When I woke up last week the world had been dead for nearly thirty years. Every microbe, every single celled plant and every Africanized honey bee. I'm not sure how I know. Even if I still had the faculties to count every sunrise and sunset, I couldn't have possibly done so face down and frozen solid in a puddle of mud. I just know. It's somewhere in my bones.
Every day I can feel the clock running. It tells me how long I've been the way I am and how long I have until I fall apart. It's the same clock that tells me it's time to eat. But when I look around, I only see the snow covered wreckage that used to be Winnipeg. There's nothing to eat. Not a blade of grass or a single puppy.
I groan and look anyway. Sometimes I pass people who used to be like me. Most of the time they're alone. Sometimes they're in groups of five or ten, huddled in ruined apartment buildings or malls. They look really old. Most of the clothing they wore when they were alive has been weathered to shreds. I don't think there's been anything to eat away at their dead flesh for awhile. When I try some of it it tastes bad. Like freezer burned bananas.
None of them move. They're all bloated with what used to be animals and plants.
I don't know why I'm the last one still around. Maybe I was the last one to die. I don't remember it, but I'm missing most of my throat and blood stains whatever mud doesn't. Maybe when the winters got real cold I got lucky and froze like a side of beef. I can still feel the ice in my belly, all sharp and prickly. But as I shuffle around it dissolves into slush.
When I close my eyes sometimes I can think. Sometimes I can catch glimpses of those who died before my awakening. But it's foggy and distorted. There hasn't been anything dead and moving for ten years.
So I pick an arbitrary location and move. I can't go very fast, but that hardly matters. As the clock ticks down I begin to feel stiff again. There's more snow. It's colder here.
Eventually I fall face forward. I don't close my eyes. They freeze wide open.
I spend the next six thousand years staring at a rock. It's not very interesting.
Labels: Flash Fiction
- Barry had no idea quite yet that his life, as full of snack food flavored joy and Star Trek reruns as it was, was just about over. While it's true that the middle aged, over weight desk jockey didn't exactly take care of himself or his (sometimes severe) health issues it's a strange twist of fate that it'd nearly save him from being eviscerated by his best mate's mentally deranged brother in law. Almost.
It started strangely enough with a visit to the comic book store. - I was dead by the time they found me nearly sixty eight years too late. My body wasn't so much decomposed as it was evaporated. Sure, the parched Sahara air did it's fair share of preservation. But the real thing that kept me from falling apart, would you believe it, my flight suit.
It was made of this real neat material, all shiny patches and mission buttons. This pencil necked flight tech once told me that it was probably smarter than I was. He chuckled at me like Fat Albert.
I didn't exactly have a Ph.D in quantum theory, but I see a shot at me when I see one.
It was kind of ironic that when they cracked the seal on the landing module I sank my teeth into the poor bastard's grandson. He tasted like astroglide and chips. - Todd wasn't exactly my friend. He wasn't exactly anyone's friend.
They say that you always have to worry about the quiet one. You know, the guy who sulks in the corner all the time reading and listening to death metal. The one you never see with anyone else at the campus hang outs, always by himself hiding behind his coke bottle glasses and smug sense of self satisfaction.
I never really gave the guy much thought. Even after the shootings at NYU and MIT, I never really thought anyone capable of, you know, just fucking tweaking out.
How wrong I was.
Todd was there. He took a bullet in the spine for me. I want to say that he did it out of the kindness of his heart. But I'm sure he hated me. I think he did it to prove everyone's misconceptions wrong.
I could have sworn as the life drained from his cross eyed face I could make out a smirk and an "I told you so." on his lips. And I hate him for that.
Prick. - A lot of innocent people were affected by the writer's strike. The big fight was between the worms at the top rolling in their dough and the twerps who pound on keyboards all day. It's natural to cheer for the underdog.
But there were hair dressers who couldn't work. No actresses or actors to doll up for sitcoms. And there were cameramen. Nothing to shoot. And there were the folk in wardrobe. No one to dress up all pretty.
But who gives a shit about them?
What about the fucking dog washers, man. What about them? - I miss Pauline Redeker. Even now I think about her a lot. How was her life after we left one another in that shower of sparks that barely passed for a relationship? Did she ever remarry that asshole broker she was so in love with? The one with the blue BMW and single testicle?
I hope she did.
I found out last week that the bastard died of AIDs.
Labels: Flash Fiction
The Search for the Middle Man
Mr. Well for all of his good deeds, charity work and over zealous attitude toward the approaching apocalypse was far from a good man. So as it was when Laura needed him the most he was huddled in his personal shelter, playing with his wooden trains and figurines. The door to his vault was sixteen inches of solid steel and smart plastic and hid quite cleverly. Even if he wanted to hear her screaming bloody murder he would be unable to respond.
Laura not knowing his whereabouts continued to scream as the rotting tank which introduced itself of Seven Legs feasted upon their twitching child. She hardly paid attention to the shadowy men who were even now tearing apart their suburban home, searching for her husband in absolute vain. Unable to answer their questions in a non hysterical manner, she simply beat against the hide of the Troll.
The Mechanical Man wheezed, his lungs in need of replacing.
"He's not here."
The Blue Haired Man crushed an ancient and priceless vase beneath his enormous foot. He was clearly agitated.
"I can see that we've been fed inaccurate information. Tell me, Kyle. Why is it your prisoners are always so willing to volunteer their secrets, however flawed they might be. While my prisoners occasionally hold out for days and spill their guts only at the last second?"
Kyle's leg joints hissed as he carried himself over the broken heap of a body guard. He sharply pinned the corpse with a long, multiple jointed leg. It took a moment, but the body guard began to stir.
"Because my prisoners don't literally have their guts spilled."
He replied as the freshly reanimated slave began to drag himself toward Seven Leg's general direction.
"Then maybe, my friend, it is about time that you make a couple of policy changes in regards to who you interrogate and who you execute."
Kyle The Mechanical Man narrowed his eyes and sized up his mentor. He could have argued his point six months prior, when he was whole of body. But now he had certain disadvantages. He coughed and whispered in a bitterly digitized voice.
"Yes. Sir.
And Sain?"
The Blue Haired Man rummaged through some business papers. Mostly ordering invoices for cattle feed.
"Let Rodney deal with him. They always had an interesting relationship. It'd be interesting to see what his imagination can come up with."
Labels: Flash Fiction, The Wake
The relentless rain was coming. A vast and assaulting sheet that left none beneath it dry or without being hindered in their movements. It was sudden and extreme as it always was, droplets fat and sticky in the low gravity. They clung to any surface, enveloping it all in a translucent skin that shimmered like miniature oceans in the breaking daylight which sliced through it all, clouds regardless. And with the glaring and extreme UV radiation night became day as the little world continued on its endless and solitary waltz through the complex trinary solar system.
Through intelligent and soulful eyes It welcomed the warmth. Neither a he or a she, It was all together different from anything any humanoid would be familiar with. A complex entity, certainly It possessed a mind capable of thoughts that rivaled and often surpassed the strange carbon based collections which stalked It even now. But that mind was devoid of only one crucial thing that ensured the survival of other non-humanoid species, ruthlessness. It certainly was not a pacifist by nature, like all sparks of consciousness it possessed a quality and drive that pushed it to do regrettable things. However, It's unrivaled ancient history contained no bleak wars, no crusades, and certainly It did not have a word which could be translated to something akin to genocide.
No, the conflicts faced by It's kind were shaped by nothing more than the requirement to feed. And with a self regulating population upon this lush world, there was always more than enough prey to go around. So It knew only the simply hunt of lesser, dimmer things. Creatures like itself, but devoid of the sentience which made It's kind sacred. To It, the purposeful ending of another intelligent life (or even something of suspected intelligence) was something that could be translated to blasphemy.
As the day rapidly approached, the landscape unfolded beneath It. The small world was suddenly a large space to those eyes (nine in all), filming over in partially translucent fifth eyelids to shield their delicate inner workings from the extreme light. It was a world if deep blues, purples and bleeding oranges that intermixed every which way. A world of deep canyons cut by raging rivers and lakes, shrouded in heavy chlorine mist and yellow belches that flowed like water. Certainly this land was fatal to unmodified humanoid life, it was far too warm, far too small, and the gasses which It breathed was a noxious chlorine mix, containing little if any oxygen. But this was home, the only one known. For the search carried out by It's fore bearers had found nothing out in the expanse beyond this realm. Nothing of value, anyway. The worlds encountered were either hopelessly lost to artificial manipulation at their current technological state, or already occupied.
So they quietly dwelled within their artificial constructs, tiny bubbles orbiting places of relevance. Or else they stayed here. Where they had existed, virtually unchanged for 50 million strong years.
The harsh light doubled in intensity as the second sun was rising, shedding light on the great family-herds that lay in the valley far below, partially lost in the chlorine cloud. At first glance from those sensory organs, they appeared to be moving landscape, their carapaces blending into whatever lay beneath foot. But as those eyes, far more sophisticated than any hawk zoomed in upon the center of it all, the landscape took on a richer detail.
These were It's people, more specifically, the family in which It had been born into.
They were odd creatures with their alien limbs in a perpetual state of running and hopping. Like some twisted kangaroo they vaulted across the landscape, propelling themselves high into the air by three rear limbs, then descending once again with an additional front six moving in a motion reminiscent of a millipede. And then it started all over again, moving in great waves of hundreds.
Their smooth skin, translucent by night was now becoming an ebony black tinged by greens that swirled like some perverted oil spill. They were beginning the morning's feast, sucking in the glaring day in addition to the tiny, human sized creatures that were mindlessly heading for shelter against the fast approaching day. But the rapidly breeding things didn't stand much of a chance. Their ultimate fate was to be halved at the beginning of every day. That was how it was here. How it has been since the beginning of their civilized society.
But It was well feed, as always in the morning. Possessing something that could translate to poet, or artist, this creature relished the grand natural sight which unfolded every day below. But today, It would witness something far more interesting than the usual sunrise coupled with the ritualistic culling. Something unseen to It's kind until now.
Fourth Deputy Centurion Marell Akantos lurked motionless in the shallow depth of the narrow waterway. The water was murky here, and even despite the elaborate filtering mechanisms built into her combat suit, the stench of chlorine and sulfur filled her cranial exoplating. Far below lethal levels, her commander had assured her and those under her command they were in no danger, for the odors picked up by their sensitive noses were only traces of the lethal atmosphere lingering. Nothing at all to worry about.
She was clearly a humanoid sentient. Beneath those thick, rubbery layers of her jumpsuit stood a woman whom bore little physical difference from most typical human subspecies. She was even a member of one of the two progenitor races, that of the Roman Empire. So it was her people that in part sparked this ingenious design, and little variations had appeared since it was first forged in the jungles of some lost terrestrial world.
This place would have killed Marell in seconds if not for the technological means which protected her. But it appeared surprisingly little to combat everything from microscopic alien bacteria to the highly corrosive atmosphere. It was nothing more than a thick sheet of seamless, spongy material not at all different in appearance to that of a wetsuit. It spread over her entire body, revealing only her face beneath an almost comically large helmet that clamped firmly to her collarbone. At the moment she was not required to give facial ques to those twenty four under her command, so she had set the elaborate thing to opaque. Her visor instead displayed a multitude of statistics regarding those under her command.
Most were talking to one another in private channels, their heart rates slow and relaxed. A select few were engaging in virtual combat with a vast array of opponents, displaying a flurry of mental and physical responses. Her second in command was playing a game of cards with himself. A solitary sentry on the outskirts of their secured riverbed was singing along to the latest musical craze.
They had been waiting here for a solid three hours ever since the drop shuttle had departed for the safety of their home encampment. They didn't have to worry about their life support, for that shiny black cranial exoplating was everything from a personal computer to a tiny self contained world. The bacteria which it housed somewhere out of sight would, in theory, keep them all alive indefinitely as long as their bodily functions remained. There was even a neat little tube that dispensed a multitude fruit juices.
Marell sucked on that now, enjoying the crisp, bittersweet and faintly metallic liquid which would keep her well awake for the coming day. It would have usually been no problem, but the days on this little world lasted for a gruelling eight point six of her standard.
As the suns erupted over the horizon, the rain came. The surface a few feet above them shuddered with countless impacts before a series of bright pillars descended upon them. The world was coming alive now, and their mission dictated that they would lead the sneak attack which would snuff that life out. So, marshaling her quarter of a century of soldiers, she began as her mission file commanded.
Labels: Flash Fiction, The Wake
Dead Eye
The out rigging chamber was still and quiet when Maria finally awoke from her head trauma induced slumber. Her hair was matted and wet. Whether that was due to being soaked in something that smelled an awful lot like diesel fuel or a clotted head wound was anyone's guess. Her hands came back stained black after inspecting the wrench dents.
But her vision was skewed anyway. Everything beyond a dimly lit radius of an arms length was blurry and murky. She could sense movement, but it seemed terribly far away to be of much concern. The backs of her eyes itched once her damaged mind comprehended something familiar. Blue and worn its cover was hopelessly stained. Its pages were soaked in the same bitter smelling liquid that soaked through her cheap secretaries uniform.
She snatched the ledger up from the floor, unaware of the gleeful shout escaping her partially numbed mouth. Its neat spiral bind was broken, the cover hopelessly stained in excrement, blood and bits of bone. She didn't have the faculties to realize it was her own, so she needlessly grabbed her sleeve, trying to clean it off to the best of her ability. It was her only link to the life outside of the murky chamber she now found herself in, and while she could not immediately recall what exactly happened or who she was prior to her awakening, she remembered the critical importance of the ledger and the information it contained.
She had worked with it on a daily basis for years. It contained every appointment, meeting, note and iota of intelligence that was left of her. She had a sudden and terribly feeling that someone was going to be awfully lost without the information it contained.
The chamber floor shuddered. Dazed and handicapped, Maria stared in wonderment at the creature before her meek and little corner of existence. Unable to comprehend fear or wonder, she simply shat herself.
The creature was lost in the haze. She could only make out a sharp tang of spoiled meat, the sound of buzzing flies and the sensation of a hot and heavy fog rolling over her.
Craning her head up in futility, she could make out a single piercing eye. And quite like the bloodied wrench of The Mechanic, it filled her world. She discovered that while her damaged mind could not quite grasp the concept of fear, it could manage pain quite well.
Twisted Face
The mechanical rasp of Kyle's respirator was terribly distracting to Mr. Aeneas as he was dragged from his cramped holding cell into the debris strewn arena. He wasn't exactly a visual man. But pressed later on in his senile years he could still recall the terribly metallic rasp of the man's labored breathing.
It was pathetic and hollow, like a mentally challenged Darth Vader.
"Moving me into the luxury suite then, gentlemen? Superb. I'd quite like a pint of your finest house lager and a nice basket of spiced bread. I'm famished. I've been on the road all evening, you see."
He babbled unbeknownst to the automated midwives. Their ears weren't exactly tuned to his peculiar way of communication.
"Are you really gone, Mr. Aeneas? Or are you just grateful for my company?"
Kyle croaked between his attempts at defying suffocation. The automated midwives dropped him in the center of the arena before collapsing into their constituent body parts. The sand beneath his bottom became soaked with engine oil and synth-blood.
Mr. Aeneas widened his eyes, the bright lights still a little dazzling. He pawed at the dots that made up his world.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe a little from column a, maybe a little from column b."
There was a clank and a decompressing sound as Kyle lowered himself to the arena floor. His eyes didn't look quite natural, despite being original.
"Are you really gone, Aeolus?"
He asked in a whisper, a digitized thing.
"No, but I'm probably going to wish I was. Aren't I?"
Kyle, despite being the cause of all this torment, sighed.
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
His body disappeared into the brightly lit arena.
"Is Mark around?"
He could make out the sound of the man who was once a friend retreating.
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
Struggling to his feet, Aeolus grabbed the closest thing to a weapon he had. The buzz saw arm of an automated midwife. The lights dimmed and Aeolus could make out the small form of a blue haired man on a catwalk many feet above him. He waved with the arm.
The blue haired man waved back before flipping him off. Testy.
Another round of trials had begun. He could feel the rumbling of an approaching enemy long before the gate swung open.
Labels: Flash Fiction, The Wake
The Mechanic
Maria scrunched up her nose when Rodney came tumbling into the foyer, all dark, jagged lines and filth. He stank of synthetic oil and Troll afterbirth. The mechanic was brilliant in all meanings of the word, but cleanliness wasn't exactly one of his best attributes.
He wobbled a little too close to her immaculately maintained receptionists desk, threatening to spill his chaos into her little world of order.
"Rodney,"
She began while she checked his arrival time into the elaborate ledger that her employer insisted she keep. Within its hundreds of pages of tiny print more than six thousand meetings, conferences and power lunches were listed in order of importance for the next eight months. This man was consistently number one, every day without fail.
He tried to look charming as he nodded his wide brimmed hat at her, smiling with broken teeth and chapped lips.
"Ma'am. Crazy weather we've been having."
"Mmhhmm."
She was lost in the ledger while he leaned on a pile of paperwork, hopelessly smearing it. Maria only managed to notice after he failed to materialize in the ledger.
"You're not-.."
Her eyes darted from his grubby hands to his face. If looks could kill.
"..-scheduled for.. a.. meeting today."
"I know."
A grimey wrench slowly came out of his jacket pocket. Maria didn't know how to react until her world was filled with metal and pain.
Sain's Horrible Deal
The lair was humid and filthy, the ancient tiled floor stained with decades of Troll afterbirth and rotting vegetation. It was hardly a location he ever expected that would wind up holding all of the riches his nation had to offer. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
He adjusted the wick on his lantern and let the light play over the closest collection of steel ingots and Bonsai trees. It hurt to look at, but a masochist by nature he couldn't help but wish he had thought out his end of the bargain a little bit better.
There was screaming deeper in the lair, he followed the noise for quite sometime until he came upon the primary birthing chamber. Rows of elaborate belching machines lit by torchlight spewed out tiny bundles of hideous joy. Their ugly little faces twisted in agony, the Trollings screamed at their indignation. The Mechanic and his assistants were there, cooing over them as the automated midwives carried them off to the outrigging chamber.
"Shouldn't you have the entrance guarded?"
Sain called over the racket of Trolling fear and Bonsai trees being run through what he had come to call "the big wood chipper." The Mechanic, startled by his partner dropped a screaming bundle to the floor.
It's delicate egg head cracked open and leaked bits of brain. The Trolling immediately stropped crying, finding the whole process intensely interesting. The Mechanic, thinking nothing of the accident strode over. An automated midwife killed the curious creature with fire before throwing the corpse into "the big wood chipper" with another Bonsai.
"Shouldn't you be out hunting for more off my shopping list?"
The Mechanic replied, hands in his pockets. The filthy, blood stained wrench was a great comfort. Sain's head would crack open just as easily if push came to shove.
"Touché. I have our visitors working on it. They make a ruckus about the whole thing, especially the pissant little effeminate one. But they'll do as they're told so long as I'm running the show."
One of the machines guttered and died. Assistants furiously tried to restart the engine as digitized wailing echoed within its interior. Sain, curious looked over The Mechanic's shoulder, hoping to catch a hint as to just what was going on in this horrible place.
Automated midwives assigned to the stalled machine were lost without direction. Their heads remained stationary while listless eyes grew bored and wandered. One keeled over and died. The others, grateful for a task proceeded to disassemble her biological components with hissing pneumatic drills. While the mechanical shell was dragged off she was added to five separate and working contraptions. They immediately began spewing out fatter Trollings.
The Mechanic didn't look phased.
"My shopping list. Now. Or else you'll have to replace more than one midwife. They're harder to come by than your little trees."
Sain narrowed his eyes, while he prepared a devastating quip before he remember just who he was talking to. He ended up sulking back from whence he came, trying to pick his least favorite member of his harem. Where was he supposed to find ten tons of live deer?
Labels: Flash Fiction, The Wake
When I was a good deal younger I spent my fair amount of time watching television, like any normal child. Sure, the vast majority of the programming I was interested in wasn't exactly normal for a kid who should have been watching Transformers or Tiny Toons, but television is more or less television when you boil it down to photons and electrons, isn't it? I watched a lot of entertainment geared toward those much older than I. Documentaries and news programs were pretty much standard, very rarely did I ever opt to flip on a cartoon instead of say, The World Before Man: The Cambrian Explosion.
Which is fine. My parents didn't seem to terribly mind me being exposed to educational material on a daily basis, and it did help my grades in the end of things. But it meant that I was exposed to a large amount of advertising geared toward adults of the intellectual variety. Which meant scores of banks, software and travel advertisements.
But on occasion I'd see an ad depicting a lonely, starving and filthy child in a third world country and a large, white, fat man begging you to shell out a couple of bucks a day to pay for the little kid's booster shots so he can be healthy enough to write you a thank you letter in broken English. I'd occasionally ask my mom if we could sponsor a child in Malaysia or Chad, or where ever the big, fat white people decided to beg from, while holding a shivering, starving child.
The first several times she brushed it off, telling me that maybe for my birthday she'd surprise me, or that she'd talk to my father about it. But nothing really materialized out of my pestering. I never received a letter with a postage stamp from Burma or Costa Rica. We never put an expensive toy in the Toys for Tots bin at the grocery store. At the most we'd donate a couple of cans of soup at a food drive, but that was pretty much it. So I kept asking.
One day my mother and father sat me down, put on their parenting hats and gently informed me that we couldn't do what I was asking for. Why? I asked, more curious than anything. Who didn't want to help those less fortunate? Were they some sort of monsters? Or were they just incredibly selfish?
Well, my mother began. We can't afford to.
Can't afford to? We couldn't afford to buy one toy for the big box outside the grocery store? Or one coat for welfare?
No, my father began with a sad little laugh. You'd probably see it next time we go "shopping."
I was too young to really realize what my father meant back then. I was just a stupid little kid. So I left it at that. I only really realized what they meant as I grew up and began to become more observant of the world around me and how most of my class mates were different. Their parents didn't shop with brightly colored stamps. They always had newer, less worn in clothing. Their holiday presents were much more elaborate than anything I'd ever experienced.
The truth of the matter was my parents were dirt poor almost all of the time. We shopped with food stamps, we received federal food stuffs, my holiday season was populated by Toys for Tots and we "shopped" for my winter coats at our local welfare office. Despite both being fully employed year round, my parents were always struggling to be in the black at the end of the month.
The only time I saw anyone in my family give to a charity was when my father died. My since disowned "aunts" decided to donate $100 in my father's name to a diabetes foundation, instead of helping my struggling mother pay for his funeral (at the time, unknown to me my mother was very much in debt, due to my father's expensive medical issues).
So, suffice to say donations and charities are still a sensitive subject for me. I really don't like giving or receiving pity or handouts. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like admitting defeat, or that one party is inferior to the needy group. As arrogant as I may be, I don't like to think I'm better or inferior to anyone else. But it's been seared into my mind.
The moment I left the nest I became bogged down in my own financial woes and it's continued to this day. I've only started to work myself out of the enormous multi-generational slump. To this day I've never really given charity more than a couple of dollars a whack, and even then I feel forced and awkward. Like I'm a bad person if I avoid eye contact with the old army vet looking for handouts outside of the grocery store. Or screening my calls because the local police department needs money to host youth activities.
Which is not to say that I'm against charity. Quite the contrary, I'd love to help the local SPCA or help diabetes research, or provide some manner of relief to those in situations I've found myself in. I just don't like being approached and being put on the spot and guilt tripped while I barely have enough as it is.
But at what point is it wise to start channeling a portion of my income into a worth while cause? When my debt has been entirely eliminated? But at that point, wouldn't it be more wise to invest the same amount of money, so I'm capable of donating even more in the future? And what would do the greater good, giving gift cards to grocery stores to the homeless, or kibble and blankets to the SPCA? Or a big check to the Wildlife Conservation Fund, but be unable to see the results and potentially risk it being lost to administrative drivel?
Labels: Essay
