Runners Up in the Fiction Inferno
Very Short Fiction Contest for 2002
These are the Very Short Fictions we decided to publish. The stories on this page
stand out because they read like bigger works, they accomplish more in 500 words or less than many full stories do
with thousands. In a great flash fiction piece,every single word has to carry its
own weight, has to forward the whole, has to shine. And these
little gems shine very bright. So then, without any more of that ado stuff, Fiction Inferno presents the runners up in the Very Short Fiction Contest for 2002!
Cuppa
Ellen Lindquist
Elbows on the table, burping, snarling at the waitress, I cried out, "Ech,
ech, ech! This coffee tastes like it was brewed in a tire!" The waitress
looked at me with what I thought were thick-lensed glasses but turned out to
be her eyes. She tied on what seemed an apron but was really a set of wings.
Buzzing over to a tire sitting near the door, she dipped my cup into a
tincture she poured directly into my mouth. Then she commenced to singing.
The song floated like scum on coffee: it left a black mustache above my
mouth, changed me into the king of a fruit fly colony. My subjects flew
about my head in a cloudy plume. They surrounded me and carried me to a
cross, where I died for having ventured into the wrong coffee shop.
--end--
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Dreams that drip
Toiya Kristen Finley
When James Pasado reached across the bed to turn off the alarm clock, a
dream slipped out of his ear and dribbled to the floor.
"Jimmy, what's that on your desk?" The Office Manager stuck his head in the
cubicle, wrinkled his nose, and his glasses twitched.
Pasado jiggled the jar. "I had this dream, and I almost lost it. So, I
scooped it up."
"Too bad when that happens," the Office Manager said, "forgetting dreams."
He twitched his nose again. "While you're trying to remember exactly what
it was, you mind doing the inventory?" and he dumped a stack of printouts on
the desk.
Pasado took the jar in his hands and shook the dream around. It sloshed in
Technicolor swirls. James tried to catch an image or a trace of something,
but every time he thought he saw a face or a building or a flower, the
vision grew foggy.
#
"I just can't remember it," Pasado said. He jiggled the jar.
"What were you thinking about before you went to bed?" his sister asked on
the other end of the phone.
"Oh, I don't know. Nothing much, but I don't usually remember my dreams. I
can't recall dreaming--"
"Not surprising. You were never too imaginative, Jimmy.... Maybe dreams
that drip aren't supposed to be remembered," his sister said.
But Pasado wouldn't believe that. He put the dream on his bookshelf for
safekeeping. Some days, after the Office Manager twitched his nose in
disapproval, or his mother asked when he was going to give her grandchildren
(and followed that question with "and how will you afford to take care of
them?"), or when he couldn't get to sleep because of the trains rumbling
past at two in the morning, he would go to the bookshelf and shake the
dream. Every once in a while, he would think he saw something in that
mess--little girls dancing, a sexy woman, letters, a dead relative,
neon-colored suns or clocks with their hands spinning backwards. But the
images always evaporated before he could force them into memory.
Pasado'd almost lost this dream, and now he wouldn't let go of it, no matter
how long it took for him to work it out. Somewhere in that glop of thoughts
encased in glass was an important message from his soul, The Secret to
Everything, the perfect lottery numbers, or the key to another dream.
--end--
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In the Care of Angels
M. W. Anderson
Inexplicably, the light seemed damp; the smell declared itself dry and
herbal in its fragrance. She had no idea that her fear could smell that
way.
The dimming light seemed to cling to her skin, leaving her feeling oddly
embarrassed, and ridiculously self-conscious. She felt...sticky.
With each step toward the room, she could discern a little more detail. She
began to hear sounds. They too were raspy.
A thump--a goblet falling on carpet, perhaps--a curse within hissing breath.
It was the rustling, the light, hollow rasping, that finally unnerved her
enough to speak with a small and timid timbre.
"Who..." she began to ask, but then silenced herself, her hand flying to
cover her mouth.
Shuffling sounds. Voices, indistinct, yet oddly troublesome, and--familiar.
"Listen," whispered one to another, both remaining within the study's
confine--neither seeing her.
"...Out of its cage," said a distinctly male voice, speaking lowly, but no
longer whispering.
And while those words unsettled her, it was her words, a silk-voiced
female--a voice filled with cool venom and steely assertion--it was her
meaning, unknown yet somehow dreadful, that caused her to turn and flee:
"Ah, be careful, dear. Take care not to spill the wine."
And as she ran blindly into the great hall's darkness, she knew that she had
no memory of a cage of her own, nor how she came to be.
The light was not light.
The smell did not originate with her fear, though it may have been aroused
by it.
And then suddenly her flight was over; a twisted lump in the
rug--falling--breathless and face down was she.
The stickiness (is it only fear that is fetid, cloying, and tight?) held her
to the sticking place, prostrate on the ancient oriental.
Yet this web-like fear, this invincible force, so compelling, and so utterly
debilitating, could not kill the curiosity, the child-like wonder that
welled-up in her as the smell of dry herbs (pungent-sweet, and a bit
sickening) and the dissonance of dark feathered wings descended, the whole
of her vision filled with fluttering shadows.
#
She awoke with a start--hellish were dreams in Heaven. The heat of the sun
had spared fabled Icarus; better to drown in the depths of the Aegean, than
to sleep in the care of angels.
Through her window she saw a Seraphim descend on a Cherub; the small angel
resembled a slaughtered winged pig hanging in the claws of the seraph.
For what she had witnessed daily through the small open window had revealed
unsettling truths:
The ethereal songs of paradise were indeed a balm for disembodied souls.
Creatures of flesh, however, fell under the reign of God, creator of all,
and his singular law was this: survival of the fittest.
Through bars at the end of her cell, she saw the winged toddlers looking at
her with increasing interest.
'Thank God,' she thought, 'they're not yet weaned.'
But their mother, worn and weary, studied her with hopeful eyes.
--end--
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Inference
R.M. Urell
He lays me down, that soothing bullshit noise issuing from slack lips.
I see the lighter patch on the darkness, and squirm my dissatisfaction. I read the future there, infinity in a smothering snuggle.
More nonsense, structured in tangles of incomprehensibility.
Around, over, under.
Limbs I barely know trapped in unyielding softness at my sides.
I manage to catch his eye for one crystalline moment, and his brow furrows in puzzlement as the concept eludes him.
That's right, fucker. I'm the one who'll pick your rest home.
--end--
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Lessons in the Afternoon
Lynn Bey
Esther Pokalski hung the child out the window.
"This is what happens if you play what you hear, Mira," she said. "Please, then, do not play what you think I want. Play only what is in your fingers, how it is your ears are hearing the music." She laughed, and the child shook in her hands. "Ha!" Miss Pokalski laughed again as the child's squeals drifted into the studio. With a quick sharp jerk she gathered the child to her, folding the plump brown legs and cottoned buttocks against her stomach like a washerwoman pulling linen off the line. The child lay draped over the woman's left arm, limp, until Miss Pokalski flipped her to her feet.
"Now," she said leaning over the sofa back, "you must try it again. This time do not reach F-sharp when you leave the G. Hold it there instead; make it steady like I showed you, yes?"
Mira picked up her violin and tucked it under her chin. "Stay away from the sharp," she reminded the child. "Or else I let go your ankles." Miss Pokalski tapped her foot on the floor, the clipped beats sure as a metronome. Her pen hovered over the notebook; only occasionally did it dart downward to scribble 'Intonation!!!' and 'Second movement-phrasing!!'
Mira came to Esther Pokalski's studio three times a week and every Saturday afternoon. She was not Miss Pokalski's first protégé, but she was the youngest - six, and tiny, not yet three feet tall. She rarely spoke; even her forte sections were infused with a reticence that Miss Pokalski knew would one day break open. She played on a one-eighth size violin, and her favorite part of the lesson was hanging from the window.
"Get the B-flat right, make it broad, broad. Then we finish with the hanging," said Miss Pokalski. Mira lifted the bow and began again, the two of them disappearing into the music, becoming conscious of nothing but the note, then the next and the next, each one seemingly borne of the other, as inevitable as the ones that followed. Miss Pokalski believed the child knew she was learning more than what was being taught, but she was too much a teacher now to marvel at how completely she understood the needs of another.
"Again," Miss Pokalski said. "Broader! Make them think you will never bring back the bow. Ha!"
She laughed, the end of her pen held still against the notebook.
--end--
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The Night Land
M. J. Hewitt
Deep within the valley of the screaming hawk ancient gnarled ugly trees whisper of the night's devilish scenes, and eerie cackles and whoops of utter derision drift around them gently like spirits. Animals this night stand statue like, struck dumb with fear.
The trees they whisper of naked devils, who danced around them in the deep of the night, devils who sung, and rejoiced, and then entered a coma like sleep for hour upon hour.
But what the ancient trees did not behold which was as yet hidden from all reality was the activity that was going on within the demons cesspool like minds, where they wallowed in lakes of crimson blood, and slowly emerging from these lakes of blood like a phoenix rising out of the ashes before them, a huge horned god, who breathed streams, and great gouts of fire, into which the devils shrieked, and drooled, grinding their teeth, immersing themselves within the beautiful pain of the flames, which lapped, and licked around them. Aroused now, and massively stimulated by the arrival of their horned god, their dreams began to become fleshy, real, beginning to bubble, and gush out of their nostrils, out of their open mouths, spouting replicas of the great horned gods, hundreds upon hundreds of winged devils that night began to glide effortlessly through the deep dark forests of the screaming hawk, Reality now, devils born from the dreams of devils, they began to wreak havok.
The good gods far above the swirling clouds, stared down at the scenes, stared down through misty eyes clouded with tears, through sad, normally laughing eyes, for they knew that the longest night of planet earth had arrived with vengeance. A new night land had been born, for the flying multitudes of devils like parasites had surrounded the sun and greedily they fed off and extinguished the solar flames, thus permanently sending planet earth into a total and complete umbra darkness.
Night land, oh night land now reigned forever.
--end--
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Not Amused
Christian Bauer
I saw her from the corner of my eye.
Slinking across the room in an aura of female-ness, she settled cat-like into an Art Deco chair. The dim light spent itself on her white silk flapper dress-clinging as a tease across the hips and girlish breasts. Removing her cloche hat, she revealed a short night-black page boy. Her eyes, the color of summer dawn, turned harder than forged steel. She gave me THE LOOK.
I tried to ignore her by pondering my computer. I failed. "What?"
She rose from the chair, then with a leisurely stride, went to the counter. Reaching for the bourbon bottle, in a lady-like fashion, she splashed a double shot into a glass. Placing her hands on her hips, and she turned in a surveyor's circle. "No ice," she announced in a chilling rendition of her husky, alto voice.
"I didn't know you were coming. You stayed away so long..."
"I'm a lady, godammit. I don't drink straight whiskey like a common party-girl."
I rose from a mediocre short-story, and stumbled to the refrigerator. Trying to avoid future offences, I used the plastic scoop for the ice, shoveling the cubes into a clean glass bowl.
I returned to find her seated, legs crossed and twisting her foot in a circle. Frowning, she received my cold gift. "No spoon. No ice-tongs."
I leapt in response. She shook her head. "You're hopeless." Daintily with two fingers, she plopped several ice-cubes into her glass. She took an experimental sip, leaving a red lip-stick impression on the glass. The horizon grey eyes cut through me like a winter wind.
"What?" I asked again.
She took a long sip from her drink. "Like you don't know."
"I DON'T know!"
She took a deep breath and raised the glass. "Because you don't listen to me."
"I do, too. But, sometimes you talk so soft and fast-"
She devoted her attention to taking another sip.
"OK, here's the problem. All I write is this penny a word drivel. Hell, I'm so desperate I'm writing a mindless story about my muse! I want to do something beautiful, powerful. Something people will love and remember and recommend to each other."
She finished the drink, rattling the ice cubes in the glass. She scrunched her eyebrows at the ice cubes, then popped one into her mouth. She devoured it with a few chilling crunches.
Relaxing in the chair, from a small beaded purse she took out a mirror and tube of lipstick. She touched up her make up, drawing the lip line to perfection, lightly pushing back her hair with her fingertips. Still holding the mirror, she put on the cloche hat, gave it a minor adjustment, and rose from her seat. Head down, brushing away invisible wrinkles, she spoke under her breath.
"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you," I said.
"I'll be back."
"You said a lot more than that," I challenged.
She narrowed her eyes, growled, and left.
--end--
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Number 9
Peggy Duffy
After they'd had a few drinks together, she invited him to see her paintings.
"You're a painter?" he asked, hurrying to finish his beer.
"Artist," she said, licking the salt remains off the rim of her glass. "Painter sounds like a trade."
"I get your meaning," he said, his words a rush of anticipation. "What do you work in?"
"Oils and acrylics, mostly."
They walked cross-town from the bar to her apartment, his hand on her ass. The paintings were hung on her walls, huge canvases covered with wide circles of muted colors, each successively numbered on cards tacked to the wall. In handwritten block letters, each card read: Number 1, Number 2, and so forth to Number 8.
"Interesting," he said, moving from one to the next, standing before each, his hand cupping his chin. "Similar to Georgia O'Keefe's more abstract paintings."
"I'm a big admirer of her work."
"These numbers, the order of their creation?"
"Yes, but also the names of the paintings."
"Hmm, not a clue as to what they represent."
"Past lovers."
"How about present ones?" he said, the thrill of seduction in his voice. "Perhaps I can pose for you?"
"I paint from memory."
"Shall we make one then?"
They made love on the only soft piece of furniture in the spacious apartment, a futon, bare of sheets or pillows. She mounted him, spread his cheeks, probed with her fingers.
"Kinky," he said. "I like it."
Afterwards he asked, "Was I good enough to paint?"
"Not yet," she said.
Months later, regaled by his lovemaking one too many times, she felt newly inspired. Working from memory, with large circular brushstrokes, she layered slabs of color onto a canvas larger than she'd ever worked on before, eventually titling the finished painting "Number 9."
--end--
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On Glimpsing Desdemona in a Dry Goods Store
Michael C. Boxall
Tup her! Where?
--end--
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The People In The Background
Kane S. Latranz
You glance up, and to your right. A cluster of
trees, green leaves fluttering. Behind these is that
church, slightly run-down, its wrought-iron cross
stabbing the pale blue sky.
You gasp, and shudder with panic. The image has
become a shimmering infrared freeze-frame projected
inside your skull. Even when you close your eyes, you
*still* see it.
You can't feel your body, and there's a
machine-like drone, echoing. Distant, muttering
voices...
After a few seconds, it stops. Thank God.
Shortly after this incident, you find the courage
to apply for a job waiting tables. Dealing with the
public always terrified you. So much so that you'd
settled for minimum wage labor jobs. Intimidated at
first, you're soon doing quite well. Your standard of
living goes up dramatically, and you begin coming out
of your shell. You even have a date once in awhile.
About eight months later, you're scribbling down
a woman's order when that same scene, of searing
orange, yellow, and red, blinds you for several
seconds. You catch a few distinct words from the
people in the background. When you come to, everyone
in the restaurant is staring. Apparently, you cried
out.
A few days later, you enroll in college to pursue
a technical degree, something you'd dreamed of doing
for a long time.
You fall in love with a girl named Stacy. She's
beautiful and sweet.
But that blazing scene, of church and trees and
sky, like a still photo branded into your mind,
returns with increasing frequency. When you come out
of it, you find that you've functioned on auto-pilot;
performing your job duties, attending classes, and
carrying on with Stacy, as though you'd never left. At
least no one will have to know that you're going
insane.
Entire days pass without your participation.
Sometimes you hear the people in the background
laughing or arguing among themselves. Weeks, months,
even years go by between your lucid intervals. You
glean that you don't have to wait tables anymore. You
work in some high-tech industrial environment. You
discover that you and Stacy have been married for
quite awhile. Then you learn that you will become a
father.
You enter a warehouse at the sprawling industrial
complex. People greet you by name with nods and
smiles. As you approach a control panel, a tall,
shapely blonde grins and walks toward you. Are you
cheating on Stacy with this woman? You find this
exciting, but are also racked with guilt. When you
think of the baby on the way, your self-loathing
becomes so intense that you might vomit.
At the control panel, the blonde places her hands
on your shoulders from behind. Her breath is hot in
your ear, her breasts prodding your back. You reach
down, turning a knob to its highest setting. Huge
machines kick on, hum, drone... At times, you hear
your own voice among those of the people in the
background.
--end--
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Powder Wigs
Paul M. Jessup
Taking time to tear apart thoughtless voids makes circle chanting seem like a chore. The strange figures that sleep on the floor while my spinning thoughts fall down just look at me piercingly. I smile, and they become mirrors. Shadows. Endless thoughts imbedded in recursive moments.
Silent still, the restless never wake.
--end--
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Sanguine Salve
David McKee
He shivered in anticipation. If the claims were true he was moments away from a miracle. Sitting on a steel table, he examined his nakedness. Normally, he wore clothing the way a trauma victim wore amnesia. His body was a tight wasteland of rotten skin and brittle zombie flesh.
After some time the 'doctor' arrived. He was effete and aristocratic, a typical vampire. Still, he represented hope. After a brief interview he sliced his own wrist. He dipped three fingers into the wound, then reached down to paint the dehydrated root between the zombie's legs, then other sensitive areas. The sanguine salve conferred a kind of life to the wasted flesh.
The 'doctor' then led him to a boudoir where there awaited a lady zombie. She giggled at the sight of him. The red smears on her breasts, her mouth, between her thighs stretched his old skin with hope.
--end--
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Seller's Market
R. M. Urell
Beep. Beep. Beep-beep.
The scanner spouts a cheery, "Fuck you!" every time I bring something across it's field.
My back hurts. My feet hurt. My fucking hair hurts. Most of all my ego, my fragile, stunted, busted little ego, fucking hurts.
"Like the Dickens," my grandma would say. Look, I love my grandma, but…what the fuck. Dickens sure the fuck never hurt. He was a barrister or something, wasn't he?
A tired Russian housewife, pale teal, translucent scarf anchored by about a million hairpins to a mouse-shit brown mass of barely contained hair, pulls up with her twelve kids and her groceries.
"Fuck," I mutter, my 'Customer Service!' smile still intact. The cart looks like a mobile Mount McKinley, and the wheels groan with nothing like their usual musical 'chirp-chirp-cheep!'.
"Pardon?" The beat down mill worker glances up and loses count of the pile of pennies he's trying to get five dollars from to pay for his smokes. He looks left at the woman and her children and her stockpile, and his jaw muscles dance a rumba. "Ah."
For some reason that soft, unassuming syllable irritates me, "You're out of here."
He stares at me. He's amused. Then he looks right in my eyes, and whatever rant or threat he'd been building curls into itself and dies like a salted slug.
He sees it. He knows its truth.
The rats behind my stare.
I see it in his shoulders. The color seeps out of his face, and he turns toward the exit.
"Get the fuck out," I use that tone. The one I reserve for the cats when they try to step up. Equal parts sneer and stone cold.
He suddenly has somewhere to be.
I wait until he's almost to the door, then, "Hey!" I bellow, loud enough to make him levitate. "You forgot your motherfucking pennies."
He turns around slow, and flares himself big, like some gunfighter in a spaghetti western.
"This ain't right, man. You can't treat me like that," his voice trembles, and his eyes flick around at everything but me and settle on the pile of pennies. There's a tight, electric silence from behind me.
I gather it in. It's there. In my face, my eyes. Everything comes into focus. He needs it. Everything he's said so far has been one long Meeeeeeowww.
I lean down, keeping my eyes on him while I grab the knife handle at my ankle and work it back and forth out of Tim's eye socket with a gritty sploop.
Here kitty-kitty.
--end--
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Someday soon I will submit this personal advertisement to all of the world's
newspapers
C. Daly
Someday soon I will submit this personal advertisement to all of the world's
newspapers.
WANTED: Artistic muse. Must be beautiful but strong. Fragile and voracious.
Intelligent and willfully compassionate. Capable of deep and lasting love,
but fickle and tempestuous. You will leave me for other men and/or women on
a regular basis and laugh at my attempts to win you back. Later, you will
beg my forgiveness and return then break every promise made. You will
inspire me to heights I have not yet contemplated and treat me like an
unworthy peasant as the feeling moves you. Must be extremely well educated
and frequently use words such as demeanor and mien, zeugma and
parthenogenesis in casual conversation with no air of pretension. Substance
abuse may exist among your habits as a support to your constant seeking
after excitement and rich new experiences. You will savagely belittle me and
my stable place in your world, except at those times when you find it
comforting. Must be adept at alternately praising and denigrating my labors
and the fruits of my artistic endeavors. Apply when convenient to the
address below. I will contact you in good time. Send no picture.
I know that you will see this and I know that despite yourself you will
respond. Your reply will stand out from the chaff of pretenders like the
Panchen Lama at a St. Patrick's Day parade. I will keep your letter in my
wallet and pin your address and telephone number to the inside of my front
door.
When I have suffered just a little more than enough I will contact you. And
we will begin the dance.
--end--
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Swansong
Tansy Rayner Roberts
I know what they thought of me. Narcissa the proud--a girl too vain to accept any suitor. But it wasn't that at all. I already had a lover, and I wouldn't give him up for the moon and the stars.
I was walking with my sisters when I first saw him. He glided through the tall rushes of the golden river, crowned and combed with ivory feathers. My sisters couldn't hear him call my name. They laughed when I said he loved me and I returned his love. But it was all I could do not to throw myself into the river and drown myself in his downy embrace. My love, my swan.
Later, he came to my room in darkness, wrapped his feathered arms around me, loved me deeply. When I tried to speak, he silenced me with a feathery fingertip. "Love me not, for you can help me not. Speak of this to no one." And he was gone.
The next night, he bit me gently with his beak. Tasted my blood. "Love me not, for you can help me not," he whispered in the darkness. "Speak of this to no one."
The next night, he drank me deeply until I was weak and trembling. "Love me not, for you can help me not. Speak of this to no one." Too late, too late.
Next morning, driven to despair, I asked my mother, "How may a man wear the body of a swan and yet still be a man?" She could not answer my question, but the damage was done. I had broken my word of silence. He did not come again.
I wept, screamed, tore my hair thin. I walked the world three times, wore three pairs of iron shoes to nothing. I could not find him.
My sisters called me back, begged me to be my sensible self again. I could not. I begged the king to let me build a bathhouse of sweetly-spiced wood by the steps of the palace, that I may sit at the entrance and offer free admittance to anyone who told me the strangest thing they had ever heard or seen.
My request was granted. I heard many strange stories in the months that followed, but nothing about a swan-lord who drank blood and loved in darkness.
Then the boy came, a barefoot child who told me of his village and the river where the village maidens all would stand, sick with love for the sake of a swan with dark, dark eyes.
I ran, tearing the road up with my flying feet. When I found the river, I flung myself into its depths, striking out with tears and kisses, bitter cries of laughter. He caught me and held me up from the dragging water, tasting my mouth, my throat, my fingertips.
When I die, let me be buried in feathers, for it is the softest feeling in the whole wide world.
--end--
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A Taste of Copper
M. W. Anderson
Things. Objects, places, and people, both large and small. Passing through time, falling into history.
History, the frozen region of the limitless plane. He is part of history.
And those who reside in history are fixed, watching, immovable as a rule.
But rules are, inevitably, broken.
He cannot remember the last time the rule was broken. Remember he cannot. He cannot think, nor move, for he has no body. No brain.
No memory.
But still, he is.
In a way that defies definition (and definition means nothing to one who is not, but is), he knows that he is aware.
Without eyes, he sees--without nerves, he feels.
A static charge in passing.
Wavering, purple lightening.
And now, called forward by some secret, enigmatic voice, pulled out of the pale existence of perpetual third-person observation, his moment is at hand.
It is similar to birth, a psychic disembowelment in reverse, and it is akin to waking up from anesthesia.
Though he has no brain, he has been given the illusion of one, and the first thing he recalls--relives--is the taste:
The moment tasted of copper.
The recollection puts him within the framework, and once more he is slumped against a tall, ominous wall of rough hewn rock, wounded in an ancient place, one knee on the ground, looking at his hands.
Was he skewered with spears?
Have bullets riddled his flesh?
Have wild beasts mauled him, and left him here to die? It does not matter. For now, dawn is climbing above the enclosing parapets, and golden light reflects upon the shimmering crimson that covers his fingers.
There is no shock, nor gasp--no sense of urgency. It is as if he is covered in sweat at the end of a hard day's work; he is at ease in the melancholy, yet satisfying fatigue of completion.
He remembers the joyful stillness, the triumph of being finished. His life was lived in a break-neck pace, each day's feinted purpose a secret prelude to this conclusion.
With a sudden rush faces, names, places, ideas, and arguments flood into him...memories.
In all of that time--the poignant idiocies, the innocent joys--it could have been so simple.
The air becomes electric as purple lightening flashes; his tide has ebbed. Yet he will savor even the pain of death, for there is an eternity waiting; more than enough time for watching, playing the role of eternal voyeur.
This was his epiphany, and it was as sweet in measure relived, as it had been hellish in its initial discovery.
But you...for you it was only an odd thought, strangely conjured, as transient as a spring breeze. The queerness was fleeting, and the moment passed.
And all that you could feel, simple child, slowly walking, mind wandering, was the chilled prickling of the hairs on the back of your neck as you moved silently, absentmindedly through the ruins.
With that same absentmindedness, you turned, looking back....
But you heard only whippoorwills...saw only shadows.
--end--
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To the Moon of Zennadon
M. J. Hewitt
Black water gushes down from the mountains of Umbra, filthy water bursts out from dark deep internal cavities like blood from a severed artery and the earth seams to bleed.
Abnormal malformed two headed beasts, pure white, red eyed, slimy animals of the night, they ride the flooding water which pours from the mountains, they skip across the galloping waves of putrid filth, they yelp excitedly like small babies, they scream through the sounds of the torrents of water that pound down, and down, from the nightmarish craggy mountains of Umbra, for they know that their journey is nearly complete.
Flooding now over the ancient gothic cemetery graves begin to be besieged and overrun by the web footed, two headed, red eyed, demonic children of the grey, rugged, harsh looking mountains which now loom in the distance.
Fervently they begin to delve deep, and give chase to tired frightened spirits who are pulled down, attacked, and torn to pieces by the hungry razor sharp toothed swimming animals, some spirits are drowned, others are tormented into madness, then hung high from the ancient trees which stare down disbelievingly upon this frightful scene, the trees they begin to protest in unison for the spirits to be left alone, but the barbaric beasts just laugh at the trees, further insulting them by hanging the spirits high from their branches like luminous banners which flap and wave beneath the darkening bloody skies, and so the trees now begin to weep tears of sap which slowly trickle down their rugged outer skins,and begin to gather in sticky pools above their knotted roots.
Later now as darkness reigns, fires can be seen burning across the rivers, the waters are burning and bubbling, banks of rising steam begin to float gently amidst the darkness, and upon these banks drift gloomy downhearted spirits, weak and full of fright, silently and full of loneliness they search for their lost friends who have been cast into oblivion by the demons of the mountains of Umbra, friends who will forever wander on the arid land which eternally sleeps, on the black side of the fabled moon of Zennadon ,for this truly is hell, a hell in the gloom and doom of Zennadon.
--end--
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Transmission Beyond Instant
John A. Broussard
Rick Meyers had stopped listening to the two physicists arguing. His attention was completely caught by the message that had flashed on to the empty screen.
"Transmission completed at 2:03:17
"Transmission received at 2:03:14"
Rick guffawed. "I knew it, I knew it," he exclaimed jubilantly. "The Mars base ramped up the G80X to where it's sending the message so fast, it gets here before it's sent."
Clayton Wing snorted. "Ridiculous. Your timing mechanisms are faulty."
Georgina Karnov broke in, "Not necessarily." She was scribbling away formulae with an old-fashion pencil and notepad.
"Of course it's ridiculous," insisted Wing, as Meyers stored the message, cleared the screen and waited for the next communication. "It's logically impossible."
"What may be logically impossible, may not be physically impossible," Karnov answered as she turned the notebook with its formulae to face her fellow scientist. "We may have to stop thinking of time as an endless series of nows, and more as a linear continuum that could turn on itself. We could be in an endless loop right at this moment."
"Utterly ridiculous," Wing retorted.
Rick Meyers had stopped listening to the two physicists arguing. His attention was completely caught by the message that had flashed on to the empty screen.
"Transmission completed at 2:03:17
"Transmission received at 2:03:14"
Rick guffawed. "I knew it, I knew it," he exclaimed jubilantly. "The Mars base ramped up the G80X to where it's sending the message so fast, it gets here before it's sent."
Clayton Wing snorted. "Ridiculous. Your timing mechanisms are faulty."
Georgina Karnov broke in, "Not necessarily." She was scribbling away formulae with an old-fashion pencil and notepad.
"Of course it's ridiculous," insisted Wing, as Meyers stored the message, cleared the screen and waited for the next communication. "It's logically impossible."
"What may be logically impossible, may not be physically impossible," Karnov answered as she turned the notebook with its formulae to face her fellow scientist. "We may have to stop thinking of time as an endless series of nows, and more as a linear continuum that could turn on itself. We could be in an endless loop right at this moment."
"Utterly ridiculous," Wing retorted.
Rick Meyers had stopped listening to the two physicists arguing. His attention was completely caught by the message that had flashed on to the empty screen.
--end--
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The treasure of Jirá
Toiya Kristen Finley
So when he saw the two tigers chained in front of the Gates of Jirá, he knew
the treasure was his. "When the legends die, so do their prowess," said our
famed bounty hunter. "The Emperor has been dead for 500 years, and no one
has spoken of him with fear for the last two centuries." We tried to
recount the stories of the immortal beasts circling the Emperor's tomb, of
griffins and tigers and dragons circling the heart of the forest where that
maniac slept fitfully in death. But the bounty hunter, determined to
recover the treasure, assured us that the Emperor's spirit and curse had
lost their sting.
From the small windows of his house, we watched him hunched over maps and
biographies, writing plans between sunrise and sunset. We know where his
desire came from--he wished to bring the treasure to our poor village,
rebuild it after the last war. The bounty hunter wanted to leave his mark,
after his wife and son died at the end of arrows during the war. Now there
was no one to continue his name throughout future generations. We told him
he had been a brave warrior, that what little he made off of bounties were
enough. He gave all his wages to us.
But he searched for the tomb, despite our tears and pleas, and we feared he
wouldn't return to us. For two months he dug into a rocky hill until he'd
unearthed the outer courts of Jirá. The griffins slumbered on the marble
tile and lulled their heads. The tigers in front of the gate were chained
to pillars, and as the bounty hunter walked by them, they mewed like
kittens. Even the dragon, celebrated and despised pet of the Emperor, had
been long dead. Her lanky skeleton curled about the Emperor's tomb.
Our fabled bounty hunter had been correct about the Emperor's curse, but we
do not rejoice for him, for now he sits with his head bowed and always drags
his feet when he walks. We know that the griffins might as well have torn
their claws into his proud chest. Perhaps he was already dead when he
bought us food and rebuilt our homes. Perhaps when we couldn't see, he'd
cried out all of his humanity in grief, and only the blinding need for a
legacy remained.
He returned to us alone.
When he entered the tomb at Jirá, his heart sank into the depths of his
spirit because all he found was a little brown orphan boy smiling and
swimming in the rain-filled sepulcher.
--end--
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What Words Cannot Say
Vanitha Sankaran
Barking dogs have something to say. Why else would
they bark? Resonant whoofs to tinny yaps, each a
message for all who can hear it.
I too have something to say. But words can't capture
my twisted necrosis. The closest I can come is a
screeching ranting tirade, weak words that plummet
into nothingness. They achieve nothing, nothing
tangible, nothing gained. Still I try again, vomit
the curses with growls and convulsions.
"You son-of a bitch you left me to rot here, with
broken dreams and broken body. All those years I gave
you, worth only a worthless note. And images of the
sweet thing you've found, if you even know what
sweetness is. If I could give you my cancer it'd eat
you whole, but instead it cannibalizes me. Every
breath I take is one stolen from you, if wishes were
free to all. But they're not and so I wither and soon
I'll be dead. You don't want me as a ghost. I'll
gnaw your conscious raw."
I too have something to say. But words can't capture
my twisted necrosis. I raise my head and bark.
--end--
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Thanks to everyone who played our little game. It was fun. Scary and weird, but fun. Maybe we'll do it again next year!
