‘Can we cut to the chase and go back to my place?’ ‘You are not so subtle, are you Mark?’ replied Natasha. ‘Wow, your house is so well decorated.’ ‘Your wife seems to be a refined lady.’ ‘Wouldn’t she mind you cheating like this with me?’ ‘Please have a seat and enjoy the meal I cooked for you.’ As Mark was pulling out a dining chair for the femme fatale, he dropped a wine glass to the floor, shattering it. ‘Damn you stupid Mark, I will have to clean that up tomorrow.’, replied the lady of the house, Natasha herself.
Fumiko’s boss was short and old with a high-pitched voice. When he asked her to stay back after work, she nervously obliged. In trouble?
Some sake? No thank you. She’d seen those ads and knew better than to accept a drink from anyone. Even her boss. Green tea ice cream then? Hai. Suddenly morning, Fumiko found herself lying perfectly straight on her back in the middle of the floor, her boss looking impatiently into her face. She ached inside and knew something was terribly wrong. He nodded. “I’ll take you home now.” The ice cream bowl was gone. Note from the author: This story is about drugging and sexual assault, and draws attention to the fact that rohypnol can be put into food as well as drinks. Darkness weighs down upon me. There are three hours left until sunrise, but I'll be dead long before the sun blesses this land.
The intermittent flickering of my flashlight confirms my fear, they are already here. Our intentions were honourable; reanimate dark matter in the hopes of better understanding the origins of the universe. Except, we awoke an evil long dormant, which feeds on light. I am the last of the scientific team assigned to reverse the process. If this message isn't found in time, it will be the death of light. I'm not a meat eater. The idea just doesn't sit right with me. But then again, my hip's been dislocated for a while. Regardless, watching the others gorge on their spread of meat has filled me with temptation. I can feel my rotted lips water. I try to fight it, as I have been all along. But the URGE...
I approach the others, shoving them aside with my decayed arms. I indulge, staring at the open body of the attacked human as I feast on his liver. We stuff our faces like a bunch of mindless... Oh. Right. John shivered, fastening his jacket and putting his hands in his pockets. This cold wind was brutal. His teeth started to chatter as he strode to the store. Only a little longer to go.
He sighed with relief, entering the heated market. The lights and activity were a welcome change from the gray, blustery day outside, and he reveled in the new environment. He strolled through the aisles, grabbing the items he needed, and checked out as usual. Darn, he thought, looking outside. More cold to come. But the heat awaited at home. He clenched his teeth and stepped out. Where are you? Please hurry, Edward. It's late! Come home now.
*** Edward Meech had passed away quite a while ago. Time moved on. Liza hadn't. Without realizing, she lived happily in her past until one day she couldn't find him. Aimlessly she wandered looking for her lover but he was nowhere to be found. It was a futile quest. Caring people tried to help Liza as she searched the corridors of her mind looking for her dear Edward. They hoped some day she may realize where he is. That day could not come soon enough. Norm gave to every charity. Five, ten, twenty dollars. It added up. Telemarketers loved him, called him by his first name. “Hey Norm,” they’d say, “send us a check.” They rang every night at dinnertime. The man was Pavlovian. He couldn’t not answer the phone, couldn’t say “no.” He explained that he didn’t want to be impolite. Drove his wife crazy. “Telemarketers are people, too,” he argued. So when his son went to college, the boy started his own charity. He called his father once a week at dinnertime. “Hey Dad,” he’d say. Five, ten, twenty dollars. It added up.
Mark kept his eyes open whilst he knocked back his scotch, watched the ice cluster as the party went sepia through the base of the glass.
“Employers blanch at my creativity,” said the bright-eyed stranger beside him. He was clutching a thermos and drinking, Mark suspected, water. “But I can’t help being a Leo!” "Trump's a Leo," Mark said matter-of-factly. "Hitler as well." Neither of these were true, they were just Mark's shortcut out of any conversation regarding astrology. Trump's actually Gemini, Hitler Taurus, but no-one ever checked. Still the guy's face fell; he drank his water, now reconsidering everything. She had never really understood each chapter she entered. Days, months, years passed but everything remained Greek to her.
Each chapter occupied one page that she had to read attentively. Rushed only granted her regrets, and she knew it. One thing that she didn’t comprehend for so many years was the unseen bridge that bridged each chapter, each page; that helped her to appreciate the whole book. The bridge connected the feelings, thoughts, and priceless experiences; the ingredients to believe in life, to build one of it. She didn’t read a book. She lives in it. She is the book. From near and far. From home and abroad. They stood and waited patiently to view the portraits.
The paintings, the sculptures, the photographs. All were exhibited with great care and love. Each one telling a different story of the sitter. When I first visited I foolishly asked her which medium she preferred to work in. She laughed at my silly question and told me she was merely ‘the curator’. All of the works were produced by artists who had wished only to celebrate her life and legend. To show the world the real woman she had become. When I was a young man I used to go downtown to a place called the Coyote Bar. There were rooms--and girls--upstairs; but I was different from the other guys because I fell head over heels in love and married one of those girls.
We've been together over 50 years, and all that time shunned and ostracized by nearly everyone. But that doesn't matter a wit to us. We have kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. And we seem to fall more deeply in love with each passing day. The way I see it, everyone should be so lucky! Snow. Boring. It no longer excited Ben. Mum suggested a winter summer holiday, told him to wrap up warm and find his bucket and spade. She switched on two patio heaters, cut a sun from gold foil, stuck it on card and hung it from the bedroom window. She resurrected a meditation CD, waves pounding the shore, seagulls calling. Together they made snow castles then ate sandwiches sitting in deckchairs, basking under the heat of the sun, listening to the sea. Banana and chocolate spread sandwiches tasted as scrumptious scattered with ice crystals as they did sprinkled with sand.
“Eyes are windows to the soul.” He took the saying to heart. What a waste now that their vessels are dead, eyelids closed, forever impeding them from witnessing the world’s beauty. No one seemed to care, but he did. And so the boy made it his mission to collect these windows: to show them how beautiful the world had become. He dug up carcasses trapped six-feet-under, freeing the eyes and letting sunlight pour over them on his porch. However, when neighbors discovered, his great task met a swift end and the beautiful world shunned the boy and his noble intentions.
Afternoon is the perfect family time. Babu used to have one. He knew. His kid and wife with him made a perfect triangle of peace and joyousness. He waited for lone long night to descend. He let the cop spend some quality time with the kid and wife. Babu wanted to quit his job. It’s all gore… Then he glimpsed a photo of his target and he felt so lucky. It was the same cop who killed Babu’s family. Babu had been a perfect finisher. Only he wanted to skip the afternoon. It was the perfect family time.
Mack decided to ride his newly acquired vehicle of transportation. Millie, he called her. Sturdy. Dependable. Purchased with years of savings.
A tepid breeze jostled sagebrush along the secondary highway Mack took. Onlookers waved from their properties. “Where ya goin’, son?” asked Jed, a retired farmer. “Grocery store,” quipped the sunlit cowboy. He entered the village and parked, distanced from other vehicles. “Got yourself a beauty!” someone yelled. Mack laughed, carrying boughten goods across the parking lot. He untied rope from a post, mounted his buffalo. Rode back home into the setting sun, like a star in a western movie. "Don't ever leave me, my true love."
He wakes up, sweating profusely although the night is cold. Rain weeps down the bedroom window and the wind howls tunelessly. It has been two years since she died and he will never forgive himself. He loves her so much but it's too late. Now he sleeps alone and unloved remembering the best of times, with anguish etched on his tortured face. He reaches for the whisky bottle but it is empty. Almost every night she returns to life again, the most beautiful dreams are the worst nightmares. You were riding in your shiny, new, car without one worry, carefree and singing with the radio when the back window was smashed out into pieces, shards of glass flying everywhere in the cold December air. You were frozen and pale faced, wide eyed as you caught the massive beast flying, landing with this smack, a loud thud in the middle of a dark, lonely stretch of the highway.
Minutes later, the black birds did come and they circled, circled, circled the grey, gloomy sky as both bodies were left trembling beneath all those high pitched cries. The Christmas tree was astoundingly large but without any palpable trunk, branches, and foliage. Santa Clauses were strikingly swift, but they had no beating hearts. Reindeers ran unbelievably fast, but they lacked legs. Children were getting gifts in abundance but from Santa-shaped automated telling machines. Carols were sung but in robotic voices. AI-synthesised cookies were presented as the foremost Christmas cuisine. Church services were performed but by digital clones. Before I could fully recognize the new weird world, I heard the first cry of a new- born. Oh! It saved my soul from drowning in the shallow festivities of 2100.
We never got to share our stories. We crash-landed on earth in 1947, looking for a place to emigrate. To say we were not welcome would be an understatement. In fact, they shot down our craft. We didn’t crash. We were shot down like you shoot down a UFO in that Nintendo game. I can still hear the sounds of that game, how it contrasts with the reality of the sounds of my vehicle, as all the systems died. Hoping to spread our stories and culture, but no, I am trapped, cut open, sewn shut again, a permanent experiment.
Claire's hiding spot was perfect; crouched behind the sofa she could see the Christmas tree with the star she had helped to place. It was a bit crooked, but Daddy said it gave the tree character. Claire wasn't sure what that meant, but when daddy called her a character he laughed, so she knew it was good.
She watched the lights with sleepy eyes determined to prove Bobby wrong. Santa managed to put presents under the tree and even a new unicorn blanket over her. She had seen nothing. It had to be magic. The song pops into my head as I pour a cup of coffee. It stays with me during my walk, only briefly interrupted when I offer a greeting to a man headed in the opposite direction.
Funny how these random songs take me through the dull moments or distract me from real thinking. They’re the background music of some kind of insanity, I tell myself. Harmless, for the most part, while providing a fast-food like sustenance when serious thought is too difficult. Stayin’ alive! And I didn’t even like disco. But there it is, following me to lunch and beyond. The writer and I met at Victoria Memorial during a lit-fest. I waited till he finished with the autograph hunters. He’s a coffee-man. We sneaked into Flurys.
You often speak to ruins and they speak back. Is that true? Yes, I chat with forts, abandoned houses and the like. How do you do this? It just happens. When you’re made to go through fire and ice in life, you become a ruin yourself. Now I’m able to interpret their vibes, and they mine. Do you find them more interesting than humans? Infinitely so! They suffer so gracefully, unlike the flesh-and-blood. Standing on the corner of the counter of The Silver Dollar Saloon, the only saloon in coal mine village Raccoon’s Crest, whilst drinking his third glass of some nice Kentucky Corn since the gunfight, the outlaw bragged to all those who wanted to hear about his latest so called heroic deed: “The man who will put down Furious Frank isn’t born yet” for the very last time, as if he sensed that at that exact moment the mother of the last man he would ever lay eyes upon, was going into labor to give birth to a now fatherless child.
I was sitting in my patrol car, my eyelids weighted down with 27 years worth of 12-hour overnight shifts, when it happened.
I’d parked on the side of a gravel lane, my headlights illuminating a sizable stretch of farmland. A shadow flew past my window. I quickly exited the vehicle. She stood not 50 yards ahead of me, in a long, flowing gown, a soft golden glow emanating from her form. Arms outstretched, she produced a deafening shriek. I woke up on the side of the road, bleeding from the mouth, a white rose clenched in my left fist. Nurse Felicia was exhausted, pushed beyond the limits of physical and mental endurance. Seventeen straight hours with the dead and dying on the fourth floor COVID ward. She needed a break. She needed something to help her carry-on.
The corridor was nearly empty,.She slipped into the small supply room, locked the door, and switched on the light. She withdrew a small envelope from her pocket. Tears leaked from her eyes, wetting the blue mask. She kissed the pictures of her parents, former patients in 405 and 407 who died last week. She would carry on in their memory. |
"Classic"
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