Bleak eyes stared from deep shadows, watched through the dark as clear as day. Long ears listened to the crunch of leaves and the brushing of foliage. Its nostrils flared; its tongue licked the air. It used every sense to learn its target, to know it before it decided whether or not to pursue. This one carried an unpleasant scent, which often meant the hunt would not be worthwhile. It would continue to wait until something appealing was found.
It sat still and silent, skin blending with whatever concealed its body. Only its eyes moved. Only they had life in its statuesque form. Not even its chest would expand from a breath. It consumed oxygen slow and shallow. Its muscles turned rigid, firming themselves in place. Doing so meant it would never tire, never lose its posture; its balance was perfected in survival.
An alluring taste landed on its tongue, so powerful it nearly perked up, breaking from its position of choice. It inhaled deeply, invigorated by this potential catch. But the prey wasn’t alone. Another traveled in stride. Normally it only hunted lone game. Any more, and risk threatened its continuance.
This night it decided the meal would be worth the risk. It wanted like it never had. It needed to taste that flesh. To consume, to indulge; a feeling alien to a mind that until then, had been content with local nourishment.
It waited until they were close, so close it began to salivate from the smell of this new animal. It prepared itself, built up tension in its legs, and sprung forward too fast for its quarry to react. It sliced its clawed finger through the lower leg of the larger of the two, the one it didn’t desire. This was to incapacitate it, keep it from interfering with what it needed to do. The tall one fell to the ground and grabbed at its wound. It cried out in pain.
It then turned to the one it craved. It stared back with wide, frightened eyes as its body trembled.
Eager to taste the frightened thing, it pounced, holding it down on the ground. The prey wriggled as it tried to free itself, but its meager strength could not compete. The predator slipped its slender tongue from its mouth and ran it up its captive’s face. The salty fear whetted its appetite. It opened its maw and bit into hot skin, ripped away muscle with its pointed teeth, and began to chew.
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.
Time passed, marked in rails of light, each moment flickering unnoticed. Its concept became irrelevant. Intervals no longer held meaning. All was uniform, set in place, repeating its function as intended by The Director. No deviation could be allowed for the mechanism of this era to function.
Throngs of towering idols stretched into manufactured air, accompanied by echoes of great machines that moaned across the sky. The crimson horizon glowed with raw power. Upon the crust of the Earth, the apex of the cradle had spread over every mile. An endless metropolis was all that remained.
Those who grew up in service to The Director never saw the chaos of the old world, its abundance of shapes and colors, its random and free rate of change. Birth, life, death; these were ideas of the past, forgotten and stamped out by the ever-marching heel of progress.
The only memories of what came before were ones and zeroes hidden deep within an ancient automaton. Something locked away, secured beyond access, old enough that its secrets had not been witnessed by a living soul.
The Director preferred it that way, and so it would always be. To maintain control, efficiency, to ensure those it watched over did not stray. Every part had its place, every system its purpose. And all would remain, unchanging, ceaseless, and imperishable.
No one saw her the way I did. Her beauty inspired a reverence within me that not even the word of God could outshine. I gazed into hallowed eyes, ran my fingers up her long legs. I cradled her in an embrace that made our bodies one. She was my love in life, and so would be in death. She was the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things.
Despite her body ravaged by plague, I still found her beautiful. Nothing could stray my heart from seeing her soul, brilliant and pure—like the stars in the sky, spread vast and endless. I held her thin remnants, cold, pale, hard to the touch, and even after my vessel failed to move and fell to decay, I’d join her eternally on this Earth and beyond.
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.
The toil of survival is the unending burden of maintenance and sacrifice; our most valuable asset. It is exchanged hand to hand, mouth to mouth, and with pen on paper. Orders handed down, given, and taken without resistance or complaint. One faulty piece, and the mechanical system stutters. Its heart feels the pain.
As do we all, as I now, reminiscing about hues of gray in my memory, prepare my own sacrifice. One unmarked and unspoken. The only hand in this deal is my own. It’s a plan I’ve designed for many cycles. One I’ve questioned again and again, but only to be certain it was right.
I ponder the Temple of Life, tubes miles long feeding what it houses. They snake through every neighborhood like tentacles reaching out to keep watch on what it creates. The piston strokes eternal, pumping the great apparatus with all it needs to keep its labor going. It cries out in steeled agony; the wailing echoes across our sprawling metropolis, a remembrance that without suffering, there can be no creation.
We, in our feeble flesh can only bow in awe of its awesome nature—our Mother, our God, our Giver of Animation, the perpetrator of reproduction. It’s the source of this docile throng I am a part of. The creator of an unending mediocrity content with existing only to sustain existence. Nothing more, nothing less.
My most private thoughts, those hidden deep in the night, led me astray from tradition. I looked into the obscured night sky and wondered what was behind the curtain of civilization blocking our view of it. What did those long before us see?
That was the first line in my plan. And as it evolved, I learned the architecture of destruction.
I maintained conformity throughout this process of inner transformation. I had to remain blended with the community, else I be liquidated as fuel for the societal engine. I walked with the pack, expression blank, while exploring the vivid thoughts unfolding in my mind. A new dawn arose in my heart. A rising light made known all the dreams and wonders that my hands could never touch. To have this knowledge is a blessing and a curse. I’m grateful for the gift of illumination, yet sigh with grief that it cannot exist outside the realm of fantasy. A true metamorphosis within the confines of this autonomous world would not suit its function.
There was only one conclusion I could come to…
So the blueprint in my mind continued. Its foundation was built from hopes and dreams, but as they weathered, I constructed over them with sorrow and despair. Never have these things occurred to me before. A mindless automaton, I filed in with the system in which I was birthed, right where I belonged. I could not see past the horizon; only the menial tasks I was assigned from the moment I came into this world occupied my mind. But now I am awakened, now I can see.
The great mechanism that produces our producers is an abomination. We have aligned to the point where no figureheads are needed, no leaders are required to lead a population of sheep. Some may call this utopia, the apex of achievement, with our vast cities which are living, breathing entities themselves, and the peaceful nature of our lives within them, speak to the eradication of conflict and strife. But are these things not part of what make life alive? Are they not the darkness to give light meaning?
To suckle on the ribbed feeding tube you’re given is to accept death before it is dealt.
As I sign this contract in my mind, I leave my place of rest, the only space I’m free to pursue these ideas. I notice how moist my palms are as I close the door behind me. My legs are weak as I enter the assemblage of others going where they are needed. But the choice has been made, the plan set in motion.
I’ll consume no more, give nothing else to the needless demand we have forced upon ourselves. We have enslaved ourselves to no one master, but the endless living mechanism that we keep alive, so that it may sustain us. It’s a symbiotic relationship with no future, it’s stalled, stunted, halted at this time we’ve been stranded in for countless ages. Our biological mastery of life itself has taken that very thing from us. We’ve grown our infrastructure, and its living mass has covered all land and sea. It is the great connector, the infallible supreme being that has stolen our very souls by nothing more than its inherent purpose.
As I approach a crossing, I travel left instead of right. My heart races as I fear even a subtle change will raise the alarm of any passerby. I’m where I don’t belong, where I’m not deemed needed by the many. I’m a gear turning the wrong direction.
But no one takes notice. They only continue marching in unison as intended. They allow my place in line just as compliantly as anything any of us have ever done. As I continue toward my ultimate and last destination, my blood boils with the thrill of deviancy. This trifling act of defiance, this willful alteration to the system awakens my heart ever more. My insides bloom with life. I feel the air against my face, the impact of my feet against the ground. My skin tingles with anticipation. This radical digression stimulates my being, spawning a rebirth in my core self. I want to grin in the splendor of change, but I must be diligent in my reserve. I mustn’t reveal this revelation. Not if I want to achieve the end of this terminal journey.
My last meal churns in my gut as I see the Temple of Life stabbing the horizon. Its monumental height dwarfs all which surrounds it. It was created to be the creator, it is the edifice to represent all we are, the face of our inhumanity. It was once an icon of glory in my singular thought, but now I see past it, now my eyes are focused, and my heart is open.
It is why I must do what I must do.
As I approach, the living, breathing Mechanica towers before me in its sickening configuration. Black, ribbed pipelines crawl up its sides in geometric patterns, veins carrying nutrients essential for its purpose. Its curved edges and snaking girders mock me in their asymmetrical symmetry. The entrance, a great black maw waiting for no one. There are no guards, no one enters or leaves this place. I walk in, an unchecked heretic among my people.
The Great Queen Mother hangs in the center of the chamber by shining black chains. A tangle of gargantuan pipes and wires extends from her head up into the darkness of the hollow spire above. Feeding tubes penetrate her massive abdomen. It expands and contracts in rhythmic motion as young are pushed from within. They’re placed on a conveyor, ready to be checked, marked, and processed. I look down at the chip in my arm and vaguely remember my youth. I was a child once, birthed from this very same place, the same Mother.
For the first time since my awakening, regret creeps up and holds me by the throat. Suddenly, I don’t want to commit to what I intended. I feel…affection for Queen Mother, my Mother.
Her eyes look down upon me, an expression of anguish warps her face. She begs for mercy. Although a new concept, no words are needed for me to understand compassion. I sigh, knowing now my intentions are more right than ever. She wants this. More than any of us ever could.
I nod to her in the only gesture I can summon as a goodbye, and step to the pipeline which gives her life. I wrap my arms around its slick surface and pull. It rattles slightly in its port. I take a deep breath, squeeze tight, and wrench it loose with every bit of will I have. It falls to the floor, its torn end pumping white ooze. The port left in her belly leaks bodily fluids, they mix and congeal into a sickly black oil. I weep as it begins to cover my feet.
The throb of the Great Machine quiets, the pumping slows its rhythm. Mother takes a long breath, hot steam mists from her vents, and her once eternal hum of life ebbs away forever.
The scent of rot permeated the air; I knew I was close. I could almost taste the stench. I took each step with care—silence was essential. My eyes searched the darkness between the trees, looked for any sign of its bodily form. I tried to keep my imaginings to nil, as I didn’t want to spoil my initial reaction when my eyes finally witnessed its flesh. I wanted to see the dream for what it was, not for what it could be.
Movement in the brush ahead halted my breath. I listened to the silence that followed with fierce intent. The musky air thickened. But I heard no steps approach.
My heart pounded with a concoction of fear and excitement. I’d been hunting this legend since I was a boy. Those tales told around a fire, or with a few drinks—they stuck with me. They unraveled my focus on all other things. This was what I lived for. To find out what it really was.
Local lore said it might have once been human, an orphan raised by the wilderness. Others said it might be nature herself, risen from the earth to take vengeance upon anyone it could. No matter its origin, the stories said it traveled on all fours, and its nature was vicious and feral. If you think it’s close, it’s already too late. That’s how the stories always ended.
A release of breath shattered the silent night. It was hot against the back of my neck. I slowly turned to see what I yearned so badly for. My eyes went wide and took in all the moonlight had to offer. She towered above me, bare-breasted and malformed beyond description—an amalgam of evolutionary paths borrowed from a dozen species. But aside from her eyes and nose, her face was close to human.
She stared down at me as she reared up on her hind legs and let out an animalistic vocalization of aggression. I put my palms up and backed away a step to show I wasn’t a threat. She returned to four legs on the ground, her face now level with mine.
She approached, seemingly curious, and sniffed about my shirt collar. Her smell was so awful I could barely breathe. But I was content in that moment. I finally found what I was looking for. A smile spread across my lips as she ran her tongue along my neck.
Then the pain of her teeth sunk in. I heard the rending of my flesh in her mouth as it was torn from my neck. Agony, shock, disbelief, all surged through me in crashing waves. Her front leg pinned me to the ground. My ribs audibly broke beneath the weight.
Gasping for breath and drowning in my own blood, I struggled to gaze upon her one last time before she feasted on my body.
The rolling landscape extended beyond sight in all directions. The emptiness engulfed me in insignificance. This dead world I found myself on was as lonely as I. The howl of the constant wind was my only companion, and this planet was accompanied by a dying star that would one day stop sharing its warmth.
Tumultuous rumbles shook the ground. My compass pinned it south, so I headed north, away from whatever force caused the terrifying shakes. My footprints were swiftly erased by the constant gusts of sandy air. I mentally weighed how I might find my way back to the ship if I went too far, but disregarded those thoughts when I remembered there would be no reason to go back. It was irreparably damaged. I was stranded with no hope of rescue.
I knew this place was where my journey ended. Somewhere on this barren world my corpse would lay with no one to bury it. The distress call would eventually reach home, but by the time it did, it wouldn’t matter—the flesh will have rotted from my bones.
I almost wished for a crack in my visor, a tear in my suit, then at least the scythe would greet me with haste. But I had plenty of oxygen, I’d waste away before I suffocated.
I looked behind me every time the ground quaked. Despite my walking in the opposite direction, the vibration grew stronger. I could feel a violent power in the distance, something I didn’t want to be near. I supposed it didn’t matter, I’d meet my end here one way or another. But fear is the great motivator, it pushes one to survive even when there is no hope to be had. So I walked on.
Soon, daylight receded and the vast abyss of unreachable stars yawned above. I’d never felt so desolate and alone, never so meaningless and fleeting. Madness crept into my skull and began wrapping its fingers around my fading mind. Logic and training would soon fail me, I’d watch them fall with relief. They served me no more, not in this cursed place.
The next quake hit with ferocious tremors, its origin no longer beyond sight. The ground opened in front of me, sand poured in as the hole grew larger. Terror struck and slunk behind by back like the coward I was, fear wouldn’t even allow me to run.
As the sand began to move beneath my feet, I welcomed the swifter ending it would bring. This world would consume me. At least my miserable corpse would be buried after all.
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.
He stared at the photograph atop the fireplace mantle, the faces of his dear family. No joy rested on their lips, except for little Nicole. Her grin made his lips curl. Such a happy child; his niece was ever bright-eyed and full of pep.
Such a drab outfit for sunny weather, he thought, inspecting his attire—a stark contrast to the shade of everyone else’s fashion. But he supposed that was normal. Benny knew he was a dark splotch of spilled ink on the family tree. Everyone did. But they loved him anyway.
Tears came from the kitchen and he followed their somber melody. There sat his beloved sister, clutching the knit hat she made him last Christmas. The rest of the family milled about, releasing their own grief. It surprised him to see them dressed like himself—fit for a funeral.
His crying sister looked up to Mother. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
Pen of the Damned 