed.

Wheeze.

Another thought pops up, something that’s been niggling for a while. A craving that never dies. I could kill for a fag right now, one last drag. The sweet relief of that first inhale; the slow release of smoke and stress on the exhale. Oh, the irony of dying for a cigarette, literally dying for the sake of cigarettes …

Time stands still as I wait for my next heaving breath, but it doesn’t come. Instead my chest tightens and my eyes flicker round the room at all the people I’m leaving behind. My hand clutches my throat as I try to splutter some last words that will never be spoken. “No,” I scream inside, “I’m not ready … wait!”

***

There is a brilliant white light so bright that it burns into the back of my eyes. My head is spinning and I feel as nauseous as hell, but I’m alive, I’m alive!!

“Please, Mr Benson, lie still. Disorientation will wear off in a few moments.”

Suddenly, like the flash from a plasma rifle, my memories return. I know who I am and why I am here. I’m also vaguely aware that the technician is still talking to me … “What did you think, Mr Benson? Quite an old memory that one, back when Aversion Therapy Ltd was just starting out. An English male, 52, died in late 2006.”

But I’m not listening as I flee from that little sterile room, ripping out the wires still connecting me to the treatment computer as I go. I’m too desperate to escape from the most frightening and intense experience of my life.

“Hey! There are other memories we can access. There are thousands to choose from – lung cancer is only one way to go, you know. Remember, you have to want to give up, Mr Benson …”

There’s only one thing I want to do right now – need to do to calm down. Squeezing through the automatic doors of the clinic, I fumble inside my jacket pocket and with shaking hands retrieve the crumbled packet and my trusty lighter.