Category: Content Rating

Sun Sky

September 6th, 2021

Trigesimus Quintus Gradus

“Did you notice that?” Susanna asked while casting a concerned glance at the window.

“That flicker? They concern you far too much, hon,” her husband sighed. “You’re too spoiled by city life. You’re lucky I finally dragged you back out to the country.” He smiled, anticipating her customary response to that line. But it never came. Hm, she must be moody. He sniffed, wrinkling his nose in a waving motion.

Susanna hadn’t heard him say anything after “hon.” She was creeping toward the window, trance-like. The green trees were flat as if they were drawn on paper…the gray street was colored just wrong…the flowers were not themselves. No, everything was…

Susanna gasped, covering her mouth with tense fingers. The sky was cloudless yet hazy, borderless yet oppressive. And pale orange all across. No gradient, no discoloration. The sky was pure pale orange, sunless, yet everything on earth was bathed in its hue, devoid of shadow.

“Nicholas, come look outside!” She was exasperated. Worried by her tone, Nicholas finally stood up. He took his time approaching the window, stroking his chin. He stood with her, observing the atmosphere for a moment. Then,

“Someone picked up our dead tree, eh?” For the thirty-foot tall tree which had succumbed to last winter’s chill was finally gone from the divot which lay in front of their yard along the road.

“Are you blind? Look! Where are all the shadows? Why is the sky so orange?”

“I don’t know, dear, maybe it’s sunset already.” Nicholas looked at his wrist, but it was bare. He turned about scanning the room for his phone, but gave up. “How many shadows do you usually see in a corn field, anyway?”

“This is not okay…” Susanna began, but she was interrupted by the howling.

The trees outside immediately bent far to the right. Many shattered at the trunk and sent their tops hurtling across the countryside. The mailbox was likewise blown into the fields. The house shuddered under the power of the sudden gale; the roof shifted and siding was peeled from the house. Any crack in the house fought to withstand the eviscerating wind which squeezed through; windows, doors, and vents blew frozen air into the house at incredible speeds. Doors and cabinets slammed shut and ripped themselves open, books and papers and trinkets flew everywhere. Susanna was lifted from her feet and tossed by the violent wind onto a couch while Nicholas was forced to his knees to avoid the same. The gale ripped at their hair and clothing.

It stopped. They stood, shivering, looking each other up and down.

“You okay, boss?”

“Yeah, you?”

They examined the mess around them.

“Man, it looks like a torn—”

“—Nicholas, I swear on my life, if you finish that sentence I will kill you.”

He fell silent, smirking.

As Susanna’s teeth began to chatter, Nicholas darted into the laundry room to dig up a blanket for his wife. Flicking the light switch, he blinked, but was still unable to see. He jiggled the light switch; still nothing. Instead, he groped around the room until his hands met something soft. He clenched and pulled it, then returned to the living room and gave the blanket to his wife. Her skin was paler, her lips less red. His body had a violent thrill as he turned toward the garage where the breaker box was. “Power’s out.” Susanna tightened the blanket around her as she darted to a couch further from the cool window. Pulling out her phone, she began to call her mother… then her father… then her best friend… before she realized that there was no signal. The lights never came back on, nor did the refrigerator, nor did their new electric stove. (“I told you we should’ve kept the gas stove.”)

The next day, they planned, they would take a trip into the city if the power and cellular remained out. By then, the storm, if that’s what it was, would’ve passed, and it would be safe to travel. But the phrase “the next day” assumes that night will come. It never did. The sky remained pale orange, never fading to a new hue, never ripening, never clouding. It stayed orange, pale but with eerie luminescence, for hours. Susanna was so worried that she convinced Nicholas to sleep with her in alternate watches to see if night would ever fall. Eight hours later they stood together in front of a large window chewing on dry breakfast bars, pondering the sky.

“Maybe it’s a wildfire.” Nicholas finally deduced. “They really mess with the sky, you know.”

“No, I escaped one as a kid, remember. That was much more hellish. This is too… I don’t know, peaceful’s not the word. Stagnant.”

“Mm. I think it’s a wildfire. What else could it be?” She punched him. He grinned. He was taken aback by the frigidity as he stepped outside to start the car. He was even more shocked that the car was gone. “Susanna,” he called into the house. He quieted when he realized that she was just around the corner, where he’d left her. “We left the Volt in the driveway, right?”

“Yes, I’m certain.”
“Well…” he gestured for her to follow him, and she did. They walked around the house, scanning up and down the street for the car. There was no sign of it, meaning it couldn’t have been blown too far by the windstorm. The fields were intact, anyway. “Open the garage door, Nick,” Susanna said. He tried, but the door didn’t budge. No power. Walking back toward the house to open it manually, Susanna noticed something in the sky behind their roof. Something big, like the moon. Now bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Something coming closer. She screamed and threw her arms around her husband. “Look!”

Nicholas looked up in time to see the object, which by now commanded a whole third of the sky. He yelped and grasped Susanna tightly, but couldn’t pry his eyes from the… is that cement? The cement, bowl-shaped—it’s a bird bath! He laughed as the bird bath loomed over three fourths of the sky, blackening the pale orange but casting not a shadow over the world. Certain he was about to die, Nicholas laughed as Susanna wailed.

There was a show of lights that sprouted around the bird bath, bright and dancing and of many colors. The lights were more clear and more lively than aurora polaris. Suddenly the trajectory of the bird bath reversed, and it shrank in the sky. Nicholas patted the back of Susanna’s head and pointed to it; she caught a glimpse of the giant object as it receded into the pale orange haze and disappeared from view.

Nicholas raced into the house, dragging his wife behind him. He scanned the countertops, and finding them empty, threw open the refrigerator. There! The tray of brownies.

“What is in these?” He asked Susanna.

“Huh?” She was confused and wiping tears from her eyes.

“You saw what I saw, right? That was a…” he paused, leading her to finish his sentence.

“I—I—I guess it looked like a bird bath, if I had to guess,” she stammered.

“Then we are hallucinating, that’s the only logical explanation for all this! What did you—”

“—Don’t you dare!” She yelled, taking a step away. “I did not spike our brownies! Ugh, you are completely insufferable, are you serious right now?”

“Okay then what can you possibly say that makes more sense?”

She burned him with her eyes and stormed into the garage. Nicholas followed.

“I’m not helping you. We certainly can’t drive hallucinating like this.”
“My parents are in danger, Nicholas. I’m going to find them, and if you don’t help me open this damn door, it’ll be the last time you see me leave through it. I can promise you that.”

Reluctant, Nicholas helped her force the garage door open.

She peeled away with him in the passenger seat of their bumper-less, rusted-out old S-10, leaving an array of tools and parts behind. For Susanna, there was no time to waste. The truck would survive long enough.
Soot

August 31st, 2021

Trigesimus Tertius Gradus

A black winter ensnares the landscape with its deceptively calm and deadly ubiquity. The clouds never scream, never flash, only stir. They are gray, infested with soot spewed into the atmosphere from fires that consume flesh dozens, or scores, or hundreds of miles away. Fires somewhere, everywhere, never before the eyes or the ears. Thick flakes of soot drift without urgency toward the desolate ground. What can be seen of the beaten earth is black with the soot. Even the ground that catches the eye is mixed with soot and presented to it as a festering stew. If one were to dig a hole they might dig forever and never escape walls of sooty dirt. Black sludge which was once called water fills depresses of earth to the brim. Now the waters are unrecognizable, full of debris, and covered with a blanket of soot that swells with the sludge.

Gray legs wade through the ponds. Bare feet batter the barren soil. Every leg is scratched. Every foot punctured. Every wound infected, spilling yellow puss down to the surface of the sludge, down to the soles of the feet. The skins of many legs hang in tatters. Those legs which have walked for more years than most are in utter disrepair. Flaps of skin have been caught on the soulless points of stones, bark, and bones to be peeled from the flesh in sheets. The bodies care not to prevent the teeth of the earth from unraveling their gray skin. Strings and mats of skin hang, decaying, across the landscape. Worse are the legs which have given up the flesh beneath the skin. Rotting muscles give way to bones blackened by the sludge and the soot. The bodies that bear the burden of attachment to these legs stumble over the earth and through the sludge as a marionette beheld by trembling hands. Yet still did they fare better than those bodies which had lost their legs long ago. These monstrosities crawled through the decaying earth, their gray chests and stomachs and faces smeared with soot and the stew of waste. They crawled until the landscape had scraped away the gray skin of their fronts. Then the land could eat their organs as they yet crawled, entrails betraying their aimless paths through the black winter.

The bodies have black eyes, eyes blacker than the soot. Long ago had the pupils of those skulls overwhelmed the irises and the sclera such that they may devour as much light in the eternal dark as possible. Often, those black eyes hide behind veils of greasy hair the color of soot.

The bodies wander. One may find itself alone among the desolation surrounded by miles of empty, dying earth and choking air, its own soot-smeared gray skin the brightest shade in the endless black winter. Or one may find itself one among thousands, no more room between it and the next than is afforded between one’s own knuckles, ebbing with the others in an ocean of rotting upright bodies. Ever are they wandering. Rarely has a body not met foot to every plot of the stinking soil of the landscape, waded against every wave of sludge in the pernicious ponds. Never do they fall, save when the stumps of their shins or of their femurs can no longer support the bodies without sinking into the mud. Never do they reach a destination, because there is no destination to reach. There is only soot, anywhere, everywhere, suffocating the sensory organs until it finally devours them. Then the bodies soak and dissolve into the black earth, ground down by the feet of others. Never do the bodies change pace. They scour the land at the same, slow pace, always.

And the bodies eat. Acute nails bite into the forearms and faces of every body. Needle-thin hands pull away chunks or strips of skin and flesh from every body. A wanderer left alone will soon tear at its belly and devour the organs found within. Yet none wants to be consumed by another. The bodies scuffle for survival. The bodies move quickly, decisively, to defend their lives in the squalor of the landscape. The bodies prefer to wallow in the sludge than to be killed and eaten by another. So they fight. Clawing and biting at each other, shredding skin, shattering skulls, eating all along. They fight in silence until their stomachs are full. Then their ravenous engorgement ends and they continue to wander.

Then from the ground emerged a man. His eyes were white around the edges, and brown, and his pupils were small, but he moved with caution through the landscape, unscathed by its barbed extremities. He had brown, not black, hair. His body was whole, not scattered across the landscape. His skin was brown, not gray. It was not blackened by the falling soot or the soot which caked the earth. His feet were clean, not festering with disease. He moved with intention, choosing where and when to be. He could see the fire beyond the wandering bodies, the fire from which the soot spread out over the land.

Then the man met the bodies. Rather, the bodies met the man. Immediately a great horde of them rushed to him, spraying dirt and sludge out from everywhere they stepped. For the first time, the bodies began to speak. The first body fell upon the man, and the man’s red blood gushed from his throat as it was split by black fingernails. The bodies screamed with witless rage, cursing the man whose body was whole. They all fell upon him to rip at his skin, tear at his flesh, to cake his hair with grime and to beat him to his knees, to his side, to drag him to the sludge and drown him, to drag as well the bodies which had latched their teeth into him. All these things, they did. The red blood of the man spilled over, leaving a red streak in the black earth as he was dragged to a pit to be drowned. His human flesh was gnawed away as he was dragged. The mass of bodies around him grew larger and larger, each gray hand desperate to desecrate the man’s flesh. His joints bent awry, his bones beaten to the point of breaking. Every hand which was laid upon him, every jaw closed against him, every foot bashed against him, was a blessing to the remainder of the body, for the gray skin began to stitch itself together, the lost flesh began to regrow stronger than it had been before. Some bodies became less gray, and some which had crawled legless for millennia stood upright again.

After the gray mass had circulated completely, and what remained of the man was no longer distinguishable from the rest of the landscape, they turned to see him standing where he was first seen. And he turned, and left.

There was a great wail. Then the gray bodies said no more, for they could not. They hung their heads, hiding their taut faces behind those broken veils of hair, and wandered and decayed and burned, never and always.

Save for one, then another, and another. For these gazed upon that place where he had been, a slight hill in the dented, twisted landscape. And while the flesh of the others again degenerated, the bodies of the onlookers continued to heal. The flesh strengthened. The skin browned. The infections dispersed. The black eyes shrunk into whites, into irises, and the hair was cleansed.

These few fled lest they be treated the same as the first man; eaten in parts by bodies and land. But one of these few remained among the damned, and those who beat her were healed until she died. Her corpse was devoured and strewn about the black earth, returning to it. The damned returned to their wandering, rapidly returning to their deteriorated state. Lo, for two among the soot stood still to stare at her red blood as it sunk into the black earth, and lamented what they had done to the man. And their wounds mended, and the soot fell away from their browning skin.
Rescue

August 24th, 2021

Sextus Gradus

“Sector One Delta, go to ad board.”

“Contact.”

“Go to 5 o’clock, approximately 3 MOA.”

“Contact.”

“Go to glass.”

“Target has a black suit, tan tie, red cap. Three targets surrounding. Armed.”

A red van tears through the street. The driver’s teeth are clenched tight enough to cause pain, but he doesn’t feel it. He is too focused on the road, on the obstacles. He cranks the wheel left, then right, then left, scraping other cars and nearly missing pedestrians. His greatest fear is striking a pole or a vehicle that would bring him to a dead stop or destroy his van. His neck aches with tension as he leans into the wheel. The traffic fades out, leading him into a mostly-empty street that’s been gated off with official cones and signs. He smashes through a wooden barricade, sending splinters flying among the shabby men who guard the street. The tires squeal in protest as he accelerates to great speed, making up for the loss after striking the gate.

Four men stand in the distance, motionless against the speeding van. One has a red cap.

He closes in on them in moments, crushing the brake and skidding the van so that its broad side, its sliding door, faces the man in the middle. The murderer, the thief, the plotter, the extortioner; the man he is about to rescue.

The bullet strikes the hood of a red van.

“No good, no good! Who the hell is that?”

A large shell casing is expelled from the rifle. A fresh one is forced into the chamber.

The rubber is ripped off the tires in thick mats on the pavement. The van groans as it peels away behind a group of buildings, then back onto the busy city streets. This time, the driver is concerned with his new cargo.

“Where are they?” The driver screams. “Where are they?”

The man with the red cap rubs his head, aloof. Turning, the driver flails a free arm behind his chair, striking the man with the red cap. Made sensible, the red cap asks, in return, “who?”

“The CFO and her children! Where are you keeping them?”

The man with the red cap is silent at first, then he begins to chuckle.

“Rounding 47th, southbound—” the sniper’s shoulder pushes back slightly with a thunderous bang— “Target is in a red van. Driver unidentified,” the spotter rattles into his handset. And the van is gone. “Authorizing lethal force. Take the target down at all costs.”

“You’re a brave one. I hope you die that way.”

The driver jerks the wheel, sending the van into a desperate drift around a tight corner. The man with the red cap is thrusted into the wall of the van, striking with a sickening crunch. When the van straightens out, he coughs. The driver feels flakes of spittle, or blood, or both, spattering onto his neck.

Two white sedans emerge in the van’s mirrors. The windows are tinted black. They pick up speed as they careen as recklessly as the van they’re chasing through traffic.

“Get down!” The driver shouts, “and stay down! We’re about to take fire!”

The passenger window of the first sedan glides down smoothly, almost coy. The thick, black barrel of a sub machine gun reveals itself to the public and sprays a controlled burst at the rear tire of the van. The shots ping against the red paint, narrowly missing the rubber. The van’s erratic pattern is enough to save the tires. Another burst, then another, then another.

A shooter from the opposite sedan joins in. Each of the chasing drivers attempt to close the gap between them and the van, but the flow of traffic chokes their options down. People scream and dive for cover on the sidewalks, tires screech and horns blare up and down the street as drivers desperately swerve away.

An ornate glass entryway slips into the driver’s view. His fingers whiten as he clenches the steering wheel, veering toward the building. There’s a shallow incline of stone stairs, but as the van reaches them, the front bumper is crushed upward and threatens to fall off entirely. The driver sees nothing but a blur as the van shatters the entrance and begins to roll into the atrium. Metal and glass are flung everywhere, becoming deadly shrapnel. The windshield is blown out, placing cuts along the driver’s face.

The sedans skid to a stop at the base of the atrial staircase. The occupants, including the drivers, pour out of each, totaling eight armed shooters. They storm up the stone stairs toward the eviscerated glass entrance, stunned at the destruction they had just witnessed.

The driver scuffles out of the window, dragging the man with the bloody suit down a flight of marble stairs. The stairwell is enclosed, and apparently leads down three stories. The driver plucks a card out of a suit pocket before leaving the mangled man at the first landing. He proceeds to stumble down the remaining stairs alone.

The fire team steps into the atrium, carefully navigating through broken glass, watching every angle. The building is incredibly empty. Save for crackling glass, the only noises are from outside; police sirens slowly but surely approach.

The team reaches the van. A smeared trail of blood leads down a staircase. Carefully, they make their way to the stairwell. As the agent at point notices dressy shoes, he points his weapon at them and draws it up along the body. It’s the target.

Gunshots ring down the stairs. The driver shivers.

“Target eliminated. Should we proceed to find the driver of the escape vehicle? Signs indicate he is in the building.”

A crackling voice comes over the radio, “affirmative.”

He waves the key card in front of a terminal. A lock snaps, the door floats open.

The fire team descends, following a trail of bloody handprints and muddy footprints. Down a flight, then another, into a corridor. The blood stops at a door which is ajar. They flick on their flashlights. The point man enters, pointing the light—his gun—at a group. A man with torn clothes and ripped skin has his arms wrapped around a woman and children, who sob with him in the dark room. The point man motions to the others. Fall back. They turn, rushing back to the atrium.
Concerning Colors and Stars

August 19th, 2021

Trigesimus Secundus Gradus

Ethan squirmed over the mattress of plump switchgrass, trying to settle. Several times he had felt comfortable only to be prodded under the shoulder by a rock or tickled on the cheek by a limp blade. The rock would need to be excavated from the natural bed and the loose blade plucked from its root and tossed aside. While Ethan wrestled with his section of the field, the sky above ripened into dusk.

At last, Ethan was satisfied with his creation. He inhaled deeply, first with his chest, then with his belly. He exhaled through his nose, allowing his eyes to fall open as they focused on the bath of colors spread before him. His vision of the sky was undisturbed by dark silhouettes of switchgrass blades; his labor plucking them up had guaranteed him a clear view. All there was for him to do was breathe and enjoy the purples and oranges and yellows far above.

He considered each of the colors. His eyes greeted them individually before his mind examined their contribution to the painting which they composed. As lone colors, he decided, most of them were rather dull. It was where they wove together amidst the clouds (blending here, sharply contrasted there, bitten by a shadow here, look how that cloud is tearing the orange in two!) where they became beautiful. Beautiful, not like a painting, but rather like a dance.

Then, there was nothing to do but wish the hues farewell. On Ethan’s left, night had emerged over the horizon. Its darkness sapped the other side of the sky of her color, ushering the redder tones away and replacing them with blues and grays.

Oh, Ethan observed, that is a new color. It’s wonderful. Even alone, it was surely not dull. Whatever should it be called?

He was distracted at that moment by a bright light which he had not noticed before. Now, it commanded his attention wholesale. It was the first star of the night, which was still maturing on the left horizon. Alone in the black bubble of night it shimmered as if shivering in a bitter, snowless winter. Ethan himself would’ve shivered if not for the warm zephyr that passed over him. His lips curled into a smile as he imagined that he had opened an oven door; that was how warm the gust had been. He listened to the wind as it played upon the switchgrass like fingers playing upon a harp.

Inside the oven was a freshly-baked apple pie. It looked as perfect now as it was every year. The fork broke through the flaky crust. The tender apple slices gave way to the prongs, now warmed by the pie filling. It steamed as Ethan brought the fork up to his mouth. It tasted as perfect now as

“—ever. Thank you so much, Dad,” Ethan said with a smile, setting the plate and fork in the sink.

Ethan sighed with contentment, the warmth of his body now sustained by his gratitude, undisturbed by any further breezes. His head rolled gently, creating a defined bowl in the switchgrass mattress. He delighted in a number of memories, savoring them like he had with the colors before. Unlike the colors, though, each memory could be cherished alone. His thankfulness grew even as the sky grew crowded with stars.

Ethan’s chest fluttered, as it sometimes does when one is falling asleep but does not want to. His eyes snapped open and he shook his head a little, quite surprised at the totality of the blackness before him; there remained no hint of the day to his right.

He explored the stars. The first one of the night was too well hidden among its peers, though he had tried to find it again. Ethan was not an astronomer, and he could not identify a single constellation. Save, of course, for the Dippers. Anyone could find the Dippers. To his eye, the stars have no particular order. They’re like clouds. Look at this bunch, here. Together, they look like a knight upon a horse. Though, I could easily tell them to be a butterfly instead. “They” is arbitrary, itself. Why not include these two, as well, and make an ice cream cone? He amused himself like this for quite some time before he decided that all the shapes were equally meaningless, including the Dippers. Together, the stars meant nothing. But the sun is a star. And without it, I wouldn’t be looking at these.

“Why is that star there,” he wondered aloud.

He was overcome by a chill. He crossed his arms and rubbed them with his palms. Warmed, he sat up to stretch, and for the first time since laying down, took in his surroundings. The field was blessed with the starlight (the moon was not out tonight). The subtle white of the stars grazed the grasses and trees and stones enough to make them visible. Color, of course, had dissolved into the atmosphere with the sunset. But the silhouettes remained. Ethan felt as if he was in a dream. Then, he looked further away, at the tree line on the edge of the field, and saw that it was black. A purer black than even the night sky, because the trees had no stars within them. Ethan tensed up, shifting his leg as if to spring himself up. He scanned the blackness there, imagining a great wolf bounding out of the black. The details of the wolf’s body were hidden from view; Ethan could only see it by the horrid blotch it made against the starlit grass. Ethan turned to run but was frozen. Closer and closer the wolf was until it leapt, finally, and Ethan—

Realized that he was holding his breath. He released it, and it shook. Feeling silly, he laid himself back down on the natural mattress he had formed, and turned his attention back to the sky.

That could happen, though. Ethan’s thoughts began to spiral. He worried for the future and feared what it held. There were worse creatures than the wolf conjured in his mind. What of it? He finally shouted to himself. He breathed several breaths and focused on the stars, putting his mind at ease again.

His eyes returned to the star. He stared at it for a moment, then two, then more. His mind was silent. Then, the star is there because it exists, and by existing it has obeyed. What does it care if it shines tomorrow or not over my world?

“We share the same duty.”
A Fish In the Water Out of the Bucket

August 5th, 2021

Trigesimus Gradus

A paid 18-month internship with guaranteed employment which would place Derek Giles in the top 30-or-so percent of income earners in the United States within the first five years of his career was an irresistible offer. At the time, it was unbelievable. But some engineers had made incredible breakthroughs in submarine technology, so the previously unscathed resources of the deep sea had opened up to the curious hands of humanity. Hundreds of lucky investors became instant millionaires, or even billionaires, a few years ago. And for their hard work chancing upon the right stocks, Derek won the job of his life at negative personal cost. That is to say, Derek was blessed.

He felt a bump on his shoulder and his body jerked to the side.

“Oop! Sorry Giles, excuse me, sir.” It was Clive Scrivens, the freshest member of the crew with a cool six years of graduate schooling—fast-tracked—and at least eight years experience working in thermonuclear engineering. But soon, even Scrivens wouldn’t out-earn Derek.

“If it happens again, I’ll have you demoted to janitorial staff. It’s too tight of a fit in here for mistakes, Scrivens.”
“Yes sir!” Scrivens responded with reverence, but he’d noticed Derek’s slight grin.

They require over a decade of special skills training but no one cares that he’s never been on so much as a fishing boat, Derek joked to himself as he entered the control room.

The control room was a little more spacious than the congested, pipe-filled submarine walkways. More went on in it. Rising, falling, seeing, detecting, controlling the half-dozen arms and specialized tools of the submarine, light control, monitoring of life support systems, and communication. As many activities went on in this room, there were hundreds more switches, controls, buttons, and lights, all on neat, clean panels that look good in fancy corporate advertisements. Four other men were engrossed by them as the vessel approached its final target, a massive electronic control station tethered to the ocean floor like a depth charge. Fine repairs were required for the land lovers to continue commanding the massive mining fleet further below without “unacceptable levels of visual and motor control interference.” Derek was here to fix a lag issue.

“Giles! Take the lead on this one.” It was Captain Nejem. “We’re on final approach. You’ll need the fine control specialists to open up panel 16-B and 23-C. You know which one the communication relay goes to, right?” Affirmative. “And the new diagnostic computer goes to the other one. Right.”

Derek took a deep breath. His performance with this relatively routine task wouldn’t ruin his career, by any means, but Nejem was a tough judge and one bad review could delay promotion proceedings for up to a year. Just put the computer and the relay to bed.

“Remember to properly import the broken components for evaluation. And don’t leave before you run final diagnostics,” Nejem finished with his arms tucked behind his back.
“Of course. Rutgers, go ahead and open up 23-C. Kayode, be prepared to extract the old relay. Carefully….” Derek walked the operators through the process. To lead them, he had to be firm and thorough, but careful not to underestimate their independent ability. After a few minutes, the old relay was onboard with no issues. Almost twenty minutes later, the new one was installed with a slight hiccup caused by the operator, Rutgers.

“Hang in there, Rutgers, nice and easy. We’ve got time.” It was still done at a faster-than-average pace. “Alright. Kayode, move Arm 3 over to panel 16-B. Hart, get Arm 5 ready for extraction.”

“Sir,” Kayode started, “the control station moved.”

“It moved? Rutgers, what happened to Arms 2 and 4? I thought they were locked in. Find the control station, Kovac.” Rutgers grumbled under his breath. They truly had been locked in.

A soft whining filled Derek’s ears and the panels of the submarine flashed red, red, red.

“Not good,” Nejem grimaced. Derek looked at the depth gauge—it was blanking out.

“Kovac, where the hell are we?” Derek demanded.

“Sir, we haven’t moved!”

“Retract the arms!” Nejem commanded. He pressed a button. “Full power, Scrivens! Point our nose up, Kovac.”

“I can’t get a read, sir! The instruments can’t see an up!”

“Up is up, dammit! Don’t you have any sense?”

“Relative to what, sir? I don’t know which way we’re oriented around the—” he stopped, breath taken.

Through the thick glass windows of the submarine, the brightest, whitest light Derek had ever seen shown through. Everyone froze, squinting, trying to determine what the light was. The command room blipped red, red, red.

“Turn us away from that, Kovac! I’m going blind,” Derek ordered. Kovac obeyed, but what Derek saw horrified him more—it was clear, bright blue water. He could see hundreds of shapes. Are they… whales? A squid? Submarines? It was like opening your eyes in the pool back home and seeing toys, not being a mile deep in the ocean.

Then the submarine ratcheted to the left, then the right. Nejem was sent flying into a bar, crashing into it with a deafening clang and a host of snapping sounds. Kovac’s face was buried in a computer screen before being shot back out, slamming his head against his chair. His face was ruined. Derek was hurled out of the control room, back down the hallway, and landed on something soft. The submarine groaned, the lights flickered.

Derek slowly got back to his feet, rubbing his head. The bright white light flooded the submarine again. The ghastly bright blue water sloshed against the submarine. Derek stumbled toward the control room. Hearing yelling, he began to run.

Hart was screaming in pain. But Rutgers was stabbing Kayode, who was silent. Rutgers had a hand on Kayode’s shoulder, holding him upright, and driving the knife in and out of his chest, throwing blood over the entire room. The silhouette of the slaughter caused Derek to writhe with chill. He could see the bones of Rutger’s and Kayode’s bodies nestled within the red glow of their illuminated flesh.

Derek sprinted the short distance to tackle Rutgers and knock the knife away in the process. Without missing a beat, Rutgers put a hand on Derek’s face and crawled his fingers to Derek’s eye. Derek squirmed his neck, trying to wrestle his face out of Rutger’s grip, but it didn’t work. Rutger drove his fingers into Derek’s eye.

Then Derek heard a disgusting sound. Scrivens, on whom Derek had landed, struck Rutgers’ forehead with a huge wrench, in which it became lodged, killing him instantly and spraying Derek’s blood-soaked face.

Derek fell away from Rutgers, hands cupped over his gushing eye, whimpering.

Scrivens scurried to Kayode, shouting for Taft, the medic.

Whatever Kayode whispered to Scrivens, Derek never found out.

Kayode’s head went limp as Taft scrambled in, so Scrivens directed the medic to Hart.

The submarine rocked again, sending them sprawling. Hart was tossed against some controls, Taft was hurled back into the walkway, and Scrivens collided with the window, cracking the innermost layer of glass. Kayode, Rutgers, and Nejem’s bodies were scattered about, planting spots of blood wherever they struck. Kovac, who was surely dead but strapped into his seat, was whipped about like a wet noodle in a windstorm.

The submarine continued to convulse, throttling its contents. The sailors’ limbs, caught in gruesome nooks, were snapped and torn relentlessly. Their bodies crushed pipes, they mangled controls. Hot and freezing gasses sprayed everywhere.

Derek, with a gouged eye, broken leg, and twisted fingers, managed to strap himself into a control seat. Even then, the turbulence subjected him to the debris of his former shipmates, various tools, and anything else that had become dislodged in the commotion.

The lights flashed red, red, red. The control room became redder.

Soon he was the only survivor, and he was there when part of Scrivens’ body made its way to the reactor and bashed against the cooling pipes along with a wrench and a cot. Derek was still awake when the neon green and red lights frantically flashed, desperate to make themselves seen against the bright white, bleaching light. A few seconds after they started, he heard a dreadful creak, and he felt the air grow thin. Jess… Ev… Vaughn….

Outside, miles and miles away, one could see the perfectly-spherical, pale white blast of the submarine’s reactor near the middle of the bright, undulating mass of ocean water which congregated amidst the void, steaming away into oblivion. Large as it was, the blast of Derek’s ship could not compare to the oppressive white light of the sun.
This is Not an Abandoned Car

July 2nd, 2021

Vicesimus Nonus Gradus

Woe am I, the wanderer of that steaming country. Steaming with the phantoms of the masses, steaming with the victory of war. Woe am I, who art alone, and who travel that desolate land in search of they who would offer a scrap of their dog meat in trade of tales from the steaming land where tales are made and shared no more.

Then on a red day, when the bleeding sunlight purged forth from the black clouds like blood from the cracks in a scab, I chanced upon they the People of Ancient Huetter where Theft is a Crime Never Wrought. What devilish drive led me out to that portion of our forefathers’ now-accursed land I shall not ever know nor understand. Their rarity, the curiosity of their home, it is the envy of all the Survived. An envy the Survived hold dormant, for it is uninspired, for they yet know not that the People exist. And they are still not known, except to the woeful bloodied and muddied pages of this journal, for they have stapled my lips to secrecy with regards to their station in life.

Drab are the walls, and parched are the pigments of their former colorful luster, of course. But sound is the structure of their homes, and clasped together yet are the boards of their walls! On the Day of Quaking, we woe Survivors believed that not a single support of the bygone Earth should be left upright, but that all should be eviscerated or knocked away by the blasts. Truthfully, it is not so. Rightly too, the reader supposes, that the People have rebuilt their homes. Yea, yea, this they have. But their new homes are of a different architecture, a new architecture informed by their new, undead culture and the demands of a barren, unending prairie. But here, among these fortresses are homes of the times before, untouched indeed by the Quaking!

Let me dawdle no more on architecture and report, privately of course per our sacred agreement with the People, on the true curiosity of these People. In the center of their town—which is yet paved! Oh, the wretched pave of the ancient roads I thought mine eyes would never meet again—lays a car with paint long stripped by the Quaking and the Elements which followed, with rubber long decayed and blown by wind away from its wheels, with glass long busted apart and scattered for miles in that steaming land, in such wretched disrepair as to be quite possibly mistaken for an ancient and strange bear trap of the most inhumane kind.

Yet e’ry day a man as old as the land itself, it would seem, and as wrinkled as a water’s surface which has but just received a boulder unto itself, sets himself upon a folding chair with rusted legs and rusted joints, rusted like those of his body, and observes the careful keeping of the car that its condition may not be rendered worse. If such a frame were to exist in the steaming land, out of the bounds of merry Huetter, confidently I report that many an animal would kindly nest within its ancient make. Yet no such animal has ever bedded, not so much as an insect, would dare enter the car under the clouded and blind eye of the man whose age is unknown to all.

When the woeful I confronted the old man, I begged of him an answer; “for what reason do you set yourself upon that rusted chair in defense of this ancient frame?”

He has told me never more than this, that at one time far before the Elements washed it surely away, there was a sticker on the paint of the frame of the car which read “This is Not an Abandoned Car.”

Color me stunned as you will, and I assure you your image is not saturated enough.

Recognize as well that on e’ry fifth day, the People would gather themselves like clockwork around the car, and sing into the sky. The keeper of the car, on these fifth days, would stand rather than sit on his chair. When their singing was o’er, a new person on each fifth day would speak for some time, from the sun’s forty-fifth to its sixtieth degree, then all would recite an incantation and depart, ne’er to return save for the next fifth day. Scared I was to e’r inquire as to these fifth days, and observe them from quite far away only e’er would I, so that woeful I could not hear the strange mutterings which they set forth around the car.

Yea, that car, set in the highest and flattest part of their Sanctuary in the steaming land, was well-afforded the attention of that man on the four days twixt the fifths and by the whole of the People on the fifth.

Save for these oddities, the functioning of those People were quite as one would expect in the wake of the Quaking, for any man and woman who need survive in the steaming land. A number of them collect water from the river, from the burning rain, and they are the ones who set their stores to the filter. Others often meet outside in the brown grass and compete with the sticks which stand in for swords, or swing their empty firearms to and fro like one would in the ancient wars. Ne’er did I hear a round disperse from those clay-stained barrels, for I believe they are too valuable in the steaming land to be put to waste, otherwise they live in fear that upon the first shot their rusted barrels would expire violently and kill him or her who pulled the fire-stick by its own self-destruction.

On the fortieth-and-third day after my introduction to the People, lo! The car was gone, disappeared from the eyes of all forever and ever. Ne’er did we find tracks, or ancient tools which would enable locomotion of that frame, nor any other indication of the frame’s resurrection to car-hood of the ancient age. Yet gone it was! Curious was my woeful self to see what might happen on that fortieth-and-sixth day (for this would be the next fifth). Woeful I was surprised at the dispassion the People felt at the disappearance of their idol, their blesser of the crops and their filterer of the waters. Yet on that fortieth-and-sixth day they did gather, the man with unknown age among them, and recited their rituals as I have previously detailed within these stained pages. And ne’er was a tear shed for the car, and it seemed to be removed from memory as easily as a paperclip from a stack of papers. This I, my woeful I, should know, for these pages on which I write are held together by none other than a paperclip foraged from the steaming land, the land of mourning and undead souls, which roam eternally searching for the eviscerated remains of their blasted bodies, unable even to settle for their shadows of deaths which have themselves long been scratched away by the elements of unmerciful nature itself.
Deaf Ears

June 16th, 2021

Vicesimus Octavus Gradus

Adira took a large bite out of a golden apple that gleamed in the evening sunlight. It was fresh, cool, and juicy. As the crunch of the bite filled the air, Kaya recoiled and her eye twitched.

“You know, if you put your lips on the skin it wouldn’t splash so much,” she complained while inching away from Adira.

“Mm,” Adira responded, mouth full of apple, “yes,” she swallowed, “but that would ruin my lipstick.” True enough, her bright red lipstick would surely smear onto the apple skin. But Adira’s argument—which was both logical and snarky as a consequence of her practice at family dinners against her corporate lawyer mother—fell on deaf ears. Kaya was busy falling; she had backed too far away and slipped off the curb of the sidewalk.

“Oh!” She called. She felt a strong arm catch her shoulders. Eric steadied her in an instant. Kaya turned to thank him, his hand still on her back, and her cheeks turning apple-colored themselves.

“Alright, Kaya, move along,” Aster, a third girl with a sporty white jacket, poked. “I’ve had enough of you trying to poach my boyfriend today.”

Kaya skipped away, looking much like a cautious bird hopping away from a stranger. She cupped her hands together and squeezed her fingers tight.

Aster held back a chuckle, casting a glance at Eric. Her pursed lips and wide eyes caused Eric to chuckle. Naturally, this caused Aster to laugh. Kaya’s face reddened and her shoulders pulled up toward her chin while they spiraled into giddiness. They weren’t targeting Kaya, though she felt they were. Really, they were laughing at each other. Meanwhile, Adira munched on bits of apple and observed with a haughty expression she’d learned from her mother. She was careful to wipe her red mouth with her thumb after every bite.

Then the scruffiest of the bunch jogged toward them from the direction of the sun.

His shaggy hair bobbed as he approached them. Short of breath, he was clutching a spacious leather bag close to his chest. It was latched shut.

“Zeek, what have you got there?” Eric asked with a bit of a cackle at the end, for no reason other than the general silliness that dominates one’s mind after they’ve been laughing for a few minutes. And, Zeek was always an amusing sight himself.

“I-I-I…” he stammered. “A bag, I guess, but check this out!” His face was unusually pale, but he was quick. Before she could protest, he had plucked the apple out of Adira’s hand and skipped out of her reach. “Hey, hey,” he repeated to Eric and Aster, “check this out.”

When he saw that he had their attention, as well as Kaya’s and a nettled Adira’s, he held the half-eaten golden apple to the bag and opened the leather flap. Then, holding the apple above the bag, he dropped it in.

Kaya noticed something peculiar. From her angle, she should’ve been able to see the inside lining of the bag. But she could not; it was simply… not visible. It wasn’t black, per se, but it wasn’t not black. And she also noticed something that the others did not. Zeek hadn’t dropped the apple. For an instant, it seemed to have stretched like putty into the bag and disappeared. But this trick of the mind was immediately forgotten when Adira snapped out,

“Nice, you can drop an apple into a leather sack. Now it’s all dirty and completely wasted.”

“No, no, you missed it.” Zeek’s eyes scrambled over the street. They settled on a birdbath about four and a half feet tall in a neighboring yard. “Come on!” He chirped, setting off toward it, “come get a closer look.”

Kaya shivered as she moved, mindful of the curb, to the new location. Eric and Aster were still recovering from themselves as they, too, followed Zeek.

“What are you gonna do, Zeek? Dump water in your bag and ruin my apple some more?” Adira sniped, trudging along the sidewalk. She was the last one to arrive in the next yard.

Zeek opened up the bag and pointed it toward the bird bath, moving nearer and nearer until it compacted and stretched like putty, seemingly vacuumed into the container. In a mere moment, it was gone. A few liters of water fell to the ground in a ball and splashed out.

Eric and Aster were dumbstruck. Kaya felt a wash of horror writhe through her arms and legs like a serpent through desert sand.

“Give me the bag!” Adira commanded, lurching toward Zeek. Zeek, more terrified by her stern expression than the item which he held, sacrificed it immediately as he stumbled away from her and the spot where the bird bath had been. Adira held the leather pouch in front of her, licking her red lips slowly.

“Adira,” Eric started, “look at that car. Isn’t that Viktor’s?” In fact, the sports car did belong to Viktor. (Or, more technically, Viktor’s father.) Aster’s ex-boyfriend and the second-best debate student, Viktor. Adira’s tongue receded and her lip coiled up.

“Yes,” she said, heading toward the red car, “it is.”

“Wait!” Kaya shouted. “We can’t just wreck a car, we’ll get in so much trouble.”

“Y-yeah,” Zeek added, “and Viktor will kill us.”
“Nobody can prove we did anything,” Eric reasoned. “Who would believe we made a car disappear into a bag? Only idiots who believe those magic TV shows are real.”

“We can do whatever we want,” Adira finished.

Zeek nodded, then squared his shoulders. “But we have to keep it secret,” he said.

Adira glanced at him with a strike of annoyance. Then she opened the bag next to the sports car and it disappeared the same way the birdbath and the apple had. Aster started to laugh; Adira beamed; Eric chuckled.

“That feels so good,” Aster said. Kaya wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Does it have a limit?” Zeek thought aloud. Adira looked at him, considering.

“Of course it has a limit. Here, I’ll show you,” Eric reached for the bag. Instinctively, Adira pulled it away. But Eric’s arms were long. He grasped the leather in his strong hands and yanked it away. Adira glared at him with hateful eyes. Eric turned the bag upside down.

“No!” Kaya cried, lunging at Eric. “What are you thinking?” He swept the bag away as she passed through the space where it had been.

“Kaya, relax, ok? Don’t be so uptight.”

“Yeah, Kaya, come on. It can’t suck in the whole universe,” Zeek snipped.

“Can you pull things out of it?” Aster asked Eric. “Maybe we can find a mansion and take it somewhere for us to live in.”

“Um, I’m not sure. Zeek, did you try pulling anything out of it?”

“And stick my hand in? No way!”

“Make Kaya try it,” Adira grumbled. “If she wants to share the bag with us, she needs to quit being such a baby.” Of course, Kaya didn’t want to share the bag at all. She’d rather it didn’t exist. She sighed.

“Okay,” she said with added reluctance, “let me see it, I’ll try to pull the apple out.”

Eric held the bag out to her, open. She jumped back.

“Whoah, careful Eric! Don’t put her in it,” Aster called.

“Well, fine, ok. I’ll hold it sideways, like this.”

“Just let me hold it.”

“No! No, I’ll hold it,” Eric snapped. Quivering, but seeing no other way to take it from them, Kaya moved her hand toward the bag. She thought about the golden apple, slowly inching her hand nearer the opening. She blinked, and felt her hand grow wet. There was the apple.

A chorus of light cheers rang up from the group. “See? We can just undo whatever we want if it’s really that bad,” Eric rolled his eyes. “Now look!” And with that, he knelt, even as Kaya grabbed at his arm and shoulder.

Like a ball of putty set in front of a piece of black construction paper, then stretched and sucked into a tiny point, so the Earth fell into the bag.

In its place was left a formless, whirling collection of untethered atmosphere. The air shifted violently in reaction to new gravitational dynamics. Water sloshed in the void, quickly consolidating into huge spheres. Among the largest new space debris were airplanes and sea vessels, specks compared to the empty space they now inhabited, which careened through the water and air violently. Birds and animals floated in the cosmic cloud, struck and killed by other debris, otherwise burned or frozen or suffocated or drowned to death. They were joined by people who endured the same.

Eric, Aster, Adira, Zeek, and Kaya stretched out, unable to control their limbs against the harsh wind. They were deafened by its howls. All they could do was look desperately at one another with shocked, terrified, suffering eyes. The whites of them turned redder and redder imperceptibly fast. A sedan smashed silently into Adira, forcing her out of Kaya’s view. Eric still had the bag in his hand, the latch and cover flapping wildly in the rushing wind. With every thread of strength in her body, Kaya reached for the bag. She ignored her bleeding ears, boiling skin, the coldness that froze her bones, and her lungs which fought to claim some of the leftover atmosphere.

But Eric’s corpse was hurtling further and further away from her own.
Worth the Wear

May 21st, 2021

Primus Gradus

“Come on, I’ll race you to the stop sign!” An encouraging voice challenged through the breeze. A young man with sun kissed skin, Kade, forced his legs down a little harder, leaning forward to a dramatic degree. He adopted a look of intensity, eyes narrowing on the road ahead of him, jaw locking back.

This prompted his opponent, Nathan, to radically increase the speed of his own pedaling. The young boy’s tiny legs circled the gearing of the bicycle with growing rapidity, smoothly pulling the small machine up to the speed of its much larger counterpart.

Kade heard the quickened whirring of the little boy’s bike. The corner of his mouth couldn’t help but perk up as his eyes softened.

“Tee hehehehehehe,” the boy giggled as his bike tore past Kade. Nathan stared at the larger rider with a cocked head, giving a big, mischievous smile, as if the race had been won. Kade returned the stare, split his lips into a smile, and thus betrayed his false intensity. He leaned back on the bike and chuckled as the boy focused back on the road and kept spinning his little legs. They spun awkwardly now that he’d reached the maximum capacity of the gearing.

“Hey, get back here, Nathan!” Kade called through a smile. Getting close to the finish line, he glanced at both sides of the perpendicular road. Usually, it’s a very calm street, and today was no exception. The stop sign gleamed in the sunlight. The young man, decided on adding some intrigue, picked up his pace. “I’m gonna getchya!”

He catches up to Nathan with ease, aligning his front tire with Nathan’s rear tire. The young man quickly glances down the road again, stops pedaling, and lets his bike cruise into the road as Nathan speeds past the sign. Then Kade makes a broad turn on the T-section. Meanwhile, Nathan, who has gone from full speed to a noisy halt, has a huge grin on his face.

“I beat you, Skittle, I beat you,” he laughs, swelling with pride.

Kade makes a tch sound, rolling his eyes and head. Skittle, he thinks to himself. Why Skittle?

Nathan sets himself back up on the pedals, ready to take off again.

“Hey, wait!” Kade rolls up next to him. “Let’s see this tire. Aw, look at it! Here, roll forward a little bit. Do you see it now?”

Nathan twists his back to look at the rear tire. The rubber grooves have been shaved down slightly at the place where he’d skidded to a stop in the intersection.

“You’re gonna ruin that thing if you keep stopping like that!”

“I know! It’s so much fun. Watch this!”

Nathan pushes hard off the concrete, spinning as fast as he can to pick up speed down the way he just came. He stops pedaling, jerking his legs in the opposite direction, throwing his lower body sideways. The bike grinds to a stop, spinning him about a hundred degrees. He turns to Kade. “See!” He calls with a youthful cheer.

“Yeah, I know, buddy, I’m the best at it.” He looks back at his bike tire, with the almost-perfect treads. This is the first bike he’s actually cared to…care for. He sighs. “Check this out!”

Kade thrusts the bike forward, standing with his rear barely off the seat, forcing his legs down on the pedals to accelerate as speedily as possible. He tears past Nathan. The wind fills his ears until he clutches the brake, setting himself back on the seat, and turning the handles and his body such that he’s able to complete slightly more than a full circle. The screeching of the rubber filled the street, leaving a wide black stain in the middle of the pale road.

“Oh ho ho ho!” Nathan cries out. He struggles to turn the bike so he can ride up to Kade. “That was awesome!” He screams.

Rolling up to the rubber circle, Nathan hops off the bike while it’s still in motion, leaving it to direct itself into the curb and fall over. He kneels next to the circle. “Look at that!” He looks up to Kade with amazement, pointing at it, then feeling the rubber on the asphalt. “So cool!”

Kade carefully steps off his bike, guiding it toward the edge of the road. “Yep, it’s cool alright.” He flicks the kickstand out with his ankle, setting the bike carefully to rest. “Here, get out of the road,” he orders as he makes his way toward a water bottle, taking a seat in freshly-cut grass. Nathan goes to pick up his bike, eager to park it beside the legendary grey-and-yellow-bike-which-belongs-to-Skittle. “It’s great and everything until you pop that sucker and end up tumbling down a big asphalt hill!”

Nathan looks over his shoulder at Kade, incredulous. “You can’t say that!”

“What, ‘sucker?’”

“No, the A-word!”

“Asphalt? Dude, that’s what the road is made of.”

“Oh, I thought you just said asph,” he mutters cheerfully as he returns his attention to the bike.

“No, that’s not…. Never mind,” Kade chuckles. He looks over at Nathan as he struggles to set the kickstand out, then struggles to balance it, then struggles to set the front tire at the same angle as Kade’s front tire. Kade notices the fresh bald spot on his tire, then seethes silently.

“I’m gonna do a full circle one day, too!” The boy chimes as he hurries to take a seat on the grass.

“Mmhm, I’m sure you will,” Kade says warmly.

A deep voice, muffled at first, comes from behind them. “Kade, Nate—”a door creaks open, the voice is clear now—“boys, dinner’s ready!”

Almost before Kade can react, Nathan is already charging toward the door. Kade groans a little as he stands up out of the grass. Getting old.

“Hey, son, let’s get you cleaned up!” The gruff voice at the door says. The man scoops Nathan up, preventing him from dragging his dirty shoes into the house. With a pensive smile, Kade watches the door close behind them.
Do Us Part

May 19th, 2021

Vicesimus Quintus Gradus

The wind was to their backs, gently wafting aside their gray hairs and loose-fitting T-shirts. Their hands, his left and her right, were clasped together, their fingers intertwined like strong vines on a chain link fence. Despite their ever-frailer muscles, aching bones, and thin skin, their grip was sturdy, painless. Their arms a bridge between their souls.

The evening sun was being strangled out by the woody horizon, giving the appearance that it was being dragged by thousands of branches into an earthen grave. And it was beautiful.

“Do you remember our wedding night?” A tired, hoarse voice sang sweeter than a morning songbird.

“Not very well, dear. It was so so long ago,” his wife replied.

“I only remember our vows,” he thought for a moment, squinting as the sun released its final, colorful light. “And how beautiful you looked,” he added.

“‘Not more or less beautiful than ever before,’ you told me,” she responded. “I remember that. You thought I looked just like usual, you old villain!”

“I lied, Mags, I lied,” he smiled to himself as much as to her, tilting his head down. “When you came around the corner, time stopped for a moment, and in that moment I felt myself melt down like an ice cube in the Texas sun. You were so—hot.”

“Ah, ever the charmer. And a liar after all these years. Such betrayal…I’m filing for divorce.” Mags squeezed his hand a little, and she smiled too. He chuckled as the dusk’s breeze washed over them.

That night, they dreamed.

They dreamed their own dreams, of course. In their age, or rather, knowing what soon awaited them, their dreams had adopted a unique character. They were less-so dreams and more-so memories. Their respective minds rewound their lives and pressed play at random points, authoring their respective narratives for an audience of one; their own respective souls. The writer—each mind, that is—would often explore someone else’s perspective of a given memory. Sometimes the mind would pretend to be omnipotent, or it would be a ghost observing, or it would replicate a friend’s thoughts and emotions. Most often, though, the perspective—when not their own—would be that of their spouse. Mags knew Craig better than anyone would ever, and Craig knew Mags better than anyone would ever, and they were adept at exercising this intimacy. Sometimes they’d recall their dreams in the mornings, and Craig would be shocked at the depth of Mags’ insight, or vice versa. So they dreamed their own dreams, but they dreamed together as they slept.

Tonight Craig dreamt of sorrow.

He dreamt of a doctor’s office, his mind full of the phantom scent of sanitizer, cleaner, and rubber that stuck stubbornly to those pale blue and white walls. He dreamt of his pale, sickly wife laying on the patient’s cot, and he sitting on that stiff mattress, fearing he already knew what was to come.

Or at least, that’s what Mags had imagined his expression to mean. For in the dream, he was Mags. And while Craig seemed to be haunted in that room by a cold, brewing dread, Mags was broiling over with red hot pain, her insides seared themselves, his skin was covered in molten wax, and worst of all her head was stuck full of needles. But Craig didn’t notice, for she was simply pale, and sweating, and laying peaceably on the God-forsaken cot.

She dragged her eyes reluctantly to the movement in the corner. The doctor had entered the room. And he held a clipboard, and his eyes were so, so blue. Beautiful blue eyes, that doctor’s were. And smart, so bright. For an instant, they gave her a dash of hope, like a drop of water thrown into the flaming abyss of her emotions. But like water does, it evaporated in the flame before it reached the bottom, before the doctor’s lips parted.

And when they did, she wanted nothing more than to tear them off, burn them, stomp on them, and scratch and beat the face from which they came.

But she felt this for only a moment, and then she felt wetness under her eyelids, and the flames stoked themselves up and licked at the damned baby blue walls of the office, and she sat up at once and wailed, and the tears flowed and flowed as she buried her head deeper into Craig’s shoulder. And he wrapped her head with his arms, and when his chest began to lurch and his nose began to sniffle, she realized she was yet not alone. Together they wept.

“Dad? Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, quite alright, dear, quite alright indeed,” Craig assured his daughter.

“Good. Well, good. Hey—”

The past couple of weeks, Craig had been quite productive. He started with cleaning the house and organizing the family photos—thousands of photos, sorted with precision. He collected up Mags’ writings and organized them in the same way as the photos; carefully and patiently. His own trinkets he packaged up, too. Models and figures varying in size from the microscopic to the vast. He’d learned a number of new recipes and shared dishes with his neighbors. They agreed to come try more over a game of Bingo in a few days, and he wasn’t shy about emptying out their wallets. Farewell, farewell! I’ll see you on Sunday, eh? To confess about the gambling?

“—Hey, it’s just that I’m worried about you.” She took his hand in her own. “These past couple of weeks, you’ve been too happy.”

What a strange thing to say. Too happy. Still, he didn’t interrupt.

“I don’t think that’s normal, or healthy. Aren’t you a bit sad?” She had her mother’s eyes, and now they begged his to speak to her. “Have you cried at all? Crying is good for you, Dad.” She continued on like this for some time, and he let her.

Finally, she asked, “tell me, why aren’t you at all upset?”

“I was, for a moment. But it won’t be long, my dear. It won’t be long until I see her again. We promised each other, ‘death shall not do us part.’ I’m on my way back to her, and for that I can not be upset.”
Nightwatchman

May 15th, 2021

Duodecimus Gradus

Tightening the straps until they hurt, Vasco Voll stands upright to glide into a confident stride out of the weeping alley and into the flickering light of the street. His black jacket grows unevenly damp in the night’s rain as he picks up his stride, deciding his movements according to a map on his phone. Picking up speed, he slides around a sharp corner, kicking up a small cloud of rainwater. He switches his phone from the map to his camera, presses record, and takes off sprinting into the darker street. Flicking the phone against a garden box such that it captures a clear view of the street, Vasco pounds the sidewalk and leaps just as a bald man spins around the corner of a building.

Having caught the man entirely by surprise, Vasco slams into his chest and drives him into the cement with a crack of the skull and a slosh of the puddle. Springing back to his feet, Vasco turns and thrusts his arm out from his side to produce a baton from his sleeve as a second man with a blue sweatshirt rushes into the camera’s view. Blue swings right at Vasco, clearly telegraphing his move, then cuts it short and attempts an uppercut with his left. Vasco, predicting the feint, steps to his opponent’s right.

In one motion, he raises his baton to catch Blue’s right forearm with enough force to bruise, then drops it down into the path of the left uppercut; Blue’s knuckles meet the metal rod and suffer terribly for it. He yelps in pain and stumbles backward. Vasco raises his baton, preparing to crash it into Blue’s skull, when he feels a pressure around his ankle. Before he can react, his leg is yanked out from under him. He falls onto his face, barely able to turn his head in time to avoid breaking his nose.

Blue, sensing the advantage and the opportunity for revenge, lumbers over to Vasco and delivers a sharp kick to his upper back, then another, now a curb stomp to the back of the head. Vasco’s legs are still gripped by the bald man’s huge hands, which remain clamped even after Vasco’s desperate attempts to escape. Presently, Blue still wailing on Vasco, the bald man stands without letting go of his prey. As a result, Vasco is pulled upside down. While being raised up, he manages to drive the end of his baton into Blue’s stomach. Blue recoils, coughing, and Vasco feels himself get thrusted downward.

Blood spurts out of his mouth as he coughs himself awake. His eyelids flicker as he struggles to process the world around him. It slowly returns to clarity as he pushes himself to his knees; it’s still nighttime, it’s still raining, he’s on the same corner. And his body is screaming.

Vasco grunts as he forces his quads to thrust him toward the building. Sirens wail a couple blocks away.

Are those…?

Yes, they are.

Red and blue lights dancing in alternation on the buildings down the block, growing brighter. The sirens grow louder.

Stumbling the way he came, Vasco plucks his phone out of the miniature garden and turns the camera off. The battery is almost dead; that was a long time of recording.

His jog-with-intermittent-walking-breaks home is unusual. His whole body is numb. His muscles do as they are told, but they seem to be two or three commands behind Vasco’s orders. And they work slowly, very slowly. Or his brain is working overtime. He can’t tell for sure.

The door groans. Vasco’s keys fall to the ground, clattering next to the baton. He barely squishes his way out of his sweatshirt, stumbling toward the couch, and collapses into darkness.

“I’m still going to have plenty of time to get the whole project wrapped up today, Mart! Come on, when have I ever let you down?” Vasco is on speakerphone. Talking himself out of tardiness is second nature by now, so he’s multitasking on the phone, watching that blue upload bar push itself toward the right side of the screen.

“Vasco, I’m not just calling to rip into you for being late—again,” Mart sighs through the phone. “You’re fired.”
“Fired?” Vasco’s eyes snap away from the phone screen, and his legs flex. He winces in pain. “Mart, my track record is flawless. You can’t be serious,” Vasco counters.

“I am serious. The company can’t tolerate it, Vasco. Your record is impressive, but it’s not enough. I… I’m sorry.” Blo-oop.

Vasco’s mouth pries itself open slightly. He works his jaw. The phone snaps onto his coffee table. He groans as he bends over to untie his shoes. Ba-ding!

His eyes snap to the screen. Reminder: Dinner with Merry tonight.

He groans again, dialing Merry’s number. “…please leave a message after the tone.”

“Hey… I have to cancel for tonight. I—I woke up really sick. Don’t want to pass it on.”

Vasco is laying in the bathtub, the water steaming into the room. He holds his phone in front of him, watching his most recent video on repeat. He evaluates the motions. All good, he just forgot about the bald guy. To be fair, he played the role of Knocked Out After a Heavy Fall really well.

He rotates the phone and scrolls to evaluate its statistics. The video had a healthy stream of likes until right before Vasco started drawing the bath water. It was now sitting between two and three hundred, with only a handful of comments. He flicks the video away and returns to his home page, scrolling slowly through the scores of videos sitting there, which range dramatically in view count. His channel barely maintains even a quaint repeat audience.

“The Nightwatchman of Lakewood” has a few great moments, Vasco thought. He scanned the deep red scar that snaked from his wrist to his elbow, wincing as he remembered that night. But he doesn’t make money.

The phone buzzed, producing a banner on the top of the screen with the headline “Miscreant street activity swells in upper Lakewood, robberies up in commercial zones.”

Vasco drops his head too hard against the acrylic tub.

And he doesn’t make a difference.

Category: Content Rating

Trigesimus Quintus Gradus

Trigesimus Tertius Gradus

Sextus Gradus

Trigesimus Secundus Gradus

Trigesimus Gradus

Vicesimus Nonus Gradus

Vicesimus Octavus Gradus

Primus Gradus

Vicesimus Quintus Gradus

Duodecimus Gradus