Tag: Fiction

Milk Duds

By Marleen S. Barr

 

Baby cages were the last straw for Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction scholar par excellence. She had tears in her eyes whenever she thought about children wrenched from their parents’ arms. Desiring to drown out her sorrows in a morning cup of coffee, she boiled water and placed a skimmed milk carton on her kitchen table. There was nothing unusual about the boiling water. Not so, the milk container. It disappeared. A person-sized breast leaned against the table in its place.

“Okay, I get it,” said Sondra to the breast. “You’re a graduate student engaged in a publicity stunt to garner interest in a Philip Roth memorial event. Great idea to dress up as the sentient breast protagonist in Roth’s ‘The Breast.’ Wonderful breast costume.”

“I am not a costume,” responded the breast.

“Enough already. You can come out of character. I will attend the memorial service.”

“I am a breast.”

“Are you making a #MeToo statement against the harassing male professors in the English department? Attending a department meeting dressed as a breast would be a good protest strategy.”

“Professor Lear, you are a feminist science fiction scholar. You must believe me when I state that I am a breast.”

“I’m open to believing you. But what are you doing in my apartment?”

“I have come to Earth to help the immigrant children Trump is imprisoning. In order to be effective, I need your cooperation.”

“Why?”

“I am a denizen of the feminist separatist planet Mammary. Mammarians patrol the galaxy in search of children whom fascists victimize. Our Maternal Council mandates that we must work in conjunction with at least one native of a planet that requires our intervention. Are you on board?”

“Yes. Certainly.”

“Good. My name is Lactavia. Since I would cause a ruckus if I bounced along Manhattan streets, I would like you to drive me to the Lincoln Tunnel’s entrance.”

“Glad to help. But please understand that I need to cover you with a trench coat. I live in a conservative New York co-op apartment building. I don’t what to incur the wrath of the co-op board. Even though New Yorkers keep to themselves, you would be beyond the co-op pale.”

Sondra drove to the Lincoln Tunnel with the trench coat-shrouded breast in tow. She parked and waited after Lactavia exited. Lactavia knew that Air Force One had landed at Newark Airport and Trump and his daughter Ivanka were en route to Trump Tower. When the president’s motorcade emerged from the tunnel, Lactavia positioned herself in the middle of the roadway.

“I have to stop the car,” said Trump’s driver. “We are being blocked by a huge breast.”

“Huge? Huge is priority one in relation to breasts,” Trump said. “But huge or not, breasts do not belong in the street. This must be some sort of feminist protest stunt trap. I’m not going to be stopped by fake news publicity. Keep going!” he bellowed as he looked out the window. “Wow. Big tit. Bigger than Melania’s.”

The limo full frontally hit Lactavia and bounced back. A cascade of milk emerged from her nipple and turned the black limo white. Before the Secret Service agents could stop Trump, he bounded out of the limo and confronted Lactavia.

“I won’t be intimidated by no huge tit.”

Milk covered Trump to the extent that he appeared to be white instead of orange. He was whiter than the homogenous population of Russia.

“People know about your Russian hotel golden shower. Now meet your white shower,” said Lactavia.

“This is a witch hunt,” screamed Trump as he wiped milk from his eyes.

“On the contrary, I am engaged in a fascist monster hunt. I am a feminist extraterrestrial charged with hunting down fascists who hurt children. I am here to close down your baby jails and rescue the children who are suffering for your political benefit.”

Sondra, risking a parking ticket, left the car and walked toward Lactavia and Trump. “I am Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction expert. You are closely encountering an all-powerful alien from the planet Mammary. It’s in your best interest to do what she tells you.”

“That tit alien is a rapist,” shrieked Trump. He slid his hand inside his oversized suit jacket, drew a gun, and shot Lactavia. The bullet bounced back and fell harmlessly to the asphalt.

“Okay, ya got my attention,” said Trump, as Ivanka stepped outside the limo. “Ivanka, meet an extraterrestrial from Mammary.”

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Ivanka whimpered as milk drenched her. “The milk is ruining my outfit and getting my hair wet. I had a bad hair day yesterday. I can’t face another. Do something!”

“You’re supposed to champion mothers,” said Sondra. “Don’t you like milk?”

“I like my appearance and my brand.”

“Why aren’t you doing something to help the imprisoned children? I will echo Samantha Bee: You’re  a ‘feckless cunt,’” proclaimed Sondra.

Ivanka jumped into her father’s arms.

“This isn’t such a bad day,” he said. “I get to grope my daughter and ogle a huge tit.”

“Oh no, you are not,” Lactavia said. “I am going to remove your daughter from your custody.”

“On what grounds?”

“You are illegally crossing the border separating New Jersey from New York. You are subject to arrest. You have to turn your daughter over to me.”

“There’s no such law.”

“I just made it up. I can enforce whatever law I want. I am more powerful than you.”

“Ivanka,” said Sondra, “I suggest that you detach yourself from your father immediately, if not sooner.”

“Daddy, Daddy, help! I don’t want to go god knows where with an extraterrestrial breast. If the alien deports me to another planet, I will never see you again. What if the breasts on Mammary have a poor fashion sense and wear stretched out bras? I won’t be able to live there. Where will I be taken?”

“I don’t know what Lactavia plans for you,” Sondra said. “She might put you in a freezing cold cage and cover you with a foil blanket.”

“Foil blankets are not in style. Daddy, save me. I don’t want to be put in a cage without you.”

“I am not going to cage you,” said Lactavia. “Two fascist wrongs do not make a right. When Trump goes low, Mammarians go high. I am merely going to force you to live in the housing your husband rents to poor people. You will stay there until all the immigrant children are reunited with their parents.” As soon as Lactavia finished speaking, Ivanka disappeared.

“Where’s my daughter?” shrieked Trump.

“She’s residing in a Kushner rental property.”

“Which one?”

“I am not telling. The better for you to feel the pain you inflict upon the immigrants.”

“OK, well, I don’t care. I have another daughter. Tiffany is hot, too. I’ll just have to start paying more attention to Tiffany.”

But Ivanka was already phoning Tiffany to tell her that the Kushner rental property was tantamount to hell.

Unwilling to suffer the same fate and not at all like her half-sister, Tiffany actually proved to be effective. She saved the day by convincing Trump to reunite the immigrant children with their parents.

Lactavia released Ivanka, who kissed the ground when she crossed the threshold of her mansion, and the Mammarian and Sondra returned to the co-op.

“I never had a chance to drink my coffee. Would you like some?” asked Sondra.

“No. Coffee is not healthy for breasts. It was nice to meet you. I’ll be returning to Mammary. By the way, your milk container will always be full. You’ve got milk forever.”

Sondra raised a glass of skimmed milk to toast the real fact that Lactavia had turned Trump’s baby jails into one huge milk dud.

 

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and she teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. She has a piece in the anthology, Alternative Truths, ( B Cubed Press, 2017), and she has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash.

Removal

By David Gershan

 

“The problem started when anger itself became criminalized,” he explained behind surgical goggles. “The original purpose of the neural implants was to stymie physical aggression. The focus was on prevention—punishment and rehabilitation became less, well, fashionable.” He turned his head and pointed to the hairless, jagged scar just above his occipital bun.

“Did it hurt?” I asked. “When they took it out?”

“Removal was designed to hurt,” he reminded me. “Hence the implant’s anti-anesthetic properties. Remember, a month after implantation that invisible nanite has replicated to fully encase the amygdala. After that, triggering self-deletion without aggravating the brain’s pain center is tricky.”

I gazed at the room’s sole lightbulb, which hung from the concrete ceiling by a wire, and remembered the digital manual that came with my mandated implantation at age 16—something about “irreversible brain damage” and a “pervasive vegetative state” if the nanobot was forcibly removed while fully integrated with my neural tissue. But I was already sitting on that makeshift operating table, not to mention I had forced down those pocket bottles of gin he’d handed me.

“That happened with me,” he continued, “but there were crude ways around the pain. After all, I was in the back of a pawn shop below a liquor store.” He laughed, then turned and coughed dryly.

My stomach was warm from the alcohol and heartburn crept up my throat. I began to sit up but the surgeon instructed me to lie down and turn my body away from him. I arranged myself in a fetal position and stared at the gray brick wall.

“This shouldn’t take long” he assured me, his voice now muffled behind a surgical mask.

Suddenly the pitch of an electric drill sent adrenaline coursing through me. As soon as I felt pressure on the back of my skull the lightbulb began to flicker.

“Don’t mind that,” he shouted over the drill. I closed my eyes and prayed for the anesthesia to work. “You know,” he continued above the grind of steel on bone, “limbic monitoring was how the garage surgery movement all began.”

 

David Gershan works as a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago, IL. When not at his day job, David can be found indulging in his love of music, literature, and creative writing. David has been published in various literary magazines and has written articles for an award-winning mental health blog. Follow him on Instagram at @gers0031 and on LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Gabriel Matula on Unsplash.

Reparative Therapy

By Dein Sofley

 

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you. It’s just that, well, you know … it’s normal to have sexual feelings. Our bodies were made to procreate.

Reproduce.

Have babies.

When you’re married.

It’s just that a man and a woman, they fit together, by design.

See?

A woman provides the egg and a man provides the seed. It’s how God intended it to be.

Yes, Jesus, too.

Well, Mary was a virgin birth.

A virgin is somebody who hasn’t had sex yet.

Sex happens when a man and a woman love each other and they want to make a baby.

Yes, Jesus is God’s son.

No, God doesn’t have sex. Didn’t they teach you anything in Sunday school?

God made Adam out of dust and Eve out of Adam’s rib. “Be fruitful and multiply,” that’s what God said to them.

Do you understand?

You can’t make a baby with two women or two men. You need an egg and a seed.

That’s why I’m here to help you. Me, and your parents, just want what’s best for you. We want you to have a great life.

What you have is a condition.

Yes, it’s kind of like being sick.

No, I don’t have to administer a shot.

We might do some body work and EDMR.

No, it’s not going to hurt.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing.

Don’t worry. I’ll explain it to you later. I assure you, it doesn’t hurt.

What?

Oh. The condition’s called SSA. Same Sex Attractions.

But, don’t worry. I can cure you.

Look, there’s a lot of changes happening in your body. You’re just confused about your feelings.

There. There. It’s okay. You’re not alone. We all struggle with sin. What you’re going through is just a moment.

Here. Take a tissue.

You see, this is how you know God loves you. He listened to your prayers.

We’re all here to help you and there’s other people, kids your age, who struggle with the same condition. They can help you, too, through support groups and prayer.

It’s called “SSA.”

No, you’re not born with it.

No, an SSN is a different thing.

You see, sometimes we’re attracted to people for different reasons. Say you like Ashley’s hair or the way Danny laughs.

Okay, well, whose hair do you like?

Fine. Sadie’s hair.

Danny snorts when he laughs?

Okay, so maybe my examples weren’t the best, but you get the idea, right? You don’t have to be gay. It’s probably just adolescent infatuation or maybe you felt alienated at some point in your life.

No, not like Lilandra in X-Men.

I’ve never read Sandman.

Loki’s a shapeshifter, that’s different.

Look, we all seek approval. We all need love and acceptance.

Yes, even Blake. Pray for his salvation.

It’s just that sometimes we don’t get enough from our parents, or we get too much, and our imaginations run riots trying to invent what we lack. What you’re experiencing is a call to come back home to God. It’s a test of faith.

Here, why don’t we start with this worksheet?

No, it’s not a potato.

It’s an iceberg. See, those are waves. That’s the ocean. Down there’s a whole lot of stuff we can’t see. Feelings.

Yeah, sort of like your mom’s five-layered bean dip, I guess. More like … hmmm … has a friend ever wanted to play a different game than you at recess and it made you angry? Well, maybe you felt sad, too, down here, underneath.

That’s the stuff we’re here to find out about, so we can sort out your feelings.

It’ll be okay. I promise. You’ll feel better. Happy. You won’t be gay anymore. Godliness just takes a little work. You’ll be a better Christian, you’ll see.  You’ll say, “Thank you Jesus for saving me.”

 

Dein Sofley teaches refugees English in the sanctuary city of Chicago. She earned her BA from Columbia College and her MFA in fiction from UC Riverside’s low-residency program. Her work has appeared in The Coachella Review, Writers Resist and the upcoming Five on the Fifth.

Westboro Baptist Church photo credit: Travis Wise via a Creative Commons license.

A Reckoning

By Chinyere Onyekwere

 

“They’re here, Papa!” cried seven-year-old Kene Biko, careening into his father’s outstretched arms. They felt each other’s thundering heartbeats—had that kind of connection.

The sight of men cavorting on his property like they owned the place jolted Julius Biko, sent fear knifing through his innards. The dreaded land infringement conundrum was suddenly upon him.

The stricken look on Julius face struck a raw chord in his boy, evoked deep empathy and a sense of sickening trepidation. Soulful eyes teared as he watched his father caught up in a web of corrupt circumstances beyond his comprehension, their menace threatening the kind, mild-mannered man.

Frozen by the reality of the unfolding drama, father and son looked on helplessly with angst-filled eyes, as the men scurried around with their measuring tapes and an air of contemptuous resolve.

Five years earlier, Julius had taken advantage of Nigeria’s then roaring oil and gasoline economy to invest his hard-earned savings in erecting a petrol pump dispenser and miniature semi-detached brick house (serving as his office) in Omambala metropolis, near the green sprawling plains of Orange Grove neighborhood, a humble, thriving community named for the plentiful orange trees dotting its terrain.

His property stood tall and proud on the edge of an incline, enjoying modest patronage by motorists grateful to Julius for siting the petrol pump in the district’s outskirts where vehicles most likely needed to top up their petrol for their long-haul trips on the adjoining highway.

A meek, fastidious and law-abiding man, Julius had made painstaking efforts to keep in consonance with Omambala Town Planning’s property siting and landscaping guidelines, spelt out in a thirty-page handbook. He had jumped excruciating hurdles to acquire from the agency proper documentation and registration for the land— including the almighty Certificate of Occupancy, the most pertinent of the lot.

Julius’ woes came calling when a new breed of villainous scheming men insidiously infiltrated the OTP agency to corner the long-awaited roadway construction project by Nigeria state government. The expressway was mapped to run alongside Julius’ property.

Whisperings from the Orange Grove grapevine revealed the con men had arrogated to themselves absolute power. They were infamous for abhorrent practices of nullifying and erasing client’s land and registration records, railroading victims into a lifetime of litigation by a dubious state government—if the victims were too pig-headed to grease palms.

Graft rot ran deep in most establishments, including top echelons of power.

The men had surprised Julius with their unscheduled visit. They pontificated on the flagrant obtrusion by property owners on government projects, berated him for sabotaging efforts in getting the road constructed, and swiftly moved in unison, like a rampaging tsunami, to paste on the westside wall of his office, a red, six-foot-tall letter “X,” OTP’s ominous property demolition sign—and last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Julius squeezed his son in a tight embrace as if to shield the boy from life’s never-ending onslaughts.

Fate had again dealt the father and son duo a horrendous blow, quickening Julius’ descent into melancholic madness. He had struggled to make sense of his loss when the boy’s mother met her demise in a bungled cesarean delivery caused by a power outage that struck the maternity ward on the day his son came gasping into the world. Despite decades of independence, his nation had devolved into a baffling paradox—a land of great wealth plagued by privation.

Willfully repressed trauma simmered to the surface of Julius’ subconscious, had him grieving afresh for his beloved Ann, fueled him with defiance against a hellish system, galvanized him to pay OTP a visit—to set the records straight with the powers that be.

•

In the agency’s decrepit offices situated on the seedy side of town, Julius sat across from Jackson Dike, OTP’s Land Infringement Task Force head and, due to dire circumstances, the wrecking ball crane operator.

His amenable features did not fool Julius, who perceived the gluttonous pervert behind the man, who reminded him of a crocodile he’d once seen, its seemingly smiling demeanor strangely at odds with its deadliness.

“You had no right putting up that confounded sign on my wall,” said Julius, ditching pleasantries, looking directly into Jackson’s shifty eyes. “My property doesn’t encroach on the proposed roadway. My documents prove it, your records, too.”

“Says who?” snapped Jackson with snide arrogance, incensed that Julius had dared challenge his fiefdom. “My predecessors were reckless with records. Who knows?”

“Tell your meddling minions to keep away from my property,” Julius said with calm comportment that belied his fury. “I have no intention of playing in one of your convoluted games. I’d watch my steps if I were you, Mr. Dike.”

“Did you just threaten me right—”

“Did I?” cut in Julius. His sudden backward movement sent the cheap plastic armchair skittering on a worn and filthy vinyl floor.

“Get that despicable sign the hell off my wall,” glowered Julius before storming from the office.

“Expect my wrecking ball machine in the days ahead!” yelled the enforcer, caught off guard by the effrontery and scuttled pay-off.

•

That dusk, Kene watched his father’s every move. The man had left his food untouched, looked dangerously emaciated. Whatever was happening with his papa seemed fatally bad.

The boy put his arms around his father’s drooped shoulders in a show of loving comradeship.

“Stop worrying. We’ll be fine, Papa,” he comforted.

•

By the next morning, the curious Orange Grove neighborhood had caught wind of Julius’ run-in with OTP, and people looked on with bated breath as the wrecking ball machine rumbled up the incline, heaving its way toward Julius’ lot.

Jackson spewed a blizzard of profanities as his heavy vehicle grappled with treacherous terrain—and he choked with apoplectic rage at the sight of a young male child, his arms firmly clasped around the petrol pump.

Irked to be deterred by a mere street urchin, Jackson inched closer with his mammoth machine for the carefully planned assault. But the boy bravely stood his ground, did not budge an inch, ignoring his father’s frantic pleas to stand down, to clear out from the wrecking ball’s imminent path of destruction.

The stand-off morphed into an extended battle-of-wills. It attracted mainstream media that honed in for the kill like a cackle of ravenous hyenas, capturing the father and son’s pitiable plight.

But Jackson’s depraved sadism came to an inglorious halt when, in a bizarre twist of events, the machine’s massive tyres lurched, skidded out of control, and sent the steel ball on an erratic pendulum swing. It smashed the crane’s cab windows to smithereens with an earth shattering blow that reverberated around the neighborhood.

Jackson hardly knew what hit him when flying glass shards blinded him. He was bundled off the lot screaming like a demented soul from the pit of hell.

As if the tempestuous spectacle playing out on Julius’ lot was not enough uproar for one day, a disgruntled arsonist with a score to settle had a momentous meltdown and purged OTP of its long overdue excesses.

The headline, “A DAY FOR THE UNDERDOG,” and a large image of the colossal wrecking ball pitted against the puny child protesting the demolition of his father’s property, were emblazoned across the front cover of Nigeria’s leading newspaper and foreign bureau tabloids. It became an iconic symbol of a system’s tyranny over its long-suffering citizens, sparking outrage, a beastly backlash against government, and a clamour for justice for the hapless little boy, who received an outpouring of love never before witnessed within or beyond national borders.

•

“They’re here, Papa!” shrieked Kene gleefully, as road dust heralded a gleaming white SUV racing up the incline.

A Nigerian couple spearheading a nonprofit organization helping motherless children had followed Kene’s poignant story with keen interest—had lovingly opted to cater for his welfare until teenhood.

“I’m off to boarding school. You’ll visit me soon won’t you, Papa?” Kene’s eyes sparkled with unfettered excitement.

“Of course son, you bet I will,” Julius said, tearing up.

They hugged each other tightly and shared the joyful pounding of their hearts.

 

Chinyere Onyekwere is a freelance graphic designer and self-published author in Nigeria. Her passion for the written word won her Nigeria’s 2006/2007 National Essay Competition Award with her story titled “Motion Picture and The Nigerian Image.” Chinyere holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Nigeria. When she’s not glued to the computer screen, Chinyere keenly observes human conditions and the state of the world in general, while trying very hard not to be hoodwinked by her mischievous grand twins. She’s currently working on several short stories. You can reach her at ockbronchi@gmail.com.

Photo credit: imageartifacts via a Creative Commons license.

Costa

By Amirah Al Wassif

 

Everyone has heard of Costa’s miracles in our grey village: the boy who had a wooden toy and a cheerful wren bird.

His giant miracles were in his spoken wooden toy, which could create a lot of jokes in a loud tone.

His second miracle was in his talented wren: a wonder-bird that had the ability to sing several numbers of songs starting with the first letter of anybody’s name.

“Oh! What a lucky boy,” everybody whispered in each others’ ears.

Actually, all the people in our village felt jealous of Costa, because of his miraculous talents that made his luck very rich.

The sun in our village was usually not very clear. It was not orange or yellow. It was covered only by a colour so grey. Due to this, our village was named “the Grey Village.” So, all our times were grey, and we did not ever see this bright light universally known as the sun.

Day by day, when all the people in our village felt sad and disappointed because of the spreading of grey colour, strangely, Costa was falling in love with each detail in our sky.

The boy of miracles never got bored of the grey colour. When the village people sat unhappy and miserable and did not look at the sky, Costa watched its grey. He tried to count the stars in the night patiently and sent his unseen wishes to the hidden sun all the days.

When our people were puffing, feeling hopeless and waking up with no excitement, Costa woke every day, smiling and jumping, from his deep sleep.

Costa burnt with curiosity to look and look at the sky, which led him to know the strangest things in the world, such as his wooden toy and his splendid wren bird.

All our people were unhappy except for Costa: He was very glad. But as he was a boy who loved all his neighbours, he wanted to make them feel happy like him, despite their jealousy over his magical power and his marvelous gifts.

Every day, Costa demanded secret wishes from the sky, and he whispered in nature’s ears.

The boy of miracles wished good things for his people in the grey village, he wanted them happy like him or even more.

Costa gave his soul more joy and magnificent meanings for life, that nobody knew how this boy had learned such things.

While Costa discovered many secrets about the sky from his daily meditation, he made himself a promise. Accordingly, he decided to make a daily show in front of his people, to draw a smile on their lips with his magical gifts, the speaking wooden toy, and the singing wren bird.

In the Costa daily show, most of the people laughed, some of them smiled, but there was one odious boy who neither smiled nor laughed.

One time, the odious boy, named Jimmy, intended to steal Costa’s magical stuff. He waited until Costa slept, moved closer to him, and took his wonderful stuff away.

Now Jimmy had the wooden toy and the singing wren, and all the people in our grey village gathered around Jimmy. They watched and watched the boy, who started to move the wooden toy up and down, left and right, as Costa used to do in his shows. The surprise occurred, when the wooden toy did not move and did not through its creative jokes make a loud tone as it did before.

Jimmy felt so angry. He tried to move the wooden toy many times vainly. Then he put it down and started to carry the wren bird, to sing its wonderful song, which was supposed to start with the letter “A,” the first letter of the folk chosen to be the beginner, but to his unfortunateness the wren bird did not sing any song either. It remained very calm and quiet.

Jimmy was shocked, he did not understand why the magical stuff did not work. People who gathered around him watched him like miserable souls.

Suddenly, the people in the grey village realized the importance of Costa’s daily shows which gave them happiness and joy that they really needed.

•

At such a tumultuous time, though he knew that Jimmy had stolen his magnificent tools, Costa watched his grey sky. He was not sad, because he understood the most important secret of the universe—that beautiful stuff came by itself to the good people without stealing or seeking.

While Costa meditated, Jimmy went to his place. Without any words, Jimmy gave him his magical tools, which began their extraordinary actions as they came into Costa’s hand: The wooden toy threw its creative jokes, and the wren sang its prettiest song, which started with the letter “A.”

“Oh! How can you explain that?” Jimmy asked Costa in an astonished tone.

“It is very simple Jimmy,” Costa said.

“If you want a charm, be calm.

“If you want a light, be kind.

“And if you help the others, the magic will still be with you forever.”

 

Amirah Al Wassif is a freelance writer and author. She has written articles, novels, short stories poems and songs. Five of her books were written in Arabic and many of her English works have been published in various cultural magazines. Amirah is passionate about producing literary works for children, teens and adults that represent cultures from around the world. Her first book, Who Do Not Eat Chocolate was published in 2014 and her latest illustrated book, The Cocoa Book and Other Stories is forthcoming.

Photo credit: Pete Beard via a Creative Commons license.

“Costa” was previous published by Literary Yard.

Horror Story

By John Sheirer

 

After a year of making hundreds of calls each day, wearing out another pair of shoes every few weeks, and knocking on more doors than he thought could exist in the whole country, David planned to take his family for a well-earned weekend in the country on the first Saturday of November.

As he watched the famous buildings of the capitol city fade in his rearview mirror, David nicked a tiny patch of early morning ice and spun his car through the railing of the Virginia side of the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge. His wife and kids slipped through the windows before the car dipped beneath the water. They had only cuts, bruises, and a terrible scare.

But David had to be pulled from the Potomac River’s chilly water by the strong hands of a local fisherman who happened to be a former college swimmer. His plunge sent him into a coma that lasted for two long months in a sad wing of the city’s largest hospital.

When he unexpectedly awoke, the medical staff sprinted for the room’s television, clicking off a shouting match on a news program that he couldn’t quite hear. Dark expressions hovered above the lab coats crowded around his bed.

“I’m alive?” he asked.

The faces nodded but remained troubled. David grimaced, swallowed hard on his arid throat.

“My wife?” he croaked. “My children?”

“They’re fine,” the nurse told him, expelling a held breath. She encouraged him to drink slowly from a small plastic cup. The icy water burned.

“Why?” he asked between painful sips. “Why do you all look so terrified?”

“We have some—” The head physician halted. His gaze found the floor.

The nurse rescued his sentence: “Some bad news.”

She inhaled a long, slow, deep breath of filtered hospital air and spoke two hushed words: “Trump won.”

David’s screams could be heard all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

John Sheirer a teacher and author who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has taught writing, literature, and communication full-time at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, for the past quarter century. His books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. His most recent book is the satire, Donald Trump’s Top Secret Concession Speech, available in print and as an audiobook read by Mike Hardeman (Rocky Mountain Mike of the Stephanie Miller Show.) Find John at JohnSheirer.com.

Photo credit: Mike Maguire via a Creative Commons license.

Monster’s Lament 3.o

By M.A. Banash

 

It’s 11:55 a.m. I’m crouching on the toilet at work. Pants buckled. Jabbing my phone to download an app. I want to get pizza for dinner but I’m too—what’s the word?—nervous, uptight, about ordering on the phone. The acoustics are daunting. Figure I should finally get in step with the world and do it with an app. But the reception sucks and I don’t want to spend all afternoon in the can. Abort. I get up, flush, wash my hands and walk out.

Like yesterday I wanted to get out. Go for a walk on the greenway. But I diddled around all morning and by the time I got in the car a few stray raindrops were falling on the windshield. I drove by the entrance to the trailhead. Turned around a few hundred feet up the road. Drove right past the entrance again and headed back home. I blamed the impending rain. And parking. And that I didn’t have my umbrella. And that I was late already and would have to cut my walk short to get back home to eat lunch in time to read enough of the new book, a novel about a being trapped in ice, real and metaphorical.

Now I want to give my ham sandwich to the guy wearing a cardboard sign full of holy scripture at the intersection of South and Tyvola, but worry he doesn’t like mayo on ham. Who does? Why can’t I get over this? Or anything really?

The dead hawk in the middle of Johnston Rd. The day splitting the horizon into a singed orange through the trees and a roiling purple on top, on my way to the dumpster in the morning. The sound of babies crying the next aisle over in the grocery store, making me want to sweep everything from the shelves, the cans of sweet corn “packed in the field,” Extra-Strength stain removers, the store-brand Oreos, Sriracha Ramen noodles, “Spring Morning” scented dryer sheets, Garlic Tandoori naan, Cheddar Colby Jack cheese in aerosol cans. Nothing goes away. It just kind of changes its shape, its tone, its presence. But it never leaves. It’s always there. Here.

And now the President of the United States knows about me, too. He said that I’m like a “boiler ready to explode.” That I need to be in a hospital. How does he know about me? How can he know that? Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing.

I may want to wipe everything off the grocery store shelves, may think about what it would be like to feel the wind rush past me as I fall into the Grand Canyon, may tell myself over and over that truth, reality, happiness are only one or two slight adjustments away and that I deserve it, that tonight I will stop and tomorrow I will start. That it’s a marathon and everyone has to be in shape to run a marathon. And I’m not quite in that shape yet. Or anyone to talk to.

I just want to lie down. And rest. Sleep. No dreams. Just sleep.

 

Matt was born and raised in PA and has lived in the Carolinas for the past twenty years. He writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in Penumbra, Poetry Quarterly,  SurVision, The Blue Nib and Micro Fiction Monday.

Photo credit: Mike Mozart via a Creative Commons license.

Dave

By David H. Reinarz

 

Dave stepped out of his air-conditioned house and sat down on the front porch. Not on a chair. On the concrete step.

The concrete step on the porch of Dave’s house was very hot. Dave could feel the heat through the seat of his stone-washed denim blue jeans and Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs.

The concrete step of Dave’s house was very hot, because it was 97 friggin’ degrees. Dave’s forehead instantly bloomed with perspiration, followed closely by his armpits. The humidity was probably about 97, too. He took off the turquoise and orange plaid cotton button down shirt. He didn’t want sweat stains on it. He had bought it on an impulse in the fashionable menswear store in Regency.

Dave’s shoulders and arms and back and chest now glistened. The soft soles of his feet were uncomfortable.

This must be what it’s like for those poor devils crossing the Mexican desert, trying to get to the Rio Grande, he thought. Or those poor bastards trying to escape North Africa across the Mediterranean to Europe. Or those poor kids working all day in that factory in Asia who made my plaid shirt. Bloody shame, that is. The world is not an easy place!

Dave took a sip of iced mocha cappuccino. He could go back inside. Inside Dave’s house, the computer-controlled environmental enhancement system kept everything at exactly 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 45 percent humidity.

But, no, he would sit outside on the concrete step of the porch of his house in the heat for a bit longer. You know, in solidarity with all those poor souls trying to claw their way across the face of the planet in search of … what?

Well, he raised his glass in symbolic salute, thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers.

 

David H. Reinarz was born in Minneapolis and now lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and he has a BA in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Retired from a career as manager of retail professional bicycle shops, he is an alumnus of the 7 Doctors Writers Workshop (2015) and has been writing short stories and poetry since 2015. Dave is the author of two collections: Story City: Ten Short Stories and One Long Story in the Middle (2016) and The Sweet Jesus Trilogy and Other Stories (2017). His books are available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com.

Photo credit: Mr. TinDC via a Creative Commons license.

Tayaran

By Christa Miller

 

The first time Haitham flies he is trying to flee the gang of teenagers in the camp who think he has something worth stealing. He is running, running, and then there is a building before him, the kitchen where his mother works during the day. Before he knows what he is doing, he takes two steps up the concrete-block wall, grasps the edge of the roof, and hauls himself upwards. He scrambles to the top and there he stays while the boys bellow and whoop below. Eventually they get bored and go off, and that is when he takes flight. A few running steps along the shallow pitch and then launch, he soars into the air. But young boys do not have wings. As he falls he has just enough time to tuck himself into a ball so he can roll along the ground.

His shoulder is sore for four days afterward. But he has tasted the air, felt it cushioning his body. It is gritty with sand and tastes bitter like turmeric, he wants to taste and feel it again.

Haitham has wanted to fly ever since he and his mother first came to the camp. They crossed the border late at night on foot, knotted tightly together with other families for protection from the government forces. Then just five, he wanted to be a bird so he could swoop into the air to escape without his feet and legs aching, without his knees and shins bloodied and bruised from his numerous stumbles and falls in the rocky sand.

He is nine now. The next time he flies, it is not to escape, but to see what else he can do, how far he can go in this tent city of a refugee camp. He has seen other boys fly on YouTube, where he watches videos of something called “parkour.” While his friends play video games that allow them to capture the government flag with guns and bombs and flame, he sits in the corner of his tent with his phone, watching boys in faraway cities—Berlin, Paris, Toronto, even Essen where his uncle now lives—balance atop high rooftops and leap from one roof to the next.

He cannot jump from tent to tent, of course, but the caravans in camp have hard rooftop surfaces. He pretends he is back in his old apartment building in Homs. His movements are awkward, tentative, a boy simply jumping from caravan to caravan, not the light tiptoe touch-and-go of the run across them he has envisioned. He tells himself this is merely because he does not yet know the camp’s layout, that, like the birds, he will come to know where it is safe to land.

But after he lands hard on the fifth caravan, a woman comes out, her jilbab flapping in a way that makes Haitham think she has pulled it on hastily. He climbs down rather than leap and roll, and he makes his apologies to her, shame warming his cheeks because he has made her risk her covering in public.

She rails at him for disturbing other people’s homes, their quiet spaces, their private time. And then, unexpectedly, her face softens. She is not angry after all, just startled, and he realizes that he reminds her of someone as she holds out her arms to him. He accepts her hug. She is a young woman whose dark eyes are warm and sad, and she holds on to him for longer than he expects. When at last she lets him go, tears have tracked down the high bones of her cheeks. Before Haitham can speak, she spins and disappears inside her caravan.

After this he—they—makes a game of it. Around the same time every day, he lands hard on her roof; she comes out and scolds him, then offers him tea and some basic riz.  From her stove it tastes better than anyone else’s riz, including his mother’s. They sit in the baked shade of her caravan, and they talk. She is from Damascus, and she has never heard of parkour. Before the war she was a university student, she tells him, studying architecture, but after the men in her family were gone, she had to take a job cleaning the classrooms she once learned in. When he asks her who she came here with, her eyes grow faraway and sad, and she does not answer.

Still it is better conversation than Haitham can find with his own mother, who doesn’t seem to notice when Haitham slips away, who bursts into tears without warning, who mutters to herself about the things she left behind. It’s as if she has abandoned the family members who gave them to her, although the rest of them escaped to Germany long ago. If she only knew where her husband was, Haitham hears her tell the other women in the kitchen, she would rejoin him. She would rather be killed there than be trapped here.

Haitham flies to escape her tears, to escape the tiny space that is perhaps the size of one room of their old home, to escape the neighbors on either side who tell them they may have to live here for years yet, years before they can flee to Germany or Canada to start again. He flies to escape the knowledge that his mother’s dreams seem to hold no place for him.

His new friend, Amal, tells him she thinks he should attend school in the camp. Why spend his days running around, she asks, her face creased with worry, where the older boys can torment him? School is safe. In school he will give himself a better chance to make it wherever he ends up. How can he tell her that school is the last place that feels safe? Bad enough that the mortar fire, far away as it is, makes her entire caravan shake; how can he explain to her what it felt like, to have seen his old school building in crumpled ruins, to realize that, had the shelling happened just a few hours later, he would never have known what hit him?

He flies to escape the mortar shells.

Before long he realizes that he has achieved the ability to touch and go, to kiss the corrugated metal rooftops with just the tips of his toes before sprinting to the next. He balances carefully on beams in construction sites. He teaches himself to launch his body and climb up the cinder-block walls of shelters and kitchens like a spider; to tuck-and-roll, as he did that first day, when there is nothing but empty space to fly through. He can go anywhere, be anything. He hardly notices when the people on the ground point him out.

That is why it surprises him one evening, not far from the market, to come out of a roll only to hurtle into another human body. For a moment he thinks it is Amal, this is near where she lives, but there is too little fabric for a jilbab. He steps backward, gazes into the hard face of one of the teenagers he has been flying to avoid.

He doesn’t know if these are the same boys who have tried to rob him. He has nothing, he tells them, but they don’t care about that. They have seen him fly, and they want him to use his skills. For Allah, they tell him, al-Nusra has a plan for you. You could return to Homs, live as a man. Surely you can make use of your speed for His glory?

Haitham does not know how they know he is from Homs. Perhaps once they were neighbors. It doesn’t matter. If he were ever to return to Homs it would be to fight at his father’s side, not for al-Nusra. He feels afraid, deeply afraid in the very center of his core, for he knows these boys do not want him to rejoin his father, nor do they believe in Allah’s grace or mercy. He knows it is not money the boys want to rob him of, but his very life. He does not know how he manages to slip between the knot they have formed around him, but he does, and he hears them laugh like the striped hyenas who skulk around the edges of the camp in the night.

The next day he remains with his mother in their caravan. When his friend Sabir comes to the door and asks if he can play, he declines. But his mother invites Sabir inside, and for the remainder of the afternoon the two boys huddle on Haitham’s bedroll, playing video games on their phones.

Haitham avoids YouTube altogether.

After three days Haitham begins to feel the familiar twitch in his legs telling him it has been too long since he has flown, he must practice. Still he does not go outside. His mother, teary-eyed, asks him what is wrong, but he cannot tell her, he cannot give her one more thing to cry about. He says simply that he injured himself and needs rest. Sabir continues to come over. Their other friend Khalil stops by after school. Khalil talks about what he is learning, asks Haitham and Sabir to join him. Haitham asks if he can still feel the mortar shells shake that building. Khalil doesn’t answer.

On the sixth day, Haitham can no longer bear the hot stuffiness of his mother’s caravan, so on the morning of the seventh day, after his mother has gone to the kitchen, he crawls out of the caravan’s window and up onto the roof. He lies flat on his back so no one else can see him, and he breathes deeply as the camp begins to rise around him.

Before long he hears voices at the nearby kitchen. A woman is looking for someone, a lost child. Her voice is near tears but still she sounds familiar, a voice Haitham remembers, from Homs perhaps? He turns over onto his belly and spies.

He recognizes Amal’s black jilbab right away, because it stands out so in a land of white tents and the brightly colored jilbabs that his mother and other women wear as if to brighten drab days, or to stave off darkness. Amal is teary, and she is speaking with his own mother, and it takes him several moments to realize that it is he she asks about, not some younger brother or neighbor’s son she was responsible for. He scrambles down from his mother’s caravan and goes to the two women, his face cast down at the dusty ground, ashamed again for causing Amal such grief, and for embarrassing his mother, though he is not sure how.

Amal catches him up in a hug, holding him as if she will never let go. When she finally does free him, he expects a scolding, but instead she looks deep into his eyes as if searching his soul, and he cannot look away. Finally, she asks, if she can find a way to teach him how to buy and sell in the market, will he come with her?

Haitham glances up at his mother, whose eyes and mouth have formed round Os of surprise. He sees something else dawning in them as well: hope, the same hope he sees in Amal’s face and hears in her name. He cannot bear to disappoint either his mother or his friend, and so he says yes.

The next morning he wakes up with his mother, who fusses over him in a way he cannot recall her doing since before they left Homs. She makes him a good breakfast of pita and vegetables, and she tells him that if there is ever a hope of his leaving this camp, learning how to run a business is it.

Amal has found him a job cleaning a flower shop. He is to sweep the outside and the inside of cuttings and fallen petals and deadheads. In exchange, the shop owner, a man named Mohsin, will teach him how to set prices and haggle and make change.

In the beginning, the responsibility excites Haitham. He sweeps meticulously, inside and out, making sure the corners are free of dust and cuttings and insects, and he listens to Mohsin haggle with customers. Several times Mohsin calls him over to watch how he makes change. He is given a piece of fruit for lunch, and he eats it behind the shop so that he will not disturb the customers.

But after a few days the excitement wears off. Mohsin seems to forget that Haitham is there. He doesn’t praise his new young worker for a job well done, nor does he scold him when he finds Haitham underfoot. He even begins to forget to involve Haitham in the purchase and sale process. It is not, Haitham reflects, as if he is the man’s son or nephew, or the son or nephew of Amal, who herself seems to have disappeared. Mohsin doesn’t seem to care whether he shows up or not.

One morning, Haitham leaves the caravan as if he is going to work, but instead he spends the day flying.

It feels good to be on the rooftops and in the air once again. It has been too long. He is stiff, his movements less fluid, and neither the air nor the ground are very forgiving. By lunchtime, he is winded and a little bit sore, but he keeps going.

While he flies, he thinks. About his mother telling him that the only way out of the camp is to learn a trade. About the things she says to the other women at the kitchen, how her husband needs her more than her son does. About the al-Nusra fighters who want him to return to Homs.

If he joins them, he wonders, if he pretends to fight for them, could he eventually find his way back to his father?

He is so lost in his thoughts that he does not even notice Amal until she plucks him out of the air.

Actually, she swats his foot as he flies above her head. It isn’t enough for him to fall, but it’s enough to make him stop running, to halt on the roof he lands on, to make his way down to the ground carefully rather than in the tuck-and-roll he hasn’t done since the day the older boys encircled him.

She isn’t alone. She is with his mother. He braces himself for the scolding, though he feels no shame this time and does not hang his head. He stares defiantly at the two women.

His mother holds aloft a paper with writing on it. She is triumphant as she tells him that she has heard from her brother in Germany. He is traveling here to Jordan to take Haitham away, bring him to Essen. He will attend school with his cousins and perhaps work in his uncle’s shop.

When his mother is finished speaking she gestures to Amal, who regards Haitham with great sad eyes. Amal kneels, takes both his hands in hers. “Haitham,” she says softly. “Your name means ‘young eagle.’ I should have remembered, eagles cannot be caged—in shops or in schools.” Her dark eyes twinkle when she says this. Then they grow somber once more. “Nor in camps. Isn’t that so?”

Haitham doesn’t blink. He pulls his hands from hers. Over her shoulder the hyena-boys skulk. He tells her, tells his mother, that he wants to soar far away. To find his father, to fight for Syria, to recapture his home for his mother, for Amal, for everyone in the camp who cannot fly. His words hang in the air between them.

Finally his mother speaks. “No,” she tells him. “There is no life for you there. Only death.”

“But you speak about rejoining Abee,” he cries.

At this, his mother drops her gaze to the dust at her feet. “Yes, and I am wrong. I miss your father, but not enough to risk your life.”

“Al-Nusra is as much a cage as this camp,” Amal tells him.

“Cages are everywhere,” he spits back.

Even as he says it, though, he recalls the parkour videos filmed in Essen, in the other cities. Those boys must attend school and work in shops, too. What if he could become the one to post videos on YouTube, give hope to some other boy who yearns to escape the camp?

He meets Amal’s gaze, then his mother’s. He smiles. In Essen, the air will be lighter to fly through, not full of heat and sand, and it will taste as sweet as honey.

 

Too goody-two-shoes for the rebels and too rebellious for the good girls and boys, Christa Miller writes fiction, which, like herself, doesn’t quite fit in. A professional writer for more than fifteen years, Christa has written in a variety of genres ranging from crime fiction to horror to children’s, but her favorite stories to write—and read—are those that blend genres. Her work has been published in both Volumes 1 and 2 of the Running Wild Novella Anthology, a 2008 anthology called Northern Haunts, in Shroud Magazine, Out of the Gutter Magazine, Spinetingler Magazine, and in a handful of online zines. Her affinity for the dark, psychological, and somewhat bizarre doesn’t stop her from snuggling baby animals as a volunteer at a local wildlife rescue, adventuring with her two sons in rivers, swamps and salt marshes, or relaxing with a good book and a cold beverage in her hammock. Christa is based in Greenville, SC. You can find her at www.ChristaMMiller.com and on Goodreads, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Photo credit: Marco Gomez via a Creative Commons license.

The Editorial

By Trevor Scott Barton

 

Jan sat at her desk, staring at a blank page in her notebook. Her left hand was balled into a fist sitting in the palm of her right hand. She shrugged her shoulders deeply and lifted her head from the page.

She had pulled up the blinds on the large window facing Main Street, hoping to fill her office with light from the breaking day outside. Early risers, in heavy coats and gloves, hurried from frosted cars toward the warmth of the restaurant across the street. Vapor rose from their mouths with each breath, like puffs of smoke from a chimney, and disappeared into the gray morning sky. This would be a wintry March day instead of her much hoped for spring, when the first tulips break through thawing ground.

She thought about the previous night, wondering what would be said over coffee at the Scrambled Egg. When they looked at the front page of the Greenville News, when they saw the headline, would any of the words be good words, words that could heal instead of hurt, forgive instead of hate?

She tried to find these good words inside herself, believing her editorials could shape actions and thoughts in the tense days to come. Or did she believe?

She pictured her neighbors, listening to the morning news on the radio or watching it on T.V. Having spent her life in Southern towns like Greenville, she knew thoughts and feelings about immigration and immigrants were shaped long before someone read an editorial, long before that someone was born.

How could her neighbors—people who ate with her, people who went to church with her, people who lived a good definition of civility—so quickly lose that civility when faced with issues of immigration? What was it about immigrants that raised pulse rates, flushed faces, clenched teeth and pounded fists in anger in an otherwise friendly place?

She rose from the chair, leaving the notebook at her desk. Her knees creaked and groaned as she stood, laboring to lift her body up and away from her morning task of trying to answer unanswerable questions and to question unquestioned answers.

 

Trevor Scott Barton is an elementary school teacher and a writer in Greenville, South Carolina. Follow his work on Twitter @teachandwrite.

DNA-Edited Spinner for Hire

By Russell Hemmell

 

Delphis—the Cheerful One—had known it since the beginning. She was going to remember the day the magic of gene editing was discovered in the multifaceted and famously riotous dolphin world.

It could provide a way for the planet to survive climate change, the developers claimed. Once we upgrade, uplift and upscale, we’ll teach the Dumb Ones in Command (read: humans) how to do deal with it.

True or not, the possibility itself was too good to be ignored.

Now, Delphis had expected outrage and disagreements, yet things turned out to be, as often happens, worse than that. Not only was there no consensus among the forty-three species of dolphins inhabiting the seas and the rivers of the blue planet, their quarrels escalated to a full-fledged (holy) war.

Amazon River dolphins—the Elder and Quiet Ones—rallied the rest of the river brethren and shunned the marine cousins away: Nothing can be gained by summoning the devil in the shape of a nasty, alien-looking technology. Weren’t human-devised climate change remedies worse than the ravages themselves? Bugger off. And don’t try to chase us up here, you sinners, or we will feed you to the piranhas.

Delphis was not surprised. Land-bound creatures were always more conservative. Remaining in the same environment all their lives didn’t help them develop an open mind. In the seas, as a matter of fact, positions were more diverse, if not always positive.

Spinners like Delphis and Bottlenoses were definitively interested in a few abilities that could give the clade an edge over the other Earthian species, marine or not, and so were the Pacific White-Sideds, although with somewhat less enthusiasm.

Others were not convinced, and Killer Whales—the (consistently) Worried Ones—were more doubtful than the rest.

Dolphins communicate but don’t talk; they whistle to one another, the naysayers said. Dolphins stay in the sea; they don’t walk around like monstrous bipeds or quadrupeds over a disgusting grey surface. Dolphins certainly do know better than messing with things they can’t manage, say, a past they can’t change, a future they can’t predict, a present they don’t even understand. They’d learnt the hard way to remain in the oceans and do climate change damage control—a time-consuming activity indeed. Dolphins definitively do not interbreed. And with whom—humans, maybe? That’d go in the opposite direction of any DNA upgrade—rational thinking first.

Oh, weren’t you the ones supporting the out-of-the-pond mating? Delphis chirped, immediately fin-slapped by her mother.

Bottlenose-—the-Rebels—were, as usual, the most outspoken (brash) of all species of the clade, using scientific evidence to reinforce their statements and with the clear intent of silencing contrary opinions.

Gene editing was not only good for acquiring skills not inherent to the species—although, they conceded, this was debatable—it was also effective for eradicating diseases, repairing biological damage and, once and for all, fighting those climate change effects their dear human friends seemed unable to understand, let alone to cope with.

Dolphins debated at length pros and cons of the procedure, which gained support especially among the calves, Delphis first of all. A 5-year-old Spinner with considerable migration experience no matter her young age, she was eager to pick up the challenge. What she fancied the most was getting Orca-like black and white spots. And talking, well, she would have loved that, too. Whistles and chirps and blips only worked to a point when it came to communicating with other mammals that didn’t understand the complex dolphin code.

Ethical aspects were also discussed, including the very idea of modifying by engineering something that was maybe better left to Mother Nature and its evolutionary laws.

But, Delphis mused, what if conditions changed and good Mother Nature was just too slow to take care of them? Dinosaurs and other poor Cretaceous creatures had probably made the same considerations, once upon a time.

With power comes responsibility, kids, the wise Clymene dolphins warned, making them all remain in a concerned silence. Extreme upgrade would most likely turn dolphins in the most powerful clade of the entire planet, with the moral duty of securing a future for the others. Are we willing, and, more importantly, are we ready? Once you are able to fly as an eagle and talk as a man endowed with tiger-like fangs and maybe other more esoteric capabilities, you might well start thinking you’re a deity, and be tempted to behave like one.

The brethren were not impressed with what they knew about the human gods.

Time passed by and, after many years of passionate arguments, the worldwide Delphinidae family, all species eventually in agreement, decided to avoid gene editing for the time being: It was too dangerous to mess with something you can’t grasp in all its complexity. A more advanced and wise species, most likely a non-Earthian one, would have to make an informed decision about that, in a far-away future—and, hopefully, deal with climate change, too.

Delphis—the (still) Cheerful One—on the other hand, secretly made the opposite choice. She could, since she belonged to the pond that discovered gene editing in the first place. She got the desired DNA upgrade as a coming-of-age gift and ended up joining one of the marine conservation parks in the Caribbean, working with a mild-mannered marine biologist under an always-shining sun. The scientist taking care of her was smart and willing to learn, already marveling at the unusual, amazing communication capabilities the new Spinner in the swimming pool was demonstrating.

Amazing—and amazed—Delphis had every reason to be so: As she had soon discovered, humans had just begun debating that thorny DNA upgrading issue that for so long had troubled the dolphin world. The science behind it was in its infancy though, she realised: They still called it genome editing, which was something far more primitive.

Clearly, they hadn’t the palest idea about the medium, its possibilities or even where to begin. Apart from playing mad scientists and writing shallow horror stories, their expertise only sufficed for some sheep-cloning, studying the basics of the double helix or messing with fruit fly genes. No DNA swapping or saving the world from greenhouse gas emissions any time soon.

But hey, you have to start somewhere. Delphis was there and keen to help them succeed, one spin at a time.

 

Russell Hemmell is a statistician and social scientist from the U.K., passionate about astrophysics and speculative fiction. Recent stories have appeared in Aurealis, Not One of Us, Third Flatiron, and others, and she was a Finalist in The Canopus 100 Year Starship Awards 2016-2017. Visit her website at earthianhivemind.net and follow her on Twitter: @SPBianchini.

Photo credit. NOAA.

 

Heaven Can’t Wait

By Dean Liscum

Less than 48 hours after the mass murder of 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, investigators are pursuing a theory that the attack was planned by the congregation itself. They were tipped off by Fox News host, Ainsley Earhardt.

During an interview with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Earhardt suggested that she and her co-workers of faith thought a church was the best place to be shot. She reasoned, as much as a Fox News host can, that being shot in a Christian sanctuary was the best of all possible scenarios. “We’re all going to die,” she pointed out, “so it doesn’t get any better than dying while close to Christ and asking for forgiveness.”

That comment got the local sheriff to thinking. “The proximity to Jesus makes this scene a perfect place for a self-assassination,” he said enviously.

According to the department’s latest theory, the attacker was actually managed by Heaven Can’t Wait LLC.

Our researchers have found that Heaven Can’t Wait’s incorporation papers state it is an organization that traffics in end-of days and rapture fantasies. It advertises that it is uniquely qualified to “hurry you to Heaven.”

The company website, recently shut down, indicates their only product offering is “Expedition to Eternity,” product code E2E.

The E2E kit includes detailed plans for:

  • How to recruit a member, or friend of a member, or a disgruntled ex-in-law to be the “hero”
  • Where churchgoers should stand to receive their hollow-point blessings
  • When the deliverance should take place.

The offering also comes with several package add-ons, including:

  • A choice of weaponry: AR-15, AR-15 with banana clip, AR-15 with automatic firing kit
  • Costume options including: Disgruntled Postal Worker, Black Ops Wannabe, and Open Carry White Guy
  • Pre-scripted social media post packages designed to throw investigators off the real motive behind the attack. Options include: Domestic Issues, Hillary’s Emails, and Failure to Apply Oneself in School, Thus Unable to Get the Job They Didn’t Work Hard Enough to Earn and So It’s the Immigrant’s Fault.

The plan outlines how the shooter should prepare for and execute the “mission of mercy.” It also provides tips for “recipients of eternity” to ease the process.

Once the “expeditor” has performed his duties, the white male leaves the sanctuary by foot or automobile. When alone, he’s instructed to dial into the company’s private confession hotline, which is outsourced to Bangalore, India; confess to “hurrying along to Heaven” his fellow churchgoers and the suicide that he’s about to commit; ask for and receive forgiveness prior to the act; and then finish the job by shooting himself with a silver bullet that has been pre-blessed and disinfected.

The lead investigator is certain that his theory is correct, but he says it will be hard to prove. The owner of Heaven Can’t Wait is one of the alleged “willing victims.” Authorities suspect that because of shooting’s finality, it was conducted as an exchange of services and not a monetary transaction. Thus, no money changed hands, which makes it difficult to trace.

“Worst of all,” added the town comptroller, who also serves as its coroner, “it’s not taxable.”

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” said one of the junior detectives and a member of the congregation who skipped church that day. “The perpetrators get to escape prosecution and all the evils of this mortal coil. They expedite themselves and their loved ones to an eternal reward, and the rest of us have to clean up the mess.”

Law enforcement organizations and Chambers of Commerce across the country worry about copycats. “This could get bigly.” The comptroller/coroner said. “Once this heavenly business model gets out, we expect it to flourish in Texas, Florida, and anywhere else that people love god and guns, and hate taxes.”

 

Dean Liscum lives in Houston, Texas and writes fiction. Sometimes it works. Other times, not so much.

 

Proofreader

By Kris Faatz

 

On the day the world finally changed, Cinny had her feet up on the end of the bunk in her prison cell and her nose in a lame women’s magazine. Today marked her seventeenth day at Washington D.C.’s Correctional Facility for Troubled Women. Seventeen days out of the three thousand, six hundred and fifty-two she had been sentenced for her career as a professional thief. Already she knew she would rather read toilet paper than these dumb magazines, which were printed by order of the Devoted Patriot—on actual paper, no less—and were the only things CFTW inmates were allowed to read. Supposedly they rehabbed you into a real American woman.

Cinny was staring at the dumbest of the articles when one of the stoolies came to the door. The cell doors stood open all day, prison rules. Over the top of the magazine, Cinny saw the stoolie stop and reach out to knock anyway, and then pull her hand back like the door was one of the Devoted Patriot’s army of undercover cops, ready to do a Screengrab on her. Like any Screengrab could matter when you were already inside this pisshole.

“Cinnabar Jackson?”

Cinny went on staring at the article, about how to program your i-Serve personal assistant to style your permed hair with just the right bounce. As if anybody in here was allowed an i-Serve, and as if Cinny had ever had a perm. Her blonde hair hung perfectly straight. She’d chopped it off boy-length five years ago, the same time she’d started thieving.

“Cinnabar Jackson!”

Cinny let the magazine flop onto her chest, but didn’t sit up. “Yeah?”

She didn’t recognize this stoolie. The guards changed them out all the time. This stoolie was tall, way taller than Cinny’s five-zilch, and strong-built, with dark skin and dark hair tied up in a knot. The dark ones outnumbered the pale ones in here, dozens to one. Most of them liked to throw their weight around when they could. Christ knew they couldn’t do it outside.

“Warden wants to talk to you,” the stoolie said.

Cinny still didn’t move. “Hell did I do?”

“Hell should I know? She just said bring you in. So get up.”

No doubt she figured that tiny, lily-white Cinny wouldn’t want to mess with someone almost twice her size. Cinny was built like a dancer, and people forgot how strong dancers had to be. But what the hell. Not like Cinny was doing anything else.

The stoolie led her through the CFTW Ward 7 maze. Built ten years ago, at the start of the Devoted Patriot’s first term, the prison was designed to be riot-proof. No hall led in a straight line: They were all zigzags and curves, with random corridors branching off and cornering back around in strange ways. It would take a long time to memorize the map.

Cinny knew she was lucky not to have see the inside of a CFTW a long time ago. Crime wasn’t supposed to work anymore, now that Screengrabs were standard. Screengrabs were the DNA samples the undercover cops could take from anybody, any time. Someone brushing against you on the street could be a cop, and he would run your Screengrab against his database implants and know everything about you in an instant. The tech should have meant that criminals had nowhere to hide. Of course, Cinny thought, the prisons stayed full anyway, especially the CFTWs.

The stoolie, who had a map implant, led Cinny down yet another corridor. At the end of it, there was an open door, a narrow gray room, and a woman who could have been anybody’s grandmother except for the stun pistol in her belt.

“The prisoner, ma’am,” the stoolie said. She pushed Cinny inside and swung the heavy metal door shut behind her.

Granny Warden pointed to a metal chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. “Sit.”

Cinny obeyed. You didn’t mess with wardens. She had been hit once with a stun pistol, only once.

“Cinnabar,” the warden said. “The color of passion. Also poison.”

Cinny couldn’t hide her surprise. Nobody else in the legal system had looked twice at her name. “A gifted thief,” Granny went on, standing in front of Cinny and sizing her up as if Cinny was an i-Serve the warden was thinking of buying. “Pickpocketing. Cat burglary. Felony misdemeanor sheet considerably longer than the average arm. An amazing career, all told.”

Cinny didn’t have to answer. It was all true. She had lifted wallets out of pockets and purses, picked locks and skimmed through houses, making no more noise than a breeze. Nothing had felt better than the rush of the score, but in the end, she couldn’t do it forever. Nothing lasted forever, except the Devoted Patriot.

Granny sized her up again. “It seems to me, you’re wasting your talents in here.”

If they wanted to make her a stoolie, they could guess again. Cinny kept her face blank. Then Granny said, “You’re such a talented thief, you could almost be a cop.”

Cinny’s mouth opened on its own. “What?”

The warden smiled for the first time. Cinny revised her first idea of the woman. No grandmother could smile like that: wickedness crystallized.

The warden said, “You know about Screengrabs, but I’ll bet you’ve never heard of Proofreading.”

Cinny shook her head. “I’ll explain,” the warden said. “And I might have a job for you.”

•     •     •

A month later, Cinny left the city she had lived in all her life. She drove the car she’d been given, a 2027 Ford Ultra, north to Baltimore and then caught the big east-west route toward Cumberland, out in the country. Traffic unclogged west of Frederick until she was humming alone down a slash of pavement with nothing but green on either side, as far as the eye could see.

Countryside made Cinny nervous. She liked crowds and big solid buildings, shadows that swallowed her up, tangles of people that left pursuers confused. Out here, she had nowhere to take cover. She also had not one but two sets of new implants, which Rose Taylor—Granny Warden’s real name—had promised Cinny she wouldn’t feel, but that wasn’t true. Cinny thought her brain was jammed up with all the new data stuffed into it. And then, last but certainly not least, there was what Cinny was supposed to do now. What, in fact, she was now.

She’d gotten basic police training in two weeks. As Officer Taylor said, Cinny already had the most important skills a cop needed. She could be fast and sneaky, use her brain and lie through her teeth—as well as the cops or better. After all, it had taken them five years to catch her. Screengrabs were just like pickpocketing: you snagged a piece of hair or brushed your hand against someone’s skin. And Cinny had exactly the right looks. Pale skin and blonde hair got you anywhere you wanted these days. They would especially get her into her final destination, at the end of this road.

The other two weeks of training she’d had were the elite stuff. The stuff nobody knew about yet, because it had come straight out of the CFTW.

Officer Taylor had explained it all on Cinny’s last day as a CFTW inmate. “We’ve waited a long time,” the warden had said. “It’s taken years of careful setup.” Cinny couldn’t believe her ears when she heard what had been going on in the prison, right under the Devoted Patriot’s sizeable nose. “Nobody thought to watch us,” the warden said. “Women aren’t smart enough to cause real trouble, you know.” She flashed her smile. “Everything’s ready, but we needed the right agent. You, Cinnabar, are it.”

So Cinny had learned about Proofreading. The skill worked a lot like a Screengrab, except backwards, and with a couple of other differences. One of the biggest was that once done, it couldn’t be undone. When you used the skill on someone, they would feel its effects forever. Proofreading, Officer Taylor said, would throw some serious sand into the Devoted Patriot’s gears. After ten long years, the CFTW women believed they had found a way to bring the Patriot’s great machine down.

By the time the afternoon sun had turned orange, Cinny had made it to the end of the road. The Devoted Patriot’s country manor.

The Patriot was eighty years old now. He refused to live in Washington anymore, but Cinny knew he hadn’t wanted this place either. He had no interest in the outdoors because he wouldn’t find any mirrors there to admire his reflection, and the trees weren’t covered in gold paint. Somehow, though, his top advisors had persuaded him that this custom-built mansion would be a smart move, a sop to prove he actually did give a shit about woods.

Cinny bet, as she drove up the long path from the gatehouse, that the one thing he’d liked about this property was watching the trees cut down so the mansion could be built. She hung onto that thought to distract herself from the idea of what she was going to have to do now.

Passion. Also poison.

Cinny was no soft vanilla cupcake. She’d had her share of men over the years, especially ones who got off on increasingly rare female smarts, but this was different.

Officer Taylor had explained the setup. The Patriot was between wives again. The CFTW in D.C. gave him the goods to satisfy his appetite. Officer Taylor had told Cinny it gave her no small taste of satisfaction to know that when Cinny did her job, no other women would be sent to the manor. And the best part was, Cinny matched the image of the Patriot’s ideal woman so perfectly that his security would rush her straight to him. Nobody would think, for instance, that she, unlike all the other inmates, carried no GPS tracker or electroshock system to make sure she went back to prison.

And they wouldn’t think to search her for the goods she did carry. So small, but so powerful, fixed inside the right cup of her black satin bra.

The mansion stood at the top of the drive. Glaring white, low-slung, and sprawling, it looked to Cinny like an enormous half-melted marshmallow. Already one of the security guards, in his red-white-and-blue uniform, was hurrying down the front steps. The Patriot was expecting her.

Cinny parked the car at the near end of the lot, closest to the end of the drive. When she smoothed her hair in the rearview mirror, the blue eyes peering back at her looked worried.

The hell are you doing this for?

Because prison was boring as fuck, and this had sprung her out years ahead of time. But not just for that.

Cinny smoothed down the long sleeves of her tight black dress and quickly slipped out of the loafers she’d driven in, exchanging them for black patent-leather heels. No, she wasn’t doing this just so she wouldn’t have to go back to a cell. There were the magazines, and the Screengrabs, and the fact that the cops behaved like criminals until a criminal like Cinny herself made a better cop. There were all the other women who’d been sent here to the manor. Over her few weeks in prison, Cinny had heard stories about the Devoted Patriot’s appetite for those women, how he reached out and grabbed them like a baby would grab a cookie, how he pawed them and slobbered and used them up knowing that when he did, somebody would hand him another. And there was the fact that it didn’t pay to be a smart woman or to have too-dark skin or to talk too loud or too often.

Long and short, there was everything the past ten years had been, ever since the Devoted Patriot came along. There was everything those years had meant.

Cinny pushed the car door open. Her heels clicked like pistol shots on the pavement. Time to do this thing.

•     •     •

Afterward, nobody was quite sure what had happened.

The Devoted Patriot’s security had left him alone with the blonde woman from the prison. CFTW inmates were never any trouble. The Patriot’s guards certainly knew that the one thing you never, ever did was interrupt the boss when he was “in a briefing.”

So nobody knew quite when this last briefing had ended. Nobody knew when or how the blonde woman had gotten out of the bedroom, out of the mansion itself, into her car and away. It was almost dawn when the guards realized the car had gone. Then somebody took his courage in both hands and forced his way into the bedroom, with two other guards behind.

They found the Patriot stark naked, curled up on the floor. At first they assumed the worst, but then the old man looked up at them with the wide eyes of a three-year-old and whispered, “I want to go home.”

They couldn’t get anything else out of him. Not then, not later, not even when his advisors came and begged him to pull himself together; told him the wolves were at the door, the hurricane was blowing, the wrath of God had come upon them. In short, the whole machine built by years of power was falling to pieces faster than a paper umbrella in a monsoon. They needed him, the one who’d held onto control with brute force, the one who’d stomped out the warring factions and ruined the pawns who had stood against him. Now the factions smelled blood and swarmed in, and the pawns came riding up with their swords out, but the Patriot, for ten years untouchable, had gone into his second childhood. No warning. No preparation. No instructions for those he left behind.

They never found the blonde woman. It wouldn’t have done much good, but at least they could have learned what the fingernail-sized plastic thing on the back of the Patriot’s neck was for.

•     •     •

At two in the morning, after completing her mission, Cinny slipped out of the bedroom window with no more noise than a breeze. Carrying the patent leather heels in one hand, she ran barefoot along the back wall of the mansion. Her black dress blended into the dark.

“Proofreaders,” Officer Taylor had told her, “find mistakes, of course. They also correct them.”

Once the Patriot had Cinny on her back in his bed, she’d used all the skill she had to make sure he only paid attention to one thing. It wasn’t too hard. His appetites were huge and simple. He never felt the light tap that affixed the plastic device to the back of his neck.

With Screengrabs, you analyzed a person’s DNA. Proofreaders went a step further. They studied your brain activity patterns, your eye movement, and your body’s electromagnetic signals, and compared them against a second, highly specialized database. The CFTW women had put that database together after years of carefully compiled research. The data covered things like the way your pulse sped up when you told a lie, the way your pupils dilated when you saw something you liked, the way some parts of your brain woke up when you felt excited and other parts got busy when you were depressed.

Warden Taylor had explained it all to Cinny in more detail than Cinny could take in. She got the idea, though, that long story short, Proofreaders could read your mind.

Thank Christ, Cinny thought as she rounded the mansion and saw her car sitting at the far end of the lot, that the Patriot’s cops had never gotten hold of this new tech. Not least because, once you had all the information about your subject’s thoughts, a good Proofreader could turn those thoughts right around and send them back to their point of origin.

What the Proofreader had done was very simple. No one else, in eighty years, had managed it. It had shown the Patriot exactly who he was on the inside, stripped of all the trappings of a lifetime. While Cinny satisfied his body, she had given the device time to dig deep enough to find out the things he had always known about himself. And when the technology turned those truths around and plastered them inside his brain where he couldn’t look away, oh, what a job they had done.

Guards didn’t pay much attention this late at night, out in the country, when the only outsider in the mansion was a prison woman. Nobody was even out on the front porch when Cinny made it back to the car. After tonight, she thought, they might decide to be more careful, but after tonight it would be too late.

To be safe, she didn’t turn on the headlights until she got out of sight of the house. The guard at the gate, assuming she was going back to the CFTW like all the others, opened it for her without a word.

Cinny sped down the dark highway. In her head she saw the Patriot again, curled up helpless on the floor, lost inside a truth he had avoided all his life.

Passion, Cinny thought, hugging the picture tight. And poison.

 

Kris Faatz’s short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Reed, and other journals. Her debut novel, To Love A Stranger, was a finalist for the 2016 Schaffner Press Music in Literature Award, and was released May 2017 by Blue Moon Publishers (Toronto). Kris has been a contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a contributor and teaching fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. She is a manuscript consultant, pianist, and teacher. Visit her online at krisfaatz.com.

Photo credit: Starchild from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

Meta

A short story by Colin Patrick Ennen

Antonia ducked behind a hardware store to catch her breath and avoid puking, thinking there was no way they’d look for her skinny, uncoordinated ass there. Huffing hard, she vowed to get in shape if she made it through this crisis, because either something was buzzing nearby or her body had started its own kind of rebellion. Who knew running from the Feds could be so exhausting?

Yet Toni had done well thus far, for a zealous liberal activist in the age of Trump. Sure, they had caught her in the coffee shop, about to upload. That had rattled her. And okay, she had dropped the laptop when she bolted. But that was her backup-backup—no biggie. Anyway, she retained the precious jump drive along with her wits and moral rectitude. Moreover, in the ensuing chase she’d crossed a major road, lapped a Safeway with the grace of a three-legged rhino, crossed again, run through a park, then crossed the broad thoroughfare a third time plus another wide street before she’d finally skidded to a stop in this hiding spot behind the strip-mall Ace Hardware. The library and an ally were just around the corner. But would she make it any further?

There was that damned buzzing again. Getting louder.

It crescendoed to a peak when a small black drone flew around the corner of the building sheltering her. Toni shuddered at its bug-like appearance, but at least it wasn’t one of the armed models.

The drone approached, settling into a steady hover less than ten feet away, its whirring rotors creating a slight breeze. The tiny camera mounted on its front swiveled back and forth, up and down over her body, coming to a halt aimed straight at her burning, sweaty face. Toni scowled back, planning her next move, fidgeting with the coat dangling from her right hand.

“Stop running,” croaked a mechanical voice from a speaker hidden somewhere on the flying instrument of fascism.

“Does that normally work?” Toni asked. Only she would sass a machine. But the thing bounced. Maybe she’d pissed off the operator. She permitted herself a smirk.

She juked a step left, a movement mirrored by the drone, then tossed her jacket at the device, hoping to foul one or more of the rotors. Even better, the thing dropped to the ground with a crash. Toni was already off and running.

Scrambling toward the library, she spied the chopper overhead —“Bugger”—and bolted across the road, ignoring traffic, resisting the urge to flash the bird at honking gas-guzzlers. The soles of her shoes slapped loud against the pavement like so many gunshots, and she cursed like the good Second Amendment foe she was. Bounding up the steps of the library, she stopped at the door to look and listen, huffing yet again. Distant sirens and a hovering helicopter, maybe, but there didn’t seem to be anyone right on her tail. Toni breathed a single sigh of relief before heading in.

Normally facilities such as this, redolent with the aroma of precious volumes, melodious with the sound of pages being turned, were solace to Toni. Not today; today this library was a fortress, from which she planned to launch an opening volley. A salvo in this vital intellectual war. A cannonball of courage in the fight for—Jesus, Toni! Get over yourself! Anyway, she was here for that other, more modern library sound: the hum from a bank of computers.

Striding past the checkout counter, Toni exchanged a solemn nod with the woman behind it, flashing the tiny jump drive. Louisa, with her thick-framed reading glasses and graying hair tightly bunned, nodded back, conscious of what was at stake: nothing short of the survival of this democracy.

The computers were past the reference books, between the children’s section and a wall that used to hold thought-provoking paintings by local artists, some of them activist friends of Toni’s now imprisoned. She gave the blank spaces a rueful smile, wiping away a single tear, then made for a terminal at the back, far from any currently being used. Despite breathing deeply, her hands shook, and she jumped at the sound of someone dropping a book in the stacks.

She forced a laugh to calm herself and sat just as the first wailing sirens pulled up out front, leaving just minutes, maybe less, to complete her task.

Toni logged on and opened Gmail. No, I don’t want a bigger penis, thank you.

In the “To” field of a new message she transcribed the address she’d written on the palm of her left hand.

Banging and yelling from outside the library’s front door stole her attention for a flash, but Louisa had rigged the doors, and no enemy had yet gained entry. Toni smiled. The resistance is female, after all.

She filled in the “Subject” line, then dashed off a quick message in the body of the email. Thank you for the opportunity, and all that jazz.

As she inserted the jump drive, the doors burst open and shouts pealed from the library lobby. This followed by the ominous echo of boots stomping on marble floor.

Toni dropped from the chair, squatting at the computer with her hand on the mouse, waiting for the storage gadget to connect. She looked up and saw masked jackboots in black gear marching past the checkout desk, numerous American flags prominent on each uniform.

With a rebel yell, Louisa jumped from behind her station, swinging a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 15 [Birds-Chemical], with remarkable force given her librarian-ness. She connected with the masked face of the lead stormtrooper, who staggered backward into a colleague. Louisa, in turn, was dropped with a kick to the stomach from another seconds later.

Toni muffled her reaction too late. Masked heads, twenty yards off, swiveled in her direction.

“There she is! Freeze, dirtbag!” one of them yelled.

Peering around to the computer’s screen, Toni clicked on the little paperclip icon, then selected the proper file to upload and hit “Open.” The progress bar’s pace was glacial, allowing three armed fascists to shuffle into flanking positions, cutting off all avenues of escape. In the second she wasted peeking back at the screen, another moved in at her 12 o’clock, holding a black gadget in his hand.

She jabbed the cursor at the “Send” button as she heard a zap, felt a thwack.

Her body convulsed from the stun gun’s charge, arms flailing, legs giving out. The jackboots pumped their fists and watched her fall shaking to the floor.

“Score!” yelled two.

Toni continued to spasm in agony as they closed in, one of them—slender, with blond hair sticking out from beneath the ski-mask—sitting down at the terminal she had been using.

“Just in time, Presser.”

The woman’s voice sounded like the siren on a broken toy firetruck. And familiar. A stocky man in black walked toward the computer station, rubbing his head and dragging Louisa behind him in handcuffs.

He grabbed and shook the librarian by the face. “Nanny, nanny, boo-boo,”

“Presser!”

“What?”

Toni knew his voice, too.

The man threw Louisa to the floor and turned to his colleague with a shrug.

The blonde spun, staring daggers at him through her mask. Toni heard an exasperated click of the tongue.

“I said, Presser, we got here just in time.”

“Phenomenal!” he cried. “What is it today, Alt-Fact? An opinion column? Someone writing her congressman?” Presser emphasized the gender of this hypothetical representative.

Presser? Alt-Fact? So this is what they’ve been up to, Toni thought, still jerking.

“Ugh, she’s another of these creative types.” Alt-Fact got up, shaking her head, and motioned for her colleague to look for himself.

Presser sat and read the email’s essentials:

To: Writers Resist

Subject: Super Important and Timely Fiction Submission

Attached File: Trumptopia

The man harrumphed, his jowls flapping audibly. “I’ll endow your arts,” he muttered, turning to the author on the floor as he removed his mask.

“You’ll never stop us, Spicey!” Toni managed to hiss, as the former press secretary’s boot-clad foot—free at last from the man’s mouth—clocked the side of her head.

 

Colin Patrick Ennen lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he looks after the large mutts at a doggie daycare. He recently adopted a pup of his own and named him Shylock. In his free time he reads and dwells on the many mistakes he’s made in life. Genre fiction is where he feels most at home when writing, but he’s obviously not afraid to branch out here and there. Fairly new to being published, he has a short piece of satire in a new volume entitled More Alternative Truths: Stories From the Resistance, and a spooky story coming soon in The Coil. You can find him on Twitter @cpennen.

Photo credit: Lee via a Creative Commons license.

Across the Hard-Packed Sand

By Holly Schofield

 

Kelly, the dispatcher, sent the call my way, but Nick caught it too, so my squad car arrived at the beach parking lot a few seconds after his. We hadn’t worked together much, but I’d sussed him out long ago. He wasn’t one of the good ones—those were rare—but at least he mostly pretended I was one of the team.

Unless money was at stake, of course. At five hundred dollars a pair, the toe bounty could be a lucrative second income for us cops. By the time I’d slammed my car door, he was racing ahead down the bank, skidding in the loose oyster-shell scree. “Watch your step, Allie,” he called back, his voice holding glee along with old-fashioned gentlemanly concern.

“Alaa,” I corrected automatically, wearily. He could have pronounced it right if he cared. But if he cared about stuff like that then I wouldn’t be running full tilt through the salt grass behind him, shovel in one fist.

The sun struggled through rumpled chrome-colored clouds and winter still clung to the cold foam of the surf. Kelly had described the radar-tracked location pretty well, and it was easy to spot the dull blue of the shattered spacepod, the size of a bar fridge, way down the gray beach near a cluster of seaweed-streaked rocks.

I began to jog once I hit the hardpack. One foot after the other over this seemingly endless stretch of northern Washington coastline. Fleeing from Syria, sliding into America under the wire, becoming a naturalized citizen, qualifying for state trooper, my personal foot race never seemed to end.

And then the Veldars had come.

And kept coming. And coming.

Would there ever be a time that I could just stop?

Nick whooped, thin and reedy over the booming Pacific. He’d reached the crash site and was bent over panting, hands on knees. I wasn’t even halfway. I slowed, my bad knee flickering with pain, and walked parallel to the line of unidentifiable sludge that decorated the high water mark. No hurry now. I’d lost. And so had the Veldar.

Sunburned cheeks flushed even redder by victory, Nick waited until I approached then pointed behind the largest rock. “Hah! ‘Bout time I nabbed one.”

The shivering alien, slightly larger than most, squatted in the rock’s shadow, its face-tendrils dangling limply below earflaps. Translucent down to lean gray bone, the alien resembled a large jellyfish that had swallowed a miniature Halloween skeleton.

I avoided its eyes and jabbed the shovel upright in the sandy muck. “You win, Nick.” One kick with my bad leg and I sent some bull kelp sailing into the water. I told myself it was a relief that this Veldar’s life was out of my hands. Yeah, a relief.

The alien raised a stick-like arm toward us and let it fall. Did it know what Nick was about to do?

Nick was walking around the collection of boulders one more time, being cop-thorough. “Yeah, just the one of ’em,” he reported and dusted off his pant cuffs. An all-around typical statie, albeit a bit more fastidious than most. His shirt was still neatly tucked despite his run and his fake sandalwood odor indicated extra-strength deodorant.

Huh. Maybe I could work with that.

“Have fun,” I said. “Last time I shot a jellyrat this big, the guts stained my uniform. Even dry cleaning didn’t get it out.” I stepped back, ostentatiously. “I’ll just let you get on with it.”

He laughed uneasily. “Hey, five hundred dollars covers a lot of dry cleaning. And, remember, you officially caught this case so you get the paperwork. You can’t leave until you do the location sketch. Don’t try to weasel out.”

“Oh, shit, yeah, all those extra forms. Last time, I forgot one for Fish and Wildlife and the captain gave me hell.”

He grunted in faint sympathy, fingering his holster flap but not opening it. The Veldar’s various cuts and scrapes had left a trail of yellow-tinged slime as it had dragged itself from the spacepod to the boulder.

I snorted, as if it smelled bad, and took another step back.

“I might have a plastic sheet in my trunk.” Nick stroked his thin brown mustache.

I heaved a huge sigh, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it. “Tell you what. You get the toes, and I’ll dispatch the jellyrat afterwards. And, I’ll bury it. But only if you do all the friggin’ paperwork for me.”

A jerk of his head. “What, cut ’em off while it’s alive? Seems kinda cruel.”

“Shift’s almost over. You can get to Sweeney’s in time for Happy Hour. And it’s not like the ‘rats feel any worse pain than a cockroach or something.” I held my face tight, lifted my black leather shoe and kicked the Veldar in one of its knees, managing to mostly strike the clear rigid joint covering. It must have seen my quick double-blink because it instantly deflated into the muck and moaned like a ghul. I shrugged. “And I’m in no hurry. I don’t go to mosque until sunset.”

Nick grinned. “Deal!” He drew out his bowie knife and grabbed each of the Veldar’s heels in turn, slicing off the bulbous pinkie toes. The Veldar screwed up its many-wrinkled face and flicked its nictitating membranes but only moaned once more. My stomach knotted and I tasted bile but I held it in.

Nick stuffed the glistening toes in a sandwich baggie. “Next jellyrat gets called in, we can do this deal again, if you want, Allie.”

“Sure.” I began to dig industriously, my shovel sending gray grit, seaweed, and bits of charred wood flying.

He hastily jumped back. “Okay, then, I’m outta here.”

Between shovelfuls, I watched him trot away. I’d have to time the gunshot carefully.

The Veldar lay, knees drawn up, elbows jutting, clutching its bowling-ball belly—resembling the malnourished toddlers I’d lived with back in the Turkish camps. Drying gel clung to the two stumps on either side of its narrow feet. Tired, yellow eyes stared endlessly at nothing.

A few minutes went by. Nick should be almost to the parking lot and out of line-of-sight. I drew my pistol. The Veldar watched me carefully.

I aimed straight out into the ocean and squeezed the trigger.

The retort made the Veldar scoot back against the rock. I blinked twice at it, in reassurance. “Hang in there, little buddy.”

Communication via blinks weren’t enough for the next stage. I drew out my black-market English-Veldar phrase book and flipped through it. War. Run. Hide. Enemy. We humans might not understand the reasons behind other alien races invading the Veldars’ home planet, or how the Veldars could keep stealing motherships full of thousands of these spacepods, but we—well, some of us anyway—understood the fallout. In the tent camp in Turkey, Baba had sat me on his lap and massaged my shrapnel-scarred calf muscle as he pointed out words in his little green Arabic-English phrase book. Soldier. Injury. Lifeboat.

That memory was all I had left of my father’s own journey—he’d died of a heart attack on our second day in America. I thrust away the thought as I finally found the page full of greetings. Now to see which Veldar language of several dozen.

“Tern ka?”

A blank look. So it wasn’t Veldar III. I sighed. This could take hours and I didn’t have that kind of time. Maybe I should just drag it to the squad car without its consent. Like border guards had grabbed seven-year-old me. Damn it all, anyway! I kicked some more kelp and ran a finger down the page. “Tennin bran?”

One earflap twitched.

Familiar, perhaps, but not its native tongue. I flipped a few pages to related dialects. “Vronah kro?”

The Veldar’s cheeks creased in two directions. “Hrran, vo narhh, hrran!” Its opaque organ sacs vibrated in excitement.

Ah, that was it, then. I made a mental note to tell Kelly to tag this one as Veldar XII in the underground database. “Hnnnah kravv voolah” I pronounced carefully. Worry no more.

“Vrahhah?” it croaked out. By now, I knew that word by heart in several languages. Safety?

“Hrran,” I said with as much conviction as I could manage. Yes. It was sort of true. Kelly and I, and a few other folks scattered across the Veldars’ vast northwestern drop zone, tried awfully hard to make things safer. Sometimes, we succeeded.

The Veldar relaxed back against the rock, letting its tendrils go slack with relief.

The Band-Aids I fished out of my bra helped with the Veldar’s oozing abdominal cuts but they refused to stick to the gunked-up sand on its toes. Finally, I gave up and wrapped its feet in evidence bags. “There. Feel better?” I’d tucked away the phrase book so tone of voice—and a quick double blink—would have to do.

It stretched out three bulbous fingers, forming a pyramid. Another gesture I’d learned in the last few years.

“You’re welcome,” I replied. “Us refugees gotta stick together.” I half-smiled, feeling better than I had all day. Hey, maybe I could keep on doing this.

A few more minutes of shoveling and I’d mounded a plausible gravesite. Tonight, I’d drive to Everett in my truck with its special compartment and drop the Veldar off at a safe house. From there, it would begin yet another journey. “Here’s two English words for you.” I pointed down the coast. “Underground railroad.”

“Vrahhah.”

“Yup.” A cold, damp wind had sprung up and the clouds threatened rain. The folding shovel fit under one arm and I lifted my burden awkwardly with the other, bracing my bad leg against the base of the rock. The Veldar breathed its odor of burnt raspberries into my uniform collar and wrapped warm slick arms around my neck. I’d have to change shirts once I got to the car but I had a fresh one ready. I was used to that.

I hunched a bit to protect the Veldar from the wind, sucked in a deep breath, and began the long hike to the parking lot.

 

Holly Schofield‘s stories have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and many other publications throughout the world. You can find her at www.hollyschofield.wordpress.com.

Photo credit: Ingrid Taylar via a Creative Commons liense.

Washing Instructions

By Brenda Birenbaum

 

You raise your hands to hush the crowd, you raise your hands america america, you raise your hands palms out to hush the crowd to give it voice, translate primordial hoots and jeers and lewd youtubes—flip off the camera, yeah, thrust that pelvis forward, yeah—the gun swells in your pants and you kick out ’em riffraff that ain’t starched n’ proper ironed, that air the laundry in public and trespass on us united bleachables coast to coast and I forget …….. like totally being mute being wrung out in the spin cycle being all ears in dark alleys as I raise your garbage (can after reeking can) above my tired shoulders, shaking the thang, cajoling the ejaculate, over the side of the dumpster. I don’t peer in when I bring it back down to check for leftover crap—my eyes are shot no kidding all I see are plastic shadows and streetlight glare splintering off patches of greasy film on the asphalt. I raise my hands america america always the man, palms out, gold face slathered in foundation, raise ’em hands, fake face, pink smile, maw full of porcelain no kidding full of chowed-down kill, fake longing to rewind to the spot embracing the same kinda shit as empty words (swallowtails had left their cocoons) ready set hit play

It’s love, I think, picking off tears of joy from the stubble above my neck tats, blowing murky soap bubbles into the rowdy dusk. Laundry instructions say not to mix the colors with whites, throw ’em black brown n’ yellow in the wash (red, too), get ’em all proper hot n’ agitated, and fuck it like it is, they still mud after rinse and repeat, not a jury of my peers no kidding no joe sixpack, the one that obeys, that cashes his pathetic paycheck at the end of the week to help with the economy to help drown his sorrow in suds, fess up to the barman how he ain’t got insurance to fix his kid, worse, dough for his clunker, which means he’s gonna lose his job as my fingers twirl ever so lightly over the handgun laying next to his brew to soak up the warmth and the glory, ain’t that just swell, chin tilted up bloodshot eyes reflecting the cool from the wall-mounted TV that gives its all in red white and blue, amerika amerika, and I just love ya for telling it like it—it like it—it like it—is, I could lick the podium under your feet wrap my arms around your legs tickle your nipples gobble your golden dick as you suck the loaded mic, all together now, take it all in take your balls into my hands follow your lead a rampage of rape ’em all bitches and the earth the west coast is burning (they had it coming those godless faggots) and I forget …… like totally the heat rising from the inferno, fire n’ brimstone, skyhigh flames leaping across ridges on the tube, place’s going down the tube, you gotta show those dipshit bleeding hearts that love ’em brown migrants and green trees more than me, ’em that say we can’t stay unextinct without water and bees, you tell ’em, yeah, you tell ’em, my gun is bigger than yours, my territory spans the words over and believe me, I’m telling it like it is, I’ll make your cock great again and it ain’t gonna be internet spam

Hold on to the railing as you stumble down the dark stairwell, the elevator is down (what’s going on, ask clueless neighbors evacuating their east coast cocoons), uniformed technicians stringing detonation wires across the sleepy neighborhood, trucks waiting out on the street to take us away no kidding it’s not men with guns, just police to serve and protect black lives matter like road kill as-seen-on-cop-shows-on-TV, surely that ain’t us. Don’t listen to that nonsense kiddo, no way they had internment camps in america, nah, genocide never happened in america, nah, and water boarding I believe is a laundering technique from a bygone era when women with big behinds in heavy canvas garments were folded over a stream banging the bedding in pristine water free and clear of pharmaceuticals neonicotinoids PCBs fluoride nuclear waste before my tastebuds turned metallic. I’m all thin and diluted and depleted and I really please would like to keep my in-unit washer and drier and I forget …….. like totally that I got the 3 strikes, I’m the bitch I’m the queer and the nigga jew like whoa obsolete stuff that didn’t receive the upgrade to muslim and mexican and hate two-point-o, and in the rising heat I’m the vanished butterfly and the hollow tree, my eyes dim out, I’m like one of ’em pathetic souls that can’t read the fine print in the manual, I apologize in advance on my knees on the wind swept asphalt, random trash slapping my face as it blows past, and I’m pleading and sobbing america america I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry, I’m with y’all in the hot arena, cheering and shrieking proper until the huge screens shatter and the blood that was up to my ankles a minute ago is lapping at my face and keeps rising steady in the dark, washing in red the great unwashed—that kinda stain never comes out—until it bursts the walls, dumping a mangled sopping mess of guns and banners and body parts and bits of screens and platforms and POVs in the pitch-black street where the lights are photoshopped out and I no longer see shit

 

Brenda Birenbaum’s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Vignette Review, Random Sample Review, Low Light Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an editor for Unbroken Journal and can be followed on Twitter at @brbirenbaum.

Photo credit: Rod Brazier via a Creative Commons license.

Patriarchal Palaver and Politics

By Chinyere Onyekwere

 

Kpotuba sweated profusely as she climbed the ten dilapidated steps to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission notice board. She looked for her name on the sample ballot, and its absence shocked her, rendered her huge undulating body immobile. She fought back tears of humiliation when a group of certified male contenders snickered as they walked by. Staggering away heartbroken, she flagged down a taxi, wondered what her next line of action could be.

In her bid to vie for political office in her country Nigeria, the chairmanship post of Achara Local Government Area to be exact, she had unleashed the “Beast,” a deceptive, subtle cankerworm that had been allowed to fester and overrun the district. It marginalized her gender in politics, in virtually all spheres of women’s lives. Landmine navigation seemed like child’s play compared with her candidacy validation efforts with the electoral commission. The omission of her name from the ballot attested to the well-oiled machinations of the Beast; a calculated attempt to disenfranchise her from the chairmanship race because some of her country’s menfolk considered politics their exclusive birthright and domain.

Kpotuba heaved a sigh of exasperation and mulled over her first-time candidature woes as the taxi sped toward her abode. A born leader, Kpotuba burned with passion to make a difference within the squalid environs in which she resided. She organized women groups in her neighborhood, empowered long suffering families to alleviate their poverty-stricken state, a calamitous fallout from economic malfeasance by Nigeria’s political class. When the women spurred her to greater heights with a unanimous endorsement for her candidacy, the Beast reared its ugly head.

Unlike her politically savvy male counterparts, she was an unknown quantity, unversed in the art of campaign gamesmanship. When her candidacy was made public, the Beast bared its venomous fangs and sharp talons to bury her long-nurtured garden patch in tons of garbage. Before the effrontery of the assault could be digested, resounding gun blasts erupted in the vicinity of her home—warning shots to scare her out of the race.

They were messing with the wrong woman. The vicious acts had only strengthened Kpotuba’s resolve to defy the bunch of desperate, uncouth, rabble-rousing despots determined to derail her political ambitions. Patriarchal marginalization of the female gender in politics was an age-old, inherent culture passed down from generations of menfolk to keep women in their place. The Beast held sway in Achara district; women who kicked against it literally battled for their lives.

Even her husband’s support was lukewarm. Infuriated, she had rebuffed his salient but ominous “be careful” with her silence. Their once amicable relationship deteriorated to an exchange of monosyllables. Her grown children were indifferent, believing they were ignored by a country of failed promises and dubious future, so what did they care? Her political party contradicted its professed motto of equity, justice and peace to treat her with disguised incivility.

Her opponent, Anene Ibezim, the corrupt incumbent chairman of Achara Local Government Area, belonged to the ruling party. The perks of office lured him to perpetuate himself in power. He ran his campaign by resorting to vitriolic pronouncements with smug certainty of returning to office.

Months earlier, when Kpotuba and Ibezim crossed paths on the campaign trail, he stalked and sized up his adversary with a vow to banish any notions of political exploits harbored by the obese upstart of a woman.

“You’ll lose, fat cow,” he muttered under his breath.

“What did I hear you say?” asked Kpotuba, stopped her in her tracks by his barrage of words.

“What part of my sentence didn’t you understand. Lose or cow?” he asked.

“You belong in the kitchen!” yelled his ragtag entourage before they disappeared into the crowd.

She made an ignominious retreat, but with absolute conviction of his inevitable comeuppance.

When the taxi screeched to a halt, she was jolted back to the present.

The driver demanded his fare, double the standard price. “Why?” she asked, incensed at his belligerent tone. “Because you’re double the standard size,” he replied, eager to take off.

She alighted from the cab, closed the door with calm exactitude, and paused. A lifetime of imagined and real indignities coalesced into something sinister. She saw a blaze of hot fiery red and lost her head.

Her scuffle with the cab driver engendered comic relief for Nigeria’s pent-up populace; a welcome diversion from disillusion and despair. The fracas drew throngs of people, mostly women who cheered her on. The man, thoroughly terrified of being trounced by a woman, extricated himself from her grasp and fled. She let him escape, had no intention of crossing the thin line between mediocrity and madness to ruin her hard-earned political career.

She dusted herself off with an imperious stance and surveyed the crowd of women whose cries of adulation rent the air when they recognized her from posters advantageously positioned throughout the town. Kpotuba, struck by what could only be deemed divine inspiration, seized the moment with righteous anger to expound on the despicable acts of injustice, meted out to her by the electoral commission.

Her eloquent speech roused the bloodthirsty mob to a fever pitch. Her plight with the Beast became their collective outrage. Like a conjurer’s trick, the swelling masses metamorphosed into a full-blown protest march to do battle with the electoral commission’s perfidious lot.

Two weeks into the general elections, a political gladiator chose to bedevil Ibezim with a human trafficking scandal that rocked the nation.

Kpotuba won the election—with a landslide—to become the first woman in history to occupy the chairman seat of Achara Local Government Area of Nigeria.

*

A month later, hounded by the Crimes Inquiry Tribunal, Ibezim frantically packed up his personal items from the office. Startled by loud laughter, he reeled around to the menacing sight of a huge body blocking the doorway.

“Goodbye loser,” Kpotuba said.

 

Chinyere Onyekwere is a freelance graphic designer and a self-published author in Nigeria. Her passion for the written word won her Nigeria’s 2006/2007 National Essay Competition Award with her story titled “Motion Picture and The Nigerian Image.” Chinyere holds a Masters degree in Business Administration from the University of Nigeria. When she’s not glued to the computer screen, Chinyere keenly observes human conditions, and the state of the world in general, while trying very hard to not be hoodwinked by her mischievous grand twins. She’s currently working on several short stories for electronic submission. You can reach her at ockbronchi@gmailmail.com.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Bella Naija.

The Woman Candidate

By Caralyn Davis

 

“You crave power,” they said.

“Everyone who runs for president craves power. You need power to get things done,” the woman candidate said. “The question is: What will each of us do with that power?”

“Women shouldn’t want that much power. You’re corrupt,” they said. “Look, here’s an article from a website our friends like that proves you’re corrupt. You’re a sleazy thief, an unpatriotic traitor, a murderer, a child molester, a slave owner. You’re also probably dying of a dread disease. You’re any caricature we can think of that justifies the fact that our skin crawls because you are powerful—and you seek more power still.”

“I want to help you, but I won’t make promises that aren’t attainable in the here and now,” the woman candidate said.

“You’re evil,” they said.

“I never claimed to be perfect, but I always did my best for the American people. Could you listen to what I have to say—consider my policy proposals?” the woman candidate said.

“You’re evil,” they said.

“Is it just me? Would you listen to another woman who doesn’t supplicate men?” the woman candidate said.

“Of course,” they said.

“Here’s my daughter. She has two master’s degrees and a doctorate,” the woman candidate said.

“She’s evil too, and that’s nepotism—she’s never worked a day in her life,” they said.

“Here’s the woman minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. She helped millions more Americans get healthcare at great political cost, and she helped pass an interim federal budget that keeps funding key programs when the president and his party wanted them cut,” the woman candidate said.

“She’s Hollywood liberal elite, trying to gut the values of the heartland, or she’s a neoliberal corporate shill. We can’t make up our minds, but either way, we hate her,” they said.

“Here’s a woman senator, a former state attorney general,” the woman candidate said.

“With those tits and that ass, she slept her way into every job she’s had,” they said.

“Here’s a woman senator who worked as a waitress to help pay her way through law school,” the woman candidate said.

“Talking the way she does, she’s unbalanced—hysterical,” they said.

“Here’s a fourteen-term congresswoman who champions the working class, women, and people of color,” the woman candidate said.

“She’s a racist conspiracy theorist, plus her wigs are as manly as your pantsuits,” they said.

“Here’s …” the woman candidate said.

“Not her either,” they said.

 

Caralyn Davis lives in Asheville, N.C., and works as a freelance writer/editor for trade publications in the healthcare and technology transfer fields. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Word Riot, Eclectica, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Superstition Review, EXPOUND, Monkeybicycle, and other journals. She likes cat acrobatics. She can be found on Twitter @CaralynDavis.

Image credit: DonkeyHotey via a Creative Commons license.

The Which In Waiting

By R.W.W. Greene

 

Joanne’s television remote hit the wall hard, spawning batteries and bits of plastic that chose their own paths to the floor. She flicked the switch on the power strip that governed the media center and picked up the tarnished hourglass she’d readied before tuning into the ceremony.

Four years would likely be enough, but eight years would be safer. She fit the timepiece into the mechanical hourglass turner she’d ginned up from a junked dryer and set the counter to 70,080. The machine wub-wubbed competently, turning the hourglass end over end over end widdershins. The counter changed to 70,079, then 70,078, then 70,077. … The rig wasn’t pretty, but it beat turning the hourglass by hand.

Joanne stifled a yawn. She had time to kill before the spell gelled, and she used it to clean out her refrigerator and haul everything to the compost heap. The rose and blackberry bushes she’d planted around the house were growing fast. Thorns bristled every which way, and the stems were already thicker than a baby’s wrist.

Joanne locked her front gate and went back inside to send an email to her accountant.

“Democracy disappoints again, pal. Dropping out for a while,” she wrote. “Keep the bills paid, will you? – Jo.”

She didn’t wait for a response. Tasha Islam had been her accountant for more than a century, and she trusted her. She’d helped set Tasha up in business, after all, and was still her best source for exotic referrals.

Joanne unplugged all of her appliances and took a shower. She brushed her teeth and gargled with Listerine. She browsed Pinterest while waiting for the readout to blink zero, then moved the hourglass to her bedside table. The sand inside glowed like embers. Outside, the bushes finished their expansion, surrounding Joanne’s home with a dense wall of brambles and thorns. If that proved inadequate, she also had one of the local dragons on retainer. Joanne rolled a sleeping bag out on the bed and zipped herself inside. The spell took hold, and her pulse slowed. Her eyelids fluttered. Her heart stopped. Her last breath dissipated in the air above her bed, and the dust motes resumed their course.

Time passed.

In Cambridge, a scientist announced a cure for cancer and was murdered in his sleep, his research stolen. A passing meteor resulted in a near panic and the formation of three new doomsday cults. A calf was born with two heads, inspiring yet another doomsday cult. Prince’s estate released a new album, “1999 Had Nuthin’ on This Party.” David Bowie’s estate launched his entire catalog—including three never before heard albums—into deep space in search of extraterrestrial musicologists. The polar ice caps melted some more, but no one bothered to measure them. Russia laid claim to East Germany. NASA cancelled the Mars mission: “Too little, too late,” a spokeswoman said. A super storm flooded most of the East Coast. The “Fantastic Four” franchise got a fourth failed relaunch. A Cuban upstart claimed to be Fidel Castro in a cloned body and called for a new revolution.

The sand inside the hourglass faded to darkness. Joanne’s face screwed up, and she sneezed out eight years’ worth of drifting dust motes. Thanks to the Listerine, her mouth tasted fresh, but her body went all pins and needles as it slowly came back to life. When her ability to move returned, she scrubbed at her face with her hands and sat up in bed. Winter light dodged through the bramble wall and trickled through the filthy windows.

When her bedside light failed to switch on, Joanne crooked her fingers to summon a fire imp. The imp darted around the room joyfully, but Joanne halted it with a glare. It settled in the air near the ceiling, flickering sullenly. Joanne got out of bed and tottered on stiff legs to the wall switch. She flicked it up and down several times. Nothing. The imp bobbed, laughing at her. Joanne scowled. Ice on the lines, probably. A storm.

Joanne sent the imp into the fireplace. The dry wood lit with a whoosh, and Joanne fell into the chair beside it to warm her feet. She directed the imp into a lantern on the mantlepiece where it sipped oil and expanded to fill the small bedroom with a warm glow.

Joanne picked the dust boogers out of her nose and threw them on the fire. She’d warm up, eat something, and go back to bed until morning. Prepping the pause was easy enough, but stasis played hell with biological processes. She’d be constipated for a week or better. She rubbed her hands together and pushed them close to the fire. She pulled its warmth into her, using the energy to rejuvenate her groggy cells. She slipped out of the chair and ran through some simple yoga positions before heading into the kitchen for an MRE and a pitcher of water.

In the morning, the electricity was still out so Joanne dressed, grabbed her laptop bag, and went out the front door in hopes of finding an outlet. The brambles creaked away from the door at her touch.

“Hell’s bells!” she said. Her garage was gone, as was the car she’d parked inside it.

She turned to fetch her broom but stalled out when she spotted the ragged tents. There were three of them stomped into the snow in her front yard.

“Are you the witch?” said a young woman in a red winter cap, crawling out of her ratty shelter. She squinted at Joanne. “You don’t look like a witch.”

“I’m no one,” Joanne said. “What are you doing here?”

The woman in the red cap looked back at the other women emerging from their tents. “I’m pregnant. They say sleeping here for three days and nights will take away the baby.”

The other women nodded.

“That’s not true,” Joanne said.

“I know a girl wot done it!” said a teenager wearing a hunter-orange snowsuit and a scally cap. “Demon come in the night and took it clean away!”

Joanne sighed. The woman in the red hat was shivering. “Come inside where it’s warm at least.” She held the door open. “Stomp your feet clean.”

Joanne instructed the women from the tents to pile their coats and boots in the hallway and gather in the living room. She summoned another imp for the teapot and set the water to boil. “How far are you along?”

“Six weeks,” said Amanda, the woman formerly wearing a red hat.

“Seven fortnights,” the teenaged girl said.

“Two months,” the third woman said.

“What are your doctors telling you?”

The women looked at each other.

“I ain’t seen one, guvnor. Reckon how no one has!”

Amanda shook her head. “Seeing a doctor is a sure route to the breeding camps.”

Joanne nearly choked on her tea. “Breeding camps?”

“Aye,” the teenager said. “They keep you in chains so no ’arm will come to the baby, miss.”

“It’s not that bad,” Amanda said. “But they do lock you up and watch you for the duration. No smoking. No drinking. No processed food. If you’re married, you get to come back home with it. If not—.” She shook her head.

“If not what?” Joanne said.

“They take the babe away!” the teenager said. “Send ya home empty!”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Joanne said. “Did Sonja put you up to this?”

“Sonja, miss?”

Joanne pointed at the teenager, who was warming her scuzzy feet in front of the fire. “Why does she talk like that?”

“Downton Abby,” the third woman said. She was the oldest of the pregnant tenters, maybe twenty-five. “It’s all she’s been allowed to watch.”

“All I’ve known since I were a girl,” the teenager said. “Like family it is.”

“Enough!” Joanne closed her eyes. She extended her senses into the women’s bellies and verified the ages of the fetal tissue inside. “None of you want to be pregnant.”

The three women nodded.

“And Planned Parenthood doesn’t exist, either?”

“We don’t know what that is,” Amanda said.

“You’re all sure about this?”

The women looked at each other for support and nodded.

Joanne concentrated for a moment, whispered a spell, and turned off the fetal-tissues’ ability to replicate and grow. It was a simple variation of the spell she used for curing warts and shrinking tumors. “There. None of you are pregnant anymore. No backsies. Your bodies will reabsorb the tissue. There may be some spotting but—” Joanne dashed into her bedroom and pulled a box of condoms from her drawer. She handed them to Amanda. “Divide these among you. The expiration date has passed, but the stasis spell will have kept them all right.”

The teenager held a wrapped condom up to the light. “D’ya eat them?”

“Oh, hell!” Joanne held out her hand. “Give me one of those, and I’ll show you how to use it.”

“Oooh, blimey,” the teenager said after the demo, “I could never use one o’ them!”

The woman who was going by the name Amanda but whose aura clearly showed she was lying about it nodded. “It’s illegal. My sister had one once. Her husband slapped it right out of her hand.”

Joanne summoned another fire imp and took it to the kitchen where she pounded herbs and made up three baggies of loose tea. “This will keep you going for a couple of months. Drink a cup every morning. It’s not as effective, and it tastes terrible, but,” she shrugged, “it’s the best I can do. Come back when you need more.”

The women looked at the bags uncertainly.

“You know how to make tea?”

Amanda scoffed. “Of course we do. It’s just … we don’t have any money.”

Joanne opened her front door. “On the house. Once I get the garden going again we can plant enough for everyone.”

After the women had packed up their tents and gone home, Joanne headed out again in search of electricity and WiFi. Both were promised at a Dunkin Donuts she found near the highway.

“The sign’s not true,” the teenager behind the counter told Joanne as she walked in. “We’re not hiring.”

“I’m just here for coffee,” Joanne said. “Check my email.”

A pink man in a too-small polo shirt stepped out of the tiny backroom. He pulled the hem of his shirt over his gut. “Who’s here?” he said.

The counter girl snapped her gum. “I already told her we weren’t hiring.”

The man stopped behind the girl and put his hand on her shoulder. “I think you should let me decide that, Jennifer.” His smile faltered as he caught sight of Joanne. “I’m sorry.” He stammered. “We aren’t hiring.”

“Just coffee.” Joanne held up her laptop. “Maybe a couple of doughnuts and a place to sit for a few minutes. You have that, right?”

The pink man turned red. “Of course.” He stepped away from the counter girl. “Jenifer will take care of you.”

Joanne gave the blonde girl a friendly smile. ‘Small coffee. Black. And two of those chocolate frosteds.”

The girl put the doughnuts in the bag, slid the coffee across the counter, and drew her hand away from the $20 Joanne held out. She craned her neck to yell into the backroom. “Do we still take dollars?” she said.

The pink man leaned out of the door without leaving his chair. “What?”

“The old kind of money.”

“Sure.” He disappeared into the small room.

The blonde girl took the twenty and held it near the register. “How do I enter it?”

The pink man’s head appeared in the doorway again. “Convert it to Bitcoin and add four.”

The girl did some math. “That’s going to be $17.75.”

“For a coffee and two doughnuts?” Joanne said.

The girl popped her gum and shrugged.

Joanne took her food and change to a greasy table in the corner of the shop. The coffee was burned and, she soon realized, the doughnuts were stale. She was logging into the Modern Witch discussion board when two overfed cops walked in. Joanne glanced up in time to see the doughnut clerk point her out to them. The biggest one hitched up his belt and strolled over to tower beside her.

“Got a receipt for that computer?” he said.

“This?” She blinked. “It’s at least nine years old.”

“Where’d you get it?” The cop said. He tucked his thumbs in his belt, thick fingers trailing on the pepper spray looped there.

“Best Buy or something.”

The cop shrugged. “If you bought it there, you must have the papers.” He looked over his shoulders at the other cop. “They still give receipts out at Best Buy, Nick?”

The other cop nodded. “Last I checked.”

“I thought so,” the big cop said. “Stand up slow so we can get a good look at you.”

Joanne held her hands away from her body as she stood. She’d dealt with enough racist cops in the past to know what set them off. She held still while the big cop took her picture with his smart phone. “Give me a search,” he told the device. He watched the screen for a few seconds and grunted. “You aren’t even in the system, girly. Must be an Illegal. You just climb over the Wall or something?”

“I’ve lived in this country since before your parents were born,” Joanne said.

The cop laughed. “You hear that. Nick. She said—” The big man flopped bonelessly to the floor, followed quickly by his partner.

Joanne put the doughnut shop’s staff to sleep for good measure. She got back online, downloaded her messages, and filled a paper sack with stale doughnuts to feed her pixies. Her broom wasn’t comfortable for long distances, but it got her home in a couple of minutes. The teenaged girl was huddled on her doorstep.

“What are you doing here?” Joanna said.

The girl shrugged miserably. “Me dad threw me out, miss. Told him I’d lost the babe an’ he dragged me to the door.”

“I would think he’d be happy.”

The girl wiped her nose with her sleeve. “It were his best friend’s babe, miss. Gettin’ me up the tree like that were part of their marriage deal.”

Joanne’s jaw dropped. “Get inside. You are not going back to that house!”

She set the girl up in the spare bedroom.

Joanne returned to her spot in front of the living room fireplace and watched the pixies eat the doughnuts. They’d refilled the wood box while she’d been gone, and the fire roared merrily. Joanne opened her laptop and looked again at the email she’d downloaded. Tasha Islam, fled to Canada and working out of a brownstone in Montreal—she’d moved most of Joanne’s money to an offshore account. Sonja Gomez, her best friend in the witch community, deported without a hearing. Drones fighting World War III over what was left of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Martial law in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Texas, starving in wake of its Referendum of Independence.

Joanne stared into the fire. Going back on pause would be the easiest thing for her, probably best for the girl, too. The 1920s were great and the 40s had shown a lot of potential, but Joanne had slept through the 30s and 50s without hesitation. It would be easy to do it again, turn the glass and skip the bad years in hopes of better.

The girl knocked shyly on the door and came in. “Do you have a TV, miss. Downton Abby is on in a few minutes and—”

“No TV, but there’s a full library in the next room.” She pointed.

The girl sighed. “I can’t read, miss. Guess I’ll just try to sleep.”

“Can’t read?”

The girl shook her head. “Never went to school. Me dad said it was for boys, no use for a girl like me.”

Joanne rubbed her forehead. “What’s your name?

“Zoey, miss.”

“Where does your father live, Zoey? Describe it to me carefully.”

Maybe this time, better years needed a little push. There were more witches out there, many of them likely on pause but many more just hidden away and riding it out. She would find them. Organize them. There were, no doubt, plenty of girls like Zoey, too. The witches could swell their ranks in a few years, sharing their arcane knowledge with a new generation of women.

Joanne listened to Zoey’s description of her father’s home and rehearsed her dragon-summoning spell.

 

R.W.W. Greene is a New Hampshire writer with an MFA that he exorcises/exercises regularly at local bars and coffee shops. He keeps bees, collects typewriters, and Tweets about it all @rwwgreene.

Photo credit: Tom Lee via a Creative Commons license.