Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Her name is Simone. She doesn’t know why that’s her name. People ask her why she’s named Simone, and she tells them that she doesn’t know. Many people mention that it’s a French name, and she replies, “Yes, but my father is German.”
She looks away and becomes busy as she answers, as though there’s a story behind her name that she doesn’t want to explore.
Or maybe she’s just weary, at nineteen years old, of being asked about her name.
Carrying a purple canvas shopping bag — walking, because, you know, fitness and environment — was harder than he’d expected. He was almost home, but…whew.
He’d purchased more than planned. He’d gone for chips and a sandwich from the Safeway deli, but he’d added Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and a small bag of pistachio nuts, thinking he deserved these things, and the fare would be an excellent accompaniment to watching Game of Thrones.
Chastising himself because he always bought too much — no, not always, but frequently — no, not frequently, but probably fifty percent of the time — did that sound right? — was fifty percent considered frequently? — he set his bag down for a breather and wiped sweat from his face. Damn hotter than expected, damn hotter than seventy-seven. Felt more like eighty, even down here by the rushing creek, in the shade of the trees by Aqua, one of his favorite pubs.
His Apple watch — an indulgent birthday present to himself — confirmed his impression that he was right about the temperature. With a final deep breath and the stern order, “Press on with pride,” he bent for the bag and saw the stick.
The stick was on the dark grass beside the pitted, gray sidewalk. It seemed like an unusual stick even as it looked just like a stick.
He picked it up. Lacking bark, it was white, about an inch in diameter, although it was tapered, and seven inches long. It wasn’t perfectly straight, but close, and had three nubs where other branches once grew, but was sanded smooth.
Imagination fueled speculation about the stick’s uses. Although shorter and thicker than a conductor’s baton, he pretended he was conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony performing the Star Wars Theme Song, snapping the stick briskly left to right.
A loud crack broke his fantasy. While he processed that sound, a ripping noise followed. The pub, Indian restaurant above it, pizza place beside it, and creek disappeared, leaving a pulsing yellowish-white — ocher, perhaps — space in their place.
The strip was like piece of paper had been torn from the world. He gawked in appreciation and astonishment. The rushing creek ended at the tear, but then continued on the other end.
What the hell? Horror jumping through him, he confirmed that no witnesses were around, then gaped at the stick with the realization that the stick had probably caused this, and then began plotting his escape from this fiasco. He was afraid to try to use the stick to fix this mess. He’d probably just make it —
“Ahem.” The sound shook his core. Jumping and looking around, he saw no one, and then spotted a squirrel. Its dark eyes were narrowed in a way that he’d never seen in a squirrel. It was holding out one paw.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” the squirrel said. “Give it.”
Its voice reminded him of Patrick Warburton’s deep tones. “This?” he said. “The stick?”
The squirrel waved its black paw. “What else, numb nuts? It’s a wand, and it’s mine. Give it over before you do more damage.”
“How do I know this is yours?”
“Give it.” The squirrel’s voice rolled through the area like thunder.
Quaking, the man bent down and held out the stick with a trembling hand. “Sorry. I just found it lying there. I was just — ”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Snatching the wand out of his hand, the squirrel turned and flicked it, repairing the tear with another ripping sound. Giving him a side-glance, the squirrel said, “Idiot,” and then disappeared.
The man took a long breath. After a moment, he picked up his bag. “Press on with pride.” The best thing to do would be to go home, have a beer, watch Game of Thrones, and forget any of this ever happened.
Sure. Like he could ever forget this.
Hearing the sharp meow, thumps, and swearing, she knew what’d happened.
He came in seconds later. “That cat is so stupid. He’s black. He knows I can’t see him, but he still lays on the rug, and I almost step on him or kick him, and he gets upset. You’d think he’d learn.”
She answered, “He’s a cat. You know he’s not very smart. You’d think that you’d learn by now.”
He glared at her for several seconds before saying, “Sure, take the cat’s side,” and stalking out.
The delivery trucks were lined up on Main Street as he took his morning walk. The doors opened up. The ramps came down. People began walking down them.
It wasn’t encouraged to stand and gawk, but slowing, he watched with a sly side gaze. The newcomers seemed like an older lot and mostly white, which gave a grimace to his face. He preferred it when they brought in young people, especially when they brought in young men. Spilling out on the sidewalks, they had the befuddled look that he’d seen before on others, the look that asked, “Where am I? How did I get here? What’s my name? Do I know you?”
He wondered who they’d be, and whether any would become friends. Ambivalence hedged his thoughts about the answer. On the one hand, he wasn’t supposed to remember these things. Meeting a new delivery always fueled temptations to share his secrets with them. He wanted to whisper to them, “Psss, did you know that you died and were resurrected? You’re just like Jesus.” He always wanted to giggle about it.
Not that it was a laughing matter, having a dead population that was always being resuscitated and put into communities to give them a lived-in look. That’s how it goes when you lose the war.
The victors dictate the terms for peace.
She loved reading books, and not just reading them, but researching what to read next, talking about her reads with her friends and family, and prowling book stores with her book list in her hand. Non-fiction, fantasy, young adult, historic novels, mysteries…they were all on her list. She read everyday, often reading four or five books a week. Finding a new author that she enjoyed was her greatest pleasure.
Then her mother died, her mother, who’d always encouraged her to read, introducing her to The Three Detectives series and Nancy Drew Mysteries, her mother, whose idea of a day out was taking her girls to the public library, where each was allowed to check out one book.
With her mother gone, she no longer wanted to read. It was like her book light had gone out, and would not come back on.
The start
seeing
noticing
talking
flirting
friendship
lust
sex
love
trust
The relationship
trust
sex
love
support
compatibility
complacency
ennui
questions
regrets
The decisions
disagreements
betrayal
anger
arguments
fights
threats
tears
compromise
counseling
separating
praying
choices
The end
together
apart
resigned
accepting
hopeful
dismissive
optimistic
pessimistic
loving
trusting
hoping
Death.
His turn, at last, just when he was about to explode from impatience. That woman ahead of him had taken, like, six minutes.
As soon as she walked away, he strode up. Spreading his fingers, he put his palm to the ATM’s cold, dark screen. A pulse rose through his fingers. Blue light limned his hand. Sharp tingling nibbled at his skin, and the hair everywhere on his body stood on end.
He tapped his foot, waiting for results. Like thirty seconds later, the ATM began printing sounds. More seconds passed. His hair flattened and then the pulsing faded, the light dimmed and disappeared, and the tingling ended. As he removed his hand, a slip of paper scrolled out. Finally.
Taking the paper with, he perused the print out. “You done?” the next person in line said.
Nodding with a grunt, he walked away, perusing his print out as he did. The bottom line was what he first went to read. It said, “Warning: your karma points have reached the minimum balance. Be careful what you do.”
A car horn blew. Looking up and around, he found the offending driver and gave them the finger. As soon as he realized what he’d done, he grimaced. Crumbling the paper up, he shoved it into his pocket and started walking fast. Of course his karma points were low. How the fuck were you supposed to get points in a world like this?
Getting into his car, he started it with a burst of smoky revs, shoved it into reverse, and punched the gas. His rear tires grabbed traction with a chirp. “Hey,” an old man shouted behind him. “Watch it.” Selecting drive, he scattered pedestrians as the car jumped forward. Cutting off another car, he started speeding down the street.
“Minimum balance,” he said, selecting another radio station and turning up the volume. “Fuck that noise.”
Lighting a cigarette, he went on down the road, speeding past a girl in the crosswalk. Minimum balance, right. How was he ever supposed to get karma points when the world was set against him?
As his father always said, there’s just no sense in trying.
Floofspot (floofinition) – 1. place on human bodies that pets like to rub. Floofologists theorize that many cats and dogs believe that rubbing a specific spot on a human will grant them complete control over the human’s activities, a practice first documented in ancient Flooflandia. 2. place on pets that humans like to rub because their pets seem to like it. 3. Specific location known as habitual sleeping, ambush, or lurking locations used by housepets.
In use: “As soon as he walked into view, the cats raced to his legs, rubbing against his calves, knees, and ankles in search of his floofspot, as their mother had taught them.”
With snow blinding me and an icy wind using a scalpel on my face, I thought I’d made a stupid fucking mistake. Lowering my head as far as I could behind the windscreen, I kept on the throttle, hoping that I wasn’t passing the trio or that I’d run ’em over. I should’ve been on them by now. I’d seen them on the cameras at the two hundred yard marker. They were almost stopped then. Since, the snow’d come on proper. No way they’d gotten closer to the house, I was sure.
I wasn’t completely stupid, though. I’d tied a rope to the garage ‘fore I left it and another to the buggy’s rear bumper. Even if I didn’t find the three, I’d been able to get myself back to the house. This had gone past being a rescue thing, acquiring an aura of a personal goal because I was remembering the time I’d failed. I wasn’t failing again. I hadn’t fought to live and survive just to fail helpin’ others. No.
Almost running into the pole I’d planted years before as a marker helped orient me. I’d deviated from a straight line by ’bout forty feet. Turning right, I squinted against the swollen battering flurries and drove into the wind, cursing myself, the weather, the people, my humanity, and my stupidity. Then, like a chance as I was passing ’em, a blue garment flashed at me on my right.
Jesus, I was passing them. Dropping off the gas, I swerved right and swamped the buggy in a snowdrift. Righting it with a combo body-lean, wheel turn, and burst of throttle, I twisted right. The blue loomed up. I aimed right for it. As I did, I saw obscured shadows that had to be the other two.
On their knees, the blue-clad figure was waving their arms at me. Wind tortured hair around an exposed white face. A mouth yawed open below dark, hopeless eyes.
I pulled the buggy in amongst them. Between me and blue, we wrangled the other two onto the buggy’s back. One of them was such dead weight, I was leaning ninety degrees toward the certainty that they’d died. I didn’t wanna drag a dead person home, but since I didn’t know indisputably, my course was set.
With them in the buggy’s shallow bed, and blue on the buggy’s passenger side of the sole bench seat, I grabbed the rope up and hit the gas for home. It was damn slow going, as I had to keep pullin’ the rope in and adjusting my course. My speed had to be kept down lest the buggy’s bumpy ride tossed the three rescuees out.
Dusk was grabbing the land and I was frozen exhausted by the time the rope led me home. Back into the garage, I pulled the door to and closed it up, just about shutting out the cold and the shrieking wind. Blue became livelier then, gushing tearful thanks at me. The other two were in greens, grays, and blacks, pants, sweatshirts, coats, hats, and scarves, anything, I guess, to be warm and protected. Still, it seemed like scarce stuff to be wearing in that shit outside. I wondered where the hell they’d come from, why’d they’d been out there, and why’d they’d been coming my way. With blue’s help, we got the other two out of the garage and into the house.
Gasping, sniffing back snot, wiping her nose, and pushing her dirty blond hair back, blue introduced herself as Lauren. Her friends were Gwen and Shalla. Shalla proved to be the unconscious one that I thought might’ve been dead. All looked like they’d missed soap and food.
“I’m Bill,” I told ’em, not my real name, but part of the wild Bill persona I’d created for myself. Don’t know why I used it instead of my real name but it felt right. The animals had come in to see what was going on, so I thought I’d introduce them, too. “Meet the Beatles. The shy cat hanging back is Ringo, and the darker tabby is George. Their mom is the bigger tabby, Paula. The husky is John.”
“The Beatles,” Gwen said with a wan, teary smile. Dark banks shuttering her face, her head dropped forward. As she fully slumped onto the floor, Lauren did the same, like the heat was melting ’em down after being out in the cold. In seconds they seemed as unconscious as Shalla.
The animals went about sniffing the comatose new arrivals as I gaped, grappling with what I’d need to do. They were the first people I’d seen in three years, the first women I’d seen in almost four. Though I didn’t really enjoy the prospect, I had to get ’em out of those cold, wet clothes, and into the bed by the fire. Once I’d done all that, I’d have to mark my calendar, cause it was an auspicious day, the day that three female survivors met the Beatles.
I just knew it was going to change my world.
Michael Seidel, writer 