THE DARK AND SHADOWY PLACES
Caitlin McColl
Copyright 2015 Caitlin McColl
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About This Book
This book is a collection of short stories or ‘flash fiction’, inspired mostly by author Chuck Wendig and his fantastic and hilarious blog, Terrible Minds, where he hosts weekly Friday Flash Fiction writing challenges. Ninety-nine percent of the stories in this book I have written are based on these challenges and can be found on my short story blog, Under A Starlit Sky, with a few unpublished ones thrown in. I decided to compile them into the more convenient and easy to read format of an eBook, rather than scrolling through them online. Now, please, won't you journey into the dark and shadowy places?
I hope you enjoy these stories, and my other ones if you so wish to purchase them, and I would love it if you could leave a review of this, or any of my other writings, anywhere you have obtained this eBook.
Warm regards,
Caitlin McColl
Table of Contents
The Labyrinthine Lighthouse
The Unknown
The Consortium
The Rorschach Test
Twisted Love
A Future That Time Forgot
Orphan Ivy
Last Train to Nowhere
The Labyrinthine Helix
Merciful Beast
God’s Own Medallion
There Are Things In the Well
Coming Back Again
Lunestra
City of Lost Hope
The Courageous Sheriff
The Griefstruck Earth
Long Way from Nowhere
Crossed Wires
A Game of Charms
Welcome to Hell, Next Left
If You Go Down To The Woods Today
My Name Is Nothing, What’s Yours?
From the Ashes
Under A Starlit Sky
The End is The Beginning
The Spectre
Twelve Mile Limit
Mars
There Goes The Sun
Up, Up & Away
The Valley of Death
The ArcHive
The Secrets of Fireflies
The Enemy Rule
A Beautiful Disaster
Amethyst Auburn & World’s End
Places, Camera, Action!
500 Words
A Stranger Calls
A Long Way Down
Ripe for the Picking
What Is Normal?
Dusk and Dawn
New World Order
As You Mean to Go On
A Voice in the Darkness
The Dark & Shadowy Places
The Labyrinthine Lighthouse
I’m from Labyrinth. That’s the name of my town. Weird, isn’t it. Apparently the guy who founded it, a couple hundred years ago, was obsessed with Crete and the legend of the minotaur in that huge labyrinth. So that’s your history lesson for the day. Why anyone would name a town Labyrinth, I have no idea. Except that, because of the founder, the town, well, is really a labyrinth. The streets are like one giant maze, and even living here all my life, growing up here, I still get lost and turned around. Streets branch off in strange directions, and sometimes just abruptly stop and go nowhere. I guess a bit like a cul-de-sac. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to get to the grocery store, but make a wrong turn, and then you come to a dead end. And you really have to pay attention if you want to get to work on time. At least I do. Sometimes it feels like the roads change, and move. That they end up in different places. I’ve not heard of a maze doing that ever, but I’ve seen some really strange things here. Mind you, I’ve never been anywhere but here. Maybe things like this happen in other places too – big cities like Chicago or Los Angeles or in England, I don’t know.
The lighthouse, just outside of town, is where most of the strange stuff happens. First of all, Labyrinth isn’t anywhere near water. So why there’s a lighthouse in the first place is weird in itself. It just sits up on this raised bit of land. So wherever you are in town, you can’t miss it. It’s like some strange sentinel, on the lookout for…something. Guarding the town from…well, not from any boats, that’s for sure. The ocean is a couple thousand miles away. Labyrinth is landlocked. There’s not even any rivers nearby that the lighthouse could warn boats on it not to…I don’t know, not to stop in Labyrinth, maybe.
The weird thing about the lighthouse is, it’s working. That might not sound strange to you. But it never has before. Ever. Not since I was born, not since my parents moved here. Not since it was built. I’m not sure why it was built anyway. Maybe whoever did it liked lighthouses, and thought Labyrinth should have one. Whatever the reason, it has never worked. I didn’t even think there was even a lightbulb in it. I know, I’ve been up there. Lots. It’s something you do when you’re bored. Go along the windy, rocky, pitted road up the hillside, and climb the lighthouse. It gives you a really cool three-sixty degree view of the town, the mountains on one side of it, and the forest on the other. I used to go up there when I wanted to be alone. Sometimes I’d go there to be alone, and there would already be people up there, hanging out, making out, the usual teenager stuff.
But that was when the lighthouse was just an old, empty, tall building with winding stairs up to a viewing deck. Now, it’s an actual lighthouse. Without anything to be a lighthouse for. What’s the purpose of a lighthouse? To warn people. And since there are no boats to warn, what, or who, was it warning? The town?
I just noticed the lighthouse was on yesterday. Only because I ran into Mrs Harris. Literally, I bumped into her because she was standing still in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at the lighthouse on the hill. I was about to mumble something ungracious and continue on past when she grabbed my shoulder tightly. “Ella, look!” she said, gripping me painfully as she pointed at the lighthouse. I didn’t see it at first, the light hadn’t made it around to us yet. But then there it was. A flash from a giant bulb that hurt my eyes, and then was gone again, only to reappear a few seconds later.
“So?” I asked, in a tone that made it sound like I thought Mrs. Harris was crazy.
“So? So? Don’t you know what this means?” The woman almost screeched and I winced, raising my hands to my ears.
I shook my head. No, I didn’t know.
“It’s the circus,” she whispered in a hiss as her nails bit into my arm.
“What?” I asked, totally confused. The circus? There had never been a circus come through town. Nothing much really happened in Labyrinth. Except the annual Cranberry festival. I hadn’t seen any posters up about any circus. I looked around, as if I was expecting to see carts full of elephants and tigers rolling down main street any second. “I don’t see any animals,” I said, still puzzled by Mrs. Harris’ reaction.
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head angrily, her perfectly coiffed hair bouncing. “Not that kind of circus! Not with animals. With them,” she lowered her voice and turned me to face her, grabbing me by both shoulders. I tried to tug myself free of her grip, but she just held tighter, staring intensely into my eyes with her storm grey ones. “The gypsies. The land pirates. They come in the night, on the third day, and in the morning, people are gone. They steal them. You don’t know who they are coming for, or how many. Sometimes it’s just one person. Usually it’s
more. Sometimes a child, sometimes someone who is elderly, frail. Sometimes someone else. Someone like you, or me. There’s no rhyme, no reason.”
I could feel my eyes grow wide. I had never heard of this. Never heard of land pirates, and people being stolen.
Mrs. Harris continued, as if I wasn’t even there, still trying to release myself from her. “That’s why the Labyrinthine Lighthouse was built. As a warning system. To warn us about the pirates. They only come around once every hundred years or so.” She looked at her watch as if that would tell her that a hundred years has passed since the last arrival of the circus.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Mrs. Harris looked at me again, as if just remembering I was there. “Do? We leave! If you don’t want to be taken, you have to run.” And with that , she took her own advice and sprinted off down the street, eyes darting nervously around her.
Today is the third day, and the sun is going down. I’m writing this from the lighthouse. You might be asking yourself why I haven’t left. Why I haven’t run, like Mrs. Harris. I can’t answer that. Maybe it’s just morbid curiosity. Like I said, nothing much happens here in Labyrinth. I want to see the circus.
Hopefully I’ll be one of the lucky ones.
The Unknown
It smelled red.
It’s the first thing that popped into my head when I opened my eyes. That acrid, tangy scent, like burning metal. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew something was…off. I lay in bed, not wanting to get up and, just like I did every other morning, look out my window at the trees, sky, buildings and mountains before getting dressed with the clothes I laid out the night before.
I glanced at the blinds, and through the little holes that the drawstrings ran though, I could see the sky. It was red. An awful, not right, red. My legs felt like lead as I swung them off the bed and, gripping the windowsill, I lifted a slat and peered out. My stomach and body must have already anticipated the dread outside, because I didn’t feel any different staring out at the landscape before me. Or rather, lack of one.
My body seemed to go numb. My thoughts slowed almost to a stop, but the first thing I remember thinking (after the red) was, how could I have slept through this? That was quickly followed by, and how am I still here?
I let the blind snap back into place. I moved as if I was walking in quicksand. My body didn’t want to function. The mundane-ness of my small apartment hit me, then. It was like someone slammed into me. The small bathroom, just outside my bedroom. The painting in the hallway of killer whales in the water. The stairs, leading down to the living room and kitchen on the bottom floor. Everything seemed so normal. It was that that made the hot tears prick at the corners of my eyes, not the everything else outside. The normality of my house. Everything was the same, everything was there. Not even a single picture had fallen from the wall, or a mug out of the cupboard.
I found myself in the bathroom. I don’t remember heading there but suddenly I was looking at myself in the mirror. I held my hands up and touched my face, ran them through my long, bed-messy brown hair. I leaned over the counter, peering at my chestnut eyes. My pale skin seemed paler than normal, but, I reasoned, that’s understandable today, of all days.
“Get a hold of yourself, Anise,” I scolded my mirror-self. “You’re still here. That’s the important thing.” And to emphasize that point, I pinched the skin on my left forearm. Ouch. Yes, I was most definitely still here. If this was a dream, I wouldn’t be able to feel any pain. Right? Oh how I wish this was a dream! I would be the happiest girl in the world if this was all just a nightmare. I pinched myself again, just to be sure. Nope.
I threw on a pair of jeans, a coral t-shirt, and my favourite purple hoodie. I didn’t care that it clashed. It was the least of my concern. The least of anyone’s concern now.
I ran downstairs, my legs moving more freely now, and headed for the TV.
My hand froze on the remote. Did I really want to turn it on? I knew what would happen if I did. My nightmare would be confirmed as reality. But I needed to. I needed to know what had happened. I needed an explanation for what I had seen out my bedroom window.
I pressed the red button and the TV blared to life with exactly what I was expecting – chaos.
Ribbons scrolled across the bottom of the screen like a ticker tape of doom, words like DEVASTATION and STATE OF EMERGENCY shouting at me. The news-reporter woman with her usually perfect news-reporter hair seemed flustered and close to tears. I could see that she was speaking, but I couldn’t register what she was saying. The ribbon of doom at the bottom of the screen with its large white letters got through to me. Mainly just 6 words: Massive earthquake splits planet.
What? I waited until the words scrolled past a second time – knowing, yet still unbelieving, in their truth.
More words followed, and the news reporters voice suddenly broke through the wall my body seemed to have built up around me. “Scientists believe that the Earth’s core has overheated, causing a sort of implosion. Massive sinkholes, sections of land have just…” the woman suddenly seemed at a loss for words. Probably the first time in her career, I guessed. I watched as the reporter tried unsuccessfully to choke back tears. “Huge areas of land all over North America, all over the world, have just disappeared.”
“Well that would explain it,” I said out loud to my small, empty apartment. That would explain why there was only water, a vast ocean, outside my bedroom window, when yesterday there were houses, apartment buildings…oh yeah, and a whole fucking mountain range. How can the Rockies be there one day and replaced by an endless sea the next? “How?” I repeated out loud, again for the benefit of no-one, in a failing effort to rationalize what was happening. I glanced at the TV screen again where the news was showing a map of the world. Or what was left of it.
Where I was, the Pacific North West, was intact. But it was now only a long narrow strip of land – from Alaska to Mexico. There was nothing east. Nothing. My brain couldn’t seem to register that concept. Half of Russia and most of Asia was still on the screen, along with the east coast of Africa. The middle of Australia too. The coast, where most people lived, was underwater. The west coast of South America was still there too. Good, I thought. I’ve always wanted to go to Peru.
I laugh at that now. I don’t know what made me think that, then, but I guess I wasn’t really thinking straight. There was a large ugly scar, a vast chasm cutting across the world.
I went into auto-pilot, then. Survivor mode. I think we all have it. I grabbed a duffle bag from the closet and filled it with food and clothes. I chucked in some Band-Aids. I slung the bag over my shoulder.
My hand reached for the doorknob. As I was about to turn it, there was a knock. I almost screamed. My heart started pounding in my chest and ears.
I opened the door. Standing in front of me was a man dressed all in black, a heavy plastic visor shielding his face. Behind him stood a few others, just the same.
“Are you Anise Buttersby?”
I winced. I hated my name. I went by Abe. “Yes.” It was all I could think to say. I didn’t even think to ask why.
“Good,” the man replied as he roughly spun me around. I heard more than felt the handcuffs go around my wrist. And then I was in a car, its windows so tinted it looked like night. I banged on the glass partition in front with my boot. “Where are you taking me?” The only answer was silence.
THE CONSORTIUM
Once or twice he thought he caught a glimpse of Lyric's intentionally messy bright blue hair in the streams of people crowding the busy streets, despite the bone chilling cold of autumn on the cusp of winter.
Gabriel squeezed past people, and began jogging through the human congestion, dodging umbrellas, elbows and murderous glares from other pedestrians. After two blocks he gives up on his quest. Turning the collar of his jacket up against the wind, he huddled down and made his way to the tall, glass-fronted home of his grandfather’s investment empire.
Putting on his best ‘don’t talk to me’ face, he managed to get to his office, on the 26th floor, without too much hassle. He sat down heavily, grudgingly thankful for the soft thickness of the leather chair.
He realized he was shaking as he drew the envelope from his pocket. He took a deep breath. “Get a hold of yourself, Gabriel!” he chided himself.
The envelope was brown. His name was written on the front in a handwriting he didn’t recognize, simply as G. Ash. He turned it over and was about to open it when he noticed something on the flap. A dot sat in the middle of a larger circle. He shrugged and tore the paper. He drew out a single piece of paper, folded over double, and lifted the flap.
Four words stared back at him in neat typed letters. You have been chosen. At the bottom of the page was the same dot and circle.
What? He stared at the paper dumbly, and turned it over, expecting something else. It was blank.
He was about to throw the paper and envelope in the trash and put it down to some weird Monday morning prank, when something fell from the envelope – a business card. He picked it up gingerly, as if it would hurt him. On the front was the now familiar circle and dot design. He flipped it over. The Consortium. It was typed in the same neat font as the letter. In a strange cursive, that he recognized as being the same as his name on the envelope, was written, your presence has been requested. This was followed by an address.
Gabriel knew it instantly. It was as far away from this part of the city as you could get. The not so nice part, down by the docks. He had always tried to avoid that part of the city, if he could help it. The part that you didn’t want to get caught walking down a dark alley at night, or any other time of day, in. “Well it looks like my life isn’t so boring after all,” he said with a glance at his boring, yet expensive, desk and computer and phone. He looked at the card again. It didn’t mention a time, or date. He risked a glace out the window. It was still cold and grey and miserable. He hadn’t even taken off his scarf or coat yet. “Better now than never,” he said as he levered himself out of his chair. His leaving the office moments after arriving raised a few eyebrows as he pushed through the revolving door and back out onto the street.
Gabriel felt like he had been walking through a maze of run-down and abandoned warehouses for an eternity. He was just about to give up ever locating the address that was neatly typed up on the card he held him his hand with a death grip, the sharp edges of the paper cutting into the baby soft skin of his palm. He felt like the only person alive right now. He didn’t think another living soul was around for miles. Gusts of wind caused old, rusted metal walls and roof to creak and groan like trapped monsters.
At last he had arrived. He looked at the faded number above the door, barely lit by the dim lamp above, and down at the card. Yes, this was the place. It was a small, narrow box squeezed in between two large warehouses. It seemed like it was being held together just by the other buildings on either side.
He hesitated. The envelope offered nothing as to what was behind the rusted door in front of him, that was barely hanging on its hinges. Maybe Lyric would be there… The thought of the girl with the riot of colour, and the aura…the something about her that made him tingle gave him a jolt of courage.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door. He stepped forward slowly, in the darkness, his patent leather shoes ringing hollowly on the concrete floor. It was almost pitch black. Gabriel realized he was holding his breath.
He almost screamed when a brilliant white light flared to life all around him. Instinctively, he squeezed his eyes shut. He could see his eyelids, glowing red, with the brightness of the light. He slowly opened his eyes, wincing.
He realized he was standing in the middle of a circle. A circle of people. And he was the centre. I’m the dot, he thought numbly. Spotlights shone down on him from all around. He couldn’t make out the figures standing around him. They were cloaked in shadow, standing just outside the pool of light.
A voice spoke. It sounded like many voices, melded as one. “Welcome to the Consortium.”
Gabriel didn’t know what to say. “Thank you?” It was more question than answer. Why was he invited? What did they want him for? Who were these people? These questions and many more swirled inside him. He wanted to ask them all, but he couldn’t find his voice. His throat was dry with fear.
“We have invited you here today to ask you only one question. You can accept, or you can decline. The choice is yours, and yours alone. If you decline, you can go back to your life, just as it was, and you will never hear from us again. If you accept, we can guarantee your life will change forever. Drastically.”
Gabriel found his voice. “For good? Or bad?”
“That is not for us to decide.” There was a long pause. “You only have five minutes.” Another stretch of silence. “The clock is ticking.”
THE RORSCHACH TEST
I sat in a small grey room, wearing a matching grey jumpsuit. They weren’t very creative here. Why should they be? I thought with a shake of my head. It’s not as if they try to make you comfortable. It’s not like home. There’s no place like home, I thought, and I tried to suppress the smile that tugged at the corner of my lips and the laugh that threatened to burst out of me, thinking of the girl that sat on my left. My roommate. This is not the time, nor the place. It would just lead to questions. I stared straight ahead, trying to avoid the gazes of the three other women who sat around me in a circle. We all wore the same matching grey outfits. As if this place wasn’t depressing enough. I tried to look at the girl who was sitting opposite me and make it so her body blended in with the wall behind her. She had long blond hair, almost like mine, but lighter, brighter. Or it used to be, I thought. Now it looked lank and greasy, as if she hadn’t washed it for a few days, and didn’t care what she looked like. I knew how she felt. I’m pretty sure I looked the same way. She was taller than me, I saw. I could tell even though she was sitting. And she had blue eyes, like me too. Though hers were lighter, brighter than mine which were the dark blue of a lake on a sunny day. Without meaning to I started to imagine what she was like before. It seemed to shine through her dishevelled appearance, radiating from her. She used to be beautiful, and hold herself with grace. Though by the slouch of her shoulders, the slackness in her round face, that I could tell was pretty, even after a spell in here, and that the light had gone from her eyes, dulling them like a storm, that she had been beaten before. She had felt like this before, like we all did right now – imprisoned. There’s something about being trapped, that extinguishes a light inside you.
I realized I was staring at her, and she caught my eyes and gave a small, sad smile, raising her head slightly, removing from view the bright blue headband she wore, ineffectually, on her head. I averted my gaze.
We were alone at the moment, just the four of us, waiting, anxious, wondering what to expect. This was my first time here, and from a brief glance around the room at the knees bouncing up and down, the hands twisting in laps, the picking at fingernails, and the nervous humming, I wasn’t alone.
I moved the baggy sleeve of my dull jumpsuit up, distractedly rubbing the tattoo on my wrist. I saw my roommate watching me from under long eyelashes from the corner of her eye, and I saw her open her mouth, as if to say something, but she closed it again, afraid. She was small, smaller than me anyway, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She banged her feet, loudly, nervously against the legs of her chair. I noticed her bright red shoes and shook my head in dismay at her stupidity.
I looked around the room again, at the ceiling, with its Styrofoam square panels, and the sickly buzzing of the fluorescent lights, just naked tubes and then moved to the featureless walls – there was not even a single picture. The only thing in the room was the door. It was big, heavy, metal, with only a thin vertical slit in it for a window. Eventually my eyes fell on the girl who was sitting to my right in the small circle of chairs. She had mousey brown ringlets, tied back in a pony tail. She was the one that w
as humming. I noticed a patch sewn on her chest – Darling, in neat block letters. Her last name, just like mine was sewn on me. I looked to the girl across from me. Hers read Tremaine. I turned to the girl at my left. Her name was hidden by her hair, but I knew it anyway. Gale. The door opened with a squeak that made a shiver run down my back.
I bowed my head, and dark, polished high-heeled shoes came into view. I raised my eyes slightly and took in her sleek, tight pencil skirt, and fitted blazer, all black of course, over a crisp white blouse. Her hair was black and her presence seemed to suck whatever it of life was left in this room away. She held a tray with four thimble sized paper cups. She stood over at me, glaring down through her dark rimmed glassed. “Drink this,” she said, almost thrusting the cup in my face. I cringed at those words, it was automatic. She laughed, loud and sharp. “Don’t worry, Alice,” she said. I could hear her chiding me in her tone. “This isn’t going to do anything to you.” The woman paused, then added, “well, nothing like you might think anyway.”
I took the thimble-full of liquid carefully between my fingers. My sleeve moved down, exposing my tattoo. The woman’s eyes narrowed at the sight of it and she clucked her tongue. I hastily dropped my arm and the image of a small white rabbit disappeared again under the grey. “Alice, I wish you wouldn’t still cling to your fantasies,” the woman said as she passed out the remaining paper cups. “And that goes for all of you,” the therapist admonished. When her back was turned, I tipped mine out on the ground. I’d had enough bad experiences drinking potions.
The woman took a seat in an empty chair between Darling and Tremaine. She turned to look at each of us. “Now Alice, Wendy, Ella, and Dorothy. I hope you know why you’re all here. You all failed the Rorschach test.”
TWISTED LOVE
We were too different. We were two different species, to be truthful. I should have known it could never have worked. In fact, I must have, deep down. Of course I saw the looks we got walking down the street together - when people got close enough to see that she was different. To see that her skin wasn’t like mine, wasn’t like most of ours. Sometimes people didn’t notice at first the strange lack of humanity to her skin, the bland, featureless-ness of it. It was smooth, like stone, like marble. But it was pliant at the same time. A strange substance, but I didn’t mind it. If others didn’t see her skin, they almost immediately saw her eyes, once they got close enough. You can never miss meccha’s eyes. They are literally windows to their insides. Every meccha’s eyes are gold. Bright copper, reflecting their inner workings through their clear irises.
And Eve’s eyes were beautiful and always reminded me of summer – of golden wheat or dried grass. Or a nice tall glass of amber ale at the local public house. Whatever they reminded me of, it was always something good.
Eve, as her name implies, was the first meccha made by her creator. Of course there are many New Alchemists around the Empire who build mecchas, and there are quite a few here in this city alone. But I remember the day I walked past the workshop. It was barely visible, where it was located in the narrow twisting alley way of Regents Street, where the sun never seems to reach. The buildings are crammed together like sardines; tall, almost angling across the street towards each other, like tree branches. It’s in perpetual shadow, and the few people who find themselves wandering up it pull their coats tighter and their collars higher to frighten away the chill. I’d walked down Regents a million times, avoiding catching others’ gazes, just using it as the quickest route from one part of the city to another. That’s what people do here. No one acknowledges anyone else, trapped in their own personal worlds going on inside themselves. And most of the shops crammed into the lower parts of Regents Street’s buildings seemed to change on an almost weekly basis, so I never took much notice. It is mainly filled with frippery such as selling women’s hat’s and ridiculous corsets in a rainbow of colours. Which is what made Eve stand out, more than anything. At first I thought she was just a window mannequin. I blame that mistaken identity on the state of the windows of her creators shop, so thickly caked with grime and soot as they were, just like the rest of the storefronts along the cobbled street.
I swore the last time I had happened to glance into the store, to avoid the particularly stern look of a man rushing somewhere rather importantly, it was a rather sad looking glove shop. But I saw Eve’s dress in the window like a ghost. It was a pale pearl-coloured thing and shone dimly through the darkened window. I drew my eyes away from what I thought was simply a store dummy to the sign above the door. It was a hastily painted sign that proclaimed the space was occupied by a Mr. Van der Veen, New Alchemist. I stopped short and glanced again at the ghostly form of Eve in the window. I moved towards the pane and rubbed my sleeve against it. I looked up into the most beautiful, peaceful face I had ever seen. And that face looked back at me with sparkling golden eyes the colour of the exquisite brass and copper of her insides – the cogs and gears that are small and intricate and struts that are as fine as filaments that make up every meccha. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly in a smile and her hand moved with the strange smooth-yet-jerky grace that mecchas had. And then the oddly bespectacled face of Mr Van der Veen appeared from behind her, glaring at me through the window. He had an array of tools including magnifying glasses, jutting off the corners of his eyeglasses.
I put my hand to the rim of my hat and dipped my head in acknowledgement. I pushed open the door to his shop with a discordant jingle of tiny bells.
Before I set a single foot over the threshold, he was in my face, shaking a finger. “Why are you looking at my meccha?”
“I just noticed her, sir. I was caught off guard. I’ve never seen anything like her before.”
The inventor’s eyes widened. “You have never seen a meccha before?”
“Oh, yes! Of course. Just never one so…exquisite,” I said, not sure if I referred to her beauty or the quality of her craftsmanship. “I was wondering if she is…,” I paused, unsure how to proceed without offending. “If she is available?”
Van der Veen’s thick white caterpillar eyebrows rose in understanding. “Ah, I see. What sort of business do you run that you require my meccha for?” He glanced over his shoulder at Eve who stood still as a statue in the window. “A public house server? A brothel perhaps?”
“No!” I almost shouted, shocked and appalled at the assumption that something so perfect could be used for such unattractive purposes. I composed myself. “No, not at all. I was just…” I stopped. I didn’t know what I was wanting, all I knew is that I needed her in my life. “What is her name?” I changed the subject.
“Name?” This time it was the New Alchemist’s turn to look caught off guard. “She doesn’t have a name any more than any of my other inventions,” he said, gesturing to a jumbled pile of objects and gadgets that hunkered further on in the darkening depths of the shop.
“Well, could you tell me a bit about her?” I asked, as a prospective…own-, buyer.
“She is my pride and joy. She is my very first ever meccha. I mean to say successful one.” Again the man gestured back behind him into his shop. I could just barely make out humanoid bits and pieces - an arm here, a leg or torso there, in various states of construction, or deconstruction.
“So she is your Eve, then?” I said, throwing a look to the dark haired woman in the window who I could tell was listening to our conversation by the slight tilt of her head, even though her copper eyes looked out onto the street at the people avoiding each other.
The man laughed at that. “Well, yes, I guess she could be considered to be my Eve. I have yet to make an Adam.”
“Well, is Eve for sale?” I asked, knowing that even as I said it, it sounded hard and callous. People shouldn’t be able to be bought, or sold. Even people who were not a real, which is how people often referred to the distinction between those who have been man-made, and those who were, well, man, like myself.
Van der Veen tapped his bearded chin thoughtf
ully with a finger. “Hmmm. Well, I was using her more as something to entice customers through my doors, but for the right price I guess we could make a deal.”
I smiled and removed my pocketbook. A few moments later and I was walking the remainder of Regents Street, arm in arm with my beautiful Eve. Like most mecchas she moved with a ethereal gliding motion that was so different from us – something else that people would pick up on. But I ignored the stares and slack jaws as we walked companionably through the crowded city. If you didn’t listen too closely to her voice she sounded just like any other woman did. It was easy for me to block out the slight whir of her voice box gears.
On a daily basis people reprimanded me for being with her, but I laughed it off. I was happy, and so was she. Our love was strange, different. Some might even say twisted. But I’ll remember it as the best times of my life.
Alas, it seems not even machinery can last forever. After the first accident I took her back to Van der Veen to get repaired, and he gladly did so, for a fee. The second accident I finally realized wasn’t accidental at all. People were trying to destroy her – destroy us – and they were succeeding. She lost one of her arms, and even though Van der Veen replaced it, she still bore the scars that I thought made her more beautiful. More human. We had been getting more threats. People just didn’t understand, and it was too much for them. I still have her clockwork heart on my mantle.
In the end we were too different. We were two different species, to be truthful. I should have known it could never have worked.
A Future That Time Forgot
Tomas didn’t mind his job as a harnesser, even though it was the lowest of the low, it didn’t pay much, and he went home every night with a new assortment of bruises, cuts and bumps. And on days like today, after a heavy rainstorm, went home smelling horrible – a hundred times worse than the worst wet dog. The stench permeated his clothes, and even seemed to soak into his skin, even after the beast had been fully dried with the blast driers.
But even though wet mammoth smelled like the worst thing on earth, and strangely the young ones smelled worse than the other ones, which was what he was trying to manoeuvre into the drying room right now, he preferred the mammoths a million times more than any of the other beasts that the Council used to help keep the planet running.
As Tomas tried to bodily move the young mammoth into the giant drying rooms, so he could then harness it so it could be used by a Rider to plow the fields, he glanced over his shoulder at a large herd of triceratops which were being ushered back and forth in long lines. He could see the energy storage packs strapped to the sides of each massive animals, though couldn’t make out the wires that ran from the giant canisters to their frills. The Council used Cera’s to harness solar energy – it collected well in their large membranous headpieces, and was funnelled into the canisters to be used elsewhere.
Tomas looked longingly at the Beastmasters. They were able to keep their space from the giants, and avoid the lashing tails and stomping feet. But it was people like Tomas, the harnessers, whose job it was to harness all the creatures for them to be used in their jobs. The mammoths, they were ridden to plow the fields for planting (and also helped with the planting as they could scatter seeds with their trunks); the Ceras were mainly used for harnessing the power of the sun.
Tomas finally led the young mammoth to where the straps were that were used to tie them down in front of the wall sized hair dryers. He was thankful all the Flyers were already harnessed by another harnesser, and they were already out on patrol. He hated harnessing the flying dinosaurs, the pterodactyls, with a passion. It was almost impossible to avoid getting hit with their wings, while keeping far away from their deadly beaks filled with razor sharp teeth or slicing edges.
He hoped to eventually graduate from a Harnesser, to a Beastmaster, to a Flyer. He turned on the blast drier and waited for the one side of the mammoth to dry, and then un-tethered it and turned it around so the other side of it could dry.
Once the beast was dry, Tomas pressed a large button on the wall. Noiselessly, a door slid open and a young girl came through, wearing the muted browns of a Steerer – one of the people who rode the mammoths up and down the fields, pulling the plows along behind them. She smiled shyly at him as he leaned down and unhooked the stabilizing straps, and the girl took the reins in hand, and began to lead the mammoth out the wide door at the end of the drying bay and out into the field. He watched as she hooked a brown booted foot on the stirrup and climbed, with the help of handholds along the top of the saddle, up and on top of the mammoth, and then steered it expertly out into the plowing fields.
He sighed and stepped back outside. High above, he could see the large dark shapes of the pterodactyls, flying and wheeling, the riders keeping an eye on everything and everyone on the ground. They were the eyes and ears of the Council. The guards, keeping everyone in line, making sure everyone followed the rules. And Tomas knew more than most, what happened if you broke any of the hundreds of rules written down in the Book of Governance. The Book ruled the entire world. It ruled even the Council itself, who went by everything written in it, to a fault. And punishment for breaking any of the rules The Book, was death.
Most of his family had broken a rule at some point. Sometimes the rules were so trivial, so minor, you didn’t even realize you had broken one, until one of the Flyer guards appeared at your door, wearing skin tight uniforms the same colours as the flying beast they rode – sometimes brightly mottled, sometimes dark and dull.
So now there was only Tomas and his younger sister, Hana, left.
Tomas looked at the fields full of mammoths, and higher up on the steppes, the hills that rose up, that were dotted with lines of triceratops, that were made to move their frills back and forth in order to capture the most sunlight, to be bottled as energy to power lights, and air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter. He watched as a man whipped a triceratops who had begun to meander off course. He squinted up once more to the ‘dactyls, as they wheeled and screeched, stirring up wind to be harnessed to power things that Tomas didn’t even know about. Things that the Council kept secret from everyone except the Council itself.
Suddenly Tomas wasn’t content to be just a harnesser. And he definitely didn’t want to be a flyer. He didn’t want to be a spy, a killer. He wanted to stop this, to stop the tyrannical rule that the Council held over everyone on the planet – using beasts to their own end, to help themselves, not help everyone that lived on this world. They lived with the dinosaurs, along side them. They shouldn’t be using them, abusing them like this! He thought hotly. He took out the long electrically charged rod, that he was supposed to use to keep the mammoths in line as he harnessed them - but rarely did – from the pouch down the side of his leg and pressed the button that brought it to life. He headed in the direction of the Council Houses.
Orphan Ivy
Ivy Malone was an orphan. She always thought of herself as one, even though she had two loving step-parents who had raised her as their own. They waited until today, the eve of her eighteenth birthday, to tell her how she had come to them. She had always known that she wasn’t like them. For one, she was tall and slim, with fine corn-silk hair. Both her parents had dark hair, and dark eyes. It didn’t take a genius. They had found her on their doorstep one brisk, yet beautiful and sunny, March morning.
“But not in a bassinet, like you would expect,” said her father Gordon.
“That’s like a basket,” explained her mother, Dorothy, but who everyone always called Dot.
“Yes, a basket,” her father said, waving a hand impatiently. “But no, there you were, lying outside on our doorstep, all bundled up, but in a casket!”
“That’s a-” her mother began, but Ivy butted in.
“It’s a coffin, mother. I know what a coffin is, I’m not a child.” She glared, her large dark blue eyes bordering on violet.
“Yes, of course. I guess everyone knows what caskets are, thanks
to the war…” Her eyes shifted to the window that was letting in a watery yellow light. She remained quiet, gazing out at the drab buildings that looked exactly like their own house. A carriage trundled noisily past.
“As I was saying,” her father said irritably, “you were on our doorstep in a casket, with a portion of the lid open at the top, for your head.
“You had a piece of ivy tucked into your swaddling clothes,” her mother said in a faraway voice, not looking away from the window. “It was beautiful, a mix of red and green. That’s why we named you Ivy, you know.”
Ivy hadn’t known. “What about this? Was I wearing this when you found me?” she lifted a small delicate key from around her neck on a thin piece of cord. It was a yellowish-white and hard.
“It’s whalebone,” said her mother, still not taking her eyes from whatever memories held her, whatever ghosts she saw outside the window in the cold city streets that were seen only by her.
Ivy had worn it for as long as she could remember. She ran her fingers across the intricately carved pattern, its ridges and edges. It was relaxing, soothing.
“I wonder if it actually opens anything,” she said in a distracted, thoughtful tone.
“I highly doubt it,” replied her father. Her mother remained silent, watching ghosts of her past roam the streets. A royal guard strolled by, tossing a baton easily back and forth from one hand to the other.
“How do you know?”
Her father patted her on the shoulder and she shrugged it off. “It’s just a necklace. Don’t read too much into something where there is nothing.”
“There was something else in your casket with you. We almost missed it.” Her mother finally tore herself away from the window and moved to the mantle above the large stone hearth. There was a small brilliant blue vial with a stopper. Ivy had forgotten about it. When she was little she remembered asking her mother what it was, and the subject was always quickly changed. Go play outside, she was told. Or, sometimes her mother gave her a cookie, and the vial was quickly forgotten again. Her mother took it from the shelf, and wrapped her fingers gingerly around it. “This was with you, at the bottom of the box.”
“Casket,” her father repeated.
Her mother reluctantly handed it to Ivy. “What is it?” She raised it to her eyes but couldn’t make out what was inside, except that it was a dark liquid.
“I took it to the chemist once,” her father said. “They said it was some type of acid.”
“Acid?” Ivy started, and held the vial away from her as if the bottle itself would burn. “Why would I have a tiny bottle of acid with me when I was just a baby?”
“That’s what we always wondered,” said her father. “We thought maybe one day we would get an answer. It was connected to you, we didn’t want to get rid of it.”
The small clock on the mantelpiece chimed noon. There was a knock on the door. Ivy’s parents looked at each other. Was it fear on their faces?
Ivy stayed where she was, inspecting the vial. She could hear her mother talking to someone softly. “Gordon?” her mother called with a slight quaver in her voice. Ivy’s father joined her mother at the front door.
Suddenly there was a woman standing in their living room. At least Ivy thought it was a woman, but it looked more like a pile of dirty rags than a person. The woman’s hair was a tangled dirty mass that looked like straw. Ivy fought to turn her face away in disgust at the visitor’s appearance and noticed with a shock that she had the same blue-purple eyes as her.
Dot and Gordon flanked the woman on either side, keeping their distance.
“Ivy, this woman says she is your birth mother,” Dot said in a quiet voice.
“She is,” said Gordon. “Don’t you remember the letter that was folded inside Ivy’s blanket? The one that said on her eighteenth birthday she would return.”
Ivy’s jaw dropped and she looked from her mother, to her father, to the worn pile of rags that looked more hermit than human.
The woman under the nest of hair smiled. Her eyes gleamed as they fell on Ivy’s throat and the key that sat there. “You still have the key!” she shouted. “ I’m sure you have many questions, my dear, and I have many answers. Come,” she said, holding a bony hand toward her. “I will tell you everything you ever wanted to know.”
Ivy clutched the vial in her left hand and the key protectively in her right. Today, Ivy Malone’s life would begin.
The Last Train to Nowhere
The gun was safely nestled in its velvet lined box, stowed under the seat of a man whose ticket was neatly stamped Mr Albert Schaeffer.
The gun, with its filigree scrollwork and pearl inlaid handle, had belong to Mr Albert Schaeffer, but the man occupying seat 12B and in possession of the train ticket of the same name, on the express train from Vancouver to San Jose was not him.
The man in seat 12B closed his eyes and leaned his head against the plush chair back and tried to forget about Mr Albert Schaeffer, former owner of the antique gun now in his possession. He sat, trying to focus on the soothing repetitive drone of the train moving along the tracks, clicking and clacking. But the sound couldn’t erase the image of Mr Schaeffer that seemed to be indelibly etched onto the back of his eyelids.
Mr Anson Boxlightner, for that was who the man in 12B really was, had never killed anyone before. Not until Mr Schaeffer. And so he had also never been on the run, having stuffed Mr Schaeffer’s corpse into the underbrush, the thorny scrub that ran alongside the railway, in the dark of night. He made sure to dump Mr Schaeffer’s body far away from the station or interchange outpost – in the middle of nowhere, where people would be unlikely to stumble upon the body. He had considered briefly removing Mr Schaeffer’s clothes, then though against it and left his dark brown suit on, hoping it would disguise him even more crumpled within the dried brown branches of his final resting place.
Mr Boxlightner tapped his foot nervously against the box under his seat, feeling better knowing it was there and it was safe. He ran a hand across his forehead. There was the tiniest squeak, the sound of someone sitting down in a leather upholstered chair. He opened his eyes and a scream like a shot erupted from him. The seat opposite, which had been empty the entire trip, was now occupied by a thin man with gold rimmed glasses that glinted with the sun. The stranger was sitting very stiffly at the edge of the chair, leaning forward slightly towards him. Anson stifled his startled scream just before it garnered too much attention from fellow passengers. He was thankful, yet unnerved, that the car he was riding in was relatively empty.
The slim man smiled a thin, crooked smile. “Apologies, Mr Schaeffer,” he said offering a hand. Anson took it with a sweaty palm and shook.
Schaeffer. He thinks I’m Schaeffer! Whoever this is doesn’t actually know Schaeffer. Anson broke out in a cold sweat all over as a chilling thought occurred to him. But whoever he is, he knew Schaeffer was supposed to be on this train and in this very seat! He tried to feign ignorance and confusion.
“I’m sorry, Mister…?”
The thin man sat back abruptly in the chair as if someone had pushed him forcefully, a look of puzzlement racing across his face, followed quickly by what Anson thought was wariness, or perhaps suspicion.
“Surely you can’t have forgotten who I am!” The man said in a raised whisper.
Anson rubbed his head, hoping it looked like he was disoriented from having being woken from a nap.
“I’m sorry, I’m not fully with it right now, you caught me off guard, and woke me.”
The man seemed to relax slightly. “Of course, I’m sorry Mr Schaeffer. I didn’t mean to surprise you. I shouldn’t have come when you were resting, but,” the man took a watch from his pocket, glanced at it and slid it back, “this was our agreed upon meeting time.”
Anson tried not to look so surprised, and he glanced at his watch. “Oh! Is it?” he made a show of looking at his own watch. Two o’clock. “Oh yes, two o’clock,” he said, as if he knew a shred of what was
going on. He looked at the stranger in the seat opposite and waited, nervously and expectantly.
The man looked back at him, calm and composed. “So.” There was a pause. “Do you have it?”
A jolt of fear went through Anson. Have it? Have what?
His mouth echoed his thoughts. “Have what?”
The man across from him looked irritated and leaned forward again, elbows on knees, decreasing the space between them. Anson wished he wasn’t in the chair, he couldn’t move away.
“The gun, of course, what else?” the man whispered in a harsh rasp.
“Ah,” Anson nodded as if understanding. “Of course.”
The man visibly relaxed once more. “I’m glad to hear it. So why don’t you give it to me.”
Give it to him? But who on earth is he?
“But how am I supposed to know you are who you say you are? You haven’t even told me your name.” Anson hoped this would make the man reveal himself to him, and maybe he would be lead a bit out of the dark and into the light.
The train whistle blew suddenly, long and loud and sharp, and both men jumped at the sound.
The man regarded Anson a long moment. “I am Shaw. Robert Shaw.”
The name didn’t ring any bells for Anson, and so he waited, hoping Robert Shaw would continue. He didn’t.
“If I’m giving you the gun, I need to confirm that you are indeed Mr Shaw,” Anson said. Who on earth is Robert Shaw and what does he want with Mr Schaeffer’s gun?
Shaw sighed and drew out his wallet from the back pocket of his pants, and took out a card. “As you may know, Mr Schaeffer, I don’t usually do this. People usually remember they are meeting with me and don’t require proof that I am who I say I am.” He laughed, an odd sound that caused Anson to shudder involuntarily. Mr Shaw handed the card over, almost reluctantly. It was thick, and smooth. Good quality. There was a small black and white photograph in the top right corner. It was most definitely of the thin man with the glasses that sat opposite him. The rest of the white card was taken up by his name, and underneath that a statement: the solution to any problem.
Anson glanced up and saw Shaw smiling at him, one side of his mouth twisted up in a lopsided smirk.
“The solution to any problem?”
Shaw laughed loudly, and then with an embarrassed glanced to the passengers in the seats around them, lowered his voice again. “Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, in my line of work, you don’t want to overtly state what you do. It would scare away the clients.” He chuckled, softly this time. “Don’t you think the solution to any problem is apt?” Shaw looked at Anson, and Anson resisted the urge to look away.
“Problem?” Anson repeated dumbly, not knowing what else to say.
Shaw smiled. “Yes, I get rid of people’s ‘problems’,” he bent his fingers into quotes. “Would you say that is the job of a,” he lowered his voice another register, “hired gun such as myself?”
A cold bead of sweat rolled down between Anson’s shoulder blades. Hired gun?
He handed Shaw back his business card. “But what I don’t understand, Mr Shaw, is why a hired gun, like yourself, is wanting hi-, my gun.”
Shaw looked at him again. “My, the nerves of all of this must really be getting to you Mr Schaeffer, if you don’t remember our arrangement. You said you were unable to pay me what my usual fee is to rid you of your particular problem, so we agreed that you would give me your antique gun as collateral instead. And I would like to see the aforementioned gun, to see if it is indeed worth my time ridding you of your pesky little problem.
Problem? Anson wondered what on earth could have been Schaeffer’s problem that he hired a hit man to take care of. His mind whirled and without much thought, his foot pushed out the cherry wood box from underneath his seat. It was engraved with initials. A.L.S. Anson wondered what the L stood for. He leaned down and picked up the box, running a hand almost lovingly across it. It was a beautiful box. He flipped the catch on the lid and opened it. He had only quickly glanced at it after he had finished disposing of Mr Schaeffer, and in the darkness of the night and the feeble flickering of his lamp, he hadn’t seen it clearly. He stifled a gasp. It was the most beautiful gun he had ever seen. He turned the box on his lap towards Mr Shaw. Surely this would be more than enough for him.
“Magnificent!” Shaw whispered reverently. “This is more than sufficient for me to carry out what you want from me, Mr Schaeffer. Trust me when I say that Mr Anson Boxlightner will no longer be problem for you.”
The Labyrinthine Helix
Josephine had always wanted to be a scientist. Because she wanted to help people she said. It was what she told everyone. because it was the truth. At least that was the original idea. that was back when Josephine was naive and believed in an ideal world. When she believed her fellow scientists wanted to help people. How quickly things change.
Josephine had believed what she had been working on, what she and others had called the Labyrinthine helix a gene modification project would be the stepping stone to curing most of the diseases and illnesses that affected humans.
Everything was going well. Until it wasn't. Something happened during a coding sequence. Some little switch in a gene turned on. And that was the start of the end. It was so subtle by the time anyone realized something was wrong it was too late.
Josephine laughed to herself. Who would have thought something as innocuous as a slight cough would hail the start of the zombie apocalypse. she tried not to think of the fact that she was the cause of it. The labyrinthine helix was her baby after all. And her baby had mutated into a monster.
Not that they were the kind of zombies everyone thought of before it actually happened. these zombies didn't eat people. So that was a positive. But it didn't make them any less dead. The living dead people called them. But were they really living if their hearts had stopped beating and their bodies began to decay? somehow they could still move. And they still had some brain activity but not one that could be called human anymore. They were more like wild animals. And like wild animals, they needed to be treated with respect. you had to keep them fed otherwise they would turn on you even though they seemed to prefer small animals like chickens, rabbits and squirrels. sometimes sheep.
People had started keeping them almost as pets or working animals. They seemed to be trainable to do odd jobs. But that was before they realized the mutation was communicable and sometimes it seemed like there were more dead around than living. They only had a fairly short shelf life. You could only be around someone that was decaying for so long. Then they had to be put down. It was ruthless and heartless Josephine thought, but then she remembered they weren't really human anymore and you didn't want them to suffer did you? They could go on indefinitely if their decay was stopped. Was that really living? She wasn't sure.
But she couldn't place blame. Doing that would make her a hypocrite. After all, she had some herself as...she shuddered at the thought, slave labour. But could they be slaves if they weren’t really people anymore? They looked like people…depending on how much of them there was left that was. They wore clothes like living people. Only because to not wear anything would be revolting and she couldn’t bare to look at them.
They had had names, of course, but Josephine called them by their patient number. It depersonalized them. Made it easier for her to accept. She called hers VP1, VP2 etc. for Virus Patient. Except for two, of course. They were a daily reminder of her failure. That she had not only failed herself, but failed everyone, failed humanity.
She stood still as one of her workers helped her to button up her lab coat. She had given up insisting she could do this simple task on her own, without their help. But they seem to like being useful. She smiled at the woman who was struggling to do up the buttons with her grey fingers, her skin not yet dead since she had given them one of her serums. That didn’t help the huge gaping hole in the woman’s left cheek that exposed teeth.
Josephine looked instead at th
e woman’s eyes once a vivid blue, just like her own, but now they had dulled to a stormy ocean grey. She reached out instinctively to brush away a strand of stringy dirty blond hair. Josephine had tried to get them to wash their hair, at least in the nearby creek, but nothing seemed to help bring life back into it and it looked like dirty straw. The woman had reached the buttons at her chest but was having trouble with the last few.
“It’s okay, mother,” she said patiently, brushing the woman’s stiff paper-dry hands away. “I can do these on my own.”
The woman raised her eyes to her daughter’s and what Josephine took to be a smile stretched across what remained of her lower face, her dry lips cracking.
In the kitchen she heard a loud thud. Someone had dropped a frying pan, again. She sighed and went through to the kitchen. “You’re going to make me late again, Charles!” she complained as she leaned down to pick up the dropped pan, saving her brother the difficulty of bending down and standing up again. Once you became a zombie, your tendons and muscles become stiff and unyielding, making what used to be easy, fluid motion very difficult.
Josephine stood, and grabbed Charles’ elbow, helping him upright from his half bend. He moaned a thanks. At least that’s what Josephine took it to be.
“Remember, I told you I can’t be late today. I told you and mother that the other day. Today is the big day. I have to get to work early, before anyone else. You know more than anyone how it is over there,” she said, looking at her brother’s eyes for signs of recognition at his past life. Charles worked in another section of the hospital from her. “You know how security is. Since…” She shook her head. She couldn’t think about it. She just had to get in and do it.
She wondered how long it would take for someone to notice a single vial of the virus was missing.
parents of…well, eternity.