The Future Is Short Page 6

Her fingers were long, white and delicate. His were short, brown and clumsy. His palm alone had a red tendril piercing its lifeline. Close to fifty sprouted from the blue, bud-like pod a stone’s throw away. And, in that gravity, it was a muscular throw.

  Soft voices called from the ship and echoed off a cliff near Jasper and Cassie. Somewhere, water gurgled. The tendril pulsed and glowed.

  It had taken Jasper some time to calm Cassie down. No wonder.

  “I’m going back now, Jas. Please pull that off and come with me. I don’t trust the scouting reports the way you do.”

  “I never told you how much I love you, Cas.”

  “What?”

  The young woman stood up and then took a step away. In the bright starlight, she could see the acne pits on the older man’s face. He said nothing.

  “No. You never told me. For –”

  She twitched.

  “For how long haven’t you been telling?”

  “Since the first tests they ran on us, back on Earth. Rorschach. Newton. Shakespeare. In the Hive.”

  “Even then?”

  “Too scared to say so until …”

  Jasper closed his four fingertips and one thumbtip on their palm-penetrating scarlet vine. It hid the biting tip from her blue sight. As if his gentle touch impeded it, the shoot bulged beyond his fingerprints.

  “Until now. They were right, you know.”

  Still a step further away, Cassie knelt.

  “What’s it feel like, Jas?”

  He smiled. She could see it was different. Before, he’d seemed half dead. Now, he seemed to throb, like the penetrating tendril. Something underground made the air vibrate. And the air smelled of. . . cinnamon.

  “First I’ll talk about before. Before I felt empty. All my life I felt it, like I was cut off from the flow of life in living people. We’re all in our own little vacuums, you know? Humans talk, so, like my mother said, we lost our ability to read minds.”

  “Funny. My mother said the same thing.”

  “Now, Cas, I feel … half full.”

  “Not half empty?”

  “I know. Everyone took me as a pessimist, before. I was, of course. No wonder. But now fullness is right here. The bond. Full-blooded unity. I’m looking at it.”

  He smiled at her. The warmth of it struck under her ribs.

  “I’m looking at her, Cas.”

  He pointed at the vine again.

  “So go on.”

  She trembled, tickled by something.

  “Make us whole?”

  “You feel empty, don’t you?”

  She hesitated, for a very long moment, and at last nodded.

  “Always. I … always thought marriage would make me whole, at last when it came. My stiff father said that.”

  Jasper laughed. A band of lighter brown scarred the skin at the base of his left ring finger, mere centimeters from the tendril’s bite.

  “Go on, Cas.”

  Her sigh at that came out as deep as the star field. Then she nodded. She laid her left hand, palm up, beside the red cord. That stone’s throw off, the pod bloomed.

  The tendril wriggled, tip rising, and dove home.

  Amos Parker is a starving writer, graduate of the University of Vermont, and resident of the United State of Vermont. He knows his muse is bereft of protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. And so, he does not cannibalize her.

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  EDGES

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  21.

  Summer Bites

  J.F. Williams

  It was only a few miles beyond the Foggy Oaks exit, then a right turn onto county route 3. Another few miles before he caught the crude wooden sign in his headlights. He turned onto the dirt road just ahead of it. Jesus, I’m late, he thought. Katy’s going to kill me

  The cabin was hidden by tree cover as he pulled the car up, but Martin could see the porch bathed in the amber light of a “bug bulb.” Down from the porch, the land fell steeply to the edge of the lake, and he could just now see the full moon’s reflection, like a row of silvery worms floating on the lake’s surface.

  Katy was sitting at a rough-hewn wooden table on the porch. “Finally,” she said. “Are you all done?”

  “Yeah. For two weeks. Where are the boys?” He pulled up a chair, bent down for a kiss, and laid out the evening paper on the table. She didn’t seem too upset, he thought.

  “The boys are already in bed. Can you believe it?” she smiled and pulled a sweater around her shoulders. It was a cool evening for July. “They’re exhausted. I’m exhausted from watching them! They went swimming all day. I just stayed down there to watch. They were good. They didn’t even go near the buoys.”

  “Tired them out, eh. Good.”

  “It wasn’t just that. The mosquitoes. They were eating them alive when they got out. Big fat ones. I killed a bunch.”

  “Eww. That must’ve been bloody.”

  “Huh? No. There was no blood. I checked for bites and Tommy had a big one on the back of his neck.” She patted a spot at the base of her skull. “He was crying and digging at it. I used that cream, and I gave them a Benadryl.”

  “Oh.” Martin was focused on the paper now and was starting to read the front page when he heard a buzzing. It grew louder and stopped, followed by the faintest humming. He noticed a bulbous mosquito crawling slowly along the far edge of the table. He folded his paper and slammed it fast as he could. “Good one!” shouted Katy.

  When Martin lifted the paper, he saw a mess. Pieces of wing and leg and thorax were scattered across the headline: “NEW REVELATIONS ON LEAKER’S BACKGROUND.” He pulled off as much of the remains as he could, but it was viscous and sticky, though colorless. At least there wasn’t blood.

  “This pisses me off,” he said, pointing at the headline. “They already convicted this guy in the press. I don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, but it looks like the press guys already decided and that makes me suspicious. And why’s the government after him if the secrets, the stuff he leaked, aren’t real?”

  “I hear ya,” she answered. “I don’t trust the government not to do this stuff. I don’t care which government. What’s to stop them? The stuff about the micro drones spying on us. That’s scary stuff. Why would that guy make it up?”

  “I dunno.” He shook his head. “Whatever they say about him, I think what he said is for real. I’m certainly not feeling any safer. Anything to eat?”

  Tommy crouched inside the cabin, just under the screen window, stone-faced, taking it all in. He was getting mad. He didn’t know why, but what his mom and dad said was making him mad. “Government” and “secrets” were making him mad, and “leak” made him repress a growl. He wanted to make them stop that talking but he held back. He felt the tension of it; his hands clenched air, his arms and thighs trembled with the urge to pounce. But he held back. Minutes passed, and his parents continued to speak. He remained still, sometimes absentmindedly touching the tiny, hair-like structure that rose exactly five millimeters from the spot where the mosquito bit him. But mostly, he just listened, and tried to keep himself from killing them, because he knew he should be listening now.

  J.F. Williams has been working in Information Technology for the past quarter-century but started out as a proofreader and spent years writing synopses of movies and TV programs for newspaper TV listings, placing him among the most widely read anonymous writers in the U.S. and Canada of that time. He published his first novel, an epic science-fiction adventure called The Brickweavers, in August 2012.

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  22.

  Boyhood's End

  Andy McKell

  They moved into the new house in the midsummer heat, when the lake mirrored the sky's longing for the breath of a breeze and the forest trees hung their heads in exhaustion. Bobby thought it the most wonderful summer ever, and when it came to a close, he would become twelve—the perfect age! He just wished and wished for his last, lingering b
aby tooth to fall before he started his new school.

  The creatures of the lakeland forest filled the air with sound—buzzing, cricketing, chirruping, wailing, hooting. He heard foxes coughing, distant deer barking, badgers snuffling close to the house, and other, unknown things scuffling the parchment-dry leaves underfoot or uttering their own calls, challenges, and complaints. It was a sweet relief after the horrid, inconsiderate, machine-driven noise of the city.

  He bravely explored his new territory. He heard soft rustlings, spotted tiny movements …. But he was twelve—almost. He was unafraid. He had grown out of magic and monsters, except for that last, lingering affection for the tooth-fairy, that sweet, gentle spirit who loves children. Yes, the tooth fairy loved children.

  He sought secret paths and places; waterfalls and pools; slippery, moss-covered rocks. He sought dark caves to explore with the brave gang he would recruit.

  So it was in the woods that he fell, bashed his face, and ripped loose that last, lingering baby tooth and watched as the precious token skittered away. Ignoring his bleeding knee and ripped pants, he scrabbled in the dirt for his trophy. And there it was; but alongside it, another thing, a bigger thing, a handfilling thing; a second tooth, a huge tooth, a giant's tooth, a monster's tooth, yellowed and curved, wickedly pointed; a tooth for ripping and tearing flesh. He grabbed both teeth, hugged them to his chest. Joyously, he raced and stumbled home, ignoring the risk of another fall, caring not a jot.

  Mom celebrated with him this symbol of a boyhood's ending, and admired his find. She grinned when he begged for an early night, to give the tooth fairy enough time to handle the double donation. Mom kissed him goodnight and gave him a special hug.

  Of course, Bobby couldn't sleep. He could feel the curve of the monster tooth through his pillow. Excitement prodded him to toss and to turn. Excitement made his thoughts churn, made him wonder if the “people” tooth fairy could handle this load, or if the owner had its own tooth fairy; and if so, what the tooth fairy for such a monster would be like. Excitement finally exhausted him, drained him, overfilled his swirling thoughts until his brain closed down and the sleep required by the magical exchange of tooth and coin overtook him.

  Until midnight.

  The noise came to him through his sleep. It was not a natural sound, not a scuffling or a barking or a hooting or a chirruping. It was a thud-thud-thud, it was a roar, it was a splintering of trees. Worst of all, it was approaching, and approaching fast.

  Bobby screamed and leaped from his bed, sweating, trembling. Noise, stench and heat—not of these human lands—embraced, enveloped, engulfed him. Light filled his room, a bright, horrid, sickly-green light; a light that wrapped around his body, rendering him as immobile as if in the grip of vast, powerful jaws.

  His entire being was gripped, shaken, and examined to its very core. He felt his body twisting, turning, turning.

  And with the monster’s tooth fairy came boyhood's end.

  Andy McKell is a new writer of speculative fiction, whose short stories are starting to appear in various anthologies. He retired early from the IT world and enjoys acting when he gets the chance. Married with three daughters, all pursuing careers in the visual arts, he currently lives in Luxembourg, Europe. andy@andymckell.com http://www.andymckell.com

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  23.

  Sting

  Marianne G. Petrino

  The droning rulers of summer hibernated. Carried by a light breeze, snowflakes silently drifted across a moonlit, barren field and covered the burrows that gave the enemy refuge from the cold. Summer meant resurrection for the aliens, whose renewed hunger would cull humanity once more in the continuation of their life cycle.

  Miranda rubbed the returning frost from the window with her frayed sleeve. Although hidden by the grey night, the glittering stars of Orion still shone, the symbol of the Women Who Hunted, upon a diminished Earth. In a broken-down garage in what used to be Ishpeming, one of the sticky traps had finally captured a specimen, bringing hope to her drafty cabin.

  The fretful chirp of a battered timer drew her attention to the plastic bottles that gently rotated over pots of boiling water. Duct tape and chicken-wire science now helped secure the possibility of a future. She removed the makeshift spit and studied the cloudy contents. Preparing the injections was an easy task; choosing the vector children would earn her hatred and praise.

  Miranda moved the spit to a wall rack. “Taffy and a corn dog.” She tapped a container that held death, a heartbeat to the lost past. “What I wouldn’t give. . . .” But the pleasures of those easy summers had gone extinct.

  Years back, scientists had worried about the growing numbers of mosquitoes that had carried unprecedented viral threats. Research into insect control had jumped, but the miasma of politics, and the bickering that shaped it, had kept funding limited. Money, and the biological discoveries it bought, could have helped them gain an edge in the beginning of the invasion.

  The absurd stories of alien visitors to the Earth had been true all along. And with a tiny hitchhiker, evolution had taken an unexpected leap in an interstellar nursery.

  The returning invaders inside the armada of one-way-only spaceships were an outwardly distressing twin to the buzzing, biting terrestrial insects, but man-sized. In the tropical regions, the swiftly reproducing spacesquitoes had eaten themselves out of prey and had died. Like an unexpected ending, only the cooling days of autumn in the temperate regions and the ultimate frost of winter had saved what was left of pest-shocked mankind. The remaining aliens had retreated deep underground, for they and their progeny were equally victims of their own biology. Yet their limitation gave their food source time to multiply.

  A gust rattled the window pane. Miranda shivered. The fattened children, juicy with virus-plagued blood, drugged and scattered like seeds in a field, would feed the gluttonous emerging females during the spring lust. But all of their newly fertilized eggs would rot under the biological assault she had created.

  A clock chimed softly four times. She reached for a kettle to keep a ritual to prop up her sanity. The Women Who Hunted had provided the specimen for her to study and manipulate, but the game may have always been lost.

  One nagging doubt made it all seem futile and added to the insomnia born of the sacrifices she must commit: What if these were engineered beings created by a superior race to scour a world clean? These spacequitoes exceeded the spiracle-bound limitations of any insect found on Earth, through morphological mutations too precise for nature. But their victories over mankind came from their numbers, not their intelligence. If her hypothesis were true, why hadn’t their masters already come to finish the cleansing of Earth?

  A bit of blue poked out of the snow. Could this be the crocus of a final spring?

  Miranda sipped her tea.

  Marianne G. Petrino (aka Marianne G. Petrino-Schaad) was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1955, and that single fact has shaped her entire life. She has survived too many professions to count. She currently resides in Arlington, VA, with her husband and her cat, and enjoys a freelance lifestyle writing novels and pursuing voice acting. ninetiger@aol.com http://www.ninetiger.net

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  24.

  Moments to Remember

  W.A. Fix

  It was one of those moments that imprints into the collective memory of an entire family. Everything was perfect. A full moon reflecting on the lake, clouds floating like puffs of smoke on a light breeze, and there were so many stars one truly felt the awesome vastness of space. The mountain air was crisp and held a chill that the campfire offset. The four sat around the fire in silence enjoying the warmth that came from the moment, more than the fire. Wayne poked at the coals with a green sapling that he had used earlier to cook his hot dogs. Without warning, another sapling invaded his space and pushed his away from the fire. He looked up to see Kathy, his thirteen-year-old daughter, smiling and ready to dual for ownership of his spot in the coals.

 
“You little creep, that’s my spot,” said Wayne.

  She pointed the flaming tip of her sapling at him and said, “On guard.” As she squinted and set her jaw with determination, they touched swords briefly, chuckled, and then went back to tending their own section of the flames.

  “Mom, can I have a Coke?” said Billy

  “No, honey, it’s too close to bedtime,” said Jennifer. When she saw the frown on his face, she added, “Sweetie, that’s too much caffeine and sugar, this late. If you’re thirsty, there is plenty of bottled water.”

  “Knock, knock. . . , hello! I’m sorry to bother you folks.” The woman entered the campsite from the dense forest that surrounded them. “I’m so sorry, but I got separated from my friends and it started getting cold. Do you mind if I just warm up?” She walked up to the fire and extended her hands, palms out, over the flames.

  Surprised by the intrusion, Wayne stood. “Where on earth did you come from?” he said to her. “Billy, get a blanket.” The woman was slender and middle-aged and wore hiking boots, blue jeans, and a light sweater. “How long have you been out there?” he said. Billy arrived with a blanket, and Wayne draped it across her shoulders. “Are you hungry?”

  “Thank you, I’m just fine,” she said. She extracted a phone from her back pocket and began dialing.

  Wayne smiled and said, “That won’t do you any good up here. There’s no phone service for at least fifty miles.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, pushed a final button, smiled and met his eyes for the first time. “It isn’t a phone.”

  The campsite was instantly flooded with bright white light. Wayne felt euphoric and a tingling swept over him. He was transfixed by the woman’s black eyes and, in them, he could see the countless years of her existence. He heard whimpering and knew it was Jennifer. A piercing scream sent chills through him but he couldn’t tell who it was. “Mommy, help me mommy”—that was Billy. Wayne tried to move and could do nothing. He felt pain in his abdomen, yet somehow it didn’t hurt. Another scream and he still could do nothing. He began to cry, tears welling in his eyes, streaming over his cheeks and into his ears. When did he lie down? Then Kathy yelled, “Daddy!” There was another scream, but this time it was his.