Pain: it’s a paradox
What do yoy do when you cannot cry? When you're choking and drowning in tears but not a drop comes out. When you want to scream but the sound is trapped. When you're chained to a cold, hard fear; but do not know where the chains strat or where they end.
I'm walking through this tangled mess blinded by its force, to smile, when I want to scream, "leave me alone!" Putting on an act, because I do not know what to do. Not knowing how to answer this darkness, or how to turn on the light, I'm lost. But I have not idea as to why? Or where to start?
The tears finally come but it came because I smiled too much that my heart feels as if it has been through the shredder over and over again.
I want to stay here in this darkness, to feel this pain again and over, all the time. But I hate myself for thinking that.
You may ask why I am speaking in a paradox?
Well that is because; Pain is addictive, you want to let go and hold on tight all at once.
#Trident
Fast Moving Dreams
Part One
Chapter One
Paige doesn’t have to see in the dimly lit truck to know the purple vein in Big Daddy’s forehead is pulsing, that his hands clench the steering wheel and his lips twitch as he prepares to unleash a barrage of shaming words. The speedometer glows white, faintly illuminating Big Daddy in his stiff new overalls. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour, too fast for the clunky red pickup that whines to keep up with Big Daddy’s rage. Paige crouches against the passenger door.
They are headed to the bus station. Big Daddy had shoved Paige in the truck and said he was putting her on the next Greyhound leaving town. Said he wanted her gone for good. Said this is tough love, which makes his chest heavy, but there is no other way.
Big Daddy drives in fuming silence at first. Then the yelling starts, builds to high speed like the truck, madder and faster as Big Daddy fumes. Paige only hears some of the words. She learned long ago to put an invisible helmet over her ears, and to pretend she is invisible too.
Paige has heard most of these words before. Addict. Weren’t raised this way. Piece of shit boyfriend. Trash. Hurting Abby. Stealing, from me! Me! He bangs his fists on the steering wheel. Ought to call the cops. But no! You’d be back like a damn feral cat. Getting you the hell away from Abby.
Paige winces at the mention of Abby. She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her little girl. But surely Big Daddy won’t really make her leave. Back like a damn feral cat made her cringe too. She is his daughter, not some stray animal.
Surely, Paige thinks, this will end like when she was a teenager and Big Daddy caught her skipping school with Danny. Big Daddy drove around yelling until his throat hurt, then ground her and refused to speak to her for days. Mother had treated her like a sick, wounded creature, bringing soup and crackers on a tray to her room for dinners, until Big Daddy got worn out being mad and let life settle to normal.
The mean words continue now though, like a stream of consciousness. She hates Big Daddy because he doesn’t understand her. His words make her want to go away, to find a place with Danny again. Danny will get her from the bus stop if Big Daddy follows through. Big Daddy’s eyes are on the road. She plucks a strand of long brown hair from her head and presses the tip to her lips.
“Stop it Paige!” Big Daddy yells and snatches the thin strand. How did he see that? Paige wonders. The butterflies wake up and flap, flap, flap in Paige’s stomach. She’d always called worries and nerves the butterflies. Mother calls them that too. Paige smiles remembering how Abby thought they were real butterflies, black monarchs and orange and yellow painted ladies flying around in your stomach like on a bloody summer day in a garden.
Big Daddy couldn’t make her leave Abby. A wave of nausea washes through Paige and tears well. She doesn’t know what to do with Abby. Her sister, Melissa the perfect, thinks Paige is a terrible mother, but Paige loves her daughter. That’s all you need, right? But she can’t have Danny and the drugs, and be a mother, responsible and all. Danny and the drugs always call her back. The heroin, the meth had chosen her, but no one understands.
Paige rolls down the passenger window for air to tamp the nausea and to let Big Daddy’s words dissipate into the night rather than hover around her all hot and moist in the cab. She looks out into the Knoxville sky, lit with billboards, and beyond that a faint sprinkling of stars. The rain-scented mountain air helps her breathe, refreshes her face, and whips her hair.
Big Daddy pulls off I-40 at North Central and eases down Magnolia to the Greyhound station. He parks the truck, which ticks to cool down as they sit in silence.
“Next bus leaving,” he says. Big Daddy looks straight out the windshield into the night. “Don’t care where it’s going.”
Paige wipes her runny nose with the back of her hand, opens the passenger door, picks up her backpack and sling purse from the floor, and steps outside. She stares at her father, who sits in the harsh glare of the overhead cab light. His eyes look sad, but unrelenting. His lips press together in a firmness that says Paige can’t come home.
“It’s cruel to kick out your own flesh and blood,” Paige says, spitting the words. ’What kind of father does that?” She waits for Big Daddy to say “I know. I can’t do it,” and order her back inside the truck. Instead, Big Daddy sighs and gets out of the vehicle, slams the door hard.
“This is your own doing, Paige,” he says. “You’re 25 and still acting 15. You’re killing me, taking years off my life.”
Goosebumps pop on Paige’s skinny arms and legs. The June night suddenly feels too cold for blue-jean shorts and a tank top.
“Daddy,” she says. Her voice cracks. “Please don’t. I can’t leave Abby. And where will I go?” Paige shivers as she talks. He’s really doing this, she thinks.
“You’ve already left Abby,” Big Daddy says. “You aren’t there for her at all. It’s the rest of us -- me, your mother, and Melissa who tend to Abby.” His voice is soft but firm. A thick moment of silence passes as they glare at each other across the expanse of the truck bed, the parking lot light drawing gnats toward their faces.
“You can’t force me to go!” Paige stomps her foot. “That’s child abuse. You could be arrested.”
“Twenty-five is not a child, Paige. Don’t threaten me,” Big Daddy says, his voice strangely calm now.
“I hate you,” Paige hisses at him. “I hate you for this.”
“Well, I don’t hate you. But I don’t know what to do with you,” Big Daddy says. “A man shouldn’t have to put a private lock on his bedroom door to keep his child from stealing cash from his wallet, or rummaging through the closet for the guns.”
His lips twitch as though he might cry. He waves away a swarm of gnats. “I can’t have you stealing from me, coming home high, and then disappearing for weeks without a thought for Abby. And as for your mother, you’ve caused her to age way beyond her years.
“Mama’s not my fault,” Paige yells.
“I’m sorry, honey, but we are done. I hope you learn something from this, grow up and get your life together. Until that happens, you’re on your own.”
Paige squares her jaw, tightens her lips, and slams shut the passenger door, trembling mad inside. Well screw him, she thinks. He never loved her. No decent father would throw his daughter on the streets. He loves Melissa, the smart one. Sorry she can’t be Melissa.
Paige walks fast into the station, hating Big Daddy for crossing this line, hating Melissa. She keeps her head down. Her heart pounds. Big Daddy follows her, purchases a one-way ticket on the next Greyhound headed to Denver, Colorado. Paige has never been there, but she knows it is far away. Too far to easily get back home.
Paige snatches the ticket and walks to the far end of the station, takes a seat in a blue plastic chair attached to a row of blue plastic chairs. She doesn’t look back, determined not to give Big Daddy the satisfaction. Big Daddy clunks coins in a vending machine for a Coke and sits a distance away, sipping the drink.
Paige decides that when he leaves, she’ll cash in the ticket and take a cab to Danny’s house, or find a motel for the night. But Big Daddy doesn’t go anywhere. Paige has no choice but to board the bus and leave everything she knows behind.
Chapter Two
Banging and yelling upstairs wakes Abby from a fitful sleep. Abby’s grandfather, Big Daddy, thunders across the ceiling. Abby pats the bed, but no one is there. Overhead, Big Daddy shouts words with “God” in them, words you aren’t supposed to say. Brave Abby wants to barge her eight-year-old-self upstairs and scream “stop!” Scared Abby jams her head under the pillow, a soft shield that does little to mute the noise.
A pale glow spills over the stairs that line the far wall and lead to the main level of the house. Aunt Melissa, who Abby calls Meme, climbs down slowly with a flashlight, one hand spread across her pregnant belly. She unlocks the desk drawer, counts out dollars, and stuffs them in her short’s pockets.
“Why’s Big Daddy mad?” Abby whispers.
“Can’t talk, Abby. Go to sleep. He’s not mad at you.” Meme takes the steps back up two at a time.
More angry stomps. A cabinet door slams. Abby sniffles against her pillow. She knows this has something to do with Mama. She pulls her fists under her chin and curls in a ball. Jinx sits on the bed and pats Abby’s back. Aunt Meme says Jinx is imaginary, but she seems real to Abby with her short orange-red hair and green eyes, always saying things that make Abby feel better.
“It’s probably nothing,” Jinx says. “He gets mad over nothing.”
Big Daddy’s old truck revs, squeals in the gravel driveway. Then, silence. Damp, dark basement air stirs like a spooky presence. The house sounds extra quiet after the commotion.
Meme walks back down the steps and Jinx disappears. Jinx doesn’t like Meme. The bed squeaks with Meme’s weight even though she’s skinny as a stick everywhere except her pregnant belly. Meme pulls Abby close and strokes her hair. Meme is so sweet -- sometimes.
“What’s going on?” Abby whispers.
Meme lights a cigarette. The match flares, sizzles. The tip of her Salem flits like a firefly around her tight-set mouth.
“I’m going to tell you the truth Abby, like I always do.” She pulls the chain on the driftwood lamp Big Daddy made. Abby takes a deep breath and waits. Meme doesn’t always tell the truth.
“You know how your mama sometimes makes bad decisions?”
“Because of the Polar Bear?”
“Well yes. The bi-polar. That’s part of the problem.”
Abby sits up and moves closer. Meme puts her arm around Abby’s shoulders. This is what Abby calls the “time before the knowing,” the few seconds when she is aware there is bad news, usually about Mama, but the words haven’t yet spilled into the air to become real.
I want to slow down time, Abby thinks. Stay here, where Meme loves me and I don’t know about the bad thing, whatever Mama did this time. She thinks of the merry-go-round at school, where you can dig in your heels, pull with your arms and slow down, go almost still.
Meme sighs and shakes the foot of her crossed leg, dangling a flip-flop. Abby knows she is hesitating because she’s thinking how to phrase things, how to make whatever happened hit Abby’s heart like a soap bubble instead of a brick.
“Your mama made another bad decision.” Meme takes a deep inhale on her cigarette and turns her head to the side, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I don’t how she got so over her head, if she quit taking her meds, or is on something else, or what. You can never tell with Paige.”
Smoke ghosts elongate like spooky eaves-droppers waiting to hear what Meme says before floating up and out the crack in the window. “You know how mad Big Daddy gets sometimes, right?”
“Go on and tell. What did she do?” Abby hears the dread in her voice, the dragging of vowels that Meme hates.
“It doesn’t matter what she did, and you don’t need to worry over it. Big Daddy kicked her out for good. He’s driving her to the bus station and putting her on the next Greyhound, no matter where it’s headed. He wants her out of our lives. Those were his exact words.”
“Out of our lives?” Abby asks. “No! You can’t kick people out of a family! She’s Mama!” Abby’s throat feels suddenly sore and her eyes swell with tears. The panic butterflies pummel her chest, beating their little wings as hard as they can.
“He sure can and he is.” Meme sits her Salem Light on the table and pulls her brown hair into a ponytail with a rubber band, then picks the cigarette back up.
“I gave her a little money, enough for a place to stay until she gets on her feet. She’s got her meds, and I told her I’d forward next month’s pills when she lands somewhere. She’ll be okay. Thank God she’s gone though. We are all going to be better off. ”
Abby jumps off the bed, furious at Meme and Big Daddy for wanting Mama gone. How can anyone’s mama be out of a girl’s life? She digs in her clothes pile for something besides the Hello Kitty pajamas she’s wearing.
Grandma Lovey will understand and take Abby to the bus station; maybe she can go away with her mother or at least say “goodbye.” She doesn’t want to live in Big Daddy and Lovey’s house with Meme and not Mama.
“I’m going too!” Abby tells Meme. “She’s my mama! I don’t want her out of my life. I’m not glad she’s gone. Hey Jinx,” Abby yells, “help me pack. Lovey will take us to the bus.”
Meme rolls her eyes and taps cigarette ash in the base of the driftwood lamp.
“For the last time Abby, grow up. Jinx is not real.”
“I’m eight!” Abby shouts but isn’t sure if she means she is grown up, or that she is just eight and has a right to believe in magical things and to have her mama with her. Somehow, she thinks, she means both things.
“She’s a made-up friend. And besides, you aren’t going anywhere,” Meme sighs. Her voice turns softer.
“I know you don’t understand and want Paige to stay, but she’s already on a bus by now. I know you love your mama, but you’ll understand someday why she’s not good for you. Besides you’re safer here and starting third grade soon!”
Abby turns her face from Meme’s eager smile about school. The other kids have moms who bring cupcakes on their birthdays and drive on field trips. School is where Abby learned that all moms and daughters don’t live in their grandparents’ homes, sleep in their mother’s childhood bedroom, or in the basement with an aunt. Most live with their moms and dads in their own house or apartment, and visit their grandparents on Christmas. Warm tears hit Abby’s cheeks, her nose runs, and her heart throbs like in the fast-moving dreams, even though she’s standing still in an ankle-deep heap of unfolded clothes.
Abby imagines her mama riding to the bus station, arms crossed, glaring out the window, mad at Big Daddy for throwing her out. Where will she go? Abby wonders. Her home is here, in the canopy room she shares with Abby, in Big Daddy and Lovey’s house, 537 Juno Drive in Knoxville, Tennessee, the address she had to memorize in first grade. Nowhere else can be home! She must have panic butterflies real bad, Abby thinks, and bursts into a fresh round of tears.
She wonders what Mama said to Big Daddy on the way to the bus station. Did she say “Tell Abby I love her? I’ll be back for her?” She might not be the kind of mama everyone else has, but she’s Abby’s mama, and cupcakes or not, Abby needs her to be the one person in the world who loves her most.
With Mama gone, who will sleep with Abby in the canopy bed upstairs? Who will flip through Glamour magazines with her and Jinx and tell them who the stars are? Because Mama understands about Jinx and doesn’t tell Abby to grow up. Who will wake Abby in the middle of the night to raid the freezer, giggling and shushing each other as they eat chocolate ice cream by the blue light of the open door? Who will love Abby most of all?
And what about Dell the Giant? With Mama gone, will he leave too? A few days ago he brought Abby star-shaped sunglasses and a coloring book from Goodwill, where he works. He’s Mama’s friend, but he’s so sweet and nice to Abby. She doesn’t want to lose Dell, too! She’s known him all her life. She once asked her mother if Dell was her father. Paige had made a snorting laugh and said “don’t be ridiculous.”
“Hey,” Meme lifts Abby’s chin with her pointing finger. “You want your mama to be safe, don’t you? She’s safer away. You’re safer here. You don’t want to travel away on a bus, do you?”
“No.” Abby lets the pair of shorts she dug from the clothes pile drop from her fingertips, then falls back on the bed. “But I already miss her,” Abby says. “I miss her so bad.”
“Don’t pout,” Meme says. “You’re loved plenty.” She pauses, then in a rush grabs Abby’s hand.
“Feel this,” she says. Meme places Abby’s palm on the skin of her big belly. It’s a private place, underneath the waistband of her elastic stretch shorts. Meme’s belly is hard as rock. Two faint kicks press into Abby’s palm. Boom, Boom. They feel like heartbeats. Abby’s lips curl into a smile and her hand trembles against Meme’s warm skin.
She can’t be angry with Meme, now that her aunt has let her touch the thin-stretched skin of her stomach, let her feel the kicks. Abby has never touched another person’s belly like this. It feels private, a personal thing she wasn’t part of before but now is.
Her heart beats quicken. She leaves her hand there, hoping for more kicks, hoping Meme will embrace her again, will stroke her hair and tell her not to worry about Mama, that she’ll talk Big Daddy into letting Mama come back and everything will be okay. Another kick tickles Abby’s palm.
“That’s your cousin,” Meme says. “You will be sort of like a big sister.”
“Yea,” Abby smiles. “Sort of like you and Mama.
“Well,” Meme says. “Hopefully not.”
Chapter Three
Paige drags her backpack up the steep steps of the bus, clutching her sling purse close to her chest. About a fourth of the seats are filled with hunched over men and women. The smell of sweat and mold fills the air. No one says anything to her and she is glad. A withered-looking woman nods and smiles but Paige ignores her.
Where did these sad people come from, Paige wonders? Where are they going? A lyric to an oldie’s song Big Daddy plays sticks in her head. “All the lonely people, where do they all belong….” She finds an empty row of seats near the front and plops down, curls into a fetal position, and pulls her iPhone from her purse.
She calls Danny’s number for the tenth time, then texts Melissa, who doesn’t respond either. The soft hug Melissa gave her when she handed Paige the $400 must have meant nothing. And Danny, saying he loved her all those nights. That was bullshit too. If any of them loved her they wouldn’t have let this happen. She’s truly on her own with nothing but Melissa’s money, a baggie of heroine she took from Danny’s stash last time she was at the trailer and a handful of Adderall.
Alone. No place to sleep, no Abby to snuggle with when she needs a hug. She could get murdered out here. How would Big Daddy like that? How would he feel about tough love then?
She pictures in her mind police officers knocking on the door at home, bringing the news that the dead body of Paige Anne Marsh was discovered in Denver, Colorado. Lovey and Abby would cry hysterically and blame Big Daddy. They would never speak to him again and he would die alone and sad. The panic butterflies kick in.
“I’m in trouble,” Paige says to herself. “I’m in serious trouble.”
Her lips twitch as she thinks of the white powder in her purse. So glad she lifted it off Danny when she did. Paige digs in her purse for her straw, draws the purse close to her face, and snorts just enough heroin to help her cope, calm her down, and make her feel better. God, she needs it more than ever. It’s the only thing she can count on.
The bus pulls out of the terminal just as the sun begins to rise and Paige’s high kicks in. She’s on an adventure now, awake and alert, watching the pink dawn, a new day opening, through the wide bus window. It feels a little like she’s at a theater.
Under the bridge, homeless men and women mill about, which makes Paige uneasy so she looks away. This part of town feels grey and lonely, deserted except for a couple entering a coffee house and a lone homeless man curled under an awning.
The Sun Sphere stands tall above the town, its big golden ball like another world in the sky, an unreachable world. A World’s Fair World that dinky Knoxville hosted before Paige was born. The university, just a few blocks over, Melissa’s old territory, would be quiet this time of morning.
“Glad I’m leaving this stupid town,” Paige mumbles.
The bus hisses and sighs like a live beast, then pulls onto the downtown streets. They hit I-40 West toward Nashville and pick up speed, then pass the exit for Pellissippi State, where Paige had once considered enrolling for a business degree. That imagined life wouldn’t happen.
But something new will happen, something exciting, she thinks. Big Daddy isn’t yelling at her. Danny’s brother can’t track her down for the money she owes. Abby will be okay with Melissa and Lovey. She’s free now, free of her old life and off to a new one where she doesn’t owe money and can become anyone she wants. She feels light, dandelion fluff in the wind. Off to wherever the breeze takes her.
Paige would love a cigarette, but a sign up front says “no smoking,” and she doesn’t want to call attention to herself. So she adjusts her backpack against the window, rests her head on it, and falls asleep thinking of dandelions, but her dreams take a darker turn.
A tabby mama cat in an alley scavenges trash cans for food. It’s a pretty cat, orange and black and white. But it turns rabid with a rat in its teeth and chunks of hair missing. She knows it’s a dream but she desperately wants the pretty cat back, the smooth-haired tabby with the gentle purr. She can’t steer her dream that way. The rabid cat slinks closer, drops the rat on her lap.
Paige wakes nervous and fretful, her neck sore from sleeping against the bus frame, her mouth cotton dry. A sour odor wafts from her armpits. She watches the boring landscape -- fields planted with corn or wheat, dotted with cows, barns and ponds. Her stomach growls.
“Where are we?” she asks the withered lady.
“Past Nashville, headed to St. Louis,” the lady says. “You slept right through that stop.”
I must have slept four or five hours, Paige thinks. Now she longs for St. Louis so she can get something to eat and drink and use a proper restroom.
In St. Louis, the bus screeches to a halt and swings open its doors. A big, lumbering man in overalls boards. He reminds Paige of Big Daddy because of the overalls, but this man is taller and his overalls are threadbare and washed to a faint blue, not starched and stiff like Big Daddy’s.
His beard and hair are bushy and mostly gray, but strands of reddish-orange show through. The man catches Paige’s eye, but she quickly looks down and calls Danny again. Her shoulders shake as she chokes back sobs because Danny still isn’t answering and she is a long way from home.
“You all right, darling?” The big man touches her shoulder.
“Leave me alone.” She flinches at the touch, stays hidden behind the waterfall of hair.
“Headed clear to Denver?”
“I said leave me alone.”
“My name’s Jonah. Long trip to Denver. Travelers can use friends.”
Paige shakes her head, still looking down, hair swinging back and forth and hiding her face. She doesn’t want to look at anyone right now. She wants this old, smelly man to leave her alone. Who knows, he could be a rapist. He claims the seats across the aisle and a couple rows back.
“Creep,” Paige mutters as she stands and steps outside. The air is thick and toxic with bus fumes. Inside she purchases two bottled waters from a vending machine and gulps one down, then plunks in quarters for cheese and crackers, a tube of Pringles and a pack of Salem Lights.
She could stay in St. Louis, she thinks. Not return to the bus and the chatty old man. But her backpack is there, and Colorado is supposed to be pretty with all the mountains. Maybe she could get approved for medical marijuana. She smokes a cigarette and reminds herself it’s an adventure.
TITLE: Fast Moving Dreams
GENRE: Adult Literary Novel
WORD COUNT: 56,000 for full novel. This is the first three chapters.
SYNOPSIS: Paige is kicked out of her family home, where she had been living with her little girl. She goes to Denver and meets a homeless preacher and a Jamacian woman who help her set up life in a camper at Camp Timberlake, an old state park that is now a homeless shelter. Three years pass. Abby, now 11, gets clues to her mother's whereabouts and sets out on a trip cross country with an old friend and her grandmother to find Paige and bring her home.
SPACE, Space, space.
SPACE, Space, space.
Space, spaces.
Spaces.
Spaces can considered as areas Around Us, defined in relation To Us, expressed as concepts By Us; a big room, a little place, a closet, or a palace; in or at scale, ie. incremental proliferation, or Shelling.
Which is (of course) Exactly how Everything works, from the quantum scale on up.
Space is created out of SPACE; quantum, or Sacred Geometry, describes how the Three Movements; Cardinal (going Up) Ordinal (Out) and Mutable (Away) -the Axes X,Y,Z, interact.
That's Numerology. The constructive efforts of the Special Forces; the Strong (Up) and Weak (Out) Nuclear Forces and Mutable (Away) Electromagnetism.
Otherwise known as Magikal Water, Fire, and Air.
But These THREE, which are movements across a common, Created Central Point, the Ninth; don't exist. They're an almost invisible skeleton of energy that the real world grows on. The Real World, meaning "Our World", or our spaces in Space made of SPACE, in the same Place Relative to SOL.
All the Universe, on the other hand, are Radiating in Scale, Up, Out and Away; Inflating, SHELLING.
Concentric Spherical Universes; radially symmetrical (Cardinal) layered (Ordinal) and segmented (Mutable) Quantum Magnetic Fields, Scaled to A Hundred; fully Polarized by the Fourth, False, Force; Gravity.
The False Force; "false" in that it is an Effect, a consequence, a Creation. The Element of Earth, aka Gravity/Inertia. Echoes of the THREE repeat, into the Earthly Elements all Created Things are made of; again; Water, Fire, Air, and now Earth; the Princess Cards. Yin and Yang and the Dots of each other within them.
SPACE,Space, spaces. Geometry exists throughout all things, in endless fractal Patterns in Nature; snowflake, beehive, butterfly; crystals, sounds, skeletons; but Only People Build CUBES.
It's a Expression, a Symptom, of our defining characteristic as a Species; a Control Fetish.
Which can be demonstrated Creatively or Nazi.
People invent things because they want to; not because they want to get rich, that's False Fourth.
People Build things, and put them in boxes, so they'll be real. So you can Open Them by Hand.
Hand is how all things are Made, and the Shape of hand can show the Shape of All Things; Thumb Up, Index Finger pointing Out, three fingers folded left, similar to "gun" -Not a coincidence.
The Rule of Right-handed-ness is a model of the quantum forces, and the Magikal Elements, and a magnetic field, and the Means by which all Things are Accomplished; by Us.
We Make things. Aside from all the Interference from Entropic Entities posing as "Order" (Cardinal) by using Force (Ordinal) to co-oerce submission (Mutable) aka religions, governments and legislations; the History of the Human Race has been Inventive, Constructive, and Co-operative.
We ROCK. We Are Rocks. We're made of rocks.
We, Humans, built All This from nothing. From Nothing. From No-Thing -space, Space, SPACE.
We, built Civilization, Together, because we Wanted To. That describes a Rational Anarchy.
Today we have exactly the opposite; including Justification to enForce building Codes; and Atypical Rooms, whether by shape or size or method of construction, require Permission.
Submission of Plans (Mutable) Obedience to Codes (Ordinal ) followed by Payment (Cardinal) of Your Energy Currency to anti-life Entropic Entities.
SPACE, Space, spaces.
Spaceship.
Hello, I'm Calum Turnbull (birth name) an Autodidact Psychic Empath.
I'm also a Walk-In on a Reincarnation.
I solved the Riddle of the QaBaLaH in only Fifteen Years, and discovered Q3eory, the "Magikal Theory of Everything".
I also invented Pressed Fiber Cannabis, aka PFC, which scavenges Free Carbon, and grows into the most Versatile Building Material in Human History -endless sticky twine, machine woven and compressed into Solid Objects including Houses, Bridges, Skyscrapers, and the Hyper Loop.
The Explanation Above flowed into my phone in response to the "What Defines a Room?" Prose Challenge.
Almost effortlessly, only because I'm not just "knowing" this, I Am This.
I'm quite certain that You, each and severally, are much more qualified to determine the labels applied to my particular expression of this type of information than I am... Science, Fact?
Smart people? Younger than older in general. Native English speaking, higher education having unless otherwise deprived.
I'm a Scot born in America, an Inventor, screenwriter and artist.
Older white man. Self possessed.
Tall, handsome (need new teeth) well spoken, charismatic. Made Films.
I also authored the TransMedia Concept MEDIEVAL LAND, set in the LARPARK, setting of the Screenplay of the same name; awaiting transfer to Final Draft for Review.
It's currently a 150 page PDF.
The screenplay will get me Prototype Money for PFC (which will win the Carbon X-PRIZE and a Nobel, too) and guarantee it's profitability by constructing the sets and props for the film, which will eventually become the world's largest entertainment venue and Film Studio. That's the Big Idea.
The Sacred Geometry stuff I barely got into above also led to a Cyclopedia's Worth of Theories with proofs and subsequent inventions; a smaller publishing company's Fortune.
In answer to the Most Rhetorical Question Ever, "Why Trident Media?", same reason I do everything else; Because I Want To.
Because (you) Solicited Submissions, providing (me) an Opportunity for a Demonstration of Practicability.
Which I appreciate very much.
Thank you, and Good Day.
Calum Proudfoot Turnbull
865 659 2066
Weeping Maiden Rock
By the time I realized a storm was coming in, it was already too late to make it to the shelter. It had come on fast, faster than I had ever seen, and I had lived out here over ten years. I thought I knew the weather patterns but apparently, I did not. An hour ago the sky was clear, with not a cloud in sight. Now the wind whipped my hair around my head and half the dome overhead was filled with the towering shape of a massive cumulonimbus, lightning jigging and jagging within it. Pieces of plants and trees flew in the wind that buffeted me as I ran toward home and my scalp prickled with fear as I sensed a tornado behind me. I ran faster, my feet barely touching the ground as I nearly flew over it, but it wasn’t fast enough. The twister picked me up as easily as if I weighed nothing at all, holding me in its grip and flinging me around in a crazy, uncontrollable spiral. I saw the pig coming, kicking and squealing and heading right for me in the chaos of the swirling vortex, but there was no time, let alone any means to avoid him. I squeezed my eyes shut and cringed right before the solid bulk of him slammed into me and the darkness rose up and snatched me away.
I had been out in the orchard, picking apples. We only had a few trees and I cherished the job as my own, enjoying the solitude of the upper field. Lately, the accusing eyes of my husband were too much for me to bear and I had to admit I’d been finding more reasons to stay away from the house. Buying this farm had been Gavin’s idea, but I was the one who was finding myself in this land. He had hurt himself more than a year ago and as limited as he was in his wheelchair, he couldn’t follow me to the upper field. Gavin had become a different person after his accident and now he wanted to sell the farm and move back to the city to be closer to his doctors. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave. I loved this place, it was my home. I wasn’t so sure about Gavin anymore but the land, yeah, I was sure about that.
It’s not a huge place, only twenty-five acres, but it’s sweetly situated in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, perfectly nestled in a valley between two minor ridges. Our fields are mostly wheat and alfalfa, but back behind the house and barn, a virgin tangle of tall pines mixed with Aspen and Cottonwood march along our border almost all the way across, cradling its cluster of structures like a jewel. The barn stands just behind the house with only a breezeway between them. Before his accident, Gavin had liked that he could get there quickly if he had to check out a downed fence, missing livestock, or anything else on their acreage that needed his attention. With the barn right there he could saddle a horse and be anywhere on their property in minutes. Now he rarely leaves the house, preferring to wait for me if he needs anything. He has refused my every suggestion to hire help of any kind and relies solely on me for everything. It’s getting old. I can't take care of him and the farm. There’s just too much to do.
I woke up just in time to witness my landing. The tornado swung me by a tall cedar tree, sticking me into a nook between branches as gently as a mother setting down her newborn baby. It continued on down tornado alley without so much as a by-your-leave, leaving me staring down one hundred and fifty feet of trunk at the forest floor beneath me. My hair-raising trip to the ground was a nightmare I will never forget, taking me the better part of an hour, and I blew a sigh of relief when my feet finally hit the ground. My adventure inside the whirlwind had stripped me of both my shoes and my socks, leaving me in only my shorts and tank top. It was almost dark and not knowing where I was, I decided to hunker down for the night. I would find my way home in the morning.
After spending a sleepless night shivering, huddled beneath the branches of my cedar, I was stiff as I made my way up to higher ground to try and figure out where I was. I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth, my clothing damp with dew, as I stumbled over the uneven ground. Morning sunbeams began peeking between the trees I was walking through, and I lingered in the patches I came across, trying to warm up enough to stop the shivering. It was hurting my teeth and clenching my jaw was only making it sore. When I came to the clearing at the top of the ridge and the sun shone full in my face, bathing me with its rays, I stopped and closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation. When I opened them a few moments later, I knew exactly where I was. Directly in front of me on top of the next crest was a rock formation I recognized. I had been there before. The real estate agent had brought me and Gavin here before taking us to tour the ranch thirteen years ago. It was apparently some kind of historic spot where the Native American chiefs from the local tribes were said to have had some kind of confrontation with some of the pioneers in the early eighteen hundreds. Their agent had told them the story mysteriously, in hushed tones, like teenagers around a campfire.
The story went that when white men initially came to this area, there were only a few of them at first. The local villages tried to incorporate the new families into their territory, tolerating them as long as they stayed to themselves and committed no major faux pas, even trading with them and treating them like guests. It was said that one brave fell in love with Grace Rosemary Williams, the daughter of one of the settlers, carrying her away with him, as was their custom. The Williams men hunted them down and brought the couple up onto the highest ridge, calling out the chiefs of the tribe to come attend the impromptu trial. The matter could not be resolved and the two parties fell upon each other, resulting in the slaughter of all the natives and most of the colonists as well. They say Rose could not be consoled at the death of her brave and was overcome with grief. Evading her father, she flung herself from the pinnacle. When the surviving Williams went to retrieve her body, it could not be found. Afterward, many people claimed to see a ghostly, hysterical woman throwing herself off of the precipice. At some point, a monument had been erected naming it Weeping Maiden Rock. As such places often end up, it became a popular, if dangerous local teen hangout.
The Rock was deserted at the moment but I was relieved to see it because it meant home was only a few hours' walk away. I started out, warm after standing in the sun, and picked my way down the hill carefully in my bare feet. By the time I got to the top of Maiden Rock, they were stinging and sore. Stopping to rest was not an option, though. I knew I had been gone long enough to make Gavin worry, and there were probably numerous police and helpful neighbors combing the hills looking for me, as well. Following a smooth vein of rock, I got too close to the edge, my weight causing it to crumble beneath me, and before I even had time to be afraid, I landed with a jolt in the scree at the bottom of the cliff. Looking up in surprise, I could barely see the top of the rock far above my head. I couldn’t understand what had just happened to me. I was completely unhurt! How was that possible? I was thinking I should be dead and wondered if I was for a few minutes before I got up and dusted myself off. I continued limping toward home, so focused on picking my way through the rocks and thorns, I only dimly noticed the impossibility of the landscape I was walking through.
With the tenderness of my feet increasing, it was late afternoon before I topped the hill above my farm. As I descended the upper field, I began noticing changes. Little things at first, then as I rounded the corner of the barn what I saw stopped me dead in my tracks. The yard was completely different! The corrals we kept our horses in had vanished and the barn and house looked brand new, each with what looked like a fresh coat of paint. I experienced a fleeting surge of hope that Gavin had people rounding up our horses, but I had no idea where we would put them when they brought them back. When I stepped around to the front of the house I stopped again as I saw the lush new lawn and flower beds in front of the house. What had Gavin done and how had he done it so quickly? Setting my jaw, I resolutely stomped toward the house to have it out with him. If he thought he was going to sell this place out from under me, he had another thing coming.
The house was cool and dim when I opened the door and I stopped just inside to let my eyes adjust and to listen for a clue to where Gavin was. He usually spent most of his days in the den, watching TV, but I didn't hear it on. I stepped into the hallway, feeling the cool wood soothe my poor battered feet as I padded into the kitchen, stopping as the sight of neat black and white décor met my eyes instead of the bright yellows and greens I had decorated with. I backed out the doorway, my eyes wide, and turned and sprinted to my bedroom. I stopped just inside the chamber, shock rendering me breathless. All my things were gone! All of Gavin's equipment and most of the furniture was gone as well. Around the mostly empty room, hanging on the walls at eye level, were several ornate frames but I couldn't tell what they contained from the doorway where I stood. Intrigued, I moved toward the one closest to me and stared at the words shouting at me from the page. It was a yellowing newspaper article, the headline catching my interest immediately. "Unusual Tornado Activity Reported in Red Lodge." Boy, I’ll say. I was thinking that was an understatement while I stepped over to the next one which read, "The Search for Cassie Thatcher Extended," making my heart leap in my chest, and next to that, "Missing Colorado Woman Feared Dead." I went mechanically around the room to the other frames, standing before each one only a moment before moving on. The last one made my hair stand up. "Gavin Thatcher calls off search for missing wife." My scalp was tingling and I couldn't see through the spots in front of my eyes as I fought not to lose consciousness. They couldn't be talking about me, could they? I’d been gone less than twenty-four hours! These articles spoke of a timeline that was measured in months, years even. A sound behind me had me spinning in place, and as I spun I saw someone standing in the doorway. It was some old guy. He was shrunken and wrinkled and his thinning hair was snow white. I squinted at him, thinking he looked familiar when he spoke.
"Cassie?!" His pinched mouth was drawn down in deep lines around a permanent frown. "How?" he asked, his eyes dominating his face. I wasn't listening. I was staring at him, my face drained of color.
"Gavin?" My voice came out in a hoarse whisper. "What’s happened to you?"
"Me?! What happened to you?!" He demanded, gesturing to the walls around me. But my blood was roaring in my ears and I couldn't hear him. I covered them with my hands and pushing past him, I ran, not noticing where I was going. I needed to think. My head was still spinning, making it hard for any firing neurons to land anywhere productive. I thought this probably had something to do with my tumble off Maiden Rock, earlier. That was decidedly strange and I was starting to feel like a character in a twilight zone episode. I skirted the house and barn and headed back the way I had come, my feet complaining every time they hit the ground, but I didn’t stop. I was afraid if I did, I would turn around to see Gavin encased in some kind of exoskeleton, jerking along back there trying to catch up. The idea took shape behind me, giving me the incentive I needed to put a comfortable distance between me and the one place on earth where I felt at home.
I ran on while the day faded around me, ignoring my pain and fatigue, and reached the escarpment just as the last of the sun’s light gave way to stars. I stood at the bottom and looked up. Was there a slight disturbance up there? I did see an area where my view of the stars was obscured, but from here and in the dark, I couldn’t tell how high up it was or any other details about it. It was there, though, I was sure of that and the knowledge comforted me. I would figure it out. But as shattered as I was, I still understood I would have to get help. If it was even possible, I knew getting back up through that thing wasn’t going to be easy. Exhausted, I eased myself down with my back against the warmth of the rock and examined my soles with cautious fingers. They were a mass of cuts, thankfully none were serious, but I must have pulled out a hundred stickers before my eyes closed of their own accord and my chin dropped to my chest as I fell headlong into the gaping maw of slumber, supported by the embrace of the outcropping I leaned against.
I woke to someone stroking my forehead with a tender hand. Startled, I sat up quickly, my heart hammering away inside my chest. Gavin lowered his hand and watched me without speaking while I gathered my bearings. I was in an unfamiliar bed but I recognized our guest room. Gavin sat in a chair beside the bed, a book upside down in his lap. He smiled and standing up slowly, grabbed a cane from the back of the chair and made his way to the door.
“I’ll have Rose make you something to eat if you want to get dressed and come to the kitchen.” He nodded his head at a neatly folded stack of clothing on a nearby bureau and went out, closing the door behind him. I hoped I hadn’t offended him but I couldn’t help staring at him. He had to be at least ninety years old. The implications were staggering and I wasn’t sure I didn’t still believe I was dreaming. It would explain the changes in the property, though. I took my time getting dressed, noticing that someone had cleaned and dressed my feet while I had been sleeping. I froze, seeing my shoes beneath the dresser the clothes had been sitting on, and picked them up to get a closer look. Where had he found them? They really did look like I had taken them off yesterday. My hands were shaking so much I couldn’t tie them. After several tries, I gave up and tucked the laces in instead, then taking a deep breath, I opened the door.
Gavin explained, while I wolfed a delicious omelet made for me by a melancholy young woman he called Rose, that he had come after me in his TF-X, whatever that was, and unable to wake me, had trapped me with his Bessel Beams, whatever those were, and brought me back here. I looked up from my plate to see him smiling his cat that caught the canary smile and narrowed my eyes at him. Same old Gavin.
“Spill,” I told him. Instead, he turned to Rose, who was washing dishes in the sink despite the very obvious space-age machine next to her emblazoned with the words, Bosch DishMaster.
“Rose, honey, will you tell Cassie what year you were born?” Without stopping or turning around, she answered in a clear voice.
“1803.” Goosebumps began chasing each other up and down my spine. Then she did turn around to look at me, her hands dripping suds on the floor at her feet. Her face spoke volumes about how this had previously been received. I could almost feel the heat of the lightbulb over my head as it dawned on me who she was. Grace Rosemary Williams.
The Weeping Maiden of the Rock has just made me breakfast.
I don’t think I’m going to get home.
Title: Weeping Maiden Rock
Genre: Science Fiction
Age Range: Teen to Adult
2914 Words
Author Name: Deanna Salser
Why it is a good fit: I would be a bestseller if I could get my work out there. Everyone who reads them likes my stories.
Hook: How many people have fallen through time?
Synopsis: Follow Cassie on her journey as she travels inside a tornado, falls from a cliff into an invisible portal through time, and meets two people as she tries to find her way home, one familiar and one she has only heard about from the past.
Target Audience: Nerds like me.
Bio: My name is Deanna Salser. I've always loved to read, in fact, I don't feel right if I don't have at least one book going. I've always had a fantasy about being a writer and I actually have a few good book ideas but I never felt like I had the time to write a novel. About seven years ago I had a story coming out of me so I decided to write when I had time and see how it went. It went slow but great. My first story is published and I am writing my second. In the meantime, I thought I would enter a few contests and see where it would get me. I need the publicity after all. So, here I am.
Platform: Not sure what this is.
Education: I am educated to be a Mechanical Draftsperson but I read voraciously.
Experience: I have several poems published as well as my first book; Procreation.
Personality/Writing Style: I love Stephen King. I tend to write darker stories like that but I am an optimist at heart.
Likes/Hobbies: Writing, reading, drawing, sculpting, carving, painting, yoga, energy healing, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Diana Gabaldon, Pears Anthony, Anne McCaffery, etc.
Hometown: Auburn, California
Age: 56
Vaudeville
On October 11, 2106, Reginald Farris was sentenced to die.
One week later people flocked from all across Thomasia, to the capital city of Alvany, to watch him lose his head.
Under a bruised, ominous morning the makeshift platform leered. It had been built special just for the occasion. And then raised when the estimated turnout climbed too high, so those in the back could see.
And then raised again.
Again.
Farris was something of a legend and for the most part it was earned. Though sometimes the stories outgrew their reality and took on lives of their own. It wasn’t uncommon to hear about the time he’d taken forty armed bluecoats with a pocketknife, all while seated and smoking. Or the time he led his rebel organization, the Farisia, through twenty miles of woods just to flash their faces at the palace and strike fear in the heart of the King.
While there was no forty-man pocketknife massacre, there were stories just as impressive—these true.
As a teenager he devised a hand signal among his men, in case any of them were ever captured by the authorities and goaded into wearing a wire. Given the Capitol was chomping at the bit for his location, he figured it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, one of his lieutenants was picked up when the blackmarket arms dealer he connected with turned out to be a cop. He was hauled into the station and promptly given an ultimatum—the wire or the chair.
Feigning reluctance, he chose the wire.
At their next meetup he flashed the signal, and Reggie saw.
He didn’t blink. He didn’t so much as change his tone. He simply spoke on, as before. “I’m going to be meeting a man,” he said, “in the alley between Gordon’s and the old pharmacy. We’ll be exchanging information on some new tech.”
“When will this be, Sir?” the lieutenant pressed eagerly, knowing full-well every word said was a lie.
“Monday night. Nine sharp.”
On Monday, at nine sharp, bluecoats were staked all around the alley. They only emerged from their hiding places when a tall man in a raincoat and widebrim hat showed himself, drifting to meet what looked like another man. They charged the broad alley, shivs of rain now coming down. They leveled their rifles at the men, only to find two drunkard bums in costume, who claimed a stranger had commissioned their services, and paid a generous sum at that.
Before the knot of confusion could untangle, a flood of rebels materialized from every direction, jumping from rooftops and rising from dumpsters, emerging from nooks and manholes. Descending from the vast array of fire escapes overhead, combat boots clambering against the metal-grate steps.
The cobbled alley soon turned to a slaughterhouse.
Even the clouds seemed to shy back, as red slaked the ground and lashed the walls. Men were hacked to pieces in a wild frenzy, disassembled like dolls, shot apart and left gaping in wide-eyed terror at a sky they could no longer see.
There were curses aplenty. There were cries of defiance, but as the weight of the situation pressed in these were slowly stemmed off, replaced by cries for mercy, for backup. In the throes of a breakdown one young recruit cried for his mother.
The few who still had their vision looked to the alleymouth. It was as though a magnetic force drew their eyes—something compelling, irresistible. Past the ragged rebels dealing their ends, they found the culprit. Standing there, in the wide gait between buildings, was a young man. He wore a dark tweed suit, his coiffure neat and black. He kept his hands unseen, clasped behind him. And he watched from the stygian veil, his face a void.
He never had to lift a finger.
For many, he would be the last thing they would ever see. On this wretched night and other nights innumerable.
But on this night it was different.
On this night he was only seventeen years old.
Two months before his eighteenth birthday, the last of the mainline rebels dissolved. There was only the Farisia now. It had siphoned all other organizations down to nothing.
A middle-aged Farisian prospect took note, and asked him: “What ever became of the mainlines?”
He clasped his hands, elbows biting his desk. Behind his threaded fingers there was a boyish face and an oil-stain glare.
“We ate them,” he replied, simply. “They’re mine now.”
“Ate?” the prospect seemed to fret.
“They work for me. What did you think I meant?”
“Nevermind,” a sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you think I meant we were cannibals?”
"If you were,” the man laughed, “it wouldn't surprise me one bit."
By thirty, he sat in a cage at a maximum security facility.
Were he to die there he concluded he would have no regrets. And he was set to die that very morning. But he didn’t necessarily plan on it.
Outside his cell the bluecoat guards on duty were switching up. Bluecoats offered the best entertainment, especially the newer ones. They hadn’t the expertise to deal with a thing like him, so they would often scramble to compensate. Fight, flight, fawn. The works.
There was a lanky young man who would thump peanuts at him like he was an exhibition at the zoo. A kindly older woman who offered an ear if he wished to speak. (She seemed to genuinely care, though by nature he had his doubts.) A blusterous round vulgarian who relished knowing Reggie couldn’t reach his throat for the bars. He would slur him and curse him, drunkenly. Well over half the words Reggie conjectured he’d made up.
He took it all in stride, with the stoicism of a scholar. Never did he react. Never did he so much as blink. With one exception.
One fateful ‘changing of the guard’ saw the peanut-thumper leaving a bag of trailmix halfeaten on his desk. The young woman replacing him noticed it, while sipping her canteen. She reached for it, and Reggie finally spoke up.
“It has nuts,” he said.
She angled her face over. Hearing his voice felt alien, surreal.
“That stuff,” he elaborated. “It has nuts in it. If I recall, you’re allergic.”
She regarded him with a skeptical look. “They told me should you ever speak, to do the opposite of what you said.”
“Go ahead and die, then.”
He said nothing else. It seemed the palace had been so stringent in its fifteen-year campaign against him, the current batch of bluecoats saw him as the Devil incarnate.
The woman ate, if only because he’d told her not to.
And when minutes later she fell retching and gasping from her chair, he was left to watch. Finally he took a quartersize crumb of the chipping wall and flicked it, the trajectory just right to hit her emergency alert button. She was well-unconscious by then.
He never found out if she survived.
They blamed him, of course. And that strange instance was relegated to legend with all the others. It morphed, and grew. Look what this creature did. He got her through the bars. And if he can get her through the bars, he can get you.
His newest guard was a fresh face, young and freckled. She looked about twenty, tops. Her hair was wiry red and her eyes were afraid. They observed from a distance, not daring to lock with his.
“Not a word,” she was quick to preface. “I hope you understand. You’ve singlehandedly swayed half the island to do your bidding. I’ve read some of the reports and—yeah, I shouldn’t have to explain why I don’t want you talking to me. In fact, don’t even breathe in my direction.”
She hung only as close as she had to, and watched his feet.
“You’re scared?” he asked.
“Shut up!” she cried, face ripening to match her hair. “I will put you in solitary!”
“I’m already the only one in here.”
“Shussshhhh!”
Calmly, he complied.
“I’m not about to risk it,” she continued. “I-I’m not the most aware person. I try, but still. I get taken advantage of really easily.”
“This probably isn’t the best job for you, then.”
“Nooo!” she covered her ears, theatrically, “I can’t hear you!”
Every guard they sic on me is clinically insane, he lamented. Every. Single. One.
There was a brief stint of silence, till she glanced over and noticed his position. He sat crookedly in the corner, right shoulder crammed against the wall.
Minutes later, she brought him a pillow, tossing it through the bars. “You looked…uncomfortable.”
“Thank you.”
“NO!” hands to the ears. “SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!”
Around midmorning, a male guard came in to fetch him for transit. He was well-armed. In fact, he looked equipped enough to do battle with every rebel in the country.
The man noticed Reggie, perched in his cage. By then he had five pillows, two blankets, twelve books, and a steaming cup of coffee.
The freckly redhead was beaming.
“Oh, they’re here! They’re here! Whew,” she declared, “I’m kinda proud of myself. All this time alone with you and I haven’t been manipulated at all.”
The male guard, Mr. Ray, was not impressed.
“What is this?!” he exploded. “Did you give him half the prison?!”
“Eep! No, Sir, I—” she paled, and grasped, and answered, “He looked sad.”
As Mr. Ray dragged him away in cuffs—a dozen more guards in tow—Reggie grinned.
“I like her.”
The gruff bluecoat shot him a glare.
“Ah shuddup.”
He prodded him on.
The coterie of guards led him from the complex, and loaded him into the back of an armored transport truck. Several crowded in around him, guns in plain view. They wanted him to know he was trapped.
Mr. Ray sat closest, perhaps so he could taunt. He was Reggie’s least favorite kind—the kind that picked “fight”. He could tolerate fear and flattery, but mockery tended to wear thin. And this guy. This guy…
“Best enjoy that brain of yours while it still works,” Ray dogged, “Before the hour’s out, it’s gonna be laying in a bucket, with the rest of yer pretty little head.”
On the surface, Reggie was unconcerned at best. He held his unreadable scowl. His pleasant-if-anything poker face.
When Ray insisted on continuing, he figured up a way to silence him. "Have you ever heard of the Vampire of Düsseldorf?"
“What are you yammering on about?”
“It was the moniker of a serial killer from the early twentieth century,” Reggie replied. “Peter Kürten. When faced with the guillotine, some of his last words come to mind. ‘Tell me, after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.’”
“Ew!” Ray snapped. “How do you know that?! Do you just sit around memorizing this—”
"WE'RE HERE!!!" the driver called back, through the chainlink partition separating the cab from the haul.
Ray sighed, and nailed Reggie with another glare. “I’d tell ye to get a life, but, well…”
Reggie smiled genuinely then, for the first time in weeks. He made sure Ray saw it. Once he offloaded with the guards and was intercepted by the higher palace authority, Ray made a face.
“Ughhh,” he languished. “They get creepier every year.”
Reggie was guided up the steps of the platform, to the cacophony of over twenty-thousand spectators. The guillotine waited, at the edge of a manmade precipice. The view was like that from a rooftop.
Amusingly enough, there were concession stands lining the road to each side. People held everything from salted pretzels to mixed drinks. Children licked their cones of shaved ice. A couple smartalecks had set up lawn chairs and umbrellas. Vendors peddled their wares, calling out in tandem with the jeers and the slurs and the laughter.
Not many supporters of his dared show their faces.
He watched the animated crowds with dispassion, disinterest. He was lost in his own thoughts—unfazed by the effigies of him hanging from makeshift gallows, lit afire and left to shrivel in the sweltering midmorning sun. Posters that bore his likeness waved, the eyes X’d out, all sorts of graffiti employed to ugly him. Someone even drew cat ears on theirs. And lipstick. And blush. He didn’t know what they sought to accomplish, and odds were, neither did they.
The Devil horns made more sense. He supposed the rumors had gotten around. Of course they had. It was inevitable.
Anything propagated by the palace seemed to catch like wildfire, and grip the diehard Loyalists, which were still a noteworthy majority.
He watched. And he resolved. If they wanted a devil, he would give them one.
The bluecoats manhandled his arms, and with wrists still cuffed at his back he was dragged along, closer and closer to the serrated maw of death. The lunette was open and ready.
Before he could be pushed to his knees, a bearded bluecoat stepped forward holding a charcoal-gray blazer. He motioned to Reggie’s handlers. “Unlock his cuffs for a minute,” he ordered, “and have him put this on.”
“What, you afraid he’ll catch a cold?” one retorted.
“We need him to look presentable,” the bearded man said. “He’s a legend, after all. The more ‘larger than life’ he comes off, the more of a message it’ll send when we dispatch him.”
“It’ll take more than a jacket to make him look presentable.”
The scrappy handlers stepped aside nonetheless. They drew their pieces and leveled them at Reggie, as the jacket-bringer unlocked his cuffs. With at least five rifles and two revolvers aimed at him, Reggie slid the jacket on. He felt the plated knuckles hidden in the sleeves, and the gun holstered in the inner-pocket.
His hands were recuffed by the jacket-bringer. He made sure to play along and pretend they had locked.
He knelt, placing his neck in the lunette. There was no top piece. The guillotine was a barbaric rig. Even the blade was rusty and worn. Perhaps they had picked this one in the hopes it would be too dull to do the job. It would sever just enough to leave him wounded and dying.
The sadism wasn’t lost on him. And he didn’t appreciate it.
An orator was summoned to give the sendoff. He wore a three-piece suit and a tie of mulberry silk. A hush swept the crowds; and those who refused to quieten were scolded and shushed and threatened into submission.
“Sir Reginald Farris,” he began, when all had settled, “for ordering the assassination of this nation’s great King, His Majesty Frederick I, the murder of numberless others, at your own hand and by proxy, and all other measures of atrocity you’ve committed since assuming your role as puppetmaster of the rebellion—you are hereby given to death. Death and all that will surely follow. Son,” a pause, “I’m real glad I ain’t you.”
The orator regarded him like a soggy piece of trash, held at arm’s length.
“Have you any last words?”
“Have you?” Reggie asked.
“Ay. Your trickery won’t work this time,” the man scoffed. “You’re caught as a chick in the claws of an eagle.”
“Let’s get this over with, then.”
The crowd opined. “Lop his head off already!” “Feed his body to the pigs!” “Mount ’is mug in the palace john!”
Off to the side, Farris noticed two children, standing among the throngs. The boy looked maybe ten, the girl maybe five. Neither shared in the joy of their neighbors. The boy’s face was juicy with tears, and the girl watched with a somber catatonia. They were discrepancies in a sea of vulgar revelry. And there was a reason. But all in due time.
Farris waited.
The orator—Mister Van Dien—knelt low, till he was at eyelevel with the condemned. His true colors surfaced. He gifted him a cynical grin. “How does it feel to know in a minute or less, you’ll be seeing Hell?”
Farris waited.
There was a strange silence that swelled, along the thunderhead sky.
Meanwhile he pinpointed every face of significance among the revelers. Ray stood with them, near the front. The redhead girl too. They in their crisp uniforms; his seeming to hug his rotund body, and hers seeming to swallow her whole.
The déclic was pulled and the mouton dropped with all the vigorous lethargy expected. But in the seconds leading up Farris freed his hands. They retreated into his sleeves and emerged with metal plates at each fist. Then they deployed, and stopped the blade above him with a sharp clash. It halted maybe an inch from the nape of his neck.
And that was the cue.
“DEATH BEFORE SURRENDER!” the cry swelled with the thunderheads. And a strange, autumnal wind began to blow.
In a blink, every bluecoat on the platform lay shot, most dead, some dying. Despite the vantage points already being vetted for snipers by security, it seemed a few had weaseled their way in. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
As Farris stood to his feet, pushing the mouton up by his plated knuckles, a blotch of black was forming along the east. It swirled together, a sentient and chattering thing. It blotted the sun and hung over the city square. An abominable ceiling comprised of who knew what.
From the ground they looked like insects. And they were fast to attack, lighting into anything in uniform they could find. The bluecoats would be swarmed, mobbed by the tiny black creatures. They would eat them from beneath their uniforms, and still upright the uniforms would stand for a moment before crumbling to the ground. Some would force their ways in through the orifices of the face and fill their screaming prey, dispatching them from the inside-out.
Though a humble illusion, the scene left an initial impression as some precursor to the end. An apocalyptic tableau. A plague poured out upon the land.
The crowd scattered, trampling and clawing and shrieking as though the air itself was laced with poison, and had to be expelled from their lungs.
The orator stood docile and stunned at the platform precipice, bearing a useless witness to it all. He shrank in his suit; eyes wrought with a distillation of terror so pure and true you’d be pressed to find it replicated in the annals of history. Men and women bayed below, like fearstricken jackals in a pen. They fled and tumbled and turned vendor carts on their side. Tables were flipped to the ground, wares shattered. Aristocrats in tuxes and gowns ran as they likely never had before, faces wrung aghast. The fire from the effigies soon caught on the debris, and small pockets of flame began to crop up in the terrorized valley between buildings.
The road ran red, and it mixed with the collections of pooled rainwater from the day prior, and it frothed pink along the curbs, lapping like some ghastly aquaplane at the point of contact between ocean and earth.
The orator stood docile, until a rustle at his back—the light scuff of footsteps—stirred him. He pivoted to face the source, and there he found Reggie, all suited and smiling. Wireskinny, eyes deceptively polite.
He moved to back away, a quavering note sticking in his teeth. It was low and shapeless, a thrum of the damned.
He reversed himself toward the precipice, and the fifty foot drop it offered. Reggie followed, walking toward him at a leisurely pace.
“What was that about me seeing Hell?” he asked. “Usually my memory is spotless, but I’m having a bit of trouble recounting. Perhaps it’s because you never finished the thought...” His voice was sickly and timid. In context, it was a subtle mockery. “So feel free, Mister Van Dien. Finish it.”
“Yck—stay back!” Van Dien cried, his mind moving to bargain. “I was a patron of your father’s park! A key investor! Before he lost his mind and started sympathizing with the rebels, I was one of his best friends…in the world, yes, in the world…” The precipice was nearing. The drop. “You had a comfortable childhood because of me! I lent him millions!”
“Well, now I’m really calling my memory into question, because I don’t seem to remember you at all.” Reggie dropped the plates from each fist, and stood barehanded before him. “Maybe you’re just that forgettable.”
Van Dien stopped, his heels cusping the edge, hanging over. He glanced back and that quickly proved a mistake. All of a sudden the drop seemed twice as far.
He flitted his eyes back to Reggie.
“You see my hands. They’re empty,” Farris said. “So why do you look so afraid?”
Caught up in the throes of deliberation, Van Dien fidgeted and trembled and soon the fear overtook him, causing him to lose his balance. Whether intentional or not, he fell from the precipice, and landed in a screaming tangle. Limbs folding impossibly. A bloodied signature on the cobbles.
Reggie glimpsed him briefly, leaning himself over the edge. He put his hands in his pockets then and turned, continuing his leisurely stroll to the stairs.
***the man that got away***
People were running in every direction, like chickens freshly-beheaded. Those deranged enough to accidentally cross paths with Reggie found themselves reeling.
From a distance he was an idea, a blur. But. With that distance closed they got to see him, really see him, in all his uncanny splendor. Thirty was young enough for his vast oeuvre of accomplishments. But up close he looked even younger. He looked like a collegiate sophomore at oldest.
He descended the platform steps and walked casually through the fleeing crowd—to the alcove where Ray and the guard girl were hiding, behind the overturned tables of a trashed vendor stand.
He stopped in front of them, and pulled the gun from his jacket. The redhead girl lost her wits then, drawing her knees to her chin and shrinking behind them and whimpering past all control like a beaten pup. Ray could only blubber and push himself back by his heels. His eyes were enormous, pupils contracted and shivering.
“Ughk-uhhhhhaaa—”
Reggie put a bullet in the leftside of his head. It corkscrewed clean through, one temple to the other. The exit wound erupted, plastering a fine red mist onto the wall behind. Some of it even hit the mousy redhead. She made a strange and guttural noise; perhaps it was a scream caught crossways in her throat, swallowed down so not to draw attention.
But she had his attention, undivided.
He watched her for a moment, then smiled. “You might want to consider a new line of work,” he said, polite and soft-worded as before. “I don’t think you’re cut out for this.”
With that, he drifted on.
She spent the first twenty minutes of her second chance puking her guts out.
Past the mud-trampled corpses and the bleeding injured and the inflamed cordillera of rubble, Reggie saw the armored transport truck that had delivered him minutes before, idling. In the driver’s seat sat one of his spies, bluecoat uniform bright and spotless and convincing as any other. The actual driver lie dead on the ground, a bullethole between his eyes.
Reggie loaded into the open haul, where a couple spies and both children from earlier sat gathered. He seated himself among them, eyes peaceful, serene.
“I noticed a few familiar faces in the audience,” he addressed the kids. “You showed up to cheer me on?”
“To see you…off…” Felix, the lad, sniffled. “I thought…I thought…”
“Where’s your faith, my boy?” Reggie admonished, quietly. “Take a page from your sister. Not a tear to be found. You knew all along, didn’t you Nyce?”
She nodded, with conviction.
As the transport truck drove from the town square, a figure watched its departure. She stood atop the dome of the bank, the highest vantage around. Her clothes were baggy, black and gold spangled. Her skin was painted purest white. And her vampish makeup was skewed partly by a netted veil. She made sure the truck was untouched, siccing her insects on anyone who would dare pursue.
Sure enough it left the bounds of Alvany and headed into the wooded country. In the back the spies were conferring. Mainly on plans for how to celebrate their victory. Reggie was quick to interrupt.
“It’s not over,” he warned. “Frederick may be dead, but there’s still his wife and son. I heard she’s in hiding now. She’s probably not even in the country anymore. And if that’s true, the kid’s likely in hiding too.”
“So, you think the palace is empty?” the younger spy asked.
“Of royals, yes. But I’m sure there are plenty grunts in position to hold down the fort.” His smile faded. “It’s pathetic really. To fight and die defending an empty castle. In support of the leaders who abandoned you.”
Another spy piped up, when silence threatened. “We missed you Boss.” The others nodded in consensus, and every nod was genuine.
“I’ve missed myself,” Reggie jested. “A month I’ve been biding my time in that rathole. That’s a lot of hours to dedicate, even for a payoff like this...” his mind trailed, “When we get back, they better have a briefing ready. I wanna hit the ground running.”
“Jennifer Richards, reporting live from the Alvanian Square, where earlier today the execution of mass murderer Reginald Farris was halted by a rebel attack. Farris is said to have escaped the city, aboard a commandeered military vehicle. Sources claim he’s since switched over to a black Victoria. The Capitol requests that all citizens stay alert. Anyone with any information is encouraged to phone the tipline. Do not approach Farris on your own, as he is said to be armed and extremely dangerous.”
Eyewitness Accounts:
“Everything happened so fast, yanno. One minute they had his neck in the guillotine and the next, there were bodies everywhere. I counted forty, fifty… It was hard to tell who was moving, because everything felt like it was moving, yanno. And those forty or fifty. Those were just, yanno, in my field of vision.”
“The bugs…the bugs…”
“I saw a bluecoat pick him up in the transport truck. A bonafide kingsman. I never thought I’d see the day that monster had kingsmen on his payroll…”
“Before today, I’d only heard stories. I’d come to believe he wasn’t even real. And seeing him…he looked like a vampire. Like something not quite human. His skin was super pale, like paper. Like, dude needs some serious Vitamin D.”
“The bugs…the bugs…”
“He walked down the platform steps, and into the crowds. I actually came pretty close to him. He smelled like teakwood candles and stale cigarettes. He was nuthin terribly special. But I suppose if he was he’d be a pretty lousy assassin.”
“He can overthrow my kingdom any day.”
“GRANDMA EW WHAT THE—”
“The bodies, yanno, some were downright ventilated. There was sniper fire coming down from everywhere. You just heard popping from the rooftops. Pop, pop, pop. And, yanno, I was outta there, I wasn’t about to stand around and gawk at the people shooting at me…”
“Now back to Darren in the studio.”
“Thank you, Jennifer. Casualties from that catastrophe are said to stand at 327, for the time being. But accounting all the injuries, that number is expected to rise.”
Upon receiving word of the Alvany incident, the palace dispatched a squad of trained assassins to track down Farris and his brood. They came a hair’s breadth from sending Heidre Marcos, but then thought better of it. Too much carnage.
She was a last resort.
Instead they sent some middlegrade professionals, people with enough restraint about them not to raze the country.
The hit squad set up shop along the road leading to Vaudeville, a decades-old, abandoned theme park the rebels had claimed for their lair. The interior was too populated with Farisians for any self-respecting kingsman to enter. So they kept far enough out that any encounter would be manageable—maybe a sparse peppering of enemies at most.
The forestry to each side of the road was thick, thick enough that anything could lurk beneath the foliage unspotted. The assassins decided to use Farris’ own terrain against him, positioning themselves under several layers of branches. Whenever the Victoria he hijacked would pass, they’d open fire on it, blow out the tires, and even lob a grenade or two if necessary.
All was ready.
Their greatest adversity now was impatience.
“I thought he’d never shut up,” the elder spy complained of Van Dien.
“Yeah. I’ll admit I almost poked the bear,” Reggie acknowledged, from the backseat of his new Victoria. “You’re still not done? At this rate I’m poised to live a very full life up here.”
Laughter abounded.
The driver was the same bluecoat impersonator from the truck. The elder spy got the passenger seat. The younger spy had stayed with the truck, to dispose of it. (Which was just a fancy way of saying ‘light it on fire’.)
Felix and Nyce sat, to each side of their father.
Just when Nyce was about to say something, a loud popping noise cut her short.
One of the royal assassins spotted a black Victoria coming up the little dirt road around evening. He called out to his comrades and the hail of gunfire began. Soon metal and glass rippled like water, under the brunt of a thousand bullets. A grenade was tossed for good measure. It rolled under the sagging automobile before igniting.
A ball of fire consumed what was left of the mangled heap. The blast was so great it propelled the driver clean through the windshield and into the road. He was marred by a patchwork of cuts and burns, evidently dead. A gash in his stomach let on. And his unblinking eyes cemented the verdict.
Slowly the assassins emerged, reluctant to survey the damage.
Could it have possibly been that easy?
“Oh…man,” one groaned, having browsed the contents of the driver’s pockets. “There’s an ID,” he sighed. “This isn’t the name we were given.”
“W-what?” another piped in disbelief.
“The traitor driving Farris went by ‘John Hadley’. And he was middle-aged. This guy’s probably twenty-five, tops.”
“Maybe Farris swapped drivers. Seems like a stunt he’d pull.”
“There’s no one else in the car,” a third called over, having given the wreckage a thorough sifting.
“Would you be able to tell?”
“Yeah. Even with fire like that, there’s usually traces. I know what to look for.”
The first man hesitated, utterly speechless. Finally he yanked his cap off, lashed it against the dirt and swore.
“It was a decoy,” he seethed, when he’d managed to gather his composure. “He knew… I bet that kid we cooked was one of them, one of those rebel cultists. Majority of their outfit is under thirty. Bunch of psychotic upstarts with no real grasp of life or death or consequence.”
He looked to the dead falltime branches, amiably joining hands overhead.
“The country wasn’t like this forty years ago,” he shuddered, if only to himself.
“What was that?” Nyce inquired of the popping.
“Oh, probably just a gravel that got picked up in the tire,” Farris shrugged.
“What’s that up ahead?” Felix asked, having scoped a strange sight. In the middle of the road—like an island born amid an ocean of dirt—smoldered the remains to some kind of vehicle, with metal ribboned and twisted and charred. A few people had collected around the scene. Farris recognized them at once.
“Mr. Hadley,” he said. “I have a request for you. When we pass this group of gentlemen up here, lay on your horn, alright? And step on it.”
Mr. Hadley obeyed.
On their way past, he laid on the horn and gunned it. The royal assassins snapped to attention, some attempting to load the remainder of their ammo. A dwindled hail of gunfire ensued, but nothing so precise as to hit the right Victoria.
It was too far gone, whizzing, galloping.
Farris and his patrons careened merrily away.
________________
Author's Note: I copy/pasted the Kürten quote to avoid typos. (The sheer quantity of commas is distressing lol.) I was also lazy so...
Title: Vaudeville
Genre: General Fiction/Fantasy(?)
Age Range: 15+
Word Count: maybe >60,000 words (it’s not all the way finished)
Author Name: Owlie Costello (pen name)
Why: I have an unusual style that you’ll hopefully find fresh and engaging. (This story kind of subverts the “rebel equals good, royal equals bad” trope. The rebels are basically villains, though nuance is present. It’s a testimony to how easily hate can become blind and irrational, if left to fester.)
The Hook: The shadow of the father falls heavy on the son.
Synopsis: Hank was just a regular boy…until one day a brutal attack gives way to the revelation—he’s next in line for the throne of Thomasia, and people want him dead for it. Now that power has fallen to him, young Hank must navigate his new role with the help of his eccentric staff. But a vestige of his father’s reign still lingers, a vicious rebel organization known as the Farisia. And their leader is a force to be reckoned with...
Target Audience: 15-35(?)
Bio: I’m a relatively young, aspiring writer who’s not had the best luck getting discovered, but I’m hoping to change that. I’d say my biggest literary influences are Markus Zusak and Cormac McCarthy.
Experience: I’ve written since I was little.
Personality/Writing Style: I like fast-paced storytelling with odd characters, unexpected twists, and the occasional flair of philosophy.
Likes/Hobbies: Writing and singing
The Wanderings of Rahul - 2. The Rejoice
Upon the golden gleam of the setting sun, Rahul saw with his acute vision his village far beyond the barren lands. The Village of Azroul. The only village, the only abode still lively and uncorrupted. He still being on the foggy hills , realizes the fine line between the dense forest he fell asleep and the barren lands in front of him. The setting sun made him remember his past, how he and his brother ended as rats in a science experiment and how the nuclear war plagued his entire world. A moment of pity he had for himself.
The sun was almost down. Rahul decided that it’s time to leave. He wandered around the edge trying to find a way down the hill, but only at the last sight of the crimson sun he realized that it was a cliff he was standing upon. “Ah,…” as he grinned a smile.
In the dark, he took his staff and held it high, unknown tongue he whispered. The staff with an amethyst crystal at the top with utmost purity, emitted violet radiant orbs. Like lost souls, the orbs floated away in a chaotic uneven manner. With enough orbs radiated, the wizard tapped the ground once with the staff. A flushing, shrieking sound was heard, when all the orbs started swirling in circle breaking the very aspect of the planar nature of the materialistic plane. Tearing away the dimensional space, opening a portal to the village of Azroul with the slight cost of his life force. But what he gave, HE WILL TAKE.
The Village of Azroul
A beautiful, lush green forest clothed over the ruins of Azroul. With fresh breeze from the seashore and an endless supply of radioactive sea food, Azroul was quite phenomenal. A village abandoned centuries before. Well, the Nuclear winter was a big threat then. Nuclear winter, nuclear war, nuclear plague, they called it many names. Like one catastrophe after another, humans could do nothing but suffer. They lived as tribes to survive, foraging for anything and everything to help them live another day. There weren’t any modern delicacy. Earth was devoid of the human creations, the plague set upon the earth was destroyed. Countries were crushed to villages here and there as the land allowed. Earth was getting into balance again, just when the nuclear power was re-emphasized. There was nothing much left to do. Humans and animals had to starve to death or adapt to survive. Living, surviving was the only option people had. It was all that mattered then, to live.
The Night of Rejoice
Rahul made his way to Azroul from the cliff. But, by mistake he made the portal a bit smaller than him. “Great, now I have to push myself through somehow” as Rahul squeezed himself in, to get out to the other side. “Phew”. It has been years since Rahul was back here, and no one knows what vicious things may have happened on these lands. As his patched boots kissed the damped ground, two predators moved swiftly on to his front. An hydra, Ular and a white barn owl, Veirun. The pets face hugged him with euphoria, “Good to be back”. “Ular”. “Veirun” “Hmm (with joy in his face), can u two fetch me some firewood please”. It was true, that Rahul’s telepathy was awed upon, to command even the predators. Rahul went on to gather some forest berries, just some radiation affected forest berries alongside the edge of the barren lands. The myth goes as on the center of these barren lands actually had a Headquarters of the CPC, which supposedly contained a mini re-emphasized nuclear plant. Due to its destruction only, that the grassy plains got devastated into the barren lands now. Maybe that is why, Rahul preferred to eat the affected berries, leaving the good ones on the seashore side for the unaffected humans. It is that he could actually feel the radiation, as he too had his fair share with the nuclear energy. Rahul was so immersed in his thoughts, as he was foraging for wild berries. It was a nasty thing. Not only are the wild animals that got mutated, but even the surviving forests too had to suffer the same fate. By the time Rahul got back, it got completely dark. When the pets arrived with firewood they gathered, the campfire was set. Fire wasn’t a problem with our wizard.
The night went on as these three almost sleepy heads gazed upon the infinite stars. There were too many stars. Maybe, mother earth claimed her first child, the wind back. The air was unpolluted with any solid particles. It was like the sky was too bright, but the lands still dark. The three kept talking all night, got the rest they needed. Love. As Rahul spoke, the other two growled and hooted in return, the gauntly night with the howling winds went on.
“Return soon, brother. There’s a lot to be done”, he whispered.
Sunil Kumar, 26, Male, Writes Cosmic Horror, Magical Realism, Sci-fi, fiction and Non-fiction. Lives in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Fall From Grace
As I opened my eyes and tried to pull my awareness to the moment, my focus on the ceiling light went in and out, as if I was moving through a haze, being pulled, and then pushed. Quickly my attention went from trying to focus on the ceiling, to the realization that something was steadily trickling down both sides of my face. My first thought was, ‘Don’t move, just breathe, you’re alive’. As I tried to take in a deep breath it was quickly interrupted by me choking on the liquid that had accumulated at the back of my throat. Without thought, I rolled over from my back to my side in order to try to clear my airway so I could take a breath. I coughed a couple of times as I felt the liquid that was being expelled from my mouth and nose. After what seemed like forever, I was finally able to take in a couple of deep breaths. The pain I felt in my face was like nothing I had ever felt before. As I continued to lay there on the vinyl tile floor of my kitchen, feeling the liquid draining from my face, breathing through the pain, I prayed that it was over, that he was no longer there, and that it was okay to move.
It only took me a couple of breaths to realize that the entire upper half of my body was lying in a puddle of blood, my blood. I reached up to touch my face, feeling if it was still there, and the blood gushing from my face instantly covered my hand. At that moment I thought ‘How long have I been lying here?’ Something from inside me demanded, ‘Get up! Get up NOW your kids need you! Get up and call for help!’. Somehow, I found the strength deep down inside me to push myself to stand up and go find my phone. I don’t particularly have any memory of where my phone was, but somehow, I managed to find it and dial 911. I remember the blood dripping from my face and running down over my top lip as I blew it away so it wouldn’t drip into the phone, as I waited on the line for the 911 dispatcher. In what seemed like an eternity, the phone clicked and I thought that I was finally connected. I said, “I need help, I had an argument with my boyfriend. I don’t remember anything after seeing his fist coming towards my face, and I woke up in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.” As I paced the floor between the kitchen and the living room, blood was everywhere. I realized that the pool of blood I had been lying in, on my kitchen floor, was like what you see in the movies, where a murder crime scene happens.
In that instance, I realized that no one was on the line. I said “Hello, hello” and quickly realized that my call was never connected. I hung up and called back. This time carefully dialing each number, 9, -1, -1. From the time I hit the last number until the time I heard the welcome sound of the dispatcher kindly say “911 what’s your emergency?”, I had decided that I was so embarrassed by what had just happened to me, at the same time scared for my life if I told them what my boyfriend had done, that I couldn’t possibly tell them the truth. I regretted even making the call but knew I needed help. Calmly as if nothing happened, I said, “Is this 911?” “Yes”, she said “How can I help you?” “Um Yes, Ma’am, I fell and hit my face on the back doorknob, and I woke up on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. I need an ambulance, please.” She repeated back to me exactly what I had said as if she wasn’t sure if that was the truth. As I tried to remain as calm as I could, I answered, “Yes, correct Mama. I have lost a lot of blood and I don’t feel steady enough to drive myself to the hospital.” She asked if anyone was in the house with me. Assuming he had left, since his car was not in the driveway, and in keeping with my lie I proceeded to tell her that I was alone the whole time, that my boyfriend, who had been staying in my apartment with me, had left earlier that morning for work. “The ambulance is on its way. Please stay on the line with me until they arrive’” She instructed. While I held the phone to my ear in silence, afraid to say anymore, I found a kitchen towel and started to wipe the blood off my hands, arms, and face. I held the towel to my face not knowing where the blood was coming from exactly, hoping to catch some of the blood still streaming down from my face.
When the ambulance arrived, I opened the front door to let in the EMTs. We didn’t go into the kitchen, and I was thankful, as I didn’t want them to see how much blood was everywhere, and that the huge puddle on the floor was nowhere near the back door. I was afraid they would question the validity of the doorknob story, and pry for the truth. I was afraid if I told them the truth my boyfriend would be arrested and look for revenge on me upon his release from jail. They asked me a couple of questions, helped me into the ambulance, and transported me to the hospital. At the hospital, they got the bleeding to stop, gave me an IV bag of fluids, and took multiple X-rays and images of my face. In telling them what had happened, I continued with the same fabricated story. As my adrenaline began to come down, a rush of emotions came over me and tears started to run down my face. I thought, ‘What had I done?’ I was inundated with a flood of emotions. All at the same time I was so ashamed, so scared, so thankful to be alive, so grateful my children were at their dad’s for the weekend, so fearful that the next time I’d see my boyfriend he’d likely want to kill me. As the tears streamed down my face, my nurse asked, “Are you okay? Are you sure that is what happened?” “Yes”, I muttered “I’m sure, just sad that this happened” I reassured her, as my body started to shake all over.
The x-rays and images came back from radiology. In preparing to deliver the bad news to me, the ER doctor explained that I was lucky to be alive and that he had never seen anything like my films before. He let me know that I had sustained eleven shattered bones, and at least twenty-seven additional fractures to my frontal skull between my septum, nose, and eye sockets. He said that they don’t usually recommend emergency surgery for face trauma, however in my case, with the severity of my injuries, they were preparing me for emergency reconstructive surgery the next morning. I cried as I made the call to let my parents know what happened, and to see if they would pick up my kids upon their return from their dad’s later that evening. I told them the same story, that I had fallen into the doorknob. They were able to help me with getting the kids for the night, and I didn’t have to have them see me this way and question what had happened. The next morning the local ENT surgeon performed an emergency Rhinoplasty and Septoplasty, where he removed all the shattered bones, and most of the cartilage from the injured areas of my face and replaced them with strips of plastic to reconstruct my features as best as he could. After the surgery to rebuild my face and restore my ability to breathe through my nose, I was left with permanent nerve damage on the left side of my face, called Trigeminal Neuralgia, also known as “the suicide disease”.
The thoughts and emotions poured through my mind during my stay at the hospital. I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. What did I do to deserve this? How did things escalate to this point? Why didn’t I see it coming? What if I would have died there on the floor? What would have happened to my kids? How can I continue to hide the truth of what happened? How can I protect my young children from seeing their mother as a victim and thinking that this kind of violence is acceptable? How could I make sure this never happens again? Well, I did what any submissive, illogical, victim, full of fear does… I withdrew from nursing school, took some time off from my two jobs, and forgave him. I believed the manipulation that he orchestrated; I was the one to blame. It was my behavior that provoked his rage. It was my words, and the tone of my voice, that set him off. If I wouldn’t have made him angry then it would have never happened. If I would have had more time to spend with him then he wouldn’t have gone home with that other girl. It was easier to accept these as part of my fabricated truth than it was to face my fears, let my family down, yet again, and have my children be aware of the terrible situation.
Unfortunately, it took me six long years of playing small, taking the blame, being the victim, and feeling like that was what I deserved, before I was able to break free from the abuse and manipulation of this relationship. It took many years after that for me to start to feel as if I was worthy of healing the wounds inflicted on me by other people’s shadows, and negative energy that had run ramped my entire life. Old wounds were brought to the surface, and more questions arose in my mind. How did I let someone have so much power and control over me? How did I get to a place where I never thought I would be, not once but twice? Why was I destined to keep repeating this pattern in my life? Why did this negative pattern keep repeating itself generation after generation, and time after time in my own life? I felt like my life was a scene from the movie Groundhog Day, where the bad day just kept playing out over and over again, continually getting worse, until the lesson was learned. What lesson did I need to learn? How could I break free from a life of abuse, a life of fear, a life of being unseen and unheard so as to not poke the bear? How could I move from being a victim of fear, being afraid of everything, to living a life that I so desperately wanted, free from these negative shadows and limiting beliefs? How could I take back control of my own life, and teach my children how to not make the same mistakes I had?
I remember so clearly when my journey all made sense to me, when I had this moment of clarity, where I knew in my heart what I was here to do. It was shortly after I was able to free myself, and my children, from the clutches of that controlling, abusive relationship, six long years after he left me for dead on the kitchen floor. When it became too much to fear what might happen if I had a differing opinion, made a wrong move, said something that may cause a disagreement, or wondered if my life and the life of my children would be spared on a daily basis. This is when I feel I was guided by that voice within to start asking the right questions; ‘Why do you feel that you are not worthy of being treated with love, and respect, or having space for yourself? What are you really afraid of? How can you let the fears of being alone get in the way of who you are meant to be?’
You know, I think I was more surprised that the answers came just as easily as the questions. Curled into the fetal position, on the floor of my shower, I pictured the water from the shower running down my face and body, washing the pain and sadness down the drain. Here, the answers were crystal clear. My thinking was that I was where I deserved to be, after all, I had been a pretty difficult child, especially in adolescence, and I was responsible for my parents’ divorce, since I was the unwanted child, at least for one of them, somehow I was responsible for the death of my grandparents, and my childhood best friend, and I had been convinced over many decades that I was nothing more than an object to be owned and controlled by men. What was I afraid of? Well, just about everything! What wasn’t I afraid of? As for who I wanted to be, well that seemed to be so far removed from my life it was pointless to even think about it. Or was it?
It was at that moment that I realized that I was not ready to throw in the towel and accept that my life would be forever stuck in these patterns of negativity, abuse, fear, and adversities; That I would once again, be on the floor of my bathtub crying so that my tears would be washed down the drain from the shower and no one would hear me cry. No, I was determined not to allow myself to ever be in this situation again. In order to do this, I had to take a really deep look inside to see what changes were needed to move away from my fears, and towards the life I knew I wanted. The answer was right in front of me. I was going to focus on myself, and my children, and nothing was going to stop me from being free of these old patterns and ending this terrible cycle of abuse once and for all.
Title: [Chapter excerpt] Fall From Grace; Genre: Self-help Memoir; Age range: 18-65; Word count: 2402; Author name; Lyrah Durga; Why your project is a good fit, the hook, synopsis, target audience, bio: Discover the extraordinary resilience and unwavering spirit of Lyrah Durga, an exceptional keynote speaker, and up and coming Author, igniting audiences with inspiration. Her remarkable journey epitomizes human growth, courage, and the unwavering pursuit of happiness. From defying the odds to triumphing over abuse, loss, and adversity, Lyrah's story radiates with resilience. Her transformation from darkness to a life brimming with love, joy, and accomplishments is nothing short of remarkable. With a Bachelor's Degree, successful parenting, a harmonious marriage, and a thriving career, Lyrah embodies dedication and perseverance. As a passionate advocate for personal growth, Lyrah empowers others through her story. With interactive exercises, practical tools, and invaluable advice, she equips audiences to conquer challenges, shatter limitations, and break free from negative patterns. Lyrah's message is simple yet powerful—our choices shape our lives. Her journey inspires profound transformation, transcending fear and embracing freedom, love, and boundless light. Lyrah brings her transformative journey of resilience, courage, and unwavering determination to the page. She will ignite the spark within your audience, empowering them to create lasting positive change.
Deathly Loneliness Attacks
I throw away all of my severed bonds that lay by my feet
I learned that no matter how many tears I cry,
Nobody gives a damn apparently
Making me want to say goodbye
Cracks run through my heart
The person who always stood by me disappear
What do I do now?
Without meaning to, I drag down whoever is near
I’ll always be like this
Even if I hold my knees and scream
I already know
In the end, it won’t change a thing
Even if I try to lament
Saying, “Something's not quite right”
In the end I do what I always do
I walk away with no answer in sight
Everything ends up being nothing
To all the things I turned away
I always did the same thing, without learning from my mistakes,
I say, ‘’What a pain’’
Again my heart gets attacked by the thing called ‘’loneliness’’
It hurts so bad deep down inside
The powerlessness of “loneliness” begins to sink in
The punishment for curling up all those times when I cried
Even if the moon shines upon it
Even if the night swallows it
It won’t disappear, it won’t disappear
With my inexperienced hands I tried to protect it
With my clumsy hands, I tried to fix what I shouldn’t have done
Before I notice it, Loneliness began to turn on me
My heart just won’t heal the scars
I cry a tiny plea
My heart shatters after hearing a kind voice
Please don’t treat me so kindly or I will cry inside
I hide myself away in the shadows,
I hope for someone to find me, the tears don’t subside
This loneliness is deadly
Making it impossible to speak out my true feelings
I hide away my emotions
But yet it ends up revealing
I hate myself, I hate myself
These words end up repeating in my mind
I don’t want to either die nor live
Ah, a penalty game called “Life” begins to rewind
Forced into loneliness
I’m already done
Please don’t treat me so nicely
I’m not someone you should waste your kindness on
Title: Deathly Loneliness Attacks
Genre: Poetry
Age Range: 10+
Word Count: 353
Author Name (Profile Name): Iroha
Explanation:
I think that my piece is fit, because it contains all the emotions that I felt, and pain. I know that some people can relate to the pain I suffered, so this poem is written to reach out to others. I'm very young for my age, and I think that, it's really amazing how far my experiences in life brought me to come this far. Some people say that young people have to enjoy their youth as best as they can, and that it's impossible that youngsters suffered pain like they have. Well, they're wrong. I suffered a lot, been traumatized so many times, and I can hardly trust others because of the betryal, gossip, and backstabbing things I've saw and went through. I just want the people who thinks, "It's alright to die, no one cares about me," let me tell you, that's not true. I overcame that phase because I heard there are good cotton candy in Japan, and if I can find a goal in life to live for, so can you.
I'm a introvert when I'm alone, but when I'm with the people I love, I'm somewhat between a extrovert and a introvert. Life is not always fun, and it never will be; it's up to you to create the fun in life is what I think.
Game Over
CHAPTER 1: Not in Kansas Anymore
"Ow." Dylan Engstrom opened his eyes and found himself on a hard metal surface. "What … the hell?"
The last thing he remembered was sitting at his desk, sipping a cup of coffee, and preparing to join his buddies for a few hours of mayhem in Grand Theft Auto Online. At some point after that, everything had simply … faded out.
I'm dreaming. That's gotta be it.
He rolled over, stood, and fought off a wave of dizziness. He staggered, rubbed his hands over his face, took a few breaths, and waited for his vision to clear. When it did, he took a slow look around and realized he was in a chamber the size of a gymnasium, with metal walls, ceiling, and floor. No windows. Several doors at the far end. And filled with … aliens? Or something.
Sure, why the hell not? Since this is a dream, I might as well just roll with it.
One a few feet to his left looked like a bipedal, wingless dragon, easily ten feet tall, with muscular arms and powerful thighs and small but noticeable breasts under a tunic that appeared to be made from the skin of an animal. She glanced around quickly, confusion and fear in her reptilian eyes, and he guessed she had also awakened moments ago.
Huh. Doesn't make sense for reptiles to have boobs. But then, I guess an alien wouldn't have an exact correlation to life forms on Earth. He chuckled. More likely it's teenage hormones causing me to dream about tits. I can barely stop thinking about 'em when I'm awake.
Past the dragon was what appeared to be an orc, of all things. Also female, dressed in leather and furs, like a barbarian, sporting huge muscles but somehow managing to still look feminine. Her burgundy hair was tied into a long ponytail with a few locks hanging past either side of her face. Her dark green skin looked kind of leathery, and her face … well, she certainly wouldn't have won any beauty contests even without the two big, parallel scars running from her forehead down and across her right cheek.
Still, there was something about her -- the angles of her cheeks and her wide jaw and chin -- that exuded an air of great strength. But then, he gazed into her yellow eyes as she glanced around. She appeared to be in her forties, but there was far more mileage in those eyes than on her face. They were the eyes of someone who had all but given up on life.
He looked away reluctantly. She may have been as ugly as hell, but goddamn, what a body. He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and decided to check out some of the other life forms. His eyes passed over a large number of creatures he couldn't quite get his brain around -- translucent things walking on tentacles, something that resembled a millipede the size of a horse, an eight-foot-tall cross between a pig and an ogre -- and locked on to another female.
He almost laughed at that. Mind always in the gutter, even now.
This one was around six feet tall and might be described as somewhere between chubby and burly. Her eyes glowed white in contrast to her obsidian skin, but aside from that, her face was mostly human. And quite lovely, in fact. A pair of horns curved up from under her wild mane of silver hair, like a ram. She wore a dark blue cloak with a hood hanging over her back, and from what he was able to glimpse, she didn't appear to be wearing anything under it. Each hand had two big fingers and a thumb, just like the orc and the dragon-woman, and her digitigrade legs ended in large hooves.
Not bad at all. He guessed her age to be close to his, or maybe a few years older, and the extra weight was perfectly proportioned.
Huh. Usually, my dreams aren't this detailed. But there's no way this can be real. I'm probably slumped over my desk and drooling on my keyboard. He shrugged to himself again. I just hope I remember all this when I wake up.
His eyes opened a little wider as a realization hit him and he drew in a quick breath.
Shit, I hope I wasn't looking at porn when I fell asleep. If Mom or Dad barges into my room like they always do, I'm hosed.
The alien girl caught him staring at her and smiled, but it was shaky and faded fast.
Well, I can't do anything about it until I wake up. Might as well just see where this goes.
He smiled back before she turned away, and continued examining the people around him. Over to the right was a trio of bipedal creatures that looked like a cross between horses and cows wearing some sort of tribal attire.
Huh. More aliens that kinda-sorta resemble terrestrial animals. How would that even happen?
Past them was a quartet of thirty-foot-long snake people with four arms, wearing only skirts made of glowing multicolored beads roughly where the naughty bits on a human would be.
Dylan's eyes, once again, automatically locked onto the lone female in the group. Her skin was dark brown with a red and black diamond pattern running down her back. Her hands, like the orc and the chunky hooved girl and the rest, had three digits, only hers ended in claws. The top of her head swept back into a curving, three-pointed crest. Her bare chest sported two pairs of breasts. Her face was close enough to human, though covered with scales, and she was actually kind of cute.
Hah. I can't dream about a human with four tits, of course. It's got to be some weird creature. And why would an alien based on a snake have any at all? He realized he was staring and turned away. Again, though, she's an alien, so I guess there's no reason she can't be a mix of mammal and snake. What the hell, you can't go wrong with four of 'em.
He grinned and glanced around again, trying to find other humans. If any were in this chamber, they weren't close enough for him to pick out of the crowd. But his gaze did pass across something that was close enough, at least in size and shape.
The robot stood with her arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the wall behind him, about ten feet away. She had apparently been designed to look like an athletic woman, with a face of flexible metal carrying a friendly -- albeit bewildered -- expression and softly glowing red optics. Her gunmetal body was covered by a pair of cargo pants, boots, a T-shirt, and a long black coat.
Interesting. He wondered if she was anatomically correct.
Before he could check out anyone else, something nudged his shoulder. He turned and found a nine-foot humanoid wearing copper armor and a helmet with an opaque visor. It grasped his shoulder, pointed at one of the doors at the far end of the chamber, and pushed him toward it. He stumbled, regained his balance, and hurried ahead of the whatever-it-was.
In the corner of his eye, another hulking armored figure shoved the orc woman in the same direction. She snarled half-heartedly but headed for the door. She ended up walking alongside Dylan.
"I don't suppose you have any idea how we ended up here or what's going on?" He doubted she would even understand him.
"Nope. I was hoping someone around here could tell me that." Her accent was an odd mixture of Russian and Scottish.
"You speak English. You've met humans before?"
"A fair number of them, yes." She smiled at him, but it was tinged with sadness. "You remind me of one of them, a little. Someone I knew long ago."
"Ah. Decent guy, I hope."
"The best." Her smile grew ever so slightly, and so did the sorrow. "I miss him a great deal."
Dylan wondered what had happened but assumed it was a sensitive matter and didn't pry.
When they reached the door, she sighed and motioned at her clothes. "The one time I put on this old outfit instead of what I usually wear, which includes several guns, and look where I end up. Though I suppose any weapons would've been taken away before I woke up."
The nine-foot goons shoved both of them through the door and onto a large platform. He stumbled and the orc reached out to catch him before he fell. He regained his balance and found himself inches away from her face for a moment, gazing into her eyes, until she looked away and steadied herself. Her face turned a slightly darker green.
Huh. The goon's hand had felt solid enough. And the woman's breath briefly on his lips had been just as real as the three times in his life that he'd gotten this close to a girl. Dylan caught himself blushing and looked away.
He glanced around and noted the others who'd been separated from the main group -- the snake-girl, the three horse-cow people, the burly obsidian girl, the giant bipedal dragon, the robot chick, and about a dozen others. Two of them were human.
Finally! He grinned, but before he could greet them, something else caught his attention.
The goons who'd herded them onto the platform remained behind as the door closed, separating them from Dylan and the others. A bright light washed over everything and his whole body tingled.
Oh, this can't be good.
The light faded and he blinked a few times. His vision cleared and he looked around.
His mouth fell open.
He no longer stood in a room. He and the others were still on a platform, but now it was surrounded by an enormous metal structure made up of sets of stairs, ramps, platforms, and partial walls seemingly placed at random. If he had to give the architecture style a name, it would be … scaffold-chic.
"What the hell is this?" One of the other humans whimpered. "What's going on?"
"Sorcery," a woman's voice came from behind Dylan, barely above a whisper. He turned to find the obsidian-skinned girl glancing around with wide, terrified eyes and trembling.
"No." The orc shook her head. "I've seen enough to know there's no such thing. This is technology, but nothing I'm familiar with."
In the corner of his eye, the snake girl slithered past, put her upper hands on a nearby wall, pulled herself up and leaned over the edge.
"Look at this." Her voice was slightly raspy.
Uh-oh. Dylan walked slowly to the wall, jumped to grasp the top, and pulled himself up.
One of the other humans found a lower wall, leaned over, and drew in a slow breath. "Oh, hell." Her face turned pale.
Dylan glanced at her, frowned, and peered over the edge.
We're in the sky. He couldn't see the ground from here. Below the structure, there was nothing but a sea of red and orange clouds. And off to the right, he could make out two distinct suns, one larger -- closer -- than the other.
Then he realized the metal under his palms felt quite real for something in a dream. In fact, everything around him was as vivid and detailed as everyday life. His dreams were never even remotely like this, at least not the bits he could remember.
What if this is real?
"Oh, fuck me," he muttered.
"Now?" the snake girl said. "Or can it wait?"
"What?" He turned and caught a glimpse of her smirking at him before lowering herself back to the ground. He shook his head and dropped back to the floor.
"This is not a good tactical position," the orc said, flicking her eyes over the structure. "We're out in the open. We should move to an area that's less exposed to …"
Movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention. Hers, too. She snapped her head around to scowl in the same direction before he finished turning. More of the armored, helmeted, blank-visored guys appeared from behind several walls on the far side of the structure. She swept her steely gaze over them and backed up a step. "Find cover."
Dylan squinted, trying to get a clear look at the things the copper-armored goons were carrying.
"They have rifles," the orc said. "Get behind something."
A thin, yellow bolt of energy lanced out from the business end of one of the weapons and crossed the distance between the two groups in an instant.
Behind Dylan, a woman screamed. His pulse jumped and he cried out as he spun around. The human woman staggered backward, bumped into the wall, and collapsed. Her eyes stared straight ahead without seeing anything. Smoke rose from a hole that had been burned through her chest.
"Sarah!" The man rushed to her and fell to his knees. He stared disbelievingly at her, grasped her shoulders, and shook her. "Get up! Come on, baby, please get up!"
A hand grabbed Dylan's arm and he spun around to find the orc woman dragging him away.
"Get to cover!" She shoved him ahead of her just as another beam appeared for a split-second and drilled through the back of the other human's head.
A silvery thing about the size and shape of a hockey puck landed behind Dylan and bounced past him before coming to a stop.
"Grenade!" The orc pushed him again, drew in a deep breath, and yelled, "Run!"
#
The explosion flung bodies into the air and sent others tumbling across the ground -- more than Grishnag had time to count. She shoved the young human ahead of her and ran until both of them reached a wall. She ducked behind it, grasped his shoulder, and held him down. She turned to see if anyone else had survived the blast and found four bodies bleeding all over the metal surface and another -- one of the equine-bovine people -- teetering over the edge of the platform.
"Jesus Christ," the human moaned, hunching over and tucking his head under his arms. "This can't be happening!"
The snake-woman zipped over to the horse-man just as he rolled over the edge. She dived at him and missed his left ankle by a centimeter. She stared in shock as he plummeted out of sight.
One of the armored attackers appeared, crept up behind her, and aimed its rifle at the back of her head.
Grishnag glanced at the human and said, "Stay here." Remaining in a crouch, she moved one step forward -- and suddenly the robot blurred out from behind one of the other walls and tackled the larger humanoid from behind. Her momentum carried both of them into the wall and slammed the enemy into it with bone-crushing force. She drove her foot into its left knee, folding its leg the wrong way, and clamped her arms around its head as it fell. One quick twist snapped its neck, and she snatched the huge rifle out of the air before the body hit the ground.
The robot opened fire on the armored figures. Grishnag risked a quick peek around the corner just in time to see one of them catch a shot clean through the visor and out the back of the helmet. The others ran for whatever cover they could find.
Nice! Grishnag waited until all of them had ducked behind something, and then she glanced at the robot and said, "Cover me!" She sprinted over to the fallen humanoid while the robot continued firing.
In the corner of her eye, one of them swung its rifle around toward her as she picked up the dead one's weapon. She leaped and rolled, and the shot drilled through the space she'd already vacated. She came up in a crouch and put five shots through her opponent's chest. It slumped over and she lunged forward to grab its rifle, and then she ran back to the human.
He was where she'd left him, curled into a fetal position and rocking back and forth.
Okay, giving him the gun wouldn't be a good idea. She glanced around, found the snake girl, and tossed the gun to her. "Do you know how to use that?"
"I can figure it out." She pointed the rifle away from everyone and pulled the trigger, firing a blast into the floor. She squeaked and twitched, pulled herself together, and rose above the wall to fire at their attackers.
Grishnag took a quick look around for more survivors and found only a horse-woman, the burly woman, and the giant humanoid dragon.
"What is happening to us?" The obsidian-skinned female whimpered, huddled against the wall behind the human. "Why is this happening?"
Grishnag noticed the girl's mouth movements didn't match the words she spoke. Something is translating her speech. What the hell is going on?
"We can worry about that later if we survive the next few minutes." Grishnag popped out from behind cover long enough to shoot another of their attackers.
An enemy shot punched through the wall and searing heat on her right cheek made her lunge to her left.
"I want to wake up," the human moaned. "Why can't I wake up?"
"This isn't a dream." Grishnag gunned down another one. Before she could duck back under cover, a movement caught her eye. She turned and found another grenade spinning through the air toward her. She sucked in a breath to shout a warning to everyone else, but suddenly a beam struck the disc-shaped device in midair. It vanished in a flash and an expanding cloud of shrapnel. Grishnag glanced to the left and found the robot shifting her aim from the blown grenade to another pair of attackers.
Grishnag sighed and looked up at the platforms above them. "We'll be better off if we can get to higher ground. We need to …"
Behind the dragon, another of the armored men stepped into the open and lobbed a grenade. It arched over everyone's head and came down straight toward her. The human looked up, spotted it, and his face turned white.
Grishnag rose to her feet as the grenade reached her, caught it in her right hand, and hurled it straight back to the enemy humanoid. It threw itself to the right but wasn't fast enough. Grishnag turned away from the sudden flash and winced at the sharp bang, but laughed when she saw the body flopping off the edge of the platform.
She only had a moment to celebrate, though. Another humanoid hopped over the top of the wall they'd been using as cover and dropped down in front of the dragon. It raised its rifle, but the dragon swatted it aside, braced her hand on the side of his head, and shoved it into the wall with enough force to leave a dent. The gun fell from its suddenly limp hand.
"Hold on." Grishnag hurried over and searched the pouches and compartments on the body's belt. She found three stubby cylinders she guessed were spare power cells for the guns and a rectangular box that might be a communication device or a control system. After finding nothing else on him, she nodded at the edge of the platform.
The dragon flashed a predatory grin and gave the body a casual toss, sending it plunging through the fiery clouds under the structure. She looked the gun over, glanced at Grishnag, and mimicked her pose, holding the rifle in one hand and propping it on her shoulder.
Grishnag found the rest of the survivors gathering behind her. The robot pointed ahead before popping off a few more shots.
"Clear the road. I'll cover our rear."
Grishnag took the lead and made her way to the nearest ramp. She rounded a corner -- and caught a split-second glimpse at the stock of a rifle before it rammed into the side of her head. When she regained her senses, she found the business end of the rifle inches from her face. She tried to ignore the pain lancing through her head and shifted her eyes from the rifle to the humanoid pointing it at her.
A brown blur came in from the right and plowed into the figure, knocking it off its feet and sending the rifle clattering across the floor. Grishnag pushed herself upright and found the snake-girl coiling her body around the enemy. The serpentoid rolled, twisted, and wrenched her body to the right, flinging the humanoid across the floor to the edge of the platform.
As it tumbled over the edge, it lashed out and clamped onto the end of her tail, dragging her along with it as it fell. All four arms flailed, her claws scraping across the metal, trying to find a handhold.
The human leaped after her and managed to grab her upper-left hand, but the combined weight of her and the goon dragged both of them closer to the edge.
The dragon clamped her talons around the human's right ankle, and that was enough to hold them in place.
The snake grunted and contorted her face, and from her movements, Grishnag guessed she was swinging her tail around, trying to dislodge the enemy.
"Pull her back up." Grishnag picked up her rifle and glancing around for more of their attackers. "One of us will be able to pick it off as soon as it reappears."
"Wait," the snake grunted. She took the human's other hand to hold herself steady, gave her tail another swing, then another, and Grishnag saw the enemy appear momentarily before gravity pulled it back down.
One more swing hurled it into full view -- and a rapid series of bolts from the robot's gun drilled through its head. It loosened its grip on the snake girl's tail. Grishnag and the dragon blasted it several more times before it dropped out of sight for the last time.
The human pulled her away from the edge. When she was no longer dangling above the clouds, she threw all four arms around him and just held him for a moment. He looked startled, but recovered after a few seconds and put his arms around her.
"Thank you," she finally whispered.
"Uh … sure, any time."
"Let's keep moving." Grishnag rubbed the side of her head, winced at the pain, and made sure to keep checking in every direction as she resumed the lead. Everyone followed her up the ramp to the next platform, and then on past two more. The next ramp led to a long, narrow level with waist-high walls. She lowered herself to her left hand and her knees, holding the gun in her right hand, and crawled forward, keeping her body below the top of the wall.
The others followed, crawling along close behind her.
Once she reached the end, she found herself in a larger chamber. Fortunately, this one had a solid wall between them and the attackers' last known position. Everyone stood and rushed across to the door and the huge window at the far end. They paused to look out the window before moving on to the door.
"What is that?" the girl with the glowing eyes whispered.
"Looks like a city," the human muttered.
Grishnag nodded. In front of her sat several kilometers of metal buildings, domes, and spires colored in varying shades of gray with streaks and splotches of brown all over. She cocked her head. Is that rust?
"A … city?" The horse-cow woman shook her head in disbelief.
"Like a village, but larger." Grishnag pointed at the nearest structures. "Those buildings are basically … tents? Huts? I've never met any of your people before, so I don't know what you're familiar with." She shrugged. "People live in some of those, work in others. Theoretically, at least."
"Ah. I think I understand."
"Maybe there's someone here who will help us out." The human glanced around at the others.
"I doubt it," the dragon said. "Would they have brought us within reach of someone willing to help us?"
"I … I guess not." He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. "So what do we do, now?"
"Most cities have vehicles in them. There's probably something there we can use." Grishnag patted his shoulder and smiled. "So, we keep going until we find a way out." She opened the door. "Let's move."
CHAPTER 2: Waking Up Dead
"So," the male said after they'd been traveling through the city streets for a while, "we've faced death together, but we don't even know each other's names."
The muscular green woman chuckled. "I'm Grishnag."
"Dylan Engstrom."
"Pleased to meet you, Dylan."
"And I'm Nishara." She slithered closer to him, smiled, put her upper hands on his shoulders, and touched her forehead briefly to his.
"Uh, hi." He smiled but clearly wasn't sure what else to say or do.
The tall reptile woman bowed, first to him, then to the rest. "Ayastal."
"I am Zilaka," the furry one with hooves, muzzle, and horns said.
"My name's Cora," the machine-woman said, turning to keep watch for more of the helmeted people.
"Syala," the thick one with glowing eyes and hooves murmured.
"Okay." Grishnag stopped at the next street corner and glanced around. "We haven't seen anyone else here. This part of the city appears empty." She sighed. "I hope the rest isn't empty as well."
"The buildings are rusting away." Cora stopped at a wall and looked it over, but was careful not to touch anything. "Looks like it hasn't been occupied in a long time."
"Probably just used for training exercises or something like that," Grishnag said. "Or whatever it is they're doing with us."
"I don't suppose any of you have seen a place like this before?" Dylan mumbled.
Everyone shook their heads.
"I've seen metal buildings before," Ayastal said, "but none like these. When I was a child, there was a settlement of 'sky-people' not far from where my tribe lived. Buildings made of metal, but the …" She took a moment to find the right word. "The shapes were different."
"You're familiar with other worlds, then?"
"No. My people are aware of those who came from the sky, but none of us have been there. Well, until now. When I was a child, I would often sneak away from home and spend most of the day simply watching their flying machines." Ayastal smiled. "I've always wanted to ride one of those machines into the sky."
"Well, you may get your chance yet," Grishnag said as they continued on their way. "If we can find our way out of here."
"Maybe if we investigate some of the buildings," Dylan said. "If there's a computer in one of 'em that's hooked up to the inter -- uh, a global network, if this planet has one, we might be able to find a map."
"I haven't detected any wireless networks." Cora shook her head. "I'm not picking up any power sources, either."
"Damn. We should keep moving, then." Grishnag sighed and walked on.
The rest followed her, glancing around every few seconds to be sure no one was pursuing them. Nishara wasn't sure how much time passed as they made their way across the empty city, everyone remaining silent as they took random turns every now and then, until she'd lost any sense of the direction from which they had come.
Not that there was anything back that way except death if the metal people were still pursuing them.
Finally, they emerged onto an enormous platform, easily bigger than her clan's largest encampment back home. And on it sat large metal structures of varying sizes and shapes. They looked different from the buildings they'd passed by earlier, resting on sets of large things that looked like feet, or in some cases, wheels.
"Flying machines?" Ayastal cocked her head and smiled slightly.
"Looks like it." Dylan turned to Grishnag and Cora. "Any of these look familiar?"
"Some are similar to technology I'm used to." Grishnag walked slowly past one, brushing her hand over the lettering on its side. "But not exactly. I don't recognize any of the insignia or the names."
"Huh," Dylan muttered, stopping to stare at the letters painted on one flying machine's side. "These are all in English. Hell of a coincidence."
"I'm seeing these in my native language." Grishnag moved on to the next ship. "I noticed during the battle that when some of you spoke, your mouth movements didn't match what you were saying, and the same is probably happening for all of you when I speak. Something has been translating us, and I assume the same thing is happening with the writing on these ships."
"Ah. I was wondering how we could understand each other." Nishara slid past Dylan and stopped to examine the ships beyond the one he stood beside. "I don't understand how it's done, though."
"Were you all unconscious when you were brought here?" Dylan glanced around at each of them. "Did you fall asleep back home and then wake up in that huge room where we met?"
Everyone else nodded or murmured an affirmative response. Dylan suddenly looked uneasy.
"I bet they implanted something in us. Hardware that interfaces with our brains and translates what we see and hear." He shivered. "And if that's what they did, then what else did they do to us while we were asleep?"
Syala shuddered and her lower lip quivered. Nishara slithered over to her and put her left arms around her.
Cora looked unsettled for a moment, and then she pulled herself together and marched across the platform. "We'll have to worry about that after we get out of here. We need to take one of these ships, assuming any of them are still functional. A shuttle wouldn't do us much good. Too short-range. We'll need a ship that has a hyperspace vortex generator in case there are no jumpgates nearby."
"But isn't the ability to understand other languages a benefit?" Syala patted Nishara's hand and walked alongside her. "Why would they give us an advantage if they simply want to kill us?"
"For the challenge," Grishnag said, her eyes opening wider at the realization. "They're hunting us for sport."
Dylan grimaced. "Why'd you have to put that idea in my head?"
"Sorry, but it just fits. They give us a way to communicate and work together when they could've just shot us dead. So, they're either hunting us, or this is a test. Evaluating specimens to decide which planet to invade, possibly."
"That's even worse."
"Yeah." Grishnag sighed and moved on to the next ship.
"Whatever the reason they brought us here," Ayastal said, "they paid a terrible price for it. I didn't take the time to make an exact count, but I believe we reduced them by at least half."
"Assuming they haven't brought in reinforcements." Cora walked over to a sleek, black ship that looked like a saucer that had been stretched out to twice its original length.
Zilaka crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "This is a nightmare. It has to be."
"That's what I thought at first." Dylan walked around the front of another ship, shook his head at the buckled strut that had once held it up, and moved on. "It's too detailed and too linear to be a dream. And it just feels too real."
"Even if it were a dream or hallucination," Cora said, "we can't afford to assume it's not real with those assholes trying to kill us."
"Yeah, guess we don't have much choice. We have to keep playing along, just in case." Dylan turned to look at another ship -- and one of those yellow beams came out of nowhere and pierced his chest. A startled look crossed his face, then was replaced by a grimace of pain as he collapsed.
Everyone stared in shock.
"Dylan?" Nishara whispered. Her hearts pounded.
Grishnag and Cora were the first to recover. They threw themselves behind the nearest ship and tried to find where the bolt had come from without exposing themselves to more.
Ayastal pulled Syala and Zilaka behind another ship. Syala stared at Dylan's body and burst into tears.
"Damn it," Grishnag snarled. "He was just a kid."
"What the hell?" Cora aimed her weapon in the distance, but couldn't find a target. "I should've been able to detect them. Why couldn't I detect them?"
Nishara sucked in a deep breath and screamed, "Dylan!" She slid over to him, hoping he was only wounded as she rolled him over.
His eyes stared blankly into the sky and smoke curled up from the hole in his chest.
Still, she put her upper hands on his shoulders and shook him gently. "Dylan! You can't …"
"I'm sorry, Nishara," Grishnag said. "He's gone. Get under cover."
Nishara wiped the tears from her eyes and lifted her head to glare at the place from which the shot had come. She could make out movement among the metal structures in the distance.
She snarled.
Ayastal turned suddenly to face something behind everyone. More of those damned beams drilled into her chest. Her legs buckled and she slumped over on top of Syala.
Nishara turned to find a dozen more metal men charging them. She drew in another breath and let it out in a shriek that caused everyone around her to stop in their tracks for a moment, even the murdering bastards who had taken poor Dylan from them. She raised her weapon, surged forward, and pulled the trigger. The nearest of their enemies stumbled backward and fell, smoke pouring from all the holes she'd blasted through his torso.
A series of flashes came from the others' weapons and sudden, searing pains lanced through her chest as if white-hot knives were being plunged into her. Before she even understood what had happened, she found herself sprawled face down on the metal ground, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
"M … monsters," she whimpered before blackness engulfed her.
#
"What the --" Dylan flailed, gasped, and clutched his chest. Before he realized he was on a raised platform, he lost his balance, fell off, dropped several feet, and landed face down. Groaning, he pushed himself up slowly and looked around. "What the hell?"
More platforms filled the room, almost like metal beds.
No. More like autopsy tables. A shiver rippled through him.
All the tables were occupied by the alien women who'd surrounded him just before …
Just before I died. He glanced down at the front of his shirt, but couldn't find the hole that had been burned through him. The shirt hadn't been repaired -- it was exactly as it had been before that fatal shot.
Just to be sure, he lifted his shirt and slid his hand over his chest. There was no sign of a wound.
How am I alive? He leaned on the platform and tried to take deep breaths and slow his pounding heart. He looked around again and a chill rushed through him.
They're not breathing. He held his breath for a moment, trying not to let a sudden burst of tears out. The only familiar faces in this goddamn place, and they were all dead.
But he wasn't. Why?
Suddenly, Ayastal inhaled. She twitched and lurched upright, glanced around, and her eyes locked on to him.
"What …? How …?"
"I don't know." He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "Did you, uh … ?"
"Die? Yes." Ayastal shuddered. Even though her face wasn't human at all, Dylan could still read her confusion and fear in her wide eyes, twitchy movements, and rapid breathing. Maybe some things were universal. "I felt my heart stop! And yet …"
"Here we are. I know. I think …"
Nishara suddenly sucked in a deep breath and screamed. She convulsed and rolled off the platform.
Dylan let out a quick scream of his own and backed away from her, but pulled himself together and approached her slowly. "N … Nishara?"
She glanced around frantically, found him, and stared. "Dylan?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Yeah, it's me."
"But …"
"I know."
"You died!"
"Yeah, I noticed that. So did Ayastal." He motioned at the dragon woman, and Nishara glanced over her shoulder. Ayastal nodded at her. Nishara stared, took a few breaths, looked as if she were about to say something, then she turned back to Dylan.
"As did I." Nishara stared down at herself and ran her hands slowly over her chest. "The wounds are gone."
"Mine, too." He lifted his shirt. "See?"
She slithered up to him, stared for a moment, then reached out hesitantly and touched his chest. Her skin was softer and warmer than he'd expected. She moved her hand slowly over his chest for several more seconds, looked up and met his gaze, and finally pulled him into a tight embrace.
"How?"
"I don't know. Maybe whoever brought us here is able to heal wounds like these." Or maybe we're clones and the originals really are dead. He didn't mention that one to either of them, not just because he would've had to explain what clones were.
"But why?" Tears trickled from Nishara's eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. "Why are they doing this to us?"
"I wish I knew." He pulled the bottom edge of his shirt out to wipe away her tears. "I wish I knew how to even begin to find out."
She put her upper-left hand over his, held it to her cheek, raised her lower-left hand to his cheek, and stroked it softly. She gazed into his eyes for a moment, and then she leaned forward slowly and kissed him.
What the hell? Though it caught him by surprise, it was also quite nice, so he let it continue as long as Nishara wanted. When she finally pulled back from him, her face turned slightly darker, and she couldn't look him in the eye again.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled.
"I'm not." He smiled.
Ayastal managed a chuckle, though she was still visibly unsettled. She stood and ran a hand over her chest as if still looking for her wounds, and finally glanced around at the other bodies.
"Since the rest of us are here, I think we can assume they were killed, as well, and will wake up soon."
"Yeah. Well, I hope they will." Dylan turned slowly, looking around at the others, but kept his left arm around Nishara. "I wonder which one of them died next."
"I wouldn't know." Ayastal's muzzle quirked slightly into what might've been an attempt at a smile. "I was unable to observe anything, being dead at the time, myself."
"Right. Heh." Dylan managed a shaky smile and waited silently to see if anyone else woke up.
The others woke one by one. Dylan, Nishara, and Ayastal took turns explaining what had happened -- or what they thought happened. Cora and Grishnag understood instantly, but Syala and Zilaka took a bit longer.
"We died," Syala whimpered. She remained on her platform, pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rocked slowly. "How can we be alive if we died?"
"Whoever's doing this to us," Grishnag said, "if they're able to abduct us and bring us who knows how many light-years to this place, then repairing fatal wounds might be child's play for them."
"So, this is what our lives will be from now on?" Tears trickled down Syala's cheeks again. "Dying, waking up here, and being killed again? Over and over, perhaps forever?"
"I don't know." Dylan walked over to her, and Nishara joined him. At the same time, they each put an arm around Syala. "But that means we might have a chance to get out of here. As long as we survive, there's hope. Right?"
Syala didn't answer. After staring at nothing in particular for more than a full minute, she put her arms around him and cried into his shirt. He glanced at Nishara, who smiled and nodded. He embraced Syala and rubbed her back slowly.
"And maybe not," Grishnag finally said. "Maybe they'll leave us alone for a while."
A door at the end of the room slid open and two of those damned nine-foot humanoids entered.
"Fuck," Grishnag snapped.
"Jinxed it," Cora muttered, and Grishnag sighed.
"Yeah."
Everyone stood and faced them except Syala. She gripped the front of Dylan's shirt, twisting the fabric in her clenched fists as if terrified he was about to move away from her. He and Nishara remained by her side.
A third humanoid followed the first two, pushing a large cart. They stopped in front of Dylan and the females, and the two in front stepped aside. The third pointed into the cart.
Grishnag peeked into the cart. "Guns. They're arming us, this time?"
"Oh, shit," Dylan moaned. "What the hell are we gonna be facing?"
"Doesn't matter." Grishnag shook her head and backed away from the cart. "I'm not fighting for someone else's entertainment."
The humanoid pointed into the cart again. Grishnag growled.
"Fuck you. I'm not playing your games."
The one on the right turned its blank faceplate toward her and raised its left hand, pointing its palm at her.
She hunched over suddenly, clutched her head, and screamed. Everyone else gasped, and Syala clamped a hand over her mouth and began crying again.
Grishnag stumbled to the right, toppled over, curled up on the floor, and continued screaming.
"Stop it!" Dylan pried himself away from Syala and rushed over to Grishnag. The goon on the left pointed its palm at him. He ignored it, reached out to touch Grishnag's shoulder, but hesitated. He glared at the humanoid on the right and shouted, "Stop it! We'll do whatever you want, just stop!"
Both figures lowered their hands back to their sides. Grishnag suddenly went limp, still holding her head and weeping, but no longer screaming. She rolled onto her back, sobbed, and tried to pull herself together.
"Fucking monsters," Nishara practically hissed before slithering over to help Grishnag sit up.
Dylan clasped Grishnag's right hand in both of his and just held it while she took deep breaths and regained control of herself. Finally, she gazed into Dylan's eyes, reached out and caressed his cheek. Then her eyes widened and she pulled her hand back as if shocked by her own actions.
Okay, what is it with me and alien women, anyway? Have I turned into Captain Kirk or something?
"You gonna be okay?" Cora leaned over to touch Grishnag's shoulder.
Grishnag shuddered before answering. "Eventually." She pushed herself back to her feet and staggered over to the cart. "Fine. I'll go along with whatever insanity you've got planned." Glaring at the helmeted humanoid in front of her, she picked up one of the huge, long-barreled rifles. Then she snarled, "How do you know I won't kill you with it?"
The armored alien stared blankly at her. She held its "gaze" for a long moment and finally sighed and turned away. Her shoulders sagged ever so slightly.
Dylan sighed and picked up one of the guns. He thought it over for a few seconds and then turned to the humanoid on the right. "This is for hurting my friend."
He aimed his gun square at the bastard's chest and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Trembling, he sagged and stared at the gun. "Fuckin' hell!"
Grishnag patted his shoulder, smiled shakily, propped the gun on her shoulder, and strode out the door.
"I can't do this," Syala mumbled.
"You saw what will happen if you don't." Nishara hugged her and rubbed her back, then took her hand and led her to the cart.
"We'll be right there with you," Dylan said. "We'll all get through this together."
Zilaka nodded, patted Syala's back, and picked up one of the guns. Holding it uncertainly, she sighed and clopped past the guards.
Dylan smiled one more time at Syala, took a step past the humanoid who'd tortured Grishnag -- then he spun around and slammed the stock of his rifle into the bastard's visor. The impact knocked the alien off its feet and sprawled it on the floor.
Holy shit, that actually worked?
The other guards stepped toward him and pointed their hands at him. He propped the rifle on his shoulder and glared at them.
"What?" he snapped. When he made no further moves against them, they stepped back but kept their palms aimed at him. He realized suddenly how close he'd just come to being subjected to the same punishment that had been inflicted on Grishnag, but tried to cover up his fear by pushing past the guards and grumbling, "Get the fuck out of my way."
As he turned the corner to follow Grishnag, he caught a glimpse of Syala staring at him with an awestruck grin -- then picking up one of the guns and marching after him.
He caught up with Grishnag at the end of the corridor, which widened out and ended with what looked like a hangar door. The sounds of boots and hooves approaching from behind told him the rest of the women had armed themselves and joined him and Grishnag.
"I just realized something," Zilaka said, obviously struggling to keep her voice steady. "There were many others sent with us onto the first battlefield, but we're the only ones who woke up in that room back there."
"The others were killed almost immediately." A troubled look crossed Cora's face. "Maybe they were rejected."
All the confidence Dylan had just built up drained away as her meaning sank in over the next few seconds.
"Wonderful." Grishnag turned back to the door. "Well, let's get this over with."
CHAPTER 3: Wheels of Fire
"Huh. That's not what I expected." Dylan turned around slowly and took in their surroundings. He and the alien females stood in the middle of a street with a set of vehicles in front of them. Wheeled vehicles, but none of them familiar to him. Each was about the size of a four-door sedan but ranged from sleek lozenge shapes to something that looked like a cross between a sports car and a SWAT tank.
The city itself was unlike anything Dylan had seen on Earth, but it reminded him of any number of futuristic cityscapes in movies, video games, and TV shows. Lots of gleaming metal, concrete, glass, bridges, overpasses, and skyscrapers. In the distance, vehicles zipped around and equally sci-fi aircraft traced paths across the sky here and there.
I wonder if we're still on the same planet as the place we were killed a while ago? The sky was tinted red instead of the familiar blue and the air felt different -- thinner, with a sharp odor of overheated wiring filling his nose with every breath. If the assholes who abducted us can teleport us to other planets, what fucking chance do we have of ever escaping?
"I know how this works," Syala clopped over to one of the cars, her mouth hanging open and her glowing eyes opening wide. "I've never seen any of these before, never even imagined such things, but I know how to drive them."
"So do I." Ayastal leaned over the nearest car, placed her hand on its roof, and peered in through the windshield. "The knowledge just appeared in my mind. But I can't fit into any of these."
"How is this happening?" Syala drew in several ragged breaths and glanced around until her terrified gaze locked onto Dylan. "How do I suddenly know things I could never have even dreamed of before?"
"I don't know." He hurried over to her and held her hands. "Maybe we'll find out sooner or later, or maybe we'll never know. Right now, all that matters is that we get through this."
She took a few more breaths, pulled herself together, and nodded.
Cora walked over to them and rested a hand on each of their shoulders. "Whoever is doing this, we can't let them break us. Don't give them the satisfaction."
Syala nodded again, smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and sucked in another long, slow breath to help calm herself.
"I also know what we must do," Zilaka muttered, turning to stare in shock at the others. "Just like the cars -- I didn't know a moment ago, and now I do."
"Same here." Dylan nodded slowly. "There's a package we have to pick up and take somewhere."
"And there will be someone trying to stop us." Nishara turned to gaze out over the city and shivered. "Someone trying to kill us."
"Again." Grishnag sighed. "No matter why our captors are doing this -- to test us, or just for their entertainment -- I don't want to submit to it."
"You know what'll happen if we don't." Dylan tried to give her a reassuring smile, but couldn't hold it for more than a second. "The longer we survive, the more time we have to figure out what's going on and how to stop it."
"True enough." A smile tugged at the corner of Grishnag's mouth. "Well, I guess we should get on with it."
Nishara cupped Dylan's face in her upper hands and held his hands with her lower ones.
"For luck." She leaned in and kissed him.
Uh … wow. He let the kiss continue until she pulled back, gazed into his eyes, and smiled. He stroked her cheek and she gave his hands and shoulders a gentle squeeze before turning to slither over to one of the cars.
Another hand brushed his arm. He turned to the left and found Syala leaning toward him. He met her halfway, thinking she wanted to say something to him without the others overhearing.
Instead, she slid her right hand behind his neck, pulled him closer, and kissed him.
Huh? His heart began to pound, but he went along with it. When Syala finally pulled back, she smiled and glanced away.
"For luck," she mumbled.
"Thanks." His face turned hot and he glanced around and caught Grishnag grinning and chuckling in the corner of his eye. He cleared his throat and tugged on his shirt collar. "So. Uh. Anybody else want a good-luck kiss?"
After everyone flicked a few glances at each other, Cora shrugged and walked over to him.
"What the hell. I don't believe it'll tilt the odds in our favor, but I'm all for finding a moment of pleasure in this nightmare we're all in." She pressed her cool metal lips gently against his and the faint smell of mechanical lubricants and polish filled his nose. Neither the kiss nor the scent was at all unpleasant.
When they parted, the other females approached him. Before he could get his brain around what was happening, each of them kissed him. In the corner of his eye, he found several of them kissing each other.
Okay, this is getting weird. The only possibility he could think of was that maybe humans were the only species that had any sexual hangups, and it simply didn't occur to any of these females to think there was anything strange about this. Hah. Getting weird. Good one.
Finally, Grishnag was the only one who hadn't kissed him or any of the others. She shrugged and put her arms around him.
"I suppose I shouldn't buck the trend," she said softly, chuckling. Her breath brushed across his lips and his heartbeat revved up again. "It has been a while since I've done this, so maybe it's about time, anyway."
Their mouths met and he closed his eyes and lost himself in the moment. It was a little odd, with those big fangs sticking up from her lower teeth, but no more so than any of the others.
When they parted, they gazed into each other's eyes for a moment, smiled, and then Grishnag walked off to choose a vehicle. She picked one of the sporty-SWAT tank-looking things, opened the door, and settled into the seat. Her eyes flicked over its control panel and she pushed a button. The engine started -- not the familiar sound of the car engines Dylan had heard all his life, but more of a throbbing hum.
The others chose their cars, except Ayastal. Grishnag glanced over at her, smiled, and pointed a thumb at the roof of her vehicle.
"This one looks sturdy enough for you to ride on top. You won't have any protection, but at least you'll be able to participate. I mean, if you want."
"Thank you. After seeing what they did to you when you refused to play their games, I'm probably better off not appearing to be uncooperative." Ayastal crouched on top of the car, braced her feet on the rear end, and found handholds on the roof.
Dylan picked another hotrod-tank, got in, and glanced around. All the controls were on the dashboard, including the brakes and accelerator. At least that meant Nishara could drive one despite having no legs. He glanced over at her in time to watch her try to enter one of the lozenge-shaped cars. She ducked in through the driver's side door, pulled back out, entered again, extracted herself again. She grumbled something, opened the back door, slid in and between the front seats, took her position awkwardly at the controls, and pulled the rest of her body in.
Syala closed the back door for her.
"Thank you." Nishara spent the next few moments trying to coil her body around the interior and find a comfortable position.
Dylan started his engine as Syala and Zilaka picked out their cars.
Grishnag's voice came from a speaker in the dashboard. "Okay. Let's do this."
#
"Almost there." Grishnag glanced at the mini-map on her dashboard and noted the position of the waypoint. She returned her attention to the road ahead and slowed as they passed through a gate and entered an area filled with what appeared to be warehouses.
As they approached the waypoint, a dozen red blips appeared around it. Grishnag noted their positions on her mini-map and grumbled.
"Well, here we go." Dylan's voice quivered slightly.
Before Grishnag could offer any reassuring words, she eased around the corner of a large, rectangular building and found a dozen males and females of varying species spinning toward her and snapping their guns up.
"What the hell?" Dylan said. "I was expecting more of the goons we fought last time."
"So was I." Grishnag steered toward the nearest three and accelerated. "No matter. Just focus on getting through this."
"R-right." Dylan's vehicle surged forward, plowed into two of the "enemies," and sent them tumbling across the pavement.
"Nice." Grishnag flashed a feral grin. "Ayastal, you may want to …"
"Dismounting." The huge reptile woman leaped off the top of Grishnag's vehicle and slammed into a pair of humans who'd opened fire a split-second before. The impact flattened them and she made sure they stayed put with a solid punch to each of their faces. She rolled off them, crouched, and sprang over the head of a pig-ogre as he tried to target her. She hit the ground, rolled forward, and came to a halt with her legs braced under her, ready to launch at another enemy.
The pig-ogre whipped his rifle around and lined up a shot at her chest.
Dylan's tank-car shot into view. He turned sharply to the left and the car skidded. The rear end swung around and slammed into the pig-ogre like a bat knocking a baseball out of the park. He rocketed into the side of a parked cargo truck, crumpled to the ground, and came to a stop with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle.
"Nice moves, kid," Grishnag said with an arched eyebrow.
"Thanks. I just now realized this reminds me of a game I played a lot back home. This was one of the moves I used on opposing players."
"This reminds you of a game?" Nishara steered her car around the back of a nearby warehouse and flinched as four enemies concentrated their fire on her.
"Yeah, a video game. It's a -- actually, never mind. I'll try to explain it later." Dylan whipped his car to the right and shoved his rifle through his open window. He pulled the trigger and perforated the human and three bovine males. They twitched and collapsed, fingers convulsing on their triggers and firing random shots until the life finished draining from them.
"Video games," Cora muttered. "I'm familiar with them. They're sort of like simulations."
"Yeah, kind of. You okay, Nishara?"
"For now." Nishara changed course again and accelerated. "I'm near the … whatever we're here to take. I'm going for it."
"I'll cover you," Dylan said.
"As will I," Syala added.
"Simulations. Hmm." Cora veered off to join the other three.
"What?" Grishnag caught up with them, glanced at the waypoint, and followed them toward a building that appeared to be an aircraft hangar.
"Just a suspicion I have. I don't want to distract everyone with it now."
"Sounds good." Dylan mowed down another opponent with his car and continued on to the hangar. "You can tell us after we finish this. Or the next time we wake up dead." He chuckled.
Hah. He has my kind of sense of humor. Grishnag grinned and parked in front of the hangar's massive open door. "Make a barricade with your vehicles while Nishara picks up the package."
Dylan backed his car up until his rear bumper nudged her front. The others followed suit, keeping their driver-side doors facing into the hangar. Everyone except Nishara jumped out and aimed their guns at the remaining enemies, using their vehicles as cover. Nishara extracted herself from her car and surged forward, slithering deeper into the building so fast she became a blur.
Dylan and Syala charged after her, flicking their wide eyes all around the interior, searching for more enemies.
Grishnag glanced at the mini-map on her dashboard. Only three enemies remained … until ten more red blips appeared at the edge of the map and approached her team's position with alarming speed. Grishnag snarled. "More enemies incoming."
"That's what I was afraid of," Dylan grumbled. "It works the same way in that game I mentioned. No matter how many bad guys we take out, more keep teleporting in."
"It's hopeless," Syala whimpered.
"No, it's not." Grishnag drilled a beam through the forehead of each of the three approaching them. "It'll end when we complete our task."
"Yeah." Dylan tried to smile at Syala. "Maybe then we'll get to sit out the next round of fighting. Y'know, as a reward."
Grishnag glanced at her mini-map again. The new red blips were almost on top of her and the others. She frowned, realizing a hissing sound had been growing louder over the last few moments.
That's inside the hangar. But … She gasped and raised her gun to aim at the ceiling.
"They're above us!"
Thumps of multiple feet hitting the roof echoed through the cavernous room.
Cora spun and snapped her gun up toward the ceiling. "I see their heat signatures." She opened fire, burning dozens of holes through the metal. Several voices cried out, and then a guttural roar overwhelmed them. More thumps echoed from the ceiling, the sound of bodies rolling down the angled roof.
"I've got the pilots," Ayastal snarled before opening fire.
The hissing sound revved, sputtered, and turned into a rattling whine. A stubby aircraft with two huge, ducted fans spun into view, a dozen holes melted through the canopy and a mixture of red and yellow blood splattered all over the cockpit. The aircraft continued its spin, tipped to the left, and crashed into the ground. It continued sliding and shedding parts, finally rolled over and ground to a stop upside-down.
"Good work, Ayastal," Grishnag said.
A deafening, sharp bang of a grenade slammed into the side of the building, almost drowning out a truncated scream. Grishnag staggered, shook her head, and a cold sensation rose up in her chest. "Ayastal?"
Nishara, Dylan, and Syala stopped in their tracks. Nishara fumbled and nearly dropped the brick-shaped, crystalline object in her hands.
"Ayastal!" Grishnag rushed to the rear of her car, peeked around the doorway, and found her sprawled on the ground with her chest blasted open.
Past her, two more large vehicles rumbled toward the hangar.
Grishnag winced and turned away. She met the others' gazes and shook her head.
Syala sobbed and covered her mouth with her hand.
"She'll be okay," Dylan whispered, reaching out to rub her back.
"How do we know?"
"She'll probably wake up in the same room we found ourselves in after the first time we were killed."
"He's right." Grishnag took a deep breath and waved a hand around the inside of the hangar. "Take a quick look around. Maybe we can find something useful. Bigger guns, or armor."
"On it." Cora rushed over to the wall to inspect the shelves and crates.
Nishara handed the golden crystal brick to Dylan. "Take this. You seem to know what you're doing."
Grishnag glanced over her shoulder at the mini-map on her dashboard. A new waypoint had appeared at the northern edge.
"We have a new destination."
"Good." Dylan carried the faintly glowing crystal back to his car. "Let's get the hell out of here."
#
"Oh, look what we have here." Cora had just opened one of the metal crates in a corner behind a shuttle and grinned at what she'd found. "Grenades, sticky bombs, and rocket launchers."
"I don't know what those are," Zilaka muttered, "but if they keep us alive, I'll be happy with them."
"They should definitely give us a chance." Cora passed the grenades and sticky bombs to the others, grabbed two rocket launchers, and handed one to Grishnag. "You seem to know how to use stuff like this more than the others. I think we'll have a better chance of holding the goons off while the others escape."
Dylan whipped his head around to stare at her and Grishnag.
"Don't worry." Cora strode toward the space between the door frame and Grishnag's car. "I'm planning on both of us catching up with you. Now, get moving."
Dylan sighed, nodded, and started his engine. Syala, Zilaka, and Nishara returned to their vehicles.
Cora peeked around the corner, found the two vehicles still fifty meters away but approaching rapidly, and nodded at Grishnag. Cora lined up a shot on the nearer van and fired. A fist-size rocket streaked toward her target. The second van veered off and accelerated, while three people bailed out of the first. Cora's rocket struck the front of the van, ripped it apart in a split-second, and the shrapnel shredded the three who'd tried to escape.
Grishnag stepped around Cora and took her own shot while Cora reloaded. The van swerved, but couldn't avoid the rocket. Shrapnel and body parts scattered in every direction. Grishnag smirked, turned toward her car, and stopped suddenly.
"Cora told you to take off."
Cora turned and found the others waiting with their engines running. "Yeah. What she said."
"We're not leaving you here." Syala aimed a stern stare at her, couldn't hold it, and faced forward again. "We finish this together."
Cora almost rolled her optics, canceled the action, and ran to her vehicle. "Fine. Let's all get the hell out of here before anyone else starts shooting at us."
"Dylan," Grishnag said as she climbed into her car, "we'll surround you and escort you to the next waypoint. Stay in the center."
"I'll do my best." He gripped the controls and waited.
"I'll take the lead. Cora, bring up the rear." Grishnag moved her car into position.
Four red, car-shaped icons appeared on Cora's mini-map, approaching rapidly from the rear. She leaned out the window, glanced around, and zoomed in on a distant motion.
"Guys, we've got more --"
"I see them on my map," Syala said, almost whimpering. "Let's go!"
Cora grabbed her rocket launcher, climbed through her window, and perched her ass on the lower edge. She lined up a shot and squeezed the trigger. The rocket streaked away and she zoomed in to watch the impact.
One of the four vans exploded and the shockwave knocked two others off course.
What the hell was that? Cora pulled the last few seconds from her optics' buffer and replayed it in slow motion. Parts of the van flickered and broke into tiny cube shapes for a split second as it exploded, as did the air around the shockwave. She scowled and lined up another shot. Voxels. Damn, I was right.
"Cora!"
"Dylan, what?" Her proximity sensors picked up a sudden movement to her left before he could respond. She snapped her head around in time to catch a glimpse of a rocket before it drilled into the side of her car.
The roar of the explosion overwhelmed her auditory sensors and the flash overloaded her optics for a few seconds. When her sight returned, the entire world was spinning around her -- until the pavement slammed into her back. She glanced around, found parts of her legs and other debris scattered all around her, and her internal sensors detected various lubricants and other fluids spraying out of what was left of her torso.
"Cora!" Dylan shrieked again.
"Keep going! I'll do what I can from here." She found her rifle several meters away and dragged herself toward it while running a diagnostic. Primary systems failing, main power cell breached and heading for a critical overload. Whatever I do, I have to do it soon.
"But …"
"Go!" She clamped onto the rifle and tried to line up a shot on the approaching vans, but her targeting system was offline. "I'll see you all on the next go-around."
"Shit," Dylan moaned before accelerating away.
The others hesitated another few seconds but finally followed him.
The remaining three vans reached Cora.
Fuck it. She rolled onto her back, jammed her rifle's barrel against her exposed power cell, and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the detonation tore her body apart too quickly for her sensors to detect any damage.
#
The blast was enormous -- far bigger than anything Nishara had ever experienced. It deafened her and shook her vehicle. Both hearts pounded as she glanced over her shoulder and found parts of Cora's body and two of the vans raining down. The remaining van swerved around the debris and continued its pursuit.
"No," Dylan groaned.
"Take it easy," Grishnag said, clearly straining to remain calm, herself. "She'll be okay. She's probably in that same room we woke up in before, with Ayastal."
"I hope so." Dylan took a deep breath. "Alright. Let's get this over with." He accelerated.
Six more blips appeared on Nishara's mini-map, directly ahead. "No …"
"Where are they coming from?" Syala's voice quivered.
"Stay focused," Grishnag said.
A beam from one of the van's occupants drilled Nishara's rear window, the passenger-side headrest, and the windshield. She flinched and her hearts beat even faster.
Must try something. Must do something before we're all killed again. She took several deep breaths. "I … I have an idea."
She twisted her tail into position, gripped her weapon, and slid through her window. She kept her lower-left hand on the controls, kept the accelerator pressed down with the tip of her tail, and held on to the roof with her upper-left hand. With her two right hands, she raised the gun awkwardly and tried to aim it at the approaching van.
A male that appeared to be Zilaka's species leaned out one of the van's windows with his own rifle.
Nishara clamped her mouth shut to prevent a horrified whimper from escaping and fired her weapon. Half of her shots struck the ground or pierced empty air, but the rest punched into the front of the van.
The male fired and a familiar searing pain lanced through Nishara's upper-right shoulder. The gun almost slipped from her hands, but she managed to keep her grip on it and continue shooting.
Finally, one of her beams drilled through the van's windshield and vaporized part of the driver's head. He flopped over and the van swerved off to the right and crashed into a stack of red metal barrels. Nishara shifted her aim to the barrels without understanding how she knew what was about to happen, and continued firing. Whatever was in the barrels ignited violently, and engulfed the van in flames.
Nishara sighed, faced forward, and grimaced at the pain spreading out from her wounded shoulder.
Grishnag veered off to a curving ramp leading to an overpass that wove among dozens of gleaming metal skyscrapers. The rest followed her. Wincing and trying not to cry out, Nishara steered her vehicle in the same direction.
Three more enemy vans appeared directly ahead, swerving through the oncoming traffic.
"Damn it," Grishnag snarled. "Too many innocent people are in the way."
"There's nothing we can do about that," Dylan said with a sigh. "We'll just have to do the best we can to avoid hitting any of them."
A human leaned out of the lead van and began firing. Nishara groaned, shifted her grip on her weapon, and returned fire.
A beam pierced her upper-left arm and another hit her chest, just below her lower heart. She screamed and dropped her gun.
"Nishara!" Syala shrieked. "Oh, no!"
Another shot burned through Nishara's abdomen, and yet another drilled her upper heart. She flailed, screamed again, and her car began to turn sideways and skid.
"No!" Dylan bellowed.
Nishara caught a glimpse of a hail of enemy shots slamming through his windshield and multiple bursts of red blood filling the inside of his car, and suddenly she turned cold inside.
"No …" She coughed as everything around her began to fade away. "Dyl … Dylan …"
Her car struck the divider between lanes and rolled. The last thing Nishara saw was the road rushing up toward her, and the last things she felt were her body twisting and the car crushing her beneath it.
==========
Title: Game Over
Genre: Science Fiction
Age range: adult
Word count: 80,000 words
Author: Fred T. Kerns
Why the book is a good fit: I tend to write the kinds of stories I wish I could find on bookshelves. As TMG has an eye toward innovation, my work would bring them something new and fresh to pass along to the world. TMG also works with a range of genres and my novels and stories are primarily science fiction but also include elements of action, humor, and an often hopeful vision of the future despite the villainous characters standing in the heroes' way.
The Hook: On this planet, "fun and games" is a matter of life and death.
Synopsis: Dylan Engstrom wakes up in a strange place and is thrown into a series of combat scenarios with a handful of aliens. Together, they must figure out what's going on and how to escape before they're all killed. And killed again. And again. And again ...
Target audience: Readers who enjoy action, adventure, humor, spaceships, aliens, and fun characters in a story that leans toward the harder end of the SF scale.
Bio: Sci-fi writer, semi-competent gamer (on a good day), and a huge geek. Born in a small town in Oregon, lived on the Oregon coast until 2013, then moved to Tucson, Arizona, and has lived there ever since.
Platform: My blog has links to most of the stuff I'm up to: https://fredtkerns.blogspot.com/
Education: High school diploma, followed by life in general
Experience: Started writing and submitting short stories at 17 and have never stopped writing since then. I've finished five novels and have another in-progress, and have written a number of shorter works and ongoing serialized stories.
Personality/writing style: Usually pretty mellow. Able to roll with the punches thanks to life being a very long stretch of bad luck. Able to face each setback by immediately going to work on possible solutions almost like a reflex. Writing style tends to be to-the-point with characters who are often a little off-kilter. I've been told that I'm particularly good at writing action scenes. I also like to research specific scientific concepts to attempt to get them right (for instance, hull breaches in my writing won't result in an endless rush of venting air) without bogging the story down with details regarding physics and whatnot.
Likes/hobbies: Writing, video games, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Have been a lifelong fan of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, and others. More recent like/influences include the Mass Effect series, Babylon 5, Star Trek Online, Red vs. Blue, gen:LOCK, among others.
Hometown: Tucson, AZ
Age: 46
Watch Me
Levi shoved Lane through the door into the cafeteria.
A Space Security ships cafeteria was always a sight. Many other worldly races crammed together in one room always seemed to make his optical senses spaz for a moment. The translator in his ear picking up all the conversations in the room. Normally, he’d turn it off because of all the separate conversations would jumble the feed, but this time every race was focused on one topic.
There was a cow in the middle of the room. The tables had been moved to the edge so that the cook could take a good look at the animal the others had brought him. Any new food source was a highly prized item.
“That’s my stuff!” Lane said pointing at two duffle bags that had been emptied of their contents onto one of the tables.
“not anymore,” Levi said putting a hand on the boys shoulder, “your stuff is the price of your rescue.”
The cow let out a low moan and cantered to the side. The kid scrutinized the animal and Levi noticed the small hairs on the back of the boys neck stand straight up.
“that’s my families heifer!” He snapped, “you can’t kill it!”
Levi tightened his grip as the boy moved forward to knock the cook back. A few nearby crewmates chuckled at the boys exclamations.
“Another fee,” Levi said with a chuckle of his own, “rather cheep considering what others have to pay to get into space. Privilege of being abducted.”
The boys eyes widened as he came to realize his situation in full. The reality was starting to sink in; slowly, but surly. His headache coming back in full force.
The aliens in front of him were poking and prodding his fathers cow. The tag in the heifers ear telling anyone who cared to look who she belonged to.
“These guys are your shipmates till we make connections with the research vessel,” Levi said, “so you’re going to have to learn to share.”
“I see,” Lane grinned. He lifted his fingers to his lips and let out a high pitched whistle.
In less than a second the haunches bunched; a slight ripple traveling under the fur. The poor alien that was sitting behind the cow had no time to react. The hoof came up and slammed into one of its three eyes. Levi watched as the crewmates face caved in with the elasticity of a punched water balloon. The alien was lifted off the bench he sat on and thrown firmly into the wall behind; its arms flailing and out cold before he hit the ground. There was one breath as everyone stared; the cow bellowed and broke the spell, bunching up another kick. The heifer, so docile a second before was now a mad and raving beast of fury. It bellowed and stampeded everything that didn’t move fast enough, and a lot of them weren’t.
“Stop it!” Levi finally got ahold of himself and shook the boy. Lane shrugged. Some were able to make it out of the cafeteria, but most sought safe haven under the tables.
“No.”
“You stop that thing now!”
Three more crew members fell to the crazy heifers hooves.
“That’s my stuff and that’s my cow. Give back all my things and I’ll stop her.”
“That’s not your call boy!”
“It is now,” Lane said folding his arms and leaning back. Levi couldn’t believe this. Here this boy had just been rescued from pirates after being abducted and THIS is the thanks they get?! And where did this brat get off acting like this?! Sure the kid was pushing six feet...or more, but he couldn't be more than...whatever they were in high school these days!!
The cow was now destroying the tables making those hiding under them squeal in fear. Any other circumstance, Levi would have laughed, but this was going to be a problem.
“Fine!” Levi snapped, “stop that thing and all your stuff will be returned to you!”
Lifting his fingers again Lane let out a series of short low whistles. The cow slowly calmed down and sauntered over to Lane. The boy patted the spot between its eyes as she nuzzled his shirt.
“Good girl,” he said checking the tag, “good girl, Gretchen. Did those meeny-heads bother you? You are a good girl.”
“What was that?”
Lanes grin widened, “that is what my Uncle Rob calls ‘security’. Ever see someone try and steal a half crazed heifer from a grazing field?”
The boy only received a glare as an answer.
“Its not pretty. This is pretty tame by comparison.”
Levi looked around at the mess. Someone had already called the medic department and he shook his head. He was going to have a hard time explaining this one to the Captain.
title: Watch Me (or Five More Minutes!)(...its a work in progress)
genre: Fantasy/sci-fi
age range: YA and up
word count: sadly, its not done...not even close to being revised the first time...
author name: L. B.
why your project is a good fit: Because Sci-fi and Fantasy a two VERY different genres
with two very different fan bases and yet you often see stores and everyone blend the two together. I wanted to hit/welcome the niche fans out there that KNOW (and are picky about) the difference between the two and will LOVE the fun and fantastic journey my characters will go on as they expand their horizons.
the hook: Fantasy loving, SCA going farm boy out in the middle of a scifi adventure!
synopsis: The world is on the verge of change. Nations are getting ready to divulge that they've been in contact with aliens for decades, but in the middle of all this, abductions are slipping past their defenses?! How does one farm boy from the Appalachian Mountains change things for the rouge alien races?
target audience: I want to target fandoms as a whole. I want to poke that bear with a hot sick.
your bio: I'm an American Plains Gal born and raised; tornados in the spring, firefly's in the summer, and tornados in the fall (and winter is a guessing game). I've always been good at piecing things together. Knowledge is how you feed your imagination and study is very important to me. Even after graduation I do my own research and make it a point to learn new things.
platform: If I could turn this into a series that would be awesome, I could go after EVERY fandom and not pull ANY punches and we could ALL LAUGH together! we could have so much fun! Because this is fandom based, of course it needs to be promoted on tumbler and the like. I can totally start up a blog on there and such. The "Humans Are Space Orcs" community will have a FIELD day with this as well, mark my words.
education: I have a BS from BYU-I.
experience: I've had a poem(The Sound(after Mary Olivers The Sun)) published in the journal Outlook done by BYU-I.
personality / writing style: I prefer an easy writing style. Those that like Percy Jackson, Will Save The Galaxy For Food, Space Team, False Prince, and The Thief will find my writing as enjoyable to take in.
likes/hobbies: Reading, Flower Arranging, Mowing the Lawn, Burring Wood, Collecting Books, Working, Hanging out with Family, doing nice things for people.
hometown: Milford, Kansas
age: 30s