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Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.
The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.
Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.
The Sirens’ Last Lament
Brian S. Wheeler
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler
Contents
Chapter 1 - Saving Pecan Pie for Another Day
Chapter 2 - Aliens and Gameshows in the Killing Chambers
Chapter 3 - Silicon, Plastic and Sequin
Chapter 4 - The Tragedy of the Starship Diana
Chapter 5 - Victory for Contestant Number Two
Chapter 6 - Green Eyes and Luxury
Chapter 7 - One Execution Too Many
Chapter 8 - Cold, Hungry and Unmoored
Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland
About the Writer
Other Stories at Flatland Fiction
Chapter 1 - Saving the Pecan Pie for Another Day
“Yeah. I’m sure, Gunner. You can take away the tray.”
I don’t get in a hurry to return Simon’s tray to the commissary. Simon has an appointment with the firing squad, and the prisoner should take his time savoring a last meal of lobster tail and steak. Simon’s execution will be far from the first killing I’ve witnessed on this rock, and I’m in no hurry to deliver another sentence.
“I hope you tasted it. You ate too quickly.”
“I was hungry, Gunner.” Simon winks. “It’s been a long time since me, or anyone else on Ganymede, tasted anything a sweet as lobster tail.”
I’ve been a sentry in this maximum security penitentiary blasted on this cold rock orbiting the mighty, red-eye Jupiter for nearly a decade, and not once have I ever doubted whether those of the Black Sun Temple deserved the death sentences those of us on Ganymede work to deliver. The space marshals will eventually track down all those cultists, no matter if they’re eking out a survival in some hovel blasted into the side of an asteroid, no matter if they’re frozen in deep sleep and floating at the solar system edge in cylinders no larger than coffins, hoping to slip beyond the attention of the sky marshals’ sensors. Sooner or later, the sky marshals will find them all. Earth spares no nickel in providing those marshals with all the equipment and resources they need to track down those Black Sun cultists. All those cultists who ever bore the black sun tattoo upon their bald crown will eventually be delivered to this penitentiary where they will receive their punishment. Not once have I ever worried that those cultists didn’t get what they deserved, no matter that Earth never gave them a trial.
Yet I’m not as hard, or as cold, in the heart as I used to be. When I took my first shift in this prison’s corridors, after I lost my right arm and much of the skin on my right side of my face while raiding a Black Sun supply depot nestled in Saturn’s rings, I thought I would grow more and more immune to any of the suffering the condemned feel when finally brought to justice. I often fear I have only grown softer.
“You haven’t even touched your pecan pie, Simon.” I reluctantly accept the tray that slides out from the prisoner’s door, briefly inspecting it before setting it upon a cart that another guard will roll into the commissary now that Simon is finished with his meal. “It’s very hard for chef Mic to bake a pecan pie for a prisoner. All that sugar’s kept on tight rations here around Jupiter.”
Simon giggles from the other side of the door. “Oh, I’m just saving that slice for another time.”
I laugh at Simon’s bravado. I think it would be impolite if I didn’t. Simon is showing a good amount of courage in maintaining his sense of humor.
But when I open the door, and when Simon has to look once again upon my shattered face, I see much of that courage flinch at the sight of my bone grin and burned features. Simon is no braver than most all the other prisoners who have waited for their execution in that very cell. A lot of prisoners attempt to conceal their fear with laughter when my keys jangle in their cells’ locks, and they’re always the ones who drag their feet the hardest as I lead them down the long hall leading to the killing chambers.
“So that’s it, Simon? You still sure you’ve gotten enough to eat?”
Simon swallows to regain much of the composure he lost when looking again upon my face. “Eating much more now will only make a worse mess out of it all in the end.”
“You don’t worry about that.”
“No, Gunner. I’m done with this cell.”
“And you’re ready to listen to the sirens?”
“I am. I’m ready for that final gift.”
I cuff Simon’s wrists behind his back as he stands from his cell’s cot and steps into the corridor. The handcuffs are only ceremony. Simon is a frail, small man, whose wrinkles, whose stained and chipped teeth, whose baggy, dark eyes clearly express he’s well beyond middle age. Simon’s thin arms and legs tell me he’s likely spent too much time floating around in zero gravity since the Black Sun Temple went on the run. Simon would be little contest for the strength and martial skill still held in my left, remaining arm. It’s not like Simon would have anywhere to run; Ganymede is a very unpleasant place for mankind. So I don’t bother shackling Simon’s ankles. We only shackles the ankles of the Black Sun Temple’s leadership; we only shackle the ankles as a sign of disrespect to the powerful among that cult who led so many souls so far astray.
“You must enjoy your work, Gunner.”
I shake my head. “What makes you think that I take any pleasure from leading misguided fools like yourself to their deaths?”
“Would you try telling me that you don’t take some sort of satisfaction putting all of us with the black sun tattooed on our heads to the flame?”
“Maybe I did at first. But I don’t anymore.”
“I envy you all the same.”
“This moon is cold, lonely and cruel, Simon. What is there to envy?”
Simon instantly answers. “I envy you for the sirens. You get to hear the si
rens almost every day.”
I don’t reply as I gently lead Simon down the corridor towards the killing chambers. I could never understand the reasoning possessed by the cultists of the Black Sun Temple. I could never understand how the pious so easily ignore all the flaws in their logic, how they so easily accept the fact that they think in unending circles. All my attempts at self-inspection, or meditation, lead me to think only of a short, thin line leading to an abrupt end. And yet, the sirens’ first song was beautiful to me. And yet, the sirens’ first song was so terrible to those who accepted the black sun inked upon their bald crowns.
The Black Sun Temple opened its doors shortly after we discovered the sirens out there amongst the stars. The Black Sun Temple constructed its altar the moment the sirens gave us their first song. A lot of people felt elated to learn that we were not alone amid the cosmos. A lot of folks were real happy to discover that the sirens lived on a planet orbiting a sun not too unlike our own, a sun that burned in our relative neighborhood in the galaxy. But a lot of people were simply terrified to learn we were not alone. No matter the nationality or the caste, no matter the religion or gender, there were all kinds of folks who trembled to imagine the creatures orbiting that sun that was a short light jump from our own.
The Black Sun Temple catered to those who feared. The Black Sun Temple gave mankind a new religion, a new dogma, for the dawning epoch when man was forced to accept that he was not alone of the Maker’s creation. The Black Sun Temple preached that the sirens would never be our friends. The Black Sun Temple whispered that the sirens were amassing a starship armada to conquer our continents. The Black Sun Temple said the sirens were demons, that they were among those the angels cast into boiling hell. The Black Sun Temple warned that the sirens would dine upon the buttered and spiced flesh of our babes. The pious quickly renounced the old religions that had served mankind for centuries in favor of the new temple. Musty robes and dusty books were cast aside. While many of us looked upwards into the stars with wonder, just as many fearfully bowed to accept the black sun inked upon their bald heads.
Those who were not afraid built powerful radios with which to hear the songs seeping through the stars that the sirens sang to us. The curious crafted the starships that would one day traverse in a wink the light years separating our suns. The brave volunteered to be among the first delegates to travel to the sirens. The scholarly sacrificed sleep to the study of the language they felt the sirens’ song implied.
But while so many dedicated themselves to traversing the distance that separated mankind from the sirens, many still trembled as they huddled in their homes and listened to the songs broadcast from the stars. Where others heard harmonies telling of new life, the fearful heard only dirges. While some heard twinkling starlight in the sirens’ melodies, many remained who heard only the dark. And so those who feared answered the Black Sun Temple’s calling. They listened to the priests of that young altar tell of terrifying dreams inspired by the sirens’ song, of visions where the Earth’s vital sun vanished, of prophecies where cold and dark consumed the solar system that spawned man.
“I thought that black tattoo inked on your bald head meant that you hated the sirens, Simon. Isn’t that hate the very reason you’re walking down this long corridor?”
“I regret nothing. I wouldn’t repent a thing.”
“Then why do you want to hear the sirens? Why do you all request to listen to the sirens at the end if you all hate those creatures so much?”
Simon pauses in his march to reply. “Even the devil has a beautiful voice, Gunner.”
I still don’t understand, but I’m not going to push Simon for any further explanation. This slow walk down a short hall is all the time Simon has remaining with his thoughts, all the time he has to prepare himself for whatever waits for him beyond the dark. It’s no time for me to commandeer the conversation. We’re both silent by the time we arrive at the tall, narrow door that opens into the killing chambers where Simon will face the mustered rifles. All the color has fled from Simon’s face, and I notice his hands shaking no matter that their knuckles are white for how hard he’s holding them together.
I don’t envy Simon. Simon cast his stone many years ago when he accepted the Black Sun Temple’s mark upon his shaved head, and now Simon, like so many of his brothers and sisters, must atone, must help to answer for the slaughter that temple delivered to so many innocent men and innocent sirens.
I might pity Simon, but I don’t at all feel sorry for him.
* * * * *