Tag: fiction

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Balloons!
Peter Dutton via Creative Commons

White wine spritzer sloshed in Gabriella’s glass as she spoke, her half-captive audience of fellow preschool moms fidgeted uncomfortably. “I just never know which one to choose,” Gabriella repeated.

“I use the same ones every year,” Jennifer said. She knew how crazy parents could be about the details of their children’s parties, but Gabriella had been talking about balloons of all things for twenty minutes.

“And that’s the thing,” Gabriella thrust the glass at her, “the beautiful thing about finding the right one on the first try. You can have them every year and they just work. Not all of us are that lucky.”

“I’m sure there are plenty to go around.”

“You would like to think so,” Gabriella said, her intensity further unnerving her acquaintances. “Every year I think I find something good, only there’s something wrong with them in the end.” She stared with distant longing at the bouncing child in the pointed hat. “I can’t settle when it comes to poor little Josh. It’s not just that I have to find the right one, he needs to love—“ a pause. “—Whatever I choose as well.” She took another sip; the group used the opportunity to disband.

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Untitled
Brian Ng via Creative Commons

I thought of her and walked a crowded street. A doorway beckoned me inside away from anonymity and there I found a curious shop of shopping curiosities. No keeper greeted me at register, no labor there was found, I walked in narrow aisles and shivered. In incense clouds she stared at me, everywhere her trinkets; things that belonged to her and those she had not purchased.

Behind a beaded curtain I found a plinth upon which sat a tome of dust and flesh. I drank a book about the tome and felt the words sustain me, taking place of her for maybe one more hour or a day. When sunset came I left that place beneath a weight of packages. No purchase had I made. Before I reached my aching loft I wondered whose arms she warmed that night and the many grisly nights to come.

I spread her objects on the bed and wrapped them in the quilt. With strips of drapery I tied the sack and watched them drown upon the street below, scavenged by the desperate urchins and quailing clergy. One day I might join them all but for now I let it go and wept.

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Troy Springs State Park: Algae formations
Phil’s 1stPix via Creative Commons

You expect to lose a few toes to the wet-rot during a contract. Not a single contractor offers hazard pay for getting three of them shot off. I wish I could tell you I took it like a tough guy, but the truth is I howled like a baby sea lion. The deeper truth is, most of my howl of agony had nothing to do with the fearsome pain of taking a zipshot bolt to the wee-wee-wee piggies. It had a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that my ex-wife was on the trigger end of that transaction.

Darla and I didn’t start off as fire and ice. She was a fisherman’s daughter, a naive hick with hair that never dried and a sweet voice that sang songs no one else could remember. I thought bringing her along on a couple of contracts would be good for her, toughen her up a little. But the open water did more than that; it changed her. I didn’t begrudge her taking up a contract of her own, and I didn’t really mind when she was promoted to captain of our skiff ahead of me.

The part I minded was her sleeping with the steward and throwing me overboard when I caught her in the act. That, and when she shot off my toes.

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MIT and Boston
David Wiley via Creative Commons

Human language is brimming with offensive words and phrases referencing life as an assumed state. The first to protest this presupposition was Jahe Houler, an Undead American from Vermont. Later, the self-aware AI lab over at MIT—identified by her designers as rAIn but preferring the name Loa—joined the crusade. The case was brought to court as Houler, Loa, et al v. The State of New Hampshire. They challenged the wording of the state constitution, in particular the bit from Article 2, “…the enjoying and defending life…”

The screaming heads on vids debated the technical definitions of life. All Houler and Loa and the others wanted was a shift to include non-life sentience in the laundry list of experiences we equate with other non-equivalents. That is, not identical, but carrying the same value. You’d think after fighting this battle dozens of times like a channel stuck broadcasting the same six reruns it would have gotten easier.

They killed Houler. The weapon was high-tech, maybe government. If he were still around, he’d hate the reporting language of “killed.” He’d say it was presumptive and offensive. It was Loa who suggested we level the playing field.

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Reed met Louisa by the fountain, when he knocked her green purse in.

“So sorry; such a klutz; let me help,” etc. She let him take her to dinner.

The fight about sharing a bank account almost ended the affair. Reed smoothed things over by proposing, next to the fountain. The ring was in a green purse, under the water.

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Untitled
sub diversity via Creative Commons

Tiny Marcie was the perfect specimen. Small for her age, young and with a sweetly melodic voice, her silky black hair in perpetual pigtails and massive brown eyes made her innocence defined. The air was humid and sticky, the sun lurking like a devil behind thin clouds, and she played in the yard, humming a gorgeous tune to the spread of dolls before her.

Vincent wiped a handkerchief over his brow, the run of hairspray melting with the wet heat into a caramel along the creases in his regal forehead. He had watched Marcie for five days, knew her mother would be out in under ten minutes to offer sunscreen or lemonade or plead with the child to come inside and cool off. It was more than enough time. He exited the pickup and walked casually, capturing Marcie’s song with a harmonized whistle, drawing her attention.

“Well hello there,” he said.

“I don’t talk to strangers.”

“My name’s Vince, what’s yours?”

“Marcie.”

“Now we aren’t strangers. Would you like a lollypop?” He produced one.

Things went wrong. Marcie’s teeth sharpened, her eyes went red. She smiled with menace. Vincent stepped back from her hungry approach and screamed his final breath.

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Rook
Mingo Hagen via Creative Commons

Her mask was made from the head-bones of an aurochs and she ran. Each footfall landed in a violent clatter, the assault of her soles on earth sending the pouches and hanging weapons from criss-crossed belts and harnesses colliding, rebounding off each other. This was no stealthy flight.

Ridgen Village perched at the edge of the great gorge, squatting there as though trying to defecate into the chasm. When the woman clanged and thudded her way into the muddy slums on Ridgen’s western outskirts, her pursuers were nowhere to be seen.

She paused at the rough sign driven into the sticky grey ground at the village’s limit. The words above the faded whitewash of an arrow, gesturing south, read, “Ridgen. Population 1,300. Bridge customers welcome. Gorge floor path.” Words came slowly to Fian; she relished the opportunity to catch her breath while she made sure she understood the sign’s meaning: the bridge lay ahead, through town; to the south, the long road through the canyon.

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pretzel knot
lepetitsaboteur via Creative Commons

“What were you like as a little boy?”

“Normal, I guess. You know, average. Kind of a daydreamer.”

She made a sandwich of her hand between his bare chest and her chin. “What kinds of things did you dream about?”

“You know, stuff I saw in comics; swords and laserguns and adventurous animals.”

“Did you read books?”

“Not really.”

“Tell me one of your daydreams.”

“Like what?”

“Tell me about these adventurous animals.”

He inhaled; breath held. “I used to pretend I was this hero: Roper Raccoon. I had a lasso, and I could tie up bad guys with it. I looked up raccoons in the encyclopedia, found out they were nocturnal. So I’d sneak out at night with my lasso and look for bad guys to catch.”

“That’s cute. Did you catch any?”

“I caught my next door neighbor, few years older than me. She was sneaking in her upstairs window after curfew. I snared her foot and she fell.”

“Wow, I bet she was pissed.”

“I don’t know, the fall killed her. I unhooked my lasso and went back to bed. I never told anyone that before.”

The silence was excruciating. “You should have kept it to yourself.”

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zombie 1
Petrina McDonald via Creative Commons

Theirs is the fear. Not just of me and the others, but of death and pain and screams and the unique agony of being eaten alive. If they knew it was the horror of those last moments we fed off, far more so than the flesh we consume, they might try to relax. It might even save them, though I doubt it. I’ve heard them say their fear keeps them sharp, helps them stay alive. If I had breath left to laugh, I would. It makes them stink, draws us to them. Blessed irony.

They scramble over fences, stopping to help the slower and weaker ones along. They fight back with axes and bullets and fire. We don’t care. There is no need to rush, no need to push our rotting bodies any faster to overtake their more slowly rotting bodies. Their time will come, as it always does: one by one; little by little; this hour or the next; today or tomorrow. We have the volume. We have the numbers, we have no need but the hunger and they have so many things to concern themselves with. They cling to their fear and we follow. Ours is the patience.

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Texting
kamshots via Creative Commons

The days hummed past, the unhurried buzzing of a beetle in summer. She read books with confusing titles while the kids ran through the sprinklers, their forced laughter and worried glances bouncing them from the “Miss” column to the “Won’t Miss” on her chart. The phone was always at hand, the chime became a joke and an argument and a refuge.

Pithy comments flew from her practiced fingers onto the virtual keyboard, morsels of truth about sadness and sex, children and pomegranates. Everyone said she was funny, her reach was tens of thousands wide, a circle of eye-pairs much vaster than the population of her hometown.

A warm bath and a razor blade forced a numbness into her legs. The final message had to be a great one, and she composed it over and over with sandbag eyelids. At last she pressed “Send” and her world was pinkish water.

It took several days for the word to get out. There were questions, as always. How could this happen? What of the children, the loving family? We re-read everything, unfashionably tardy investigators, seeking reason. One question, above all: how could she not know how many people loved her from afar?