Short Stories
Dean
And Tulip Ann - Through the Continuum
The Twelve Labors Of Walter Turdley
Flat Black
A Very Short Tale; A Universal Story
10,000 Degrees of Separation
It was a barely discernable bump. I guess we thought that the jump through the Continuum was going to be more of a major issue. Hell, back in "98" we hit a small cow on the road in Mexico, and the ice in our tumblers of scotch nearly flew out the window, but this ... damn ice hardly even took notice as we passed through the interstellar matter like hot jalapenyas through a Mennonite. Of course the Airstream had taken on a new look but in the Continuum everything was expected to be different. Everything, except me and Tulip.
Tulip's hair was still blue and I still belched like I meant it, nothing had really changed. She was still the woman who owned my heart. Hell, back when everyone else said it couldn't be done, she laughed that gutsy, ball-busting laugh, tossed her blue hair back, thrust her chest out (I liked that part) and said "Hell, just cause no-one has ever taken an Airstream through the Continuum, doesn't mean me and Dean can't." By-God, now that's a helluva woman!
The first thing she said to me, after we woke up was, "Hon you want another scotch?" I peered at the surroundings and replied, "Hell no darling, we ain't in Kansas anymore so break out the tequila." After a little refreshment we noticed that we could exit the Airstream at any one of four different doors, that we hadn't had before. We also began to notice other oddities. Like we could cook breakfast either right-side up or up-side down, and depending on how you like your damn eggs one would be advantageous over the other. The hardest part for me though was sitting on the pot to take a whiz. My ol'pard would just kinda hang down the wrong way, and hell I'd be pissing in my face. So one day after enough of that I turned to Tulip and said "Tulip, bitch-up the Airstream babe. Time for us to be making tracks."
Well she bitched-it-up, I fired-it-up and we skedaddled out of the Continuum. Now we're back to the normal interstellar mess and a fine mess it is. There are times we miss the Continuum, but HELL! we can go there any'ol time.
The Twelve Labors Of Walter Turdley
Without finishing, King put the submission face down on his desk and punched the intercom button. "Frances would you have Jillian come in, please."
Jillian opened the door immediately and walked in with Robert on her heels. Actually almost in her heels, a place everyone knew he would rather be. "I told you." He crowed over Jillian's height. "See, didn't I tell you? Isn't that simply unbelievable?"
"Sorry King couldn't keep the wind from blowing in." She shrugged, resigned to the fact that Robert was one of those eternally internal problems. King shook his head and motioned for her to sit. Robert sat next to her crossing his legs, knee to kneecap, hands linked together in the "ready to gossip" position.
"Robert I don't remember inviting you to attend this meeting." "Oh come on King, really after all I was the first one to read his submission and this is going to be so good. Pleeeese?"
King sliced and diced the interloper with a glance. "I don't want a damned circus in here Robert, understand? Keep your comments to yourself or I'll personally boot your butt down the street. I don't know what this guy's problem is but I don't need a lawsuit today." King's gaze could stop an oncoming truck and everyone on the staff avoided it like the plague, except Robert and Jillian. Robert was immune to King's hard edged sobriety simply because he was simple, in an uncomplicated way. Jillian was inured to King from years of battering. She was like hillside limestone after eons of erosion, smooth and unruffled on the exterior, impenetrable bedrock beneath. The three had worked together for the best part of fifteen years and fancied that they had seen everything there was to see in publishing hell. "Hey, promise to zip the lip." He did his imitation of Jack from television. "Promise, zip not a word from me." Knees crossed, hands clasped. "After this."
King picked up the manuscript again, looked at the title, sighed and shook his head. "And uh, this guy's out in the lobby wanting to know what happened to his submission?" King was baffled and if he had a sense of humor he would have been rolling on the floor. Jillian nodded an affirmative. "Our lobby? Demanding an answer? Right?"
"Yep." She said and felt a smile start to inch its way up her blouse from the pit of her stomach. She bit her bottom lip remembering the "circus" comment and yet wanting to laugh out loud at the absurd situation. "Really, he's just sitting out there and he won't leave and he's demanding to see "the King" and I'm guessing that would be you Your Majesty." Robert coughed in an effort to suppress laughter. King lifted his eyes and stared.
"I didn't say anything." Robert stuttered and stuffed it back down. King reached for the intercom.
Walter Turdley sat, staring indignantly over his top of his glasses. King simply stared back, sighed and then spoke. "Mr. Turdley " King ignored a muffled giggle that came from Robert and continued. "Mr. Turdley this submission, the one that you sent in for our contest, is plainly a plagiarized work and now you're here demanding what?"
Agitated, Turdley sat forward. "Mr. King I demand to know what kind of company you run? After weeks of writing and the money it cost to enter your contest and I've I've been disqualified?" Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth and the bill of his ball cap bounced up and down with his displeasure. "Now you have the gall to tell me that I'm a plagiarist, as if as if I'm some kind of unimaginative criminal. Well we'll see about that. I've got an attorney friend and he knows the rules damn you." Turdley stood and leaned forward, spacing his palms out on King's desk. "You think just because you're a big company you can do what the " King took a worn paperback from his drawer and slid it across the desk, it stopped, title tilted so that Turdley paused and looked down cranking his head to one side.
"What?" Turdley questioned.
"Mr. Turdley sit down and open to page 159."
"So Hamilfuck's Mythology. What's that got to do with anything." Turdley continued to lean.
"Isn't it Hamilton?" Robert squeaked.
"It's Hamilfuck you you little nandy." Turdley picked up the volume leaving sweaty palm prints on the desktop.
"Go on." King insisted evenly. "Page 159 Walter."
Turdley flipped through the pages without difficulty then stopped. Shifting his weight he lowered himself slowly back to the edge of the chair. Across the room Jillian could see what King couldn't. As the disturbed little man sat and read, head down, tears began to fall onto the pages. Robert squirmed uncomfortably next to her. Minutes went by quietly then he stood up, walked to the door and left holding the book, a stubby finger stabbed into the book marking page 159.
"Hey!" Robert said, starting after Turdley." King, your book?" "Never mind he can have the book. Just let him go."
Standing, Jillian peered out the open door. "Well I made sure that security was waiting so they'll see him out but I think that he was more than embarrassed. Did you see him? He was crying."
King closed his eyes and rubbed his face with both hands, something he did when he wished that he worked as a convenience store clerk instead of a chief editor. "I don't know. What do you say about someone that submits "The Twelve Labors of Hercules" like he just dreamed up this great, original story yesterday? Hell it's common, everyday mythology. And then on top of that . to write it word for word from something that's been in copyright since what, the 40's? I just don't know."
It was a fine day for flying. Standing on the ledge he looked out beyond himself as a rush of warming air blew up from below stealing his cap. Touching his bare head vaguely saying goodbye to a loved possession he raised his arms and flew forward. He didn't jump out very far so on descent his body hit the wall of the canyon turning him end over end in freewheeling acrobatics well before the final impact that liquefied his bones and burst him like a melon. The valley wind howled in recognition of the fabulous feat and as the canyon walls heated with indifference and afternoon sun, there was a slight increase in humidity as Walter's last breath evaporated.
"Not now Robert." King rubbed his face.
"King you've got to hear this." Robert's disembodied head floated just inside the door ready to be pulled back if something was thrown. "No really Robert. I don't have time ." King barked.
"You do for this, I mean seriously the weirdest thing, really if it's not you won't even have to fire me again. Promise, I'll just leave."
This time Jillian followed Robert in. They both sat and then looked at each other as if one was waiting for the other.
"What!" King yelled and they both jumped.
Jillian started. "Walter Turdley. Well he "
"Look if that little weasel wants trouble we have attorney's all day long." King leaned defiantly towards the two.
"No it's not that King." She went on. "He jumped off Skyline View Canyon yesterday."
King settled back slowly. "No shit." He mentally rewound yesterday morning's events and began to regret his meeting with Turdley. "No shit." "Well it's more than just that." Robert broke in. "After they found his body they went to his home the guy had murdered his entire family. Three little boys and his wife and from what they can tell about a month ago just about the time he made his submission. They found copies of his submission everywhere like a dozen copies."
"Jeez." King exhaled and then reached for the intercom. "Frances, call the police and find out who's in charge of this thing with Walter Turdley. They'll know what you're talking about. Then have them call me." Jillian and Robert looked at each other then at King. "What?" Jillian asked. "Well I don't know why that poor man killed his family but I sure know why he entered his submission and that might help." King sat back and rubbed his face.
"Well?" Robert prompted, the gossip position assumed. "What well? You're both in the publishing business, don't you know anything about Hercules?" King looked perturbed, sat up and started back to his work. "You two star editors have an evening assignment and that is to find out just why Hercules had twelve labors. Now don't let the door hit you." King sat alone for awhile then pulled Turdley's submission from his file. He weighed it carefully, thoughtfully in one hand. In a strange way it had not been plagiarized, there was no anguish in Hamilton's work. He flipped past the cover sheet and started to read again, this time he would finish it.
- The Bruja -
Her breath rasped up against the back of her dry throat. Running nimbly, she carried the unconscious child over her shoulder with ease, only the darkening, rumpled cloud's overhead watched in silent witness, her deed. The child stirred and began to moan. The woman, wind shredding her hair so that it blew in wild tangles, stopped and laid the child on the ground. The girl moaned once more and then opened her eyes. She opened her mouth, but before she could scream the woman's hardened fist met her temple, knocking her senseless again. The witness's sped by overhead, but now they acknowledged the scene with a snap of lightning and the deafening approval of nearby thunder. These sole spectators brought long desired relief ,and as they pressured each other up against the eastern mountains rain began to fall erasing the tracks of this woman stealing away from the Pueblo.
Dumping the child on the floor of the stable, the woman lit a small candle allowing just enough light to see with but not enough to be discovered. Tearing through the large confines she brought back rope and bound the child's hands and feet and stuffed a rag into her mouth pressing it back hard into the small windpipe. Mercifully, the child remained unaware of the woman and the lightning; she would have been terrified, she would have wept and struggled, now she simply played insentient host to the woman's madness.
"That will do. Yes, that will do nicely," said the woman in low Castillian. She tied a final loop around the small feet and then stepped back to the other end of the rope dangling from a beam overhead. Pulling, one claw-like hand upon another she soon had the girl spinning upside down over the hard packed dirt-floor. The dim light of the candle fixed a pastel story of the two occupants against the far wall, as their shadows danced oddly and played a softer, more hallucinatory narrative to the scene.
Placing a brass urn beneath the slowly turning figure, the woman with tangled black hair squatted down beside the vessel. She retrieved a knife from her waistband. Then, as if slaughtering the evening's meal she grabbed the girl's hair and yanked down to stop the spinning. With a deft stroke of the blade she slit the girl's throat and pulled her head hard to one side so that the draining blood rushed evenly into the cold brass container below. She licked the knife, carefully. She licked her fingers, intensely and then sat back to watch until the flow slowed to a stop. It did not take long; she was a small girl.
In the faint light of the room the woman's features were thin, delicately Castillian, some little Mayan, and remained stoic as she uttered strange passages. She gripped a rosary that she had earlier hidden in the stable, placed there so that it would be defiled by the animals of the hacienda. Dropping the beads and cross onto a stone she picked up another stone, and then between the two she ground the religious thing to small fractions of what it had been. The fragments she carried to the brass crucible and scraped them off into the blood while soft, rapid incantations of dementia drifted overhead.
Stripping herself bare, she stepped out of the stable and into what had earlier been only a passage of dark clouds but was now a steady hard rain partnered with a hostile wind. Unfazed by the conditions, in fact heartened by their company, she strode with the bloody potion to a wall that was in the process of being constructed.
It was only three feet in height with a promising future of no less than seven feet. It surrounded the hacienda, and it was meant to guard against those who would harm its occupants. Anxiety pushed and prodded at the realm of her sanity, and each night she awoke terrified, and each day she sat apprehensive in a hostile land where people like her and her children were butchered or taken into captivity by wild, unthinking, naked savages.
The adobes were stacked in rows and were many, almost enough now for the completion of the wall. Overhead, a distant flash of lightning displayed the flat, well-made surfaces as the woman walked past them and to the mixing yard. Here, massive adobe bricks were made from the combination of earth, straw, water, and then formed by hand into the heavy pieces used to protect, and to confine. It was here at the origin of the process she stopped; naked and dripping, wet hair lashing like wild angry snakes, nipples hardened more from the kill than from the cold. It was here that she brought the offering, the gift stolen from the girl. Here, she bent and lowered the bowl to the ground, then with her knife she slit her own palm and squeezed drops of blood into the mixture, a gesture of both partnership and domination over the essence of the girl. Breathing a staccato litany into the wind she carefully walked the length and breadth of the mixing yard sprinkling the contents of the urn over the dirt that was to be used for the last layer of bricks. She would watch over this making to insure that the consecrated ground was laid as the final piece of the wall.
Entering the stable she tossed the emptied urn to one side. She had washed it clean in the rain, and it gleamed in the candlelight. Walking across the room she pulled a heavy, long-handled axe from its position of repose and brought it with her to the girl. Various parts would have to be buried around the wall as the final act.
The night was not yet done, and while the woman worked she contemplated, with satisfaction, her future protector but not the future of her soul and how it would crisp up nicely in some blistering corner of hell.
- The tagger, Chuco -
Positioned unconditionally, at the dead-end of one of the few remaining dirt roads in the barrio was the wall. Barren lots and ruined, empty homes stood on all sides of the wall except along the street side where weeds laden with broken glass, and trapped trash cozied up to its care. Pyracantha sprouted in varied profusion around the outside of the wall, the thorny stuff making access to most of its surface impossible for all but the smallest of creatures.
Inside, the tumbled-down remains of the Velasquez hacienda sat noiseless and empty. As old as the city that now encircled it. The home had been built three hundred years earlier than this night, and the surrounding wall, built by the bruja Marta Velasquez to protect the home, remained without loss, organic and purposeful. There were whispered stories about the wall; about how the evil curandera had built it with innocent blood and about how anyone, who had ever contemplated the destruction of the home or the wall, had come to some grisly end and about its baneful immortality.
So, while the wall remained ageless and everything near it decayed, quiet, mostly uneasy discussions were held to frighten little children, but no one in the barrio cared to speak too loudly about the wall, afraid that it might perceive them.
This night, a light rain was falling when Chuco pulled his car up to the wall. Leaving the lights on and the motor running, he reached under the seat and retrieved a can of spray paint. Sliding out of the car, he stumbled up to a bare spot in the weeds. This would be his best tag. No gang had ever dared to tag the wall.
"Pinche culos," he swore to himself, "They won't even come over here. It's just a damn wall and if anyone can tag it it's me. Wait till tomorrow. Ha! Wait till I tell'em to come look at this."
The La Familia gang tag covered the neighborhood, and other parts of the barrio, mostly by his hand. Chuco had built an underground reputation as one of the most prolific taggers in the city. But after tonight, after this, everyone would know that he was the best.
He laid his palm on the vertical barrier. It was warm. Adobe retains the heat of the sun, but it had been uncommonly cloudy and cold for the past few days. Chuco shook the can of Flat Black waiting for the sound of the ball and paying little attention to the strange warmth of the wall. Tequila, lots of tequila, a gram of hash and impudence had dulled him, and now even the strange faint sizzle that the raindrops made as they collided with the wall seemed natural.
Hand propped against the wall he leaned over a small, prickly Pyracantha. He raised the can, pressed the valve down and anticipated the soft whisper of propellant.
No sound came from the can, but a sudden irregular wind swept up from behind pushing him forward, and then stopped. A strange soft sucking sound could be heard close by. Startled, he moved to turn but couldn't. His hand, the one propped against the wall, wouldn't come loose, and instantly he knew where the sucking was coming from. The wall surface was heating up rapidly. He pulled again at his hand, but rather than feeling it peel away from the wall he actually felt it begin to sink further into the adobe as the sucking sound grew louder.
Chuco howled incoherently, eyes wide, pulse erupting, he dropped the can, grasped his wrist and pulled. Panic quickened his struggle, but still drunk he fell forward into the little Pyracantha. Without warning, his car alarm howled to life, horn blasting, lights flashing. Now the screaming and the extraordinary pleading with God began in earnest.
A Very Short Tale; A Universal Story
Once upon a time, a small gravity bound body rotated around a sun. For this venerate rock it was the best of times and the worst of times. Ruled by a single sun during part of its rotation and one gloriously capricious moon for the other, it was bathed in just the right amount of warmth and light. Every living thing; no matter beast or beauty, flower or fowl, human or single cell at the oceans bottom, survived the same heat and a familiar cold if only by a matter of a few degrees. This is the story of one particular day, and this is what happened.
* * *
2008 - August 12th - Arctic Circle
12:09:36
PM
Jamie sat and watched the ice curiously. "It's turning to water so fast,
how funny," He said to himself. He had been asked to come here to watch
and study glacial melt and damned if it wasn't happening right before
his eyes. "Hey," he shouted out to the rest of the team "you see this?"
In the early morning light they were just coming out, still zipping up
their coats.
12:10:56
PM
"Hey," he yelled again, but this time it was because the ice that he was
sitting on began to evaporate, right from beneath his ass. "What the hell!
He looked up to find the rest of the team only ghostly figures in a dense
steamy fog that was rising from the surroundings.
12:11:30
PM
Jamie fell to his knees clawing at his throat. His windpipe continued
to fill with water vapor so thick he couldn't breath. He made out the
forms of the rest of the team. He couldn't even scream his own pain as
he watched those around him begin to melt.
12:12:30
PM
Once upon a time a small gravity-bound body rotated around a sun. All
that was there, good and fair, all that was agony and strife, all that
was life seared, ungraciously, to atoms by an unexpected solar flare.
At a distance of ninety-three million miles, the sun may seem somewhat aloof, but at the speed of light it's blessings are received in less time than it takes for a brisk morning walk.
~ July 12th, 2018 ~
10:07:56
AM
Doctor
Zars Lindquist knelt to inspect the ice. He wiped his goggles, unsure
that what he was witnessing was real. Mumbling to himself the scientist
doubted immediately what was taking place. "That's funny . . . it's turning
to water so fast."
Lindquist had been asked to visit to the outpost to study polar glacial melt, and damned if it wasn't melting, right before his eyes.
He stood up. "Hey," He shouted, waving to the others. "you see this?" In the early light, the rest of the team were just making their way out of the shelter.
10:10:01
AM
"Hey!" He yelled again. The ice that he was standing on had given way,
turning to slush and he slipped backwards. He righted himself. "What the
hell?" He squinted, looking around for the rest of the team. They had
become ghostly figures in a curious, rapidly rising mist.
10:11:30
AM
Zars fell to his knees, he clawed desperately at his throat. His windpipe
filled with liquid, he was drowning. Frantically he searched for the rest
of the team. He screamed, but it was only a damp anguished gurgle, sounding
very much like the popping of his skin as that began to blister and then
melt.
10:12:36
AM
Time is a human device meant to mark passage, and this day, this time
is only remarkable in that it is when the spent lick of a twenty-million-mile
solar flare began its casual roll back to the sun's surface.
For uncounted eons the total amount of energy emitted by this body remained constant, nurturing, until deep within, too many particles of hydrogen collided with too many particles of helium.
There are places where even our nightmares fear to go and when this fiery flood broke it was an undreamed of sound. Outward it whipped, the startling snap of a 10,000 degree caress, seperating an infinite number of atomic particles from a dozen-billion screams that roared their own meek reply. Then it retreated, leaving only a hot cinder where there had once been awareness, of time.
All of this was barely discernable to a universe busy racing to the edges of itself.