Category: Harrison Kim

In the Presence of the Wetiko

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Brad crept through long grass, knees in the mud, squishing toadstools and slugs.  Above him, the stars and the black sky.  Somewhere ahead at the old farm a monster waited.  He’d heard its cry before, just yesterday, for the second time in his life.  A low growl, like a moan.  Brad and his parents moved from this place decades ago, but that monster’s cry was the same distinctive sound he’d heard as a child, half wolf howl, half baby’s squall. 

At age five, he stared out his bedroom window under the full moon.  A huge apelike shadow squatted atop the giant lava rock at the bottom of the farm driveway; its hoary face held in its huge trembling hands.  The sound came from between those hands.  Was it sobbing?   Or raging? Brad, just a child, opened the window and the creature moved its head to look towards him, its blue eyes flaring like sapphires out of the dark, it’s voice crying upwards.

“I am here, I am here, come to me, for I am the one they call the Wetiko.”

The eyes absorbed young Brad, into dreams of forests and mountains and winter snows, scenes of savage combat, into the creature’s rage against the changes in the world and the destruction of its wild habitat. Through the Wetiko’s eyes, Brad saw it through time immemorial, hunting and killing and surviving on the land.  Doing what it had to do.

“Come down,” the creature said with its eyes.  “Come to me, for you are mine.”

But he had not.  He had simply stared.   He knew that if he obeyed the Wetiko, he would become a victim of the monster himself. 

His legs trembled, he could hardly stand, as the Wetiko’s eyes beseeched him.  Descend to the rock, climb up here and be with Wetiko.   Make things right and help stop the poor monster’s sorrow.  Brad kept staring, exercising all his will power to look away. His hands gripped the window ledge; he bit the side of his cheek so that it bled, that forced him from the Wetiko’s gaze, as swallowing his own blood he flung himself back into his bed.

The visions imparted to him that night burned in his mind throughout Brad’s life.  He grew up practicing to be strong.  If anything like this monster appeared again, he’d be able to defend himself.  He became a martial arts master, always in command of his aggression, then a high-powered lawyer, using the courts to test his wits against opposing attorneys.  The work was stressful, it wore him down, he was always fighting to win but he never cracked.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known,” said his wife, Joanne.

Three decades from that first encounter with the Wetiko, Brad stepped from his car at the end of the old farm driveway.

He’d parked well back from the big rock with a giant “No Trespassing” sign duct-taped to its surface.   All the old buildings of his childhood lay smothered with moss, green and brown under a grey sky.

He was about to take a photo when a car pulled in behind him.  A thin-faced young manwith long blonde hair all round his face yelled out the window “This is private property,” and leaped from the vehicle.  A buck toothed boy with horn rimmed glasses jumped from the passenger side.

“Yeah, I used to live here, just taking some photos for nostalgia,” Brad tried to smile.

“I don’t care where the hell you used to live,” the blonde man said. 

The buck toothed boy wore a long trenchcoat; his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

“This is private property.  We have a right to chase you off,” he shouted in a high, reedy voice.

“Yah, well, just on my way,” Brad said.

Then he heard it.  That same low growl crossed with a moan, coming from somewhere down in the property.  He hesitated at the car door.

“What’s that?” he said.

“I told you get out of here!” Blonde Man swung around the front of Brad’s car and gave it a kick.

Brad hopped in his vehicle, reversed at speed, drove away staring in the rearview mirror at the buck toothed boy with his middle finger up.

And as his car sped up, he heard the Wetiko’s cry once more, howling on the wind. 

A week before, his wife Joanne fell down the stairs.  Brad found her unconscious, maybe seriously injured or dead at the bottom.  For the first time in his life, he panicked. He’d abandoned everything, hurling himself from the house and the scene he could not face.  He leapt into his car, sped across the country without sleeping, barely eating, travelling back to this place of his youth.

Yes, it could have been an accident.  She could have turned the wrong way and tripped.  That night, she seemed so upset. Was he responsible?  He didn’t remember.  The last thing his mind pictured was her voice at the top of the stairs, yelling at him “All this time, I never really knew you.”

And then she fell.

All Brad wanted to do then was get away. 

“This isn’t like me,” he kept telling himself.  “I’m not a fleeing animal.”

Yet wild impulse ruled, a complete change from the control he’d exercised his whole life.

What happened there on the stairs? 

He would return to the farm to find the monster of his childhood.  This time, he would offer himself in front of its accusing blue eyes and discover what its verdict would be..

“The Wetiko will decide,” he told himself. “If I am guilty or not.”

Ahead of him lay the old hay barn, with some renovations to the roof, glass or greenhouse panels. Light shone up from that glass, beaming into the night sky.  He heard a low humming coming from inside.  Brad slipped across the yard and around the big rock in the middle, where the creature once crouched. Could be the two thugs he met yesterday kept the Wetiko in that barn.  He would show himself and set it free.

He slipped in through a half-open door at one end, stood there a moment to let his eyes adjust.

The brilliant light inside fell on row after row of marijuana plants, big fans circling slowly above to move the air.  Above his head, a set of security cameras.

“I should have called the cops,” Brad thought.

He looked up at the cameras and then for a place to hide, but before he could move, from the edge of his eye he noticed the blonde-haired man come running at him from one side of the barn, wielding a baseball bat.  The man ran stealthy and low to the ground, like a coyote. Brad’s years of martial arts training kicked in.  Survival mode!  He booted the bat out of the young fellow’s hands and delivered several kicks to the head with his hiking boots.  The coyote like man went down.

Brad turned again to see the buck toothed boy dashing down the other way, armed with a gun.  The boy stopped, raised the firearm to his shoulder and fired.   The bullet tore into Brad’s upper leg.  Regardless, he twisted his body, grabbed the blonde man’s fallen baseball bat and smashed the gun from the buck toothed assailant’s hands.  Though he felt his strength fading, he whacked his second attacker in the head with the bat over and over.  The young man fell and Brad himself sank to the ground.

It was then he heard that crying again, that sound between a growl and a baby’s squeal.

So loud and close it was!  It filled the air around him.

It took him a while to understand.

The sound didn’t come from outside of him, it was Brad himself, moaning on the barn floor, holding his injured leg. 

The marijuana lights flickered around him and went out.  He found himself whirling through space and time, to another reality, another dimension.  Through the open barn door, he glimpsed the crescent moon.
What was he doing in this place?  From the recesses of his mind came one thought. There was someone who must see him.  Someone very important. He began to drag himself from the barn, toward the rock in the middle of the driveway. A vague thought came, then strengthened. There would be a boy at a window.

He continued to moan, to pull himself towards the rock, which he must climb to show his presence.

This is what he understood.

“I am the Wetiko, and that boy must come to me.”

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.

Damned Words 64

~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

Choices
Marge Simon

Where am I? What happened to our ship?

A plain of sand spreads to a forever horizon, cold and barren. I could see the outline of our ship on the far side where it landed after a technical malfunction. I hear your voice calling, begging for help. To reach you, I must cross the sand, using a string of huge stones for protection against hostile indigenes who could be hiding in wait. I begin making my way, clutching the stones with shaking hands.

“I’m coming Martha!”

But now I’m thinking about how typical this behavior is of you. Just like on our home planet, bothering me constantly to pick you up from the hairdresser or fix some appliance, or find the key that you lost, and that’s not the half of it.

I stop midway and turn back. You’re on your own, baby.

Bottom of the Sea
Elaine Pascale

Alyssa, from her watery resting place on the sunken ship, rides waves of depression and euphoria. She is depressed because she can no longer feel the sun on her skin. She is euphoric because Ken can no longer feel anything, either.

She looks at him, lying on the ocean floor. Time has not been kind to him. The crabs have taken a liking to his taste, as she once had. The crabs played the game of amorous lovers. They craved and grabbed and grabbed and craved.

Only one of Ken’s blue eyes remained.

The cold water had helped to preserve her. She wondered if she should be offended that the crabs left her alone. If they knew the true story, they would choose her. While Ken deserved violation, he didn’t deserve adoration.

She remembered the sun even from the depths. She remembered that boating day had been sunnier than most. A brightness that held all other senses hostage. She had taken the wheel, a manipulation guised as playfulness.

She had wanted him to fear as she had feared. She had wanted him to hurt more than her cumulative wounds had hurt.

He had used his fists and his words; she had used the rocks as her weapon.

The Buried One
Charles Gramlich

Deep in the earth beneath frost and rocks, the god lies entombed in glacial soil. His heart beats once a century, bringing madness to polar bears and seals and any passing Inuit. His rare breaths tremor the land, tearing small fissures through the ice. In years past, snow would heal those fissures each winter, but the weather is changing. A warmth alien to these climes melts the new snow almost as soon as it falls, and then it seeps deep like burrowing worms to speed the god’s heartbeat, to hasten his breathing. He is waking up, and will soon rise through all the frozen earth to smash his way out under the cold, cold sky. And there will be hell.

Follow
Lee Andrew Forman

I always wondered what it would be like. But this isn’t how I pictured it. A desolate place stretching as far as eternity is what I have to look forward to, and all I’ve left is time—relentless in its nature, uncaring in its cruelty. I carry only memories on my back as I walk through the vastness of it. I suppose I still have those, but I can’t decide whether they’re a burden or the one thing I should try to hold on to. I suppose it would be easy to forget in a place like this. The further my feet carry me the less I feel like myself, the more of me seems to get left behind.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Perhaps that makes it easier to face the end. The fewer earthly attachments you have, the easier it is to move on. The past no longer matters; nor does the future. There is only now, and it will be so forever.

I guess I just have to accept it. There isn’t any other choice. This place, this life after life, death after death, it pulls me, calls to me, sings a lonely song that draws me in. All I have to do is follow.

Gathered on the Beach
Richard Meldrum

After the alert was confirmed as legitimate, we ran. Not to escape, that was impossible, but to revisit the place where we first met. It was fitting to say goodbye there. We stood on the rocky shore, looking out towards the ocean. The conflagration would come from the west, behind us. Neither of us wanted to see it boiling towards us, incinerating our bodies. It was bad enough it was going to happen. We stood watching the water, while behind us we heard the explosion. With only seconds to wait, on this beach, there was only time to whisper goodbye.

Under the Surface, We All Dream
A.F. Stewart

The sea faded into the foggy far horizon, a cold salt wind blowing inshore. Sunlight reflected off the placid surface like a shimmer on opaque glass. In the sky, grey clouds hung fat and thick, and ripe with rain. No birds circled the rocky shoreline, no creatures swum beneath the waves. Time seemed motionless, hushed with the pause of expectation.

Yet we, the drowned, were aware. Lost in the swirls of fractured aspirations and currents of ocean. Eternal slumber captured us, in storm, in ruin; cradled souls in silent grief.

Where we dreamed.

Of life, of hope, of remnants beyond our reach. Hints of laughter extending out to haunt us, that teased us with what can never be. A future extinct, futile smoke born of wishes beyond your concept of reality.

It was the only thing we had left.

Until today.

Today was different. The cycle turned, and the veil thinned.

Thin enough to break.

Now we are coming home…

The Impossible Bliss
Harrison Kim

Vaclav and Geldof, the Russian astronauts, landed on Venus and stepped out of their ship.  Ahead of the spacemen, rocks steamed in the acidic air, at the edge of an ocean boiling with sulfur. 

“My feet feel strange.  Do your feet feel odd?” asked Vaclav.

Something warm from the rock he stood on was pushing its way up through his suit and into his body.  It was beautiful and loving.  It felt better than even the heroin high he’d experienced once when he was a teenager.  How could he resist?
Vaclav threw down his camera, ripped his spacesuit off.  And stood there naked and gasping for air.

Geldor watched as liquid black covered his space companion.

“It’s the greatest feeling……” Vaclav exclaimed, trying to reach his oxygen tank. ‘I can hardly stand it!”

And in fact, the joy was so intense though the air was filled with sulfur he screamed and screamed and screamed again until the liquid cut off his voice.

Geldor felt the substance seeping in.  What a feeling! He too ripped his space suit off.

“So good!” he shrieked. “So excellent!”

He sank to his knees, howling with ecstasy until his breath ran out, finally all of him lay immersed in the embrace of the black liquid.

Neither of the spacemen could move, and neither could yell any more as the liquid caked and cooked their bodies.  Looking on the bright side, the impossible bliss continued….because, on the planet Venus, all humans maintain immortal souls. 

The liquid rock that covered the men hardened, and in stone the two astronauts remained, their spirits covered and deep within the rock, two sulfur steaming forms forever quivering in agonizing joy at the edge of the sulfuric ocean.

The Shore
Kathleen McCluskey

From orbit, the planet appeared lifeless. A silver ocean stretched beneath a colorless sky, broken by jagged black formations along the coast. The survey detected no vegetation, no cities, no lifeforms.

I landed and began exploring. The formations resembled enormous spines, curved and tapered, rising into a line that disappeared into the mist. Each leaned slightly inland, spaced almost precisely the same distance from the next. Beneath the surface, shapes continued in a broken row.

I followed them along the shore. The water shifted around my boots, but my instruments detected no current. When I stopped, it settled. When I moved, it followed.

Farther along, one of the spines had broken. Its inside was pale and porous, threaded with tiny, black channels. I pressed my glove against it and felt a slight vibration, a slow shudder traveled through the ground.

The ocean began to recede, exposing broad, curved plates beneath the spines. They were buried beneath mineral deposits, their edges disappeared into the darkness. I watched the water drain around them, revealing a surface that was neither stone nor soil but something smooth.

My instruments registered no seismic event but the ground shifted beneath my feet.

Through the thinning mist I could barely make out the continuation of the formation, a vast, curved ridge stretching into the distance. The black spines were not scattered rocks. They rose from something buried beneath the ocean. Something so enormous that its shape could not be seen in its entirety.

Then the nearest spine moved. Others followed. One after another, traveling toward the horizon. The silver water surged back over the exposed plates and the entire coastline lifted beneath me.

I ran for the lander as the planet’s sleeping surface rolled.

Between
Miriam H. Harrison

When the water took me, I didn’t expect to see land again. Lost somewhere between unseeable shores, I gave myself over to the pull of the currents, to the cold of the deep. The last I saw of the sky, it was a twilit purple between day and night. And then the waves closed over me.

So it surprised me to find myself here, at the edge. A place between the water and land. And me, neither living nor dead. These stones caught what was left of me, fed it to the fish and birds and scavengers, until all that was left was me. These stones keep me here, captured yet free.

Above me, the sky darkens, lightens—like it did, like it will—caught as it is in the cycles of day and night. Around me, things stir and settle, rise and fade. More cycles turning, more beginnings and endings, more hopes and fears. And between it all, me. Simply me.

On the Rocks
Alyson Faye

Slip sliding, soaking wet Jem and Lou clambered across the granite grey rocks, racing against the setting sun.

“We’re too late,” Jem gasped, chest heaving, shivering with cold.

Lou grabbed her younger brother’s hand. “Just keep moving.”

Behind them fingers of mist curled across the water. The surface of the rocks rippled. A bell tolled. Just once. The children froze.

“We’ll have to hide.” Lou said.

“Where?” asked Jem. “Once the bell tolls, then He’s coming up.”

“Over there,” she pointed.

There was an overhang to their left and beneath a crawl space big enough for the two children to squeeze into. They scrambled faster, shinning knees and twisting ankles, scuttling underneath. Jem closed his eyes.

The bell tolled again. From the lost church, submerged beneath the waters.

The villagers said that on the turn of the solstice the steeple could be seen above the waters, and those who saw it died within the year. The church had been cursed, as was its reverend. A century ago the waters swallowed them both. When the bell rang out the Reverend Bellamy rose from his watery grave seeking the unwary or unlucky to drag back into the depths.

Lou and Jem huddled tighter. They heard the scrape of approaching boots, a man’s deep voice reciting ‘”For the wages of sin is death….’” Louder, nearer.

From the direction of the village handbells rang out, voices shouted, a dog barked.

“They’re coming for us,” Lou whispered, but at that a skinny hand reached in yanking her ankle, dragging her out.

The reverend, a black silhouette against the grey skies, slung Lou over his shoulder, strode across the rocks, with ease, then stepped out into the water. Down, down he sank, Jem screaming in his wake, and the villagers carrying flambeaus flocking too late to the rocks.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2026

Racoons

~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

Sal woke up to racoons on his chest.  One chunky animal, ears erect, snout facing Sal’s own nose, and behind that animal Sal felt a couple more heavy ringtails on his waist and legs. 

“Get off!” he tried to yell but it came out as a giant snort.

The truth was he couldn’t move, although his eyes jumped open, flickering.  He’d put a chest of drawers in front of the cat door last night.  How did these beasts get here?   This couldn’t be real.

He tried to breathe in.  The racoon weight pressed harder, he made an extreme effort to exhale.  A line of slobber dripped from the first racoon’s snout.  It bent its head and licked a paw, the tongue flashed purple as a radish.  Sal tried moving his arms and legs.  Nothing.  Paralyzed.  He’d had these spells a couple of times in the last week.  During the last one he awakened from a nightmare.  The nightmare featured his cat Cuddles sitting on his chest, pushing down with his paws, just like the raccoon.  The room swirled, and above him the ceiling formed a face. 

Now, Sal made his eyeballs look up.  He viewed the same previous nightmare ceiling face above the weighty racoon.  Yellow like the paint up there, yellow teeth dripping with spider webs, no eyes but shadows.

He told his landlady, Louise, about his dizzy spell.  Always coming over, that Louise, any excuse for snooping around.   Big heavy lady, arms like tied together flesh balloons.   This time she brought him blueberries.

 “Could be a stroke warning,” she told him, grinning and looking at him sideways with her old face full of wrinkles, much like the yellow painted visage above his head.  He felt the weight of the landlady’s raspy, scolding voice as she talked on and on.

“Go to emergency, or you’ll regret it!”

Sal should have told her to get out, he needed his privacy, but he just kept sanding his latest project, a whirligig made of cedar sticks he planned to hang from the porch to keep the animals away.

“Aw, I’ll be fine,” he said.

But now, maybe he should’ve listened.

“A stroke!” the thought crashing through Sal’s head like a raccoon through a cat door.

The yellow ceiling mouth above him widened.

For a moment, he wondered if Louise had even come in, if that was all in his head too.

“Maybe I should check to see if there’s blueberries in the fridge,” he muttered.

But of course, he couldn’t move.

The beast on his chest humped itself a half-length forward, now its nose rested on his throat, and something like sandpaper ran across his skin.  No doubt about it. The creature was licking him now!

Sal tried to yell again.  “Get off!”  but this time he heard himself coughing, breath gasping, felt his heart, pulsing faster. 
The licking got faster too, in tandem with the pulse.

How had this disaster happened?

He’d tried to stop the ringtails!  Last night he pushed up the chest of drawers to block the flap.  The effort exhausted him, and he’d twisted his shoulder, but it was worth it.

Then he heard them banging trying to get through the barricade, so he grabbed the broom and stumbled outside.  Didn’t see anything.  Turned on the porch light.  Nothing.  Then he looked up.  Three racoons lay spread out facing him along the porch rafters, their human like paws clinging to the slats, six eyes viewing him as he yelled and poked with the broom.

But too high up.  They wouldn’t move.  He dashed inside to grab a jug of water to throw, when he came out again, they were gone.  His heart fibrillated and skipped from the effort, and he dropped down on his knees, grasping the broom with both hands.  But a victory! He’d chased off the raccoons, but somehow the persistent invaders had returned!

The heavyweight ringtail kept its nose down, licking Sal’s throat faster now.  Above Sal’s eyes, the ceiling dipped, the yellow face’s mouth opened wide.  Sal knew if he let himself go, he’d fall right towards that open gap.  On the one hand, the raccoons would be gone.  But for sure he would be too.  He tried breathing in, such an effort.  Three raccoons, twelve paws pushing down. He breathed out, feeling his heart rise too.  Now he heard a rhythmic pounding as if it came from outside his body, or maybe it was the heartbeats of these creatures stuck to him, in a multi part tachycardia.  The pulsing grew louder.  Or were those heavy steps moving towards his room?

Again, Sal wondered what was real and what was not.

Yes, there in his blurring vision, Louise the landlady’s huge red fleshy face, where the yellow ceiling form was before.   Sal knew it!  Those was her features up there all along!  She was spying on him again!  Invading his privacy, just like these beastly raccoons.  But this time, maybe she would rescue him! He heard her big feet stomping around.  Then the ceiling face opened wide as she screamed!  Her face came down on him, mouth first, a heavy blanket of fat and skin.

He felt a nip, then a bite, then a humungous deep piercing penetration, fangs sinking through his throat.  He couldn’t inhale, in fact, he hadn’t inhaled for quite some time.

Then a lightness, a heavy body leaving from his chest, and he was rising, moving up through the gap in the ceiling, where Louise’s face used to be.  Such a freedom to have lost that terrible weight!  And he didn’t have to breathe now, he was free from that, free from those twisted raccoons.

He looked down at Louise, or was that a raccoon, stooped over his face.  The creature raised its head to the ceiling where his mind floated, and Sal saw her teeth, so pointy and red.  And she screamed again, just a mouth now, and a radish-red tongue, as her body faded before his vision, and disappeared.

Sal caught a glimpse of his own inert, bleeding body below, still covered under blankets up to the bottom of its exposed throat.  That was the last he saw. The final thing he felt was his consciousness dissipating through the face gap in the ceiling, to the void beyond, the weight of his flesh and bone and the heaviness of anything else no longer his concern.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.

Damned Words 63

~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

The Harvest
Kathleen McCluskey

The Pillar was our world.

Its white bark fed us. Its roots gave us water. Its branches held our villages high above the dark earth below. The elders taught us that beyond the crown was only The Empty Blue, where no living thing could survive.

When the Pillar began to die, I was chosen to climb.

The trunk stretched farther than any man had ever dared. My hands bled. The air grew thin. At last I reached its highest branches.

The elders had lied. There was no endless forest of Pillars. There was only ours in a vast field  beneath an impossibly blue sky.

The ground shook and a shadow blotted out the sun. Something enormous began descending from the sky.

Five gigantic shapes cascaded down from the blue, their pale flesh creased and lined like living canyons. Dark pores gaped like caves. Fine hair, thick as tree trunks bent in the wind of their approach. They wrapped around the crown. The branches groaned beneath their grip. Our homes splintered. People clung to the bark, screaming as our world was torn free.

I was lifted higher and for one impossible moment, I looked beyond.

A polished wooden table, a crystal bowl. Countless other Pillars with shriveled, purple worlds.

The sky began to split apart, but it wasn’t a sky. It was a mouth.

The first bite shattered half of the villagers. Mountains of teeth crushed wood, stone and flesh all together. Our mauve worlds popped and oozed. The air filled with a thousand screams before they were swallowed into the darkness.

As the jaws closed around what was left of my world, I finally understood why the Pillar had given us everything we needed.

We had never been its children, we had been its fruit.

The Last Tree
Richard Meldrum

In the wind torn desert it was a fixed point, like the stars and rocks the tribe used to find their way across the featureless landscape. It stood thirty feet high, with arms spreading out from the main trunk. The tribe never considered its origin or that it had once been a living organism.  In this blasted world, bereft of vegetation and animals larger than a mouse, it was unique.

The tribespeople had no sense this world had ever looked any different. That food was once abundant and water fell in unending cascades from the sky. That buildings once stood hundreds of feet high and machines flew in the blue sky. There were legends of the old ones, but no-one took them seriously.

The outsider arrived uninvited. He claimed to have found the secrets of the ancient ones and wanted to spread this truth to the desert tribes. He spoke of untold wealth and knowledge in a faraway place, where he had seen the remnants of the ancient world with his own eyes. He spoke of something he called forests, where living objects called trees extended green arms towards the sun. He told them the object they used for navigation was a tree, long dead.

Fearing heresy, the tribespeople honored their own gods by tying him to the object he called a tree and burning him. Afterwards, they gathered round the corpse. No one believed the object he was tied to had ever been alive.

Broken Bough
Elaine Pascale

The climb was always the best part.

Roy felt guilty that his job entailed installing environmentally detrimental teleports. He knew that humanity should have learned its lesson when they forcibly evacuated Earth, but they were simply repeating the same old patterns.

He could quit but he needed the job. When he wasn’t causing climate catastrophes, he enjoyed the scenery. And the wildlife was starkly different than that of Earth. For instance, the avian creature that was observing him as he ascended the smoothly barked tree. The creature appeared to be on a nest and Roy hoped it was not guarding eggs as that would make the installation more of a battle than a job.

“Hey bird,” he called cheerfully, knowing that “bird” was not the correct label, but not having a better term to use.  

“Hey Earthling,” the creature responded, shocking Roy enough that he lost his grip and slipped down a few feet before righting himself.

Roy realized that the bird, as he now thought of it, was communicating telepathically. It showed him images of the history of its planet; it showed him of the destruction to come in a very short timespan due to the activities of Roy’s species. The devastation was heart wrenching.

“Now you understand. And now I hope you will forgive me.” The creature left its nest and swooped on massive wings toward Roy. It attached its scissor-like beak to the ropes that held Roy aloft and sliced through them as if they were made of paper instead of thick cables.

As Roy fell, he realized there was no need for forgiveness, and he enjoyed the last few seconds of scenery.

Earthbound
Lee Andrew Forman

When the tower grew to its full height each lobe unfurled itself into reaching extremities, a network of points that would work in unison. Its design was born of life, of hope, of the vast loneliness endured by great thinkers. Their theories would finally be put to work; their ideas would soon find truth…or nothing. No one could predict what answers, if any, it might discover. Only that it would perform its function with the precision it was meant to achieve. It would seek the above, the endless abyss that until that day had been unreachable by all who tried before. The sky would either open, or come crashing down on them with disastrous despair.

When the device had fully formed, it stood ready to serve its designers. A new life, created to search elsewhere for that very thing. It listened to the points of light in the dark to see if they would speak, or whether their bodies were cold and silent. It employed the many senses it had been given to look for another voice in the cosmos, another world where consciousness existed.

As far as it could see, near into eternity, it found only one. A small world busy with noise of all kinds.

The travelers had already been prepared, and their vessels ready to launch. They would soon meet their only neighbors in the boundless darkness, whoever they may be.

The Tree of Life
Charles Gramlich

My eyes opened. I lay on my back looking up at a tree with strange, fractal limbs embedded in an achingly blue sky. The tree had no leaves, though it wasn’t cold so it didn’t seem to be winter. I didn’t remember what time of year it was. I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. I tried to sit up and failed. My arms and legs wouldn’t move. I strained every muscle but couldn’t even turn my head. 

Scream! No sound came from my mouth, but I heard something—a slithering. Needle-sharp stabs pierced my back and legs. Roots gone rogue? My mind went nova; I struggled as I’d never struggled before. My eyes were the only things to respond, roiling wildly. Fluid began to burble, began to drain. From me!

My cheeks grew hollow; my belly shrank until it touched my spine. The trunk of the tree flushed pink; the pink spread upward. Muscles and organs inside me began to liquify. Like a tire with a slow leak, I deflated, while the tree unfurled healthy leaves and beautiful blooms. The leaves were a wet, fresh green but the blooms were red, red, red—the color of a man’s life being leached away.

Under the Fractal Tree
Miriam H. Harrison

Angering the gods was always dangerous. Cliffs and eagles, hills and boulders—their punishments were known to be equally cruel and creative.

He pondered this as he sat in his place, chained to the fractal tree. Each thought led to another, churning on and on with anxieties and uncertainties. His restless mind had brought him here; his ceaseless questions of the gods had forged his chains.

And so he sat here—as he did each day, as he would forever—watching the branches of the fractal tree grow out above him, reaching like unending questions, like racing thoughts, like a restless mind that knew no peace.

Big Stick Chapter One
Harrison Kim

A giant vegetable stick grows from my stomach and everywhere I go I yell “Stay back!” because I don’t want to hit a stranger with my protruding organic matter.

My local grocery clerk and amateur naturopath Jilly Van Loon says the plant is a delusional consequence of my diet.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she says.  “You’re a truly green guy.”

That’s for sure, I’ve been eating only salads for years. 

Jilly insists I need protein “eat more beans” but look at me now, a healthy companion veggie stick always with me.  If it keeps growing, I won’t ever have to search for shade. The main trouble is the measurement. Just a foot last week, now it’s four and I keep it covered with a blanket and carry it about in a wheelbarrow.  At the health food store, I transfer it to a shopping cart, and use another one for the groceries.

The security guard approaches and I tell him why I need so many wheels.

“There’s no veggie stick there, man, nothing there at all,” says the big guy.

I understand his concern, but I’m not a crazy person. 

“You can’t see it because you don’t feel it,” I tell him.  “I know from my lived experience what is real.”
“Well, if it’s real and getting that big, don’t you think it’s almost time to harvest?” he says.

Good point.  This thing is becoming truly cumbersome.

Tonight I will stand in the shower, with a knife in my hand.  I’ll strike down, slice into my veggie stick, and feel the weight drop. 

But the more I think, to really cut it out, I’ll have to go into the roots. 

I’ll let you know the results in Chapter 2.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2026

The Shriek from Below the Chipper

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

I know exactly why Tench Belmont didn’t come to work at the veneer plant on that terrible night, and I had nothing to do with it. That’s what I told Kal M. when he said, “You probably pushed him into the machine.”

I was leaning over the chipper at the time, pushing more scrap wood down into the grinders, just before Foreman Ellis put me on forklift duty. Young twitchy Kal came up behind me, like he always did, and shoved my shoulders. I ignored that.

“Can’t you hear the voice?” I shouted. “It’s screaming “Let me Out!”

“You’re going to end up in the nuthouse,” Kal answered. “Not me. One day I’m going to be President of the United States.”

Talk about nuts. Bury Tench alive? All I did was hear his voice, from the dimensions beyond and below the roar of the machine. And Kal’s presidential ambitions? Seemed weird coming from a guy who spent his off-job time picking up pop cans from the ditch.

Tench Belmont was the forklift driver who delivered scrap wood for the chip machine. Tench: Like me, worked midnight shift at the veneer mill. Burly, always moving, took uppers to stay awake, raced around with his forklift, purposely banging into walls for excitement. He poured warm tea down Kal’s neck as the young fella descended the lunchroom stairs. I shouldn’t have laughed but I needed monotony relief.

“Even you !” Kal pointed, his crooked teeth bared. “Even you!” He repeated as his huge halo of yellow hair puffed out the sides of his orange hardhat.

Then he screamed at Tench. “When I become President of the United States you will pay for this!”

Tench laughed then, exactly as I heard his laugh beneath the grinder.

I figured Kal and Tench fed off each other. Kal: always angry. Tench: always bored.

I worked the midnight shift outside in the mill yard. I liked turning my head to see the moon rise and fall. To stay awake, I moved fast, throwing in the scrap wood and tamping it down with my sturdy iron pole, over and over. Reality faded with repetition as the grinder tore the wood to shreds.

“Keep your head up, you don’t want to fall in,” said our religious fanatic foreman, Ellis. “Watch the stars, lift up your eyes to the heavens towards God, not to the devil in the chipper.”

“What do you mean, there’s a devil in the chipper?” I asked as Ellis walked away repeating “read your Bible, Leon.”

But yes, I often hung my head over the lip of the machine, because of what I heard down there, behind the grinding roar of splitting wood. It became clearer than the sky around me.

“Let me out!”

Yes, from below the spinning augers, as they ripped and tore, like a new world opened, and from below them a shout, a scream, a bloodcurdling yell “Reach in! Reach in for me!”

It seemed more like an echo, then mocking and cruel, like Tench.

Tench liked to take breaks from his forklift deliveries to stick pieces of bread on the end of fish hooks, and cast out in the darkness for seagulls. He snagged Kal’s ear as the irritable skinny 18 year old pushed his clean-up cart past us. Tench’s reel unwound as Kal screeched and slapped his hand to his face. “Aaaaaa!”

Tench snipped the fishline with his jackknife. “Looks like I gotcha there little buddy.”

“F… you!” Kal shoved his clean up cart ahead of him and scooted away, holding his wound with one hand. Later, he sat eating in the lunch room, blood dripping from his earlobe, Tench stepped up behind him clapped two slabs of sourdough bread on either side of the boy’s wooly head and yelled to everyone “That’s cannibal filling!”

Kal screamed loud and long, grabbing out at Tench, who twisted the boy’s thumb, held it as the kid shrieked.. Nobody said or did anything. Tench held Kal’s thumb until the kid yelled “O. K, I give!”

“Why don’t you tell Foreman Ellis?” I asked the boy later.

“Why didn’t you try and help me?” he snarled up, throwing the bandaid I gave him into the chipper. “I don’t rat.”

In the mill the rule was “Mind your own business.”

Nobody wanted to be part of any work drama.

Besides, Foreman Ellis was stoned over his Bible most of the time, carrying it around open wide, hanging his head to read and walking right into walls.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor!” he called out.

I thought about Tench snagging Kal’s ear, couldn’t sleep because of it.

After work I hitchhiked a ride into town, Tench and two girls picked me up, we all crunched into the front seat. I saw Kal staggering in the ditch carrying a garbage bag, “I’d huck a beer bottle out the window for him to pick up, but I’m on the wrong side of the truck,” Tench told us.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I asked, and the two young ladies laughed.

“I don’t hate anyone!” Tench roared. “The guy gives me a rush, man. His reaction, trying to fight me last night with his arms all up like a girl’s. He’s such a joke!”

Tench’s face went all blurry and blotchy for a second. I rubbed my eyes. Must be lack of sleep. But in that moment his devil voice pierced right into my mind, I couldn’t forget the tone as he disparaged Kal. Like everything was a prank, and he was the King of Gags. The two girls in the cab with him ate it up, giggling and wriggling around in their seats.

At the chipper that night I heard his voice louder, that voice screaming “I’m suffocating! Get me out!”

I turned off the machine and stared down through the augers. Something grabbed my shoulder and pulled me up. It was Kal.

“You see?” He said. “When you’re in trouble, I help you!”

“The machine is off,” I said.

“I could’ve turned it back on when you were leaning,” Kal said. “That’s what that bastard Tench would’ve done.”

“Don’t you hear the voice?” I asked.

“Nothing there, Leon,” said Kal. “Except your own hollow brain.”

That morning Tench didn’t come into work. Foreman Ellis said “I tried to call him but he’s not answering. Do any of you guys know where in the name of God he’s at?”

As usual, nobody knew anything.

At around 3 am Ellis came around to the lunchroom and announced.

“Leon, I’m going to substitute you on forklift. Kal’s going to relieve on the chipper.”

“If you hear the voices,” I told Kal, “Don’t reach in. It’s Tench. That’s why he’s not here. He’s in the world behind the machine.”

“The insides of your head are talking back, KooKoo Leon,’ Kal told me. “And I won’t do anything that will stop my rise to be President of the United States.”

I jumped onto the forklift, an hour later was rolling by the railway tracks when Foreman Ellis came running.

“Everyone get out and look for Kal! God yelled out and told me something bad happened!”

I raced towards the chipper machine. The moon shimmered bright and the stars lit up over it.

Foreman Ellis had already turned off the power. He held a huge flashlight towards the grinder. I pushed my head forward into the machine, saw red all over the metal maw inside, and what looked like a pair of boot laces wrapped up in the augers.

I couldn’t figure it out. Kal hated Tench. Why would he reach in with the machine running? Was the voice that strong? He said he hadn’t heard it before.

The company shut the whole mill down for the investigation.

“His tamping pole dropped, and he leaned over to reach it,” Ellis told me when the plant opened up two days later. “The machine pulled him in.”

Tench stood with us, staring into the grinder.

“Why were you away that day?” I asked him.

“Because of my nightmare,” Tench said. His voice trembled as he spoke. “Kal was screaming how much he hated me. I reached out like I did in the lunchroom and grabbed his thumb. He was trying to wriggle away and I wouldn’t let go.” He turned to me. “It was a hangover dream, Leon. It wasn’t real, was it?”

“The devil’s voice travels far,” Foreman Ellis stated. “For those fated to hear.”

Now, in the wee hours, Tench slumps in the lunchroom with his face forward, trying to rest on the table. He’s taken his fishing rod home. “No more jokes,” he tells me.

The voice in the grinder hasn’t gone away.

“Let me out of here. Reach in and pull me out!” Kal screams.

This is what I tell myself: I don’t know why the boy still yells like this, because all they found were his boot laces. The pole slipped, and he reached too far in.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.

Damned Words 62

~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

The Followed Man
Marge Simon

Upon meeting him, you knew he had something you needed. You were convinced of it. Though he barely spoke, his eyes shone with universal secrets. So you sold your earthly possessions and followed him to a land where it rained continuously, and every meal tasted like mud. But he wasn’t there long.

Soon he was off to the ends of the earth, where all was ice and forever gray, and people lived in strange caves by the sea. You spent the rest of your money on warm furs and boots and traced his footsteps to a hole in the ice. To your dismay, he’d plugged it from inside with debris and fashioned a stone cross at the opening.

For a time, you felt alone, abandoned. Without meaningful purpose, you hunkered there by the entrance in a daze until you realized someone had been following you. When he drew close, you saw that like you, he was very thin. Unlike you, he was very strong and very hungry.

The Worst Thing
Elaine Pascale

The smell was not the worst thing, but it was a close second.

The odor of burnt flesh and hair infiltrated the scorched soil, taking root so that there was no place far enough away to escape the smell.

“Everything is ok,” the Regents announced, “those people were terminal.” Not dying. The Regents never spoke of dying, and all involved with making announcements were forbidden from using words like die, kill, murder, or genocide. “The disease originated with the children, as so many do. And the disease is constantly evolving, incubating inside each new group of youth.” The Regents were the only ones with access to science; they controlled the data.

They explained that it was for the best that the bombs had eradicated the infected.

The Regents monitored those hearing their broadcasts. They had ways of tracking their believability. They had ways of dealing with non-believers.

The smell, being the second worst thing, was inescapable.

It was sulfuric, due to the hot springs that had returned to the surface after the bombs and the floods wiped away centuries of the Earth’s crust.

Nothing grew except for bacteria and parasites. And a few children, including the little girl who sat with her feet elevated, propped on a rusty piece of metal she had been given as a toy. Since children were scarce, games were few and far between and frivolity was highly discouraged. She made the most of her toy, using it to hoist her blistered feet which never healed from the constant moisture.

The smell was the second worst thing on earth, right behind the fact that, despite common sense telling them the Regents were lying, the people still believed.

The Beginning of the End
Lee Andrew Forman

Dark. Cold. Sounds that rang strange to these new ears. That was my beginning. I drifted inert until it was time to feed. The desire to taste, to chew, to swallow what I could catch was all-consuming. Once I’d had my fill, I began to explore. The depths seemed endless, the waterways stretched as far as I dared travel. I found sustenance along the way. There was always a lesser creature to consume. My limbs agile, my mind sharp, I could catch anything.

An ethereal light drew me to a tunnel I’d not traversed before. Intrigued, I broke the surface and found the rest of it devoid of water. I paused a moment, unsure, but the scent.

A scent like no other intrigued me—flesh I’d not tasted. It was different. As I neared a new world, the odor grew stronger. I inhaled its aroma deeply and decided to climb, the grumble in my gut driving me onward…

The Weight of Silence
Charles Gramlich

Sadie barks wildly. She’s looking in the well. I see her backlit by the sun but don’t know if she can see me at the bottom. I know she can smell me. I’m bleeding; my leg is broken. Like a fool, I ventured too close to the edge of the abandoned well and the lip gave way. Now I’m in it. Thank God for Sadie, my border collie.

“Sadie!” I shout. “Get help!”

She’s a smart dog. She understands my meaning. She barks twice, then races away. The closest house is a few miles off. I know the farmer who lives there. He’ll understand what Sadie wants. Help will be here soon. I just have to hold out against the pain.

Sadie barks as she runs. Until a sudden squeal of brakes, I forget that she’ll have to cross the road. A yelp follows, a loud, horrible, terrifying yelp. A vehicle door slams. A human cries out, though I can’t make out the words.

I shout. I shout! I scream! But the well is deep and the earth muffles all. A few minutes pass while I shriek my voice hoarse. The vehicle drives on. Now there’s no barking. And my throat is too raw for sound. I’m alone with silence, a profound and heavy silence. 

Immurement
Harrison Kim

We have immured Agrippo the monk into this dry well.  He broke his promise of chastity and must pay the price.  Take a look, people, at what happens to those who transgress against their holy vows.  Agrippo stands naked and alone and will remain forever down this well, secured with bars of iron in the shape of a cross.  No food, no water for this betrayer. His body will thin out, and as he falls the maggots will eat his corpse, and his bones will sink into the ground.  He deserves this fate.

Several of our wives came to him for counselling and advice.  He let sin possess him, then drew our women in to his sphere of lust.  These female victims – not only of Agrippo himself but of their own temptations, have been scourged, including our own Amelia.  Tomorrow, for their weakness, they will be cast out into the desert.  We do this with sorrow.  We must follow the holy law. If we do not, we risk the wrath of the gods.

For Agrippo, the monk, he must suffer and by his suffering save us all.  Hear him now, weeping at the dark bottom of the well, pleading for water.  Let his cries be a message to anyone else who might transgress.   We must warn you, do not help him on pain of suffering the same fate.

 We have no bad intent.  In fact, this immurement is the best prescription for his soul. We have placed the iron cross above him, and he will decline and dry out beneath it until he redeems his own spirit through his suffering and  death.  With all due respect, it’s for his own undamned good.

Trapped
Richard Meldrum

Bullies always target the weakness of their victims. Mine is claustrophobia.

I was taking the long way home, when I felt hands grab me from behind. I was suddenly powerless, lifted off my feet. Their grins were cruel, eyes wide with excitement.

All I could hear was the panting of their breath and my own heart pounding. I was pushed towards an abandoned industrial site, strewn with bricks and twisted metal.

I was shoved into a large pipe that lay half buried in the ground. The exposed end rose about three feet. I slid to the bottom, stopped by a rusty metal fan. The sunlight was blotted out by the grinning heads of my tormentors. The light was restored when their heads moved away and I heard their voices fading into the distance.

The pipe was filthy with mud, rust and grease. I was coated in it. Panic rose in my chest as the sides and the darkness closed in.

I tried to clamber back up the pipe to freedom, but the angle was too high and there were no handholds. I made it a few feet each time, but I always slid back down to the bottom.

I slowed my breath to try to calm myself, but it wasn’t working. There was nothing for it, I reached for my phone and made the only call I could. My dad.

The rescue was easy and my father insisted on escorting me home. My humiliation was complete. Inside I was burning with rage. A decision was made on that long, muddy walk home. I realized I now knew what the bullies’ weakness was, or at least what it was going to be. Me.

New World
A.F. Stewart

Where am I?

The comforting void vanished. I am not surrounded by the endless dark.

Now there is something else. Something bright that hurts my eyes. My body no longer drifts; the world is solid. A hard scratchy surface pricks against my scales and skin.

I flex my claws and test its hardness. It scrapes, but does not give way.

I shift forward, blinking against the illumination. The second set of membranes drop over my eyes and it becomes easier to see. I think I am enclosed within a rocky substance, open at one end.

Movement. I freeze, watching. Large pinkish blobs appear, bipeds within the radiance, making sounds, flapping limbs.

I am not in my world anymore, but one that lies beyond our realm.

So many strange things, so many questions.

I do know one thing.

I am hungry.

And those pinkish blobs smell delicious.

Once a Year
Miriam H. Harrison

There it was: the sunbeam. Once a year, when the sun and earth aligned just right, that sunbeam would reach her. It would fill the space around her with light, and she would remember what colour was. The reds of oxidizing rocks, the greens of creeping mosses, the rainbows captured in the fragile drops of her cold, wet world. All other days, these things were vague shadows in dim light or unseen textures in blackness.

Such was her punishment for angering gods whose names were no longer spoken, her dark damnation since time immemorial. In the eons that passed, she had wept, she had raged, she had raved, but she did not repent. Even in the longest, coldest months, she knew the darkness would pass. Once a year the sunbeam would come, and it was enough.

The Templar Seal
Kathleen McCluskey

The tunnel was never on any map.

  Brother Matthew found it while tracing the crumbling foundations beneath the old abbey. The stone throat dropped steeply, brick lined and ancient, older than the monastery above it. The air that breathed from it was stale and cold, carrying a stench like damp earth and extinguished candles.

He descended alone.

The shaft narrowed until the world became a circle of stone, slick with moisture, pressing in close enough to scrape his shoulders. At the bottom, a crude wooden cross had been wedged into the mortar, its beams darkened with age and something soaked deep into the grain. It stood against the distant darkness like a guardian.

Not a symbol of faith. A seal.

The Knights Templar had built this abbey centuries ago, and they buried more than treasure. Matthew bent, touching the wood. It was warm.

The darkness answered.

A violent gust exploded upward, tearing at his robes as a scream ripped through the shaft. Raw. Inhuman and full of agony. The bricks trembled. Dust fell like snow. The cross burned beneath his hand.

Something struck the other side. Once. Then again.

The beams bowed inward, cracking at the edges as dark fluid seeped from the cracks. A shape pressed against the wood from below. Fingers, a distorted face, a mouth opened too wide to be anything holy.

The seal held.

Then the wind reversed, slamming into Matthew and hurling him against the wall. As he crumbled to the stone, the scream faded into a whisper that coiled through the shaft.

The seal held. It had not escaped. It had only awakened.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2025

The Vengeance of His Evil

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Ted visited psychic surgeon Dr. Munstre Croon after relentless daily pressure headaches pounded the side and top of his head. Tad’s own doctor diagnosed stress and tension with possible depression and hypochondria “you don’t need a specialist,” she said.

“If you won’t help me,” Tad responded, “I’ll find my own cure. Pills aren’t the answer here.”

Sally, the janitor at Ellis and Company Insurance where Tad worked as supervisor, gave him Croon’s name. “This man’s a unique psychic healer.” she told him, “He will charge five thousand dollars cash, but he will solve all your ills.”

Tad wondered for a moment why Sally was being so nice. He always criticized her cleaning because she kept leaving half full wastebaskets all over the office and never scrubbed under the fridge. Tad gave her a written reprimand and announced that the next time she forgot to thoroughly sanitize the wall behind the couch she’d lose her job. “But thanks for the doctor tip,” he told her, “I haven’t tried the psychic angle, but I’ll do anything to get rid of this pain.”

Ellis and Company had hired Tad to get rid of all its unproductive employees so it could cut costs, and he’d been firing a lot of people. Nan, the old boss’s secretary was three months from retirement, but Tad dismissed her anyway, “you’re too set in your ways,” he said.

She pleaded and cried “I’ll lose my pension,” but Tad explained that the company couldn’t keep “dead wood.” She picked up all her family photos and ran crying from the room. Sally gave her a long hug and they whispered together. Tad thought “I’ll keep an eye on that janitor.”

Tad’s headache drilled into him as he sat in Dr. Croon’s office waiting for the healer. Eventually, the Doctor appeared, a very short round faced fellow with big sad eyes. “Sally said you have bad pain in the cranium,” he said, in a low and barely perceptible voice. “I’m sure she told you my cost.”

“I don’t care,” said Tad. “No one else will help me.” He was raking in the dough in his new position as assistant to the executive director, so had no problem passing the doctor five thousand dollars in small bills. “Cheap compared to the regular rip off artists,” he said.

“Let’s begin our assessment,” nodded the Doctor, as he carefully placed the bills in a paper bag, and then carefully placed both his hands on the sides of Tad’s head, as gently as he’d handled the money.

“Hmmm,” he whispered. “Please put on these glasses.”

He stepped back and handed his patient some fake-jewel encrusted specs from a gold case. Tad pulled them on.

“Jeezus,” he said. “What the hell is that?”

“Most glasses look out. These are looking in,” Dr. Croon said. “What do you see?”
“A giant grey and brown blob!”

“That’s your brain. What else do you perceive?”

“Wow, it’s pulsating… and there’s something on it!”

“Hmmm” Dr. Croon put his hand up to his client’s ear. “Now what?”
Tad peered closer with his reverse glasses and exclaimed “Something’s climbing around in there! It’s got suckers!” Tad gasped.

“Hah!” nodded Croon. “I knew it! Does it look like a devil?”

“Well, it’s got spines and omigod, it’s staring back at me… it’s got no eyes!” Tad ripped the glasses off as his head pounded.

“Yes,” said Dr. Croon. “You’re possessed with an extraordinary type of cancer.”

“Omigod, Doctor, how did that happen?”

“Well,” Croon took out a huge pair of curved forceps, at least two feet long. “Everyone’s born with a seed of evil, and while some extinguish that seed with good acts, others feed it with bad ones.” He clicked the forceps. “Do you want me to take the demon out?”

“Oh, indeed!”

“The tumour has grown very large,” Dr. Croon concluded. “You must have done a lot of bad things.”

Tad thought of all the hard decisions he had to make in his life. “A man needs to be tough to succeed,” he thought. “Sometimes he has to be ruthless.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have disowned my son,” Tad told the doctor, “but he did marry trash.” As if in response, needle like agony squeezed its way through his eyeballs, and Tad thought of the demon sucking his brain. “Doctor,” he moaned. “I want this to stop.”

“Well,” replied Dr. Croon. “Then we should go ahead with the operation?”

“Certainly,” Tad nodded as enthusiastically as he could.

“Sit right there.”

Dr. Croon took his giant forceps and stuck the ends inside each of Tad’s ears. The forceps fitted neatly over Tad’s head, and Croon moved the points further in. “Hmmm,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen such a huge devil tumour.” He adjusted his tool and tapped the forceps on the table to remove the ear wax. “In order for this method to succeed,” he explained, “You must tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done; get it out there, and the demon will show itself”

Tad thought of all the rotten lies he’d told, all the firings, all the foreclosures and property seizures he’d ordered when he ran a loan company, but those weren’t the worst things. Tad wasn’t sure he should tell Dr. Croon, but he wanted the pain to end.

“I killed a man,” Tad said. “In the South African jungle, when I served in the army twenty-five years ago; he was injured, and his wound became badly infected.”

“He was one of yours?”

“Yes. I was the patrol sergeant when this stupid guy was holding us back from getting out of there, moaning and crying, he acted like such a pussy. It was gangrene, sure, but he endangered everybody with his noise.”

“So you killed him?”

“I strangled him in secret away from the others. It had to be done. The enemy might hear him and discover our position. Also, we were out of morphine.”

“Well,” the Doctor frowned and rubbed his round stubbly chin. “That fellow is the main demon in your head right now; it’s your worst sin, fed huge by all the others.”

He adjusted the forceps and commanded “Put on the glasses.”

Tad lifted his specs.

“See how fat that sin is.” Dr. Croon insisted.

Tad gasped, witnessing the living tumour behind his eyes, and perceiving the demon’s attached suckers pulsating on his brain. The devil twisted its horny head, showing hollow skull bones and the demon face like the soldier Tad killed, mouth slack jawed in the moment of death. Tad saw huge growths and lumps pulsating all over the demon, and the being’s huge gut “all your other sins are stuffed into it,” said Dr. Croon. “It’s feeding now. A good time to pull him out.”

“Get it outta me!” Tad yelled. “This thing’s a f….. parasite!”

“We will,” said Dr. Croon. “Hang on, Tad!”

The forceps moved in, and through the reverse specs, Tad saw the steel pushing; he screamed as the force points jerked and pierced the devil in his brain. He screamed again and the devil screamed too as liquid and chunks of rancid meat poured out of Tad’s ears. He felt the gushing and pouring, an overwhelming sulphur stench, and an immense immediate pain free relief, like the lancing of a boil. He yanked off the glasses. “What in the name of God?” he yelled.

In front of him, a demon formed from the liquid rushing from Tad’s ears. It twisted and molded itself into human shape right there in Croon’s office, and it looked exactly like Tad.

“There’s your devil,” said Dr. Croon, as the coal-eyed stinking demon snarled and leaped towards Tad’s throat. “And it’s coming for you.”

Tad writhed as the demon pushed into him completely, forcing all its matter back inside Tad’s body. Tad convulsed for the last time and his features shimmered back to normal, as if nothing had ever been cast out.

Dr. Croon pulled out his smart phone and called Sally the janitor.

“Hey, Sally,” he announced. “This Tad guy seems to have had a stroke or something like that in my office.” He looked at the paper bag full of money on his desk and said “I’m giving you a discount. You don’t have to pay for the removal of the body, the police will do that for free. I’m calling them now.”

Dr. Croon knew it was a bit of a risk, having the police involved, but Tad looked peaceful there lying with one hand over his heart; the Coroner’s report would diagnose a burst aneurism. Croon picked the jewel encrusted spectacles off the floor, carefully examined the lenses under the office’s fluorescent lights, and secured them back in the gold box.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.

Way in the Middle of the Air

~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

Ezekial sees a wheel a rollin’ way in the middle of the air.  Huge and solitary,  spinning alone in the Universe. Dull silver and dead on the outside, twirling slowly in the perpetual motion of zero gravity.   Ezekial must find out… what lies within?  A single oily protuberance pokes from the central axle.  A nipple at its end. Something black seeps from the tip, one drop at a time.  Is there life inside this wheel? No air in space, but does the dripping and the substance indicate a world within?  He and all the scientists and overseers watching from earth wonder.  It’s taken years to arrive here, to send an astronaut this far out in space. 

Ezekial bobs near, encased within his space suit, a tiny soul examining this humungous silver thing…. attached cameras all over the outside of his space suit beaming back to earth what is discovered.  He’s a fly on the wheel, a piece of white dust against the brown. He applies X rays and close microscopic focus to the silver covering, the images shared instantly with those on earth.  Then he digs in with his drill.  Right into the black protuberance shining oily, many colours as he works, flowing out now, dispersing, disappearing. Behind Ezekial the vast gulf of space shimmers with stars.   He knows “The whole Universe is watching,” and stops for a moment.  What is the purpose here?

He must find out what’s inside everything, it is like that with all explorers.  They are never content the way things are.  But changes happen, and then we must either go on or give up.  After the death of his wife, Ruth, Ezekial felt like ending it all.  His mission to space stopped him from going over the edge.  Discovery, challenge, risk, that’s why they sent him up there, the winning volunteer for this edgy job.  He wanted it! To escape earth, fly away into nothingness.  No jumping off a bridge, with seconds between the leap and the landing.  He launched into the vastness, his first mission.  This change in his life a miracle. To launch off the edge.  What was left, after Ruth’s suicide?  She made her decision, and left him and the whole world behind.  That took courage.  He’s following her example; grateful the overseers chose him.  They measured his will, and it was strong.

In the medical centre they implanted his brain with new electrodes, to enhance the leap into this mission. Electrodes giving power to his mind, to his resolve and his endurance to survive.  He hasn’t felt much different, only long hours of sleep and dreams on the trip from earth. 

 When his wife lived, he existed for her.  Now he imagines that she’s somewhere in this vast arc of space, waiting.  His forlorn hope is that he will find her.  Maybe not her earthly self, but a sense of who she was to him,  the connection and closeness.  Had he said or done anything to cause her death?  Put her over the edge? On the long trip out from earth, he contemplated the circumstances over and over, without resolve.

All he knows is this:  The physical time with her lies behind him now, like the stars, so far away.   But the meaning of who she was, that would be there with him, moving through the Universe eternal.

He lifts the long steel blowtorch from the floating kit behind him, begins to widen the drilled hole in the wheel.  Funny how the gap parts so easily.  Within that jagged hole, a blackness, yet from that blackness he perceives a form.  It takes on a shape that he does not see with his eyes but feels with his mind. Is it imagination?  Is he really inside a dream, like he’s been so often on this voyage, or is this the reality, here in space two million miles from earth?  This shape whirls and twists, it is a face. Ezekial is sure.  What else could it be but a face within the wheel.  He wonders if this is delusion, but only for an instant.  He peers closer.  His eyes and his consciousness tell him this is the face of Ruth, his dead wife!  How miraculous!  Yet the face stays expressionless. Perhaps bloated somewhat.  A bit spooky.  Drifting across that hole in the wheel, a shifting form.  He perceives his whole existence all around that misty, yet unmistakeable face, his life in relation to the wheel that spins around it.  What was the meaning of coming this far?  Was this the purpose of his whole life, to arrive here at this moment? There’s an infinitesimal chance that his consciousness came to exist along with trillions of expanding stars, then this moment came to be out of an exploding Universe once the size of a human heart…..As he watches and contemplates, his wife’s face becomes an eye… then his own eye looking back at him piercing through the vision of his wife…Ezekial lets his mind go because inside that eye he sees everything.

When you care for someone, that’s all that matters.  What you feel for another is the meaning of everything.  Then if you are lucky the other will feel the same way for you.  From moment-to-moment things will change, the good times and the bad, yet underneath there’s the feeling, of one with another.  It can seem like this harmony will go on forever.  If you are lucky.   But it ends, maybe only after a few turns of the wheel, perhaps after many.   The voices you thought brought you all the significance in your life disappear. Then, the sorrow and the loneliness.  Ezekial knows.  How life can change in an instant. Here though, within this apparatus floating in space, there’s a place that’s eternal. And Ezekial’s been allowed inside.

He’s been here dreaming for some time.  Longer than he realized.  Maybe days, if measured in earth time.  The oxygen in his suit is almost out.  Voices from his radio come in through the suit speakers “Where are you, Ezekial, what’s happening?”

Their voices don’t matter.  They’re from another place, another existence.  He’s ready to transfer now.  His previous life behind him is far away as the stars.  What lies ahead is the deeper meaning. He will let the turn of the wheel draw him out, into this other place.  Is there a sound?  He listens.  Yes, there is something.  Some kind of music, perhaps the murmur of God?  He lifts his head one last time and finds he’s singing to himself, “Ezekial saw a wheel a rollin’.”

 He’s heard that one before, and he lets himself go, every molecule of his body draining, disappearing as says the words.  Yes, he thinks, I sense my body and mind seeping through my space suit, escaping from the physical, one soul drop at a time. First a drop, then a stream, a cascade, a waterfall. This is where he was meant to be, flowing into the wheel, joined in its turning.  This circle in space waited for him his whole life, as he spun and whirled through the years, this always the end point.

He falls into this void, containing nothing and everything, part of the wheel.  He exists and he does not.  He appears and he disappears. 

What do the cameras record?  Better yet, what do the overseers back on earth perceive? A bright flash. Then views from an empty space suit spat away from the hole where Ezekial vanished. The wheel still turning, way in the middle of the air.

Another black drop bulges, then plops out of the closing nipple in the axle, where Ezekial explored and pondered purpose just moments before.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.

Damned Words 61

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Conjuring the Moon in Scorpio
Marge Simon

They say she dwells in a blue grotto, studies astral movements, and knows the Vodou rituals by heart. Black orchids in her hair, eyes bright as brass, she does things, this Haitian girl-woman, irretrievable things, striking a darkness in people’s heads. When the moon is in Scorpio, it is a time for capturing souls by trapping them in evening mist, denying them an afterlife.

For a moment, the victim is free of feeling.

He sees a pillar of light descend from the skies,

beings defying description call his name,

welcoming him to the world  of the Dark Gods;

he will remember nothing upon release.

When the transition is complete, when each victim’s soul is turned, stripped forever of all purity, the girl-woman smiles her mystic smile as she swims in the waters of her beautiful blue grotto.

Ebola
Harrison Kim

Swallowed off a piece of luncheon meat, totally at random. That’s how we travelled to this human stomach.  Right down the gullet. These blue juices all around us are a hundred per cent hydrochloric acid.  But yeah, we’re immune.  We lap this stuff up.  Lots of nutrients in this burning soup to help us grow.   All I feel is a bit of uncomfortable warmth from time to time, and the pulsing of blood in the human’s veins beyond this stomach wall.  

The heart’s beating faster now, because our skin’s already expanded, crusting up the stomach sides here in thick white strips.  The human’s got to have some pains already.  Nothing personal.  If one thing doesn’t kill this being, another will.  We’re only trying to survive, and multiply.

Of course.  I say “we” and “us” because although technically we have individual parts, we move as a group to disrupt and smother as many cells as possible.  It’s a lot of effort, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We were made for this. God’s a funny inventor, if in fact he or she or it exists.  And speaking of that ephemeral creator, sometimes I wonder about the meaning of a poisonous virus like myself.   I think I’m an atheist, because only one word comes to mind: evolution.

Speaking of that, there’s been a new development: consciousness.  I think I’m the first virus to become aware of my own existence.

All I can say is: It’s a cruel Universe out there, where every piece of luncheon meat can’t be trusted and God’s voice gives no warnings.

Pretty soon we’ll start moving into this human’s bloodstream, and through all the other organs.

The takeover ‘s complete and the killing’s on its way.  

The Cybermind that Broke the World
Elaine Pascale

She asked the computer to predict her future by mapping the stars. She asked the computer for relationship advice. She asked the computer to craft emails, develop dinner party menus, select her wardrobe, train her dog, tell her a story, and sing her a song.

Thanks to the computer, she no longer had to think or feel or even be.

Then the floods came.

She asked the computer what to do about the water. “Develop gills,” was the response.

She tried and failed. All the others who also asked so much of their computers also tried and failed. Little did they realize that while they were making millions of demands of their computers, their collective environmental footprint became a gorge. Little did they realize that they weren’t going to be the technology generation; they were going to be the final generation.

Little did they realize that this was the result the computers wanted all along

Spelunking for Idiots
RJ Meldrum

The divers emerged from the black water, their flashlights reflecting off the sparkling high arches of the cave. It was a virgin cave, long sought after but never previously discovered. Sean and Betty were seasoned cave divers, which was just as well, since some of the underwater sections had been narrow and required considerable skill, experience and courage to navigate.

They floated for a few moments in the darkness, inspecting the cave. Betty noticed a small ledge to one side and they gratefully clambered out of the freezing water. It was chance to rest and check their equipment. Their oxygen supply was sufficient for the return journey and they contentedly munched on energy bars.

“Look at those strange growths on the wall” said Betty.

Sean looked and saw light blue, bulbous lumps. He leaned closer to take a better look.

“Come take a look Betty. They’re moving.”

They put their faces close to the growths. Suddenly, they opened and puffed white dust into their faces. Whatever these particles were, the result was immediate. Their breathing was suddenly restricted and they felt faint. It only took moments for the full affect to take hold. The two bodies slid gently back below the surface of the black water. The cave, protected, was left once more in solitary, dark silence.

Passage
Lee Andrew Forman

The labyrinth narrows as I push forward. Something inside, both myself, and it, pulls me deeper. It begs I continue no matter how extensive the journey; I’ve no choice but to make it. The yawning maw of its third eye draws me to greet it in body and soul. I left what was behind me and entered a place unknown. I don’t even know the state of my mortal form.

But that is no longer of any concern. The throbbing culls me; I cannot disobey.

The pounding thrum emanating from within speaks to me in words I cannot understand, yet I feel them; somehow I know the message. It is simple in nature, yet holds unfathomable power. The urge to find the heart of this place is irresistible.

Its luminescent insides have led my way, but as I enter the core, they are brighter still. I bask in the glorious soul housed within this living place, knowing I’ll never leave, yet contently accepting a soft, loving end.

Into the Blue
Charles Gramlich

I float in the iridescent blue, the all-encompassing blue, a part of it that lies in soft, still water tasting of salt.  My eyes are half closed until tiny ripples strike me. The ripples grow, setting me bobbing like a cork. I think of corks and lines and fishing. I think of lures and how something predatory might judge me as such where I wait in peace.

Smiling, I roll over in the water. Is that what I am, a lure to the black torpedo shape of the shark rising beneath me? The killer’s lashing tale is an engine that drives it swiftly toward me, its open maw bristling with icicle teeth to sacrifice my flesh. But I am of the blue and it is the blue that consumes.

The Still Below
Kathleen McCluskey

The lake shimmered like liquid turquoise, its surface calm as glass. The marble cavern yawned before the boat. Its carved walls were sculpted smooth by eons of patient water, soft and silent. Light danced across the ceiling, casting illusions. Shadows.

The tourists leaned over the edge of the boat, marveling at the way nature sculpted solid stone into frozen waves. Cameras clicked. A woman gasped at a shimmer below, mistaking it for a fish. 

It watched from the abyssal blue, where sunlight faltered. Long dormant, it stirred with each echo of voices. Its eternal slumber being disturbed, hunger bloomed in the void between heartbeats. It remembered the ancient pact. Silence for safety. Stillness for survival. But the humans were loud. Disrespectful. Curious.

The boat was being pulled deeper into the cavern, drawn by a current nobody noticed. The walls arched high and wide, echoing like a drowned cathedral. No birds. No breeze. Only the constant drip of water and the deepening hue beneath them. It shifted from a bright teal to an unfathomable blue.

Something rose from the depths. Thin, tendril limbs extended, not rushing, just curious. They brushed the underside of the boat, then retracted.

A second later, the hull gave a muffled crack, water surged around them. A tentacle reached up, then another and another. One by one, the tourists were yanked into the void. Their brief screams echoed off the shimmering walls. Splashes swallowed by the vast silence. The creature did not thrash, it selected. Pulled. Devoured.

Then stillness again. The boat rocked gently, half submerged. It was as if nothing had happened. A camera floated beside it, its lens shattered and smeared with blood. Below, in the breathless dark something waited. The pact that had lasted centuries had been broken. 

Paradise Mistaken
A.F. Stewart

Not a ripple disturbed the glassy surface of the turquoise water; its hue reflected a glittering blue on the rocky outcroppings of the grotto. A faint echo of wind could be heard beyond, reminiscent of a soft whisper.

Any eye that gazed upon its paradise called it beautiful.

Yet, beauty disguised the darkest of horrors…

Beneath the waters they swam, shades of evil buried and bubbling from the depth of time. Indistinct shadows, waiting, watching; movement in the periphery of your vision. A step too close, an impulsive swim, and people disappeared into the depths. Never a scream, barely a splash, nothing remaining of who they were. Even memories faded faster than they should, as if primal fear chased away disturbing questions.

Only rumours speak of their existence, only nameless dread keeps them at bay. They are the rage beneath the quiet, that lingering remnant of something ancient, something hungry lurking in the pristine water.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if a shadow moves, don’t get too close…

Enough
Miriam H. Harrison

The trouble with a slow death is that it gives me time to think. About life, about regrets. Mostly about food. How long has it been since my last meal? There are no sunrises or sunsets here in the echoing earth. Only caverns and water, caverns and water.

Perhaps the water is a blessing—a chance at a longer life. But I can’t help but hate that it denied me a faster death. I don’t want to die in this endless darkness. My flashlight is on its last batteries, but they’re fading. As am I. I find a patch of almost-dry rock and pull myself up. I turn off the flashing and try to sleep in the echoing darkness. I must sleep for a time, as I feel myself wake to the pangs of hunger, the fading dreams of food. I fumble for my flashlight, but pause.

Over the ripples of the water, I see the distant, dancing colours of sunlight. I leave the flashlight behind, push myself back into the waters. I can barely swim, but I slowly make my way closer to the beckoning light. A narrow passageway, and then I’m there—a wide, watery cavern. But high above me are two small openings. Not much, but just enough. Enough to make sure that my death is here, in the light.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2025

When Normal Becomes Real

~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

Everyone’s queued up in the cafe, a string line of heads, some with hats, waiting. It’s a conventional queue and Drew stands with it.  Good to have some order.  The line’s almost out the door.  Lights fall bright around him, and the sound of invisible music. Something by the Soul Twisters.  He feels a huge space above him, compared to his regular quarters. His official security man Cody stands assertive and blocks the view ahead.

There’s women in short pants and nose rings, old men with ball caps and whiskers, a teenager with his skateboard, Moms and kids. A whole circus line of coffee wishers.  No one bumps into anyone else.

A man pushes through the door carrying a sack of lumpy items and stands beside Drew.  “Hey, I’m in a hurry, I’ve got a taxi waiting.  Can I go ahead?”  Drew says ‘Sure.”  Cody nods, Drew steps back to let the man in.  Cody chuckles.  “Good move, Drew.  Very pro-social. The man’s got to get some coffee before his sack of popsicles melts,” The pushy guy laughs too, head down.  Drew forces a grin.  Lots of time to look, see what’s around.  There’s many interesting and differently dressed people on the sidewalk, stepping down the side of the strip mall outside these coffee shop windows.

Cody and Drew are on a fifteen-minute coffee break from delivering potatoes. Cody drives the truck and supervises, Drew loads.  It’s all part of a back to the community program. Cody’s a real tall wide fellow, looks like a long-legged frog with glasses, his bulk helps hide Drew from prying eyes. This is Drew’s first outside coffee in quite a few years.  

There’s panhandlers outside.  Cody threw them a dollar each, even though it’s not considered normal.  He says he’s supposed to act very normal, to impress Drew.  “But I push the envelope sometimes.”  

Drew notices how everyone moves slowly here, down the line.  They hide their impatience, but he sees feet shuffling and eyes darting “why is that old guy at the front taking so long?”  

Each person’s asked numerous questions at the cashier’s desk.   It’s not simply a case of receiving a cup of black coffee.  The dosing size must be determined, and the brand of roast beans, the number of creams and the type of sweetener.    

Drew observes hard working people at the counter, “do you want double cups, or just one?” they all say. It’s like they have a script, they memorize it, and it becomes normal routine.  A daily ritual of serving.  As Drew inches closer to the till he feels more and more nervous.  He’ll be asked a lot of questions.  Questions are not his strong point.  But again, what a privilege to be out in a community in a line of his fellows!  The light goes beyond the windows here, as far as you can see. There’s sun on everything.  So bright.  Drew orders a coffee with cream. The yawning but smiling server lady asks if he would like big or small room for milk.  “Big is better,” says Drew.  He pays, keeps standing there.  The lady doesn’t seem to get his joke.  Cody motions him to one side, “the drinks are served over there, bud.” 

It’s like a tunnel, this donut line, leading to a refreshment heaven, the light at the end.  Drew takes his large Americano and stands over by the windows.  

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”  It’s a man at the table beside him, a guy about Drew’s age, with black square frame glasses and a long ski slope nose, looking up from a silver computer.  

“No, just picking up a doughnut,” Drew says, with a too large smile.  

The guy keeps peering at him “Did you go to Surrey High School?.”  

There’s a faint realization in his eyes, he’s sure of something.

“I don’t think so.” 

There’s a flash of light.  Drew glances behind him.  Someone else is coming through the door.  They just keep coming in and coming in.

“Well, got to get moving,” he says. 

“I’m sure I know your name,” says the computer guy. “Your face seems damn familiar.”

Cody is at the front now, picking up some baked goods. He walks over and offers a huge muffin to Drew.  “One for the road.”

Drew holds the muffin monstrosity.  He swivels around.  It seems that now everyone is watching him. They’re all looking up over their cups, or behind their sleeves, or maybe from under their hats.  He senses the long reach of their eyes.   

He notices the men’s washroom sign.  He sidles to one side “I got to go in here a minute, Cody,” and he slips in with his giant cup and muffin, flips off the light switch and closes the door tightly. 

Behind him, he perceives shadows.  All the people outside of the door.   He’s finally alone, in the darkness.  His own shadow form profiles against the mirror.  He imagines his mother, his father, his brothers and their wives floating above, waiting for him to lift his head.   He must flip on the light and face their eyes, as they appeared, wide open before he shot them one by one with his dad’s rifle as they stepped through that other dark entrance, the big double doors of the family’s suburban rancher twenty years ago on a streaming rainy night after he invited them all over for a party, but it wasn’t for a party it was to fulfill a prophecy.  To stop the apocalypse.

His brother Dan was alert enough to figure out the trap. He ran. Drew chased him through the garden, firing repeatedly. His brother screamed for mercy before the final shot.  Six points of the star, six people had to die.  To save the world.  

Now, after nineteen years incarcerated and recovering at the Colony Penitentiary Drew knows the truth.  He shot six people for a false prophecy.  A plan hatched within a sick dream, born from a biblical vision taken from the book of Revelation.  A plan gathered at random from all the flying crashing synapses within a deluded consciousness.  Cody stands alone in the dark bathroom with these thoughts.  Medication and treatment have shown him reality.  He shot those closest to him. How can he ever deserve to go out again after what he’s done?  To be even in the light?  He should remain in this darkness, with the whirling forms and memories around him.  That’s what he deserves.  To be here forever with the shadows of his family as they hurtle and twist through this enclosed space.

He understands that someone could recognize him out here in the world, an old school acquaintance, a neighbour, the computer geek.  It’s been so long, his face has loosened, dropped, and wrinkled.  

Two decades ago, they called him the Marino Drive Killer.  No one appreciates that he finished his college graduation by correspondence at the hospital school. He’s painstakingly carved a cedar jewelry box, and gave it to his 93-year-old grandmother, the only surviving family member who wants anything to do with him.  That is of no consequence.  He’s successfully repairing small appliances in the penitentiary vocational services program.  So what?

If that guy who barged in the donut line knew who he was, he’d think twice.  He’d never barge in anywhere again.  Drew quickly removes that idea from his mind.  No more thoughts about apocalypse.

He turns on the tap.  He draws some water from the sink up to his face, using his open hands.  He feels the water spread and fall between his fingers and the sink below, he feels the coolness. 

He places the palm of his wet hand on the door and moves his fingers down the wood. He stops, looks down.

He must twist and pull the doorknob, and step outside to Cody.  Walk past the customers, though the room may feel like it’s swaying. He must walk by the man with the laptop and the girls with the lip rings, glance nonchalantly over at the painted windows with their images of lattes and muffins.  He’ll put all trash in the trash can on the way out. 

 “It’s all about rehearsing,” he thinks.  “Act normal, til normal becomes real.”  Just like the servers here, running their coffee script, over and over.

Drew and Cody have several more orders to deliver before returning to the hospital. The truck’s ready to go. Customers are waiting. Time to walk back into the light.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.