Short Writings

"Any last words?"

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The rifle held firm, but the man behind the gun grinned briefly at me.  A gold tooth glinted in the light.  Not dim enough for him to miss, I guessed.

“Any last words, asshole?” he growled, cocking the rifle.

I looked back at him, not letting any expression show on my face.  In my head, of course, I was frantically running through scenarios, but everything was coming up blank.  I couldn’t see any way out.

“Just shoot ‘im already, Jeb!” called out one of the other men.  They were hanging back – wisely, too, after I’d managed to put a knife through the throat of one of their companions.  Another one of the men was still alive, but probably wouldn’t be walking for a couple weeks until that testicle dropped back out of his stomach.

“Last words,” I mused, considering, as I watched that unwavering rifle.  “Okay, then.  I commend my soul to any god who can find it.”

“Nice,” grunted the man, and he pulled the trigger.

I tried to dodge, of course.  I can’t remember ever moving faster.  But still, I felt a giant’s hand slam into my chest, and my vision all went sideways.  For a second, I couldn’t breathe, and I dimly felt myself hit the ground.

“Freaking ow,” I complained a minute later, as I lifted myself up.  “God, that stings like a son of a-“

I froze, the sentence unfinished.

I’d just been shot, hadn’t I?  Right in the chest, too.  I should be in a lot of pain – and expecting another bullet at any moment, this one probably through the head.

But I didn’t feel any pain.  And around me, the world was still.

Until I heard a footstep in front of me.

“Well?  Come on, get up then,” said a voice, not unkindly.  “We don’t have all day.”

“Well, actually, I suppose we don’t have any days,” the voice kept on speaking, as I reached down and lifted myself up off the ground.  “But we do have plenty of time, although it’s not real time.  Just our perception of it.  Quite fascinating, really, how the quantification of time doesn’t mean much to us.  Perhaps there is another time particle, only accessible by ones like us.  Fascinating.”

The voice was cultured, and sounded like a mildly forgetful college professor.  It didn’t make any sense, given that I’d been shot in a desert canyon where the thugs had tracked me down, but I just added this onto the list of confusing things.

I stood up, looked up at the speaker, and felt my jaw drop open.

“Yes, yes, get all the gawking over now,” the giant, monstrous, eight foot tall figure in front of me said, sounding annoyed.  “Body of a man, kilt of linen, ankh, papyrus, take it all in.”

“Erm, plus the, uh, head,” I managed to add, feeling like my eyes were bugging out of their sockets.

“Oh, yes.  Head of an ibis.  To be honest, I often forget about that detail.”  The monstrosity reached up and stroked its long beak with one hand.  “Now, are you ready to get going?  We have much to do.”

“Uh, sorry, what?” I stammered, taking a step back away from this strange abomination.  “Who the hell are you?”

I didn’t think that an ibis could look annoyed, but the creature in front of me managed it.  “Thoth, of course,” he tutted at me, as if I was a schoolchild who had forgotten my arithmetic.  “The one fortunate enough to claim your soul.  Rolled a ninety-seven for you, so hopefully you’ll be worth it.”

“I- you won me?  What?”

The ibis-headed man crossed his muscular arms at me.  “You offered up your soul, and I claimed it,” he stated, as if I was especially dull.  “Now, either renege on the bargain and get it over with, so Ammut can devour you, or come along!  We have much to do.”

I had no idea what this creature was talking about, but being devoured didn’t sound at all fun.  “Um, coming,” I said, hurrying behind the bird-headed man as he turned away.  “So, uh, you’re a god?”

“Thoth, yes,” the ibis called back over his shoulder.  “God of knowledge and writing.  And very, very busy.”

Well, this was a new and unexpected chapter in my life.  Or, perhaps, after-life?  I wasn’t clear.

But as I half-walked, half-jogged after the bird-headed god, I reflected that things could have turned out worse…

Writing Prompt: Meeting the Author

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I kept on running.  My heart was pounding in my chest, my legs were aching, but I couldn’t stop.  I couldn’t even spare the second it would take to glance behind me.

Besides, I knew that they were getting closer.

I sucked in a deep breath, trying to control the precious oxygen.  Focus, Jack, I told myself.  You need to focus.  Running will only keep you alive for a little while longer.

You need to think.

I glanced back and forth as I took another corner.  I was on a street, both sides lined with small shops.  I could feel the sun shining down on me, warming my wind-ruffled hair.  If not for my pounding heart and screaming inner voice, it could almost have been peaceful.

Up ahead of me, I saw one of them come sweeping into the intersection in front of me.  They were getting smarter, trying to cut me off.  The shadowy mass, at least a dozen feet tall, rippled with the suggestion of bones, sinews, strange and abhorrent limbs hidden beneath the almost merciful blackness that ate all light.

I didn’t even slow as I turned.  A shop came in front of me, and I hit the door with a lowered shoulder.  It yielded, and I came flying inside.

I skidded, but stayed on my feet, staring around the shop.  It looked to be some sort of coffee shop, someplace filled with tables and students on computers.  No one looked up, of course.  They couldn’t even see me, couldn’t perceive that I was even there.

Except one young man.

For a moment, we made eye contact, and I saw him freeze.  His eyes widened, and his hand, halfway to the coffee cup beside his laptop, froze in mid-grasp.

I rushed forward, slamming both my hands down in front of the man, making him jerk in surprise.  “You!” I growled, my voice halfway between a roar and a pant.  “You’re him, aren’t you?”

“Oh my god,” the young man in front of me stammered, staring up at me.  “Oh god, I’m having a stroke.”

Outside the shop, a loud thud echoed through the room as one of the Unspeakables slammed into the door.  The wood held for the moment, but I could already see tendrils of blackness sneaking in through the cracks.  I had a minute, maybe two.

“Set take me, I don’t have time for this!” I snarled down at the confused young man in front of me.  Up close, he was anything but intimidating.  He looked soft and weak.  I doubted he’d last ten minutes in my world.

But it wasn’t my world – not really.

It was his, wasn’t it?  He had made it.

The young man was currently staring past me, his eyes locked on the shaking, sweating doors.  “What the hell are-” he began, but I was already moving around behind him.

“Hunters,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of the man’s face to break his spell.  “Now, write them away!”

“What?”

I shook my head back and forth.  “Ugh, I don’t have- look, you made them!” I shouted, stabbing my finger towards the door.  The wood was slowly splintering, and I could see the entire frame starting to give way.  “So you can write them out of existence!”

“I – I mean, I imagined them, but I didn’t create anything,” the young man in front of me stammered.  He really was useless.  And soon, we’d both be dead.

“Write!” I shouted again, stabbing my fingers down at the slim laptop in front of the man.  And, his fingers trembling, he started to type.

The Unspeakable howled in rage.  All it knew was blind rage.  It had no concept of satisfaction, even of itself.  All it knew was blind anger, hunger for the destruction of its target, hidden behind this puny and fragile defense.

“What – insight?” I snarled, staring over the young man’s shoulder at the words on the screen.  “That won’t help us!”  The door had almost broken away from its frame.

“Just give me a second!” the man snapped back, and his fingers kept moving.

The Unspeakable pulled back, about to throw its entire weight into the flimsy barrier.  But even as it charged forward, the whole building shimmered, fading away.

The Unspeakable didn’t have eyes.  It perceived what was truly there, seeing through any illusions.

But a moment later, the building truly was not there.  It had faded, not just from sight, but out of the entire plane of existence.  The Unspeakable’s quarry had escaped, and its howls of impotent rage threatened to tear its entire being asunder as it searched helplessly for a trail that was no longer there.

I lifted my head, staring out the windows of the building.  The loud cracking of the door slowly splintering had stopped.  So had all other noise from outside.  I could hear nothing, and all that swirled outside the windows was mist.

“But, I- what just happened?” stammered the young man in front of me.  “I mean, my writing isn’t real!”

I reached down and slowly patted him on the shoulder.  “It is here,” I told him.  “Now, come on – they’ll figure out our trick soon enough and be after us again.”

Listening intently, I slowly advanced towards the door.  “Come on, Author!” I shouted over my shoulder.

Behind me, the young man stood up, tucked his laptop under one arm, and then hesitated.  “I mean, I bet there won’t be a good coffee shop for miles,” he muttered to himself, looking down at the table.  “Maybe I can grab a to go cup?”

“Author!”

“Coming, coming!” the young man yelled back, tossing back the rest of his coffee as he scurried towards the door, following the protagonist he created years ago.

The Man Who Built in the Sahara

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“And to think,” the man sitting in the leather-padded chair across from me commented, his lips twisting up into a little smirk of self-satisfied humor, “they all thought that I was absolutely crazy.”

I nodded, not quite sure how I should respond to this comment.  Throughout the whole interview, I’d always had the slight, sneaking suspicion that my subject was, in fact, just the slightest bit crazy.  But I knew better than to say this out loud.

Fortunately, the man just chuckled a little to himself, and then leaned forward to pour himself another glass of champagne.  Beneath our seats, I felt the private jet shift slightly as the pilot adjusted the course.

“Shouldn’t be much further, now,” my interview subject commented, sparing a quick glance out the jet’s nearest window.  “It’s a bit out of the way, I know – but that’s part of how I became so successful in the first place, isn’t it?”

I nodded again, mentally telling myself that I had to pull this interview back on track.  “So, Mr. Gibbs, did you see something in the tech world that tipped you off, something you spotted before anyone else?” I asked him.

Across from me, the man’s smile faded somewhat as he leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his neck.  “A hole,” he commented at length, his brows furrowed a little.

Jefferson Gibbs was not a small man.  From the moment that I had arrived at the airport for this interview, I had felt slightly dwarfed by his presence.  Even as he leaned in to shake my hand, I felt like I had stepped into a circus, like I was up on stage with a trained bear.

Initially, I had worried a little about conducting this interview on a jet – would Gibbs even fit inside the private plane?  But once we had climbed the steps, I saw that the man had completely redone the interior, replacing the rows of smaller seats with just a couple larger swiveling leather monstrosities, in which we now reclined.

“Saved so much on fuel that I could afford the whole interior being redone,” he explained to me, as we settled into the seats and prepared for takeoff.  “But with energy so cheap now, well, gotta put that money to use somewhere else!”

The man maintained a ferociously genial attitude, and he seemed to keep grinning at me no matter what question I asked.  Once again, as I saw him flash his wide, white teeth at me, I had the feeling that Jefferson Gibbs had a screw loose.

“A hole?” I repeated, hoping the man would elaborate.

And for just a second, that smile went away.  “Yeah, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” Gibbs growled, leaning forward aggressively.  I kept my face neutral – a well-practiced skill as a reporter familiar with the rich and powerful – and the man relaxed after another minute.

I don’t know if he decided that I wasn’t a threat, or he just wanted to brag some more, but Gibbs’ anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  “See, everything was in place except for one missing piece of tech,” the multibillionaire elaborated, glancing again out the window.  “And I knew that, if I could push the demand for that tech high enough, someone would figure it out and make the rest of my investment profitable.”

At face value, the strategy sounded absolutely insane.  But there was no denying that it had worked for Gibbs.

When he started, the whole world deemed him crazy.  A minor player in the computer science world, whose singular claim to fame was a patent on improving microchip density, Gibbs stunned the world when he announced his plan to build several geothermal heat engines out in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Admittedly, the idea had several merits.  Geothermal heat engines, which relied on using the temperature differential between the hot desert surface and the much cooler interior of the Earth to generate power, were some of the cleanest and most efficient energy plants in history.  Land in the Sahara was incredibly cheap, and once the high initial cost of the engine had been paid, the device would run for many decades without needing more than routine maintenance.

“But there’s no need for power out in the middle of a desert!” critics pointed out in the papers around the globe.  “Forget the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ – the guy’s building a power plant for nowhere!”

And indeed, without a market, Gibbs’ investment seemed doomed to failure – until, just weeks before the plant was set to come online, the Tesla Motor Company announced that they’d made a huge leap forward in battery technology.

Suddenly, batteries were smaller, lighter, and capable of holding hundreds of times their previous charge.  Everyone wanted to switch to battery power – and they needed someplace to charge those tanks.

Gibbs had the cheapest fuel line for that demand – and as power poured out of the Sahara, the man shot to the top of the Forbes 400 Richest Individuals.

“Ah, here we are,” Gibbs interrupted my thoughts, nodding towards the window.  I turned and looked as the jet banked in a descending circle.

Down below us, in regular lines across the undulating tan sand of the Sahara, steel towers rose up from the ground.  Each tower was topped with an array of black panels, gathering in the heat of the brightly burning sun above us.  That heat, I knew, would be conveyed down into the earth, where it would mix with the cooler air rising up from the bowels of the earth and would drive a series of electricity-generating turbines.

Across from me, Gibbs stared out the window at the source of his great fortune.  The expression on his face was unusual.  He looked almost hungry, desiring, as he stared out at his power plant.

The man had taken a great risk building this plant, I knew, no matter how vociferously he insisted that the strategy made sense.  I wondered what his next leap would be – and whether he’d be able to get lucky twice in a row.

"With enough thrust, pigs fly just fine."

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I took a moment to collect myself as I stepped around to the wooden gate that lead into my neighbor Jeff’s backyard.  I didn’t know what I was going to find – but my sixth sense was tingling already, telling me that it was going to be trouble.

I should have known that an engineer takes everything far too literally.

And sure enough, as I came around the corner of his house, I could already smell the acrid scent of melted plastic, the tang of gunpowder.  My concerns weren’t lessened when I saw the wooden structure pointed up at a forty-five degree angle, a set of rails that angled up over his back fence.

“Jeff?” I called out, a hint of concern in my voice.  What was he building?

The man himself popped up a second later from below a metal contraption of some sort, grinning broadly.  His face had even more smudges of dirt and grease on it than usual, and he wore a pair of safety goggles, conveniently protecting his forehead.

“Bill!” he shouted back, sounding as if he hadn’t seen me just yesterday.  “Check it out!  Totally gonna prove you wrong this time, buddy!”

I stepped forward, doing my best to get some idea of what the man had constructed, while at the same time trying not to set him off with any sudden movements.  “And what are you proving me wrong on, exactly?” I ventured, trying to figure out what he had cobbled together.

It looked like a long ramp, two parallel rails aimed up and over the back fence.  At the base of the ramp, several wooden struts supported and cradled a sled, made out of a sheet of hammered metal with a couple small wheels bolted to the bottom.  Attached to that homemade sled were two very suspicious tubes that smelled strongly of dangerous explosives.

As I stepped in closer, I heard a faint squeal from the other side of the ramp, and I felt my stomach drop.  “Oh, no,” I said out loud.

“Oh, yes!” Jeff retorted, popping back up from whatever he had been adjusting on his sled.  “And you said that they couldn’t fly!”

I stepped gingerly around the launch platform (and that had to be what it was, I figured out), staring down at the creature in the cage on the other side.  A pair of beady little eyes stared back at me, not recognizing me but already blaming me for being trapped in this little metal box.

Things weren’t going to get much better for the fellow, I knew.

“Surely, you can’t be serious!” I tried, staring back and forth between the man, the pig, and the machine that the man had constructed for the pig.

“I am serious!” he fired back.  “And don’t call me Shirley!  Look, it’s totally going to work – and Sir Porksalot is going to be fine!”

“Jeff, it’s just an expression!” I insisted.  “It just means that something isn’t going to happen!  You don’t have to prove the idiom wrong!”

“But it isn’t that they can’t fly!” he said, reaching down and, with a grunt, lifting the cage, and the angrily protesting Sir Porksalot with it, up onto the sled.  Even despite my horror, I couldn’t help noticing that there were small pegs on the sled that perfectly held the cage in place.

He might be insane, I had to concede, but at least my neighbor was a hell of an engineer.  And for all I knew, this crazy contraption might actually work.

“See, I worked out the calculations,” Jeff continued, overrunning my protests with sheer determination.  “It’s just a problem of propulsion!  With enough thrust, pigs fly just fine!”

And before I could say anything more, Jeff had tugged me back a dozen feet from the gantry, sled, and angrily protesting passenger.  He lifted up something that looked suspiciously like a garage door remote and pressed the button.

My next comment was totally lost in the roar of explosive combustion.

As my ringing ears slowly cleared, I stared at the long, arcing trail of smoke that led up and out of Jeff’s back yard.  “Hey, Jeff,” I shouted, trying to make myself heard above the persistent sounds of encroaching tinnitus.

“Yeah?”

“How’s it going to land?  And where?”

“There’s the field back there behind our houses!  He should come down just fine in that!  I put a parachute-“

A very loud boom cut off the rest of his sentence.

We hurried out of the fenced-in back yard and around the house – where we both stopped short, staring in shared horror at the large column of smoke rising up from the field behind the house.  Even at this distance, we could already catch the whiff of burned Porksalot on the breeze.

I reached out and patted Jeff on the shoulder.  “Sure, they fly with enough thrust, but you still need to work on that landing,” I told him.

For once, the engineer didn’t have a retort.

The Man Who Bought Socks

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I glanced up from the paperback sci-fi novel held just below the counter as the bell over the front door jangled.  As soon as my eyes focused in on the man’s face, I sighed.  I put the paperback away, bracing myself and taking a deep breath, trying to prep for the confrontation I was sure to begin momentarily.

In my head, I whispered a silent but fervent curse to UPS for delaying the recent clothing shipment to our store.  Didn’t they know that we had regular customers?

Extremely regular, a few of them.

“Hey, Albert,” I called out, leaning over the counter a little and giving a wave of my hand to get the man’s attention as he shuffled in.  “Listen, buddy, little problem…”

The man glanced over at me, pausing in his usual pattern that he followed.  I could see confusion pass briefly across his face, accompanied by some other emotion that I couldn’t quite place.  Was it fear?  “Yeah?” he grunted, looking at me from beneath lowered brows.

“Listen, I know you’re in here every day to pick up a pack of socks,” I said, trying to sound as apologetic as possible.  “But our restocking shipment hasn’t arrived yet, even though it was supposed to be here by Tuesday – and we’re all out, buddy.”

The man blinked, and I braced myself for some sort of assault or tirade.  I really had no clue what was going to come out of this strange little man, but I really just hoped that he wouldn’t start knocking down displays when he freaked out.

I mean, the man has to be some sort of crazy, doesn’t he?  He’s been in every day for the last six months – every single day I’ve worked here – and he’s always buying the same thing.  He strolls in, picks out a single six-pack of white athletic socks, and pays for it in cash.

When I first started working here, I used to imagine that maybe he was some sort of alien, and he was trying to study humanity through socks – or maybe I just read too many dollar store science fiction paperbacks.  All of us employees had our own guesses.  Mary thought that he used them instead of toilet paper.  Carl insisted that the man jerked off into them and then threw them away.  My boss, Tom, swore that he’d once seen the guy eat one.

I really didn’t know what Albert did with these socks, or why he needed a new pair every day – but this day was going to definitely throw a wrench in the works.

I was expecting him to get angry, maybe yell a bit.

But I wasn’t expecting him to stare at me with wide eyes, his whole face going pale with shock.

“No, no,” he gasped out in strangled tones, staggering forward towards my counter.  I leaned back a little, concerned that this might be a ploy to get close so he could take a swing, but the man’s hands just landed on the counter, as if he had to struggle to stay upright.  “No, you can’t be out!”

“I’m really sorry, man,” I offered, not sure how to handle this outburst of sheer panic.

The man stared up at me, his eyes so wide that the irises were fully visible.  “But you don’t understand,” he insisted.  “Now I can’t feed it – and it’s going to spread!“

What the hell?  I just stared back at him in confusion.  “What?” I managed.

“The plant!  Oh god, the plant!  If I don’t feed it, it’s going to grow out, searching for food – and once it learns that there’s more, well, it will explode!” the man hissed, waving his arms at me as if this would somehow make things clearer.

I just shook my head at him.  “Plant?  Albert, slow down.  Are you telling me that you feed these socks to a plant?”

For a moment, the man affixed me with one wide eye, glaring at me as if wondering how I could be so dense.  “Yes,” he snarled at me.  “When it crashed into my back yard, I did as ordered.  I was a good little servant.  And I convinced it that only I could bring it the food it wanted.”

I nodded, certain that this guy had to be off his meds for something.

But Albert saw my expression, somehow read my thoughts, and shook his head furiously at me.  “You don’t believe me – not yet,” he accused me.  His hand reached down for his left sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and hauling it up.  “But just wait!  It will grow, and you’ll see!”

This time, as the man shook his left forearm at me, I felt my mouth drop open as I stared.

All up the man’s arm ran a line of round, puckered scars.  It looked almost like the tentacle of some giant octopus creature had wrapped around him, burning marks into his skin.  I couldn’t think of anything else that could cause such a pattern.

“And now, it will grow!” he continued, shaking his scarred arm at me.  “It only stopped before because I convinced it!  Now, now it will know that I cannot be trusted, and we won’t be able to hold it!”

Inside my head, I felt myself lurching, reality sliding off at an angle.  Albert couldn’t be talking truth, right?  This had to all be some sort of crazy self-delusion.  But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those scars wrapping around his arm.

“Albert, wait,” I said, my voice sounding to me like it was coming from somewhere far away.  “What if we fight it?”

The man just stared at me, but I was already moving, ducking out from behind the counter.  Fortunately, the store was empty aside from the pair of us and Tom was in back.  My replacement was due in at any minute, and I’d be off duty.

I hurried down the aisles of the store, Albert tagging along behind me.  Finally, I found what I was looking for, and skidded to a stop.  Behind me, I heard the other man suck in a breath.

“It might work,” he said doubtfully.  “There’s a chance.”

I nodded.  “You know, I’ve always wanted to fight an alien,” I remarked, staring up at our store’s selection of weed killer, shears, and other trimming implements.

I reached up and lifted down one of the big pairs of hedge trimmers, feeling its comforting weight in my hands.  “What do you say?” I asked, giving the pair of oversized scissors a test snick together.

For a minute, Albert just stood there, looking at the wall of weaponry.  And then, suddenly, he reached forward and picked up a bottle of poison.

“Let’s do it,” he said fervently.

The two of us loaded up, getting ready for battle…

Pickup for the Errand Boy

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I pedaled my bike through the maze of narrow streets, my eyes running over the numbers printed on the sides and doorways of the buildings as I whizzed past.  Occasionally, my turning and meandering path would veer me out into traffic, but I ignored the honks and occasional shouts.

Where the hell was this place?

Still pedaling, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little scrap of paper my boss had handed me.  No, I still had the address correct in my memory.

“1408 Shining Ave,” I read off aloud.  No other directions…

I was on Shining Avenue right now, so finding this place ought to be easy.  But I hadn’t figured on Shining running right into Chinatown – and promptly beginning to weave back and forth, worse than a drunken sailor with a full stomach of whiskey.

Hell, half of the little shops along both sides of this street didn’t even have numbers up on their doorways!  And although I spoke a few pidgin words of Mandarin and Cantonese, they were mainly choice terms for insulting someone’s mother – not so good for navigating.

What sort of shop did a cake decoration place have, anyway?  My boss had sent me out here to get some sort of “specialty wedding topper” for one of our orders.  And like an idiot, I’d gone ahead to grab it, hopping on my bike without asking for any further information.

A few houses down, I spotted an ancient little Asian woman, sitting on the steps to one of these shops and smoking a long-stemmed pipe.  Figuring that I was down to my last option, I hit the brakes and coasted to a stop.

“Excuse me,” I called out, and her hooded eyes rolled over to me.  “Do you know where 1408 Shining-“

Before I’d finished talking, the woman rose up laboriously to her feet.  Without even speaking a word, she reached behind her and opened up the door.

“Oh.  It’s here?” I asked, surprised and a little suspicious of this sudden reversal of my bad luck.

Still, the old woman didn’t speak – she just nodded towards the open door, as if urging me to just get it over with already.

Pausing only to lock my bike to a nearby sapling, I stepped into the doorway.  The shop inside was pitch black, and I couldn’t see my nose in front of my own face.  “Hello?  Is anyone there?”

There was no answer – except for the door behind me swinging shut with a click.

For just an instant, I was lost in blackness.  And then, seconds later, a bright light clicked on, shining into my face and making me lift up my hands to try and shield my eyes.

“Do you have it?”  The voice was strong, deep, authoritative, and rolling out of the darkness beyond the spotlight shining into my face.

“Do I have it – what?” I echoed back, confused.  “Do you have it?”  Had I been supposed to bring something to exchange for this pickup?

The voice didn’t speak – but a rattle sounded, and a battered metal suitcase slid across the floor to land at my feet.

I reached down and picked up the case, not pausing to even glance at the contents.  “Uh, thanks?” I called out into the darkness as I reached behind me for the doorknob out of this place.  I was definitely not going to go on my boss’s next pickup mission!

“Wait!” the voice called out of the darkness.  “And what about what we require?”

Maybe they needed the receipt?  I pulled it out of my pocket and tossed it out beyond the circle of light.  The voice said something else, but I had already opened the door and stepped back outside.

Out on the street, the elderly little Asian woman was gone, but at least my bike was still there.  I tossed the metal briefcase (who delivered cake toppers in a briefcase?) into the basket on the back of my bike, unlocked it, and pedaled off.

From behind me, I suddenly heard the door burst open, and shouting in some language I didn’t understand.  I glanced back over my shoulder as I started to pedal away – and saw several shadowy men wearing what looked like top hats and long yellow trench coats running out, pointing after me and yelling something guttural.

“Dammit,” I cursed, pedaling harder.  Maybe I had been supposed to bring payment after all – but my boss could figure that out.

A couple of the men went running after me, but I veered down Semetary, made an illegal left turn onto Pennywise Boulevard, and cut through a yellow light to merge over to Gilead Street.  I doubted the men would be able to follow that.

But even as I pedaled, I felt doubt and suspicion start to creep up into my mind.  Veering over to a parking lot, I glanced back at the metal case behind me as I slowed to a stop.

I had wondered who would hand over a cake topper in a metal briefcase.  Now, as I set my bike down and lifted the case out of the basket, I could feel my doubt growing.  The case felt wrong, different.

I set the case down on the ground and popped the latches.  Hesitantly, I lifted the lid.

“Dammit,” I muttered again as I stared at the contents.

From inside the case, carefully set into a leather interior, two long, heavy, blued steel revolvers glinted up at me…

"We’re made of star stuff."

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I stared down at the control panel spread out in front of me.  Even now, as the entire floor shuddered beneath my chair, I couldn’t help but notice how, well, homemade the whole thing looked.
Over there, wasn’t that lever off of the lawnmower bot that had used to rumble around my backyard?  And I recognized the steering handle in front of me, the one that controlled the angle of the main thrusters, as coming from that old decommissioned hover-junker that had been abandoned in my back yard a few years back after I gave up on it as a side project.
Of course, this craft was a side project, too.  
But this was one that wasn’t a fleeting passion, wasn’t a passing fancy.  I had wanted this for as long as I can remember, ever since my grandfather bounced me on his lap.
“Don’t forget, kid,” he had told me, as his wrinkled hands gripped me firmly and his knee bounced lightly beneath my bottom.  “You’re made of star stuff.”
It wasn’t until I was older, until my grandfather was no longer alive, that I’d really come to understand what his quote truly meant.  But even before I knew the meaning behind the words, it fascinated me.
Our molecules, the very building blocks of our bodies, had been forged in the crucible of stars, stars long since gone in fiery explosions.  We were all created out of those remains, hydrogen atoms compressed into more complex and elaborate structures in the aftermath of their original hosts’ destruction.  We were all forged from molecules, atoms, that had once been part of a fiery fission drive within the wilderness of space.
My father, of course, had reacted in typical protective fashion, ordering me to ignore the wild words of my grandfather.  “Don’t get cocky, kid,” he’d tell me, ruffling my hair, when I tried to ask him questions about stars and the worlds beyond our own.  “The universe is no place to be cocky.  It’s dangerous, and can get you killed.  Better to keep your head down.”
I looked around me at the hand-constructed vehicle in which I sat, my finger poised over the key.  I was definitely not keeping my head down.
I heard a shout, faint but still audible even through this vehicle’s thick shielding.  “Harry!  Come out of there!”
I stood up from the seat with a grunt, pushing aside the unbuckled harness designed to hold me in place if I ever found the courage to fire up the engine.  I climbed down, navigating with difficulty along the wall that was intended to be the floor.  Moving inside the vehicle was tough with it pointed up at the sky, but a few minutes later, I managed to emerge out into the sunlight.
My mother stood out in the field behind our house, staring with her usual doubtfulness at my creation.  “Harry, when are you going to give up on all this craziness?” she asked, with a sigh.  “You’ve had your fun putting it together, but you’ll never actually launch, will you?  I mean, there’s no need!”
“There’s always a need!” I exulted back at her, going through the same steps of the same argument we’d had dozens of times before.  “Mom, we never explored all that’s out there!  We just used a shortcut, dodging around the whole problem instead of facing the challenge head-on!”
“But the portals are safer,” my mother argued, as she’d done so many times before.  “No need to go into space – just hop from our planet to another through the nethers, without needing to wait for travel time, or having to risk riding on top of a giant explosion!  What you’re proposing is so dangerous, so foolhardy-“
“But portals will never show us everything!” I insisted.  “Mom, portals can take us to another planet, but will they ever let us come close to a star, to truly see all that’s out there beyond the places we can comfortably rest?”
My mom crossed her arms.  “The portals protect us from that danger,” she concluded, and I could tell that she refused to hear any more.
But even as I headed inside for dinner, I couldn’t risk one last look back at the big, clunky machine, its nose cone pointed up at the dusky sky.  I had worked hard to wire it all together, to make every weld that held its body intact, to attach the old but reliable fusion engines that were now being sold off cheaply since the entire mode of travel had been abandoned.
The portals were safer, were easier.  They took us straight to our destinations without any fuss of the trip there.  
But they were never going to truly carry us to the stars.  
My grandfather’s words echoed in my head, and I mentally resolved that tomorrow, as soon as the sun rose, I would launch.  
We were made of star stuff, and I was going to see my creator.

The ‘Doubt’ Theory of God

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The devil sitting across the table from me leaned back, one hand lazily twirling a finger about an inch above the brim of his coffee cup.  Even though there was nothing physically extending down into the cup itself, the liquid beneath his finger seemed to be moving along with his motions.

In front of me, both of my hands were wrapped around my own coffee cup.  Even after years of working here, of pouring coffee every day for the angels, both holy and fallen, that wandered in here, I still got nervous when talking to them.  Call it mortal nerves, maybe.  I waited for the devil in front of me to respond.

“See, here’s my theory,” the devil across from me finally started.  His voice was cultured, with only the very faintest little hint of a sneer giving any sort of allusion to his true nature.  “We all know that God exists, somewhere, in some form.  Right?  We,” and he waved one hand around in a little circle to encompass the two of us, the coffee shop, the world in general, “wouldn’t be here if He didn’t exist.”

“But we never see him,” I countered.  “And even the angels and devils I’ve talked to haven’t ever spoken with him directly.”

It was true.  Ever since I’d started working here, since I had realized who the real customers of this coffee shop were, I’d begun asking around.  My inquiries were surreptitious at first, but as I grew more comfortable with the immortal agents of Heaven and Hell who filed through here every morning, grumpy and in search of their caffeine fix, I grew bolder.

The devil across from me held up a finger, as if I’d just made his point for him.  “Ah, but that’s just it, isn’t it?” he announced triumphantly, as if he’d scored a point.  “We know that He exists – but at the same time, we don’t know!  We’re doubtful!”

I narrowed my eyes at the man.  Was he just trying to be flippant with me?  He did look the type – if it weren’t for the black clothes that marked him as a fallen angel, he could have fit in at a fraternity house, dressed in a polo with a popped collar and hollering for shots.  His blonde hair was pushed back in a loose curl across his forehead that would generally take hours in front of a mirror.

“What’s your point?” I said shortly.

The devil crossed his arms and looked smug.  “Doubt,” he announced.

“Doubt?”

“Yeah, isn’t that what I just said?  See, I think that this God guy lives on doubt.  He exists, but He can’t demonstrate that He exists, or else He removes all the doubt.  And He must need us to be doubtful for some reason!”

I didn’t feel convinced.  “So God exists… but He is powered by doubt?” I reiterated.

“Yup.  And if He was to start messing around directly, throwing lightning bolts and such, well, that would remove all the doubt!”  The devil looked pleased as punch with this theory.

“Okay…” I paused, trying to decide where to go next.  I still didn’t feel convinced, but I didn’t see how this devil could help me any further.  He was a fairly low ranking devil, but he had been one of the few that seemed agreeable to talking with me.  I was stuck with the customers who seemed friendly, low-powered as they might be.

We sat there in silence for a couple more minutes – I was trying to digest this theory, and the devil was gloating, apparently believing he’d landed another convert.

“So, what does this mean for us?” I finally asked.

“It means we can do whatever we want!” the devil exclaimed.  I almost expected him to add a ‘bro’ onto the end of that sentence.  “See, God can’t jump in and stop us, or else it would prove that He exists – and He can’t do that!”

“But what if He intervenes indirectly?” I countered.  “Like, God doesn’t appear and throw lightning bolts, but there happens to be a thunderstorm in that same place that struck just then.”

The devil across the table frowned.  “Nah, that wouldn’t work, would it?” he mused, looking a little rattled.

“Remember the general who got shot by a cannon after mocking the enemy’s ability to hit anything?” I countered.

The devil looked a little ill.  He lifted up his coffee, but slopped a little as it rose up to his mouth.  “Uh, maybe my theory needs a little detailing,” he stammered, as he rose up quickly from his seat, brushing drops of hot liquid off his black clothes.  “Maybe I’ll let you know once I’ve worked it all out.”

I watched the devil scurry away, and sighed.  Another servant of God who didn’t even know if his boss existed.  Sometimes, I despaired that I’d get anywhere on this.

The bell above the door jangled, jolting me out of my reverie.  Well, at least I could serve coffee.  I hopped up and hurried back behind the counter, putting on a smile as the newest angels entered.

Just Like Their Father

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“Hey there, you two.  How are you guys holding up?”

The oldest’s wine glass shook a little in his hand as he approached his two brothers.  Nerves, he told himself.  He willed his hand to cease, to hold still.  It was a fine vintage, after all.  No need to spill even a drop.

“Hey.  I’m doing all right.  Your flight get in all right?”

“Yeah.  Little rough coming in with the storm and all, but the pilot handled it.  I’m just glad I was able to book a hotel room last-minute and all.”

“Hotel?  You could have stayed here with the two of us.”

The oldest shook his head.  “Nah.  Late night work to do.  Always more business to attend to, even at times like this.”

The oldest cast his eye over his two brothers.  The youngest looked even paler than he remembered.  Was he sick, or was it just the stress of their father’s death piled on top of everything else?  He’d been staying at home with Father in the final days, so maybe he was most affected by the loss.  Unlike the other two, his wine glass held only water.

“Any word on the will yet?”

“Lawyer’s bringing it over tomorrow.”  At least the youngest seemed to know what was going on there.  No surprise – he was probably worried about losing his room, being thrown out of the manor.

The middle brother paused.  “Wait – I thought it was in the safe?”

“Safe?”  The oldest had been away too long.  He didn’t remember a safe.

“Yeah, down in the study.  Father had it put in a few months ago.”  The middle paused.  “But I don’t know the combination.  Do you-?”

They both shook their heads.  “Birthday?” suggested the oldest.

“Nah, easier way.  We’ve got a sledge hammer out in the shed, back behind the manor.  We could duck out now while everyone else is upstairs, go grab it, knock the thing open.”

“Now?” said the youngest in surprise.  “It’s snowing out there – and it’s not like he’ll come back.”

“Might as well do it now,” the middle insisted.  “Come on, you two, don’t make me do this on my own.”  He tossed back the rest of his wine and set the glass over on a side table.

The oldest shrugged, lifting up his wine glass in turn and gulping down the remainder.  “Damn good wine,” he said, slightly unsteadily.  He glanced at the youngest.  “Good find in the cellars, man.”

The three started for the back door, but the oldest paused.  “Gimme a moment, I have to make a call for a moment,” he told the other two.  “I’ll be right out after you, promise.”

The middle paused for a moment, looking uncertain.  He had already slid his hand into his jacket pocket, and looked like he was gripping something inside.  Maybe it was some lucky charm, for inner strength?  But after a minute, he nodded and headed out the door after the youngest.

The oldest waited until they had both left the manor, the door closing behind them, before he dialed.  “Yeah, it’s me,” he said into the receiver.  “They’ll both be staying at the manor tonight.  Just them, too.  Should be easy to make it look like a suicide.”

After the voice on the other end of the line confirmed this, the oldest hung up.  He felt a little unsteady on his feet, but put it up to the stress of the evening.  More stress than his brothers felt, that was certain.

It wasn’t anything personal against them.  But Father had been hoarding away his wealth for decades, money that the oldest could use to save his struggling business.  But in order to do that, he had to get the entire inheritance – and that meant getting rid of the other two heirs.

Outside, as they trudged through the snow, the middle brother kept his hand in his pocket, feeling the sleek metal of the wicked little device within.  He’d practiced for several hours, shooting tin cans off the fences at the edge of the manor.

Of course, he didn’t plan on shooting tin cans.  But how much different could it be?

He felt a small twinge of regret, but he steeled himself, committing to this choice.    He didn’t have the business of the oldest, the sympathy of the youngest.  He had always been forced to fight and claw to hold his own.

Soon, he’d be done having to fight these other two any longer.

Furthest out, the youngest felt the cold stinging at his slim frame, and tried not to shiver.  Just go along with them for a little while longer, he told himself.  He’d watched as they had both gulped down the wine he had “found,” and now it was just a matter of waiting.  He had been patient so long – it would just take a little longer, now.

He had always been last in line, trapped at home with the dying man while his brothers went out into the world, made advancements.  He had been forgotten, abandoned.  But he wasn’t going to lose out once more on this inheritance.

The wind howled as it blew the snow around the manor.  It was a cold night, and there was no warmth, no heat to be found out in that dark land.

Sparing a life in WW1

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After the first mortar explosion, we didn’t bother with the slow crawl across the muddy ground any longer.

As the mortar shells kept on dropping around us, the nearer hits throwing huge explosions of dirt up into the air to rain down on us like stinging hail, we all rose up to our feet and ran, a ragged charge across the battlefield.  There was no time to think of strategy, of keeping a low profile, of anything.  All we knew was that there was danger, that we were on the brink of death-

-and our only shot at safety was in the trenches that lay ahead of us.

We were lucky.  One of our own shells had hit the nearest machine gun nest, and one of the German mortars had misfired and taken out another.  Ahead of us, we could hear cries of surprise and fear, but only our bullets whizzed through the air.

But that didn’t last long.

With a loud staccato roar, like a car rolling over a pile of sticks, a nearby machine gun opened up on us.  Ahead of me and half a dozen paces to my left, I saw Johnny, my bunk mate, stagger and convulse as half a dozen lead hornets ripped through his body.  Tears stung at my eyes, but I couldn’t stop.  I had to keep going forward.

The enemy trench was just ahead of us.  I could see it.  But I didn’t think I was going to make it.

A head popped up over the trench, the face going slack with surprise as it saw us.  I managed to pull my rifle around as I ran and pulled the trigger, the metal slippery beneath my fingers.  The expression of surprise on the head in front of me froze as its forehead exploded.

Behind me, I could hear more cries, but I was so close.  I threw myself forward, feeling my feet lose purchase below me in the slippery mud.  I tumbled – and kept on tumbling, dropping down into the trench.

I rolled up, scrambling to my feet, covered from head to toe in the mud – and found myself face to face with two more Krauts.

I dropped the useless rifle.  I wouldn’t be able to get it up in time.  I instead grabbed for my Webley at my waist.  For once, the holster didn’t catch, and I pulled the trigger feverishly.

Both of the men dropped to the ground, only one of them even managing to make a gurgle.  I straightened up into a crouch, holding the revolver in front of me, my heart pounding like a jackrabbit’s in my chest.

Which way?  I was totally lost and disoriented.  But I couldn’t stand still.   I had to move.  I picked a direction – but paused as I heard a sound behind me.

Slowly, I turned, back to the two fallen German soldiers.  I looked down at them, the gun held out in front of me at arm’s length like a wand.

The man who had fallen on top was definitely dead.  The .455 had blown out most of his chest cavity, scattering gore in a circle around him.

But the man beneath was still alive.  I could see his face sticking out from beneath his fallen companion, eyes wide with shock and fear.

I forced my eyes to not stare back at his, instead looking at the rest of him.  My shot had grazed his arm, I saw, but he looked to be otherwise unharmed.  The bullet had cut a tendon or something, forcing his right arm to go straight, like he was reaching out for something.

I lowered the gun, pointing it at the scared, bloodless face sticking out from beneath his companion.  I could feel my hand trembling, making the Webley’s barrel shake.  In my ears, I could hear the roaring of machine guns, the shouts and cries of my companions as they fought and died.

My index finger felt the trigger resisting beneath it.  I should shoot – the man had been prepared to do the same to me.

But I couldn’t do it.

“Don’t you bloody try anything, or I swear to god I’ll shoot you,” I told the man angrily, even though I doubted he could understand.  “I mean it, I swear.”

The man just stared back at me, blinking but uncomprehending.  I sighed, trying to stop the shaking in my limbs.  I managed to re-holster the Webley on the third attempt – and then reached down, hauling the corpse of his companion off of the German.

I half expected the man to leap up, to make some heroic attempt to fight back.  But he didn’t move, even once he was in the clear – he just stared up at me.  Only when I held out my own hand did he accept my help, letting me pull him over into a sitting position leaning against the side of the trench.  I could see the grimace on his face at the pain of his injured arm bumping against the ground, but I couldn’t do much about that.

Around me, I could hear the sounds of battle growing fainter.  Maybe the rest of my squad had taken the trench – or maybe I was the last one left alive.  But right now, I didn’t want to think about that.

I reached up and patted the pocket of my jacket, feeling the crumpled rectangular packet inside.  I fished it out, pulling out one of the treasured white tubes.  After a minute’s consideration, I also grabbed a second, offering it to the Kraut beside me.

The man looked over at me, but then shakily reached up with his good hand and accepted the offer.  He stuck it between his lips, and then reached down to his own belt.  I watched with caution, but he pulled out a lighter, offering it to me first.

“Well, this is bloody awful,” I commented, after I had managed to light my cigarette.  I glanced over at the Kraut, who still looked like he couldn’t understand a word I said.  “Wilfred,” I said clearly, patting my chest.  “Wilfred Owen.”

After I repeated this gesture again, the man finally seemed to understand.  “Adolf,” he responded, tapping his own chest.  “Hitler.  Adolf Hitler.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Adolf,” I said, taking a puff on my cigarette and leaning back against the mud behind my head.  “I guess you’re my prisoner – or, if it turns out that all my buddies are dead, I’ll happily be yours.  Either way, beats getting up again.”

Next to me, Adolf’s eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell as he puffed on his cigarette.  I kept one hand on my revolver’s butt, but I did the same.  For just a moment, as I closed my eyes, I could believe that I wasn’t in the midst of Hell.