My grandmother glares at me not to approach her, despite her being alone in the empty ballroom of the manor. Winter rain pounds against the picture windows, making it seem like God has elected to plunge the earth under a second flood. I shiver, wishing that the windows were double-glazed or Gran had turned the heating up or I’d kept my coat on when I came in, cold and wet, from school.
You wouldn’t believe she was in her sixties. She’s spinning on her feet, leaping to her own height in the air then rolling on the sprung oak floor and rising effortlessly to her feet again. Every movement she makes is accompanied by her razor-sharp katana slicing or stabbing in all directions and if you watch carefully, with your breath held in the spaces between heartbeats, you can see that it is a distinct sequence of moves; a kata; executed one after another with a thirty degree variation from one sequence to the next.
After twelve repetitions she has returned to her starting point and stops, the sword sweeping to the left and swishing into the scabbard. She bows to a statue of Athena at the head of the room, although I don’t think it’s Athena she’s bowing to. Only now does she smile at me and come over.
“Lucy, darling,” she says, kissing me on the forehead. “How good of you to come over. Filthy weather, isn’t it?”
“I live here, Gran,” I said. “It’s you that doesn’t.”
“Sorry, dear.” She puts an arm around my shoulders as if I’m still a little girl but I’m almost as tall as she is now and I go to big school.
“When are you going to teach me how to do all that?” I nod back toward the dance floor and she laughs, her long braid swishing past my cheek.
“When you’re of age I’ll teach you iaido, dear. I’ve told you that before.” She steers me toward the rack where she keeps her swords. There is one, at the very top, that I have never seen her use. It’s wrapped in red silk and she has never even shown it to me. Father won’t touch it. He says it’s cursed. Curses are things people say when they want you to be frightened of something. I’m not frightened of a stupid curse, but I am frightened of Gran. Father says that Gran can be more cutting than a razor blade.
She puts the sword from her belt onto the rack, pats my shoulder and leads me to the kitchen. I’ve just come from there, but between me passing through and coming back Dad and Mr. Jasfoup have decorated the whole place with streamers and balloons and there’s a huge cake in the middle of the kitchen table in the shape of a coffin. Mum couldn’t make it to the party but I know she’s here in spirit.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” Father starts singing as soon as we open the door. Mr. Jasfoup and Gran join in with the second half and I grin stupidly at them. I thought we weren’t having a party this year. Father said that he’d take me out for a meal at a restaurant instead.
“Blow the candles out.” Gran pushes me forward, looking younger than Father and almost as young as me. Excitement does that to her. It always has. She says it makes up for all the people who look old and tired when they get excited. The cake has fourteen candles in the shape of a number fourteen. I smile at the cleverness as I inhale, then lean forward, careful not to dangle my hair over the flames.
“Make a wish first,” Mr. Jasfoup says, and holds one hand to his ear as if to catch what it is. He nods as I lean forward again, and I can almost believe he heard my thoughts.
Like a dragon in reverse, my breath puts out all the candles and everyone claps. “Cut the cake,” my father says, but although there’s a neat stack of plates and napkins there’s no knife.
“With what?” I ask, though my eyes narrow when they all look around for a knife. It’s all a bit theatrical, if you ask me. They’ve planned this.
“Why not ask your Gran,” Mr. Jasfoup says.
I play along. There’s a script here and I’m the only one who hasn’t read it. “Do you have something to cut the cake with, Gran?”
“I might.” She reaches behind my Uncle Fred’s chair and pulls out a package. Uncle Fred died before I was born but every time we’ve tried to redecorate the kitchen his chair has reappeared in the same place the following morning. That’s not the spookiest thing in the house (you should see my aunty Julie and her spare eyeball) but it was enough to convince us to let it be.
I guess what the present is immediately and my grin is probably as long and as curved as the blade inside that tissue-paper package. My very own katana.
“Careful with it,” Gran says, planting a kiss on my cheek, “it’s as sharp as sunlight.”
I’m not wearing a belt so I grip the saya–that’s the scabbard–in my left hand and draw with my right, the way I’ve watched Gran do a hundred times. She steps hastily backwards as I twist it in a vertical loop and cut the cake lengthwise. I want to say that I’m accurate, but although the cut starts at twelve (if the cake was a clock) it finishes at more like seven than six. Liquid red jam seeps out of the hollow gingerbread man sandwiched between the sponges and Gran hands me a napkin.
“Always clean the blade between kills,” she says. “Happy birthday Lucy.” She pauses then pulls me into a hug. “Happy coming of age.”
Rachel Green is a forty-something writer from the hills of Derbyshire in England. She lives with her two female partners, their two kids and their two dogs, and only occasionally gets them all mixed up. She was the regional winner of the Undiscovered Authors 2007 competition and her book “An Ungodly Child” will be published in 2008. When she’s not writing, Rachel can usually be found with a katana in her hands in the study of Iaido and Ju-jitsu, or else discussing philosophy with her partners. “Darkness and Shadows”, her first book of poetry, and “Jasfoup’s Dribbles”, a book of one hundred 100-word flashes, are available from http://www.leatherdyke.co.uk.
Captain Kratz picked up the bottle of whiskey. His hand shook. He stroked the label then put the bottle back down again. He’d signed the pledge ten years previously after the disciplinary court gave him his final warning. The unopened single malt was his badge of honour.
Ten years captaining a deep-space mining ship had taken its toll; trouble amongst the men, repairs not carried out, food poisoning, sanitation robots malfunctioning. The ship smelt like an oil-filled latrine. If only he could hold his command together for a little longer. Just six more months sober and he could retire with his pension intact.
The piercing scream of the ship’s alarm shook him from his reverie. The holo-screen filled with the startled face of First Officer Benson.
“This had better be good, Benson.”
“It’s Arthur, sir, Arthur Bean, he–it,” Benson gibbered.
“What are you blathering about? Bean is dead.”
“Bean has escaped, sir.”
Kratz drummed his fingers on the desk before replying.
“So this would be the same Bean that was killed on Theta Prime?” His voice was smooth with sarcasm. “We only found his legs and lower torso which you locked in the hold. What the hell are you talking about!”
“When I checked the legs on the holo-screen I saw that spaghetti fungus had grown from his wounds. I went down to investigate. When I opened the door the legs attacked me. Kicked me and ran off.” Benson hung his head and sobbed.
“Have you been drinking, Benson?”
“There were tentacles growing from his pelvis. They twisted round and round, grabbing things.”
Kratz grimaced.
“I want a category red alert. All men to form a SWAT team. Proceed with extreme prejudice. Destroy those legs.”
Burly crewmen armed with soft target blast cannons marched down access corridor 33. The captain watched on his holo-screen as they cornered what was left of Bean.
The legs stood akimbo. The tentacles dangled like a grass skirt.
The crewmen squatted in an interlocked formation, their blasters leveled and primed to fire.
The tentacles rose, twisted and stretched.
Everyone watched in fascination.
The knotted tentacles morphed into a spinal column, ribs, collar bones and arms with twig-like hands. A skull uncrumpled from the spine like a ripening seed pod. Organs grew in the cradle of the pelvis; pallid intestines, glistening liver, purple kidneys. A heart inflated and fluttered within the new ribcage. Empty sockets filled with milky eyes. Muscle formed, skin slid up to encase the new body of Arthur Bean.
Bean’s new mouth twitched, and then smiled.
“Don’t fire!” the captain shouted over the intercom, “It might be friendly.”
The mouth gaped impossibly wide. A purple tongue dimpled with suckers lashed out and ripped off a crewman’s face. He fell to the ground, his finger tight on his blast cannon’s trigger. As he jerked and twisted in his agony his cannon hosed everyone in the room. Men exploded, their body-parts rained to the floor. Dying crewmen opened fire. Bean’s body erupted, showering everything with green goo.
Kratz punched the Omega code into the Comand Console. The ship shook as bulkheads sealed shut on every deck.
Six months before the ship docked–six months to watch the holo-screens and witness the body parts of his crew stir and move. Their wounds sprouting fungus. A smell like boiled cabbage drifting through the air ducts. Their bodies re-grown. Purple tongues probing hatchways, loosening panels, widening inspection conduits, room by room towards the captain’s office.
Kratz picked up the bottle of whiskey and stroked the label.
Bill West lives in Shropshire, England. He is a member of the Shrewsbury Scribblers Writers’ Group, I*D Writers’ Group and a number of on-line Writers’ Communities. His work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, FlashQuake, Mytholog, Heavy Glow, Right Hand Pointing, 21 Stars Review, Foliate Oak and other places.
I am washing my hands at the beach cottage, when the phone rings. My friend Tess and I have come here to escape. We’ve come to cope with the issue neither of us plan to discuss. Right away, I know it’s him calling by her liquid tone. “I’ve been thinking of you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry,” and then, “You know I would.”
He is her old love, a trust-fund kid she ran off to St. Johns Island with when she was barely twenty. Andrew is in his thirties now. He’s married. When she hangs up the phone, Tess moves toward our open window facing the Florida shore. “You know why he still loves me?” “Why?” I ask like I haven’t heard the answer a hundred times. “Because… we never were foolish enough to marry,” she laughs, pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes. I am pouring Tess the Pinot Grigio now chilled with one ice cube the way she likes. “Andrew says he wished he could sleep in the bed with me one more time, no sex, just sleep.”
“Do you want to watch the sunset on the pier after dinner?” I ask. It’s one of the many distractions I have come up with that really won’t work. Nothing does. “What would you have done if you were me?” Tess asks. Although I despise the question, I am still somewhat pleased, for she is nibbling on a cube of smoked Gouda. She’s eating something.
I busy myself with the Pinot and bring forth the pineapple, blueberries and watermelon, another distraction, a mini comfort. Tess knows I won’t answer the question. I can’t. I don’t know what it’s like to lose an old love, find him again inside a ferocious affair and still lose.
That evening, we don’t watch the sunset. I try for my third distraction “Let’s watch The Pursuit of Happyness now.” But Tess has passed out on the sofa instead mouth open like a fragile child so I resign myself to a hot bath. Our marble Jacuzzi is the shape of a seashell, a soft rain is tapping on the rooftop. My body is warm. I feel cozy, lifeless beneath the bubbles yet the weight of the air, this cloud, remains.
And when Andrew’s brother phones much later the next day, I do not have one single distraction for the news. The wine glass is in her lap, but Tess stands up too quickly without thinking. She can’t think.
A few seconds after the glass breaks, Tess does.
So I hold her. It’s all I know to do. She is sobbing choking so I hold her. I rock her like she’s a new baby with a chill, a puppy with a disease. Her eyes are black from mascara now and her face is splotchy-red. She is having trouble catching her breath so I keep holding on as if she’s my Nanna with the heart failure coming back to me.
We do not go to the beach the next day or the next but Wednesday we stay up most of the night to catch the sunrise from our porch. We drink far too much and don’t sleep enough to appreciate the swirls of soft purples and pinks, this delicate scenery, its beauty. Still, we are mesmerized. We watch. We watch without saying a word about Andrew’s cancer, his morphine ride. Death makes us silent.
Angela Carlton has previously published other stories in Burst Magazine, Pedestal Magazine, Long Story Short, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia, The Dead Mule and Coastlines. In addition, she won the Reader’s Choice award with Pedestal Magazine in 2006.
The day came lilac and hazy. Trees whispered sluggish, cotton greetings. A crow, from its high cedar perch, blasted a call to its mate three trees down.
I sat on the porch and watched the birds fly over–smudges reflected in my black morning mug.
Crows in my coffee. Not the best of signs.
The coming night promised a full moon and a total lunar eclipse. The mumbling morning newsman said to look to the east. I turned off the radio.
Then she came walking down the street.
I knew she needed help, even before she came through the fog. She made straight for me, like she knew I was sitting there all along.
I met her at the gate, and let her in without a word exchanged.
Her hair and clothes were laced with dew.
Inside the house, as she shook, she told me about the Horror following her. On its way for me.
“But why?” I asked. I led her to the couch. I put down my coffee.
“Your poems.”
“I knew it.” A falling sensation. “So they’re real now.”
“As real as I,” she answered.
I took her hands. “You’re the Banshee.”
“I will be, though I wish it wasn’t so.”
“What do we do?”
She slumped on the couch. I noticed blood in the corner of her mouth. “I just die. My job was to warn you.”
I glanced out the window. “What do I do?”
“Run, stupid.”
I ran.
The Horror tore through the house behind me. I heard the Banshee shriek. Strobes of white and golden light beat across my back, snapshots of the yard filled my eyes as she gave her life for mine–soul fire. I flew over the flashing fence.
My ankle snapped as I landed, my house exploded, and I took a crunching stagger into my neighbor’s pool. The water saved me.
Fire seared the air. The fence blew over the pool–shrapnel from my house buried in its blasted boards. The Horror rode the shockwave of the explosion, screaming its rage at having lost me, trailing tattered black webs of rotted fear from its shriveling form.
I stayed under until I was sure I’d drown. I surfaced as scorched paper rained down upon the pool.
Crows in my coffee.
I gathered every charred page.
I found the spine and back cover of the tome, and two blank pages, mostly unburned. I’ve written this account on the pages, here under the eclipsing moon. The night is red around me, and the wail of the Banshee echoes in my head.
I’ll set this all to flame as the moon comes out, to finish this awful story. And I’ll not write poems in the backs of magic books again, especially in those with specific warnings against doing so, no matter how romantic and heroic I think myself on that day.
Kevin Shamel has never been one to scribble notes in the margins, but he has used the blank pages at the ends of books for various reasons. Never magic books.
There was a man who loved squirrels so much…
First he collected ceramic squirrels. His bookshelves and dresser tops were soon haunted by plastic, plush, wood, stone, glass, and sea-shell squirrels.
Then he began to collect real squirrels, breeding them and setting them loose in his yard and in his house. Squirrels scampered on his countertops, foraging for nuts left out in snack bowls.
They got into the clothes-hamper, burrowing nests in the dirty clothes. They chewed through electrical cords, left droppings on the floor and behind the couch cushions. They overran the yard, a swarm of furry, flickering tails and twitching, whiskered noses and chattering rodent teeth. The man had to wade through them to get out his front door. He would crunch over them when he pulled his car out of the garage.
One day at the zoo, the man who loved squirrels saw the biggest squirrel he’d ever seen.
The man thought to himself, “I must have that squirrel.”
Under cover of night he snuck into the zoo and stole the giant squirrel. When he brought it home it didn’t get along well with the other squirrels; the giant squirrel was stand-offish, and all the other squirrels gave it a wide berth, chattering at it indignantly from a safe distance.
One day the man’s friend Bob visited.
Observing the man’s giant squirrel, Bob said, “That’s not a squirrel. That’s a lesser panda.”
“A lesser panda?”
“Also known as a red panda.”
That is when the man who loved squirrels learned he needed glasses. He hadn’t realized how fuzzy his world had become until his new glasses put everything back into sharp focus.
The first morning he went outside wearing his new glasses his neighbor–a widow–waved at him and he waved back. The widow was quite shocked. She had waved at the man every morning for years, and since he never waved back she had assumed he was anti-social and that there was no room in his heart for anything but squirrels.
Now that the man could see her, he waved back at her every morning. After a few weeks they began talking. Eventually they were married. The man who loved squirrels moved into her house and left his house to the squirrels.
One day, on a tip from the paperboy, the DNR raided the man’s house and found no human residing there, but several dozen squirrels and one malnourished lesser panda. The widow posted bail and the man worked off his sentence with community service, lecturing at nature centers and Cub Scout camps about rodents.
When the man died, atop his headstone perched not an angel but a stone squirrel.
In time the widow was buried beside him.
It is said that on some evenings when the cemetery is quiet and still, a whole bevy of squirrels can be seen huddled around the man’s grave, planting acorns in the ground beside the plastic flowers, a tribute to the man who loved squirrels.
Or maybe they are trying to weigh his corpse down with acorns so that he can never rise up to torment them again.
Nicholas Ozment once had a pet squirrel. Sometimes it would run up the leg of a visitor to perch on a shoulder, and the unwitting guest thought he or she was being attacked by a rabid squirrel. It was the cutest thing.
