FLASH CHALLENGE: November '07-Vote!

[kailhofer]

Remember guest votes and member votes are tracked by IP address only. A second vote from the same network will change your vote instead of adding another.

[hr][hr]

The challenge was: To create the best possible sequel to an author's own story published in either Aphelion or a previous flash challenge. Entrants had to include a piece of glass prominently in the story.

THE FOLLOWING ENTRIES WERE RECEIVED:




[center] Phil Marlowe, He Ain't

by
Bill Wolfe

Sequel to “Sam Spade Ain't Nearly Dead Enough”
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/ ... mspade.htm
[/center]

On day three, the first two recruits dropped, puss-down in the sand. If they're lucky, their clocks'll stop before the siphons find 'em. It's been twenty years by my Stream and I still got scars. Soon as Tail-End Charlie passed 'em by without more'n an eyeball twitch, two Tenders phased-in and snatched 'em. The Kid's still goin' strong. He don't even look thirsty. I'm keepin' peepers on him, sure. He's gettin' the thin part of a B&B. No doubt about it, but danged if I can tell how. With my fine-tuned detectivatin, I'm seein' he takes a whiz or two every day. The rest of these newbies ain't pissed since day one.

I'm takin' notes on this Kid. Lot's of notes. He might think he's slick but he won't pull nothin' over on me. I'm writin' down what he says, what he does, where he stops to rest, to pee, to sleep. Everything.

All's I know is that you could'a knocked me over with an electron when I hear that his letter of reference is from good old Timmy Sputnik, my mentor in the Program.

He's a legend in the Corps, you know. Figured-out this test halfway through day one, busted a rock to get a sharp frag and slit his wrists. Genius, that one. Tried to teach me how to think like a true Temporal Detective. Some of it musta' stuck, I'm still kickin'. Field work didn't work-out too good, for me, though, so I'm running the death march for Basic Training. Recruits think it's a survival test, but the real object is to teach 'em what it's like to die. 'Course, we bring 'em back and revive 'em once they kick. Half drop-out after this little exercise, which is why we do it early.

[center]#[/center]

Day six, the Kid's still goin'. Hell, he ain't even hungry! We got ten full-time Time Dicks keepin' an eyeball on him and we're gettin' diddly. At this rate he'll be out of the temporal blocking field by nightfall, tomorrow. This field's special, only instructors can time-phase in it, it negates all known tech and magic. It's some of the highest tech the Corps' got and somehow the Kid's beatin' it like slippin' on ice. Commandant's gonna have my balls if I don't figure this out, pronto. And one more thing, there ain't no damn water within a thousand klicks. This planet is dryer than Arrakis in its heyday and makes Mars look like a swamp.

[center]#[/center]

Damn that Sputnik! He's bustin' my chops without even showin' up. The Kid made it out of the field and then this Downstream version shows up and jaws with him for a minute. At which point the Kid just sits down and waits. I'm licked and I know it. You know, the Kid reminds me a little of old Sputnik. He always seemed to be just a little too good at what he did. Sputnik beat this test by offin' himself early. It just occurred to me that the Kid has gone and done it, too. Only he done it by survivin' the unsurvivable. Damn.


[center]#[/center]

"Once again, young man, and this is an order: How did you survive for almost a week without food or water?" The Commandant was tryin' hard not to sound like he was pleading. He wasn't quite makin' it. The sawbones had already confirmed that the Kid hadn't suffered much more'n a sunburn.

"Sir, once again, my Downstream self showed-up at the end of the test and told me that it wasn't a survival test at all, it was a test to see how we faced death. And he told me that I never tell anyone what happened." The Kid didn't even blink. "If I tell you, won't it trigger a causality loop?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no. I've checked Downstream as far as I'm cleared, and the records show that you never do. They also showed that I asked. You're free to go, young man. Dismissed."

But after the Kid leaves, I hadda ask. I just hadda. Timmy Sputnik had screwed me bad, but he was still the best Time Dick I ever met. Maybe he knew something that I didn't. Maybe he knew lots more.

"Commandant?"

"Yes, Chief Instructor."

"Sir, you're cleared for a lot farther Downstream than I am. This Kid. He's gonna make it big, ain't he? He's gonna really do somethin'!"

"You know, Chief Instructor, you might just have saved your job."

"Sir?"

"After this fiasco, I was thinking of transferring you to a Quartermaster position, but perhaps you've got a knack for spotting promising young recruits after all."

"Sir?"

"You're dismissed, Chief Instructor."

"Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir." As I skedattled, I was more'n a little bent that he hadn't answered my question. Then I wondered. . .maybe he did.

[center]#[/center]

In due time the Kid did his stint as an Instructor. Just about every agent with some down time—usually for injuries—pulled the duty.

He'd get the chip to allow his Temporal Manipulator to work in the blocking field, and then he'd have a little hiking to do. Fortunately, somebody back then had kept scrupulous notes concerning his daily activities. Max had sent him the sixpack of Bloodguard nutrient solution he'd asked for, and now all he had to do was to phase fifty years back, bury one edible bottle at each location where he decided to sleep and leave it for his younger self to lie down upon.

He knew full-well that his Upstream self would find the first glass bottle as he tried to figure out what that lump was, under his back. After that, it was easy. He only had to write the note for the first one. Low tech time travel was always the best.

The note read: Head north. Sleep where you want. Five more like this. Keep quiet till we talk.

And, of course, it was his own signature that convinced him.

Larrye


[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]


[center] Windows Into Hell

by
Dan L. Hollifield

Sequel to “Saucerful of Secrets”
http://aphelion-webzine.com/mystories/saucer.htm
Appeared as a serial in issues 19, 20, and 21.
[/center]

The breeze through the shattered windows was warm, with the smell of honeysuckle and wisteria blossoms mingling with the smoke from my cigarette and the cordite tang from my pistol. I could see the plume of smoke twisting up from my hand, to snake through the air and slowly disperse on the wind. I holstered the Mauser, still warm from the twin shots I'd fired through the door's window panes, as I walked to the door and looked out on the shards and splinters of broken glass that now littered the warped floorboards on the wide porch outside. The fragments of glass glowed eerily for a few seconds as the spirits of long dead slaves escaped their silicon prison. Something rather like fog gathered around the broken glass, then faded from view. The curse was lifted, its victims free, and the ruins of this old antebellum mansion could now rot in peace. I grunted vaguely, lost in thought, then sighed aloud.

"What am I," I said, disgust plain in my voice as I crushed the fire from my cigarette against the sole of my left shoe, "a weirdness magnet?" Without another word, I walked out of the formerly haunted house and made my way through the tall weeds and briers that separated me from my car.

My name is Douglas Simon Daley, my friends call me D-Day. I'm a private investigator. I used to be a regular Joe, but over the last decade or so I seem to have become a nexus for the paranormal. I don't like it much, but it pays the bills.

As I drove home, I wondered how I was going to write this one up for my files. The case had started normally enough, but then, all of them do. I'd gotten a call from a farmer who'd bought some land that used to be part of a Civil War-era plantation. He'd hired a crew to demolish the old house there, so that he could clear the land for planting. They quit the first day, claiming that they'd been run off by ghosts. So had the next crew he'd hired, and the next, then he'd tried to tear the place down himself. He saw the ghosts too, and ran away. No one else would take him seriously. But I could hear the fear in his voice. I believed him. I had to believe in ghosts. After all, I'd been hired by one once. But that's another story.

After the phone call I'd looked up newspaper accounts about the house. My computer had found loads of references about the haunted house in the local paper's online morgue. A few hour's reading gave me a pretty good history of the place. It'd been built about seventy years before the war. The plantation owner had been known for whipping his slaves. A lot. He'd killed several of them that way. There was even a write-up about the curse laid down by one of the elderly victims. Evidently he'd been a tribal witch-doctor before being taken into slavery. With his dieing breath, he'd declared that the plantation owner would always remember his victims, that the house would bear witness, that the owner's torment would only end with his death. The slaver had died, driven insane, decades later in a madhouse. The family heirs sold the place and moved out West. After that, the house never stayed occupied for long. Every buyer left soon after moving in, declaring the place to be haunted. There was also a lot of detail about the construction of the house. One article noted that the window glass had come over on the same ship as the plantation's first slaves. That writer had waxed poetic about how those windows had witnessed the whole sorry spectacle of the plantation's history. Another linked article detailed a theory that stone temples and tombs could soak up psychic energy from the people who used them, then play back ancient events like a recording...

I drove out to the house the next afternoon. After threading my way through the briers that surrounded the place, I finally stood on the front porch. The warped and sun-baked wood of the railings was rough under my hand. The weed-choked yard was silent. No birds sang, no squirrels chattered. No breeze cooled the chill sweat from my skin as I shivered in spite of the sun's heat. The smoke from the cigarette dangling from my lips tasted like crap as the bile rose in my throat. I turned the cold brass doorknob and went inside. The whole house shook with echoes as the door creaked shut behind me.

I looked around. The years hadn't been kind to this place. Wallpaper peeled in strips from the moldy plaster walls. The staircase had fallen down. The floor sagged and had rotted away in spots. Dead leaves littered what was left of the floor. Only the front doors still had glass in their frames. The rest of the windows gaped like empty eye sockets in a skull. I turned to go back outside. That's when I saw the ghosts.

I could hear screams and the crack of a whip. I could smell sweat and blood, woodsmoke and pigpens. I saw an old black man, gray-bearded and bloody, screaming hateful words as he struggled to stand upright, then choking as he fell to the ground, dead. More screams, more visions, more pain and hate and misery. The whole thing played out before my eyes like a scene from hell itself.

I don't remember drawing my old Mauser, or firing two shots through the wrinkled antique glass panes of the front doors. But I saw the glass explode outwards as the 7.63 millimeter bullets struck... Then there was silence, and a feeling of peace settled over me.

Outside, I could hear whippoorwills begin to call out their plaintive song. I lit another cigarette, one-handed, as I slowly stopped shaking.

[center]*****[/center]


[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]


[center] Mr. Megrim

by
G.C. Dillon

Sequel to “The Lost Days”
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/ ... tDays.html
[/center]

Being a bartender was a good gig for me, at least until my anticipated sheepskin buys me a better job. Career!

I came in that afternoon with some low mein Chinese take-out and a few textbooks for tomorrow morning's classes. I planned to catch up on my reading during the slow time. You meet a lot of people behind the bar. I could cliché it up with the happy drunks, the sad ones crying in their brew, or the tough punks whose testosterone level matches their breathalyser score. There were amateurs and there were professionals. Mr. Megrim was a pro.

Smiling, he walked into the bar. Mr. Megrim was somewhere between sixty and dead. Longish white hair covered his aged head, and a close cropped beard graced his face. Crisp blue eyes stared out at you. A glib tongue spoke most of his words. He was not a big man, maybe even slightly under the average.

“I'll take a pint, my good man.” The old man wagged a finger at me. “And none of that steamed out malt beverage you pour me ofttimes. I quaffed my quota in '28.” I should explain that last comment. You see, Mr. Megrim lived in the retirement home around the block. It had been converted from the old Hummel Hotel in the city, a local landmark. Mr. Megrim would leave the establishment sometimes signing out and sometimes not through an unlocked door. He had a knack for finding them. My boss set a policy to give him a non-alcoholic beer, then check to see if he was AWOL. Only if he was legit, could we get him a real beer. I poured him a Kaliber instead of an O'Doul's into a clean wide-mouthed glass mug, hoping the more hoppy taste would fool him.

“Two bits, four bits, pieces of eight.” He spread out a varied collection of coins onto the bar top. I picked out a Thomas Jefferson dollar. And a few other presidents. I did not recognize a lot of the money. Must be some far-fling foreign places they came from. Many were not even round, just a rough blunt edged sorta-circle. “I'm as legal as a two dollar bill,” he said. “Or is that three? There was a three dollar coin if memory serves me correct.” He slammed his fist upon the bar. “And a three cent piece, by gum.”

I had to serve a business-suited man with a narrow tie a gin and tonic. When I came back, Mr. Megrim had untwisted the cap from the salt shaker we keep to sprinkle on the pub grub at Happy Hour. He had the salt spread all over the counter. Oh well, I've had to clean up worse! He was dredging his finger in the pile, shifting the white powder into swirls and curlicues.

“What'a doing Mr. Megrim?”

“These were the signs of the road on the Linclon Highway. No, on the rails. This was the sign for a 'Nice Woman' – she'd give you food – and this was a 'mean man'. Skip that house.”

“That one looks like the crossed-out 'P' Fr. Kawiecki wears on his Sunday getup.”

“Vestments,” the old man corrected.

|) /
|
/ |

“The Chi Ro. The first two letters in the Greek word for Christ. And this one....” He started with a large five-pointed star and then made lines that must have been taught only in a non-Euclidean geometry class. “Cannot draw that one!” Mr. Megrim cried, and wiped the symbol away with his palm.

“Always make friends with the Snake. He ran the rail switches; he was a family man. You just avoided the Bulls.”

One ear was trained on Mr. Megrim, but I heard a commotion at the other end of the bar, by the front door and the register. It was the one thing I feared more than a bar-fight. A robbery was going on. Two men stood, guns in hands, wearing hockey jerseys: N.Y. Rangers and Carolina Hurricane. Good move. Just dump the big garments and no one could identify the rest of your clothes.

Mr. Megrim patted down his pants pockets. “Missing. Not here. Lost.” He grabbed my arm. “Have you a length of wood? A pencil, perhaps.”

“Mister, calm down. You don't want to upset these guys,” I chastised him. “Pencil? No, only a pen.”

“No, it must be wood grown in the Earth's green soil.” He looked about, then his sharp eyes settled on my lunch in its white carton. “Your chopsticks! Give them to me,” he commanded. I handed him the utensils. He stood up immediately and turned to face the robbers. I tried to stop him, to settle him down, to give him a brief time-out on his barstool. The gunmen swung about, raising their automatics.

“I am no fey changeling to fear iron or its stepson steel. Your bullets are hoary even to Atlas.” The old man muttered. He rubbed one chopstick along the rim of the glass.

I can only say my eyes lied because what I saw could not have happened. The beer mug seemed to grow out like a Rudy Valley megaphone. Waves of glass spun out before Megrim. The robbers fired. Their .38 slugs flew through the air. The bullets spun into the glass funnel. The bullets slowed so anyone could see. The lead slugs stopped dead in the air, hung in the glass trapped. Then they dropped to the ground loudly.

“I am the snarling wolf in the night. I am the bad shadows in the dark. I am the grey wizard in the moonlight. Dare you stand before me?”

The gunmen stood there, their guns smoking a wispy white fog. They turned their heads to each other. Then they fled through the front door.

“Now a drink, my good fellow,” Mr. Megrim said, reclaiming his seat in the manner I imagine Lancelot sat at the Round Table.

I poured him a Guinness.



[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]


[center] THE TRIBULATION: BLOOD MOON RISING

by
Mark Edgemon

Sequel to “Christville”
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/ ... VILLE.html
[/center]


“I can hardly see past my windshield cause of this damn rain,” the trucker said to himself while trying to keep awake. “When I tricked out my rig, I should have installed bulletproof glass. Well, at least I’ll be pulling into Christville, Tennessee in about 5 minutes.

Hey John Atkins, You’re talking to yourself again,” he said as he pulled into Clancy’s Diner, a favorite eatery among truckers entering and leaving Christville.

While sitting in his truck waiting for the rain to let up, he tuned his radio to the national weather service for an update. “Violent thunderstorms with increased lightning, are wreaking havoc across our nation, blocking the sun for the third week in a row,” the weather forecaster said. “Temperatures will reach 115 degrees throughout much of this first week of December.”

“Damn infernal heat,” the trucker exclaimed!

The forecaster continued, “To determine the cause of these storms, we have asked Dr. Simon Foxworth of the Danforth Observatory in Nottingham, England to explain what is behind the turbulent weather.”

“Our sun acts much like a giant nuclear reactor,” Dr. Foxworth answered. “The sun’s nuclear fusion creates solar flares, which are violent discharges of mass from the Sun's outer atmosphere. When solar flares are powerful enough, they pummel the magnetic field, which surrounds the earth, creating violent thunderstorms and electrical blackouts. They can also cause disruptions in phone service, television reception and orbiting satellites.

But there is an even greater cause for concern.

When an aging massive star ceases to generate energy through nuclear fusion, it undergoes a sudden gravitational collapse, which heats and expels the star's outer layers. This could cause an explosion on the sun’s surface, driving a shock wave to sweep up an expanding shell of gas called a supernova remnant. It would only take 8 minutes for the remnant to reach the earth. The earth’s surface would become a furnace with temperatures reaching in excess of 2,000 degrees.”

All of a sudden, the lights went out in Christville, due to a cascading power failure sweeping across the nation. Power-transmission components were burning out throughout the nation’s electric grids, due to a surge overload, brought about by intense solar disturbances.

The Mayor of Christville, Mack Edmond, a devoutly religious man, was admittedly frightened for the first time in his self-absorbed life. As he gazed skyward, he trembled to see the moon’s bright yellow light metamorphosed into a dark blood red color. He remembered a passage of scripture in revelation, which had mentioned that this would be a sign of the end time.

He called for an emergency prayer meeting to be held at the church later that night. With the power and phones out, the mayor walked over to Clancy’s Diner and asked the truck drivers, if they would be willing to drive up and down the streets of Christville, using their loudspeaker systems to announce the meeting.

Later that night, John Atkins showed up at the meeting to find the townspeople of Christville frightened and huddled together, waiting for some word of encouragement. As the mayor walked up to the podium, the room became deathly silent. Fumbling for a moment, he addressed the congregation and said, “I’m going to let the good pastor do what he’s been paid to do and provide a little comfort to you folks”.

Reverend Sinaught had been the pastor of The Church of Christville for over twenty years. He would often use big intellectual words and long-winded elaborations on religious doctrine, so the congregation would admire his religious knowledge and keep him on salary.

“My dear children, do not fear,” he said with a condescending tone. “The good Lord will not allow anything to happen to the righteous”.

Suddenly, as he spoke, the earth shook with a powerful earthquake, which rocked the foundation of the entire planet. The sun’s helium had just ignited with an explosive flash, sending a large fragment of the star’s mass hurtling toward earth.

The force of the blast shattered the large neoclassic stained glass window, located directly behind the pulpit, which showed Michael the Archangel throwing Lucifer out of heaven. The stained glass had been reduced to thousands of glass specks, which reflected the frequent lightning bursts, as they cascaded downward, causing a multi-color light show effect.

However, a shard of glass, showing the menacing face of Satan, the only piece of glass that was not completely shattered, fell with the sharp side pointing down and lodged in the skull of Pastor Sinaught as he was standing behind the pulpit. He fell as if in slow motion, to the left of the podium hitting the stage hard with his face toward the congregation. The smiling face of Satan in the stained glass remnant, was illuminated every few seconds, back lighted by the flickering lightning bursts, now pouring through the hole in the window where the stained glass used to be.

The horror-stricken mayor cried out in fear as he fell to his knees beside the dead pastor. Immediately, the people of Christville ran forward to the front of the church and joined him in prayer. They prayed louder and more fervently than they had ever prayed before.

Over the last several minutes, John Atkins had been thinking about his sister, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier. She had walked into her bedroom followed by her husband only a couple of seconds later to discover she had vanished. It was now beginning to make sense to him. Revelations…the end of time…people missing! Well…John was comforted by the thought that his sister was in a better place and safe. That was all he could ask for, not being a spiritual man himself.

As the people of Christville prayed …they worried whether or not God would hear their prayers…if they would actually get through to Him…with only 3 minutes remaining.


[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]


[center] Steampunk Willie

by
David Alan Jones

Sequel to “Rococo by the Bay”
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/ ... e_Bay.html
[/center]


New York New was falling. Gunfire echoed in the streets, barking out death and change.

“It’s our time, Tom,” said my partner. Reese had grown lean and hungry over months of fear and boredom. He leaned across the back of my couch like a pedigreed hound eager to hunt.

I raised my eyes from a newscast of Armageddon on the courthouse steps. Twelve riddled bodies, The Governing Council, littered its white marble.

“They brought that stone up from Earth,” I said.

“It’s Steampunk, Tom. Steampunk did this - his grand scheme . . . we thought he was a crazy saw junk, and look at him now.”

I looked and remembered.

Willie Wills, Steampunk to his old friends and enemies, appeared in the air before us, simulcasting on all streams to every part of the city-state. His sallow face looked as simple and mean as when I had first met him beneath the streets of NYN.

“My people. I am your new president. Discontinue all armed rebellion and I will –“

Reese drew, fired, and destroyed my TV in one easy motion. Little rings of blue smoke rose from his Colt.

“He wasn’t worth saving,” he said. He handed me an empty glass vial – a tiny, insignificant thing really.

“His last shot of sawdust,” I whispered.

“His oath to us.”

“How will we get him?” I asked.

“The worm leaves a hole. We’ll crawl up the way he did.”


# # #


The under bowels of New York New ran hot. Steam kissed our cheeks and made heavy our clothes as Reese and I plumbed the engineered depths.

“Stairs,” said Reese, pointing through the gloom, his Colt in one hand, the glass vial in the other. Flickering florescence showed double doors blazoned with this single graffito: DESCENT.

We climbed down twenty-seven floors through gloom and dripping echoes and then trudged east until our spelunking brought us beneath Capitol House.

The carnage began five floors up. Cops and Lunar Guard alike lay in droves, cold bodies splayed upon pools of gore.

Reese spit and said, “We’re the Shield now, partner.”

Willie’s men caught us three floors from the top. Twenty-five of them closed in, net-like, as we stood back to back, hearts pumping acute awareness into our senses.

“Not these. Don’t kill these,” said a voice from behind the wall of armed brutes.

Rutgers emerged, bald head gleaming in the sticky dark.

“Reese the Poet and Turn-Around-Tom. My stars and heavens,” he said with an ivory white smile.

“We want Willie, not you, peon,” said Reese.

Rutgers’s face pinched the way it always had even before he turned coat and disgraced the Shield. But in a flash the smile returned and he said, “You’d be dead already if Steam hadn’t asked for you by name. You’s VIPs.”


# # #


Capitol House wore splendor in rich red carpets, rare wood banisters, and wavy stained glass imported from Earth. No building on the moon bore such prestige as the seat of our city-state.

The Governor-General’s office – large, book-lined, and regal – sat beneath a dome whose windows shown on a distant blue and white Earth, floating as if by magic in the depths of space.

“No help coming from there,” said Willie when he saw my eyes drift that way. He smoked a cigar behind the High Desk while ham-fisted grunts flanked him with charge rifles. Reese’s ancient Colt and my Tearlock pistol lay before the ostensible ruler like pitiful offerings.

“They’ll come,” spat Reese.

“And what? Nuke us? You think the libs will stand for that? Joint Globe will be in committee about this for the next twenty years.”

“Damn the day we saved you,” I said through teeth clenched so tight my fillings creaked.

“You made me, Tom, and you Reese. I owe you both. You got me off the sawdust, rehab’d and fit. And here I sit, able to pay you at last. Look at the love I show you, standing there with your hands free. I could have had you killed, but instead I’ll make you kings in this city.”

Reese’s eyes went narrow. “You have no honor, man. We’re men of the Shield. We ARE kings in this city. You can’t buy us.” He tossed the vial onto the desk. Willie stopped it spinning with his stubby fingers.

He eyed it and grinned.

“I bought Rutgers,” he said.

The bald man smiled all smarmy and white. “And for a reasonable price, too,” he said.

“You bought a snake, not a man,” I said and Rutgers punched my mouth.

The time between Rutgers’s knuckles connecting with my cheek and Reese’s extended index and middle fingers puncturing his left eye was miniscule. I hadn’t even hit the floor before his screaming filled the office.

Whump-whump-whump. One of Willie’s heavies fired three charges in Reese’s direction, but my partner had already dove and rolled so that the desk was between him and the rifle. Rutgers’s head had exploded on the second shot. For an instant his body stood, trembling, and then it fell, disgorging blood and smoke from the whole of its neck onto the expensive rug.

I hurled a wainscot chair, catching the shooter in the chest. In the confusion, Reese barreled into the two guards behind the desk. He came up with a rifle aiming down.

Whump-Whump.

I grabbed my Tearlock, but Willie had the Colt. He zeroed on my face. Up close I could see his finger beginning to squeeze. I closed my eyes, expecting to face the black equinox, and heard a terrific - CRACK!

Willie slumped on the desk, his forehead atop the empty vial that had once ruled his life. It was cracked.

Reese stood over him, rifle still raised butt downward.

Like a machine he took the Colt from limp fingers and put a bulleted end to Steampunk Willie’s wild ride.

I dropped the glass vial onto the rug and ground it to powder under my heel.


[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]


[center] Samsara

by
McCamy Taylor

Sequel to “Sister Death””
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/sisterdeath.htm
[/center]

My body is riddled with disease, but I have to hang on. Jerry needs me. And the kids. They’re grown, but you never stop needing your mom. Mother relies on me, too. I was the oldest of six, so I grew up fast, making sure my brothers and sisters had breakfast in the morning and clean clothes and massaging my mother’s shoulders at night when she came home from a long day at the factory, nodding my head while she told me about the boss who kept making passes at her even though he was married with three kids, a note of pride in her voice that men still sought her company at thirty-five. Now, she’s seventy and lonely, and she calls everyday to tell me her problems and I nod my head out of habit, though she can’t see me on the other end of the phone.

My breath catches in my chest. God, how it hurts to breathe, but I have to hang on. Just two more hours until my next pain shot. Then, I can sleep for a bit and forget. Get Well Soon cards lined up on the table beside the bed. Two of them hand lettered, from the grandkids. My babies are all grown up. Thank the Lord. I couldn’t bear to leave them all alone with no mother to look after them.

But what about Jerry? What’s he gonna do? When I try to talk to him about dying, big tears well up in his eyes, and I have to change the subject fast. He never could stand to hear me talk about sad things. Plenty’s the time I’ve asked him “What’s on your mind, honey?” and we would sit and talk, and he would tell me what he was scared of. I would hold his head or pat his back, and together we would work it out. But every once in a while, when I forget and let him see me cry, his shoulders get all squared up and his face turns red like a child fixing to bawl and he hunkers down in his chair or mutters something like “I can’t take this shit anymore!” and then I remember that I am the strong one. God put me here to listen and love and nothing good comes from tears.

Is it day or night? The lights are always on inside this hospital room, and there’s no window. Feels like night to me. The nurses are quiet. Haven’t seen a janitor in I don’t know when. And that angel dressed in black is over there in the corner again. Pretty thing. Dark haired, face as white as Dresden porcelain, soft black wings. An angel like that would only come out at night. The sun would burn her fair skin---

Shit! It hurts so bad! There’s no way I can wait an hour and fifty minutes. I call for the nurse. They aren’t stingy here, on the hospice unit. I’m the one who’s been stingy. Trying not to take too much pain medicine, so I’ll always be awake for my family. The nurse comes in with a syringe in hand. I am so used to the stuff by now that it only dulls the pain, but my breathing feels heavier, and so do my eyelids. I blink.

The dark angel is standing right beside me now. Her smile is so sweet. All the love I ever wanted is there in her face.

I blink again, and on the other side of the bed, to the right stands a knight dressed in black armor carrying a scythe. He pushes back his helmet, revealing auburn hair.

I look back at the angel. “Are you here to take me to Heaven?” I croak. It’s very hard to speak, with morphine and tumor robbing me of my breath.

“It’s your choice,” the knight answers. “You’ll live like this for another month unless you do something to end it now.”

“What can I do?” I ask helplessly, tears trickling down my cheeks. “It’s a sin to take my own life.”

“Are you still in pain?”

I nod my head mutely.

“Then call for more pain medication,” he says.

“I just got more---“

“Do it!”

His face is so dark and scary, that I obey.

A different nurse walks in. That means it’s break time. She is standing right in front of the black knight, but she doesn’t see him. The nurse is carrying my chart and a syringe. “Let’s see. Your last medication was four hours and fifteen minutes ago.” My nurse must have gone on break without charting the last shot. How did the dark knight know?

The medication burns slightly as it flows through my IV. I close my eyes. When I open them again, I am standing beside the bed, where my body lies, looking deathly pale and still. The dark angel holds my left hand, the dark knight has his hand on my right shoulder.

My own nurse ducks her head into the room. She walks past the three of us and calls my name. She checks my pulse. She listens with a stethoscope. Last of all, she takes out a mirror and holds it beneath my corpse’s nostrils for a full three minutes, watching for any sign of breath. The glass remains clear.

As she is tidying up my deathbed, she accidentally drops the mirror. It shatters on the floor, slivers of glass flying everywhere.

“Damn it,” she mutters. “Seven years bad luck. Just what I need.”

My two companions are not reflected in the broken mirror glass. I deliberately step on a shard. I feel no pain, nor do I leave a bloody foot print. I wave my hand in front of the nurse’s face. She stares straight through me. I really am dead.

As the angel of death unfurls her wings, I wonder why it seemed so important a few minutes ago for me to hang on. Mother and Jerry and the kids will live their lives. Now, I have to live my death.


[center]The End[/center]

[hr][hr]

[kailhofer]

Apologies to Mark Edgemon. The system will not allow me to put his full title and name together in the poll because it is too long. I was forced to abbreviate his title.

I haven't run into this restriction before (but we usually don't have the author names on, either).

Nate

[kailhofer]

It has been reported to me by a user that the stories above do not display correctly on his screen. He gets a scroll bar that he has to use to move side to side to see the text.

I've seen that before on my PC at work in IE occasionally, but never thought much of it because I always use Firefox on a Mac to read stories.

Is anyone else experiencing a problem? Does anyone know a quick fix?

Nate

[kailhofer]

I highlighted the whole post and copied it into Wordpad so that I could read the stories without having to scroll sideways.

It only took a minute or two to do it.

Dan

Is that normally the way you see it? Or is this one different?

I don't see anything wrong on my end. I don't have to scroll at all.

Nate

[kailhofer]

Is that normally the way you see it? Or is this one different?

I don't see anything wrong on my end. I don't have to scroll at all.

Nate

This is the first time I've had to do that. Normally, the stories are auto-formatted to the size of the Lettercol box. I thought it was just my computer, acting up again. I've had some trouble with it today.

Dan

Does the font display bigger than normal or in a different font? If you reduce the point size with a control - (minus), does it show up better? I'm wondering if I should just force it all to be 11pt, or something like that.

Nate

[kailhofer]

It was an easy, smooth read and I enjoyed it greatly.

You've got my vote!

It's not stated in the rules anywhere, but I encourage people to wait until after the vote is done to post reviews or comments about the stories. That way, no one can influence the vote.

However, I'm sure McCamy was glad to hear what you had to say, and I wouldn't want to take away the warm glow that such praise brings. As they say, the deed is done, so next time please hold off until after the poll closes.

Thanks.

Nate

[kailhofer]

I do have to say, I was surprised at which stories were made into sequels.

I expected I'd see Trauma Martin, Tom Darby, or Al & Githros. While one is a Mare story, the connection is only made at the very end, and not like it was an overt march through the doors into the Mare proper. The "really famous" stories weren't sequelled at all.

I was half afraid I'd see a Last Movement sequel, but I don't know McCamy very well. I guessed I'd see Doyen & Ogema. I missed Lost Days the first time around, but I'm going to have to go back & read it. And I was glad it was Christville and not He Must Kill... Not sure I could have taken another of those so soon.

But I think a good question for discussion might be: How many people are reading the originals before they vote? Bill asked me when he uploaded his story to put the link at the beginning, because he felt that people would have to read them in order to really get it. I thought he could be right, but it wouldn't hurt if he wasn't, so I did it that way. Personally, however, I felt that each sequel had to stand on it's own, so I wouldn't read any of the originals until after I'd made my choice. Now, I do have to say that, although I have one more original to read, I'm pretty sure I would have picked a different one if I had read all the originals first.

So I was curious. How are the rest of you going at them? Are you reading just the selections? The originals first or later?

Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

Unfortunately, I get the feeling these competitions come down to who has the most friends willing to log on and vote for them. I often see five or more "lurkers" on the site. I wish we could convince some of them to vote. And I don't necessarily mean for MY story. It would just warm my heart to see us pushing one hundred or more total votes.

As I write this message, I see three members and 10 guests logged onto the site. I assume that many of these guests are probably writers looking at the critiques on their own stories. I wonder how we can entice them to come make some unbiased choices?

-- david j.

So what you're saying is that you don't have enough friends? ::)

(Imagine how I feel when I only get one or two votes including MINE!)

The competition was pretty strong this month -- there was only one entry that was definitely weaker than the rest. In the end I voted for a story that both used a character from a previously-published story AND stood alone (no prior knowledge of the background required) ... and even that only narrowed it down to two or three entries.

Incidentally, what is the deadline for voting? Midnight tomorrow, Eastern Time?

RM

[kailhofer]

With hundreds, maybe thousands of members, it appears there are only two dozen that participate regular in the forum posts.

It's possible that a few of the regulars really don't want a large turn out and may be comfortable with a small participation.

On the other hand, it looks like Nate and some others are working hard to change that and pump up involvement. But no matter how many new people are brought in, for them to stay, there has to be an atmosphere where new folks feel welcome and want to stay around and be involved.

I think it's safe to say that change happens slowly. Much as it pains me to say it, since I harp about marketing a lot, perhaps it should be this way. One would hate to mess up a good thing.

However, a lot has changed. Cool redesign, integrated forum, RSS feeds, shared universes like the Mare, Nightwatch and the new upcoming one, writing tips, flash challenges... And yet so far the world has not beat a path to our collective door, even after over half a year. Not very much, anyway.

It begs the question: Does the rest of the world know that anything has changed here? Is our problem really one of promotion or advertising? (I don't mean paid advertising.) I suspect that the rest of the world only knows that it free, new writers submit stories, and there's the Mare. That's all I ever see in Aphelion's listings anywhere.

Am I way off? Opinions?

Nate

PS--This was my 1000th post!