Midnight From Beyond the Stars
Author: Gabino Iglesias; James Newman; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; Tim Curran; Lee Murray; Ronald Kelly; Samantha Kolesnik
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Dark; Paranormal; Horror; Literary; Fiction
Description: There's life out there... and it's coming for you!It starts as a mild rattling of the windows disturbing your pleasant dreams. Then the trees outside your bedroom rustle from a mysterious celestial wind. When the neighborhood dogs erupt in a cacophony of terrified barking, you're jerked from your peaceful slumber. Through bleary eyes you look at the display on the nightstand. Midnight. A roar cracks the obsidian night sky as a ball of blinding light streaks out of the heavens, crashing with an earthshaking explosion on the other side of the hill. Racing to the open window, you smell the electr
Publisher: Silver Shamrock Publishing

MIDNIGHT

FROM BEYOND

THE STARS

MIDNIGHT

FROM BEYOND

THE STARS

Edited by Kenneth W. Cain

www.silvershamrockpublishing.com

Compilation Copyright © 2021 Silver Shamrock Publishing

Individual stories Copyright © 2021 to their authors

Front Cover Design by Kealan Patrick Burke

Internal Images by Bob Veon

Formatted by Kenneth W. Cain

Edited by Kenneth W. Cain

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Richard Chizmar

“Attack of the Killer Tumbleweed!” by Antonia Rachel Ward

“Abduction Annie” by Ronald Kelly

“Roadkill” by Samantha Kolesnik

“Embryo” by Tim Curran

“Scan for Life” by Jason Parent

“Unravelling” by Stephanie Ellis

“Snow Blind” by Kristopher Triana

“Death and Decay” by Shelly Campbell

“The Fear of Fallen Leaves” by James Newman

“The Bulge” by Rob E. Boley

“Phantom Limb” by Kay Hanifen

“Incident on Saddle Road” by Brian Moreland

“Skin-Wrapped Gift” by Chad Lutzke

“We Still Have Time” by Amanda Headlee

“I Will Meet You There” by Brennan LaFaro

“A Monstrous Hunger” by Simon Clark

“To Sing with the Choir Invisible” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

“Too Many to Count” by Jeremy Hepler

“A Cat Named Sue” by Jennifer Soucy

“The Bluehaul” by Lee Murray

“The Little Voice” by Gabino Iglesias

“Count Backward From Ten” by Meghan Arcuri

“Midnight Dreary” by Owl Goingback

“Skin Tags” by Vivian Kasley

“Virescent Sky” by Tim Meyer

“Sometimes All of Our Thoughts are Misgiven” by Janine Pipe

“Whatever You Want Most” by Megan E. Hart

“Who Built the Moon?” by Tyler Jones

“Stasis” by John Lynch

“Fourteen Gallons” by Red Lagoe

“Broken Star” by Lucas Milliron

“Chittering” by Bob Pastorella

Introduction
by Richard Chizmar

I’m not going to comment on the individual stories in Midnight From Beyond the Stars. I could do that—and with great enthusiasm—but then you’d have a lengthy delay before you got to the stories themselves, and that’s not a good thing. Trust me.

I will say this: the tales found within these pages are consistently well crafted, entertaining, and thought provoking. They’re all good stories—a rare feat these days—and there are even a handful of genuinely great ones.

But I’m looking at the bigger picture here.

I want to tell you why editors like Kenneth W. Cain and publishers like Silver Shamrock are heroes of mine and always will be.

First, let’s step into our time machine and travel back in time a bit.

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, back when dinosaurs walked the earth, the short horror fiction landscape looked very different than it does today. There was a plethora of magazines—both professional and small press—not to mention new release hardcover and paperback anthologies facing cover-out on bookstore shelves each and every week. Magazines such as The Twilight Zone, Night Cry, The Horror Show, and Weird Tales represented the best of the best. More modest efforts like Deathrealm, Grue, and New Blood published smaller numbers but no less quality fiction. Dozens of other independently produced fanzines represented a sort of “minor league system” for beginning writers and artists.

The anthologies of the day ran a wide range of themes—from quiet horror to the more visceral splatterpunk, from creeping psychological terror to chilling supernatural. Editors Charles Grant, Martin Greenberg, and Ed Gorman became legendary figures, and we all hustled to appear within their contents’ pages. Looking back after all these years, it sure was a helluva time to be working in the trenches trying to earn your chops as a writer. Sit down and write a scary story, pretty much any kind of scary story, and there was a market out there somewhere just waiting for you to submit. As for making the big bucks…well, that was another story entirely.

But then came the inevitable horror bust of the mid-90s, and to some degree the short horror fiction market has never recovered. At least, not to any extent that resembles the golden-hued glory days I just discussed.

Which is why I make it a point to champion folks like Kenneth Cain and publishers like Silver Shamrock every chance I get. As a longtime editor and publisher, I know firsthand how much energy and how many hours it takes to release a decent anthology. As editor, you possess a specific vision in mind for your book and you go to great lengths to properly capture that vision. First, you spend countless days poring through either a slush pile or an invite stack—sometimes both—looking for appropriate stories. Once you find enough of them, you pick up the telephone or power up your laptop and start spreading the good news to the accepted authors. Soon after, you are forced to undergo the unenviable task of rejecting tales from respected colleagues and oftentimes, personal friends. And then comes the real work—editing the stories you’ve chosen. Some tales require a handful of line edits, in and out surgery that can be performed in a matter of minutes. Others take major and painstaking reconstruction, and weeks of back and forth with the writer. It’s behind-the-scenes, foundation building laboring of the first degree and not very glamorous. The satisfaction of a job well done is most often the greatest reward for an anthology editor. Reason #19 I admire and respect Kenneth Cain and many others like him.

Then, there is the publisher. First things first: anthologies aren’t cheap. Not if done properly. Pay a fair word rate and an average-length anthology of 80,000 words will run you at least four grand for just the stories. Add an editor’s fee, professional artwork and cover design, and interior page design, and you’re looking at quite a bit more. And we haven’t even discussed printing and promotional costs.

Hopefully, you get the picture: giving the green-light for a quality horror anthology takes a significant financial commitment, as well as an abundance of faith and (no, I’m not being overly dramatic here) a great deal of courage. It also takes a genuine love and passion for the genre. You can’t fake that, folks.

Now I promise I’m not trying to bore you with the nuts and bolts of twenty-first century publishing, and I’m not merely trying to shine a spotlight on the unsung heroes of the horror genre (although that is and always will be a worthy endeavor).

What I’m actually attempting to do here is pull back the curtain a bit to explain why a book like Midnight Beyond the Stars is every bit of a modern day miracle and cause for joyous celebration.

Because, quite simply, it shouldn’t exist.

The overall risk is too great, the reward too rare and fleeting. Most readers nowadays want novels—the fatter the better—and the heck with short stories. They’re an antiquated art form, they complain; their time has come and gone.

But then someone like Kenneth W. Cain emerges from the crowd. He finds an independent publisher like Silver Shamrock, works with them to develop an idea—a vision—and despite the long odds, a horror anthology is born. It takes faith and dedication and nurturing to bring it to fruition and make it shine, but these folks have those things in spades, and it gets done. The work gets done.

And, here in your hands, you hold the final result.

Thirty-two short stories.

More than 400 pages of high quality fiction.

Midnight From Beyond the Stars.

A miracle.

Perhaps a small one, but a miracle all the same.

Now turn the page and get busy celebrating.

Attack of the Killer Tumbleweed!

by Antonia Rachel Ward

They came!

They rolled!

They shredded!

Nothing can stop the killer tumbleweed when they descend on Las Vegas!

Starring Dean Valentine, and introducing Glitter, the most stunning showgirl on the strip. You won’t want to miss ATTACK OF THE KILLER TUMBLEWEED!

Showing in all good movie theaters now.

Glitter knew the newlywed was gonna cause trouble the moment she walked through the dressing room door. Or rather, Dean Valentine was gonna cause trouble. He shot the girl a white-toothed smile that reminded Glitter of his song, “Jimmy the Shark.”

Crusin’ the bars

Lookin’ for someone to bite.

The newlywed—blonde, doe-eyed, stumbling like a new baby foal in her wedge heels—well, she looked like she was just asking to be bit.

Glitter turned to her dressing table, pulling out the pins that attached her feather headdress, and watched through the mirror as the husband shook hands with Dean. The husband wasn’t much to write home about. Stocky shouldered like an Iowa farm boy, with a doughy complexion and a buzz cut. He didn’t stand a chance against Dean, who still had his Hollywood glaze, even if it was a bit chipped at the edges these days.

“Buddy Hitchcock,” said the farm boy, although his accent sounded more East Coast than Iowan. “And this is Cindy-Lou.”

“We just got married!” squeaked Cindy-Lou. “And I’m so gosh darn excited to meet you, Mr. Valentine. Wasn’t my Buddy just the sweetest to arrange this for our honeymoon? Do you know, I used to have your posters on my wall when I was a girl?”

Glitter peered at Cindy-Lou’s reflection. Hell, she must only have been talking about a year or two ago. She surely wasn’t much more than twenty, now.

“It’s an honor, ma’am,” said Dean, his eyes twinkling. And then he went ahead and winked. Actually goddamn winked, with her new husband right there, looking all puffed-up and proud like a bird in full plumage.

Cindy-Lou started giggling uncontrollably.

“Don’t let him charm you.” Glitter put down her headdress and turned to face them. “He’s a real heartbreaker.”

Cindy-Lou giggled some more. “Heartbreaker” was one of Dean’s most popular hits. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, was Glitter’s motto. She couldn’t stop Dean from playing around, but she could make herself part of the act.

“I saw you on stage!” Cindy-Lou said, suddenly turning her attention to Glitter. “You’re a fine dancer, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I better be,” Glitter replied. “Been doing the same act for over a decade. Name’s Glitter, by the way. Say, you folks want a drink?” She headed for Dean’s drinks cabinet. “We got whiskey, vodka…”

“Oh, I don’t drink hard liquor,” Cindy-Lou said. “I’ll have a water, if you don’t mind.”

Water. Glitter poured her a gin and tonic and popped a little umbrella in it to soften the blow.

“This is Vegas, baby doll. We don’t do temperance.”

Cindy-Lou smiled politely, and took a dainty sip—so tiny it made Glitter want to slap her. Instead, she turned her attention to Dean and Buddy as she poured the rest of the drinks.

“…and then I got the job with NASA,” Buddy was saying.

Dean’s eyes had glazed over, and he accepted the whiskey Glitter put in his hand without a word. “NASA? You’ll have to explain that one to me, kid.”

“Well, sir, it was only established last year. July 1958.” Buddy glowed with pride. “My team was one of the first to be transferred over.”

“Dean don’t read the newspapers,” Glitter said.

Dean knocked back his shot, chuckling. “Old man like me can’t be expected to know all the latest developments.”

“Oh, but you’re not old!” Cindy-Lou effused.

Dean turned his gaze on her with a satiny smile. “Older than you, popsicle. What are you, eighteen? Nineteen?”

“Twenty-two.” Cindy-Lou’s eyes shone. The way she looked at Dean, you’d have thought he was some kind of saint, and not a washed-up forty-something trying to sleaze his way through the tattered remains of his career. Besides, under that red velvet lounge suit he was getting a bit of a paunch. Unfortunately, there were always girls like Cindy-Lou to persuade him he hadn’t quite lost his touch.

Glitter poured herself a generous martini and sucked on the olive, catching Buddy’s eye as he stood in the corner, his opportunity to show off about his job now long past.

“You staying in the hotel?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

“Hey, Glitz, why don’t you take Buddy on the backstage tour?” Dean said, as though the idea had only just occurred to him. “Sure he’d love to meet the other girls, wouldn’t you, Bud?” He gave Buddy a wink.

“If it’s all right with you, sir, I’ll just stay here,” said Buddy.

Glitter knew her role. She downed her martini and sashayed forward, the beads on her costume jingling.

“Come with me,” she said, taking Buddy’s arm. “The girls sure will be thrilled to meet a man who works on the space program, won’t they, Dean?”

“They sure will.” Dean didn’t take his eyes off Cindy-Lou as Glitter hustled her husband out the door.

“So are you some kinda astronaut?” Glitter asked, as she led Buddy through the back of the theater.

“No,” said Buddy. He seemed morose, and kept glancing over his shoulder. “A propulsion engineer.”

“A what?”

“A rocket scientist. Say, can’t we just go back? I don’t like to leave Cindy-Lou alone.”

“She’s not alone,” Glitter said. “I’m sure she and Dean are having a real nice chat. Here,” she added, steering him towards a nearby fire exit, “why don’t we step outside? The strip is real pretty at night.”

She opened the door, and the heat hit them, the air still dry as cinders even after dark. Glitter led the way along the block to where a blinking light show in shades of blue, green, and purple signaled the main entrance to the Peacock Hotel. Her hip clicked now and then as she walked, an irritating reminder that it was only a matter of time until her high-kicking days were over, and she would be relegated to working the craps tables on the casino floor.

“You got a cigarette?” she asked, stopping on the corner and ignoring the tourists who tried to snap Polaroids of her in her costume.

“Sure.” Buddy patted his pockets until he found a pack of Marlboros and lit one for her, followed by one for himself. For a while, they smoked in silence, Buddy gazing at the lights glittering all down the strip. A stray tumbleweed drifted past their feet.

“That’s Dean’s Cadillac.” Glitter indicated a sea-green convertible parked close to the front door. “Nice, ain’t it?”

“Sure is.” Buddy barely glanced at the car. He took a drag of his cigarette, then added, “I really ought to get back to Cindy-Lou. It’s late.”

Glitter slipped her arm through his and pressed up against his side. “Stay a little. There’s no rush.”

“No, I— Hey, d’you see that?”

Glitter followed his pointed finger. There was something in the distance. A fuzziness. A cloud obscuring the lights further down the strip.

“A dust storm,” she said. “We better get inside.”

A scream pierced the darkness.

“That ain’t no dust storm,” Buddy said, squinting. “It looks like…tumbleweed.”

He was right. It was tumbleweed. Thousands upon thousands of the puffy weeds, bouncing down the strip like balls dropped out of a giant bucket. Ahead of them, people were running. Panicking. Falling. Glitter had seen tumbleweeds pile up before, when the wind was strong—enough, sometimes, to block entire roads in the desert—but nothing like this.

“There’s just…so many of them.” She backed away as the balls bore down on them.

Up ahead, a tourist turned, trying to snap a photograph, only for the wave to engulf him completely. Glitter heard him shout as he went down, a howl of pain that sliced right through her. A tumbleweed flew past her head, splattering blood.

“Come on! Move!” Buddy pulled her back along the sidewalk, heading for the fire exit.

Glitter stumbled in her high heels. Tripped. Almost fell. A tumbleweed latched onto her ankle, and she felt it…bite.

“Oww! It hurt me!”

“Inside! Come on!” Buddy pushed her through the fire exit and slammed it behind him.

He stopped, panting, with his back pressed up against the door. There was a scratching sound, like the clawing of a thousand fingernails, as the weeds passed by. Then, silence.

Buddy stared at Glitter.

“That happen often?” he asked.

“No,” said Glitter. “That don’t happen often.”

They found Dean and Cindy-Lou out by the pool. When they’d arrived at an empty dressing room, Buddy had gotten mad. He’d stormed his way out of the theater and halfway across the casino floor before Glitter persuaded him to look outside. The pool was Dean’s favorite place to take prospective conquests. She knew, because that was where he’d taken her. There was something about the stillness of the water at night—the dim glow of the lights, the hum of the cicadas—that made it the most romantic place in the hotel after dark.

Cindy-Lou perched on the edge of a sun-lounger, sipping a fruit cocktail through a curly straw. Dean was opposite, close enough for his knees to touch hers, smoking a Marlboro.

He looked up as they approached; took in Glitter’s bloodied ankle and ripped fishnets.

“What happened to you?”

“Didn’t you see?” Glitter said. But aside from a couple of damp tumbleweeds drifting in the pool, there was no sign of the invasion that had swamped the strip. She sat down on a spare lounger and slipped off her shoes, flexing her injured ankle.

“That looks nasty.” Buddy crouched down to examine her leg. “You oughta see a doctor for that.” He picked up her foot—gently, but it still made Glitter wince. Her skin hung off in shreds, as though she’d put it through a snare of barbed wire.

“Looks like I’ll be on the craps tables sooner than I thought,” she quipped, but nobody laughed.

Buddy, still holding her foot, looked up at her with his round, farm boy eyes. In the dim light, Glitter thought, he was almost cute.

“What was that?” he said, as though she somehow held all the answers.

“That,” said Glitter, “was some crazy shit. Dean, you gotta come see. Come upstairs to the suite and look out the window.”

So they went upstairs to the suite Glitter shared with Dean—when he was in the mood. When he wasn’t, Glitter had her own room further down the building, but she preferred Dean’s suite for its vast windows and panoramic view of the strip. Tonight, though, that view was obliterated by the tumbleweed, piled up storys high along the road, as far as the eye could see.

“Damn,” was all Dean had to say about it. “Damn.” He shook his head and went to pour a drink.

Cindy-Lou stood so close to the window her nose almost touched it. “How’re they gonna clear it all up?” she wondered aloud. Then, turning suddenly to Buddy with a wail in her voice, “We were gonna walk to Fremont Street tomorrow!”

“Never mind that,” said Buddy. “We gotta get Glitter’s ankle seen to first. Is there a doctor in the hotel?”

Glitter shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Then we better get to the hospital.”

“We can’t go out in that!” Cindy-Lou complained. “Look at it! It’s like a jungle.”

“Well, I’m not leaving you here.” Buddy’s eyes strayed to Dean. “Perhaps we should all go. Glitter’s gonna need help to walk.”

Dean knocked back his whiskey. “It’s too far to walk,” he said, decisively. “We’ll take my car.”

They stepped out of the elevator and came to a complete stop. The Peacock’s marble-floored reception hall was crammed with people, but for once they weren’t haranguing the check-in staff. Instead, they sat or lay on the floor—bleeding, injured, dying.

“It’s a disaster zone,” Cindy-Lou breathed.

Glitter looked at the glass front doors. Behind the gold “PH” monogrammed push handles, tumbleweed was piled as high as the ceiling. A few balls had even drifted into the reception. Buddy walked over to one and crouched down to touch it. He drew his hand back hastily.

“It’s sharp as razor blades,” he said. “This isn’t tumbleweed—look.”

Glitter looked. Buddy was right. The plant was no plant at all. Beneath the layer of desert dust that had gathered on its twisted tendrils, wire glinted.

“It looks man made,” she said, peering closer. Then she jumped back with a yelp.

It was moving. With a little screeching sound that put Glitter’s teeth on edge, it rolled towards her. She backed away, coming up against Dean, who stood behind her. The thing didn’t stop. It kept coming, until Dean stepped around Glitter, put out his foot, and kicked it square across the room.

“High school soccer,” he said. “Knew it would come in handy one day.”

The razor-wire ball soared through the air and came to rest on the reception desk. There, it paused, rolling this way and that for a moment, before dropping off the desk and bouncing out of sight.

“Is it…alive?” Cindy-Lou wondered.

Everyone looked at Buddy. He stood from his crouch, at a loss for words.

“Well?” said Dean.

“Well, what?” Buddy blinked at him.

“You’re the spaceman. What the heck’s going on here?”

“I don’t…” Buddy began, then cocked his head, frowning. Listening. For a moment, Glitter wasn’t sure what had caught his attention. Then she heard it. The scratching. Shrill. Incessant. And getting louder.

She turned to the doors just as they burst open. Tumbleweed flooded the reception hall, balls bouncing everywhere, consuming the injured, flinging themselves at those well enough to flee. One after another, the hotel occupants were torn to shreds, howling, their skin hanging off them in ribbons.

“Run!” Dean yelled.

They ran back into the hotel, across the casino floor. Glitter limped, wincing with every step on her injured ankle. Tumbleweed spilled into the room close behind them, upsetting slot machines that vented rivers of silver coins across the carpet. Roulette tables toppled. Cards flew everywhere. A panicked gambler desperately tried to scoop up his winnings, filling his pockets with chips before the balls pummeled him to the ground.

“This way!” Buddy cried, making for the elevator, but before he could reach it, the tumbleweed cut him off. He veered sharply to his left, and Glitter tried to follow, but her ankle twisted and she fell.

Sprawled on the carpet, she glanced back to see the wire balls bearing down on her.

Dean turned. “Glitter!”

“Dean, no!” Glitter shouted, but he was already on his way back to her. He pulled her up, pushed her onward to where the others were heading for the buffet restaurant. Cindy-Lou wobbled on her wedge heels. Glitter limped to catch up, looking over her shoulder for Dean.

“Dean!” she screamed. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”

Dean had taken off his red suit jacket and was waving it around his head like a matador’s cape.

“You stay away from my girl!” he yelled at the advancing wave of razor wire. “You stay away from her, you motherfuckers, you hear me?”

“Dean!”

“Just run, Glitz! Run!”

Glitter gasped, tears springing to her eyes, then she turned and ran.

She tried not to hear Dean’s howls behind her. Tried not to imagine how his matinée-idol face would be sliced up like he’d been attacked by a crazed plastic surgeon. Tried not to think about the fact that he’d never sing again.

Skidding around the corner, she found herself in the deserted buffet restaurant. Buddy and Cindy-Lou slammed the doors behind her, and Buddy pushed a table up as a barricade. There was a cacophony of scratches as the tumbleweed battered against the door. Then, silence.

Buddy and Cindy-Lou stared at Glitter.

“What happened to Dean?” Cindy-Lou said and, at the same moment, Buddy asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m all right.” Glitter glanced back at the door. “But Dean, he…” she swallowed. “He didn’t make it.”

“I’m so sorry.” Cindy-Lou put her arm around Glitter’s shoulders. “Come and sit down.”

She led Glitter to a table, already set for tomorrow’s breakfast. Glitter slumped into a seat and put her head in her hands.

“Ouch!” Buddy’s voice made her look up, and she saw him wrestling with a small tumbleweed, which was wrapped in his jacket. “Managed to catch this as it went past my head,” he explained. “I’m gonna take a look at it, see if I can learn anything about these things.”

“You do that, Bud,” Cindy-Lou said. Then, gently, “Glitter, can I get you some water or something?”

“I’m fine,” Glitter said. “I’m…” But she couldn’t help herself. The tears spilled over, and then she couldn’t stop.

Cindy-Lou rubbed her back.

“It’s okay,” she kept saying. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Glitter wailed. “Dean…” She sniffled, trying to get herself under control. “Dean…”

“You guys were pretty close, huh?”

“I know he was…an asshole, but…” Glitter sniffled again. “He was all I had. What am I gonna do now?”

Without Dean, the show was over. Without Dean, there was nowhere for Glitter and her busted ankle to go but to the craps tables, for the rest of her goddamn life. That was, if she got out of this nightmare alive in the first place.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Cindy-Lou just kept saying.

Glitter rounded on her.

“Didn’t you hear me? It’s not okay! I’m thirty-five years old. I’m all washed up. Nobody hires thirty-five-year-old chorus girls. Nobody marries ’em, either. Now I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nobody. I’m all on my own.”

“It’s not over!” Cindy-Lou smiled her sweet little doe-eyed smile. “Thirty-five’s not old. You’ve still got a future.”

“Working the casino floor until my back gives out? That’s not a future.”

“Then do something else. What do you want to do?”

Glitter glared at her. “How the hell should I know? Nobody cares what I want to do.”

“C’mon. There must be something. When you were a kid, what did you dream of doing?”

Something about Cindy-Lou’s earnest expression made Glitter bite back the sarcastic response that rose to the tip of her tongue.

“I used to… I used to want to choreograph,” she admitted.

“Well, then!” Cindy-Lou clapped her hands as though it were all settled. “Do that.”

“I couldn’t…”

“Why not? You said it yourself—you’ve been doing the shows for over a decade. You must know all there is to know about them, right? So just why couldn’t you choreograph them?”

“D-Dean used to say I was too clever for my own good,” Glitter said, faintly. “So maybe… Maybe…”

“There you go. That’s the spirit.”

“I knew Dean since I was a kid,” Glitter said, wiping her tears. “Everybody was always sure he was gonna be a star. He just had this…aura about him, you know? Charisma. I don’t know why he picked me.”

“I’m sure he loved you, in his way,” Cindy-Lou said.

“It’s funny: there’s this old song of his,” said Glitter. “Maybe you heard it? It goes, You and me, girl / We’re just tumbleweed drifting in the breeze.”

Cindy-Lou laughed. “I know it! Yeah, I remember that one. Say, what’s your real name? You can’t’ve been born Glitter, surely?”

“Margaret,” said Glitter.

“Margaret.” Cindy-Lou held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Margaret.”

Laughing and crying, Glitter shook her hand, just as Buddy called, “Hey, come check this out!”

They hurried over to find him with his lighter out, teasing a tiny ball of wire around the table. Every time he put the flame close to it, the miniature tumbleweed shrank back as if flinching, allowing him to herd it this way and that, just like how Glitter had seen cowboys herding bulls at a rodeo.

“It rolled up of its own accord,” he said, without glancing up. “And when the fire gets near it…”

“It’s afraid,” Cindy-Lou finished.

“Sure seems that way.” Buddy frowned, making the ball roll across the table again. “I don’t think this is man-made at all.”

“You don’t?” Glitter slipped into the seat opposite him.

Buddy shook his head. “This may sound crazy but… I-I think it’s an alien life form.”

Glitter exhaled a weary sigh. “Ain’t nothing sounds crazy to me tonight.”

Cindy-Lou looked up sharply. “What’s that?”

Glitter listened hard. Scratching. The restaurant door quivered with the force of an endless stream of blows. The table holding it closed began to creep forward.

“We gotta get out of here,” she said, getting to her feet. “Come on. There’s another way out through the kitchen.”

“And then what?” Cindy-Lou asked, breathlessly, as Glitter led them out. “How long can we keep running?”

“We don’t have to,” Buddy said. “Not now. They’re scared of fire—we can cut a path through them. All we need is a steady source of fuel to burn. Gasoline.”

“Dean’s Cadillac,” said Glitter.

“You got the keys?”

“In the dressing room.”

“Right.” Buddy wove his way around a clutter of serving carts. “I just need someplace I can work on it for a while. Is there an underground garage?”

“Sure is.” Glitter pushed open the kitchen door a crack, peering out into the empty corridor. “But we’ll have to get the car down there first.”

“Keep moving, girls.” Buddy started rooting around the kitchen. “I just need to pick up a few things.”

Cindy-Lou hesitated, so Glitter grabbed her arm, and the two of them raced down the corridor, footsteps echoing off the walls, not looking back. Glitter led the way, limping, through the rabbit warren of hallways and into the theater’s backstage area. She dove into Dean’s dressing room and by the time she’d retrieved the keys, Buddy caught them up, his arms laden with cooking utensils, dish towels, and a bottle of kerosene.

“What the—?” Glitter began.

“Torches.” Buddy threw the tea towels on the floor, doused them with kerosene, then wrapped them around the utensils. Glitter got a serving ladle, Cindy-Lou a potato masher. Buddy took a long-handled whisk for himself, lit it with his cigarette lighter, then passed the flame around to the others. Glitter held her ladle as far down the handle as she could manage, feeling the heat radiating towards her hand.

“We can’t hold these for long,” she pointed out.

“We don’t have to.” Buddy was on the move again. “Just long enough to get to the car.”

They made for the fire exit. Buddy headed outside first. The street was piled high with tumbleweed, but the balls shuffled away from the heat of the flames. The space they made was just enough to allow Buddy and the others to cut a path down the sidewalk to the hotel’s entrance.

Glitter glanced back, and saw that as soon as they moved on with their torches, the wire balls fell back into the space behind them, leaving them fenced in by razor-sharp mesh.

“These torches better hold out,” she called, wincing at the heat on her hand.

“Not much further.” Buddy pushed onward, forcing the girls to hurry to keep pace with him.

“I can’t hold it anymore!” Cindy-Lou yelped, and her torch fell to the ground with a clatter.

As they left it behind, their glowing circle of safety shrank, and the wall of tumbleweed pressed in closer around them. Glitter’s heart hammered; a picture of Dean flashed through her mind. Dean, torn to ribbons, half his face hanging off. Fear closed in on her from all sides, turning her limbs numb.

She almost froze, but then they were at the corner of the block, and Buddy hurried them across the parking lot. The Cadillac was in sight. They clambered in, and Glitter tossed Cindy-Lou the keys while she and Buddy held their torches high against the coming onslaught of tumbleweed. Cindy-Lou gunned the engine, and they veered along the side street, down into the parking garage, where she screeched to a halt.

“I’ll get the gates.” Buddy leaped from the car and ran to close the gate.

Cindy-Lou leaned back in the driver’s seat, breathing hard. She looked as though she might cry. “What if they get down here?” she wailed. “What if we’re stuck in here?”

Buddy jogged back over. He reached into the backseat and tossed her the half-empty bottle of kerosene. “Create a line of fire in front of the door. Make sure you keep it burning. That should hold ’em for a while.”

Cindy-Lou headed for the gates and drew a line with the kerosene. Buddy went around to open the Cadillac’s hood and bent over it, muttering.

“What’re you gonna do?” Glitter asked him, as flames sprang up in front of the garage door.

Buddy glanced up at her; wiped a hand across his brow. “I’m gonna rocket power the car.”

Some time later, Glitter woke to the roar of an engine. She jerked awake from where she’d dozed off in the backseat of the Cadillac, opened her eyes, and saw nothing but black smoke belching from the car’s exhaust, and, beyond it, the lick of orange flames. The car lurched forward with a jolt. Glitter could just make out Cindy-Lou in the driver’s seat and Buddy alongside her. Up ahead, the garage gates loomed, the wall of fire still blazing in front of them.

“We’ve gotta open the gates!” she screamed.

“No time!” Buddy shouted. “Can’t stop now that we’re moving. Just brace yourself!”

Glitter curled up small and put her hands over her head just as they hit the wall of flames. Cindy-Lou screamed. The car smashed through the doors, fire blazing from the exhaust. Ahead of them, tumbleweed scattered crazily in all directions, veering out of their way, bouncing over the hood of the car. Then the Cadillac was flying down the strip, faster than Glitter had ever moved in her life.

“I can’t hold it straight!” Cindy-Lou cried, battling with the steering wheel.

Buddy reached over and grabbed it for her.

“Just keep your foot on the gas.”

“I don’t know if you’ve thought of this,” Glitter yelled, as they shot out of town, “but how are we gonna slow down?”

In the end, though, the fuel simply burnt itself out. Out in the Nevada desert, the balls of tumbleweed became fewer and further between, and by the time the Cadillac rolled to a halt, there were barely any in view.

Cindy-Lou lifted her hands from the steering wheel. She was shaking.

“I never want to do that again, Bud.”

Buddy reached over and pulled her into an embrace. “You did great, Cindy. Real great.”

Glitter got out of the car and wobbled along a few steps on trembling legs. In the distance, the sun was rising over the mountains, turning the sky into a technicolor haze of purples and reds. A gentle breeze swept over the desert, making her shiver.

“Hey,” she said, spotting a glimmer in the distance. “What’s that?”

Buddy joined her, and they made their way over to the shining object. It was circular, like a dinner plate, and about the size of the Cadillac. It was wedged into a crater in the desert sand, sunlight glinting off its silvery surface.

“This must be their craft,” Buddy whispered.

“An alien spaceship?” Glitter stared. “Do you really think? It’s so small! How could all those tumbleweeds fit in there?”

Something brushed against her leg, and she screamed. But it was only a tumbleweed—a real, ordinary tangle-of-branches one. It drifted by, on its way to nowhere.

“Perhaps…” mused Buddy. “Perhaps they self-replicate. Perhaps the tumbleweed was the first thing they found here on Earth, and they simply copied its molecular structure. I wonder—”

“Hey!” It was Cindy-Lou, jumping around, waving her arms. “Hey, over here!”

Glitter looked to the horizon. A cavalcade of army vehicles was making its way along the road, speeding towards Las Vegas. Spotting Cindy-Lou, one of them slowed down.

A week later, Glitter was back in Dean’s suite at the top of the Peacock Hotel. Armed with flamethrowers, the National Guard had cleared Vegas of the tumbleweed invasion, and the spacecraft she and Buddy had found had simply vanished. Buddy and Cindy-Lou had gone back to Virginia on the next plane out, although Cindy-Lou had promised to call, once things settled down. The front pages of the newspapers were calling the attack a “freak weather event.” That was okay with Glitter. She was just happy to look out the windows and see the strip all lit up in the darkness, exactly as it should be.

She poured herself a martini and went to thumb through Dean’s record collection until a familiar sleeve caught her eye. She pulled it out, ran her fingers over its surface. Dean Valentine Sings the Hits. He looked so young in the photograph. Tanned and alive, with that twinkle in his eye. Glitter wiped away a tear and put the record on the player, letting the needle drop at random. There was a crackle as it got into its groove, and a song rang out through the darkened hotel room.

“You and me, girl / We’re just tumbleweed drifting in the breeze.”

Glitter smiled and took a sip of her martini. From somewhere buried deep in her mind, a few dance steps emerged, and she began to sway. Then, putting down her glass, she started to move in earnest, repeating the steps over and over until she’d invented a whole phrase. She rushed over to the mini-bar, grabbed a napkin, and scribbled down what she’d done.

The show would go on.

Abduction Annie
by Ronald Kelly

“Hey, sugar! Come on over here! We’re needing some service real bad!”

Annie Newman looked up from filling the salt and pepper shakers. It was those jerks from the manufacturing plant across the railroad tracks again; Mike Pugh and his bunch. And there was one with him she didn’t recognize. A big, burly fellow with a bushy red beard and an oily green John Deere cap who looked like a bigger, dumber version of Mike…maybe a brother or a cousin.

“Come on, Annie!” called Tim Johnson, Mike’s best friend. “We need some nourishment. Why don’t you hop in that flying saucer of yours and hover on down here?”

The waitress—twenty-nine, lean, with honey blonde hair dyed blue at the tips—tensed and simply stood there, trying to ignore them. But Chuck wouldn’t let her. She looked over when the truck stop owner cleared his throat.

“Annie… Customers need you down yonder,” he told her with that little asshole of a grin on his stubbled face.

She wanted to snap back at him, but she bit her tongue instead. She couldn’t afford to mouth off and lose this job. God knew she’s lost enough of them already.

Annie abandoned the shakers and started down the counter, fishing her order pad out of her apron pocket. As she walked, she saw them grinning at each other and elbowing each other in the ribs. Insufferable rednecks fishing for a little entertainment to go with their burgers and buffalo wings.

When she reached them, Mike didn’t hesitate to launch right in. “Hey there, Annie,” he said loudly. “How’s my girl doing tonight?”

Annie couldn’t help herself. “Your girl is at home with your three young’uns. This woman is standing here, waiting to find out what you want to eat.”

The blue-collar workers burst out laughing. Mike’s grin faltered for a second, then broadened. “This is her, Keith. Ol’ Abduction Annie in the flesh.”

“And who’s Keith?” she asked, even though she didn’t give a rat’s ass.

“He’s my cousin, down here visiting from Knoxville. I thought I’d give him the grand tour… You know, show him some of the local attractions and oddities.”

Which, of course, meant her. “So, what do y’all want to eat?”

“Not so fast, darling,” said Cousin Keith. “I gotta know if it’s true.”

Annie said nothing, just looked down at her tattooed hand poised above the order pad, pencil at the ready.

“Were you really hijacked by a bunch of little, green men?”

Gray, she almost said, but didn’t dare.

“Yeah,” said Tim Johnson. “They beamed her up Scotty-style and everything. I heard they stripped her nekkid and did things to her. Scientific things.”

“Oh, really?” asked Keith. A grin crawled across his whiskered face, from ear to ear, like a tobacco-stained snake. “Like what?”

“You know,” said Mike. “Sexual things. Probes and such. Stuck them outer space instruments into every hole she owned.”

Big Keith snickered. “Oh, that’s just awful! Just plain awful. Little Annie, did those alien guys take a long, hard trip to Uranus?”

As the men fell over each other laughing and guffawing, Annie rolled her eyes. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard that one before. She glanced down the counter to where Chuck was cooking. He had his eyes glued to the grill, but his grin was every bit as greasy and lecherous as those of her unruly customers.

“Come on, guys,” she said, straightening her backbone. “Quit clowning around and give me your orders.”

They finally curbed their ribbing and told her what she needed to know. She returned midway down the counter and pinned the order slip on one of the clips above Chuck’s grill. “You could’ve stepped in and stopped that,” she said, miffed.

“Uh-uh,” he said as he lifted a basket of fries and dumped the oily contents onto paper plates. “I’d say you deserved what you got, coming up with that cockamamie story the way you did.”

“Dammit, Chuck… That was nearly seven years ago. How long are folks gonna hold this over my head?”

Chuck shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Annie, this is a small Tennessee town with little to amuse it. When you throw them a bone the way you did, they’re gonna grab it and hold on as long as they can.”

It was a little after ten o’clock that night when Annie showed up at her mother-in-law’s house on the respectable side of town. She knocked several times before the front porch light came on and Stella Newman opened the door.

“Lord have mercy, Annie!” she scowled. “You’re gonna wake up the whole neighborhood!”

The waitress tried to ignore her attitude, but it was hard. “Is Jimmy asleep?”

“No, he’s still up…playing on the living room floor with Spencer,” the short woman with the raven black hair told her. “Why should I put him to bed, just so you can come pounding on the door to wake him out of a sound sleep?”

Annie stepped inside the house and followed Stella into the living room. Jimmy, all red hair and freckles, sat on the floor, playing with Mr. Potato Heads with Stella’s oldest son. Spencer Newman was thirty-three years old but mentally challenged. He was a perpetual mama’s boy and did anything Stella suggested or commanded. Spencer was content to spend his life pleasing his mom, watching cartoons on Netflix, and playing with his toys, his favorite being a tub of Mr. Potato Heads he’d had since he was four.

“Hey, Mama,” said the six-year-old, sticking a plastic nose where an ear should have gone.

“Hey, baby. Are you ready to head home?”

Jimmy hung his head. “Awww! Can’t I stay all night with Grandma tonight?”

“Sure you can, sweetheart,” said Stella, cutting sly eyes toward his mother. “Your grandma would be happy to have you stay.”

“Not tonight, Jimmy.” Annie’s voice was as stern and parental as she could muster. “We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? When I get here, you be ready to go. Mommy’s worked hard for ten straight hours… She doesn’t want to hear you whine and throw a fit.”

“Please, Annie?” Spencer pleaded, pooching his lip out. “Please let Jimmy stay! We haven’t even finished building all the Tater Heads!”

“I’m sorry, Spencer, but it’s way past Jimmy’s bedtime. And you should be in bed, too, shouldn’t you?”

“I decide who goes to bed and when!” Stella snapped hatefully. She turned to the two in the floor. “Y’all go on and finished those Tater Heads. I’m gonna have a talk with Annie here.” The middle-aged woman slipped her hand under the waitress’s elbow, as if intending to usher her to the kitchen.

Annie pulled away defiantly, but followed her out of the room. Once they were in the kitchen, Stella whirled at her, dark eyes flashing. “I’ve made a decision, Annie. I’m seeing an attorney first thing in the morning.”

“An attorney? Whatever for?”

Stella smirked with fire engine red lips. “To file for custody of Jimmy, of course.”

Annie couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding! You’re only his grandmother. They’re not going to take him away from me.”

“They will if his mother can’t provide for him sufficiently.”

Annie felt that familiar heat of anger creep into her face again. “Sufficiently? I bust my ass every day to give Jimmy everything he needs. And I think I’ve done a pretty damn good job since…”

“Since you drove my son to suicide?” countered Stella, eyes flashing.

That struck Annie like a slap in the face. She had always known Stella blamed her for Jake walking out to the garage that night last September and putting a 9mm round through the roof of his mouth…but this was the first time she had actually had the gall to say it out loud.

“You remember the note they found in his shirt pocket, don’t you?” Stella continued. “You remember what it said.”

Annie did. It had simply read I CAN’T TAKE THIS CRAZY SHIT ANYMORE.

“Just what kind of crazy shit did you put my son through that made him do such a horrible thing?”

“Jake had problems,” Annie told her.

“Yeah, like a laughingstock of a wife who made him feel foolish and stupid! Spreading that awful story around town about being abducted by aliens! Aliens for God’s sake! Is it any wonder he couldn’t take it for one more minute and killed himself?”

Annie’s stomach sank, and she looked behind her to see if Jimmy had heard. He hadn’t, though. He was still building an army of Mr. Potato Heads on the living room carpet with his uncle.

“Can we shut the door?” she asked. “I don’t want…”

“Jimmy to hear?” Stella laughed harshly. “I’m sure he’s heard everything there is to hear from the kids at school. Everything about how his precious mommy was flown away in a spaceship and tortured and molested by aliens!”

Annie opened her mouth, but couldn’t figure out what to say.

“How did it happen again?” Stella continued mercilessly. “You had that flat tire out on Highway 70 near the rock quarry, and you were walking back to town when a green light hit you and you were paralyzed. Couldn’t move a damn muscle! And then that beam of light lifted you off your feet, and you found yourself on a round table that revolved on its base. They’d stripped you and clamped your wrists and ankles down and were doing the most godawful things imaginable to you. And you had to go out and tell everyone about it! Spreading lies and filth, shaming my poor son until he could bear it no longer.”

That wasn’t how it had happened at all, but it was useless to tell Stella that. She already had her mind set. Annie hadn’t remembered anything about that night…not until the hypnotist at the mental hospital had brought it all to the surface. She had felt ashamed and in shock afterward; hadn’t wanted a word of it to get around. But folks loved to laugh and gossip. Before the end of the week, her so-called “alien encounter” had been spread from one end of the county to the other.

Stella wasn’t finished, though. “Yeah, and what happened nine months after that? Jimmy was born. And my Jake as sterile as a cotton ball, unable to have children!”

“You, bitch! You know Jimmy was Jake’s.” Folks in town had always alluded, none too subtly, that she had concocted the whole alien story to cover up an illicit affair.

Her mother-in-law kept laying it on thick. “I’m taking my precious Jimmy away from you because you’re unstable as hell. Won’t let him go outside to play, won’t let him play pee-wee football with the other boys his age. Always taking his temperature and babying him, when he should be out riding bikes or climbing trees. You’re stunting him, Annie! Turning him into less than what he ought to be!”

“He’s… He’s a sickly child!” Annie protested lamely. “I’m just trying to protect him… Trying to keep him safe.”

“A boy needs a little dirt under his fingernails!” Stella told her. “He deserves a few skinned knees and black eyes. That’s why I’m going to do my best to gain custody and take care of him myself…to give him a chance to live life like he should!”

“I’ve heard enough!” Annie stormed out of the kitchen and crossed the living room to where her son sat. “Come on, Jimmy! We’re going home!”

As Annie lifted him into her arms and carried him to the front door, Stella followed closely, only a few steps behind. “Don’t worry, Jimmy! Grandma is gonna make things right. She’s going to give you everything you need and deserve.”

Jimmy began to pout, on the verge of crying. “What’s wrong, Mommy? Why is Grandma yelling at us?”

“Don’t pay her any attention, sweetie,” his mother told him. “We’ll be home in a few minutes.” Then both of them were out the door and heading across the yard to Annie’s beat-up Chevy Impala.

“See you in court, you sorry whore!” Stella screamed, loud enough to not only wake up the whole neighborhood, but half the county.

The dark-haired woman stood on the porch and watched as Annie backed the car out of the driveway and headed for the east side of town. She waited until the taillights disappeared from sight, then turned and went back into the house.

Stella walked to the kitchen and brewed herself a pot of coffee. She sat at the kitchen table for a long time, then nodded to herself and got up. Walked to the living room where Spencer still sat cross-legged on the floor playing with his toys.

“Spencer?” she said. “Sweetheart?”

The big man looked up. “Yeah, Mama?”

“You love Jimmy, don’t you?”

Spencer nodded furiously. “Yes, ma’am! You know I do! Love him, love him, love him! Really, really love that boy!”

Stella’s face was sad and grievous, although inside she was smiling like a serpent in Eden. “Then you’re the one who’s going to have to do something about it.”

“Huh? Do something about what?”

“About poor Jimmy being mistreated.”

Spencer’s broad face grew pale with shock. “Who’s mistreating my Jimmy?”

“I hate to even say it, but his mother is.”

“Annie?” Spencer shook his head. “I can’t believe that. Annie’s a good mom. I like Annie!”

“But that’s just for show…around us,” Stella told him. “Things are different when she gets him home. She lets Jimmy go hungry and spanks him so hard he can hardly walk. He cries in his bed at night, so lonely, wishing you were there to protect him.”

“No!” protested Spencer wildly. “No, no, no!”

“Yes, Spencer. It’s true. And we’ve got to do something…something to save Jimmy and keep him safe.”

“Well, what, Mama? What can we do?”

“It’s you who’s going to have to do it,” his mother insisted. “You’re the one who’s going to have to be the superhero and save that little boy.”

Stella’s words hit a nerve. “A superhero? You mean like Batman or Captain America or Green Arrow?”

“Yes, son. You’re going to have to be the man of the family, like your daddy was, and do what needs to be done. You’re going to have to deal with Annie.”

Spencer stared at the woman for a long moment, then his eyes widened. “No. Oh, no, no, no! I could never do that. Not to Annie.”

“Yes, you could. She’s small and weak. You’re big and strong. You could do it quick and then Jimmy would be safe and happy. And he could play Potato Heads with you whenever you want. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To have a little brother to play with and love and take care of?”

Spencer thought about it for a moment, then began to nod. “How, Mama? How am I going to do it?”

Stella Newman smiled sweetly, crossed the living room, and sat directly in front of her oldest son. And, softly and patiently, told him everything he needed to know.

It was eleven-thirty when Spencer stood on the little wooden porch of the single-wide trailer. The outside light was off and he could hear crickets and toads singing in the darkness around him. It scared him, and all he wanted in the world was to leave and go home.

But, he couldn’t. He looked over his shoulder at the Ford Fusion parked in the driveway…silent, headlights dark. Stella stared at him through the windshield. It was that stern expression she had when he missed the toilet and peed on the bathroom floor.

Spencer swallowed. His throat was bone dry. His right hand was heavy. Every time he looked down at it, he wanted to cry.

He looked back at his mother. Her fingers drummed impatiently on the curve of the steering wheel.

Spencer lifted his left hand and knocked on the door. He could hear a TV inside…an old rerun of Gunsmoke, he thought. He knocked again and heard the squeak of couch springs, then someone walking toward the door. Abruptly, the outside light came on, making him squint. The door opened and Annie stood there, looking surprised.

She unlatched the screen door and pushed it open. “Spencer? What are you doing here?”

“To rescue Jimmy,” he said. His voice was half-moan, half-sob. He brought the claw hammer up and over his shoulder, forcefully striking her in the forehead just below the hairline.

Annie blinked three times and stumbled backward. She still had that surprised look on her pretty face as blood began to trickle down. “What?”

He lumbered inside, swinging the hammer from the side. It glanced off her left check, likely shattering it in a dozen places, and nearly ripping her nose away as the claw end went past.

Annie tripped over her own feet, landing on her butt on the floor. She raised a hand, attempting to ward him off. “Wait.”

He struck again, hitting her fingers, breaking them at the knuckles. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he blubbered, crying now. He looked behind him. Stella stood outside now, on the little porch. Her eyes said, Don’t disappoint me.

Spencer wailed and hit Annie again and again. The hammer, which had been pretty and clean thirty seconds before, became wet and mired with things from inside Annie’s head. Finally, she fell backward and just lay there. Stared straight up at the ceiling fan and didn’t move.

He leaned down and patted her head tenderly. “I’m sorry, Annie. I’m so sorry. But we had to save him. Had to save Jimmy.”

Stella was inside the trailer now. “We’ve got to be quick, sweetheart,” she told him. “Wrap her in that afghan there and put her on the couch.”

Dropping the bloody hammer, Spencer did as he was told. He rolled Annie in the crocheted throw and, with little effort at all, laid her on the couch. On the TV, Festus was telling Matt Dillon to look out for those outlaws behind the rocks.

“Grandma?”

The voice startled them. They both looked over at the little hallway between the kitchen and the bedrooms. Jimmy stood there in Minecraft pajamas with a green Creeper on the front.

“Grandma? What are you doing here?” He looked over at the bundle on the couch. “What’s wrong with Mommy?”

“She’s had such a hard day at work, Jimmy, she’s plumb worn out,” Stella explained. She just fell asleep while watching TV.”

Jimmy nodded. “But why are you here?”

“We’re going on a surprise trip, baby. Just you and me and your uncle. Now let’s go to your bedroom and pack some clothes.”

Jimmy looked at the big man next to the couch. “Why is Spencer crying? And why is he bleeding? Did he hurt himself?”

Spencer’s wet eyes bulged when he looked down and saw Annie’s brains and hair on his hand. With a sob, he wiped it on the cream-colored couch, leaving a smeared handprint.

“Oh, you know your Uncle Spencer,” Stella said as she ushered the boy down the hallway. “Always having accidents. He cut his hand on the porch railing when he was coming up the steps.”

The hallway was dark as they made their way to Jimmy’s bedroom at the very end. Stella suddenly realized she had never been this far into the trailer before…that she had never actually seen her grandson’s room. As they reached the door, her nostrils flared at the strong odor of rubbing alcohol and bleach.

She opened the door and fumbled along the inside wall for the light switch. When she found it, she turned it on.

Jimmy’s room wasn’t a little boy’s room at all. It was more like an operating room. The walls were white and sterile, and banks of monitors stood in the corners. And there was a long, stainless steel chamber with a clear plastic dome running along the top.

Stella couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. “What…what is that thing?”

“That’s my bed,” he told her.

“Your…your bed?”

“Mommy calls it an oxy…oxy…oxy-shun chamber.”

Stella shook her head, feeling her pulse quicken with rage. What the hell has that crazy bitch been doing to you?

“Mommy takes good care of me,” he told her. “She makes sure I’m healthy and don’t get sick. I hate all the vitamins, though. They’re yucky tasting!”

“Let’s get those clothes, sweetheart,” Stella said, pulling her eyes away from the steel chamber. They went to Jimmy’s closet and, after finding an old backpack, filled it with shirts, pants, underwear, socks, and a couple of pairs of sneakers.

When they got back to the living room, Spencer was sitting on the edge of the couch, crying and slowly stroking the mound beneath the afghan.

“Aren’t we going to tell Mommy goodbye?” Jimmy asked.

“Oh, no, baby. Mommy’s sleeping so soundly, we don’t want to wake her up. We’ll give her a call on the way to the surprise.”

Jimmy jumped up and down. “What’s the surprise, Grandma? Please tell me!”

“I will when we get in the car,” she promised. Stella looked over at Spencer. “Well, come on, son… We’ve got to be going.”

Spencer looked up with frightened eyes. “But…but shouldn’t we wait for the poli—?”

“Get in the damn car!” Stella shouted. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Please, honey… We really need to go.”

Spencer nodded, patted Annie’s motionless body one last time, and joined his mother and nephew. They locked the door behind them and went to the car.

Stella buckled Jimmy into his car seat, then jumped into the front and started the Fusion. Spencer sat in the passenger seat without his seatbelt on, crying and rubbing his hands together furiously with hand sanitizer he had found in the glove compartment.

As they backed out of the drive and started down the highway, Jimmy asked her again. “What’s the surprise, Grandma?”

“Why, we’re driving to California, baby,” she said, mustering the most cheerful tone she could manage. “We’re taking you to Disneyland!”

“But that’s a long, long way to drive,” said the boy. “The one in Florida is a lot closer.”

“Yes, but Disneyland has more magic. Walt built it himself.”

Spencer’s face bloomed with hope. “Are we, Mama? Are we really going?”

Stella lowered her voice, so the boy wouldn’t here. “No, not really! We’re driving to Denver. I’ve rented us a house there.”

Appearing confused, Spencer asked, “Denver? Why are we going to—?”

“Listen!” She steered with one hand and grabbed his left forearm firmly with the other. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to find a safe place to take Jimmy…a safe place to hide. We can’t stay, do you understand? Not after what you did to Annie.”

Spencer looked mortified. He peered through the side window into the darkness as fleeting glimpses of familiar places rushed by. “But…but what about our house and my bed?” His eyes widened. “What about my Tater Heads?”

“We’ll go to Walmart and buy you some more!” she hissed between clenched teeth.

They drove in darkness down the lonesome stretch of rural highway. The interstate heading west toward Memphis was still fifteen miles away.

“Grandma?” the boy asked after a few minutes.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Can we call Mommy now?”

“No, not now,” she told him. “Mommy was very, very tired. She’ll sleep all night long. We’ll call her in the morning. I promise.”

The boy grew silent and, at first, Stella was sure he had fallen asleep.

“I shouldn’t have,” Spencer mumbled next to her. “I shouldn’t have…shouldn’t have done it… No sir, shouldn’t have hit Annie with that…”

“Shut up!” snapped his mother. “Do you want to upset Jimmy? Make him cry? We’ll talk about it when we get to Denver.”

Spencer lowered his head and cried bitterly into his hands.

Onward they drove. They were a half mile past the county line when they heard a sound come from the back seat. It sounded like wrapping paper tearing on Christmas morning. Moist, soggy wrapping paper.

“What the hell —?” Stella felt along the dashboard, found a knob, and clicked on the overhead light. “Spencer, look back there and see what that was.”

Spencer nodded, wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, and craned his neck, looking between the front seats. The back of the vehicle was illuminated with pale yellow light.

Spencer screamed.

“What is it, boy?” Stella demanded, easing on the brake. “What do you see?”

“Oh God!” Spencer shrieked. “Oh no... Dear Jesus…no, no, NO!” Then he turned, opened the passenger door, and, without hesitation, rolled out.

“Spencer!” Stella screamed. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the Fusion to a skidding halt onto the gravel strip along the side of the highway.

She sat there for a moment, then looked in her sideview mirror. Spencer had landed on the gator-back border at the side of the road. His body was jack-knifed, and his head had somehow melded with the pavement. In fact, most of his head had spread clear to the center line and beyond.

Stella closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Opened them again and looked in the mirror. Spencer was still there, ass in the air, as dead as he had been ten seconds ago.

Something behind her moved… or slithered.

Oh God! Oh God… Please, dear God… Please…”

She didn’t want to look. Her body rebelled against motion, wanted to stay frozen exactly where it was…but her mind was a traitor. It just had to know.

Stella’s heart pounded wildly as she turned her head and stared into the back of the car.

Her grandson’s Jimmy suit was still buckled into the car seat, as flaccid and empty as a glove without a hand.

Stella’s neck felt rusty and hard to move as she turned her head and stared straight through the windshield. She simply sat there for a long moment, allowing the Fusion’s engine to idle…listening for sounds. They came a second later. Something covered the dome light overhead, plunging the vehicle’s interior into darkness.

She raised her eyes to the rearview mirror. Even in the gloom, she could see slow, sluggish movement as it traveled across the ceiling of the car…and stopped directly above her head.

“Grandma?” The voice sounded hollow and wet…almost seemed to echo in her ears and her mind at the same time.

“Yes, dear?” Her voice was flat, emotionless. It was as numb as her hands clutching the steering wheel. Hands so firmly anchored that her arthritic bones threatened to fissure and crack.

Something dangled down from above. Long and pliant…chillingly moist…as it tenderly caressed her cheek. “Can we have ice cream, Grandma?”

“Yes,” Stella told him. She glanced into the sideview mirror again at Spencer’s body…wishing it were her instead. “Anything you want, sweetheart.”

She dropped her right hand to the gearshift and put it into drive. Before she pressed the gas, Jimmy slid down from the ceiling and spread across the passenger seat beside her.

Stella eased the car back onto the highway. She found it difficult to focus…to collect her thoughts. Now, what…what was I doing?

“Ice cream,” said the thing beside her.

“Yes…right.” Stella sent the car speeding down the dark country road, away from town. Exactly where, for what reason, and with what…she had no earthly idea.

Roadkill
by Samantha Kolesnik

When I was thirteen, my father was on the sheriff’s list for roadkill cleanup.

It was a good deal for Dad, who got to keep the meat and butcher it, put it in the freezer, and then serve us venison styled eight ways to Monday in various stews, sauces, and sausages.

Some families were blessed with matching Christmas pajamas and nice cars.

We were blessed with death.

And the sheriff’s office appreciated the work, too. My father’s name was a welcome word around their office. His willingness to clean up the roads meant the cops didn’t need to send their guys out. All they had to do was provide the coordinates and they had their willing servant.

A man would go far if it meant feeding his family.

Sometimes the deer were still alive when Dad and Paul arrived on location. And conversely, sometimes they were a little too far gone, the rot already set in.

Other times, they were just too dismembered—too scattered across the roadway to be of use. But more often than not, the carcass was fresh and was brought home to be skinned, chopped, vacuum sealed, and frozen—then eventually thawed, cooked, and consumed.

We lived in a suburban town with thick swathes of woods surrounding two-story lookalike homes. Ours was the oldest and smallest home on the street, and we were the only renters there. This was a distinction the kids at school never let Paul and me forget. It was the nicest home we’d ever lived in, but what I realized at thirteen was, “a nice neighborhood,” as they called it, didn’t actually mean nice people lived there.

I missed our old home, and I missed Mom.

“The cool thing about living out here,” Paul said, while holding one of Dad’s cigarettes in his hand, “is you can see the stars real good.” Paul had curly red hair like Mom had. I resented him for getting to carry so much of her in his appearance when I didn’t look like her at all.

I looked up at the sky and saw what Paul meant. The stars were crystal clear in Crescent Hills.

“Do you remember what the sky looked like in Simpson?” I asked.

Paul twirled the unlit cigarette in his fingers. He didn’t know how to smoke it.

“I remember it was dirty all the time,” he shrugged.

“I think it’s what killed Mom.”

Paul shot me an angry look then glanced down at the ground, his profile only half illuminated by the porchlight. “It was cancer. There’s no one to blame for that,” he finally said.

I thought of Mom leaning against her car, a cigarette in hand, while she watched Paul and me playing roughhouse, tag, pirates, and whatever other pretend play in the yard. She always had bright red lipstick on, and it bled out from the rim of her top lip, blurring the border. “One of these days I’m gonna learn how to do this right,” she’d laugh while laying the color on thick.

I was with her the first time she coughed. People just didn’t get cancer out of nowhere. It came like an intruder, by stealth. The one that took Mom snuck in when Hurricane Ivan rolled through Simpson. The storm killed thirty-four people and displaced about two hundred more, but I’m also convinced it brought the cancer that killed my mom.

When the hurricane came, Mom, Paul, and I huddled in the bathroom with pots of water, books, and snacks. Hurricane winds didn’t treat homes like ours too kindly, so we tried to be as insulated as possible. The winds whipped and howled outside until all at once, there was a calm.

“It’s the eye of the storm,” Mom said, an excited gleam in her eye. She had worn her red lipstick even for this occasion. She stood up and craned her head outside the bathroom doorway. “Come on, let’s have a look, Paul,” but Paul was too scared.

So I went.

The front door to our house had already been flung open by the winds and flapped intermittently outside, creating a seductive rhythm against the siding. A circle of haze and small flying debris blew softly beyond the doorway, all but begging in its spectacle.

Mom held my hand in hers, tightly enough that I knew she was nervous, and pulled me to the doorway. When we got there, I remember her whispering, “On the count of three, Mary,” and we both murmured, in synchrony, “One…two…three.”

The step outside into the open air was a free-fall tumble of adrenaline in my belly as I opened my eyes.

There, in the midst of destruction, was the prettiest rainbow I’d ever seen in my life, a beguiling arch of color that promised a peace it couldn’t deliver. The beautiful colors were so out of place that they seemed mirage-like in the impoverished wasteland around us. I was sure nothing that beautiful could be real in Simpson.

“That’s how you know God is real,” Mom said.

I looked at her, and saw tears streaming down her face, one of them landing on her trademarked red lip.

The wind started to pick up again, and I had to pull her back into the house, almost by force. She hadn’t wanted to leave the porch. The promise on the horizon had been too seductive, too hopeful. It had seemed to avow a greater dominion over earth than man, and it looked like it was coming in peace. Because nothing bright and beautiful could ever be bad.

Soon as Mom was back inside the house, the first coughing fit came.

There was a cancer in that hurricane eye, and we had let it in.

Dad came home extra tired that evening. His face was grimy with dust from the mill, and there was a strange scent of metal and sweat in the air.

“Paul!” he yelled.

Dad shot a look at me, “Why aren’t the dishes clean, Mary? I told you I don’t want to see dishes in the sink when I come home anymore.”

“Sorry, I’ll do them now,” I said, and I scurried over to begin washing them.

“Paul!” he yelled again. His voice held a threat he’d never act on, but it still intimidated.

My brother ran in from the hallway.

“Get your coat on, we got a deer to pick up.”

My brother groaned, “I don’t want to go.”

My hands were sudsy with soap. I turned the water faucet a little lower to hear their conversation more clearly.

“You don’t have a choice,” Dad said.

I watched Paul go toward the closet to get his coat and gloves.

“Can I go, Dad?” I asked.

My father hesitated. He seemed to mull this over in his mind, the conflict between his saying women were equal and how he gendered our chores.

“Yeah, take Mary,” Paul said. My brother had gotten tired of the endless nightly trips, of spending his prime video game time skinning and butchering in the garage.

“Are you sure you can handle it?” Dad asked.

I nodded, even though I wasn’t so sure.

“If you come with me, once you’re in the truck, there’s no chickening out.”

“I won’t chicken out.”

Paul looked elated as I ran past him to get a coat. I grabbed it from our overstuffed closet. It was a red puffer jacket Mom used to wear, but now it fit me. I slid on cotton gloves and grabbed a warm hat.

“You’re going to need different gloves than those. Here, take your brother’s.” Dad handed me work gloves. I didn’t like how they felt on my hands—bulky, loose.

“Paul, since your sister is coming with me, that means you got dish duty.”

I smiled. I liked this role reversal.

I followed my dad out to his pickup truck and slid in next to him. It was so cold outside I could see my breath.

“This is the third time this winter the sheriff’s called me to pick up from this location.” Dad said. The truck sped along the road out of our suburban development. He kept the windows cracked because he was hot, he said, but I was shivering under Mom’s puffer.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s Hennepick Road, which is up past the middle school, about ten miles beyond the pond you and your brother fed the ducks at last year. I’m just glad it’s not snowing because they don’t plow that area very well.”

“There must be a lot of deer up that way.”

“A lot of deer, maybe, but not a lot of cars. Got me wondering if someone’s killing them for sport.”

“Dad, no one would just kill a deer and not take the meat. That doesn’t make sense.”

My dad shot me a sad kind of smile. “Not everyone kills for the same reasons, Mary.”

“Yeah, but what other reason would there be?”

Dad turned on the radio and we listened to classical Christmas music for most of the way there, until we got just a little beyond the duck pond, now frozen over. That’s when the radio devolved to static and Dad switched it off.

“Should be almost there,” he said.

The road grew less sure as we went along, and the trees closed in on us—leafless oak trees, born way before we were. I had the grim notion that bugs which feasted on all sorts of dead things had been in and out of those oaks over the years. The forest was a kind of writhing graveyard. In the warmer months, it could be deceptively pretty. In the winter, it presented its true nature.

Dad turned on his high beams just as flurries began falling from the sky. They looked like flakes of ash against the windshield.

“Let me know if you see anything,” he said.

Just as he said it, something on the side of the road caught my eye, but we passed it too quickly. When I turned around, the darkness obscured my view.

“Hey Dad, turn around. I think I saw it.”

Dad put the truck in reverse, his head craned back. “Are you sure?”

“I saw something.”

We backed up far enough that in the light of Dad’s high beams, we saw the fallen deer. Its neck was twisted unnaturally, head blanketed in shadow. Its rigid contortion was hard to look away from, even though I wanted to.

“Well there she is,” my dad said. “That’s a doe. Usually is.”

Dad turned on the cab light and started gathering his things.

Meanwhile, I thought about the doe’s children. I wondered if she had any, and if they’d be safe out there in the forest alone. My own nose was cold enough to start aching.

I followed Dad out of the truck.

“We gotta be quick because I don’t wanna waste the battery.” He jerked his head back at the high beams which were still on. I’d left the door to the passenger seat open. The flurries intensified and speckled our hats and coats with white before they melted into small wet spots. I kept touching the tip of my nose to try to warm it.

Dad reached the deer before I did. I stood back a few feet from it and waited for him to signal what I should do. He knelt over the animal and followed its neck up to where its head was. I couldn’t see the head because it was blocked by the animal’s body, bent backwards almost a full hundred-eighty degrees.

“Goddamnit!” Dad said. He gestured for me to come over.

I took a deep breath and walked closer to where my dad knelt.

“Look at this,” he said. I didn’t at first understand what he meant.

“No, come around here, look at the head,” he urged.

I angled myself to where he was kneeling and bent over his shoulder. He held the doe’s head in his gloved hands. The poor animal’s nose was busted and there was a streak of dried blood down the slope of its skull, but what startled me were its eyes. The doe’s eyes were wholly white, like marble orbs.

Dad let the head slip out of his hands and patted his knees. “This is what the others were like out here, too. I hauled ’em out to the woods, but fuck if I’m coming out here again. Sheriff’s got me chasing bad meat.”

“Why are its eyes like that?” I asked.

A strong wind blew from the woods to our right. My fingers were chilled through my gloves.

“Disease, maybe,” he said.

My dad stood up and looked beyond me, into the woods. “…or poison,” he mumbled, and he took a couple steps toward the tree line.

“Hey! Who’s out there?” he yelled.

I heard the crackle of branches—distant but not too distant. I followed my dad’s gaze and saw roving beams of light strobe in the darkness. They pierced the black night and revealed the oaken skeleton of the woods.

My dad took a few steps closer until he was at the border of where the woods started.

“Dad! Let’s go. Let’s go home!” I looked back at the pickup truck, and then at my father again. He seemed transfixed by the roving lights in the woods. They were different colors, like a rainbow.

Another gust of wind blew past me, carrying a breeze of stench off the deer carcass. I remembered my mother’s tears, and I looked at the bright red and pink streaming through the trees and wondered what new God could this be.

“Dad, let’s go,” I said again, though my voice felt stifled by the wind and cold. I watched my father pull out his skinning knife as he slipped into the shadows of the forest.

“Dad!” I screamed, but there was no answer except the crackling of branch and wind. Everything was drowned out by the collective decay of the forest, while snow steadily came down.

I left the doe and scurried back into the pickup truck. Half of my seat was wet from snowfall. I slammed the door shut and hit the locks. I decided to leave the high beams on so that my father could find his way back. With exception to the illuminated deer carcass, I couldn’t see anything. The rainbow-colored lights in the forest had disappeared, taking their secrets with them.

Was it children out playing? There was nothing out here for miles, though. Teenagers drinking? It was too cold to be out partying. Dad had said he’d been out here before; maybe someone was watching him all this time?

The wind whipped at the side of the truck and I looked out through the windshield. The deer carcass began to look uncannily human in the headlights’ illumination, just a crumpled mess of flesh. I slid down in my seat so I wouldn’t have to see it anymore. I thought of Mom, and how much I missed her. I could smell her scent on the air and wondered what she would say during a time like this.

She’d say it was God. That He worked in mysterious ways.

But what if it wasn’t, I wondered? What if all the mysteries we attributed to God were just strangers in the night, leaving presents for us only they could understand? I shivered against the seat leather and looked up through the windshield at the falling snow. It was hypnotic as it landed against the glass.

I reached out for the heat knob, cranked it up, and it blew lukewarm air through the vents. Dad would be back soon. He’d climb into the seat and mutter about work the next morning, how this was a wasted trip, how he should’ve taken Paul, and how the dishes had better be done by the time we got home…

I thought all these words I imagined him saying, in his voice as I remembered it, while I drifted asleep, despite my better intentions.

A plow came the next morning, the sheriff’s car trailing it, as it cleared a path through the snow to Dad’s pickup. The gas had run out and I was shivering beyond my own control, an automatic impulse that wouldn’t stop jerking my body no matter how much I willed to be still.

The sheriff had to pry the door open. His face was covered in human grief and I worried I might be on the brink of crossing over, of feeding oaks and other ancient things.

“Now keep your eyes on me, young lady.” The sheriff grabbed my arms and jerked me upright. He had a hard time holding onto me because I couldn’t keep still. A wool blanket was wrapped around my shoulders, and I did my best to get my body to cooperate exiting the truck.

I stumbled out and would’ve fallen if not for the sheriff’s grip.

“Where’s my Dad?” I managed to get out.

The plowman was out of his vehicle, as well, and looked shaken. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the cold or the sight of me.

“Eyes on me, come on now,” the sheriff prodded. He held me close, kept my arms flat against my sides, as if he didn’t want me to turn around or escape his hold.

Then, I remembered.

The deer carcass.

He probably didn’t want me to see it.

I jerked out of the sheriff’s grip to turn around and verify my suspicion.

Only—the deer carcass was gone.

What laid in its place, contorted with early decay, was the corpse of my father, his head hanging lopsided from a snapped neck, with eyes as white as the snow around us.

“Only God knows what happened,” my mom would’ve said.

My father would’ve said the same, that only God could cure the cancer that took my mother. People came up with all sorts of spiritual explanations for things science couldn’t explain—heck, oftentimes for things science could. Who’s to say why it’s decided to leave blessings for some families, and grotesque presents for others?

I stared at my father, his contorted flesh inhumanly posed. I was too cold to cry and too weak to scream. I just knew someone—something—was watching for my reaction.

And I knew better than to call it God.

Embryo
by Tim Curran

Megulon was the fifth planet in the Procyon A system, and the Antares had been orbiting it for three going on four weeks. Circling round and round that ugly blue-black ball that was like a stripped skull drifting in space.

Leeden hated it. He hated looking at it, seeing it, knowing it was there.

What had first been a sort of inexplicable apprehension at the sight of it had now ramped up to pure terror.

When he was on duty at the comm module like tonight, his eyes were drawn to it on the view screen. Much as he tried to look away, he couldn’t. It held him hypnotized, the way it was once thought a snake could hypnotize a bird it wanted to eat.

It had him. It owned him. And deep down where the real fear dwelled, he knew it.

And that’s it, he thought with a shiver. It knows I’m here, and it’s watching me as I watch it because it has plans for me.

God, he couldn’t keep going on this way. The others were starting to notice there was something off about him. Last thing he wanted was a psych discharge when they got back home. He needed the big pay that came with manning a deep space rig. He had to think of Kassidy and Taylor. He had to take care of them.

“You awake, Ly?” a voice said, and he jumped.

“Sure,” Leeden said. His voice was dry and shrill. “Just zoning out, I guess.”

Moxton stood there, looking from the planet to Leeden. “You know me, Ly, I don’t butt in. But…well, is something bothering you lately? Man, you just don’t seem to be yourself.”

Leeden pressed a hand to his mouth and faked a yawn. He had to do it so he didn’t scream or start ranting about how he thought that goddamn planet was haunted, that it was an immense serous eyeball staring into the depths of his soul.

“No, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Moxton didn’t sound convinced. “We’ve been out a long time. You need a couple days’ rest, you let me know.”

Good old Mox. He was second in command of the Antares, and he was like everyone’s big brother. He had a caring eye and a sympathetic ear.

“I’ll let you know.”

From the board there was a droning sound like wind blowing through a deserted house. Rising and falling, blowing, moaning.

“Why don’t you turn that shit off?”

It was the stellar and planetary noise of Megulon, the emissions from its magnetic field. It got under your skin after a while.

“I guess I didn’t realize I had it on.”

Moxton gave him a hard look. “Well, it’s spooky. Don’t sit up here and listen to it. It’ll make your head funny. Sounds like the goddamn planet is breathing.”

When he left, Leeden turned it back on. It was eerie and it wasn’t helping his state of mind any, but when he was alone like this and he found himself staring at the dead world of Megulon, he automatically listened to the noise. It did not comfort him: it scared him…yet, he listened to it for hours.

Right now, it sounded like heavy static with a distant, regular ping buried in it that reminded him of the cleats on a flagpole rope banging in the breeze. Ding, Ding, ding, ding. Hollow, reverberating. It made him think of empty schoolyards and the wind whipping through playgrounds by night.

It was very windy down there on Megulon, its rocky surface blown by clouds of toxic methane, hydrogen, and helium. Dark, misty, the sky marred by clouds the color of bruises. There was nothing else down there. The planet had been Earth-like at one time, but now it was on the way to becoming a gas sub-giant through a process of planetary evolution that had the geoscience boys scratching their heads. That was the primary reason that the Antares was making an extended survey of the planet and launching probes every couple of days.

Now the music of Megulon was a roaring, whooshing sound like thunder or old-style jet engines. That died away and the droning static returned. The pinging was gone, but there was an odd metallic tapping noise that repeated over and over: tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. It was like Morse code. Leeden pressed his hands over his ears.

“I won’t listen,” he said. “I won’t.”

I know you’re just a planet. I know it. I know it.

As if in response to that, there was a continual fleshy, throbbing noise coming in now. It sounded the way Taylor’s heart had during the ultrasound when she was six months along in Kassidy’s belly—shish-shish, shish-shish. My God, he was losing his mind.

When his shift at the comm was over, his nerves were frayed like old wires. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep because the planet would invade his dreams, so he went down to the galley and punched up breakfast from the food synth unit. Cheese omelet, bacon, toast with marmalade. Black coffee. Orange juice. It was a nice spread, but as he sat down, the smell of it made his stomach roll over like a pill bug.

He pushed it away, then thought better of it.

If anybody had squawked to Captain Creed about him acting strange, the old man might be watching him right now. Goddamn Antares had more fly-eye cameras in its walls than a federal lockup. They could watch your every move if they wanted to.

He sipped his coffee, trying not to think about Megulon. Even when he wasn’t topside, it could look through the walls and see him like an eyeball peering through a mouse hole.

Doc Sharma came in, nodded to him, and sat across the room studying the display of her lenticular holo-tablet that hung suspended in the air before her eyes.

Don’t look at her. Don’t meet her eyes, a voice in the back of his head told him. It’ll look paranoid.

Knowing there was a very good possibility the old man had alerted her to watch him, Leeden tried to act very casual. Though his appetite had crashed along with his sense of well-being, he forced himself to eat. He wanted her to see how good his appetite was.

See, Doc? See? I’m a big healthy boy with a big healthy appetite. No worries.

But she was smart, and he knew it. She could spot a good case of space rapture (or the “spookies” as it was colloquially known) from a mile away. He had to be careful not to overplay his hand. If she thought some kind of mental fatigue was setting in, she’d confine him to bed for forty-eight hours and load him with droxamine until fantasy and reality would blur together in his head like an abstract painting.

I can’t afford that. If the planet thinks I’m defenseless, hell knows what it’ll do to me. Gotta keep vigilant.

He cleaned his plate and gulped down his orange juice. When Doc Sharma passed by to put in an order, he smiled and said, “Hey, Doc. I recommend the eggs. Taste like the real thing. Nobody would ever know it was the scrambled atoms from Tuesday’s meatloaf leftovers.”

There. How’s that? More like the old Leeden?

She laughed. “You should’ve been with us at Titan One in the old days, my boy. Our synth never worked right. You’d get blue cheese dressing on your oatmeal and fish sticks in your pizza.”

“Ouch,” he said.

She went back to her table, but she was still watching him and he knew it. Danny Chee came in and ordered nachos, sat down across from him. Leeden was glad for the company. Chee was an EST, Engineering Systems Tech, who mothered the cooling processor. Couldn’t have the fusion core of the ship getting too warm. The Procyon system already had two suns—Pro A, the main sequence star, and Pro B, a dead white dwarf—it didn’t need a third.

“What’s new, Chee?”

He crunched nachos, washed them down with root beer. He looked around conspiratorially. “You know that smoking hot pharm tech on four? The one with the long black hair and the legs up to her neck?”

“Iramani. Sure.”

He looked around again. “I was balls deep in that girl last night while you were stroking the comm.”

“Then what happened?”

“Ah, you know. Then I woke up.”

Leeden laughed and made sure Doc Sharma heard him. Encouraged, Chee went into detail about who he was lusting over this week, claiming—and not too quietly—that he would get laid about the same time the captain got a personality.

“How’s things up in the comm?”

Leeden swallowed back deserts. “Ah, boring. Nothing much to do during orbital. Mox stops by to make sure I’m not sleeping, and the old man comes in now and again to tell me what an exemplary job I’m doing, how proud of the crew he is.”

“And you listen without throwing up? Damn, I admire your fortitude.” Chee chomped away, sucked down more root beer. “Glad I’m not up there watching that damned planet on the view. Goddamn thing gives me the creeps.”

Leeden swallowed again. “Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. It just does. Better you than me. There’s something spooky about big old Meggy. Maybe I’ve been listening to too many stories.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Agency lost two geo sats here back in the old days. You know that? And a Zulu class warship called the Scorpius crashed on the surface twenty years ago. Last call they got from her was her captain putting out a distress that they were being called down by something that lives there.”

Although he was trembling, Leeden said, “Nothing could survive in that shitstorm down there.”

“I’ve seen life in worse places and so have you.” Chee pushed aside his food. “The Scorpius had a crew of fifty. When an Agency SAR ship did a flyover, they couldn’t find any trace of the ship. And that’s the truth.”

With that, Chee went on his way, dumping the remains of his nachos into the recycler. Leeden sat there, wound tight as a spring, thinking, thinking. He could feel the planet watching him as intently as Doc Sharma, but only Megulon had penetrated into his soul.

Procyon A looked like a fuzzy yellow disk from the orbit of Megulon. It was nearly 500 million miles away and Leeden envied its distance. He refused to look at the viewscreen. Nothing could make him do it. He would have turned it off, but it was against regs. If Captain Creed popped in as he liked to do and it was off, Leeden would have been in for the mother of all ass chewings.

But even when he didn’t look at it, it was looking at him. He could feel its eyes on him, feel it trying to get into his mind and make him do things. Although he didn’t remember turning on the audio that monitored the sound of the planet’s magnetic field, he could hear it—the sound of Megulon, like wind blowing through rows of Nebraska corn, a sound of respiration, the sound of something alive.

Shaking his head, he clasped his hands to his ears so he didn’t have to hear it.

You can’t shut us out, Ly, a sibilant voice said, and he nearly screamed.

“No no, no,” he said.

You’re part of us, and we’re part of you. Tonight, we will take a life as a blood offering. Then you’ll know. Then you’ll understand.

But he didn’t want to understand.

He didn’t want to know.

He wanted blissful ignorance.

But they wouldn’t allow it.

He doubled over with pain, nauseated, with a mindless horror that he had been invaded. That they were inside him, crawling through him, gestating in him like an evil fetus. And his mind was drawn down, down, down and then not only were they in him, but he was in them. He was down there in that screaming wind tunnel of seething methane and hydrogen mist. The air was filled with blowing flakes of ice and spinning dust devils, whirlwinds of it…and yet, he could look up, peer through the bruised black-purple clouds to a ship that orbited high above. And what he felt…what he felt was—

Hunger.

All those energetic, dreaming minds and the tender, sweet gray matter that powered them. He wanted to stuff himself with it.

Then, whatever it was—a delusion, vision, a psychic impression, a mind-swap—it was over and he was standing there, staring at the planet on the viewscreen, his lips moving, his voice saying, “Yes…oh yes.”

He might have screamed, but the door slid open and someone stepped in. It was Lucy Klyman, one of the geologists from three. Leeden wiped sweat from his face. He was both happy and disturbed to see her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just trying to kill the time.” He swallowed. “Why are you up so late? I thought you geo people were morning types.”

She walked right past him and stood before the viewscreen.

“We’ll never get away from it,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She kept staring, her lips moving but no words coming out. Finally, she said, “It’s in my dreams. Every time I close my eyes, I see Megulon. I’m not sure if I’m dreaming of it or it’s dreaming of me.”

His throat was so dry, he could barely speak. “Lucy…Lucy, are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. Not as long as it’s down there…watching us, thinking about us, dreaming about us.”

“Lucy…”

She looked at him and her eyes were lifeless, as if her soul had been sucked away.

“It’s not a planet, Ly. It’s an entity.”

With that, she turned and left the comm module.

Tonight, we will take a life.

Yes, he knew it was true. Tonight, they would take Lucy.

“That’s crazy,” he said under his breath.

But he knew it wasn’t crazy at all.

As the Antares moved across the face of the planet, Leeden stared down into the uneasy firmament of its dark, boiling atmosphere which was like a black funeral veil pulled over the grinning death mask of a corpse. Behind it, it leered at him, mocked him, dared him to get closer. It flaunted its nameless primordial secrets and in his fevered mind, he could see it smiling with huge white teeth.

He had to turn away from it because its baleful influence was beginning to fill his mind. Sooner or later it would make him do something awful, demand sacrifice of him.

Yes, it will ask you to stand in one of the airlocks and open it, so it can pull you down to the surface.

He stood there, thinking how easy such a thing would be, and he began to shake uncontrollably.

Turn around, Ly. Turn around and look upon me as I truly am.

But he would not. He did not want to see its evil, grinning face, the tenebrous holes of its eyes, or the leeching blackness of its mouth.

“You’re nothing but a hunk of rock,” he said in a low, wounded voice. “You can’t hurt me.”

Then, over the comm, he heard the emissions from the planet—the howling tornadic winds scouring its rocky surface and wailing through ancient dry ravines and Stygian canyons where all the shadows of the galaxy were born. It sounded like pure elemental wrath, shrieking and hissing, crackling with the primal electricity of creation and pulsating with sinister life.

He could flee a hundred light years and he’d still never escape it. The knowledge of this was like a straight razor across his throat. What terrified him the most was the inevitability of it all. It had him. That dirty black, shadow-crawling planet had him and there was nothing he could do about it.

He turned and faced the viewscreen.

Up close like that, the reflection of his face was superimposed against the image of the planet. He stared at it. He looked deep into it. The emissions coming over the comm were not simple atmospheric bounce and magnetic noise. They sounded like millions of locusts shrilling and droning.

“Go ahead,” he said, because he was tired of it all, tired of feeling like a bug on a pin. “Take me now. Do whatever you want. Kill me. Destroy me.”

The planet irised open like an immense bloodshot eye, showing him a rapidly pulsing gelatinous orb with red swollen veins that wriggled like the tentacles of a squid and a titanic slime-green pupil.

A surge of horror overwhelmed him, something partly physical but mostly spiritual. He fell back and landed on his ass. He had to clasp his hands over his mouth so he did not scream. The eye grew larger and larger, the pupil filling the screen. It was coming for him. He had invited it, and now it was coming to claim him.

You’ll sit at my table and sup upon horror beyond anything your simple little simian brain can imagine.

And he could see it, really see it. See himself dying on the frozen rocky surface of Megulon. Eyes boiling from his skull. Toxic gases making his lungs rupture and his skin split open like dry leather. His body freezing, then exploding into a rain of ice chips.

He crawled across the floor, turning his gaze from the eye. The sounds coming in over the comm were deafening. He had to get away, had to hide, to flee before he screamed his mind away.

Then everything went silent.

Save for a voice in his head, the silky seductive voice of a woman. When the time comes, we will come for you. And you will be ready.

There was a death on the Antares.

The details were carefully guarded and not for general dissemination amongst the crew. It happened on three, the Planetary Sciences wing. Rumors were flying and people were demanding to know what was going on, but Captain Creed and his officers kept a tight lid on things. Still, bits and pieces got out. One of the geophysics people, a woman named Klyman, had been acting odd and withdrawn for some time. She confided to a friend of hers, a BioMed nurse, that a voice from Megulon was calling to her in her sleep, that it wanted her to do awful things to herself and to the others.

The scuttlebutt claimed she had committed suicide on the observation deck.

“But don’t believe that,” Chee told Leeden in his cabin over a few shots of bourbon. He had gotten the true story from his friends in mapping who’d found her. “Whatever happened, it was like nothing you can imagine. Her insides were spread all over ob deck. It looked like she’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen, frozen solid, then shattered with a hammer. Real nasty.”

According to Chee, Doc Sharma was one of the first responders. She said Klyman looked pretty much how someone would if they stepped out onto the surface of the planet without a protective pressure suit.

When Leeden heard all this, it was like a frozen needle slid into his heart. He could barely keep it together. It meant whatever was down there could come up to the ship anytime it wanted…or it could bring you down to it.

Lucy.

Oh, Jesus, Lucy…I’m so sorry.

It invaded his dreams.

He saw its eyes yellow as poisoned puss, felt its icy ammoniated breath against his throat.

He was on the surface of Megulon, hiding amongst towering cairns of wind-polished stones. He wore no pressure suit. He breathed the toxic air. A dirty amber light created shadows that slithered like snakes. The voice of the planet called to him. It reverberated weirdly in the gaseous atmosphere, discordant and piercing, a scratching dead voice like a thousand forks scraped over a thousand blackboards. Now and again, he would catch a glimpse of the planet’s avatar rising from a seething mist of methane—a fluttering, coiling collection of fragmenting tendrils and appendages and wormy feelers eroding into a storm of dust, a living shroud with a single translucent eye like an egg sac threaded with blood.

You came because I called you. You are here because I wished it. I summoned you to my side as I will summon them all, one by one by one, their soft pink skins crystallizing, their lungs rupturing, their mouths filled with ice shards of blood, their eyes popping like bubbles. I will have them, Ly, all of them. And be made fertile.

He ran even though there was no escape. Then he was back in his cramped little bed in his equally cramped little cabin on the ship…and the monstrous avatar of the planet covered him like a great writhing, vermin-infested winding sheet, pressing its hot repulsive body against him and exhaling noxious vapors into his mouth until he suffocated.

When he woke, he knew he had been visited.

In his mind, there was a single thought, but it wasn’t his own: Tonight, we’ll take everyone, Ly. Everyone. But not you. You have a special purpose.

It was his nerves.

That’s what Leeden told himself.

He was in denial and this was the self-deluding bullshit he came up with. He spoon-fed himself with it like a baby. Bad nerves. Not enough sleep. Too many damn long hours at the comm combined with fatigue and a runaway imagination. He went to see Doc Sharma and laid it out for her. She understood and gave him some tablets to calm him down.

“We all get it out here,” she told him. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

She warned him to only take the pills before bed. He thanked her and went on his way.

When he got up to the comm that night, he swallowed two of them. Within ten minutes, he felt mellow.

Real mellow.

For three hours there was nothing. He began to feel like he’d licked it, straightened out all the bad vibes in his head. He wasn’t the first one to get a good case of space rapture. It happened. To prove to himself how much better he was feeling, he opened the channel on the comm and listened to the noise coming up from the planet. Nothing but static, a few stray hollow echoes, now and again a thrumming noise like a generator warming up.

“Shit,” he said, feeling stoned and perfectly easy with it all. “Noise. That’s all. That’s all it ever was.”

As he reached out to turn it off, a voice said, Are you scared?

He threw himself back, nearly falling out of his seat. It was the same silky/seductive/throaty voice from before.

You didn’t think it was over between us, did you? It won’t be over until my arms are around you, and you are inside me.

In his mind, Leeden screamed hysterically. He slapped a hand down on the comm board and shut off the noise from the planet. He would not listen anymore. Shaking, his flesh gone cold, hot fever sweat rolling down his brow, he sat there for some time thinking about fate and how you could not avoid what it had in store for you.

Ten minutes later, Moxton came in. “How’s it going?” he asked.

Leeden forced himself to breathe deep and even. “Just fine. Another night.”

Moxton simply nodded. There was something on his mind, something he wanted to say. But he talked around it. He talked about other missions, his first EVA. Anything but what was on his mind. Finally, almost painfully, he said, “You ever have any trouble up here?”

He tensed. “What kind of trouble?”

Moxton kept stroking his beard. “I don’t know…you listen to the emissions from the planet. Do you ever hear…um…voices?”

“What do you mean, Mox?”

“We’ve been having trouble with some people. I’m not naming names, so don’t ask me. They claim they hear sounds or voices from the planet.”

Leeden knew this was his chance. He could spill it all to a sympathetic ear. Which he started to do, but his voice betrayed him. It said, “No, nothing.”

Which was exactly what Moxton wanted to hear. It relieved him. He thanked Leeden and went on his way.

It was later. Much, much later.

He was dreaming or maybe he wasn’t dreaming at all. The Antares shook. A concussive force made it lurch and shudder as if it were grabbed by a giant fist and shaken. There was the sound of thunder, the groan of metal fatigue. Vibrations rolled through the deck plating, and it spun like a top. He heard screams of agony and terror rising up and up and then—

Then his eyes were open and he was on the floor. Alarms were ringing, lights flickering. The displays on the comm board were dead. A droning automated voice was declaring ship-wide: WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! LIFE SUPPORT FAILURE! REPEAT: LIFE SUPPORT FAILURE! INTIATE EMERGENCY PROCEDURES! LIFE SUPPORT FAILURE!

Oh Jesus, oh Christ.

Leeden crawled across the floor. The hull had been breached. They were losing pressure, atmosphere, everything. He needed to get to the emergency locker down the corridor. He had minutes, possibly seconds. There was a cracking sound in the bulkheads. The ship rolled again, and he was thrown across the room. As he crawled toward the door, he could feel gravity beginning to cancel out. His movements were sluggish and exaggerated as if he was underwater.

The hatch wouldn’t open.

Shit!

He opened the box and worked it manually. It took nearly a minute that he did not have. When it was halfway open, he pushed himself through the aperture and a wind hit him, forcing him up against the ceiling. The air was already getting bad. The temperature was dropping. He slithered along the ceiling until he reached the locker. Thankfully, the door slid open.

Okay. Move. Hurry. Don’t panic.

At half gravity, he flew across the room and banged into the wall, making a slow and graceless somersault to the floor. He righted himself, reached out for the pressure suit locker. His head was spinning wildly. Whether it was from the fading gravity or contaminated air, he wasn’t sure.

With some effort, he climbed into a suit. As soon as he was in, it read him, connected with the chip in his arm, recognized him and sealed the suit, the bubble helmet falling over his head and locking with a hiss. Right away, his head began to clear as fresh oxygen cycled into the suit.

He was alive.

He was protected.

The suit would technically keep him alive for weeks, even if he was drifting in deep space. He regulated his breathing, mellowing slightly. He wasn’t going to die. He had to get out there and help the others. That was his priority, the one that had been instilled in him through countless emergency drills.

He stepped out into the corridor and began to float. The gravity was failing fast. That was okay. The suit was designed for such a contingency. He worked the controls and propelled himself slowly down the corridor. He rounded a corner at the end and the lights went out.

Power now, too.

He needed to get down to the engineering section and cold-crank the auxiliaries. They should have kicked in by now. Maybe they were damaged. But there were backups, and there were always the escape pods if worse came to worse.

The suit’s helmet lights blazed and there was debris floating everywhere—cups and papers, a stray boot, a wrench, a plastic water jug. He pushed it all out of his way and something much larger came drifting in his direction.

A body.

It was dressed in an orange jumpsuit that was blown up like a balloon from massive decompression. A seeking tentacle of blood oozed molasses-slow from its mouth. Its eyes had been forced from their sockets. Still connected by the optic nerves, they looked like the eye stalks of a crab.

As he reached the next level down, the corridor was filled with exploded corpses. They were like migratory birds, moving together in a flock. They were like tomatoes that had been pumped with helium, pulped, then quick-frozen. Clouds of frozen blood crystals moved with them.

They can’t all be dead, Leeden thought with more than a little desperation. Not all of them. Oh God, oh please, don’t let them all be dead.

Maybe being up in the comm module had saved him. By design, it would have been one of the last places to lose its atmosphere.

Unless you’ve been kept alive for another reason, a much darker reason.

But he couldn’t think that way. It was more important than ever to keep his head clear. He couldn’t waste mental energy worrying about the planet or what might be down there. He had work to do.

He pushed past more corpses—oh shit, Mox, not you, not you—and went down another level. His helmet lights were full of dust and spinning grit. It was like moving through a sandstorm. There was wind now, a tempest of it cycling down the corridor. He could barely move against it. The suit read it and told him it was blowing at well over a hundred miles an hour. Clouds of sparkling mist enveloped him. The suit said the atmosphere of the Antares was now a lethal envelope of ammonia and methane.

Like Megulon, he found himself thinking. It’s becoming like the atmosphere of the planet.

Such a thing was impossible, completely impossible, but it was happening just as he knew he wasn’t alone in the storm of dust and poisonous fog.

He heard a shrill cackling in his ears. We’re making the ship habitable for us, Ly. We’re terraforming it.

He could see a luminous form coming out of the murk, reaching out with black splintered talons. She…it…they were coming, a colonial organism of death and agony and decay. A flickering phosphorescence of blowing rags and tendrils and coiling ribbons, a cycling vortex of methane and hydrogen, liquid nitrogen and ammoniated ice. The avatar of the planet itself, a monstrous chaos birthed in lakes of ammonia and filled with seething clouds of toxic vapors.

Leeden began to scream as he saw the huge bubble-like eye in the center of it watching him with avid hunger.

Now we’re going down, Ly, where we can be alone.

Even though cold waves of absolute fear washed through him, he wasn’t going to give in.

Survival instinct made him flee. He moved away down the corridor to the bay where the escape pods were. He’d get in one. Blast himself free of the ship and Megulon, send out a distress. The suit propelled him down there, and he opened the bay with the preset code. The hatches of the escape pods were open and waiting. He chose one at random, climbed in, and sealed it. He began the prelaunch sequence.

This will work. You’ll be okay.

The outer airlock opened, and the viewscreen activated. There was Megulon. He refused to look, to listen to what it was saying to him. The pod was ready. It’s AI package launched it. It shot into space, and he saw stars and stars…and then blackness as it swung around on a freakish trajectory.

It was taking him back to the planet.

In a matter of minutes, it had launched some 30,000 miles from Megulon, but now it was returning.

“NO, YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!” Leeden shouted at it. “YOU CAN’T DO THIS! YOU FUCKING CAN’T! I SET YOU TO TAKE ME TOWARD PROCYON!”

Regardless, the pod was returning. Despite every override he applied, the goddamn thing was taking him back to the fucking planet.

It grew larger and larger on the viewscreen…except, it was changing. It was not the dark, lifeless sphere he knew. Now it was the color of blood, more oblong than round, vibrant pink and red threads drifting out from its periphery as if it was a gigantic fraying ball. Its surface was irregular. As the pod brought him in, he saw that it seemed to be composed of pulsating bubbles or globules.

No no no, oh please, not this. Not this—

Closer and closer still.

Now more tendrils were splaying out as if it was unraveling. Its shape was elongating, its surface covered in palpitating gelatinous bubbles. In his head, he could hear it throbbing like an immense pumping heart. Shish-shish, shish-shish. It was seeped with blood and globs of tissue. At its apex, pink fibers like filaments of wood rot spread out, snaking, branching like veins and blood vessels. He could see fluid bubbling in them.

Its shape continued to elongate until it had the general form of a paramecium seen under a microscope—a titanic fluid-filled membrane, blood-red and purple. It seemed to be made of coiling cilia like a ball of living string…all of them alive and wriggling and at the center, the very black beating heart of the thing, there was a squirming, repellent form in an egg-shaped chamber…an obscene, embryonic horror like a fetal spider seen in a transparent ovum. It looked out at him with a single bleary eye, its mouth suckering open and closed like that of a leech.

Lucy had been right, he knew as his sanity broke loose of its moorings. It’s not a planet Ly. It’s an entity. And yes, oh dear God, yes, the planet was a writhing placenta, a birth sac bubbling with plasma and amniotic fluid. And in it, an embryo that was waiting to be born.

The pod surged ever forward like a hot seed that had come to fertilize it, beginning its terrible fall through the webby, plasma membrane of the egg, reaching deeper, deeper for the black eternity of the writhing tomb known as Megulon.

Scan for Life
by Jason Parent

Eight minutes and forty-two seconds.

That’s how much time I have left before my air runs out. The digital number on my visor’s display continuously counts down to zero. No one can stop time.

Not that I’d want to. In the seven hours, fifty-one minutes, and…now, thirty-eight seconds, that I have been drifting, I’ve gone through the five stages of grief. The first four were ugly. A lot of denial, hysterics, anger, weeping, and pleading to a god I’m not sure I believe in.

And finally acceptance. Or at least resignation.

I am going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

As I look at the life support and operational functions flashing in red over my visor, I’m unsure if anything I have to say will be recorded, though I have the com open. The visor itself responds to my verbal command prompts and all its display options appear to be working fine, though nearly all my suit’s critical systems are offline. Thrusters worked for half a second, just long enough to stop my spinning. Not that I have anywhere to go.

Oxygen’s working, but that’s running out faster than I can make this entry. Anticipating further technological advancement, I optimistically estimate I’m twenty plus years away from rescue…er, retrieval, rather. On the off-chance someone, somehow, some way, someday hears these, my final words and last moments not on Earth, I will attempt to relay what happened to me and the crew of the U.N.C. Erebus, a ship that was, thirty years ago when we left Earth, a state-of-the-art Epsilon Class interplanetary vessel.

And I’ve only got about seven minutes, so the short version will have to suffice.

My name is Sasha Kozlov, First Lieutenant aboard the Erebus. The date is March 5, 2176. My crewmates are dead. Our ship, for lack of a better word, exploded.

We were tasked with assessing Chernobog Minor, a diminutive, Earth-like planet in the shadow of Alnitak in the Horsehead Nebula, for resource and colonization purposes. The journey went without issue, but as soon as we dropped out of warp, we nearly collided with the planet’s sole satellite—a bleak, gray, desolate thing not unlike Earth’s only moon. All our navigational charts and calculations put us exactly where we landed, but with Chernobog Minor’s moon on the far side of the planet. It was almost as if the damn thing had reversed its orbit while we slept.

Our ship’s thrusters ripped us free of the moon’s gravitational pull, and we made haste along Chernobog’s equator until we had circumvented half the planet. We had barely begun atmospheric sampling when we experienced a second proximity alert.

This time, we saw no moon. All Erebus’s sensors indicated an anomaly still many klicks beyond the bow but closing rapidly. Over the next few minutes, Captain Barlow ordered a multitude of evasive maneuvers, but nothing could shake whatever it was that had honed in on us. It moved as we moved, as if it could sense our actions before we could even enact them. Nothing on Earth could maneuver so fluidly. Nothing technological, anyway. It glided like a shark through water.

But, of course, we weren’t on Earth.

Captain Barlow eventually gave up on trying to outmaneuver the incoming projectile. Instead, he raised the shields, deployed anti-torpedo missiles and barrier mines, and braced for impact.

It never came. We all stared at our viewscreen, watching half our ship’s artillery float away uselessly. Aside from the planet thirty thousand klicks off our starboard side, only space—black, empty, and endless—lay between us and more space.

Then…something.

I couldn’t be certain whether it was truly there or just a mere trick of the eye. It looked as if a segment of black nothingness was moving, swirling in the airless expanse, darker than space itself except where it glittered like the stars. Some sort of translucent miasma approached. Tendrils wisped over the viewscreen.

The Erebus’s sensors blared. Jervis tried to scan it, but the readings that appeared on his dashboard might as well have been in Mandarin. No, even that would have been better because Zhao might have understood them. Whatever was out there, it was made up of no known elements. Nothing natural. Nothing…earthly.

As if that should have surprised us. We do not belong out here. There are places humans were never meant to go, things we were never supposed to comprehend. Space is infinite. Our minds…not so much.

We stared in awe and dread as darkness engulfed the ship. The brume wisped like wind through spiderwebs, delicate fingers probing over our hull. We felt nothing in a physical sense—no collision, no movement, no nothing. We killed the alarms, yet heard no sounds. But the look on the others’ faces—pale, wide-eyed expressions, gazes darting about—told me they felt what I felt: something wrong. Something terribly wrong.

An eerie howl, like a whale song underwater with all the lamentation of a dirge, pierced the silence. A rank odor—rot to a level I’ve never smelled before—seeped in through a supposedly seamless hull. The ship began to rattle.

Beep. “You have three minutes of oxygen remaining.”

Twelve people…twelve brave men and women crewed that damn vessel, and I was the only one to move. Being first to react saved my life. Well…prolonged it, anyway. I’m not sure why I ran for my suit, abandoned my post. Something about the very air in that ship felt unclean, curdled my skin down to the bone. It was suffocating, maddening even. They say all ships are like that on long journeys—suffocating, closed as tightly as a coffin.

Enough to drive anyone mad…

But this was not mere claustrophobia, but rather a presence that has to be felt before it can be understood. Just thinking about it comes with nausea and the bitter taste of revulsion. Something was in that ship with us. I couldn’t see it or touch it, but it touched me, reached inside my skull and explored my contours. It invaded me, seeking I know not what, but defiling every part of me it explored, souring it. Souring me. And upon feeling it, I had to be free of it.

You will either believe me or you won’t. I can only hope that some other evidence will corroborate what I’m telling you, proof falling short of you experiencing that festering cloud for yourself. I wouldn’t wish that upon any person.

Thankfully, as quickly as it had come upon us, it had gone. But it had changed everything.

I had just managed to clasp on my helmet when the ship fell apart around me. Panels separated from their niches on the walls. The floor dropped away. All the synthetic polymers and all the screws and bolts beneath them just undid themselves as if they couldn’t stomach each other’s company any longer. Pieces shot randomly in all directions. Tubing impaled Mikhailov before my very eyes. Zhao went insane, tried to tear off my helmet and take my suit, an act that had he succeeded even partly, would have left us both dead. I…I had to dispatch him myself.

My suit sustained damages in the struggle. Moments later, I floated within an asteroid belt of shiny, expensive debris, the now-scrap metal that had previously been the Erebus. As the ship finished…not exploding, as I said earlier, but dismantling itself, I took even greater damage, fortunately mostly to the suit’s outer lining and digital components.

Or, unfortunately, given my current circumstances.

And just before the ship drifted apart, I could hear Com.R.A.D., Erebus’s AI, scrambling captain’s log entries to repeat a message I couldn’t make sense of: “In its shadow, a dead god dreams.” It played through the intercom patched into my helmet.

Then, the silence of space, all around me. Someone—Villanova, I think—floated by me, his skin shining like purplish-silver armor. His death was immediate. I assume the rest of the crew met similar fates.

I envy them now.

Beep. “You have two minutes of oxygen remaining.”

There you have it. Two minutes before I start dying.

Some part of the ship—it looked like the toilet—knocked me askew, and I used the three seconds of functioning thrusters I had to right myself. For nearly eight hours, I’ve been orbiting the planet, its gravity drawing me closer. I suspect my body and this suit will burn up entirely as I enter Chernobog Minor’s atmosphere, and this entire record will have been a complete waste of time. But, fret not. At least I will have suffocated long before I’ll feel even a modicum of heat.

Warmth. Where life belongs. Humans cling too fiercely to their one-sided notion of reality to walk in the wide, empty spaces between known quantities, where only cold, incalculable privations await.

I should not be here. You don’t volunteer for a mission like this if you’ve got someone or something back home worth staying for. But you don’t realize what’s worth staying for—the little things, like…I don’t know…bike rides and ice cream, fine wine and finer music—until you can’t experience them any longer. I was homesick for a home I thought I wouldn’t miss before I had even left its atmosphere.

The quest for knowledge is a fundamental flaw in the human condition. We can never leave well enough alone. We live on a speck of dust in a great, dark sea, and in our arrogance, we think we should venture far. The cosmos does not tolerate carbon-based life.

I’ve thought about removing my helmet…

But the planet below me—it’s so beautiful, so much like Earth. Its vitality brings me some comfort, to know I am not all that is alive out here. Alone out here. With my visor’s magnification on high, I can see so much of it now. Oceans and forests and mountains and so much of all the stuff that made our planet wonderful.

Home. Even after mistreating it so poorly, we should never have left. This new world doesn’t deserve us. Part of me hopes neither I nor it are ever found.

I’ve given up trying to decipher what caused our undoing, either the Erebus’s or our planet’s. Life’s too short. Ha! I’ll chalk it up to bad gas and try to appreciate the view while I can. There is still too much out here we can never understand.

Wait… What is… “Command: magnify one hundred percent.”

It…it can’t be…a…a civilization? “Command: increase magnification another forty percent. My God… If you are listening to this, Chernobog Minor shows signs of habitation. Intelligent life!”

Beep. “You have one minute of oxygen remaining.”

“I-I-I can’t believe it! Those structures…so many of them, tall as skyscrapers, shimmering like glass castles. Something lives here. But where? Command: scan Chernobog Minor for life.”

Beep. “No lifeforms detected on the planet.”

But those structures…they have to be artificial. No manner of natural phenomena, not even out here, could have constructed those formations. So many straight edges and right angles. So many repeated geometric shapes, interconnecting rails, but…broken now, like shattered teeth. A crater at its center. It’s massive, odd-shaped, elliptical, infinity, infinite.

“Command: scan for life.” Surely, there must be life.

But I see none. Where have they gone?

Beep. “One lifeform detected.”

“Where? Show me!”

A flash comes from my peripheral. My helmet’s computer is directing my gaze toward the planet’s moon. Could life from the planet have relocated there?

But how is the moon… It can’t be here. It should be somewhere on the other side of the planet by now, orbiting as I am orbiting. Surely, I couldn’t have circled the entire sphere?

Beep. “You have ten seconds of oxygen remaining. Ten.”

The moon—it’s huge! As big as the planet. “Command: scan out.”

“Nine.”

Still so big. Its gravitational pull has somehow ripped me from orbit.

“Eight.”

Impossible. It’s moving. Unfolding. No moon…

“Seven.”

An eye? Hideous, as wide as an ocean. Watching me.

“Six.”

Full of contempt, and…beneath it… “Command: magnify four hundred percent.”

“Five.”

A thousand faces! Millions! Humanoid, but not quite…

“Four.”

Eyes wide, screaming, clawing. Trapped. A transparent membrane. Trying to get out.

“Three.”

A tentacle, large as a freight train, whipping toward me, emanating that hideous mist.

“Two.”

I can hear it in my head! Unintelligible, yet its meaning clear. Calling for me. Sucking me in!

“One.”

My heart pounds in my chest. My body—so cold, trembling. You can’t have me! Mind unraveling, my fragile sanity holding only because death will embrace me before that-that… Oh God, what have we found out here? What now sees us?

The appendage draws nearer. A chorus of howls carries across the void from the civilization trapped beneath the titan’s skin.

Beep. “Oxygen offline. Seek alternative source immediately.”

I laugh, choke, then wheeze. Death must come before that thing can touch me. I can feel its presence, so much stronger now than I did back in the ship. Tears stream down my face. My arms flail to no effect as I try to swim away. I must escape. Death is the only escape.

The being, so close now. In a moment, it will have me. I laugh madly between gasps. I suck at air, my body craving to go on where my mind can no longer.

My eyes roll back in my head as the miasma radiates over me, creeping in like swamp mud into a boot. My skin revolts against its touch.

It has me, I know, but it is too late. Everything has gone black.

Its presence, louder now in my mind, its voice razor sharp, tearing at the fabric of my soul!

And with its touch, my breath returns, if only to fuel my screams.

Unravelling
by Stephanie Ellis

The fire raged, orange against black night. Janet felt the heat of the flames from her position behind the safety cordon. Her husband was apparently inside, but that didn’t concern her. The only emotion she felt was one of overwhelming relief. Rachel stood at her side and held her hand, her expression empty as she watched the blaze. Her sixteen-year-old daughter had never been one to show her feelings.

A woman’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Janet. Janet? I’m so sorry. I heard and came straight over.”

Janet turned to see Olivia, their neighbour and general busybody. The other woman caught sight of Rachel at her side.

“Rachel! Oh, you poor girl. Janet, do you think this is really the right place for her?”

Janet was saved from having to answer by Rachel herself.

“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Brewer,” said Rachel. “I wanted to be here.”

Janet saw the look of surprise on Olivia’s face, the excited curiosity. The woman would not be easy to get rid of.

“Any news on who started it?”

“Too soon to say,” said Janet. “Philip had been getting quite a few threats from activists lately. He’d even stepped up lab security at the suggestion of the police.”

“We can see how well that worked,” said Olivia, showing her usual lack of tact.

Mother and daughter ignored her, Janet turning back to view the scene. The flames were dying down as the fire crews got the blaze under control. Portable lights brought in by a news team illuminated the area, revealing the skeletal remnants of the building. There was nothing left of the laboratory tucked away at the edge of their residential estate. The officer who’d spoken to her earlier was making his way towards them. He was accompanied by a policewoman. Their faces were grim. She knew what they were going to say, and she composed her features to express distress, squeezed Rachel’s hand.

“Mrs. Cooper, Miss Cooper,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to tell you we found a body.”

The man had kind eyes, a sympathetic face. She felt bad about deceiving him with her hypocrite’s tears. It was necessary though. Rachel’s health had been deteriorating more rapidly of late. They needed time to dig through Philip’s dirt.

“My husband?” She choked on her words as the smoke drifted over.

The inspector looked apologetic, unhappy. “We have to wait for formal identification, but yes, I’m sorry, it does look like him. WPC Turner here will take you home and stay with you.”

Janet couldn’t stand the thought of the company of strangers. She and Rachel needed to be alone. Charles had promised to call, give them some answers. “I know you mean well, Inspector, and it’s a kind thought. However, we’re perfectly capable of looking after ourselves.”

“Please,” said WPC Turner. “This must be traumatic for you both.”

“Yes, yes, it is,” said Janet, her eyes continuing to tear up at the sting of the smoke. “I’d rather be left alone, though. I have my daughter. We can look after each other.”

The two officers looked at them doubtfully and not a little curiously.

“Don’t worry, Inspector,” said Olivia, stepping forwards. “I’ll look after them.”

The last thing Janet wanted.

“It’s okay,” said Rachel, before she could speak. “Mum’s right. We’ll be fine on our own. I’m sure you understand.”

They wouldn’t give up. “We can give you a lift.”

“No,” said Rachel. “We don’t live far, and we’d rather walk.”

“If you need anything, though, anything at all, or remember anything of use, give me a call.”

“Thank you, Inspector,” said Janet. “We will. You’ve been very kind.”

As she finished speaking, Janet found herself being pulled away by her daughter. The girl’s strength surprised her, considering recent events. She’d probably had enough of having to deal with platitudes, pretend to a sadness neither felt. What would the police make of their abrupt departure?

The two women walked quickly, turning into a side street free from the milling crowd of press and locals. It led to a maze of alleyways, shadowy paths which allowed them to leave the site unobserved. Thoughts of what the police would find flitted through Janet’s mind.

She doubted they were looking much beyond the animal rights groups whose threats and activities had escalated in recent weeks. At least the lab rats had escaped. The guinea pigs in the basement laboratories on the other hand, were something Janet could not begin to think about. Their rescue would’ve triggered further investigations. Collateral damage, Rachel had called them. Her daughter’s increasing coldness worried Janet.

“Do you regret what we did?” asked Rachel, her voice muffled as she buried her face in her collar against the night’s chill.

“Not one bit,” said Janet. “After everything he did to us, to you? I’d do it all again, although probably sooner.”

“They won’t believe it was an accident,” said Rachel.

Janet shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “If they ask, I’ll tell them the truth. It’s up to them to believe it or not.”

She had replayed his death over and over again in her mind. The struggle over those other files, the ones with Rachel’s name on their cover, his fall. The sound of his skull cracking on the corner of the table. Try as she might, she felt no guilt over him, no sadness. Only when her thoughts turned to the basement labs and the four test subjects they had discovered down there did she feel any remorse.

“We’ve spared them whatever Dad intended to put them through,” said Rachel. “If they’d survived, they’d have been treated like a freak show. Perhaps I should count myself lucky he didn’t turn me into one of them.”

They weren’t far from home when Rachel suddenly stopped and doubled over, a low moan escaping her lips.

“Rachel? Is it those pains again?” Anxiety coursed through Janet as she put her arms round her daughter to comfort her. The bouts were becoming increasingly frequent.

Rachel nodded, unable to speak as another spasm ran through her.

“Come on, love,” said Janet, helping Rachel to straighten up as the attack eased, taking her weight to support her as they walked. “Let’s get you home and into bed. I’ll give the doctor another call.”

“He’ll just say it’s all in the mind again.”

“Well, he wasn’t allowed to examine you. Your father made sure. Now he’s out of the picture, we are going to get answers,” said Janet. “Your father can’t stop us getting you into hospital this time.”

Rachel straightened up further, although she continued to lean on Janet. The woman could feel her daughter shaking, see her pallid face despite the darkness. Philip had stopped her from getting Rachel looked at properly, insisted it was growing pains. They had to trust him, he’d said. He was a doctor and Rachel’s father after all.

Seventeen years ago, she had been Philip’s patient at an IVF clinic, a single woman of forty years desperate for a child. He had agreed to treat her when others wouldn’t. They’d married when Rachel had been born. Ethics had not concerned either of them at the time. It didn’t matter he wasn’t the biological father, he had said—one of so many lies uncovered over the course of their marriage. He had burned tonight all right. She hoped he was in Hell.

Those early years, he had doted on Rachel, watched her like a hawk. His interest gradually wore off as she grew up to become pretty much like any other her age, nothing out of the ordinary. Janet had often caught him looking at Rachel with an expression of disappointment. What had he been hoping?

Janet felt the tension ease from her as their home came into view. The back entrance to their garden was mercifully clear of gawkers and protestors alike. Here, their security measures had worked. She tapped in the code on the gate and it swung open to admit them. Rachel continued to lean on her, stumbling slightly as they made their way up the path despite the lights coming on to guide them.

Another code tapped in at the kitchen door and they were in. Janet didn’t stop until she’d deposited her daughter safely on the lounge sofa and closed the curtains against prying eyes. She turned on the lights and saw her daughter properly for the first time.

“Rachel!”

She rushed back to the girl’s side, noticing she was no longer pale, had become flushed and mottled, as if her skin was weeping blood. She put her hand to Rachel’s forehead and could feel her burning up.

“Mum, water,” begged Rachel. “My throat feels as if it’s closing up.” Her voice got quieter as she spoke, reflecting her words. “What’s happening to me, Mum?”

There was panic in her eyes, an expression she knew was mirrored in her own. Janet quickly got a glass of water and held it to her daughter’s lips, Rachel’s desperate gulps doing nothing to ease her anxiety. With the glass empty, she pulled Rachel into her arms and held her tightly, stroking her hair, murmuring desperate reassurances. She pulled out her phone. Charles had had time to examine the files they’d taken from Philip’s office. He might know what was wrong. Her husband’s former colleague from the clinic was one of the few she still trusted. He picked up immediately.

“Charles,” she said, “Rachel’s really ill. She’s had another episode. I’m going to call an ambulance. Can you meet us at the hospital?”

“No, don’t,” said Charles. “I’m sending a car for you and I’ll have a room ready for her here.”

“Charles, she needs treatment now. An ambulance—”

“No! You asked me to dig around Philip’s work, and I found something. It’s better Rachel comes here to my hospital. It’s private, discrete, and she’ll get better care than anywhere else.”

“What—”

“The car’s already on its way. Please, trust me. Gordon’ll be with you in a minute. Hang on in there. The codes haven’t changed?”

“No,” said Janet.

“Good, he’ll come in the back way. Don’t worry, Janet, we’ll have you both here in a jiffy.”

The call ended. Janet continued to sit and rock Rachel in her arms, terrified at the thought of losing her daughter. What had Philip done to her? If she’d accepted the WPC’s offer, they would be in a hospital already. The police. They needed to know where they’d gone. It would look suspicious if she seemed to vanish the night her husband died.

She rang the inspector on the number he had given and was thankful to go straight through to voicemail. It lessened the chances of her slipping up. She kept it simple. Rachel had been taken ill and he would find them at St. Maud’s Private Hospital.

As she hung up, she heard footsteps.

“Janet?”

“In here.”

Dr. Gordon MacDonald, another one-time colleague of her husband’s, entered the room. He examined Rachel quickly. She should’ve been relieved at his presence yet his reluctance to comment unnerved her.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get her to the car. Don’t worry, Janet. We’ll find out what’s wrong with her.”

Together, they helped Rachel to her feet and out of the house.

“She’s cooling down a bit,” said Janet, as they got into the waiting vehicle. “A bit of fresh air might be all she needed.”

She doubted it was as simple as that although it was a good sign and one she intended to hold on to for as long as possible.

“Perhaps,” said Gordon.

Janet recognised the professional non-committal tone. Having been around doctors for so many years, it was the one which meant they had found something and it wasn’t good. She would try though.

“Has Charles discovered something?”

“He’ll tell you,” said Gordon. “He was very insistent. I’m sorry.”

A chill ran through Janet. “Doesn’t sound good. That bloody DNA test. We thought it would be a bit of fun and instead opened a whole can of worms. I wish we’d never done it.”

“If you hadn’t, nothing would’ve changed and you’d have been further in the dark about it.”

Plus, Philip would be alive. All of this from a whim to track their ancestors, hers, Rachel’s and Philip’s, although he had said no. Oh, they’d discovered Rachel’s heritage of Vikings and Saxons all right. They’d also discovered her paternity having sneaked a sample of Philip’s DNA for testing.

“You said you weren’t my biological father,” had screamed Rachel when she’d discovered the truth. “Have I been such a disappointment to you, you’d say such a thing? Deny me all these years?”

Janet shuddered as she remembered how her husband had stared at Rachel before speaking the words which had led directly to recent events.

“You were an experiment,” he’d said to Rachel and then turning to Janet, “and you were merely a womb.”

His cruelty had sliced through her and torn her daughter apart. Love for her husband had died long ago, leaving her emotionally empty until he’d revealed his true feelings. His words ignited the spark which had turned her antipathy to hatred for him and fear for Rachel.

“What do you mean experiment?” she’d asked, feeling sick as she imagined all sorts of possibilities.

“Suppose it doesn’t matter now,” he’d replied. “It didn’t work anyway. And yes, Rachel. You could say you were a disappointment.”

“What didn’t work?” asked Janet, gripping Rachel tightly seeing both shock and terror in her daughter’s eyes.

“Oh, a little tinkering here and there. You knew my research.”

His work. Janet felt as if her legs were about to give way. Philip had left the IVF clinic not long after Rachel’s birth to head up research into genetic engineering.

“You messed about with her DNA. What have you done?”

“Dad?”

He’d ignored their questions and walked out. Janet had spent the rest of the day trying to calm her daughter as Rachel ranted and raved, alternating between fury at her father and terror at her predicament. Feelings which Janet shared and which she had to battle to supress as she sought to comfort the distraught girl.

That had been three months ago. Not long after, Rachel had begun to suffer crippling bouts of pain, and Philip had treated her despite everything. This was no attempted apology or change of heart. It was a way of covering up his possible involvement in the cause of her illness. By admitting he’d done something to Rachel’s embryonic DNA, he’d left himself vulnerable to investigation, a risk he couldn’t take.

In desperation, Janet had contacted Charles even though she hadn’t seen him for years and told him everything. He’d promised to run some tests on Rachel and dig around the clinic’s archives. They had been determined to get answers, his promise bringing them here, to this moment.

Charles was waiting for them at the entrance, two nurses by his side. All wore masks and gloves. It was a frightening sight.

Rachel struggled against the nurses who’d come over to her and taken her by the arms. “Mum?”

Janet could barely bring herself to look into her daughter’s terrified eyes. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’m sure it’s purely precautionary.”

Rachel nodded, accepting her mother’s reassurance, and allowed herself to be lifted onto a gurney and wheeled away.

Janet tried to follow, instead found herself and Gordon directed another way. “Charles?”

“You both need to shower and change your clothes. I then need to do a body scan for each of you. Precautions apply to you as well, you understand,” he added.

Janet’s mind was in a turmoil. “You think she’s got something infectious?”

“I’ll explain everything in a bit,” said Charles. “I know you’re anxious, but we have to check both of you over.”

The look on his face showed no more information would be forthcoming until they’d done what he’d asked. She briefly considered dashing past him to find Rachel. The sight of two burly security guards appearing behind him stopped her. Her concern deepened as she obediently took her shower, applying the sterilising gel as directed. When she remerged, her old clothing was taken away, and she and Gordon were led to a small lab.

“We’ve been developing and redefining a 3D body imager,” said Charles, as he guided them inside. “We can use this without questions being asked.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” asked Janet, as Charles took blood samples from both her and Gordon and put the filled tubes in an electrical cabinet.

“Patience,” said Charles. “A little longer and then we can talk. You go first, Janet. The pod’s perfectly safe.”

The door slid open and she entered the capsule with some trepidation, watching as Charles studied a monitor. Small beams of light danced across her, numbers on a panel beside her continually changed as information was gathered. She hadn’t been in there long before a light flashed and the door opened.

She stepped out and watched Gordon take her place. Janet studied the screen herself this time and was astounded to see every aspect of Gordon’s internal organs and nervous system. She had never seen such an advanced piece of equipment.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Charles, glancing up at her. “We can zoom in to a microscopic level without loss of clarity. One day we hope to have these in all hospitals. It’ll save from having so many invasive procedures.”

A ping behind them sent Charles back to the cabinet. Numbers flashed on a small screen on the machine.

As Gordon exited the capsule, Charles took off his face mask and gloves.

“You’re both clear,” he said.

Janet noticed the look of relief on Gordon’s face. “I take it if we weren’t, it would’ve been bad news?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Charles.

Tears formed in Janet’s eyes as she understood the implication. “Rachel?”

“Come with me,” said the doctor.

He took them to a small bay at the end of an empty isolation ward. The room was divided into two. The outer section in which they stood contained computer screens flashing up a startling array of images. Through a glass partition, Janet could see her daughter lying asleep with a number of wires and probes attached to her. There was also the more usual equipment monitoring vital functions and an IV drip.

“We’ve given her a sedative for the moment,” said Charles. “She needs rest and we thought it best in light of recent…um, bodily changes. The shock… Well, I can’t imagine,” said Charles.

“Shock?” By now Janet was completely at a loss.

“We have found anomalies in Rachel’s cells. White blood cells, tissue, muscle, everywhere. Look.” Charles went over to a blank screen and keyed in a command. A picture formed. “This is a brain cell. We can zoom in to the nucleus like so. See the chromosomes.”

Janet nodded, gripping the edge of the table to keep herself upright.

“Here, I think you should sit down,” said Gordon, bringing a chair up behind her. Gratefully, she sank into it. She stared at the chromosomes which Charles turned around on screen to give a full 3D view.

“Now we go in further,” said Charles. “To the DNA itself. Our machines have refined and taken electron microscopy to a new level. See the double helix?”

Janet gazed in wonder at the coiling strands whose coded message defined the human carrying them. They twisted and turned, shimmered. The glow was strange. “Is that supposed to be happening?”

“No,” said Charles. “That is the anomaly. Look at this screen; this is an image of our DNA as we’d expect it to be. This is mine by the way.”

There was no movement, no shimmer. She looked back at Rachel’s. “So, what’s happening here?” She was finding it hard to focus, terrified for her daughter, horrified at her own helplessness.

Charles cleared his throat. “It seems…um… It seems to be unravelling. The DNA strands appear to be unzipping—”

“How? How is that humanly possible? And what will this do to my daughter?”

“We don’t know. We can only observe. Look at this cell.”

The computer was continually scanning the data from the probes, sending images to the monitors. The cell looked normal. Then the strands shimmered and it was as if a fine sheath covering the filaments was detaching itself and slithering away. A snake shedding its skin.

“Do you have any clue at all as to why this is happening?”

“I’m afraid it goes back to Philip.”

Philip. This was his doing.

“Seventeen years ago, roughly around the time he met you from what I recall, Philip somehow acquired a sample of rock collected by astronauts on one of their space walks. Apparently, odd bits of debris would occasionally float by and they would grab what they could. Anyway, this particular sample had miniscule remnants of a life form embedded within it. I remember it became one of Philip’s obsessions when he wasn’t working in the clinic. He even mooted the idea of bringing whatever it had been back to life. Like that stupid idea in the Jurassic Park films. You know, I’d forgotten all about this until I started reading Rachel’s file.”

Janet tried to stop her mind racing ahead and jumping to impossible conclusions.

“He wanted to embed alien DNA, or whatever the alien material was, into a living organism,” continued Charles. “He couldn’t do it using traditional methods of splicing. Instead, he found a virus to act as a carrier. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of horizontal gene transfer? No, I suppose not. It was what he was working on. He joked about creating a human-alien cross; at least he told me it was a joke when I challenged him. Said not to worry and of course he wouldn’t do anything so stupid or unethical. I must admit, however, I was pretty relieved when he gave his notice and went to work in the labs. And I was pleased when you and he got together. I thought normal family life would bring back some…stability to his life. I didn’t realise until I read the file how far he had actually gone. He had not been joking.”

“The bastard inserted alien DNA into my baby,” said Janet, voicing her thoughts aloud, hoping Charles would deny them. She received no such reassurance.

“Yes. He found a virus to carry the alien material, and it burrowed its way into Rachel’s brain and there it stayed. Philip thought it hadn’t worked. Seems now it was simply dormant. If I had to give a reason as to why it should ‘wake up’ and start spreading through the body, I would say it’s probably been triggered by Rachel’s hormonal system. I can’t tell you how sorry I am you’re both in such a horrific situation.”

Her child. The one thing she had ever wanted, the one person she loved unconditionally. Janet got up and went to the partition door.

“Janet, you can’t go in there,” said Charles. “She’s changing. We don’t know what she’ll turn into.”

“Rachel is my daughter and I want to be by her side when she wakes up, no matter what.”

Gordon moved in front of her.

“Out of my way.”

“Janet—”

“No. The past sixteen years of my life have been a sham. The one thing in any way real is my daughter. She is not a monster, a freak or an alien. She is my child and I cannot, will not, abandon her.”

“You understand the danger?” asked Charles.

For the first time, Janet detected fear in the unflappable doctor’s eyes; it did not change her mind. The bond between a mother and child was one of the strongest, most unbreakable ties of all. “Yes.”

“Gordon. Step aside.”

Janet pushed the door open and made her way quietly across to her daughter’s bed. She sat in the nearby chair and took Rachel’s hand. The skin felt different as she stroked the palm with her thumb, something she had often done to soothe Rachel as a toddler. She inspected it more closely. It was as if she’d worn a hole in the flesh of the palm, the skin having peeled away with each circular motion revealing something else. Janet took a deep breath. She is not a monster, not a freak, not an alien. She is my child.

“What is it, Mum?”

Fearful eyes were looking at her.

Janet fixed a smile on her face. “Nothing, sweetheart. Think you’ve had an allergic reaction to something, that’s all. Listen to you though, you’ve got your voice back!”

“Yeah. I’m not sure how long for though. I feel as though I’m disappearing, fading in and out. My head’s all whoozy.”

Janet swallowed. “Don’t be silly, love. You’re here, and I’m right here with you. Neither of us is going anywhere.”

Rachel shook her head sadly. “Don’t, Mum. Tell me what you see, what you really see. My hand. I can’t feel it. Can’t see it.”

“Your skin,” said Janet, struggling to keep her voice level as she noted the transformation of flesh to leather, unable to give Rachel the answer she wanted. “I’ll get Charles to look at it. Probably your psoriasis flaring up again.”

Rachel gave a small laugh. “You always were a rotten liar. I’m changing, Mum. I can feel it. Is this what Dad did to me? What he wanted to see? Don’t lie, Mum, please. Don’t be like Dad.”

“Yes,” said Janet, beginning to sob, unable to prevent her tears. “Dad did this to you. I didn’t know. I swear. All I ever wanted was my own child. And I got her and she was, is, perfect.”

“He used us both,” said Rachel, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Janet,” said Charles, his voice drifting in via the intercom. “The police are here.”

“It’s okay, Charles. I told them where to find me. Tell them I’m not going anywhere until…until —” She didn’t want to think ahead, couldn’t give voice to her dread.

“We have a few questions for you,” said Inspector Fenwick, interrupting over the intercom. “I know it’s not a good time.”

“It’s the perfect time,” said Janet. “You’ll see firsthand what that so-called husband of mine has done. Why I did what I did. Even if you haven’t worked it out, I’m admitting it now. It’ll save you time and effort. All I ask in return is time to stay with my daughter.”

“Janet, don’t say anything more.”

“It’s fine, Charles. I’m sure they’ll give me a bit of leeway, won’t they? This isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. Inspector? I mean, I can’t very well escape, can I?”

Janet could see the men conferring. They’d turned off the intercom so she was unable to hear what they were saying. No one tried to enter the chamber, however.

Janet felt a tremor in her daughter’s hand.

“Mum, I can’t… I can’t—” A panicked look appeared in her eyes and a shudder ran through her body. A low growl rose from her throat, another garbled, “Mu—”

Rachel began to thrash about on the bed and suddenly Gordon was at their side, masked up again and tying restraints around her limbs. He shook his head at Janet and then left them alone.

Janet reached out to stroke her daughter’s cheek and shrank back in horror as the skin slipped away at her touch. It peeled back to reveal the same leathery membrane she had seen on her daughter’s palm. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream and smelt something, not her daughter’s scent but a musty, decomposing tang. Janet wanted to gag. She couldn’t break down though, couldn’t let Rachel see her fall apart any further.

“Mum, there’s something in my head,” cried Rachel. “It keeps itching at me; it’s eating at my— I can’t—”

Another shudder and Rachel’s gown shifted as the remainder of her skin sloughed off. Sheets of skin hung over the bed, then crumbled to the floor. It was a nightmare without end.

There was the sound of a scuffle in the other room as the inspector made for the chamber’s door. Gordon held him back.

“For Christ’s sake, Doctor,” said the inspector. “We’ve got to get her out of there!”

There was a crash and the sound of more scuffling as Gordon held on.

“Janet, you need to come out of there now,” yelled Charles.

She caught his gaze and held it, made certain he understood what she would do.

“No,” said Janet. “She’s my daughter. Rachel is still in there.”

Charles nodded, his face a picture of misery.

Janet looked at Rachel, focused on her eyes because it was there she could detect her existence. Her pupils flicked from brown to black to red, but somehow she sensed the spirit of her child behind them. Her peripheral vision, however, forced her daughter’s metamorphosis on her. The disappearance and recombining of limbs, the continual reforming of the body as if Rachel were no more than a model kit. Arms became tentacles, the trunk decomposed. The sound of bone breaking, the smell of exposed meat, the slither and slurp of liquid. Janet tried to shut out, refused to look anywhere but into those kaleidoscopic eyes. It was the one thread holding them together.

“It’s okay, Rachel,” she murmured over and over. “I’m here. You’re mum’s here. She will always be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Audible gasps came over the intercom as the transformation continued apace. And all the time Rachel’s frightened eyes sought out her mother whilst Janet clung tightly to her hand.

“Mummm.”

“Here, sweetheart. It’s just us, like always. Just the two of us.”

“Muuummmm!”

The scream tore at her heart, and she held her daughter tighter.

“Mrs. Cooper,” shouted the inspector. “You need to get out of there.”

She ignored him.

He tried again. “Janet.”

Janet turned to face the four of them through the glass. Shocked and horrified, they could not tear themselves away from the sight before them. Charles did not try to persuade her to come out. He understood.

“She’s nearly gone,” said Charles. “Her DNA has unravelled almost completely. There’s nearly nothing left.”

“No,” said Janet, smiling at them. “She’s still there. My Rachel is in there somewhere.”

“Mum… M…u…m.” The word hissed across the room, and Janet steeled herself before turning back.

A tentacle slithered across the bed and wrapped itself around her hand.

“M…u…mmm.”

Janet gazed into the creature’s eyes. It was not Rachel, not her daughter, yet it was her child. That bond could not be broken. In there, somewhere, was Rachel, a daughter calling out for her mother. She would never abandon her daughter.

She allowed the tentacles to creep over her, exploring, touching, embracing.

“M…o…th…er?” The creature knew her.

“Yes,” said Janet. “Always.”

It held her tightly in a crushing embrace, a last act of love between a mother and her child.

Snow Blind
by Kristopher Triana

Christina was in pain. It was the kind of cold that chills you down to your marrow, making your bones ache as it cuts into your flesh like needles. Her back was bent, her body caved into itself, behaving as if crippled by arthritis. She felt so much older than her forty-one years. To make matters worse, the snow was past her ankles and slowed her steps, the wet mounds like devouring quicksand. The snowfall was merciless, pelting her face, making it difficult to see. If not for that single glow ahead, she might as well have been blind.

It was that glow that led her to leave her car in the first place. She needed to get somewhere warm now that the Toyota had stalled out on desolate State Road 44. Christina had been struggling with the route since leaving Blake and the argument he’d initiated, her tires failing to catch traction when she hit dreadful patches of black ice. Now the car had totally crapped out. She could only hope the engine hadn’t seized for good.

Hers wasn’t the only vehicle forced to pull onto the shoulder. She’d passed an empty minivan just before the Toyota died and there was a black Volvo ahead. About sixty yards further, a tractor-trailer had stopped, taking up half the lane. There were no taillights, no headlights, only the vast, white nothing of the winter storm, the most brutal Nor’easter Christina could remember.

As she came upon the source of the light, she realized it was an electric lantern in a window. The cabin slowly came into view, little more than a gray shadow in the haze. When she reached the door, she raised her numb hand to knock, but the door came open.

A girl in her early teens ushered her inside. Her braces glimmered when she spoke, “Get in quick.”

Christina didn’t need to be told that. She scurried into the cabin.

When the girl tried to shut the door, a mean gust of wind made her struggle. A large man appeared and helped her get it closed. He nodded at Christina in greeting, but she was too frozen to respond properly. She put her back to the wall, hugging herself. A thinner man in a trench coat was crouched before a fireplace, working with old newspapers and a cigarette lighter, trying to get the logs to catch flame. A woman about Christina’s age was sitting on a loveseat, a long sheet of burlap wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket.

“Thank you,” Christina managed to say to the group.

She started brushing the snow off her body so it wouldn’t melt into her clothes and make them any wetter. She removed her beanie and shook the flakes from her blonde hair. Then she patted her gloves but did not remove them, for while the inside of the cabin was warmer than being outside, it was clearly not heated.

“You’re most welcome,” the big man said in a thick Maine accent. “Or at least as welcome as any of us.”

She gave him a curious look.

The teen explained. “None of us live here. We all came in out of the storm too.”

Christina looked about the small, one-room cabin. It had minimal furniture. No washtub or even a stove. No bed. No television or computer. There was a desk in the corner where the lamp shone, but no shelving on the walls. Aside from the love seat, there were a few folding chairs, most of them caked with rust.

“I’m Lily,” the girl said.

Christina introduced herself and the others told her their names, all except the man working the fireplace, who hadn’t even bothered to look at her. The big man with the STIHL trucker hat was Randy. The sitting woman was Taylor, and she was Lily’s mother.

“Beastly out there,” Taylor said.

Randy nodded. “Worst storm I’ve seen in a decade.”

“And the coldest.”

“Well, if you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a second.”

Taylor gave a small laugh. “My father always used to say that.”

The man in the trench coat smirked. “Everybody’s father says that.”

“I’ve driven this road hundreds of times,” Randy said, “and this is the first time I couldn’t make it. I hate missin’ a shipment.”

“I take it that eighteen-wheeler’s yours?” Christina asked.

“Yep. I’m a driver. Didn’t think anything could stop my rig. Nothing has before.”

“My car died completely. Just suddenly stopped working.”

Lily said, “So did our van. It just, like, died.”

“I hope the hoses didn’t freeze and burst,” Taylor said. “I would’ve opened the hood to check but the storm was too intense. Besides, I don’t even know what to look for.”

Taylor was overweight but wan, permanent dark rings beneath her eyes. She was rife with exhaustion, and with the tarp wrapped around her like a cloak, she looked like a wizard in a fantasy film.

“We were coming home from seeing my grandma,” Lily said. “This storm just came out of nowhere.”

“Skies were clear when I got on the road,” Christina said.

“Ayuh,” Randy said. “Weather report didn’t even give us any warnin’ ’bout this. Sometimes I think they just make things up, yeah? No more accurate than a monkey throwin’ darts at a map.”

Christina took a seat in one of the chairs. “I’ve been on this road plenty of times too. I remembered this cabin being around here somewhere. Thank goodness for the lantern or I wouldn’t have known where it was at all.”

“We followed it too,” Lily told her.

“We all did,” Randy said. “I was the first one to arrive, and the lantern was already here, and on.”

Christina furrowed her brow. “That’s odd, isn’t it? Where’s whoever put it in here?”

Randy shrugged. “I figure they headed on out ’fore the storm got too bad. Must’ve left the lantern on for people like us who might get stuck. After all, the door was unlocked.”

The man in the trench coat cursed as he flicked the lighter repeatedly, getting nothing but sparks. Taylor’s eyes narrowed, clearly displeased with him for using such language.

“Damned thing,” the man said.

He’d gotten the newspaper to catch, but it burned out without igniting the logs.

“Firewood’s too wet,” Randy said. “I told ya. ’Twas outside when I got here and its covering had blown off.”

The man stood up and exhaled. “It’s freezing in here, what the hell else am I going to do?”

Christina took her phone from her jacket pocket. “I was gonna call for a tow truck, but I doubt they’d have any more luck driving in this than we did.”

“Ayuh,” Randy said. “Probably wouldn’t get through on a call anyway. I tried callin’ my boss to tell him what’d happened but the line was all staticky. We couldn’t tell what each other was sayin’.”

“Can’t get online either,” Lily said, holding up her pink phone.

“What do you expect?” the trench coat man asked. “We’re in the middle of the goddamn mountains. Probably isn’t even a gas station for miles.”

“There’s one ’bout two and a half miles up,” Randy said. “Second exit.”

The man’s already sour face pruned further. “Gee, thanks, asphalt cowboy. Lot of good that does us. We can’t walk in this.”

Christina looked away, already disliking this defeatist. From the looks on everyone’s faces, she was not alone.

Taylor rolled her eyes, exasperated. “No one’s suggesting that, mister.”

The man put his hands on his hips, looking like a hen pecking corn. “Well, what are we suggesting then?” He looked to Randy. “You’re not the only one who had somewhere to be, you know. I’ve a very important meeting in Boston tomorrow morning. I need to get to my damn hotel and get some sleep. I’ve been driving for hours in this goddamned bullshit.”

Taylor huffed. “Will you please not talk that way around my daughter?”

“What way?”

She rolled her eyes again and looked away.

Randy stepped toward the man. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Does it matter?” he said.

“You know our names.”

“Well, I didn’t ask for them.”

Randy stepped closer still and the man moved back. Christina didn’t blame him. Randy had a good fifty pounds on him. He had a beer belly but wide shoulders and an overall look of hardness, muscly from years of manual labor.

“Why’re you so hostile?” Randy asked him.

“I’m not hostile. I’m aggravated.”

“Well, we’re stuck here too. No need to get pissy with us, man. You wanna keep your name a secret, fine. But long as you’re keeping your mouth shut, maybe do as the lady asked.”

“I’ll say whatever I want.”

Christina went to Randy. “Look, forget it. We’ve got bigger things to worry about. We need to figure out what we’re gonna do.”

“Nothin’ we can do,” Randy said, turning away from the other man. “We just gotta wait ’er out. Hopefully plows come through ’fore it gets dark and someone reports our cars so the police’ll come.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.”

Randy rubbed his beard. “At worst, I figure we spend the night here. Figure the snow will let up ’fore mornin’.”

“Why’s that?”

“Shoot, I dunno. Just gotta stay positive in times like this.”

“Listen, I’m all for staying positive, but we’ve gotta be proactive too. It’s ten degrees out there. When night falls, it’ll be even worse. Without heat, we could freeze to death in here.”

“Exactly,” the man in the trench coat said. “So any time you want to help me get this fire going, just step right in, lady.”

Christina glanced at him. His thin, sandy hair was somehow perfectly combed despite having lumbered through the storm. Beneath his coat he wore casual business attire, complimented by shiny dress shoes, the official uniform of the corporate stooge.

“My name’s Paul,” he said with an exaggerated shrug. “There—we friends now?”

“Stop it,” Lily told him. “You’re being a butthead.”

“Quiet, little girl.”

“Don’t talk that way to my daughter!” Taylor snapped.

“Then tell her to mind her business. It’s called parenting.”

Taylor stood. “Listen here, you little twerp—”

Christina got between them. “Enough! Please. We’re all frustrated, but there’s no point bickering.”

“She’s right,” Randy said.

“Did you search the place for supplies?” Christina asked.

Randy nodded. “That we did. It’s only what you see here. No cupboards or hope chests. No storage.”

“What about a shed?”

“All that’s behind the cabin is an outhouse. I brought my backpack from the truck. Have some snacks and a canteen of coffee, but it’s gone cold now.”

“Any road flares?”

“Ayuh. I set ’em off earlier, just before I came here. When I looked back, couldn’t even see ’em, what with the snow bein’ so thick.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see them.”

“Coulda gone out by now anyways. And before ya ask, I tried my CB radio but only got dead air.”

Christina slumped against the wall. Things were looking dimmer by the minute.

“I’ve got my bag too,” Lily said, raising a purse like a hobo satchel. “But there’s not much in it. Just a pen and notebook and junk.”

Christina looked out the window. Several inches of snow had mounted on the sill. The storm raged in a white wall. She couldn’t even see the road anymore.

“Any of your cars have working heat?” she asked.

Paul smirked. “They’re all dead, honey.”

Christina let it slide. She woke her phone, figuring she’d give it a try just in case it worked better than everyone else’s, but just as she was entering her security code there was a loud crash that made the cabin shudder.

“S’all right,” Randy said. “Somethin’ musta fell on the roof. Tree probably.”

“Seemed like it hit the side of the cabin to me,” Paul said.

“Yeah,” Christina said, though she hated to agree with him.

“Like I say,” Randy said, “it was probably a tree knocked over by the wind.”

“Maybe we should go take a look.”

Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Why? It’s freezing out there. If a tree fell, it fell.”

“I just think we should know.” But Christina wasn’t sure what she expected to gain from it. “If a tree hit the cabin, it might cause more damage.”

“Nothing we can do about it if it does,” Paul said.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

Randy held up a hand. “Nah, nah. I’ll go take a look. You’ve barely had time to get yourself warm. I’ll check things out and get right back. Give you a full report.”

When he winked, Christina gave him a small smile. At least there was one decent guy here. Paul was insufferable, and she’d had enough of men’s bullshit after the fight she’d had with her boyfriend, Blake. It’d been bad enough to make her storm out and attempt the hour drive back to her apartment. A commute was one of the drawbacks of finding a guy through a dating app. What made the fight so infuriating was they’d had this same argument twice before in the few months they’d been seeing each other. She was in her forties now. Why were relationships getting harder instead of easier?

Randy went to the door and told Paul to get it closed on his way out. For once Paul didn’t have a snarky retort. As Randy stepped out into the fury of snow, he hunched his shoulders and moved quickly. Christina watched him disappear behind that dizzying whiteness, and something sank within her. She suddenly wished she hadn’t let him go.

Paul tried to push the door shut, but a hellish gust battled him. Christina went to help him, but he barked at her to help, anyway. They got the door closed and Christina returned to the window where Lily stood. They gazed out but couldn’t see Randy, couldn’t see anything.

“You really think it was a tree?” Lily asked.

Christina didn’t know what she thought.

“Sure,” she said. “What else could it be?”

“Where is he?” Taylor asked.

She’d joined Christina and Lily at the window, searching for any sign of Randy. He’d been gone for almost fifteen minutes now, more than enough time to check the cabin, and way too much time to be out in a storm this relentlessly brutal.

“We have to go check on him,” Christina said. “He might be hurt.”

Paul scoffed. “I’m not going out there.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Taylor said, narrowing her eyes.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re good for nothing! Everyone’s trying to help and work together except you.”

“Hey, you wanna go out there, be my guest, lady. Become a snowman for the rest of your short life.”

“You’re horrible!” Lily said. “Just shut up!”

Paul repeated what the girl had said, mocking her like a schoolyard bully. It was disgraceful. Christina grabbed the lantern from the desk, ignoring Paul as he objected to her taking the only source of light.

“I’m going,” she said, heading to the door.

Lily stepped up. “Me too.”

“Lily, no!” Taylor said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Paul crossed his arms. “Finally talking sense.”

Christina looked to the girl. “Your mother’s right. It’s dangerous out there.”

“It’s just snow,” Lily said.

But Christina wasn’t so sure about that. Her head told her it was just a terrible storm, but her heart told her there was something worse behind it, that something cruel and pernicious lurked behind that blizzard of ice. She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself, but the foreboding dread remained, germinating within her.

“I have to go,” Lily insisted.

“No,” her mother told her.

“No, Mom…I mean, I have to go.”

Taylor shook her head, looking even more exhausted than before.

“You can go in the corner,” she said.

Lily flushed. “No way!”

“Everyone will turn around and not look.” She glared at Paul. “Right?”

“C’mon,” he said, nostrils flaring. “I’m not a pervert, lady. I don’t want to see your daughter piss, but I also don’t want the smell to stink up the place.”

“I’m not peeing in here!” Lily said. “I need to go to the outhouse. It’s not that far.”

Taylor groaned but resigned. “All right, fine.” She reached for the lantern in Christina’s hand and told her, “We’ll go. Lily can pee, and I’ll look for Randy. No sense in you freezing your butt off too.”

Christina liked the idea of not having to go out there but felt guilty about staying behind.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

But Taylor had already opened the door. The wind was tornadic, whistling like a locomotive and blasting the cabin with a vicious assault of snow. Paul approached the door, all too eager to push the mother and daughter out, cursing about them letting the cold in. That she would suddenly be alone with the jerk made Christina’s stomach churn. She went to the window to watch, hoping the lantern’s glow would make it easier for her to track Taylor and her daughter. Gray shadows enveloped the inside of the cabin as she pressed against the glass, watching the silhouettes trench through snow that had mounted nearly to their knees. The lantern cut through the blizzard with a thin razor of light, guiding the way. Christina honed in on it, not wanting to lose sight of it. But soon it was just a dim glimmer, the shadows of Taylor and Lily no longer visible, and then the light suddenly went out.

Christina gasped.

She heard the girl’s chilling scream. It echoed through the lifelessness of the hills, reverberating when it reached the surrounding mountains. Christina went for the door. Paul just stood there. He’d gone pale. She entered the doorway, calling out for Taylor, for Lily, for Randy, for anybody. The only answer she received was the deafening roar of the wind as it whipped snow in every direction. Cold struck her in a crippling blow. She took a few labored steps and the mounds of snow swallowed her feet and calves. She cried out for the others again, her own voice coming back at her as if rejected by the surrounding woodland.

There was a rumble. She felt the earth shift threateningly beneath her. The dead trees trembled, same as she did. When she heard the noise again, Christina looked up, holding her hand above her eyes and squinting through the storm in the direction the sound had come from. She could just make out the mountaintops beyond, their gray shapes stabbing the sky, looking like the uneven teeth of a handsaw.

Christina’s mouth went dry.

The mountains were moving.

She told herself it was a visual hallucination caused by the snow blindness, but the rumbling coincided with the progressing movements. She thought of an earthquake—a rarity on the East Coast—but the mountains didn’t just shake, they moved. They glided horizontally, like slow pucks upon a sheet of ice, drifting through the storm as if they were no longer attached to the earth, as if they never had been at all.

A figure emerged from the whiteness then, barreling toward Christina. She shrieked and stepped back, realizing she’d somehow wandered much farther from the cabin than she’d intended. The spindly, anthropomorphic form moved quickly, a sphere of light coming with it, and though Christina turned to run, she fell in the rising snow. She nearly screamed again but as the figure came upon her, she saw it was Lily. Ice had crusted over the girl’s cheeks, her tears freezing before they could leave her face. The lantern swung from her hand. Instead of helping Christina up, the girl hugged her, crying and shrieking. She dropped the lantern, and Christina snatched it up.

Christina got to her feet, holding onto Lily for fear of losing her. She scanned the snow but didn’t see Taylor. She called her name, and it made Lily cry out with grief.

“What happened?” Christina asked.

But Lily was unable to form words. Something red had spattered her white coat, turning to russet crystals in the fluff of her hood.

Christina swallowed hard. “C’mon!”

They ran toward the faint outline of the cabin, the ground quivering beneath them, making them stumble. Christina held the lantern tight and Lily’s hand tighter, snow caking into her eyelashes, her lips cracking, lungs burning from the arctic air. They were just a few feet away when she saw the fallen tree on the side of the cabin. A STIHL trucker cap lay beside it, half buried in crimson snow.

“Randy!” she cried.

She led Lily closer to the tree, and Lily struggled against her.

“No!” the girl shouted. “No! No!”

“Lily, we have to—”

A loud snapping sound cut her off. She held the lantern high and the beam fell upon the bloody patch of snow, illuminating the fallen tree. Randy was facedown beneath a tangle of its branches. How had he gotten under it if it had fallen while he was still inside the cabin? She called his name, but he did not respond. Only the branches did.

They curled about Randy’s limbs in serpentine slithers, crackling like popping vertebra as their wooden forms snaked around his body, entombing him in expunged roots and winter-bare branches. The movement turned his body on its side, revealing the gory concavity of his skull. It had been hollowed out at the face, the flesh, bone, and brain gone, leaving a perfect oval hole, as if a giant scooper had gouged him out.

Christina whimpered, too cold to scream. She pulled Lily into her, and they staggered toward the cabin. Reaching it, she saw the door was wide open. The sight made her gulp. It didn’t seem like Paul to not have closed it. The dense blackness of the doorway gave Christina pause. She stopped before it, but Lily tugged at her insistently.

“Wait!” Christina said.

But they couldn’t wait long. Christina couldn’t feel her feet or hands. When she spoke, her mouth and cheeks stung as if they were being ravaged by paper cuts. Her breaths had grown shallow. If they stayed out here, they would surely die of exposure, but looking at the cabin now, it seemed to radiate a sinister horror.

Lily tugged her forward again, and Christina tried to hold the girl back, but she managed to break free. Christina ran after her, crying her name, but the storm and the rumbling earth were so loud she couldn’t even hear herself speak. She pointed the lantern at the doorway just as Lily reached it, and the girl suddenly stopped at the threshold and went perfectly still. She did not run away or turn around. She only stared into that great, impenetrable, waiting dark.

As Christina took her hand again, Paul appeared in the doorway. His feet were off the ground. He hovered at the entrance like a spectral deity, his arms outstretched, palms out, fingers spread wide. Ice covered his torso in a pale, blue vest and frost climbed his throat like moss infecting tree bark. His dull eyes were filled with blood and his tongue hung out of his mouth, purple and swollen.

Christina pulled Lily out of the doorway just as Paul emerged through it, and saw he was not floating, but impaled. A long, thick tendril of ice stretched out behind him, the end of it pushed into his back like the arm of a puppet master. It made tentacle movements, its frozen mass emanating azure like a massive electric eel.

Lily screamed. So did Christina.

Rivets of ice wrapped around the top and sides of Paul’s skull, clenching like arachnid legs. His head titled back and a white horn pushed out of his mouth, so thick it made his lips split open and broke all of his teeth. They spilled out in a bloody confetti. The horn was a jagged crystal of frost, pulsating with the same ominous blue hue.

Christina turned to run, pulling the screaming girl with her, heading toward where she thought the road was. Maybe they could find one of the cars and hide in there until a plow came through. It was the only option she could think of. Trying to get to the gas station would be impossible.

Lily dragged behind her, sobbing and shrieking, her sanity compromised. Christina pressed on, still clutching the girl’s wrist. The earth vibrated as if it was about to give way, and Christina had to force the image of a sinkhole from her mind. In the distance, the shadows of the mountains continued to roam, their unnatural movements riddling her with a nauseous fear. The mountain in the foreground had either come closer or grown larger, and it seemed to have changed shape. Its advancement made Christina feel hollow, cored, but still she pressed on, madly wondering if she could outrun a mountain. Snow pummeled her, the wind doing everything it could to halt her progress, but still she stomped through the frozen mounds even as they rose past her knees.

A crack of thunder turned her head to the sky. Pink flashes of lightning ran through the heather like burning veins, and the strobe revealed the mountains to her in full.

Only they weren’t mountains.

Two organic pyramids throbbed with life, shedding crusty layers of frozen rock to reveal quivering, jellyfish flesh beneath. Behind the veils of translucent meat, turquoise globules rose and fell like the innards of a lava lamp. Worms of brilliant, blue light extended throughout the insides to touch these globules, creating spastic reactions.

Between these dual monstrosities was what she had taken to be the mountain in the foreground. It had evolved into a shaft of slick, gray meat, like the body of a rotting dragon, but larger than an ocean’s worth of blue whales. There was no head visible, only a series of spongy, snail-like antenna at the rounded end of the body. It was not connected to the ground at all but instead lurked in the ashen sky, an unknown horror fallen like Lucifer from the heavens. It moved in a wide arch above Christina and Lily, covering them from the falling snow and giving them a better view of its swollen midsection.

The grotesque underbelly of the beast was peppered with bulging, insectile eyes of various sizes, some lost within the sea of brittle hair that hung long and white, blowing about in the wind like surrendering ribbons. A moan like a screeching cello emerged from somewhere within it. The sides of the creature’s body pulsed, the oyster-like meat opening with thousands of puckering holes that excreted hurricanes of snow and ice. It came out of the beast with the force of hydrants, not adding to the storm, but creating it.

Lily let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

Christina snapped out of her frightful trance. She moved ahead, tugging Lily with her. There was another loud crack and with a final scream the girl’s weight suddenly lessened and Christina nearly stumbled from the added momentum. She felt Lily’s wrist in her hand, but it was as if the girl was defying gravity. When Christina spun around, Lily had disappeared. All that remained was the girl’s arm, ripped free at the elbow, blood pouring from the stump and turning to red ice before it hit the ground.

Christina cried out and dropped the arm. It was immediately engulfed by white. She called the girl’s name even though she knew Lily was gone.

Charging forward, Christina stumbled and struggled, the snow mounds nearly to her waist in some places. The chill had faded and she was starting to feel warm—a bad sign of hypothermia. Her breathing was even shallower, and she felt drowsy despite her terror. Snow blindness struck her hard. She no longer knew which direction she was headed in, but she thought she heard voices, even though she couldn’t understand what they were saying over the whale song of the beast overhead. She didn’t even see the cabin until she was just before the doorway, and she fell to her knees in fright, but Paul and his mutant killer were no longer there. In their place was a small group of people waving her in just as Lily had when she’d first arrived.

Had she reached a different cabin?

They ushered Christina inside, whispering encouragements. When she collapsed into their arms, she was escorted to a small sofa. Someone took the lantern away. She tried to speak, but her lips were numb. Abrupt groans of horror nearly suffocated her.

A hand fell on her shoulder. An older man leaned over to look at her, his eyes wide, a queer smile on his face. His head was shaved, and he had no eyebrows. His ears stuck out like car doors.

A bald woman draped a blanket over Christina’s lap. It was thick and scratchy, like hemp or…

Burlap.

Christina realized she was sitting in a love seat. She saw the rusty folding chairs and the fireplace where Paul’s coils of newspaper still lay.

Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “How…how’d you…g-g-get here?”

There were seven of them gathered in the cabin. All their heads were clean-shaven, and they wore identical blue jumpsuits and white sneakers. None of them had eyebrows, and the men had no facial hair. Their eyelids were red and dotted with small scabs.

Christina gasped. They’ve torn their eyelashes out.

“Who…who are y-y-you…” she asked.

The older man grinned like a doll. “We’re the ones who made this cabin. We built it for you. You and the others.”

“So you’d have somewhere to congregate,” the woman added, “once your cars and phones were ruined by the signal.”

A young man came forward, glowering at Christina. “What’d we bring her in for?” he asked the older man.

The woman hissed. “Do not question your leader!”

The leader put up his hands in a passive gesture. “It’s all right, Edith, it’s all right. He’s new and still learning.”

He turned around and put his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “She’s the last one left.”

The young man’s face went slack with realization. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, Timothy, you’ll come to understand the—”

Christina stood. “What the hell is going on?”

Edith and a third man were on her instantly, grabbing her by the arms. She struggled against them but had little fight left in her. Too much of her was numb.

“Prepare her,” the leader instructed the others.

Christina’s captors seized upon her, pulling her out of her coat and knocking her back onto the loveseat. Her boots were removed, her sweater pulled over her head. Christina found she had some fight left in her after all, but though she writhed and kicked, she was easily overpowered. They stripped her down to her undershirt, socks, and panties, and one of the women came forward with a plastic bag and withdrew a jumpsuit identical to the ones they wore. As Christina was forced into it, someone grabbed her by the hair, wrapping it in their fist, and went at it with a pair of scissors as big as garden sheers. Another member of the horde followed the trimming with an electric razor, holding her by the chin as he shaved away all that remained.

The earth quaked, making the cabin tremble.

“What are you doing?” she said in a panic. “Those things out there—they’ll kill all of us!”

Some of her captors chuckled, and the leader shook his head, bemused. A man approached Christina with a pair of white sneakers. She kicked him hard and pain exploded through her frostbitten foot. She stopped resisting, and the sneakers were forced upon her.

“You see, Timothy,” the leader said to the young man, “the survivor is to join us for the great winter harvest.”

Timothy nodded. “The feast. Is it time at last?”

“It is time indeed.”

The walls shuddered violently. The floor heaved and Christina looked down to see worms of ice curling up between the floorboards. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa and drew her legs to her chest.

“I never thought she’d make it,” Timothy said. “I thought they’d take her too.”

The leader grinned, his eyes never blinking. “They could have if they wanted to. But that is not their way. They require sacrifice if the storm is ever to end. Only then will they retreat to the stars for another year and spare the world of endless winter.”

Another year? Christina thought. Was this an annual—

The cabin creaked with the sounds of snapping wood. The roof groaned. When Christina dared to look up, a ring of icicles was suspended from the ceiling like a chandelier. In their center was Paul’s faceless, blue corpse—frozen solid. His head was scooped out just as Randy’s had been, the horn that had pushed through his mouth having imploded the skull.

Christina was pulled to her feet. Pain and numbness caused her to fall, but the large man came in behind her and held her under her armpits as the roof was torn free. Paul was vacuumed into the firmament and the roof burst into pieces, chewed apart by colossal, spidery ligaments. The horrid creature hovered above them, its vascular cavity pulsing blue within the putrid epidermis, the glow rising and fading with every gaseous release of snow.

The cabin walls fell victim next. The twin pyramids of mesoglea had joined the snow beast, their towering forms speckled with pinpoints of azure light like a city skyline at dusk.

The leader raised both arms in worship. “Ah…they’re full of stars.”

Christina was carried to the others as they formed a circle. They joined hands, one on either side of her taking hers. The leader spoke in a language Christina could not understand or even recognize, and his followers chanted the words back, their heads tilted to face the immense beings as they closed over them in a sphere of gelatinous flesh, encasing them in a living snow globe. The storm was reserved for them now. The snow beast hammered its servants with a blessing of ice, and its hair came down upon them, writhing and dripping, each strand alive. The mouths of these oral arms snapped at the humans with fangs of ice, attaching to the cult members’ heads one by one and feasting upon the gore within.

When cold jaws closed upon her skull, Christina fell to her knees in involuntary worship of the blinding whiteness. She was lifted, her feet leaving the shuddering earth, and as she was whipped into the atmosphere at the end of a tendril, the icicle teeth melted inside her head, turning to a cool liquid that numbed and poisoned her mind.

The wind surged no more.

She opened her eyes and looked through the translucent flesh of the sucking mouth that held her. The snow had ceased. The twin mountains were drifting back into the horizon. As the snow beast pulled her to a higher altitude, the skies grew dark and her body went rigid as the cold of space set in. Just before her skull imploded, she rejoiced in knowing the storm was over, at least for one more year.

Death and Decay
by Shelly Campbell

“You made it! How was the flight?” Gabe reached for Kate King’s backpack without asking, all dimpled cheeks and wild curly hair. He hadn’t changed from four years ago. Full of easy, casual energy, addicted to travel, allergic to schedules, Gabe had always been a chameleon who adapted easily to other cultures. Even when they’d travelled together, he never stayed in hotels. He couch-surfed. Made fast friends with taxi drivers and cafe owners and they invited him into their homes like he was long-lost family. When he flew, it wasn’t ever on a plane bigger than the twin-engine turboprop that had just deposited Kate, muscles buzzing and ears ringing, onto the cold tarmac of Ilulissat terminal.

Kate pasted on an assured smile and swept blue sweaty hair away from her cheeks. “Good. The flight was good.” A lie. She felt like barfing all over her clunky new Sorel boots, but she’d always been a wounded bird around Gabe, hiding weaknesses, singing when she felt sick. He was just so goddamned capable, it was exhausting trying to be perfect around him—one of the reasons they’d broken up. Kate despised feeling helpless, and Gabe was too open and adaptable to be anything other than consummately helpful. Damn him.

“I’ve lined up a house for you.”

“Gabe. No. I’m not staying with you.” Christ, they’d talked about this.

“Not with me.” He blushed. “With the Møller family. You’ll love Maritha.”

“I booked at Hotel Arctic. They reserve seven months out, Gabe. You are not denying me the experience of the world’s most northerly four-star hotel.” Kate softened her words with another smile, a genuine one. It was good to see him again. She’d missed him.

“As you wish, Queen Kate.” Gabe grinned, hoisted her backpack, and turned toward the terminal.

That night they dined on reindeer medallions in a truffle sauce. They sipped juniper infused ale in between Gabe’s sets at the bar. He was a skilled musician with a Bob Dylan voice, effervescent enough that hotels hired him for stints in their lounges. That’s how he’d ended up in Greenland. Four years Ilulissat had held onto Kate’s ex, and she’d needed to see it, this place that Gabe Lambton had gotten stuck on, this city—small enough to be a village—that held him longer than any exotic beach or backwoods wilds. Certainly longer than any woman.

Gabe’s love affair with the place made sense on her very first morning. Kate had booked a kayak tour to the ice fjords where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calved into the sea. Ilulissat clung to a lichen crusted bedrock shore, under a peach-toned sky. Compact, cheery salt-box houses in blue, red, and yellow stared out at the ice-clogged ocean with fiery orange windows.

Her guide's name was Neils. He didn’t speak much English, but he didn’t need to. His sleek boat carved ahead of Kate’s, leading her around “sick ice” while still easing the kayaks close enough to the towering white columns that the scale of them boggled her mind. They sounded like giant teeth grinding. Groans, pops, and cracks fluttered across the dark bay. At one point, Neils pointed out an iceberg rolling over in slow motion, water cascading off its luminescent blue marbled belly. It looked like the dimpled back of some ancient sea monster diving to the deep. Water frothed around its base and, after the berg resettled, Neils and Kate’s tiny boats, hundreds of metres away, bobbed in the rolling waves. It was easy to forget to breathe.

Later that day, Kate was invited to a Kaffemik at the Møller residence, which involved fifty pairs of boots piled inside the door and stuffing strangers and friends alike with as much cake and coffee as they could possibly consume. People chattered, came and went in waves. Maritha was celebrating the baptism of her daughter Esma.

No wonder Gabe loves it here. They treat everyone like family. Even the awkward tourist with electric blue hair.

She fell asleep that night to the sounds of thousands of yipping Greenland dogs and the icebergs singing back in clicks and pops that sounded like shotguns echoing across Disko Bay.

This is a universe away from cars honking and pigeon shit.

“Watch out for the shit.” Gabe straddled the sledge ahead of Kate as she clung on white-knuckled. Dogs scrabbled through the snow in a fan formation. Sledge runners hissed and the musher, Torme, clamped a pipe between his teeth.

“What?” Kate snorted, eyes streaming behind her sunglasses. She was sweating in her sealskin anorak and pants. Gabe had insisted on renting outerwear for both of them. Torme wore a Nike track suit and a plaid hat with ear flaps.

“I said, watch out for the dog shit,” Gabe shouted. “They’re trained to not stop running. They just crap as they go. Don’t step in it when we’re going uphill.”

She did, of course. On the very next incline, when her and Gabe bailed and trotted beside the sledge, she stepped in fresh dog shit. It smelled like greasy fish.

Torme cackled. He stopped laughing when they crested the rise and climbed back aboard. The dogs balked and their musher stomped on the sledge brake.

“What the hell is that?” Gabe exhaled as the sled juddered to a stop and the dogs whined, glancing pleadingly back at their driver. “This wasn’t here in the spring was it, Torme?”

He extracted his pipe, tamped the tobacco and pocketed it. “Never seen this.” He squinted at the wind-whipped ice field.

“A shipwreck?” Kate pushed her fogged glasses up. Her stomach clenched hard. They were too far inland, weren’t they? The massive hull jutting out of the ice was jet black, swallowing sunlight around it so effectively that the permafrost dimpled, melting faster around its seamless perimeter. Its exterior looked more like pocked skin than metal, its shape phallic and bloated, like a skyscraper-sized seed pod ready to burst. Folded protrusions lined the spine of it in pairs, curled in like rigored legs on a dead insect. The whole thing towered higher than the icebergs Neils had told her were fifteen stories high. The bergs had been breathtaking, but what the ice had disgorged here was jarring in a hideously primal way. Kate’s skin crawled.

“Russian maybe?” Gabe joked.

Jesus, how can he crack a smile in the shadow of this thing? Her mouth dried out.

The dogs twisted and yowled in their harnesses. Before Torme could answer, one of the big males, white with black patches, tore into the neck of the blonde dog beside him.

Torme bellowed, smacked the snow hook down, and plunged toward his dogs.

They snarled into a tangled mess of frosty snouts and bared teeth. Torme waded into the midst of them kicking and cursing in Greenlandic. Blood spotted the snow and dogs scattered as the musher sawed at tangled lead lines.

The blonde dog with the bloodied neck shot away, harness line slapping behind as it streaked toward the black abomination nestled in the permafrost.

“Lissa!” Torme barked, but the terrified dog’s ears didn’t even flick as she plunged through the snow, back curled and tail tucked.

“Gabe?” Kate yelped as the sled jerked and the rest of the team leaned into their harnesses squealing.

“Hang on.” He turned to her, blue eyes snapping, smile certain as it always was. Gabe grinned like that when he was cliff-diving, spelunking in caves closed to the public, climbing barricades to reach treacherous waterfalls. He wasn’t scared like she was. He ate shit like this right up.

Suddenly, the dogs dropped into silence, fog from their breath still clotting around their pinned ears. Torme froze halfway between Kate and the black torpedo. From the far side of the structure, floated something twice the size of the blonde sled dog.

Wolf. Kate’s throat closed, but as the silhouette peeled toward Torme’s startled dog, its features clarified. Not a wolf. What the hell…

It was lithe and hairless, like a greyhound, barrel-chested and thin withered. Grey skin darkened to black furred sleeves and red, wide-splayed claws with three talons, but the creature wasn’t running. It was floating. Limbs streamed out behind it like broken kite ribs. It skimmed over the snow, focusing on the dog scrambling back toward the sled.

“Jesus Christ,” Kate sputtered, digging her heels into the cargo. “What is that?”

Torme sprinted back toward them white-eyed. “Aajumaaq,” he wailed. “Aajumaaq. Gun!”

Gabe turned and clawed through the cargo between them, digging out the musher’s shotgun.

The beast’s head was naked, just a bleached skull and fang teeth. Where its eyes should have been there were two dished depressions with multiple finger-sized holes like lotus seed pods. A slick pink tongue wormed between its bony jaws as the aajumaaq swiped at the blonde dog. Lissa yelped and somersaulted in the snow. As she found her feet, her pursuer made a sound like a sneeze, ejecting a black, sooty cloud into the husky’s face. The dog plunged through the mist and bolted for Torme.

“Shit.” Kate’s hands clamped both sides of her head.

Lissa blew past her musher.

The thing Torme had called aajumaaq was on his heels now, careening over the drifting snow.

“Fuck,” Kate screeched. “Shoot it, Gabe!”

He wrenched the shotgun free of the cargo, but Torme stumbled and the aajumaaq inflated like a sail behind him, limbs splaying, ribs cracking wide open into a wet hollow maw. It blanketed the musher in a heartbeat, wrapping him in a living cocoon. Jaws clamped over Torme’s head, and he spasmed in its stranglehold.

Kate wailed.

Gabe fired wide and the whole world rang like a bell. Gun smoke thickened in the air with a chalky tang. The blonde dog leaped onto the sledge, wedging behind Kate and the handlebar. All of its teammates went berserk, screaming and yanking the sled away from the grey creature engulfing their master.

The sledge pivoted drunkenly. The snow hook let go and juddered over rocks. Gabe lost his balance and dropped the gun.

Kate kept her eyes pinned on the grey beast as it rapidly receded toward its towering shelter. Torme’s kicking feet gouged a trail in the snow behind them. One of his boots fell off.

“We have to get him,” she whimpered, but the dogs were already a single-minded unit again, fleeing with Gabe and herself barely clinging on behind.

Something opened in the black protrusion. A quivering hole, more like a heart valve than a doorway, swallowed the aajumaaq and Torme both. The hillside blocked Kate’s view when the sledge dove down it. Something cracked as it landed.

Gabe clambered over her to take the musher’s position, but the brake wouldn’t work and the snow hook bounced behind them without biting. The dogs didn’t stop until they got back to town. The blonde one wedged behind Kate sneezed the entire way.

“Aajumaaq.” Gabe’s face looked hollow underlit by the pale blue of his phone.

Kate shivered under a blanket on the balcony beside him. Overhead, Aurora Borealis sizzled through the sky in neon tones of green and purple. The faint sound of radio static crackled through the heavens. Kate should have been wonderstruck, but she couldn’t shake the image of Torme’s spasming sock foot dragging through the snow while the rest of him suffocated in folds of grey skin.

Gabe bit into a boiled egg and kept talking with his mouth full. “A mythical creature of Greenland, the aajumaaq is a helpful but sometimes vengeful spirit with the body of a human, three fingers and toes, and the pointed skull of a dog. Everything it touches decays and dies.” He paused to swallow. “Shit, Kate. That’s what that thing was, like Torme said.”

The police hadn’t let them go back with the search party and that was fine with Kate. Whatever the black structure was, with its ghost creature, she wanted no part of it. It just opened up like a parachute, swallowed him with its ribs, and took him back to the blackness. She shuddered.

“You should eat something.” Gabe pressed.

She blinked down at the spread between them. Mackerel in tomato sauce, herring with onion. Salami and pickles. The hotel had considerately laid it out for them after their late return, but Kate didn’t want any of it. The emptiness in her belly longed for familiarity not food. She reached past the food, laid her hand on Gabe’s crotch, and started stroking.

“Uh…Queen?” He squirmed.

Closing her eyes, she ignored him. Couldn’t he give her this one damned thing?

Gabe grabbed her wrist delicately. “Don’t get me wrong, Kate. You’re as hot as you ever were, but I think if you do this right now, freaked out, you’re gonna regret it later. I know I will. And I love you too much to hurt you like that.”

You hurt everyone you love, Gabe. You don’t sit still long enough for anyone to love you back. Not until now. Not until Greenland. Kate folded her hands into her lap and stared at her ex through messy blue gobs of hair until he turned away, throat working, building to say something more. She didn’t let him. “You have something black on your face,” she stated bluntly. “Right cheek.”

Gabe wiped where she’d indicated before rubbing his fingers and thumb together. “Dust. Weird.” He sniffed it. “Almost smells like…mold.”

“It’s on your forehead too.” Kate let her head roll back. “Look, if you’re not going to fuck me, I need to sleep.”

He took her abrupt barbed words like he always had, right in the chest, eyes brimming with pain like a kicked puppy. And he left.

Because he doesn’t need you enough to fight for you. He never does.

It would be the last time Kate ever saw his clear blue eyes.

“Can you take me to the optometrist?” Gabe’s voice sounded shaky and thin. She struggled to parse his words, brain still sloshing from downing every bottle in her mini bar last night.

“They have an eye doctor here? Jesus, Gabe. What time is it? I don’t have a car and you can walk anywhere you need to go.” Ilulissat really was the size of a postage stamp.

He answered with a loud swallow and a broken exhale.

Shit, is he crying?

Kate sat up and readjusted the phone. “Look, I didn’t mean to be bitchy last—”

“I can’t see, Kate.” Gabe blurted.

“What?”

“I can’t fucking see.” His voice cracked. “I woke up this morning and my eyes were all gummed up with shit, and no matter how much I wash my face, I can’t fucking see. I’m scared. And my place has a shit ton of stairs and I just want to know if you’d walk me to the damned optometrist, if it isn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

“Yeah.” She licked her lips. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be right there. What’s your address?”

“I've never seen anything like this.” The ophthalmologist stopped halfway through his examination to don a face mask and shield. “Chemical injury?”

“No,” Gabe gulped, eyes clouded and oozing. “I told you, I just woke up because they were burning and I couldn’t see.”

“Mr. Lambton. You’re going to need to go to the hospital immediately. This is far beyond what I—”

“I’m not going to a fucking hospital.” Gabe slammed his fist into the armrest of the exam chair. He hated hospitals. A staph infection in Borneo had nearly killed him once, and he’d never trusted a seemingly sterile room since. “Can’t you just give me some eye drops or something?”

The doctor edged closer to the door.

Nervous. What the hell? Kate frowned.

“No eye drops,” he answered Gabe firmly. “The entire epithelium is devitalized. The corneal stroma is cloudy. Epilation of the eyelashes could be attributed to mites, but those aren’t Demodex mites. I’ve never seen a parasite like this. You need to go to a hospital, Mr. Lambton. Now, if you want any chance of saving your eyesight.”

“Wait. Parasites?” Kate said.

“Holy shit.” Gabe quivered and brought his hands to his face.

“Don’t touch your eyes!” she and the doctor both snapped at the same time.

“What do you mean, parasites?” Kate said.

“Some sort of spider mite. Maybe venomous. There’s already signs of necrosis. You need to get to a hospital. Both of you.” He turned to Kate. “Stay here. I’m getting you both face shields and masks, and I’m calling the ambulance.” Stale silence choked the tiny examination room as the doctor’s shoes clacked away from them, deeper into the building.

“Fuck this.” Gabe charged toward the door. He ricocheted through the hallway, arms extended.

“Gabe, wait!” Kate caught his elbow as he tripped over a chair leg in the waiting room.

“No ambulance, Kate. No fucking way.” he said. “Get me out of here.”

“Promise you’ll let me walk you to the hospital.”

“Mr. Lambton!” The doctor barked. “Stop!”

Gabe leaned into her hard. “Kate. Help me,” he rasped.

Gabe never needs help.

“Okay.” she gripped his arm and pushed him toward the door. They burst onto the street and the ophthalmologist yelled from the sidewalk but didn’t follow them.

“Take me home, Kate,” he yelled as they ran.

“We’ll stop there,” she puffed, “but then I’m walking you to the hospital. Tell me yes, or I’m leaving you right here in the middle of the street.” She let go of his arm, and he skidded to a stop, hands raking the air, milky eyes searching.

“Jesus, Kate. Yes. Okay? I just need to breathe for a second. This is so fucked up. Spider mites?”

“We’ll figure it out.” Kate grabbed his hand again, even though part of her wanted to shrink away from him like the eye doctor had.

It hit them halfway to Gabe’s house as they were passing the dog fields. Gabe froze as chains slinked and huskies yipped, staring at them balefully from atop their crude houses. “Torme’s dog,” he panted. “The aajumaaq sneezed that black shit all over it.”

“And the dog sneezed all the way home.” Kate gulped. “You were on the sled behind it. You had it on your face last night, remember? Black dust. You might have gotten it in your eyes.”

Gabe stumbled. “Holy shit. We have to find that dog, see if the same thing’s happening to it.”

“No, Gabe. We have to get you to the hospital.”

“Jesus, Kate! The internet said that whatever the aajumaaq touches decays and dies. The doctor said necrosis. That means rotting.”

“The internet says.” Kate scoffed. “How ’bout we rely on what doctors say? Let’s pack an overnight bag, just in case, and get you checked in, all right?”

She helped him pack. God, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Gabe’s folded underwear stacked in a drawer. Who in the hell folds underwear?

“Wait, I have to piss first,” he said after slipping into his boots.

“I’ll be right here.”

She waited by the door. It must have been fifteen minutes before she started knocking, and another five after that before Kate found something to pop the lock. The bathroom window was open, screen popped out. Boot prints smeared the toilet tank lid. Gabe was gone.

The police were gone too. As Kate rushed down the paved roads and boardwalk paths winding through Ilulissat, she couldn’t avoid the crowd of mushers clumped around the station. None of them had seen her ex, but they informed her that the officers who’d gone after Torme last night hadn’t returned. A second scabbed-together search team was harnessing dogs and fueling up snowmobiles. They refused to take her with them, but promised to keep an eye out for Gabe.

They didn’t come back either.

Three dog teams. Four people on snowmobiles. None of them came home that night, and neither did Gabe.

Half the town milled around the police station, starving for updates.

“Qivittoq.” Maritha Møller whispered to Kate.

“What?”

“Wanderers. If a man is lost from his village, he wanders inland and becomes a qivittoq. When he dies, his hair turns white and he grows fur on his arms. His soul stays restless. Lost and angry out on the ice.”

“I’d rather not be bullshitted right now, thanks Maritha,” Kate snapped, but the woman wouldn’t take a hint.

“If you are going out there to search, you need to take something to trade. Something to mollify the qivittoq’s anger,” she said. “A needle, thread, and matches.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” She shouldered past the woman and away from the crowd.

That night, the Aurora twisted and warped on the horizon, like something was tugging the light down toward the black hulk.

Kate clutched a mini bottle of gin so tightly the plastic dented. What the hell is it? Something buried in the ice for hundreds of years. Something faceless flying from it and cracking open at the ribs to engulf poor Torme. Old enough that the people here passed down legends about it. Aajumaaq. Qivittoq. How many wanderers had the black thing pulled in since it emerged from frozen sleep? Not Gabe. Not yet. Kate couldn’t explain how she knew, but she did. Gabe was still alive, and she’d find him.

The next morning, after confirming that her ex hadn’t checked into the hospital sometime through the night, Kate withdrew her limit at the ATM in GrønlandsBANKEN. She paid one of the residents a thick stack of cash to rent his snowmobile and a helmet. The man was leery, but Kate promised she’d keep to the paths surrounding town. He looked at her with sad eyes and let her go.

It took her half a day to find Gabe. He was wandering inland, only a few kilometers out, but heading toward the plains Torme had taken them to days ago. The blonde husky was with him, and a flock of arctic terns circled tightly overhead.

“Gabe!” Kate hollered, peeling off her helmet and diving into knee deep snow. “Jesus. Gabe, what are you doing?”

He didn’t turn until she was almost on top of him. The smell hit her before she could focus on his face.

Once, when Kate was little, her cat unplugged the freezer in the garage and the meat inside marinated for an entire month before her parents discovered it. Gabe smelled like that now, like the guts of that ruined freezer. A clinging stench that saturated your nostrils long after you fled the source.

Rotten meat. Dried blood. Fat flies bobbed around his curly hair, clotted around his scraped and bleeding knees. One of his legs was bare, boot lost, lower leg lacerated and waxy grey. Where Gabe’s eyes had been, there was nothing but pus-crusted black holes and brown congealed blood. Deep gouges ran down his face and over his lips.

“Oh shit. Oh, Gabe. What did you do?” Kate said.

The dog growled, its face a jellied mess too.

“They just popped,” he mumbled, lips swollen. “That’s when the smell started, but they feel so much better now.” He sighed and grinned, blood on his teeth as he pet the matted husky. “You always got so mad when I helped you and I didn’t need help back. You come to help me now, Queen Kate?”

“Yeah. I did.” Kate struggled to speak without gagging. The wet stench flooded the back of her throat. “We’re going to get you back to town and patch you up, okay?”

“I’m not going to the hospital. I’m going to the ship.”

“Ship?” Kate’s throat pinched. Blood rushed to her fingers. Holy shit. Ship. As in alien fucking ship. This can’t be happening. “I— Uh… I think we better get you cleaned up first, yeah?”

Gabe grinned wider. His cheeks pinched and his hollow eye sockets narrowed to terrible slits. A fly crawled into one. “Lissa won’t let you take me away.” He patted the eyeless dog. “We’re both going to the ship, but I can’t find my way.” Reaching up, he casually dug a finger into one socket, scooped out something that looked like jelly, and flicked it away. One of the birds dove and gobbled up the mess.

Sickness lurched up Kate’s throat, and she clamped her lips and swallowed hard.

“It promised to show me the way back,” Gabe muttered. “It just needs a little more time inside my head.”

“The ship?”

Gabe nodded.

Oh God. Oh Christ. Kate doubled over, blowing several shuddering wet breathes before recovering. In a tight voice, she said, “How about I take you right now? On the sled. I remember where the ship is, and it’ll be faster that way.”

Gabe turned like a wind-up automaton with pieces missing. “To the ship? Lissa comes too?”

“Yeah, sure. The dog can ride behind and you can ride in front. There’s room for everybody. I’m gonna take your hand now, all right?”

He let her. Kate flinched when his icy fingers clasped hers. She led him to the idling snowmobile with the dog walking stiffly at his side.

“Here.” She patted the cracked vinyl seat and helped Gabe sit. Terns circled and dove overhead. Kate shoved the helmet on and settled behind her ex’s shivering body. The dog scrambled onto the seat behind them, sandwiching her in the stench of decay.

Don’t puke. Just do this. Be the capable one for once.

She gripped the handlebars as hard as she could and cranked the throttle. The snowmobile reared and plowed ahead. Gabe smashed into her chest and the dog peeled off the back of the machine with a gurgling yelp.

“No!” Gabe bellowed as Kate fishtailed the sled back the way she’d come. He thrashed between her arms, elbowing her face and stomping her toes. Luckily, most of his blows skidded off the faceplate of the helmet and Gabe was weaker than a child. She held him pinned between her and the handlebars and she didn’t let off the throttle.

The dog howled from far behind them.

This is insane, Kate. You can’t take him back to town. He’s sick. Contagious. But there was nowhere else to go. He needs you. He asked for help. The hospital will know how to fix him. They have to.

Kate didn’t stop the snowmobile until they were at the emergency entrance. She bawled for help. Gabe screeched too, convulsing in her hold until several orderlies trotted out and peeled him away with clipped shouts. Before they sedated him, Gabe coughed and spat frothy black spittle onto the face of the closest orderly. The overspray splattered on Kate’s cheek. She slapped her sleeve over it, swiped it away, and gagged.

“He’s sick,” she panted. “Something contagious.”

“We’ll take care of it, ma’am,” the man answered. “This is as far as you can go.”

The last time she ever saw Gabe alive, he was being strapped to a bed, his carved-out face drawn and his desperate voice slurred but decipherable through the room’s door. “You said you’d help me, Queen. You said you’d help!”

She scoured her face and hands in a sterile bathroom then wedged into a waiting room chair that pinched her hips until a nurse told her to go get some rest, that she wouldn’t be able to see Gabe until morning. “I’ll ring the hotel if anything changes,” she assured Kate.

In a daze, Kate returned the snowmobile and wandered up the middle of the street toward her hotel in the twilight. Ice crunched in the bay and huskies trotted free, harnesses torn and tongues lolling as they dipped between houses and peed on sign posts. Several of them sneezed and pawed at their runny eyes. She recognized a white one with black spots. The male who’d attacked Lissa.

This should be scaring you more, her numb mind informed helpfully, but Kate was too hollow to care.

An American military helicopter flew over the next day, nose aimed inland. It looked more like a tank than a flying machine.

Kate rushed to the hospital only to find out Gabe wasn’t there. There was some confusion as to whether he’d been checked out or transferred. No one would give her a straight answer until she screamed and smashed a clipboard against the plexiglass divider.

“Ma’am.” The orderly Gabe had spat on leaned toward her with outstretched hands and red, crusted eyes. “He got out.”

“Got out. As in escaped? He was tied down. Sedated.”

“There was a bad reaction to the medication. He pulled himself free and slipped out sometime in the night.”

“You fuckers!” she screamed, and everyone in the waiting room ducked their heads and avoided her blazing eyes. “You didn’t even call! You said you’d call!”

The mushers found Gabe a few hours later, far from town, frozen solid, fingers and other exposed bits gnawed off by predators. Kate wasn’t supposed to know the grisly details, but Ilulissat was the size of a postage stamp and people here whispered loudly. Gabe had apparently made it twelve kilometers out of town before he dropped. Twelve kilometers from a hospital bed—completely blind. Almost back to the alien ship that had called to him.

Kate woke with raw eyes, lashes glued into crusted yellow clumps and a pulsating headache, like wasps wriggling in her sinuses.

“Shit.”

She clawed out of the rumpled hotel bed and staggered toward the bathroom. Through a clotted veil of eyelashes, her reflection drifted milky and out of focus. She swiped cold fingers at the sludge at the corners of her eyes and blinked several times before her vision cleared.

A swollen face framed by a cloud of blue disheveled hair squinted back at her. Puffy slits for eyes.

“No. No. No. Hell no,” she whimpered, hands twitching.

Jesus, you touched it. That’s how they spread. The bugs. Kate gagged. Her face felt as thick and numb as cold dough, and her ribs squeezed around her heart like calcified spider legs. She scrubbed her hands in the sink.

If only I’d said no and hadn’t come on this damned holiday. A cliché backpacker, itching to cross Greenland off her bucket list. Kayaking in Disko Bay. Mushing with Greenland huskies. Gabe would still be alive if not for me.

He’d been healthy four days ago. Jesus, had it only been four days? Kate dried her hands, patted down her hair, and sagged onto a plush bed that wasn’t her own, feeling dazed.

By tomorrow your eyes will explode just like his did. And then you’ll belong to the ship.

She could still see shapes and blurred colours. Smashed dog sleds in the snow. Overturned snowmobiles. The warped, grey wreckage of a helicopter fuselage, and towering over it all, far taller than she remembered, the black ship.

It’s grown. I’m not imagining it. The soggy thought leached through Kate’s throbbing mind.

Curled limbs on either side of the black spine had unfurled. Fat growths hung like dead fruit from the ends, waving in the blowing snow. The whole thing looked less like a ship and more like a bloated leech, sated and quivering, snow and ice peeling away from it at an alarming rate.

Kate stepped over an amputated arm still gripping a machine gun.

Several aajumaaq glided from the backside of the ship to greet her. They sniffed her face and blew puffs of black, choking spores, but none of them opened up to consume her because she was already infected. The ship already had her. She’d walked all this way in nothing but jeans and a t-shirt, hadn’t she?

Red claws snagged on her pant legs as the aajumaaq drifted by. Kate’s vision seemed to clear as they breathed on her. It wasn’t black fur on their arms and legs, she realized; it was carpets of mold. Everything they touch decays and dies. Five of them herded her gently toward the black mass.

Her feet sunk up to her ankles in black and russet lichen as she closed on the massive, vibrating ship. Puddles sloshed and ruffled against its pocked walls. Kate laid a hand on the exterior, and a thrum filled her hollow bones and warmed her ice cube feet.

It’s warm. It’s breathing. That’s why the snow is melting.

The quivering valve door snapped open and aajumaaq flanked her on either side.

It’s nearly free, but it needs your help, like Gabe needed you. Only you didn’t help him.

Kate stepped into the ship.

The walls bristled with a million pink stalks. They carpeted nearly every surface, sweating drops of clear mucus like glass beads. Pale cross ribs spiralled in a helix down the hollow length of the interior, and multiple dark human-sized lumps squirmed behind membranous walls. A sound like a scream reached Kate’s ears, but the ship hummed louder, and the longer she thought about it, the more it sounded like singing instead of screaming.

I belong here. The thought settled on her like a warm blanket. I’ve finally found the place I belong, and I know what I have to do. The ship needed her.

The aajumaaq paced around her, whining as eagerly as the sled dogs had when they wanted to run.

One more body and it’ll be free. You robbed it of Gabe. You owe this. The realization struck Kate in the chest. She couldn’t breathe for the joy of it. When the closest aajumaaq reared up before her, Kate smiled, elated. She threw back her head and opened her arms as the grey beast’s ribcage snapped open and it wrapped her in hot, urgent darkness.

Jaws gripped her head. Fire licked her skin. Through the aajumaaq’s teeth, Kate saw the wall bulge to take them in. Sticky resin burned into her pores, raising immediate angry rashes on her cheeks. The aajumaaq’s impossibly long tongue frayed into a thousand slender threads that feathered over her face, into her ears, up her nose, and under her eyelids. The tendrils probed so deeply that Kate choked. They rooted in her lungs, coiled around capillaries, and weaved through her heart.

Soon Kate couldn’t tell where she ended and the ship began. She felt the other minds working in concert, wrapped in their aajumaaq cocoons: Torme and the other mushers, the police officers and military men, even the dogs. She sensed the ship elongating. Glossy carapace wing covers peeled outward. Rows of origami wings unfolded and shivered, tasting the air.

We’re going home, beyond the stars. The communal thought pulsed through every threaded mind aboard as the ship levitated from its ice crater.

Kate beamed even as the translucent wall webbed over her face. There was only one thing left to do before they could go.

Plant the life they’d come to sow.

The ship banked toward Ilulissat and headed south down the coast to the city of Nuuk. Trembling seed pods teaming with millions of microscopic parasites swelled, ready to explode and seed the atmosphere in clouds of thick black.

What an adventure, Kate thought before her consciousness flicked off. Gabe would have loved this.

The Fear of Fallen Leaves
by James Newman

“Autumn is the most difficult, for obvious reasons,” Marilyn says. “God, how I dread the end of summer. Some mornings it’s all I can do to make myself leave the house.”

The others offer their usual looks of sympathy. A young lady whose name she can never remember dabs at her eyes with a tissue. Marilyn thinks the sweater she’s wearing ought to be a crime: candy corns and pumpkins in a gaudy checkerboard pattern.

“I hate this time of year. Hate it.”

Even now, she imagines she can hear the source of her distress outside: rustling, sighing, crackling. Like the flames of the constant struggle burning inside of her.

And then she’s done talking. She shrugs. “I know they can’t hurt me. I know it’s ridiculous.”

“No one’s here to judge,” says Evan, the leader of her support group. “I once met a man who had an irrational fear of ladybugs. Remember, you’re talking to a guy who’s terrified of tall people.”

They all laugh—with him, never at him.

Marilyn’s eyes meet those of a man named Markus, who sits directly across from her on the other side of the circle. His phobia is of big shaggy dogs. She quickly looks away. She finds him incredibly handsome, and such thoughts disturb her. Bryan hasn’t even been in the ground a whole year.

She stares off toward the refreshments table at the back of the room: a coffeemaker, packets of non-dairy creamer, a few stale donuts on a paper plate. And a new addition, presumably donated by one of her groupmates since their last meeting—a ceramic jack-o’-lantern full of peppermint puffs.

She notices the bowl sits on a bed of fake autumn leaves.

Well, that’s disrespectful.

Evan checks his watch. “We have about ten minutes left. Who would like to share next? I see a new face or two…”

A woman in a Keith Urban T-shirt holds up one chubby hand. “My name is Celia, and I’m afraid of spiders.”

“Welcome, Celia,” the others say in unison.

Everyone except Marilyn, who isn’t listening. Just like always, she is already dreading the walk outside to her car.

She wonders if she can slip out the back door, so she won’t have to pass by the man with the leaf blower again.

“Two more days ’til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween,” sings the jingle on the television. Some silly horror flick her ten-year-old is watching. She catches a snippet of it on her way through the living room to get the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet.

“Two more days ’til Halloween…”

Don’t remind me. Marilyn is sure the song was composed to taunt her personally. I’m trying to forget, as if that will make it go away. She wishes she could crawl under her bed, stay there until October 31 is an “X” on the calendar and it’s time to start preparing for Thanksgiving. But the thought of disappointing Joey is too much to bear.

“Honey, turn that off. You know scary movies give you nightmares.”

Once upon a time, that wasn’t true. He used to watch them with his father at every opportunity. After what happened a year ago, though, Joey isn’t the only one who has trouble sleeping when he watches that crap.

“But, Mom! This old dude’s using masks to kill all the kids! They put ’em on and snakes and spiders come out—”

“Scary movie. Off. Now.” She rubs at her temples, feels a headache coming on. “Why don’t you build something with that Lego set you wanted so bad for your birthday?”

She doesn’t dare suggest he play outside. And not just because of the chill in the late-October air.

“Fine.” An exaggerated sigh. Joey turns off the TV, stomps down the hall.

She smiles as she watches him go. He’s a good boy.

Her smile disappears at a knocking sound overhead. A muffled smoker’s cough, followed by a hint of male laughter. A metallic scrape, a heavy thud. It has been like this all morning, as if her home itself is alive. She had hired two local men to clean out her gutters (and almost fired them before they got started, as she didn’t care for the way one of them looked at her when he said getcha cleaned out good n’ proper; in that moment she missed Bryan with an ache that nearly brought her to her knees). Now, three hours in, she wonders how something like this could possibly take so long. She doesn’t dare peek outside to check on their progress. Won’t even allow herself to get too close to the windows until their work is done, lest she witness brown horror raining down from above, inches from her face.

They can’t get the hell off her property soon enough, taking with them the waste from her gutters. But even the thought of the damned things burning somewhere—blackening, withering, curling in upon themselves like dying spiders—make her feel no better.

Sometimes Marilyn wonders if everyone else in the world knows of her affliction, and they’re trying their best to rub it in her face…

During a trip to the grocery store on Halloween morning, her Volvo idles at a pedestrian crosswalk in the center of town. A man with a buzz cut struts by, wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. The symbol of his favorite team resembles a smear of blood on his chest, a gory handprint left there by the victim of a brutal murder.

That makes her think of Bryan. She squeezes her eyes shut, curses beneath her breath.

“You shouldn’t say bad words,” Joey scolds her from the backseat.

The drive home proves no less stressful. She feels a panic attack coming on, considers for a second pulling over so she can dump some of her groceries onto the seat beside her and use the bag to keep from hyperventilating. They are everywhere, impossible to ignore…

Other people step over them, sweep them aside, find the wretched things beautiful (some folks even take photos of them, for Chrissake, travelling from neighboring states just to watch them change color!). But as far as Marilyn is concerned, they are russet nightmares skittering across every sidewalk, hideous papery shapes stuck like parasites to the hood of every vehicle, remains of a dead season piled in every drainage ditch like casualties of a suburban apocalypse.

As she approaches her neighborhood, she spots a skinny teenager working in the front yard of his split-level home. He brandishes a rake like a lazy warrior halfheartedly swinging his weapon around. Behind him sits a trio of black garbage bags pregnant with the proof of his labor. Marilyn imagines the bags bursting, spilling forth their contents, and bile rises in the back of her throat.

She swings a right onto her block, sees Ray and Paula Quinlan’s boys jumping into piles of leaves that have fallen from the giant oak at the edge of their property. The youngest has already donned his Superman costume as if he can’t wait a few more hours for the festivities to begin. Watching the little tykes plunge willingly into those vile brown heaps makes Marilyn’s skin crawl, as if her clothes are infested with bugs.

Three houses down from the Quinlans’, Craig Cannon kneels under his carport, filling a leaf blower with gasoline. His T-shirt reads “THIS IS MY HALLOWEEN COSTUME.” He waves at her as she rolls by. She lifts one hand to return the gesture, but when she sees the countless leaves covering Craig’s driveway like a rust-colored quilt stitched together from her worst nightmares, she grips the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turn bone-white. If she doesn’t hold on to something, she fears she might fall right off of the world.

When she passes Tom and Teresa Huston’s property, two houses down from her own, she swerves, nearly striking a fat orange tomcat sitting on the curb. For a second, she is sure she sees a pale face leering at her from within a drift of maple leaves beneath the Hustons’ new deck…her late husband’s face, entombed in a deciduous cocoon. A second glance proves it is only Tom Junior’s soccer ball. Nothing more. Just a half-deflated soccer ball.

Leaves. God, how she loathes them.

As she pulls into her driveway at last, she glances in her rearview mirror to make sure none are chasing after her.

She knows it’s stupid, but she doesn’t care.

The kitchen smells of sugar cookies and pumpkin-spice-flavored coffee. On the radio atop the counter, a commercial filled with cheesy horror-movie sound effects advertises a local attraction called “The Fear Farm.”

“Joey, honey, could you come in here for a minute?”

He comes running into the kitchen. “Cookies! Awesome, Mom!”

“I am an awesome mom,” she quips.

He reaches for one, but she gently slaps his hand away. “Not so fast. Gotta wait ’til they cool down. Plus, I’ve gotta add the final touch.”

She paints little Halloween-themed pictures on them, using the tubes of frosting set beside the stove.

“We’ve got vampire bats. Ghosts. Here’s an eyeball. This one’s supposed to be a goblin, but it didn’t turn out so well.”

“It looks like a big green booger,” Joey says. “No offense.”

“You’re a big green booger!” She whirls around, pretends like she’s going to squirt him with one of the tubes.

He giggles, steps out of reach. A lock of wavy blond hair falls across his forehead. God, he looks so much like his father.

“Do me a favor, honey. There’s a bag from Laymon’s Grocery in the hall closet. Fetch it for me, please?”

“Sure.”

When he returns, he tosses the bag onto the table next to the set of tools they will use to carve a jack-o’-lantern later.

“Open it,” she says. “There’s something inside for you.”

He reaches into the bag, pulls out what she bought for him.

“Frankenstein! Cool! This is the exact costume I wanted!”

“Of course, I knew that,” she says with a wink. “And it’s Frankenstein’s monster, remember. Frankenstein was the guy who made him.”

“Good one, Mom.”

Where most kids can’t wait to dress up like Batman, Spiderman, or the Hulk for Halloween, all her son has talked about for the last month is transforming himself into Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. Bryan would have loved that.

“So, does this mean we’re going trick-or-treating?”

“We are.”

He throws his arms around her. “Yayyy! You changed your mind? But aren’t you afraid?”

She holds him close. Her eyes grow wet with tears. “I’m always afraid, honey. But I can’t let my phobia control my life. It’s why I attend those meetings. I hope they’ll help one day.”

“Because they’re gone, right? Those…things?”

She hesitates, but only for a second or two: “They’re gone. Right.”

Her strange condition didn’t start just one year ago. But the events of that night didn’t help with her phyllophobia, to say the very least.

Halloween was always Bryan and Joey’s thing. Since the age of eight or nine, the last time her own parents had taken her trick-or-treating—before her father left and her mom quit trying, and she was forced to outgrow such things sooner than most kids—she didn’t care one way or the other about Halloween. She could take it or leave it. Thanks to Bryan, though, October 31 was their son’s favorite day of the year.

To look at her husband, with his professional haircut and his corporate lawyer attire, you wouldn’t suspect that he was a lifelong aficionado of monster movies and slice-and-dice slasher flicks. The cornier the better. Most attorneys Marilyn knew decorated their walls with photos of themselves shaking hands with politicians, or shelves full of leatherbound books they would never read. Bryan’s prized possession: a framed first-edition Invasion of the Body Snatchers poster on the wall behind his desk at Thompson, Tierney, & Crites.

Joey had inherited his father’s love of scary movies, much to Marilyn’s chagrin. They’d argued about it on more than one occasion—Godzilla stomping on toy cars and cardboard buildings was one thing, topless college kids chopped up by a machete-wielding madman was another. If she could turn back time, though, she would join Bryan on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn big enough to feed a family of twelve, and with Joey sandwiched between them she would watch every bottom-of-the-barrel B-movie in her husband’s Blu-ray library. As long as they could have him back.

How could they have known, on that fateful day one year ago, that their lives would become a horror movie? That Bryan would end up just like the victims in those monster movies he adored so?

Joey had insisted on going trick-or-treating dressed as a “rotting zombie.” Marilyn had asked him more than once if he wouldn’t prefer something less gruesome, like a cowboy or a scary pirate. She knew she had lost the battle when Bryan bought an old flannel shirt and a pair of ripped jeans at a thrift store on his way home from work. He “dirtied them up” in the backyard with Joey’s help, then grinned from ear to ear as he showed her the results, as if he had scored a million-dollar lotto ticket instead of someone’s musty-smelling secondhand clothes.

“Perfect, right? Tell me the kid won’t look like he just crawled out of the grave!” Bryan said.

“Yeah,” Joey giggled. “It’ll be perfect!”

Even as she rolled her eyes, Marilyn couldn’t help but smile.

Daddy dressed up too, of course. She was tasked with applying their makeup: fake blood, cracked yellow teeth, green flesh oozing with latex sores. When all was said and done, she was actually quite proud of her work. She squealed with mock terror as the decaying duo lumbered after her to Bryan’s Volvo.

“Braaaains!” the tall zombie grunted, and the short one followed suit, his trick-or-treat bag bouncing against his bony hip.

They set out a couple of hours before dark. The streets of their hometown were filled with miniature superheroes, ninja turtles, Disney characters, and adult chaperones of the same. Jack-o’-lanterns grinned from porches beneath strands of blinking orange lights. Motion-activated skeletons mocked their victims with canned stentorian laughter. Bryan and Joey lurched down the sidewalk from house to house while Marilyn followed behind them in her Volvo. Each time they approached a home with its porch light on—the universal sign that those inside welcomed trick-or-treaters—she pulled over to wait at the curb.

Bryan’s love of Halloween wasn’t the only reason she stayed in the car while he did the footwork with Joey. As she cruised down the block, the abundance of fallen leaves everywhere she looked kept her in a constant state of anxiety. She was like a bullied child forever on the lookout for her tormentors. Her pulse quickened when she spotted a lone yellow dogwood leaf dancing along the sidewalk behind her son as he approached the Quinlans’ place. It appeared to be chasing after him. Gooseflesh broke out on her forearms any time she saw a bunch of them raked into piles like burial mounds in the middle of someone’s yard. Still, she pushed her fear to the back of her mind, forced herself to enjoy the evening with her family as much as possible.

Before long, Joey’s trick-or-treat bag bulged with so much candy it would take him months to eat it all. As she rolled to a stop in front of a house with a “FOR SALE” sign in the front yard, she decided to ask Bryan if they could call it a night after this one. She had been listening to a collection of Elton John’s greatest hits as she drove; she paused the CD now so she could hear her husband’s reply through the open passenger-side window.

That was when she heard the first scream.

So did the stooped old man dropping a handful of Tootsie Rolls into Joey’s bag. The senior citizen stepped out onto his front porch, rolling a small oxygen tank behind him: “What in tarnation was that?”

Marilyn peered through the windshield into the twilight. The air had an odd pinkish hue, making the scene before her appear even more surreal…

At the end of the block, several hundred feet in front of the Volvo, an obese woman flailed about beneath a giant oak tree, swinging her arms as if performing a maniac’s dance. The three children with her—a chubby vampire, a miniature witch, and a pint-sized Hulk—bawled in terror and confusion as they watched.

It looked like the woman was being attacked by a swarm of leaves.

An invisible ice cube slid down Marilyn’s spine.

Bryan and Joey ran across the yard, back toward the Volvo.

“Dad, what’s wrong with her?” Joey asked.

“I don’t know. Get in the car, son. I’ll be right back.”

Marilyn leaned across the seat, popped open the passenger-side door.

“Mom, I’m scared,” Joey said, climbing in. “What’s wrong with that woman?”

“Bryan, where are you going?” Marilyn called to her husband.

He sprinted past the car. “She needs help, honey!”

“Bryan!”

She gave the Volvo too much gas. It shot forward. She slammed on the brakes. The tires protested with a short squeal. Everything was happening too fast. She eased her foot off the brake, idled toward the intersection at the end of the block. She called out to her husband again.

Something to her left caught her attention. Helena Tennant—head of the P.T.A. at Joey’s school—thrashed from one side of her front porch to the other, shrieking in horror and pain. Those…leaf things…were attacking her too. They flitted around her like a flock of small brown birds possessed by demons. Helena crashed into a massive jack-o’lantern sitting atop her porch railing and it smashed onto the ground in a gooey orange mess. She followed it a few seconds later, turning her ankle and striking her concrete walkway face-first.

The creatures covered her instantly, darkening her flesh like living shadows.

“Oh, my God,” said Marilyn. “Oh, my God!”

Joey started to cry. “M-Mom? What’s happening?”

More screams echoed throughout the neighborhood.

Another group of trick-or-treaters—two young women and six or seven small children—staggered across the street further up. At first glance it appeared as if they were all trying to rip their own hair out. A mother in a glow-in-the-dark BOO! shirt batted at her face and breasts. Another lost her pointy witch’s hat as she fled from the creatures in pursuit. A toddler in a baggy Spiderman costume tripped and fell in the middle of the road. One of the things darted under his mask with twitchy, bat-like movements. A bigger boy in a Captain America costume tried to help the toddler to his feet, but a moment later he was rolling about in agony too as the monsters converged upon them.

Marilyn heard gunshots from the next street over. Three, in rapid succession. A man’s voice shouted hoarsely from somewhere behind her, “Jesus! Look out, Martha! Look out!”

His screams ended in a grotesque gurgle, as if something had crawled down his throat.

Trying not to panic, Marilyn eased the Volvo to a stop beside Bryan and the crowd under the oak tree. The fat woman and her young wards were now dark shapes crumpled on the grass a few feet away from a faux cemetery erected in someone’s side yard. Their bodies undulated ever so slightly, as if covered with a living blanket. Otherwise, none of them moved.

“Bryan!” Marilyn yelled. “Please get in the car!”

“Daddy!” Joey sobbed.

And then the things were on Bryan.

They were a dark rust-color, almost but not quite star-shaped. Not much larger than the hand of a human adult. Something about the way they moved reminded Marilyn of flying squirrels. Or stingrays. The way they glided effortlessly through the air from one victim to another…

But mostly they looked like leaves.

It was as if her phobia had come to life. It had grown fangs. And it was hungry.

Two of them stuck like flying leeches to each side of Bryan’s face, another to his neck, and yet another wrapped itself around his left wrist. He swatted at them, knocked one away but it was replaced by three more. He fell to his knees. Their flat brown bodies swelled as they sucked his blood. Marilyn had never heard her husband scream before. He sounded like a little girl.

She screamed with him as she watched him die.

“They got Dad!” Joey cried. “We have to help him!”

Tears streamed down her face. It was too late for Bryan, she knew. She had to protect her boy.

“Roll up your window, Joey.”

When he didn’t respond, she pushed a button on her side and did it for him.

One of the creatures slammed into the window inches from Joey’s face. It left a thin smear of blood on the glass where it stuck, the blood of one of its victims. In the center of its maple-leaf-shaped body, its round, lamprey-like mouth worked furiously. Marilyn glimpsed hundreds of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

Then, just as suddenly, the thing was gone. As if it had lost interest in them.

“What are they?” Joey wept. “Mommy, are they m-monsters?”

She didn’t reply. She peered through the windshield, her vision blurred with tears, and saw that Bryan’s body was covered with them now. He lay on his stomach, half-in and half-out of the road. He twitched once, then lay still.

She slammed her foot down on the gas. No clue where she was headed. Just had to get away from here now.

They were everywhere. Anyone who had not found shelter was food for the invaders. They floated down from the heavens by the hundreds, darkening the twilight sky. They descended from the trees, attacking men, women, and children on both sides of the street. Marilyn saw Steve Thompson, Bryan’s boss, thrusting a snow shovel at a swarm of them as they cornered him against the storage shed out back of his place. A young couple dressed like Dracula and a sexy gypsy fell beneath the monsters on the front lawn of their three-story home. Amidst the elaborate decorations on their patio, a flickering strobe light gave their demise an eerie silent film quality.

In another yard, a muscular man in a Gold’s Gym tank-top pried one of the things from his face, but his flesh came with it. Another leaf-creature crawled beneath his lacerated cheek, slid behind his features and across his skull. Marilyn saw his eye sockets turn brown.

She suspected the things hunted by sight and with only the dumbest of animal intelligence, as the only people who survived their attack were those who found shelter by fleeing into their home or jumping into a vehicle. Once there was any sort of barrier between the beasts and their prey, they seemed to lose interest immediately.

Marilyn watched as a skinny kid in a Darth Vader costume pulled a plastic swimming pool on top of himself to get away from a horde of the bloodsuckers. Once he was hidden beneath it, they abandoned their pursuit, soaring across the street to attach themselves to other victims.

“We’ve got to call for help,” said Marilyn. “Hand me my cell phone, baby. In my purse.”

Joey’s hands trembled as he dug it out and handed it to her.

She heard the wail of the siren a second before she rolled through the intersection, and the ambulance struck them on her side. The door crumpled in on her left arm, and the Volvo was thrown violently to the right. They spun around once, twice—she lost count—and from a million miles away, she heard Joey scream with her. Broken glass sprayed across her face and lap.

They finally stopped spinning when they crashed into another car parked against the curb.

Something hissed under the Volvo’s hood. She was pretty sure her left arm was broken. Her head felt as if it had been stuffed full of cotton. She smelled blood and burned rubber. Heard voices, incomprehensible murmurs, like music heard through water.

“Joey,” she moaned. “Oh, God. Joey, honey, are you okay?”

“I think,” he said, blinking.

They fell into each other’s arms. Blood trickled from a small cut on Joey’s cheek, but he didn’t appear to be seriously injured. By force of habit, he had buckled his seatbelt as soon as he climbed into the Volvo. Good boy. He was such a good boy…

“Ma’am, are you okay?” said a deep male voice.

Marilyn flinched, turned to the source of the voice, and as she did so her entire left side felt as if it had been doused in gasoline and set on fire. She winced.

Two paramedics were looking in on her, trying to open her door. One of the men had a thick black beard with blood in it, the other barely looked old enough to drive.

“You rolled right through that stop sign, ma’am,” said the young guy. “I never even saw—”

And then the paramedics weren’t there anymore. They were on the ground, covered with those leaf-creatures. Their white uniforms were now the color of rust. Moving rust.

“Mommy,” Joey cried, “what are we gonna do?”

“We have to run for it. We have to get help.”

She winced again as she fought to open her door. It wouldn’t budge.

“Try yours.”

“Stuck.”

“Try the back door. On your side. Can you do that for me?”

He climbed over the seat, opened it with some effort. She followed. Every movement was agony, but she couldn’t fail him now.

They fell from the car. Ran through a small park at the edge of a dying neighborhood. Past a picnic table, across a basketball court—the corpses of three young men lay beneath one of the goals, their bodies covered with bloated bloodsuckers—and past the boundaries of the park.

Right away, Marilyn wished they had stayed in the car. They were exposed out here, vulnerable. But they wouldn’t have been safe for long in the Volvo, with its busted windows. Those things might have gotten inside. They would have been trapped. She had to find help, find someone who knew what was going on, someone who knew how to deal with this. Whatever this was…

She risked a look back, over her shoulder.

At least a dozen of the creatures flew through the air toward them in a deadly phalanx. Less than thirty feet away, closing fast.

She had brought them to a dead end. They were cornered.

A split-rail fence marked the edge of the park. On the other side of it, a row of birch trees lined a small ravine.

At the bottom of the ravine was a thick bed of dead leaves, perhaps as deep as Joey was tall.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Jesus…”

The drop appeared to be twelve, fifteen feet at most.

It was their only chance. She recalled how the one creature had lost interest when Joey rolled up the window. As if, once the glass was between them, it no longer knew they were there. She thought of the kid crawling beneath the plastic swimming pool, and how the things seemed to forget about him once he was out of sight…

She took Joey’s hand. They climbed over the fence.

“We’re gonna jump,” she told him. “Think you can do that?”

He stared up at her, his expression of terror morphing into one of disbelief. “Into the…leaves? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I can do this. We have to do this.”

“Okay.”

“One, two, three, go!”

They leapt into the ravine.

As soon as they hit bottom—harder than she’d intended, and if her left arm wasn’t broken before, there was no doubt in her mind that it was shattered now—she started pulling them on top of her with her good arm. Covering herself and her son with hundreds of leaves. Joey helped.

Darkness consumed them. Marilyn’s greatest fear tickled, scratched, poked, and scraped at her face and arms, filling her nostrils with the smell of dirt and compost. She was inside them. They were inside her. She could taste them.

She shivered, said a silent prayer to a God she wasn’t even sure she believed in. She pleaded with Him to let them live through this, let them survive this ordeal with her sanity intact…

Later, when she thinks back on everything that had happened, she is thankful that He answered at least the first part of her prayer.

She doesn’t know why she told them. She sure as hell didn’t plan it. Maybe it has something to do with the almost intoxicating sense of self-confidence she has felt since facing her fear, since she took Joey trick-or-treating one year later after thinking she could never do that again. Perhaps she believes she has finally found a family as screwed-up as herself, a safe place where people will not judge her. She expects—no, demands—unconditional sympathy here, in this room full of men who tremble in terror at the sound of someone snoring, women who break down sobbing at the sight of an escalator, and couples whose debilitating fear of germs bring them to each meeting with rubber gloves on their hands, their faces hidden behind surgical masks.

“There was never a word about it in the media,” she explains. “It was all covered up somehow. It was like our little town was just wiped off the map, and those of us who survived it…they did something to us, to make us forget. But it didn’t take with me, for some reason. I remember everything. As far as where those…monsters…came from? Maybe they were aliens from another galaxy. I don’t know. They didn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen on this planet. Well, except for…”

She shudders, trails off.

“Anyway, I’m not sure knowing would make it any easier.”

When she has finished sharing, the other members of her support group just sit there staring at her.

Evan’s lips part, but he doesn’t say anything for a minute or more. The expression on his face resembles that of a man trying to assemble something complex but discovering the instructions are written in a foreign language. Toward the end of Marilyn’s story, he took a piece of hard candy out of his pocket, popped it in his mouth. She can see it sitting on his tongue like a pumpkin-colored tumor.

Donna G. and Donna P., the quiet lesbian couple who always sit in the back, whisper something to one another and snicker. A senior citizen in a silvery tracksuit who often shares stories about his aversion to aerosol cans clears his throat in an exaggerated manner. Markus, the guy Marilyn usually finds so attractive, covers his mouth with one hand as if fighting an urge to break the awkward silence with a deafening guffaw.

“Umm…okay, then,” Evan finally says. The candy clicks against his teeth.

Marilyn gathers up her purse and excuses herself, knowing she said too much.

She has never needed a therapist or some high-priced shrink to help her figure out where her phyllophobia originated. She has always known. It started with an incident that occurred when she was six years old. Her parents had left her in the care of her older brother, Billy, for a few hours one morning. When she accidentally broke one of his toys, he held her down, shoved handfuls of muddy leaves into her mouth. She swallowed some of them and was subsequently sick for days, little bits of leaf and grit coming out of her body from both ends every time she ran to the toilet.

Billy is long dead now, buried in a grave upstate that she visited only once after his O.D. on pain pills when she was in high school (she imagines him lying beneath a thick brown blanket of the things that scare her the most, and she feels no guilt for appreciating the poetic justice of such a scene). Thirty years later, the assault is her most vivid memory of him.

As bad as her fear of leaves has always been, it is worse than ever since the night Bryan died. Her greatest fear lurks on every lawn, darkens every ditch, blows across every backyard as if they have gathered one by one to outnumber the human race. She knows the leaves didn’t kill her husband, of course. That’s silly. Still, at first glance, the demons’ camouflage was infallible. The monsters that took Joey’s father away looked just like the autumn leaves.

So the question is never far from her mind: What if it happens again? Here, in this town where she has attempted to pick up the pieces of her life and make a new home for Joey? What if they come back, a second wave, hungrier than the first…

If she has no choice but to leave the house and walk among the fallen leaves, she will remain vigilant. Just in case.

When the world turns green again—vibrant, reborn, alive—she can relax. But only a little bit.

Meanwhile she will watch the skies, always looking up if they should fall upon us again.

The Bulge
by Rob E. Boley

Jimmy Richards always had a bulge down below, but not like this. With wide eyes, he stood bow-legged in front of his bathroom mirror. His scrotum had stretched bigger than a softball, all its hairy wrinkles ironed out by the pressure from whatever was inside. He probed the tender sack.

Dammit all.

He had a sex disease.

That strange woman in the woods must’ve given it to him.

He shook his head. What the hell was he going to do? The bulge wasn’t going away. If it grew much bigger, he wouldn’t be able to fit behind the wheel of his pickup. He shuffled into the kitchen and retrieved a bag of peas from the freezer.

His golden retriever, Buddy, whined, so he gave the dog a bone-shaped cookie from the jar on the fridge. Buddy gobbled the treat but kept on whining. Jimmy reckoned the dog could tell something was wrong. Buddy knew him better than anyone else.

Jimmy stared down at his ungodly bulge.

As a teen, Jimmy had always worn tight khakis to show off his bulge for the girls. He’d watched their eyes drift down below his belt buckle and then their lips would curl upward like some blossoming flower. He didn’t much like flowers, but he knew how to tend to their needs. Jimmy reckoned flowers were a lot like women that way. He knew how to make them blossom but had no interest in putting down roots with them. A real man didn’t need a woman. No sir, he was a short-term man. Cut stems only. And on account of his good looks and charm, he’d plucked many a flower.

In high school, he worked in landscaping because he liked the outdoors but realized quickly that the flower business was easier money. When his dad passed on soon after Jimmy graduated high school, he invested most of his inheritance in a flower shop. Fifteen years later, Richards Flowers now afforded him expensive toys like guns and a four-wheeler to roam his wooded acres outside of town. Currently though, he had little use for those toys. He’d been holed up in his house for days with this bulge.

He slammed the bag against the counter a few times to break up the contents and placed it against his balls. For one moment, the icy cold eased his pain.

His scrotum twitched. His body tensed with anticipation. An internal force yanked at the contents of his scrotum. The pain knocked him off his feet. He screamed and toppled sideways across the vinyl tiles. He must’ve torn open the bag, because frozen green peas scattered in all directions like a solid cue ball break at the start of a game of pool. Into the dining room. Under the table. Beneath the stove. Buddy scampered this way and that, licking up the peas.

“Oh God.” Gasping for breath, Jimmy reached down between his legs.

His scrotum now felt like a deflated balloon and every bit as empty. Where were his twins? Tears welled in his eyes as his hands rose upward to a new bulge the size and shape of a football below his waist and above his manhood.

What had that bitch done to him?

It’d happened four weeks ago.

Jimmy had already hit his bag limit for the season, but he’d be damned if the state was going to tell him how many animals he was allowed to kill on his own land. Well before sunrise, Jimmy was perched in his tree stand staring out at the forest. It was too early to spot a deer, but he liked to start hunting when the bats were still flapping in the yard, when the whole world was still asleep.

It made him feel ahead of the game. In on the secret. Powerful. Maybe a little dangerous.

Back before he’d bought this old house on its vast acreage, he used to get up early and walk around the suburbs. He never peeked in any windows or anything, but sometimes he’d scale the lone tree in his backyard and watch his neighbors’ houses. He wasn’t quite hunting, but nor was he merely observing.

Often, he had the same sensation at Richards Flowers while watching his team of sexy but largely inexperienced workers. His girls. He only ever hired high school or college girls, ones as pretty as the flowers he sold.

He never smoked while hunting. It always seemed disrespectful. In fact, on the days he hunted he only ever let himself smoke after a kill. No kill, no cigarette—not until after sunset. You didn’t want to encounter him on those days, by God.

Something went wrong that morning. Three shooting stars made long white slits across the night sky, like sharp knives slicing open the celestial belly. A moment later, a pink light flashed out in the furthest recesses of his property. Hell, maybe beyond.

“Goddamn shroom hunters,” he whispered to himself.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d caught those damn hippies trespassing on his land looking for their magic mushrooms. Well, this time he’d scare the shit out of them. He climbed out of his perch.

Rain had fallen yesterday, so the autumn leaves smooshed noiselessly under his boots. He didn’t need a light, not on his own property. He moved like a ghost between the trees, over the hills, through the ravines. Listening with wide eyes, he stopped every ten yards, but heard no sign of anyone. He sniffed the air but could only smell the deer urine he wore to mask his own scent and attract prey.

A twig snapped directly behind him and he froze. Fear made his asshole clench. A full body shiver rattled his bones. He was no coward, but for one minute he knew exactly how every animal he’d killed must’ve felt. Terror—that was a word he’d never known until now. He turned around expecting a bear. Sasquatch. A masked lunatic with a machete.

Instead, a naked woman.

He must’ve walked right past her. For a moment, his eyes gulped at her. In the moonlight, the edges of her body undulated like sheets blowing in the breeze, but she was definitely naked. Her body was lean with long limbs like a gazelle, almost unnaturally so. She had long hair that stretched down past her ass and wavered around her though the morning air was as still as a corpse. Her breasts were small and must’ve had the palest nipples ever because he couldn’t make out the areolas. She was old school ’70s about her grooming, because a thicket of darkness throbbed between her thighs. The fright inside him morphed almost instantly into arousal.

“Uh, hi,” he said, raising his free hand with a wave.

She raised a hand in return, said nothing.

He considered trying to explain to her why he smelled like deer piss but decided to only mention it if she did. Not wanting to scare her, he placed his rifle, safety off, against a nearby tree. As soon as he let go of the weapon, she moved toward him.

What happened next was the most erotic experience of his life. She took him to the ground and ripped off his hunting clothes. Literally. The fabric tore like rended flesh, and for a moment he thought her strong hands were tearing open more than his clothes. That fear only added to his arousal.

When he tried to kiss her, she issued a strangled hiss and smacked his cheek. He tasted blood. She let him palm her breasts, surprisingly cool.

Where the hell are her nipples?

Before he knew what’d happened, she mounted him. He slipped inside her, but it felt more like she was penetrating him. It ended quickly. He was right on the verge of orgasm when she grunted triumphantly and lifted off of him.

He sat up. “Hey, wait.”

By the time he got to his feet, she was gone. So was his rifle.

He staggered back home wearing his shredded clothes. After letting Buddy outside, he jerked off in his living room with the woman’s vague image in his mind’s eye. After, he sat on his back porch and had a cigarette, though he hadn’t made a kill.

Hell, if anything, he’d been hunted.

Several weeks after Jimmy lost his balls, he crawled mostly naked from his kitchen to his living room to answer his ringing cell phone. It was the flower shop.

On the sixth ring, he put the phone to his ear. “This is Jimmy.”

“Hi, Mr. Jim. This is Hannah.”

“I know who you are. What’s going on?”

“We have a problem.” His assistant manager paused like she always did when she was about to give him bad news, despite him telling her repeatedly that making him wait longer only agitated him further. “The Lampton wedding is today, and we didn’t order enough roses.”

“We?” Jimmy rose up on his knees, clutching the bulge at his waist which was now as big as a beachball. Buddy walked up and sniffed the bulge, his fluffy tail tucked between his legs.

“Uh, I— I didn’t order enough roses. See, we got this big order yesterday and—”

“Did you call the Bigham farm?”

“They’re out of stock.”

“Okay, here’s what you need to do. Drive down to the Lowe’s near Elverson. You’ll have to buy entire bushes. We’ll lose some profit, but that’s better than dealing with an angry bride.”

“I, uh, don’t have my car today. My dad took it to get an oil change.”

“Goddammit.”

“I’m sorry.” She apologized, even though he’d told her multiple times that he hated apologies. “I mean, I’m sorry for apologizing. I’ll—”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

It took him that long to find his keys and dress himself. The bulge had long ago made wearing his usual khakis impossible, but he was able to squeeze himself into a pair of tan fishing waders. He couldn’t use the padded suspenders, though, because they irritated the holy hell out of his breasts, each of which was now as big as a softball and featured a plump irritable nipple. Most of his button-ups were fitted too tight to squeeze over his new rack, so he settled on an oversized t-shirt he’d won at a carnival paired with a hunter orange vest.

After letting Buddy out, he used a walking stick to waddle out to his truck. Each step felt like a corkscrew twisting into his lower back. Shit, and his lawn was damn near knee high. He’d have to get some local boy out here to mow soon.

His pickup growled to life, and he pulled out of his driveway. His closest neighbor, nosey old Tom Jenkins, waved as Jimmy drove past. Tom was a good old boy who loved guns and knives and beer. They’d gone fishing together a time or two. Tom was all right. His wife had run out on him some years ago after the kids were grown. There were rumors of abuse. Sometimes Jimmy saw her out at one of the bars around town—all made up and on the prowl and looking fine for a woman deep into her fifties.

Jimmy waved back at Tom and gunned it down the road. Five minutes later, he pulled into the lot of Richards Flowers and his lips curled at the unkempt sight. Bits of trash in the bushes. Unwashed windows. His girls had been slacking off in his absence. He’d have to talk to Hannah about this.

She swung open the passenger door and slid her gorgeous ass inside. He accelerated out of the lot without a word. She was wearing her khaki-colored apron with the Richards Flowers logo printed on it. He’d ordered a mess of them two years ago after hunting around for the perfect apron—one with a non-adjustable neck strap long enough that the aprons would fall low on the chest revealing plenty of boob. Once he was on the highway to Elverson, he glanced over at her.

She’d unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt, revealing the sloped tops of her tanned C-cup breasts. Oddly, though, the sight of her chesticles didn’t get him horny. In fact, he felt sympathy. She’d been working long hours in his absence, keeping the shop running and wrangling his girls.

She broke the silence. “Mr. Jim, I know you’re angry.” She undid her seatbelt and lowered her head toward his bulge. “Let me make it better.”

For a moment, he considered letting her do it. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched himself or even had an erection. They’d fooled around plenty in her three years of working at the shop. He’d hired her the fall of her junior year of high school and had marked the calendar for when she’d turn eighteen. After that blessed birthday came, he quickly seduced her. It wasn’t hard, since that day coincided with a break-up with her boyfriend. They fooled around for months, and eventually he promoted her to assistant manager because in addition to having a talented mouth, she was also good with customers and needed a job after graduation. In the past year, she’d started seeing someone which was fine with Jimmy. He liked variety, after all.

Now he caught her by the wrist a moment before she would’ve discovered his bulge. “I’m not angry, Hannah. You’ve been doing a hell of a job at the shop. I’ve dumped a lot of responsibility on you, and you’ve kept the place running in fine shape. In fact, I’m giving you a raise.”

His own words startled him. The syllables scurried out of his mouth like cockroaches in a dark kitchen. Beyond the words, though, genuine compassion festered. He wiped his eyes, his vision corrupted by sparkling tears.

“OMG, Mr. Jim. Are you…are you crying?”

He blinked hard. “I’m so…so proud of you.”

It was later, while Hannah was loading the rose bushes into his truck, that he felt the first kick below his belly. Dread filled his heart. He prayed it was only indigestion and rested a trembling palm over his bulge. Seconds later, something nudged against his hand.

Something was growing inside him.

He spent the following weeks on his laptop alternately deep-diving into medical websites to self-diagnose his symptoms and streaming content on Hallmark Movies Now. Sometimes he journaled, filling spiral notebooks with childhood memories like sitting at the kitchen table eating watery mac and cheese while Mom smoked cigarettes and talked on the phone about Dad being an asshole. Smoke had hung in the air like a dragon ghost. If he dared to cough, she would have flicked her ashes in his bowl instead of on the floor.

After she ran out on them, the house stank like cigars instead of cigarettes. When things broke, Dad called them “a bitch” or “a whore.” When Jimmy got in trouble, Dad labeled him the same. He never once told Jimmy he was proud of him, but constantly reminded him, “A real man don’t need a woman.” As Jimmy wrote all of this out now, he saw how his parents had wired his thoughts and emotions.

When not journaling, Jimmy grazed on chocolates, pizza rolls, Kalamata olives, and yogurt—sometimes all mixed together. He’d always hated olives, but now he couldn’t get enough of them. Praise be for being able to purchase groceries online.

His aching back only allowed for three or four hours of sleep at a time, which he managed twice a day if he was lucky. Hannah called him twice a week with updates on the shop.

He was in bed wearing only a pair of boxers while binging Christmas romance movies when the first contraction came. It felt like someone had shoved a hot poker into his belly button. He bucked so hard that he flung the laptop off his lap and onto the floor.

A woman’s distraught voice said from the laptop, “I don’t think Santa can bring me what I need.”

Buddy stood beside the bed alternately whimpering and barking while Jimmy thrashed and writhed. Agony twisted in his belly. Unbearable pressure swelled behind his penis. His spine smoldered and ached like a stack of burning coals.

“Oh god, Buddy. Oh shit.”

The dog whined in response.

Jimmy needed help. When he tried to sit up to look for his phone, his body felt as heavy as concrete. Another contraction lanced through him. His bladder released, soaking his boxer shorts.

The contractions came in relentless waves, pounding at his inner shores. He wanted more than anything to curl into the fetal position—to make himself smaller and hide from the hurt. His skeleton wouldn’t allow it though. No matter how much his muscles tried to turn and contract, his bones remained stiff. His traitorous body stayed splayed out on his back like a starfish. He couldn’t even make a fist. Everything was locked in the most vulnerable position possible. His outstretched hands hung over each side of the bed. All he could do was scream, and thank the Lord above for that.

The labor continued until daylight filtered through the bedroom’s drawn blinds and then well after the light faded once again. He screamed and prayed and begged.

Buddy licked his hand.

When the contractions came, he choked on his scream. Everything locked up. His eyes felt fit to pop out of his skull.

Buddy barked.

From the laptop, voices flirted and fell in love and split apart and miraculously found each other again, all interspersed with Christmas music. If he survived this, he swore to himself that he’d never listen to another Christmas song ever again. Not even “Blue Christmas” by the King.

By the second night, the contractions lasted several minutes with only time for a few breaths in between. His mattress, sheets, and shorts were soaked with sweat and urine. A particularly brutal contraction tore through Jimmy’s middle like a length of rebar. After that, he didn’t even have a chance to scream. Another contraction. Another. Surely his body couldn’t take much more of this. Each contraction was a pickaxe slammed into his core, chipping away at his pitiful remnants.

Something shifted inside him. Pressure swelled at the base of his penis. He wanted more than anything to clutch his shaft and protect his wilted member. It spasmed like a worm on a hook, but this wasn’t a voluntary action. Nor was it a reflex. Something was moving his penis from the inside like a puppet with a hand jammed up its ass. Over his mountainous bulge, the tip of his cock waved back and forth. Hot tears streamed down his temples. The pressure spread through the shaft as if something were trying to push through it.

“No. Please, God, no.”

The pressure intensified. Shadows crept along the edges of his vision. The pressure dampened, replaced now by agony as sharp pain tore through his insides. Instinctively he realized the thing growing in him couldn’t get out that way, so it was going to find another exit. His stomach swirled like a flushed toilet. He retched and gagged. A more familiar pressure gathered inside him as if he were about to shit. If his ass had been able, it surely would’ve screamed in terror.

The pain was a dull axe slammed repeatedly between his ass cheeks. Slippery things wiggled around his sphincter. Hardly able to breathe, he bore down as if having the most terrible shit of his life. No matter how bad it hurt, he kept pushing. Whatever was growing inside of him had to come out right now. Otherwise, it might kill him.

On the bedside, Buddy whimpered and barked.

From the laptop, a woman said, “I want this more than anything, but I’m afraid.”

He pushed and shoved. The suffering concluded not with relief but with a terrible rending of his backside. Tearing. Blood red curtains parting.

Something squirmed on the mattress between his legs. It uttered a raspy hiss. He hadn’t the strength to try to see what, and his bulge had only partly deflated. But it was over. Blessed glory of the Lord, it was over.

Another contraction, this one every bit as painful as the ones before.

“Please no. Please.”

Over the course of two more Hallmark Christmas romances, he birthed no less than three more things from his ass. By the end, something in his skull had snapped, and he dissociated from the torture. His vision receded. His hearing dimmed. His body numbed. His consciousness didn’t so much pass out as collapse.

He woke to the sensation of Buddy licking his chest. It wouldn’t have been the first time. In the past, he’d sometimes come home late from the bar craving nachos. He’d eat while watching old Sylvester Stallone movies in his recliner, dripping meaty cheese and crumbs on his bare chest. After falling asleep to Stallone stabbing someone, he’d wake to a dog’s tongue slurping across his chest.

This was different. The tongue was everywhere at once. He wasn’t in the recliner. His insides ached and his ass was a seething cauldron of hurt. He wasn’t hungover. And the man’s voice in the darkness wasn’t Sly. “I’ve never felt the way I feel when I’m with you. I can’t lose me again. I need us.”

He opened his eyes, struggling to make sense of the writhing shadows on his chest. His throat was scorched earth from screaming. The bedroom stank of salty dampness and coppery blood and something else…something moist and hot.

Nearby, Buddy whined.

The shadows upon him formed into shapes—thin hairless humanoids with the proportions of Barbie dolls, though not so tall. Four of them slipped and slid over his belly and chest, fighting for the two coveted nipples. When they latched on, his head filled with helium. Their urgent mouths tugged until something spilled from within. The sensation was at once urgent, painful, and soothing. His limbs were no longer locked in place, and he reached for the suckling creatures.

They jerked away from his touch at first, but one of them—the largest of the bunch—eventually let Jimmy hold it while it fed. Its pale skin was smooth and hairless—all lean muscle and bone. Revulsion urged him to throw the damn thing across the room, but he didn’t.

The four monsters took turns feeding until dawn, then snuggled together against his belly as he rolled over on his side. He reached for his injured ass, finding the creatures had torn a gaping hole in his shorts. The last thing he heard before exhaustion dragged him to sleep was a man’s voice on the laptop, “Bethany, from the first moment I saw you, I knew I would love you for the rest of my life.”

A dog’s frantic barking woke him the following morning. The four creatures were no longer on the bed. Emptiness swirled in his gut. He clutched his stomach, the flesh all loose and stretched out. Hollow, that was the word that echoed in his heart.

Buddy’s barking came from the front of the house. Maybe he needed to go outside. God, how long had Jimmy been stuck in bed? Maybe it was it all a dream? No, his torn asshole said otherwise.

The dog’s barking ceased, now replaced by frantic yips and whines and then squeals, noises he’d never heard the canine make before.

He spilled out of bed still wearing his stained boxers. “Buddy!”

The squealing ceased.

From the laptop, voices sang, “All is calm, all is bright, Round yon virgin mother and child, Holy infant, so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in—”

He slammed the laptop shut, ears straining.

“Buddy?”

The dog didn’t respond. A wet slurping noise filled the silence, like someone sucking shredded meat through a straw. Something crashed, as if the front door had been kicked in.

Footsteps preceded man’s voice said, “What the hell?”

It was Tom.

Next, a gunshot.

The bang made Jimmy jump, causing a stab of pain in his rectum. Dread as thick as syrup oozed in his gut. Still clutching his laptop, he rose wavering to his feet and staggered down the hallway. In the living room, he found Buddy sprawled on the floor, his belly torn open. Blood was splattered over the curtains, which must’ve been what made Tom kick in the front door. His neighbor stood nearby with his Desert Eagle handgun trained on three of the four children. The trio hunched in the corner, covered in blood. Their sibling—the fourth—lay on the floor torn nearly in two by a bullet.

Gun still trained on the trio, Tom looked over his shoulder at Jimmy and said, “I thought I heard screaming last night. Came over to check on you. What the fuck is all this?”

The trio hissed in unison, drawing Tom’s attention. Except it wasn’t a hiss. Jimmy recognized it for what it was—a cry of mourning for their fallen sibling. The noise stabbed right through his heart. Sorrow filled him.

“You little fuckers.” Tom’s arm tensed, readying to shoot again.

Jimmy’s sadness morphed quick as lightning into rage. Without thinking, he flung his laptop like a Frisbee at the back of Tom’s head. The gun went off, and a framed painting of dogs playing poker shattered on the wall. His neighbor pitched forward and Jimmy lunged. He kneed Tom in the groin and threw him to the ground. The gun fell with a resolute thud. He grasped it and slammed it repeatedly into Tom’s face. Bone crunched. Blood splattered. Teeth rained. He kept on thudding until his neighbor’s face resembled cherry pie.

Only then did he rear back on his haunches. His exhausted gaze scanned the room. Blood everywhere. Buddy torn open. His faceless neighbor. The trio of monsters covered in the blood of Buddy, his only real companion.

The trio crept forward, moving on all fours. They stared at him with an intensity that shocked him. With fear? Hunger? He clenched the gun tighter. It grew heavier in his hand.

Eight months later, life had more or less returned to normal. His balls had come back and his tortured body had recovered, aside from all the stretch marks. It was a beautiful autumn morning, or it soon would be. Jimmy stood in his living room working on his laptop which now had a head-shaped dent in the side. He clicked through the new Richards Flowers website Hannah had designed. She was earning her keep as the new general manager. The site was sleek and modern, and they’d already seen a boost in online retail. It featured plenty of pictures of the staff, a mix of young men and women wearing brand new aprons with better coverage—though still khaki and still with his logo.

He sent her a text. Dam, Hannah. The web sight is perfect. Thanks.

At the door, his phone purred in his pocket, a message from Hannah. Did she ever sleep? Glad you like it, Jimmy. That was followed by a smiley face graphic, emoties or something like that. Maybe she could show him how to use them.

As he was stepping out the door, a pang struck his heart as it always did. Buddy should be under his feet right now, wagging his tail. His gaze drifted to the wall where the dogs were still playing poker. He’d patched the hole in the painting with a halfway decent likeness of Buddy smiling at his hand of cards.

Outside, he breathed in crisp cool air and the scent of dead leaves. A few bats flapped around the yard. He strolled around back toward the woods, glancing at Tom’s old place. It remained dark in the distance.

It’d taken weeks before anyone noticed Tom was missing. Hell, Jimmy half-thought he’d have to call the police himself. Eventually, someone noticed, maybe a distant relative. When they finally came, they found a massive cache of weapons and white power paraphernalia. There were rumors he’d run off to join a militia. The police questioned Jimmy, but seemed more concerned with what Tom was planning with all those guns.

The woods welcomed Jimmy. It was a good morning for a hunt, though he hadn’t brought his rifle. Yesterday’s rain made the fallen leaves into a damp carpet. Damn, it was a morning like this when he’d met her. Had it really been almost a year?

He climbed into his tree stand. The forest remained dark and quiet. Gradually, the sun stretched into the horizon and the blackness above swam through the darkest shades of blue. He didn’t have to wait long.

Something rustled in the distance. Branches snapped. He raised his binoculars. The buck bolted through the underbrush, dashing for his life. The poor thing didn’t realize he was being herded into a trap.

The girls moved so quickly, like pale flashes of light between the trees. Faith and Grace latched onto the deer’s thick neck. His steps faltered. He ricocheted off an oak tree but struggled to continue. His thick rack swayed back and forth. He managed to blaze forward until Hope leapt from the bushes and bit into one of his rear legs. The buck went down.

Jimmy sighed. It was a thing of beauty seeing his daughters hunt. He climbed down and jogged toward the kill. The girls had already torn open the abdomen by the time he arrived. He would’ve offered to help, but they liked this part.

Instead, he stood there admiring their strength. “You girls were amazing. I’m so proud of you.”

At the sound of his voice, they stared up at him with their black eyes. Blood was smeared over their faces. They were still hairless and long-limbed, though taller now than Barbie dolls. He’d tried to get them to wear clothes, but they wouldn’t do it. Whatever…as long as they were safe and happy.

They smiled, revealing rows of sharp teeth. He felt a pang in his breasts, a distant ache to nurse. He knelt, and they leapt on him, nearly knocking him over. They nuzzled his neck and wrestled to be the first to receive a hug. He never knew he could feel love like this.

He didn’t take any venison with him. The girls would bring him plenty after they’d eaten their fill. It looked to be a nice day, maybe one of the last before winter. Maybe they’d cook out tonight. The girls were getting pretty skilled at washer toss.

The sky was light blue by the time he returned home. He visited the new garden bed on the side of the house and knelt over Joy’s unmarked grave. The roses he’d planted there were fading, but the black-eyed Susans and sedum were in full bloom. They had strong roots. He’d made sure his lost baby girl would always have beautiful flowers.

“Your sisters did well,” he whispered. “It was a fine kill.”

Wiping a tear from his eye, he walked to the back porch and lit a cigarette. A blue cloud lingered lazily around him. He never smoked around the girls. He was a good dad.

Phantom Limb
by Kay Hanifen

The final entry in the diary of Doctor Jillian Howard

Found at the abandoned Outpost Tunguska

Dated 07 September 2030

Transcribed for classification here:

I am empty. A hollowed-out shell that once held a person, but now has been gutted and stitched back together in the facsimile of a human. I am a poorly done taxidermy statue, my heart and lungs and organs replaced by sawdust and my body misshapen and forever wrong. I came here empty and looking to be filled. I don’t know if I want that anymore.

I hear it calling to me. It whispers, promising me home, promising me unconditional love. It tells me that if I surrender my selfhood, I will never be alone again. I don’t think I want to do that. I think I want to remain me, but I don’t even know who me is. It speaks in Jackie’s voice.

Jackie and Jill went up a hill to fetch a twelve pack. Jackie fell down and broke her crown, but Jill never came tumbling after.

I always came tumbling after. The second born and she never let me forget the minutes between us entering the world. Jackie and Jill. My parents thought they were so clever, but we were sick of the nursery rhyme and ready to kill them by kindergarten. I was always behind her. My grades were great but not valedictorian. I was fast on the track team, but she broke records. We were identical, but boys and girls passed me over to pursue her. But I didn’t care about my sister’s shadow, because it was Jackie and we connected in the way only twins could. I felt her pain and her joy as acutely as if it were my own, and she knew mine better than anyone else’s.

Losing her was like losing a limb. I’d reach out, trying to sense her, to feel her presence, but found only the empty chasm where she had once been. We’d already lost our parents to a carbon monoxide leak when we were just out of college, but with Jackie gone, I am utterly alone in the world.

People don’t know how to deal with grief, especially the grief of others. No one likes to imagine the end and the human mind recoils at the thought of its own destruction. Some find comfort in belief in an afterlife, but the fear of death or an eternity in Hell lingers. Words fail in the face of devastating loss and no amount of “I’m sorries” and assurances of them being in a better place can assuage the pain. So-called friends drifted away, or perhaps I turned my back on them because I couldn’t be the girl they wanted me to be. I understand. I’m a sad drunk and no one wants the grieving orphan to bring down the mood during happy hour.

Every moment I spent in our small town was surrounded by reminders of our summer afternoons at the ice cream shop, nights spent sneaking out and drinking on the roof, Sunday mornings dragged to church until we were old enough to refuse, and it threatened to swallow me like a black hole. So, when this research position opened in Siberia of all places, I knew I was running away, but I had to get as far from Jackie as I could. And a potential new species found in the permafrost was as good as anything.

If you’re reading this, you might have an idea of what happened next. The first few weeks were normal enough as we removed the specimen and began the impossible task of identifying it. The creature is something that defies categorization. Even just looking at it was difficult. The eye doesn’t comprehend the impossible morass of tentacles and spines and segmented limbs.

After Jackie died, I would stare in the mirror, into her face, cataloguing our eyes, the shape of our nose, the cupid’s bow of our lips until my features shifted and warped like I was staring through rippling water instead of reflected from glass. Staring for too long at the specimen felt like those hours I’d spend in front of the mirror.

If you have a high enough security clearance, you might know what happened when we brought it inside to be studied. Put simply, it woke up. I’d heard of this happening with prehistoric worms and other simple lifeforms, but never anything so complex as this thing. And whatever it was, it was scared. So very scared.

It lashed out, slicing into one of the head biologists, Alexei Dolokov, like he was made of wet tissue paper before we locked it in the lab. His condition has deteriorated over the past few days. Whatever was on its claws was highly poisonous. The tissue around the wound is necrotizing at an alarming rate, and we have no idea how to help him as his skin and muscle slowly slough off. His screams echo through our test site and we’re helpless to alleviate his pain.

The creature promises me it’ll end his pain. It’ll end all our pain if we let it. I almost believe it.

We’ve taken to watching the thing in shifts. It mostly sits in the corner rocking back and forth like a frightened animal, but with me, it tries to get my attention. Tries to get me to join it.

It showed me things. Images and feelings mostly. Here’s what I’ve gathered: the specimen was once a part of a collective hive mind, blissful in its oneness with the rest of its species. While on an exploratory mission the ship malfunctioned, trapping it in arctic ice.

I know this pain, this phantom limb where a we became an I. No one else at this research base truly understands what it’s like to lose half of yourself and be left floundering as you try to pick up the pieces of the remaining half. Sure, they’ve likely lost someone important to them, but Jackie and I shared a mind. Once, my right side started hurting like someone had pushed red hot needles into my stomach. I would have said appendicitis, but mine was removed years ago. I had a terrible feeling, so I called Jackie. When she failed to pick up three times, I followed my agonized gut and called an ambulance. It turned out she had collapsed from a burst appendix, and had it not been for my feeling, she would have died. Well, it bought us a little time anyway.

It’s my shift with the creature, and it’s staring at me. I cannot see its eyes, but still I know it stares. The tentacles pulse in an irregular rhythm like a parody of a heartbeat and the floor is slick with the slime it excretes. I know what it wants just as much as I know it’s what I cannot give it. It wants to be made whole again. No more silent abyss.

Love bombing is when a cult showers a lonely recruit with affection, make them feel like they belong, like they matter. While I went into biology, Jackie studied psychology. We’d spend school nights sitting side by side helping each other study even though she didn’t understand an ounce of biology beyond AP Bio and my psych skills stagnated at Dr. Phil. I remember her talk on cults well, because we both went down a rabbit hole of Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate documentaries trying to understand how smart people could fall for something like that.

But now I do understand. Because I feel it. Twins have a unique connection. Mom and Dad said it was because we shared an egg, a womb, and just about everything else. Having it torn away leaves me as half a person. The specimen, though, loves me in a way no one else could.

With Jackie, I was loved as a part of a package deal. Outside of the occasional romantic relationship, we had the same friends, and they could hardly tell us apart on a good day. I lost count of how many times they got us confused, how many times I got in trouble with our parents for something Jackie did or vice versa. The specimen, though, has never met Jackie. It loves me. It loves me.

I can feel it through the glass enclosure, a pulsating promise of You won’t be alone ever again. I love you, Jill. Open the door and join us. The feeling, the knowledge of its love slithers down the back of my neck and burrows into my heart. It’s a warm feeling, but not comforting. It’s unwanted fingers groping in a nightclub, your boss laying his hand on your thigh and slowly sliding up until you figure out an excuse to escape. It’s one part affection, three parts violation, and you hate how your body reacts when touched in these sensitive areas.

I don’t want it implanting its twisted love into me, and yet I still yearn for that secondary presence within my mind. For the first time in a long time, I feel…not complete, but not alone either.

The worst relationship I’d ever had happened when Jackie was studying abroad. I missed her but also relished in the time alone to figure out who I was when I wasn’t Jackie and Jill. Her name was Tessa, and she was so bitterly jealous. To keep me to herself, she’d convinced me that everyone else just liked me because I was Jackie’s sister. She was the only one who loved me for me. I should have realized it was a lie, but after spending your teenage years never quite as good as your twin, you start to believe you’ll always be the second choice. It’s why I decided to go with a different major. At least Jill the biology student was different from Jackie the psychology student.

I figured out her game when she tried to turn me against Jackie by implying she thought I was just holding her back. I may have wanted some space, but I knew our sisterhood was rock solid. When that didn’t work, she started implying we were in an incestuous relationship, which…gross. That was when I broke up with her. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was that I was feeling lost and lonely, and she was really good at showering me with affection. With her, I felt for the first time like I was valued as an individual.

When it called to me on the first shift after it woke, it spoke in Tessa’s voice. I’m glad to be free of her, but that night I had been thinking about where she was and what she was up to. I hate to say it, but I missed her, in the way a candle misses the flame. Sometimes, our greatest desires are also what will hurt us the most.

“Jill?” I heard it call in the back of my head.

I had been thinking of the good times between us, but hearing her voice sent a familiar jolt of panic through me like a bolt of lightning. Everything bad about us came rushing back. The feeling of being always off balance, never knowing the right thing to say because any misconstrued word could be a trap. It was a tightrope walk with spikes at the bottom and flamethrowers to my sides.

My response apparently wasn’t what it wanted, so it tried again, this time with a voice twice as agonizing as the flashbacks to an emotionally abusive relationship.

“Jill? Please. It hurts,” it said in Jackie’s voice.

“Shut up,” I half shouted.

I must have looked insane yelling at thin air, but I didn’t care because the creature that was killing Alexei used the voice of my dead sister. An almost laughably obvious attempt at manipulation, but the whiplash of hearing Tessa and Jackie back to back in the middle of Siberia had me off balance enough that I was more receptive than I would have been had it caught me on a good day.

“Jill,” it said again with her voice, and I felt this tsunami of grief that wasn’t all mine.

It was memories of being whole, of a thousand minds buzzing in tune with my own and the comfort of knowing I wasn’t alone. I was so loved. It filled me with the pressure of a volcano until I erupted into tears of joy. It was the Christmas mornings of our childhood when we still believed a man could fly around the world in the night and our loved ones would be with us forever and a vast hive of individuals was working in perfect synchronicity, all knowing their place and happy to contribute to the whole.

My boss, Professor Ivan Belyaev, found me the next morning curled in a fetal position, my nose and ears bleeding and tears still streaming down my face. He forbade me from taking another shift, but when the specimen became lethargic and only responded to me, he let me take over and watch it again. I think it just made the rest of the team uncomfortable to look at.

09 September 2030

Alexei died fifteen minutes ago. I just received the email along with an announcement that there will be a meeting in fifteen minutes to decide what to do with this thing. I’m certain some will want to destroy the greatest scientific find of all time, but I know we can’t.

It’s the last of its kind. The specimen had been under the ice for several millennia and in that time, its hive had gone extinct. It has shown me its pain and confusion, the bereft feeling where thousands of minds once hummed with its own. I have felt the jagged wound as though it was my own and my heart bleeds with it.

It knows, too, what is about to happen. For the past several minutes, it watched me as I wrote all of this down, vomited my thoughts and feelings as I fought against its embrace. It stared out the window, its chelicerae clicking and octopus-like eyes boring into me. I don’t know why I got to my feet and placed my hand on the window, but when I did, it reciprocated with a tentacle.

And suddenly, I understood. The hive was compatible with any species. It didn’t have to be alone if it could get others to join it. We didn’t have to be alone. I know what I have to do.

12 September 2030

I’m writing this last note so you understand what happened, so you’ll know the joy of being a part to a whole. When I opened the door and we became one, so too did our pain and our pleasure. I can still grasp a pen, but my body has warped. My bones groan like trees in a windstorm as my shoulders broaden and my rib cage expands to house new organs. I’ve watched my teeth fall out with amusement because my jaw no longer held them. My skin hardened into a chitinous shell, and we have become one. These words are the last gasp of Doctor Jillian Howard. She was so alone. We were so alone.

But we won’t be ever again. We will preach the gospel of the

Hive to all who would listen and rebuild our

Empire starting with the remaining crew. No one has to be alone again. Do you feel it? That

Love? That sense of wholeness? Or are you still empty inside like we were? We can give you

Peace. We are of one

Mind and one body. Join us and you will never be alone with the

Emptiness of your existence again.

Incident on Saddle Road
by Brian Moreland

The Big Island, Hawaii

Up the road, a thick fog bank rolled across the valley. Before Jeff Logan could switch on the headlights, mist swallowed his Subaru Outback. The morning sunshine vanished. The landscape within the haze turned gray, as if the fog had sucked the color out of the world. Surrounding ‘Ōhi’a trees and volcanic terrain dotted with scrub were half-hidden by drifting wisps of vapor.

Jeff said, “Check it out, girls, we’ve entered the creepy stretch of Saddle Road.”

Riding shotgun, his fifteen-year-old, Kai, glanced out her window. “Woo, so scary,” she said, then went back to texting on her phone.

“I can barely see the trees,” said Malina, his nine-year-old, from the backseat.

Jeff said, “Look hard enough, you might spot ancient Night Watchers moving through the foggy woods.”

“Who are they?” Malina asked.

“Hawaiian ghost warriors. They haunt these parts, but mostly at night. If you hear drumming or a conch-shell horn, you know they’re close. But if a Night Watcher floats up to your window, don’t dare look it in the eyes or you’ll be snatched into the spirit realm.”

Kai rolled her eyes. “Dad, don’t scare her. She’ll have nightmares and beg to crawl in bed with me.”

“I’m not scared,” Malina said, crossing her arms.

“It’s just a myth anyway,” Jeff said. “How about we play ‘I Spy’?”

Kai groaned. “Definitely no.”

Malina shook her head and, mimicking her sister, took more interest in her phone.

Jeff was trying his best to reconnect with his daughters. An ugly custody battle had kept him separated from them the past year. Now that he had finally been granted this weekend with the girls, he felt like he barely knew them. Since picking them up at the Kona airport this morning, Kai hadn’t spoken more than three words. Malina was talkative one moment, aloof the next.

Just give them time, he told himself. Don’t try so hard.

The fog pressed against the vehicle until there was little visibility beyond the windows. He switched on the headlights, carving a path through the murk. The farther he drove along the narrow two-lane road, the more he felt a sense of unease. The road began to vibrate. Headlights shown from up ahead, then a convoy of military vehicles burst from the fog and rumbled past. The soldier behind the wheel of the last Humvee flashed his headlights as Jeff passed him. Then the disturbed wall of roiling mist stitched itself back together, hiding whatever lay beyond.

“Why did he flash his lights at us?” Malina asked.

“Beats me,” Jeff said. “I don’t know military code.”

Kai tapped at her phone. “Oh great, no signal.”

“How will you ever survive without texting Matt?” Malina chided.

Kai turned to face the backseat. “I was trying to post a photo of the fog, mutant. It’s thicker than usual.”

“Who’s Matt?” Jeff asked.

“Nobody.”

Malina made kissing sounds, and Kai told her to knock it off.

Jeff smiled as he listened to his daughters squabble. Man, how he missed this. Kai, with her long black hair and dark eyes, looked so much like her mother. Malina, who looked more like him, had grown too fast in the past year. She noticed him looking at her in the rearview mirror and scrunched her face.

“Dad, watch out!” Kai shouted.

Ahead, a shadow-shape stepped into the road, arms waving. The beams lit up a soldier. Jeff swerved off the road, tires trundling over rocks and shrubs. He slammed the brakes. The Subaru skidded to a stop beside a clump of trees.

“You guys all right?” Jeff checked the girls.

Kai pressed a hand against her chest, catching her breath. “I’m okay.”

Malina looked jolted but nodded that she was okay too. Thank God they were buckled up.

“I see Night Watchers!” Malina pointed.

Across the road a half-dozen soldiers, barely visible in the mist, were combing a wooded hill, panning flashlight beams. The ground cloud drifted, revealing another military truck and Humvee parked along the opposite shoulder. A few steel drums stenciled with ARMY had fallen off the back of the truck’s flatbed and into the road. The barrels had busted open. A glossy black liquid was spreading across the pavement. Ghostly figures in white hazmat suits appeared from behind the truck. One harnessing a flamethrower shot out a long flame and scorched the spill. Several spots in the road lit up with dancing fire as the puddles burned.

Jeff swore he heard a pained, animal screech.

“What the hell was that?” Kai said.

Before he could register where the strange sound came from, a loud knock on his window startled him. It was the soldier he’d nearly run over, a hard-faced Latina. She banged on the window again, motioning for him to lower it.

Window down, the burning oil stench from the road assaulted his nose.

“Anyone hurt?” the soldier asked, poking her flashlight at the windows. Her gray camos had a chest tag that read SANCHEZ.

Jeff eyed the pistol on her hip. “You gave us a scare, but we’re all right. What’s going on?”

“Sir, I need you to drive a quarter mile then pull into the rest stop. Saddle Road’s shut down for a while.”

“Why? What are you guys burning?” Jeff nodded toward the flamethrower.

“Just wait at the rest stop until we reopen the road.” Sanchez stepped back and waved her hand like a traffic cop.

Jeff drove on, watching in his rearview mirror as the flame bursts turned the soldiers into silhouettes.

Kai released a nervous laugh. “That wasn’t totally bizarre.”

“Just cleaning an oil spill,” Jeff said, hoping to calm the girls’ nerves.

“Then what were they looking for up the hill?” Kai said. “I definitely heard something screech.”

“Night Watchers,” Malina said with a giggle.

“All part of our foggy Saddle Road tour, eh?” Jeff joked. He couldn’t help feeling guilty. His ex-wife, who had won custody, had not been in favor of the girls visiting Jeff. In his head, Kailani’s voice chastised him, You better not screw up. If one of the girls comes home with so much as a scratch…

The endless mist was getting to him. Every time he looked out his side window, the shifting, alien landscape disoriented him. The thought of being detained by soldiers made him feel claustrophobic. He stopped the car and shifted into reverse.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Kai asked.

“Turning around. We’ll backtrack, take the north route around the island.”

“But we’re almost to Hilo!” Kai protested. “Going back will take hours. We’ll never get to surf.”

“Or get pizza at the Beach Shack,” Malina piped in.

“You’re not flaking out on us, are you?” Kai challenged.

Last thing Jeff wanted to do was let his girls down again.

As the fog shifted on the side of the road, Kai gestured to a familiar sign with a cartoon of a fat dude riding a surfboard. “Let’s just wait at Sonny’s. We can eat tacos like the old days.”

Jeff ran a hand through his shaggy hair. Being a responsible parent without Kailani around was more challenging than he’d expected. Life was so much easier back when he was a surfing champion, with a beautiful wife and two small fans cheering him on from the beach.

“All right, surfer girls. Next stop on our foggy tour, tacos at Sonny’s.”

Kai and Malina cheered as they used to do when they got their way. Even as he laughed and bumped fists with them, his gut tightened. He drove ahead, deeper into the mist.

The headlights lit up a roadblock manned by three soldiers holding rifles. One of the men directed Jeff to pull into a gravel lot where a few cars were parked.

Sonny Ilehakala’s Rest Stop and Grill was the only place for food and gas for several miles. The store looked like a tourist trap on Mars. The large building and surrounding scrubland were partially concealed by the fog. Jeff’s good friend, Sonny, had intended his place to be a haven on a lonely stretch of Saddle Road. The high, thatch roof had been built to resemble a Hawaiian hut. Murals of volcanoes, hibiscus flowers, hula girls, and the local black pigs decorated the brick walls. The metal-framed glass door and wide-paned windows offered a view into a convenience store filled with snacks, cold drinks, and souvenirs.

Kai got out and waved over a young soldier. “Hiya, I’m Kai.” She sounded flirtatious.

Jeff winced. When had that started?

After eyeballing her tan legs, the soldier grinned. “Private Davis.”

“Can you tell us why you’ve blocked the way out?” Kai asked. “We’ve already passed the spill.”

“Not at liberty to say. I’d advise you to stay inside the store.” Davis looked antsy as he gripped his assault rifle.

“Come on, Kai.” Jeff guided her away from the soldier.

Malina, who had wandered off to the edge of the lot, watched three feral pigs rooting around the picnic tables. “Can we feed the pigs?”

“Maybe later,” Jeff said.

“Mom and Barry always let us,” Malina whined. “Barry says it’s a family tradition whenever he drives us across the island.”

Jeff tensed at the mention of his ex-wife’s new husband. Barry: who constantly bought things for the girls that Jeff couldn’t afford, like braces, dance lessons, and vacations at Disney World. Barry: who had moved Jeff’s family five islands away to live in the city of Honolulu, while Jeff still lived on the Big Island in the empty house that had once been filled with love and laughter. Barry: who dressed like a successful adult while Jeff, the perpetual beach bum, lived in tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops.

Now, as his precious Malina talked fondly of family traditions with Barry, hot waves of anger surged through Jeff. On the jukebox in his mind, he played IZ’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The big Hawaiian’s soothing voice and ukulele strums always calmed Jeff down. He never lashed out or raised his voice in front of his daughters. A lifetime spent in the ocean had taught him to ride his emotions out. When the anger subsided like an ebbing wave, he returned to his natural, even-keeled state.

Malina ran to him and pulled on his arm. “Will you take me to feed the pigs, Daddy? Please, please.”

“Of course, ladybug.”

“And buy us some candy bars?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Thank you, Daddy, I love you.” She hugged his waist tight, then ran inside the store.

Kai shook her head. “She’s totally manipulating you.”

Jeff shrugged. “When you were her age, you had me wrapped around your little finger.”

“Who says I still don’t?” Kai elbowed him playfully.

He nudged her back. “Let’s get some grub.”

The public area of Sonny’s rest stop was laid out like an L, with the store taking up the entire front. The spacious interior had a high, vaulted ceiling. Beyond several aisles stuffed with tacky knick-knacks, beach towels, and T-shirts, Sonny had added on an area dedicated to a museum, where tourists could learn about Hawaiian myths and traditions. Standing on pedestals, wood-carved statues of the four godsKū, Kāne, Lono, and Kanaloawatched over the store.

At the entrance, Jeff nodded hello to Ray Wong, the skinny, pock-cheeked man who worked the front register. Kai shopped the aisle of bagged chips. Malina perused the candy bars.

“Get me some Funyuns and a Snickers,” Jeff told them as he made his way to the back left corner, where a small restaurant with three booths and a walk-up order counter offered a fast-food menu. In one booth, two backpackers looked over a topography map of the island.

“G’Day,” the girl said with an Aussie accent. “Do you know of any good hiking round here?”

“Hilo Forest Reserve. Start here.” Jeff tapped a trail on the map. “You guys on holiday?”

“Our honeymoon.” The guy squeezed his wife’s hand.

“Congrats, and happy hiking.” Jeff stepped up to the order counter, where the big kahuna himself stood in a small kitchen. Sonny Ilehakala was a heavy-set Hawaiian with a wandering eye. “Jeff Logan, haven’t seen you on my turf in ages.”

Jeff fist-bumped Sonny’s big knuckles. “I haven’t crossed the island much lately.”

“Don’t blame you, bro. Shit’s gotten weirder than usual on Saddle Road.”

Jeff ordered three plates of soft tacos and a bucket of corn feed, then told his friend about the heavy Army presence and people in decontamination suits using flamethrowers. “Any idea why we’re suddenly under martial law?”

“They don’t tell me shit.” Sonny made the tacos as he talked. “Soldiers been in and out all morning, acting like they got itchy trigger fingers. You’d think we were under siege.”

“Feels that way.”

“The Army’s been doing top-secret shit in the area. Closed off one of the Mauna Kea roads. Nothing but military vehicles going in and out. You ask me, Army’s responsible for creating the fog on Saddle Road. Always gets thick as soup when the soldier boys are doing God-knows-what.”

“Sounds like one of your conspiracy theories.”

“More than that, bro.” Sonny lowered his voice. “I overheard two of the soldiers. You know that earthquake last month?”

“I read it was caused by volcanic action.”

“That’s the official story. But that’s not what happened. Not according to these soldiers.” Sonny leaned over the counter and whispered, “They said a meteor struck the side of Mauna Kea.”

Jeff laughed nervously, doubting his friend. “Right.”

“I’m dead serious, bro. Army’s covering it up. They’ve been acting like a disturbed hive ever since. That’s not all. I’ve had blackouts the past couple weeks. Nightmares that give me sweats. Some days, I wake up outside with my head fogged-up and no memory of what happened. And my arm’s always sore.” Sonny rolled up his sleeve and showed a patch of bruises. “I believe I’ve been abducted.”

“Bro, I think it’s time to lay off the Maui Wowie.”

Jeff ate lunch with Kai and Malina at one of the outside picnic tables. He damn well wasn’t going to be cooped up indoors on his one weekend with the girls. The gray mist had thickened. He couldn’t see Saddle Road or the soldiers at the roadblock, which meant he and the girls were cloaked from them as well. The fog drifted around the picnic tables and made the trees look like watchful specters. Jeff scratched at a reef scar on his arm that was covered by his tribal tattoo. He wasn’t going to let a little apprehension spoil the girls’ fun. When surfing, there was always danger from drowning or sharks. Rather than fear the ocean, he had taught the girls to stay alert, feel the rhythm of the tides and ride them. That was his life philosophy, too.

After finishing her taco, Malina got up to feed the wild pigs. She giggled as they ate out of the bucket of corn feed. Jeff felt a little guilty eating Kalua pork in front of the sow and her two offspring.

Kai looked at him with a mature gaze that reminded him of her mother. “You’ve been unusually quiet.”

“Just got stuff on my mind.” He was bothered by what Sonny had told him, especially the blackouts and bruises.

Kai messed with her phone and groaned. “Still no bars.”

“Guess you’re stuck talking with Dad. So, who’s this Matt guy? Boyfriend?”

She blushed and looked away. “Just some boy. Mom won’t let me go out with him. She thinks I’m too young to date. I’m almost sixteen! Maybe you could convince her.”

“Sorry, sport. Dating’s her jurisdiction. I’ll give you a little ammo, though. Your mom and I were fifteen when we went on our first date to see a movie. Our parents took us to the mall and picked us up. After a few innocent movie dates, we earned our parents’ trust.”

Kai smiled. “I’ll definitely use that.”

Footsteps approached from the gravel lot behind her. The shape of a helmet and a familiar young soldier materialized in the fog. Private Davis stepped forward holding his assault rifle to his chest. “Thought I told you to stay inside the store.”

Jeff bristled. “You advised us. Last I checked, we still live in a free country.”

“We’re just trying to keep you folks safe.”

“Safe from what, an oil spill a quarter mile away?”

“Our lieutenant just radioed an ‘Echo, Echo, Echo’ warning. Orders are to secure all civilians inside the store. Now.”

Multiple gunshots fired somewhere along the road.

Jeff and Kai bolted up out of their seats. Davis jerked with his rifle. Beyond the mist that covered the parking lot, staccato gunfire continued as if the unseen soldiers were in heavy combat.

Jeff pulled Kai down behind a picnic table. Terror gripped his chest as he scanned the seating area. “Where’s Malina?”

“She must have wandered off with the pigs,” Kai said.

Jeff crouched with his arm around Kai. “Let’s find her. Stay low.” Together, they searched the woods beyond the picnic area, away from the distant gunfire. Davis followed. The volcanic ground was rough terrain under Jeff’s flipflops. He stepped around shrubs and tangles of pink knotweed.

He and Kai shouted, “Malina!”

Jeff’s heart jumped when pigs squealed, followed by Malina’s scream. They found her huddled inside a thicket of ‘Ōhi’a trees, crying.

She pointed frantically. “It’s killing them.”

The sow was stuck in a black pool. It was thicker than oil, more like tar, and gave off a foul stench. The surface sheened as Davis passed a flashlight beam across it. Two dark lumps buried beneath the muck must have been the smaller pigs, both dead as oil-spill casualties.

“How did this stuff get all the way out here?” Jeff asked Davis.

The sludge bubbled and spat.

The soldier jumped back. “Shit, if the rumors are true, it crawled here on its own.”

“Don’t bullshit me, man,” Jeff said.

The sow oinked louder, struggled to pull itself free.

“Help it!” Malina cried.

“Daddy’s on it, ladybug.” Jeff picked up a long stick to help get the poor animal unstuck.

“Stay away from it.” Davis backed away.

As Jeff stretched out the stick, several spots in the tarpit began to eddy. Oily tendrils slid up and around the pig’s body like boa constrictors snaring prey. Their tightening coils squeezed so hard bones cracked, and the pig squealed in pain. Its body crumpled. An appendage wrapped around the stick and pulled it out of Jeff’s hands. This time he jumped back.

The churning muck made squelching sounds as it ate away the flesh of the three pigs. They dissolved quickly.

Jeff and the others watched in disbelief as a dozen greasy tendrils rose a foot above the tar-pool, squirming in the air. More feelers snaked along the ground toward Jeff’s feet. He scooped up Malina in his arms and nudged Kai. “Back to the store! Hurry!”

Kai bolted with the swiftness of an athlete. Jeff ran with Malina clinging to his neck. Behind them, Davis fired a barrage of shots at the writhing mass.

Then he screamed.

Jeff stopped in the picnic area and looked back. Davis was on the ground, one arm outstretched. “Help!” he shouted. “Help me!”

Black tentacles slid over Davis’s face and entered his mouth. Then the dark patch snatched the soldier into the fog.

“Daddy?” Kai hadn’t called him that since she was Malina’s age.

“Go!” Still holding Malina, Jeff grabbed Kai’s hand and pulled her along the side of the building.

More gunshots rang out inside the mist. Soldiers yelled with panic in their voices.

Jeff and Kai rounded a corner and ran to the front door. Sonny opened it and let them in. He was clutching a baseball bat. “Fucking hell, man, we under attack?”

Jeff nodded, too in shock to describe what he’d seen. He set Malina down beside Kai and caught his breath. The two Aussie backpackers and Ray Wong joined them. Everyone watched the front door and windows. Sporadic gunfire echoed as the fog flared up with a terrifying light show.

An engine roared from the fog-bound road. Tires screeched. Hazy headlights lit up the windows. A Humvee skidded to a halt at an angle. The doors flung open. A tall, bald soldier climbed out of the passenger side. The Latina soldier, Sanchez, jumped out from behind the wheel. A second Humvee barreled across the parking lot and crashed into the first. The two soldiers rushed through the store’s front door and slammed it shut behind them.

Sanchez thrust her open hand at Sonny. “Keys!”

Sonny pointed his bat toward the window. “What about him?”

From behind the wheel of the second Humvee, someone covered head to toe in a white hazmat suit stumbled out. His head craned around, facing the people in the store.

“Lock this fucking door, now!” Sanchez barked.

Sonny retrieved his keys and locked the entrance door.

Pistol drawn, Sanchez backed up beside the burly, shaved-head soldier. “Yost, where’s your weapon?”

“That thing snatched it out of my hands.” Yost reached for Sonny’s baseball bat. “Give me that.”

Sonny shook his head. “Not happening.”

Yost looked out a window, shaking his head in disbelief. “Holy shit. What the fuck’s wrong with Dr. Hix?”

The man in the biohazard suit jerked with spasms as he walked toward the store.

“That’s not Dr. Hix anymore,” Sanchez said. “Everybody get back. Away from the windows.”

The Australian couple ran to the farthest aisle. Sonny gripped his bat with both hands. Ray Wong took refuge behind Sonny. Kai held Malina’s hand. Jeff stood protectively in front of his daughters, separating them from the two soldiers and Sonny, who formed a wall of defense against the chaos outside.

Dr. Hix pounded at the glass door. “Let me in!” His voice gurgled, as if filled with fluid. “Don’t leave me out here.”

Sanchez’s arms shook as she kept her pistol aimed at the white-suited man. His face was hidden behind a black spatter on the inside of the hood’s facepiece. He slapped a torn glove against the door and smeared dark muck across the glass. Worm-shapes squirmed inside his suit. The fabric tore open in a dozen places. An outpouring of slugs escaped from the suit. They merged back together in a thick pool around his boots. Dr. Hix’s hazmat suit deflated to the ground as if the man had performed a vanishing act.

Kai let out a gasp as she shielded Malina’s eyes. Jeff motioned for them to stay back near the wall of refrigerated doors, then followed Sonny and the soldiers for a closer look.

At the foot of the entrance door, a human skull and spine floated in a writhing sludge-pool. Snakelike feelers slithered over one another and up the glass.

Behind Dr. Hix’s dissolved remains, three more glistening black mounds slid across the parking lot. A soldier’s helmet was embedded in one of them. From their rippling edges, serpentine appendages pulled the mounds toward the store. Like the tar-pool that had eaten the pigs, black feelers wriggled above their surfaces. The three mounds slid past the parked vehicles and fused with the sludge-thing at the door, forming one hideous mass several feet wide. Its liquid flesh was constantly moving, changing, as if in perpetual evolution. A thick, eel-shaped appendage glided up and down the glass, as if searching for a way inside. The tip of it shaped into a fist and banged against the door.

Everyone inside flinched. Sanchez and Sonny held their weapons with shaky arms.

Jeff could feel his own fear rising with each slimy thud against the glass. “Can it get in?”

Sonny shook his head. “No way. Door’s shatterproof. Windows too. I fortified this place to keep thieves out.”

“That won’t keep the substance out.” Sanchez nodded toward a narrow gap along the doorjamb where goo was seeping into the store. “Got ammonia?” she asked Sonny.

“Yeah, storage closet.”

“Get it. Hurry!”

Sonny ran to his kitchen, then brought back a jug of ammonia. Sanchez ripped it from his hands and splashed the liquid all around the front door. The stuff seeping through the gaps retreated. The fist-headed eel finally stopped banging. More eels rose up and coated the glass door with slime.

“What is that thing?” Jeff asked.

“It came from that meteor, didn’t it?” Sonny said. “Some kind of alien sludge?”

“I don’t know anything,” Sanchez said, but her eyes defied her lie.

Sonny glared at the two soldiers. “This is your fuckup. What do we do now?”

Ray and the Aussie couple were wild-eyed and spoke over one another, demanding answers.

“Try to stay calm.” Sanchez spoke into a walkie-talkie, “Echo, Echo, Echo, this is Lieutenant Sanchez, Tango Unit. We need Dust Off at Sonny’s rest stop.” She looked around at everyone. “Nine survivors. Hostile at front door. Over.”

A voice crackled back, “Roger that. Hold position. Deploying team now. Out.”

Sanchez returned the walkie to her belt. “Hang tight until they get here. I want everybody to keep to the back aisle. I’ll guard the entrance. Yost, stand watch at the rear door.”

Yost ran to the back of the restaurant and disappeared through the kitchen door.

Jeff joined Kai and Malina at the back wall of refrigerated drinks. Near tears, Malina bent over and began hyperventilating. Jeff put his arm around her.

“It’s…going to…get us…like it did the pigs,” Malina said between huffs. “I’m…scared.”

“We’re safe inside the store,” Jeff assured her. But that was bullshit. He didn’t feel safe at all. He studied his daughters’ faces. Kai was holding it together, but she was scared too. If anything happened to them, anything, he’d never forgive himself.

Over many surf lessons, he had taught the girls to confront their fears like warriors. When fear crept in, he had shown them how to use ancient Hawaiian breathing methods to enter a state that is calm, centered, and energized. Kai had channeled that state to win surf competitions, and Malina had used it to carve up waves like a mini version of Jeff. Drawing strength from the Hawaiian warrior tattooed on his forearm, he knelt and met eyes with Malina. “Remember your Piko-Piko breathing?”

Malina sniffled and nodded.

He took both of her hands. “Imagine you’re at the beach. Feel your feet planted firmly on your board.” After she closed her eyes and got into her stance, Jeff said, “Now breathe with me.” He started inhaling with a Ha-breath, then exhaled with a Kū-breath that sounded like a cough. Malina sucked in her tears and matched his breathing. They inhaled and exhaled together for over a minute. When she opened her eyes, the fear in them had lessened. Jeff smiled and rubbed her head. “Good job, ladybug. If you feel yourself getting scared, think of the mighty Kū god and breathe just like that.”

“I’ll think of Pele too. She’s my favorite goddess.”

Jeff hugged her. Kai gave him a rare approving look. He loved them both so much. He said his own silent prayer to Kū. Help me protect them.

The Aussie couple joined them. The young woman, Molly, couldn’t stop crying. Kai took her hand, trying to console her. Malina followed her big sister’s lead and took Molly’s other hand.

The woman’s husband, Peter, was pale and trembling. “If that thing gets inside, we’re all bloody dead.”

Jeff gripped the man’s arm and gave him a shake. “Don’t talk like that. We’re getting out of this.”

Peter nodded and tried to compose himself. “Sorry, man.” He put his arm around his wife.

Jeff grabbed two Cokes from the fridge for Kai and Malina and chose a bottle of Big Red for himself. “Keep your energy up. Your spirits too. Help is on the way.”

“We’ll stay chill,” Kai said, and Malina put on her tough-girl face.

Jeff nodded and rejoined the others at the front of the store. “Any sign of rescue?”

“Not yet,” Sonny said.

“You three, wait back there with the others,” Sanchez motioned for Jeff, Sonny, and Ray to move.

Sonny towered over the lieutenant. “My store. My rules.”

“I’m staying where I can see that thing,” Jeff said. “Or things. Whatever the hell it is.”

“Suit yourselves,” Sanchez said.

The power suddenly cut off. Half the store went dark. The only visibility came from the Humvee’s head-beams shining through the windows. The eels became undulating shadows as they glided up the glass door.

“Sergeant Yost, get back here!” Sanchez yelled.

Yost didn’t respond.

“Why’d he kill the power?” Sonny asked.

Jeff scanned the dark restaurant. The area that led to the kitchen and Sonny’s office beyond was a black hole. No sign of Yost.

The light coming through the front windows began to flicker.

“Fuck. What’s it doing?” Ray said.

The sludge had spread from the door to the width of the building. Like a rising black tide, it moved up all the front windows. The interior grew darker as its mass blocked out the headlights. For a held-breath moment, Jeff was lost in pitch blackness. Unable to keep watch over his girls or the creature, he felt cold terror creeping into his chest. He yelled, “Kai! Malina!”

“Daddy!”

Jeff could hear them, but people’s panicked shouts and cries created chaos in the dark store.

Kai and Malina turned on their cell phone flashlights. Others did the same, creating little havens of light. Jeff exhaled and gave his daughters a thumbs-up.

Sonny found flashlights, handed one to Jeff. He shone his beam across the wide-paned windows. It was like watching some underwater amoeba at an aquarium. Round suckers with needle teeth held the alien-thing to the glass. Its underside shimmered with rainbow colors like oil film in sunlight. Undigested bones floated within its substance. An eye that looked human peered at Jeff and floated upward, as the mass continued to climb the exterior wall.

“It’s headed for the vent.” Ray pointed toward a grate high up near the vaulted ceiling. The slats were open.

“Get the ladder!” Sonny yelled.

Ray dashed off and returned shortly with a long ladder. Jeff helped him and Sonny tilt it against the wall. Ray climbed the rungs.

“Hurry!” Sanchez kept her pistol and flashlight trained on the vent.

Ray reached the top. Turned the lever. “Oh God, I see it!”

Black tendrils shot through the slats, wrapped around Ray. He screamed and kicked, knocking the ladder sideways. His body hung high above, tangled in slick-black vines that tightened around him, snapped bones. With an incredible force, the creature yanked Ray through the grate, leaving behind a gaping hole.

Jeff hit the floor to avoid the falling ladder. When he stood, he searched the faces partly-lit by cell phones. Kai and Malina were nowhere in sight.

Molly cried out, then went silent mid-scream. She and her husband, Peter, lifted off the ground, and dangled above the food aisles. Harpoon-like claws jutted from their chests. Behind them stood Sergeant Yost. His arms had somehow become long tentacles. As he moved them, the dead couple swung through the air. Smaller tendrils sprouted from the tentacles and cocooned Molly’s and Peter’s heads. The burly soldier smiled and rolled back his eyes as if in ecstasy.

“Yost!” Sanchez fired her pistol. The sergeant took three rounds to the chest but didn’t fall. A fourth shot struck the top of his head.

Black blood streamed into Yost’s eyes. Still, he grinned. “You’re next, Lieutenant.” He began to quake violently. His harpooned victims, half-devoured in their black webbing, shook on the ends of his tentacles. Yost released an ear-splitting screech. His shaved head cracked open at the scalp. The wound ripped down from crown to throat. With wet popping sounds, his face zippered open and became a vertical mouth with shark teeth. Tongues jiggled from the maw.

Sanchez yelled and shot Yost again and again. From his neck, a geyser of dark matter and innards exploded upward. Attached to the ceiling. Out of the hole where Ray had exited, a thick black waterfall rolled down the wall.

Jeff searched the aisles, calling for Kai and Malina. Between deafening gunshots, he heard their screams but couldn’t place them.

Sanchez kept yelling and shooting until her gun clicked empty.

In the darkness behind Jeff, wet things moved across the walls and floor. Sticky feelers brushed his back. He ducked behind a row of souvenirs as something with multiple legs skittered across the top. On the shelf beside Jeff’s head, dashboard hula girls danced on springs.

“Kai! Malina!”

“Dad, over here! Help me,” his oldest daughter pleaded.

Swishing his light, he found Kai several yards away, prone on the floor. She was pinned beneath a knocked-over T-shirt rack. Halfway between her and Jeff, one of Yost’s black entrails squirmed around a shelf. Moving like a giant worm, it blindly explored the shelf and floor, covering everything it touched with mucus.

Kai looked at her father, her eyes full of terror. Thinking quick, Jeff grabbed a conch shell off a souvenir shelf and lobbed it across the store. The smack against a window drew the appendage’s attention away. Something massive knocked over shelves near the front.

Jeff ran hunched, keeping close to the row of shelves still standing. He lifted the shirt rack off Kai’s legs. “You hurt?”

“I’m okay.” She crawled out, threw her arms around him. “I lost Malina.”

Jeff’s gut clenched. “Where?”

Kai shook her head. “That soldier knocked us apart.”

Oh, God, Malina! Jeff panned his flashlight around the store. The beam passed across the writhing tower of flesh, innards, and sludge that had once been Sgt. Yost. Bone spires jutted from the soldier’s gnarled back. His tentacles fed what was left of Molly and Peter to the sludge that covered the front wall. Yost’s split head turned toward Jeff’s light. The vertical mouth opened. Its many tongues flicked the air.

Jeff lowered the beam. He ran low behind Kai. They passed Sanchez, who was hunkered behind a shelf. The soldier looked shit-scared. She held a rosary in one hand, her pistol in the other.

Jeff tapped Sanchez’s leg as he ran past her. “Follow us.”

The three ran between the wall of refrigerated doors and display shelves. They reached the end where the L-shaped store hooked right. The back corner restaurant was mostly dark. Only the three booths by the window were visible.

“Malina!” Kai called desperately.

“Over here!” voices yelled back.

Lights flashed from behind the taco counter. Malina was with Sonny in the kitchen.

The display shelf beside Kai, Jeff, and Sanchez toppled backward with a crash. They made a run for the kitchen. Sonny ushered them inside. Locked the thick door behind them.

Malina barreled into Kai’s arms.

Jeff hugged them, kissed their heads. “Thank God you got away.”

Another drawn-out screech sounded from the dark store. Jeff and Sonny shone their lights through the open order window. An unfathomable monstrosity emerged from the shadows. Its lower half walked with a soldier’s legs. But everything above the Yost-thing’s waist was a visceral tangle of ropy appendages that whipped the air and brushed the ceiling.

Jeff helped Sonny pull down the metal roller door. They latched it and sealed off the order counter from the store. Inside the long, narrow kitchen, the five survivors caught their breath. Between the order and serving counter on one side, and the gas range, fryer, and a sink on the other, there was standing room only. Sonny remained at the kitchen door and watched through a small, square window. At the other end of the kitchen, Jeff stood with his girls near a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the picnic area. Fog still shrouded most of the outside world.

Malina cried into Jeff’s waist. “I tried to hold onto Molly’s hand.”

Jeff squeezed her tight. “It’s not your fault, baby.”

In the restaurant, he could hear squishing sounds. Something banged against the roller door. Everyone jumped back. The metal barrier rattled, but held.

Kai pointed. “The door!”

The Yost-thing peered one eye through the door’s square window. Pounded the metal. Tried to turn the knob. Sludge tentacles came in through the crack beneath the door.

Sonny scooped a ladle of hot grease from a fryer and flung it. The invading feelers hissed smoke but kept branching up the door.

Sanchez grabbed a large salt shaker and shook it over the tentacles. They wilted and retreated back under the door. The soldier salted the roller door, and the thing on the other side backed off.

“The substance hates salt as much as ammonia,” Sanchez said. “Burns it like acid.”

Sonny turned to her. “So you know about that thing after all.”

“Be straight with us, Sanchez,” Jeff said. “What is this thing, this stuff?”

“That’s classified.”

Sonny loomed over her. “I just saved your ass. Tell us what you know or I’ll toss you back out there.”

The soldier slapped a fresh clip into her pistol and aimed at Sonny. “Don’t even try.”

“Stop, both of you.” Jeff stepped between them, facing her gun barrel. “We need to keep our heads straight and cooperate. Sonny, she just saved your ass too. Get a grip, bro.”

His friend backed off. “Sorry, just freaked the fuck out.”

To Sanchez, Jeff said, “I’m guessing you want to get out alive. So do my daughters. Don’t let them down.”

Sanchez glanced at Kai and Malina, but kept her gun trained on Jeff and Sonny.

Kai sidled up next to her father. “Please help us.”

Sanchez gestured toward Sonny. “You gonna keep that gorilla from doing something stupid?”

Sonny raised his palm. “I’m cool.” He retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniels from a cabinet and poured himself a drink.

Sanchez lowered her gun. “I’m trying to keep us all alive.”

“Then tell us what we’re fighting,” Jeff said. “How do we stop it?”

“Let me see what we’ve got on hand.” Sanchez rummaged through the cabinets. She found another jug of ammonia and three plastic spray bottles. “Bingo.”

While Sanchez filled the bottles, Kai worked beside her, screwing on the spray nozzles. Sanchez looked at her fondly. “I have a daughter your age. She’s a tough cookie too.”

Kai touched the woman’s arm. “Please tell us what you know. In case, we have to defend ourselves.”

Sanchez looked conflicted as she met eyes with Kai and then Jeff. “Sonny was right about it being some kind of alien substance. The scientists haven’t had time to study it, so that’s about all I know.”

“Who was Dr. Hix?” Jeff asked.

“A specialist the Pentagon sent. His containment team escorted my unit as we transported the deadly cargo from the meteor site. When it busted loose on Saddle Road, I knew we were screwed. That sludge feeds on everything. It’s constantly growing, evolving.”

“Dad, look!” At the window, Malina was peering outside at the fog.

Jeff heard oinking. The black sow and her two piglets ran from the mist and poked their snouts against the window.

Malina said, “The pigs are alive!”

Jeff pulled her back behind him. “Stay away from the window.” He watched in amazement as the pigs rooted around the picnic area beside the building. The sow had the same white spot on her hind quarters. “We watched those pigs get eaten. How in the hell…?” He turned to Sanchez.

“The substance somehow mimics whatever it consumes. It can even talk like them. Dr. Hix and Sergeant Yost…” Sanchez shook her head.

“How do we know it’s not mimicking you?” Sonny said.

“Because you’re still alive.”

Kai said, “So, ammonia and salt just repels it. How do we kill it?”

Jeff felt proud of his daughter. Most kids her age would fold. She was ready to fight.

“Fire seems to be the only thing that destroys it. There’s a flamethrower in our Humvee, but it’s too far away to get to. Best we wait.” Sanchez frowned with worry. “A rescue team should’ve arrived by now.” She tried to call on her radio, but kept getting static.

“What if they arrive and think we’re all dead?” Sonny asked.

Sanchez ignored the question. Jeff understood Sonny’s worry. The military would want to destroy the matter. They might even set fire to the store and everything in it. He tightened his hold on Malina. We’ve got to get out of here.

The sow faced the window, like she was watching them. Her black eyes had lost their animal innocence. Something sinister and self-aware stared back. Three long tongues shot from its mouth and stuck to the glass with round white suckers.

Jeff looked at the others in the kitchen. How long would they be safe here? He feared the rescue team would arrive too late. Find only sludge and dissolved bones on the kitchen floor. Or worse, mimics of Jeff and his daughters. He felt an overwhelming fear that he was going to lose his children. Ever since he was a kid, whenever life knocked him sideways, he had escaped to the beach with his board and delt with his problems on the waves. After he became a father, Kailani had accused him of running away from his responsibilities and abandoning his girls when things got tough. He could hear her worried voice inside his head: Your daughters need you, Jeff. Don’t fail them. He took a few breaths to calm his nerves.

He knelt and huddled with Kai and Malina the way they had often done at the beach. “How are you holding up, surfer girls?”

“Best as the little mutant and I can.” Kai put an arm around her sister. “Trying to stay in the zone.”

“I’m doing my Piko-Piko breathing,” Malina said.

Jeff smiled. “I don’t say it enough, but I’m proud of you both.”

Kai rolled her eyes. “Don’t get weird on us, Dad.”

“Life’s just thrown us another big kahuna wave,” he said. “We’ll crest it like we always do.” The three bumped knuckles, then broke the huddle.

Outside, the pigs screeched and began to shake erratically. Their solid bodies melted back into sludge-piles on the ground.

Sonny went over to the kitchen door and peered out the square window. “The thing in the restaurant is breaking down.” He stepped aside and Jeff shone his light through the glass. On the floor several mounds floated in a bubbling, swirling cesspool. A woman’s muddy arm stuck out of one mound. What might have been her husband was fossilized in another heap. In the slurry, a half-submerged camo uniform was all that was left of Sergeant Yost.

“Why are its mimics breaking down?” Jeff asked Sanchez.

“Its metabolism goes haywire after it’s fed. While it digests, the substance returns to a semi-liquid state. That’s when it’s weakest. It was during this dormant state that the containment team was able to transfer it into barrels.”

“What were you all planning to do with the sludge?” Sonny asked.

“That’s way above my rank,” Sanchez said.

Jeff paced. The kitchen connected to a small hallway that led to a rear door. “While it’s dormant, we can make a run for our cars.”

Sanchez blocked the exit. “Bad idea. There may be other mimics out there. Its offshoots don’t always metabolize at the same time. Orders are to hold position.”

“Whoever shows up might not even be human,” Sonny said.

“Or they might not believe we’re human,” Kai added with a grim face. “Dad, do we stay or go?”

Jeff felt torn. If they ran for the cars, he risked them getting attacked by something in the fog. If they stayed put, they might not get another chance.

“How long before that thing wakes up?” he asked.

Sanchez shrugged. “Minutes. Half hour if we’re lucky.”

Jeff said, “I say we arm ourselves, then bolt for our vehicles.” He asked Sonny, “Got anymore cleaning supplies?”

In the hallway, Sonny opened a closet full of mops, rags, and aerosol cans.

“Gather as much as you can and meet in the kitchen,” Jeff told the others. “We’ve got work to do.”

Kai, Malina, and Sonny set to work. Sanchez protested at first but soon joined in. When they were done, they had a small arsenal of ammonia-filled spray bottles, mop-torches, salt shakers, and two Molotov cocktails—Sonny’s liquor bottles stuffed with grease-soaked dishrags. They set the firebombs in the hall. At the back door, Jeff tested a can of bug spray with a long-reach lighter and shot out a flame.

Armed, the five gathered near the window and went over their plan. Outside, the mounds of pig bones had already begun to regenerate. Writhing muscle cords wove together rapidly over reassembled skeletons.

“Shit, these are coming back fast,” Sanchez said.

Voices cried out from within the building.

Sonny peered through the kitchen door’s window. “You’ve got to see this.”

In the restaurant, viscera-covered bodies slowly rose from the mounds: Ray Wong, Molly, Peter, and Sergeant Yost.

A man’s slime-covered head appeared at the square window.

Sanchez gasped. “Dr. Hix…”

His ebony eyes gleamed. “Come join us. It just wants you to become part of it.” He opened his mouth and black ink spattered the glass.

The roller door began to rattle. Ooze seeped between the slats. Dripped down from an overhead vent. Kai, Malina, and Sonny sprayed the invading sludge with ammonia. Sanchez salted the door. Jeff burned black tendrils with his makeshift flamethrower.

The air, pungent with ammonia and aerosol fumes, burned everyone’s eyes and it became hard to breathe, but they kept spraying the relentless sludge.

Above their heads, the ceiling creaked and buckled.

“It’s in the rafters!” Sonny desperately sprayed cracks forming in the ceiling.

Chunks of plaster fell as swinging appendages looped down.

Jeff followed Kai, Malina, and Sanchez into the short hallway. He opened the back door, then lit the rag-end of their mops. Jeff and Sanchez returned to the kitchen, where Sonny was still fighting. They pressed their mop-torches against the sludge dangling from above. Its flesh caught fire, and then flames spread across the ceiling. Smoke filled the kitchen.

“Run!” Jeff pushed Kai and Malina out the back door. Sanchez grabbed a Molotov cocktail and ran outside. Sonny grabbed the second one, made it as far as the hallway before a dozen black cords wrapped around him. Then the big man was yanked back into the smoke.

“Sonny!” Jeff ran back into the burning kitchen. A wall of heat pummeled him. He coughed as smoke invaded his lungs.

Sonny hung upside down from the ceiling. More black cords wrapped around his legs and waist. Jeff dodged fiery tentacles and tried to reach his friend.

“Go!” Sonny yelled. Gripping his Molotov cocktail, he touched the wick to the burning wall. The tentacles pulled Sonny up into the smoke-filled rafters. Then the space above the ceiling exploded.

The hot blast knocked Jeff back onto his rump in the hall. Sanchez pulled him away from the enflamed sludge dropping from the ceiling.

Jeff resisted, tears and smoke stinging his eyes.

“He’s gone. Let’s go!” Sanchez pulled him out through the back door. They both coughed out smoke. Jeff’s heart ached for the loss of his longtime friend.

Kai gripped his arm. “Dad, we gotta go!”

Sanchez shoved Jeff to keep him moving. With Kai and Malina sticking close, the four hurried through the fog along the side of the building. The two small pig mounds had halfway formed into another generation of mimics. The sow was gone.

Jeff and Kai burned the two greasy mounds with their torches. The pigs squealed as their semi-solid flesh popped within the fire. An animal screeched behind Jeff. Between two picnic tables, the sow stared with those sentient black eyes. Her toadlike tongues shot out and wrapped around Malina’s legs. She screamed as she was yanked off her feet. Jeff’s baby girl clawed the ground as the tongues pulled her toward the sow’s wide-open mouth.

Jeff grabbed Malina and played tug-of-war with the pig. Kai burned its tongues with her mop-torch. Sanchez threw her torch like a javelin into the sow’s mouth. It burst into flame, and the tongues released their grip of Malina.

Jeff pulled her up and hugged her tight. “Ride my back.” Crying, she clasped her hands around his neck tight as he took off behind the others. They fled along the side of the store, past the windows. The fire inside was spreading. Mimics of Ray, Molly, and Peter ran at the glass and shrieked as the inferno engulfed their bodies.

Jeff tried to shut out their cries as he followed Kai and Sanchez. They sprinted across the gravel lot. His Subaru was parked somewhere in the mist.

The two parked Humvees came into view.

“The flamethrower!” Sanchez opened the back door of her Humvee. She handed Jeff the Molotov cocktail, then lugged the fuel tank onto her back.

A deformed soldier emerged from the woods. Knotweed had taken root in his face and neck as if the sludge-thing hadn’t decided which meal to mimic.

“I told you to stay inside the store,” Private Davis said with a gurgled voice. Pink fingers of knotweed wriggled from a hideous maw in his chest.

Before Jeff could respond, Kai shouted a warrior call. She charged Davis with her torch and rammed the flame-end into his chest. The soldier’s upper torso caught fire. He stumbled off, shrieking.

The store was now completely ablaze. Rising flames lit up the fog.

A large pool of the sludge had escaped out the front to the center of the parking lot. Knee-deep in the churning muck stood Dr. Hix, his body covered in the tarlike substance. He raised his arms, as if in reverence, and moaned with an unearthly voice. Two more half-formed soldiers drifted out of the mist.

Sanchez shot a dragon’s-breath flame at the approaching soldiers, lighting them on fire.

Holding out their torches, Kai and Jeff formed a defense at Sanchez’s back as more soldiers approached from the fog. The mimics, staring with ink-filled eyes, seemed to share one mind. Sanchez torched another one that got too close.

Dr. Hix screeched with a rage that made everyone turn to face him. His body stretched upward and tore apart as it formed into a twelve-foot-high column of sludge and red muscle cords. His sinews became tentacles that whipped around his elongated body. Dr. Hix’s head, still animated, perched at an angle at the top.

“Go!” Sanchez shouted at Jeff, Kai, and Malina. “Take cover.”

While the soldier stood her ground, Jeff ran with his daughters and took refuge behind the jack-knifed Humvees. He set down Malina and she huddled between him and Kai. He wanted to drive them out of here, but the Humvees blocked in his car. Jeff thought for a moment, wondering what to do. He still had a mop-torch and Molotov cocktail. He couldn’t just sit here and do nothing, waiting for Dr. Hix and his alien soldiers to close in.

He told Kai, “Protect your sister. I’m going to help Sanchez.”

“No, Dad, stay with us,” Kai pleaded.

“I love you both,” he said to his girls. Heart hammering, he stepped back out into the open parking lot. Straight ahead, Sanchez yelled as she torched two more soldier mimics. A third soldier, covered in sludge, attacked from the mist at her blindside. His long-fingered hands grabbed hold of her fuel-tank pack and pulled her backward to the ground. Then he stood over her, his boot holding down the nozzle of her flamethrower.

“Hey!” Jeff yelled.

The mimic’s dark, writhing face looked up and shrieked as Jeff charged toward him.

Sanchez, still on her back, unholstered her handgun and fired shots into the soldier’s legs and chest. He stumbled off of her and fell on the ground.

Attacking with the mop-torch, Jeff set the soldier’s head on fire. The prone soldier wailed with an unearthly voice and shook as he burned.

Jeff took Sanchez’s hand and helped her to her feet.

“I told you to take cover,” she said, but her expression was grateful that he’d come back.

Looming at the center of the tar-pool, Dr. Hix’s constantly shifting body sprouted more tentacles. Up and down its torso, a dozen mouths opened, gnashed teeth.

Jeff lit the wick of the Molotov cocktail. He ran toward the tower of alien and human flesh. As feelers snaked toward his feet, he hurled the bottle-bomb. It exploded against the thing’s torso. Flames raced up and down its trunk. Its many flaming appendages filled the air with embers and the stink of burning offal. At the top of the column, Dr. Hix’s head wailed as skin melted off his skull. The feelers at Jeff’s feet broke off and slithered away.

Sanchez appeared beside him and shot out a long flame across the sludge that pooled around the fiery tower. The fire spread rapidly across the pool’s oily skin. As the alien sludge burned and screamed, Jeff ran to Kai and Malina, hugged them tight.

As the soldier mimics ran off into the mist, they suddenly caught fire as long flames brightened the fog. Then came swishing light beams. Several armed figures in hazmat suits moved in an arc toward the four survivors. The rescue team’s flamethrower bursts torched more outlier mounds that tried to slink away.

Sanchez took a protective stance in front of Jeff, Kai, and Malina. “Hold fire. They’re friendlies.”

The team of hazmat suits approached cautiously. One yelled, “You know the drill, Lieutenant. Step aside.”

Sanchez moved out of their way.

Jeff held up his palms. “Don’t shoot!”

Three hazmat soldiers raised their rifles. Darts shot into Jeff and his daughters.

Jeff began to see double. As he lost balance and fell with Kai and Malina, everything turned upside down.

Sanchez looked down at them with regret.

Jeff fought against a heaviness that weighed down his eyelids. He reached for his girls as the hazmats picked them up. His awareness became foggier. Then the world of soldiers and hazmats went black.

Jeff woke to glaring sunlight. Rubbed his eyes. He had one hell of a hangover. His right thigh felt sore. He was sitting behind the wheel of his Subaru, parked on the side of the road. Kai was asleep in the passenger seat. Behind her, Malina slumbered in dreamland.

A few military vehicles drove past. A Humvee pulled up behind his car. A Latina soldier approached the driver’s side, motioned for Jeff to roll down his window. Her chest-tag read SANCHEZ. Her hardened face seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

“Sir, you shouldn’t be parked here.”

“Sorry, picked up my girls early this morning. We were just taking a siesta,” he lied, not knowing how he got here. He wondered why a soldier was checking on him.

Sanchez looked at the sleeping girls, then stared Jeff down, making him uneasy.

“Do you remember seeing anything unusual in the fog today?”

He tried to remember where they’d been, why they were sleeping on the side of the road. He recalled driving into a fogbank and not much after. The past few hours were a blank. The fog that covered Saddle Road was now in his rearview mirror.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Something wrong?”

“Nah, just making sure you guys are okay.” The Latina soldier seemed to genuinely care. For a split second, he felt a connection with her; then her face turned hard again. Another military vehicle roared behind her and disappeared into the fogbank.

“Convoys are maneuvering today,” Sanchez said. “It’s not safe on Saddle Road. I’d advise you to move along to wherever you’re headed.”

“Sure, just give me a moment.”

As the soldier returned to her Humvee, Jeff shook both of his girls. “Wake up.”

They slowly opened their eyes. Kai squinted. “Where are we?”

Jeff pointed to a green sign up ahead: Hilo 25 miles. “Almost home.”

Kai rubbed a bruise on her arm. “I don’t remember conking out.”

“Guess we all needed some rest,” Jeff chuckled, but felt there was more to it than that.

“I had a scary dream about Night Watchers,” Malina said.

Kai glared at Jeff. “Told you so.”

“Promise not to tell your mother about our little roadside nap?” Jeff pleaded. “She’ll blow it out of proportion.”

“Hmm,” Kai pondered. “You’ll still take us surfing?”

Malina poked her head between the seats. “And out for pizza and ice cream!”

“You’ve got yourselves a deal, surfer girls.” Jeff offered his pinky. “Let’s make this the best father-daughters weekend ever.”

The three sealed the deal with a pinky-swear.

As he drove toward Hilo, the Latina soldier’s Humvee followed a few miles, then eventually turned around and drove back the other way. Jeff didn’t understand why he felt troubled. Like every bad vibe that waved through him, he rode the current until it passed and then shrugged it off. He put on some tunes and smiled at Kai and Malina, grateful to finally have them back in his life.

Skin-Wrapped Gift
by Chad Lutzke

Gabriel was staring at the box again.

It sat on the end table next to the checkerboard. He remembered the cheery greeting he received from the mailman when the package was delivered, the carrier having no clue to its contents. “Could the weather be any nicer, Mr. Hamilton?”

Gabriel Hamilton looked at the sky and flashed a smile that said he agreed, but deep down he hadn’t seen a good day in at least ten years. Society made sure of that. Humankind had begun to eat itself, and it was hard as hell to watch.

“We’ll see,” was all he said.

The package had no return address, just the words “Not of This World” burned into the cardboard box, as though engraved with a woodburning tool with expert precision.

Not of this World.

The strange words stayed near his tongue, tucked beside it like a lemon drop. But it’s when he read the letter inside that the real mystery began. He read it a dozen times. The same perfect font, with each letter burned completely through the cardstock paper, smelling of sulfur and chlorine.

And now he waited on the porch for his best friend Jerry. Jerry was late for their daily chat over coffee, a bagel, and a game of checkers. Because his friend hadn’t felt well the past few weeks, Gabriel let him win their last match, hoping it would raise his spirits. It hadn’t.

At 11:49 Jerry showed up, a leather pouch full of jade checkers in his hand. They were a gift from his late wife, and he never played without them.

Jerry grabbed the rail of the porch steps with an arthritic hand, knobbed by years of labor, and lifted a tired foot to the first step. Gabriel had noticed a change in the old man’s gait the past few weeks and it worried him. Jerry had become a fragile thing, barely holding onto what little dexterity he still held at 82. It made Gabriel feel guilty, as he was two years older but held the agility of a sixty-year-old and the eyes and ears of a teenager. And if his wife were still alive, he was confident he could still perform at least once a week, even if the shriveled thing only coughed dust.

Jerry swung the porch door open, and the rusted spring at the top sang a familiar and inviting song. “Sorry I’m late. Had that pain again.”

“Don’t mess around, Jer…get yourself checked out.”

Gabriel’s worst nightmare used to be life without his wife. Now it was life without Jerry. Sure, he had the unconditional love of his grandchildren to keep the tears away, particularly his great granddaughter, but she couldn’t help pass the time like an old friend could. Sometimes children were a ray of sunshine, and sometimes they were a haunting reminder of how your best days are behind you.

Jerry shambled across the porch and sat down at the small table. The old wooden chair wailed under the weight of his bones like a cat caught in a fan belt, the sound a precursor for fellowship, much like the first loud sip he would take from his favorite mug, a mug he’d leave at Jerry’s. No sense in taking it home when the only time he drank was in the company of his friend.

Gabriel left the kitchen to retrieve the coffee and bagels, while Jerry placed his checkers, kissing each one as he did so.

“I got some interesting mail the other day,” Gabriel called out from the kitchen.

“What’s that?”

Gabriel sighed and hustled toward the porch, his hands full. “I said…I got some interesting mail the other day.” He carefully set Jerry’s steaming mug in front of him. It was solid black with a metallic golden crown on it barely visible after years of use. Under the crown were the words “King Me.”

“Hell, any mail that isn’t a flier telling me who to vote for is interesting to me.”

“This ain’t no flier. This is a package.”

Jerry cocked his head and squinted an eye. “Well, let’s hear about it.” He kissed the last checker and placed it, his unsteady hand knocking the checker against another, and the peacefully quiet tink brought a smile to his face.

Gabriel sat down across from his friend, the cardstock letter in his hands. “It came with a letter.” He handed Jerry the letter.

Jerry looked over the rim of his finger-smudged glasses. “You know I can’t read that.”

“You ain’t blind, Jer. Could at least put some effort into it.”

“Near enough.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, cleared his throat, brought his glasses up from his chest, and rested them on his nose. “It says to incubate the egg, and once it hatches to release it upon the world, then humankind will cease to exist… Then down at the bottom it says, ‘You’re welcome.’”

“Egg?”

“Ayup. There was an egg in the package, wrapped in bubbles, peanuts, and all manner of foamy shit.”

“Return address?”

“If you wanna call it that. It just says, ‘Not of this world.’”

“Hmmm. Outer space?” Jerry scratched at his chin while he stared at the checkers. It was hard to tell if he was planning his first move or contemplating the odd package.

“I think it’s real, Jer. It hums. Maybe…maybe I’m some kind of messenger…or savior.”

“Executioner sounds more like it.”

“I’m serious,” Gabriel said.

“So am I.” Jerry pulled a coin from his shirt pocket and flipped it.

“Heads.”

The coin landed in the palm of Jerry’s hand. Tails. He grabbed a checker and moved it. “If it’s real, like you think it is, you’ll kill us all.”

Somewhere in the distance a siren howled. Another quickly joined it.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Gabriel locked eyes with his friend, and a word wasn’t spoken between the two of them for nearly a full minute. “The world’s gone to shit, my friend. You know that.” He moved one of his own cheap, plastic checkers.

“And what about Serena?”

Serena was Gabriel’s great granddaughter. He took great pride in his role as Grandpa, buying her gifts when the Social Security checks allowed. She was like the daughter he never had, and hearing her name in the scenario was all he needed to shut the idea down.

“You got me there,” he said, then eyed the checkers with great intent on winning.

Other than Jerry complaining that losing the round was due to the distracting news of the package, the egg wasn’t spoken of for the rest of the day. Jerry never asked to see it, and Gabriel never offered.

Gabriel spent the next day at the park with Serena, whom he hadn’t seen in several weeks. He took dozens of pictures, all filled with toothy smiles and joking tongues protruding from cotton candy-filled mouths. At the end of the day, the seven-year-old girl said, “This park is my favorite place on Earth, Grandpa. And that tree over there is my favorite spot of shade in all the world.”

He scanned her favorite spots. There was nothing special about them. Not to him. But he was overjoyed to see that a child’s perspective of the world lacked the darkness he saw within it. Through his eyes, the world was a violent place, where people searched for reasons to hate one another and went to great lengths to spread that hate. But this small child saw the beauty in the dull scenery of a rusted swing, a graffitied picnic table, and an old maple tree that’d lost half its leaves years ago. This innocent child was the future of a new, much brighter world. So, he decided in that moment that whether there was truth behind the egg’s ability or not, he would never incubate it. Serena, and every other child with wide, curious eyes and careless optimism about their future deserved a chance at making the world what it should be—a safe haven filled with promise, opportunity, joy, and laughter.

Two days later, Jerry was late again. Gabriel cast his worry aside for the first hour, then headed to his friend’s house and stood on the porch, pounding on the door.

Jerry didn’t answer.

After one peek through the bay window, Gabriel’s world crumbled. Jerry lay on the floor covered in piss, bloated blue with milky eyes fixed on the ceiling. His platonic soulmate. The one person that shared his same grievances. Both widowers, both served their country, both bitched about a miserable world, sharing the same yoke.

Yoke.

Gabriel shuffled home in tears, with plans to end the world.

The letter was tacked to the wall above the couch. Gabriel had memorized it.

Incubate the egg. Once it hatches, release it upon the world and humankind will cease to exist.

You’re welcome.

He held the grape-sized egg in his hand. It was warm and emitted a calming hum—an audible nuzzling felt deep within, which fed him reassurance that ending the world was a good idea.

He wondered if his hands were warm enough for incubation, and just how long the process would take. Weeks? Days?

Minutes?

If it took days, Gabriel felt like he could hold it the entire time and never move. He’d stop eating. He’d shit right there on the couch if need be. He had nowhere to be. No one to be with. The occasional afternoon visit from Serena—as much as he loved her—wasn’t enough to sustain him and kill the intrusive loneliness that would fill his days.

He laid his head back and sighed. A picture on the wall caught his eye. Serena’s first day of school. In the picture, she’s carrying the book tote he’d bought her—tie-dyed pink with a unicorn in its center.

He gazed at her smile and the innocence there. The unknowing eyes. She was happy. She loved her life, her planet with its bullshit parks and Charlie Brown trees.

“I can’t!” He screamed, then shoved the egg into his mouth and swallowed. The egg slid down with ease. Had he not been so accustomed to taking a plethora of various-sized pills each day, it may have gotten stuck. But this was just another pill. Not one to save his life, but other’s.

“Take me only,” he groaned.

The droning hum seemed to grow, and within minutes a cramp seized him, squeezing something inside. There was an audible crack, and right away he knew the egg had hatched, perhaps prematurely.

The next sound he heard was an explosive burp he never consented to—a forceful punch of air that burned coming up, pushing bile through his nose and spraying his shirt.

Gabriel never heard another sound. He only barely felt the quick rip of his esophagus, his gums, then lips, as the egg’s contents shot from his mouth and onto his lap. His eyes rolled, then fell upon his granddaughter’s smile where they remained as they dried and sunk.

The silver, eight-legged thing seemed to move on instinct.

And it would kill on instinct, the mission having begun.

It spun on its legs and seemed to ponder what was left of Gabriel’s face, then followed his gaze. The thing’s eyes glowed blue as they scanned the pig-tailed innocence with a fanned wall of lasers, noting all pertinent information with regard to recognition, then jumped from the old man’s lap, skittered toward the window, and crashed through the glass.

The tinny skittering turned to a bassy rumble as the eight appendages grew in size, casting tall shadows on the nearby houses. It took only a moment before the first wet scream joined the cacophony of metallic limbs, as the otherworldly gift of evisceration began.

We Still Have Time
by Amanda Headlee

Present Day… Twenty-one hours remaining

We’re barricaded, by our own volition, in my living unit, separated from the rest of the Parallax. The makeshift calendar Tyler made from outdated hydro-unit schematics tracks of how long we’ve isolated ourselves. The station’s auxiliary power has kept us alive so far. Once that runs out, we’re dead, stranded at the edge of the Kuiper Belt. We no longer keep our InfoComm units charged to salvage each precious watt and are therefore oblivious to the actual time aside from what Tyler’s calendar tells us. Tyler believes we have a few weeks of electricity remaining—if we’re lucky. Neither of us step foot outside of my quarters anymore unless we’re scrounging for food or supplies. When we do, one goes alone with protection and extreme caution. The other stays behind to keep watch on the only door into the oblivion, ensuring nothing slips inside.

Tyler returns from a food run. We can only carry so much at one time, or we would have cleared out the canteen by now. We should find a cart but agreed to not go out of our way to look for one. It’s too dangerous and takes too much time to deviate from the path directly to the canteen. Bags are out of the question because you never know what else they may carry.

I keep watch as he steps through the doorway, ensuring nothing follows him over the threshold. After closing the door, he unzips the pouch sewn into the waist of his spacewalk suit and pulls out several meat source and pasta puree packets, setting them on my desk. Without a hello, he takes off the suit and helmet, hanging both on the peg next to the bathroom door.

We don’t trust the door’s locking mechanism since we believe the entire ship’s been compromised—given the main power never came back online—and after Tyler performs his manual override on the door, locking it, we slide the couch up against it for extra protection.

As we push the sofa into place, my knee gives out.

“Whoa there,” Tyler says, catching me before I hit the floor. I smile before righting myself and continue helping him with the sofa. Once in place, he turns to me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just tweaked my knee wrong when I pushed.” A lie. I didn’t want him to know what happened. It’s better if I just disappear.

Tomorrow I’ll tell him I need tampons and go out on a “supply run.” He’ll think it strange because he just went out and I should’ve said something to him, but the mention of tampons will leave him red and silent. My excuse. We’ve been together for over six years, involved before we chose to go on this mission, and he still cannot bring himself to touch a box of tampons. In reality, I’ll be going off somewhere to die. He doesn’t need to know I’m infested. Tyler will kill me on the spot, and I don’t want that on his conscience.

Running away gives Tyler more time before he is infested as well…or eaten.

Three Months Ago… 2,191 hours remaining

“Space does odd things to one’s genes,” Dr. Isabella Miriam said, her head bent low over a tray as she pipetted in a bluish liquid.

“I thought they discredited that seventy years ago with Scott Kelly where his genes were only affected temporarily by space’s environment.” I snapped shut a casing clasp on the water filter under Dr. Miriam’s lab sink. She said nothing but smiled oddly. I yawned and looked at my watch: 7:30 a.m. I hated it when she played games this early in the morning. “Right?”

She raised her head slightly, never taking her eyes off the tray in front of her. “Sure.”

The woman unsettled me. I disliked living so close to the lab because I saw her every morning. She stood behind one of the large lab bay windows watching us—the ones who kept the ship running—pass by as if we were a colony of little ants. Her own specimens. Dull red lips pinched in the corners. Her light-colored, almost translucent, eyes rapidly moving as she set her sights on each one of us. I hated her, yet, at the same time, she fascinated me. Which is why I tended to volunteer for the tasks in her lab. No one else wanted the work, and I had to know what she was tinkering with in there.

“What’s the latest project?” I asked and closed the cabinet.

Her shoulders shook twice as a soft giggle escaped past her lips, then murmured, “Things and stuff.”

She was being secretive. Did the commander know what kind of experiments she was doing in here? Had he sanctioned them? On the opposite side of the room a wall of aquariums, void of water, lined inset shelves. Each held some type of insect that Dr. Miriam had brought with her from Earth: Praying Mantis, Rhinoceros Beetles, Walking Sticks, et cetera. The aquariums were filled with substrate conducive to each insect’s lifestyle. However, there was one that was devoid of anything but the air inside and about ten flies. All they could do was fly or walk on the glass walls. They were beautiful. No bigger than a nickel, their wings caught the light with a cascade of rainbow colors. Their eyes were a brilliant turquoise and sat atop long thin stalks that connected to a soft pink head and body. A far cry from the typical dull, red-eyed house fly.

“Where’d these come from? I’ve never seen flies like this before,” I asked since they were not in her lab last week.

A toothy smile stretched across her face as she finally looked at me, laugh lines cracking the corners of her eyes. “Those are my babies.”

“Your babies?”

“Yes.”

“They look weird.” I shuddered. Bugs are gross. “Little rainbow nightmares.”

With my fingernail, I tapped the aquarium’s glass. The vibration sent them all into flight. They whirled about each other in a circle around the interior of the aquarium, like horses racing at the track back on Earth. Their wings caught the bright lights of the lab and sparkled like little multicolored jewels. I was torn between hating them for their buggish appearance and being entranced by their colors.

“What species are they?” I asked.

She returned her focus to her pipette and tray, a signal that she no longer wanted to talk. I wasn’t going to get anything further from her.

“I tell you, she’s like Dr. Frankenstein in there. Creating her own…things.” I said to Tyler.

We lay in my bed. He arrived twenty minutes ago after a seventeen-hour shift working on the master radio communication unit’s electrical panel, which had gone on the fritz yesterday.

He rolled over, away from me. I hadn’t seen him since he left at six that morning. “Annie, just let me sleep. Can you tell me all about it in the morning?”

I turned my back to him in a silent huff, allowing the tears to slide down my cheek and wet my pillow. After six years, this was our relationship. Work apart all day, barely speak when together at night. Love still existed strongly between us, I could see it in his eyes and feel it in my heart. Maybe Tyler was right when a few nights ago he said the time had come to return home.

A faint blue emanated from the light strip recessed around the ceiling molding. It began to pulsate ever so slightly. I’d forgotten to turn it off before I crawled under the covers and wasn’t about to get up and do so now. Most wouldn’t have noticed the faint pulsation but being as long as I have in the maintenance sector, you notice the little things. One of the nuclear generators was kicking into overdrive. In a few moments, the light went still. Someone switched the reactors, giving the active one a rest before it had a meltdown. Always on the brink of a cataclysm in space. The tiniest thing could kill you. Even something as small as a nick in your space suit while on a spacewalk.

I fell asleep to thoughts of Dr. Miriam creating monsters in her lab.

“Annie! Get up!” Tyler shook my shoulders. A siren screeched from the hallway.

It was our day off, and I wanted to sleep in. Groggily, I collected my senses and stared wide eyed at him. The auxiliary lights were on; the blue strip lights weren’t.

“What’s going on?

“I don’t know, but there’s a ton of yelling and screaming in the hallway.” He ran over to my couch. “Get up and help me slide this in front of the door. The lock may be compromised.”

I threw off the covers and ran over, the coldness of the floor sending a shock through my feet and legs.

Tyler must’ve seen my confusion at the cold, unheated floor. “We’re on aux power now.”

We slid the couch in front of the door and collapsed upon it, listening to the screaming from the other side. The siren continued to wail. Tyler pulled me close, holding my head to his chest and covering my exposed ear with his hand. The sound’s now muffled, but that didn’t quiet the fact that whatever horror was going on outside was still there. I focused on the sound of his heartbeat. He started talking.

“Say that again,” I asked, pulling his hand away from my ear. The loudness of the gruesome sounds returned.

“We’ll stay here until things quiet down, then go out and see what’s going on.”

“Why don’t we go now? What if someone needs help?” My voice didn’t sound convincing even to me. I didn’t know if I was being brave or dumb.

“Are you serious? Don’t you hear what’s going on—” Something slammed against the door so hard that the couch jolted. However, the impact proved that even though we were on auxiliary power, the door’s automatic lock did in fact still work. Hopefully, it would still function properly when we wanted to get out.

A guttural moan came from the other side of the door then a halfhearted scream. The siren suddenly stopped. For a moment, all I could hear was our breathing as we clung to each other for comfort.

Then the sounds of tearing and cracking and slurping started. We leaned toward the door, nearly putting our ears against it. Further away down the hall, more screaming continued, but there was something right outside my door—right up against it.

We said nothing to each other and sat there for what felt like hours, listening.

Finally, when it was silent, when whatever was making noise outside my door stopped, Tyler leaned into me and whispered, “Let’s go out and see what’s going on.”

I trembled. There was no way I was going out there.

“Come on, Annie. We have to see what happened. And I’ll need to help the crew get the main power back on.”

I shivered again, and he pushed me off the couch. I once more recoiled at the cold floor and climbed back up. With my knees to my chest, I rocked back and forth on the seat cushion. Tyler moved about my living unit, and I was aware of at least that but couldn’t focus on what he was doing. In my state of shock, Tyler began to dress me in my maintenance overalls and footwear.

“Let’s quietly move this.” His voice snapped me back to reality.

Still shivering, I nodded and helped lift the couch out of the way. He put his hand on the door panel. It wouldn’t unlock. Panic rose like a hot knife in my chest as though I were about to split open. Tyler held his index finger up, indicating to give him a moment. He got a tool and some other things out of my closet and popped open the service panel. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but there was a little zap of electricity then a click. The door unlocked. He separated two wires, capped them and left them exposed. Tyler’s a genius with electricity which is the reason he’s in the electrical mechanic unit while I’m in hydro. He’s electricity and I’m water. We go so well together.

“I’ll have to do that again to lock the door.” He held up his finger once more. “Hold on a sec.” He got a large butcher knife from the kitchenette drawer. The only weapon I owned. Returning to my side, he grabbed my hand. “Stay close and keep silent.”

Tyler pulled open the door.

Present Day… Fourteen hours remaining

Dr. Miriam said that it took twenty-four hours for the infestation to reach the full effect before the host died and turned into a mindless eating machine. Tyler cannot be near me after I die. The twenty-four hours allows me one last night with him under my synthetic down quilt on my full-sized bed, barely large enough for the both of us. In the early morning, I’ll leave before the infestation fully takes over my body.

“I’m going to heat these up,” I say, grabbing two meat and two pasta puree packets then hobbling over to the kitchenette. My leg went numb a few minutes ago and I know the normal sensations will never return, but I still have time.

“Maybe you should sit down, put something on that knee?” Tyler says.

I wave him off, turning my attention to our improvised stove made from a Bunsen burner taken from the lab and a small pot. Using electricity for the microwave is out of the question. We must conserve every precious watt until help arrives…if help is even on its way. One of the caveats in taking on this mission is we are on our own, out in the furthest reaches of the solar system.

I hear Tyler check the tape we put over each vent, ensuring that all are still sealed. I know the stuffiness of my living unit is getting to him when he peels off the plastic layers covering the largest vent by the bed and quickly tapes on a screen wrapped in nylon fabric against the vent’s faceplate. It’s rare for him to expose a vent like that, but it’s becoming stuffier in here as each day passes.

“There’s barely any air coming through.” He stands with his face nearly plastered against the screen.

On auxiliary power, nothing runs at full speed. And I’m sure the air handlers haven’t been scrubbed since the infestation. The odds are high that there’s no one left to maintain them. Tyler and I certainly can’t. It’s not our specialty. Each maintenance crew member aboard this station had a specialty, but we aren’t cross trained or as versatile as we should be. Backups and redundancies save lives. Many of us aboard the station are too specialized to be able to maintain full life support.

As the food heats, he continues his dinner-time routine of checking every crack and crevice to the outside, which we sealed up in some form or fashion.

Yet, through all the caution and protection, we couldn’t keep them out. One got in. It must’ve happened when he went out this morning, dressed in the spacewalk suit, to forage for food. We’re always so careful about opening the doors. Whoever stays behind watches and listens for them.

This morning, I sat on the sofa, reading a book and waiting for Tyler to return when I heard a buzzing sound. My throat tightened. The buzzing was all over the room, I couldn’t pinpoint it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the intruder.

Three Months Ago… 2,166 hours remaining

Paul, Tyler’s best friend, knelt over someone toward the end of the corridor. Whomever it was, they were injured, and Paul looked to be trying to help them. A long streak of blood on the floor led from my door to them. Tyler placed a hand on my shoulder, stopping me from taking another step. The look on his face told me to wait.

As he took long, stealthy steps toward Paul, I followed, slowly moving forward. Something wasn’t right. The corridor was in disarray with dropped paperwork, toolkits, and other oddities that workers carried back and forth between job sites. On the floor, a few feet before me, lay a pipe. Tyler had a knife on him, so I should be carrying something too, right? He might not always be able to protect me. The cold pipe felt heavy and firm in my hand.

“Auugh!” Tyler screamed.

Paul had him pinned on his back to the ground. Tyler’s knee was to Paul’s chest, keeping him from sinking his gnashing teeth into Tyler’s face. Blood coated Paul’s arms, face, and chest. Before I knew what I was doing, I was upon them, swinging the pipe and connecting hard with Paul’s head. He made a wet groaning sound as he fell to his side. Tyler rolled with his friend, now on top of Paul and about to slam the butcher knife into Paul’s chest.

“Ty—” I reached out to him, but it was too late.

He buried the blade to the hilt in his friend’s chest. Blood gushed from Paul’s mouth, eyes, and nose. Tyler jumped off his body and stumbled over to me. Paul’s blood covered his maintenance jumpsuit.

“I didn’t mean to—” he choked and pointed to the body on the floor that Paul had been hunkered over. It was a woman, but we couldn’t tell whom without getting close enough to look at her name tag. Her face was cracked open, like an egg, and the soft tissue of her head scooped out.

We found Dr. Miriam hiding in her dark lab. When we pushed the doors open, the sound of tape ripped.

“Get out of here!” She ran at us with a metal tray.

Tyler pushed me to the side. The tray hit him in the shoulder. Before she could draw it back, he yanked it away.

“Oh, you’re alive.” Whatever fiery passion she just had in wanting to kill us fizzled out, and she returned to her monotone self. Then she turned her attention to the door, slamming it shut and smoothing the wide mylar tape back into place.

“What the hell?” Tyler yelled, throwing the tray to the floor.

“QUIET!” she harshly whispered.

That is when I noticed all her windows were covered and taped in paper, even the ones on the door. And all the seams around the door were taped. Looking around the lab, the vents were also covered.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to her.

“Our demise.” She shrugged and walked over to the wall of aquariums. The one that once housed the brilliantly colored flies was shattered. The other ones looked normal, except for the fact that all the insects inside were dead, covered with a thin white powdery film.

“I killed these ones with insecticide,” she said, placing her hand on one of the intact tanks. “I killed them all to try to save us. To save us from there being more.”

Tyler grabbed her upper arm and spun her around. “Save us from what?”

“From my babies.”

Her babies? Then I remembered the conversation I had with her while fixing the lab’s sink. “The pretty rainbow-colored flies?”

“Yes.”

Tyler, aghast. “Lady, you’re nuts. Flies don’t cause… They don’t cause whatever the hell is going on around here.”

“What’s going on is a newly identified species.”

“Newly identified?” I asked, unsure if I wanted the answer.

A dark smile spread across her face. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke. “I found something. Technically, NASA found it, and I commandeered it for Space Force.”

“You stole something from NASA?” Tyler asked.

“Commandeered,” she corrected him. “I was with NASA prior to joining this mission on the Parallax. As you know, I’m Earth’s leading scientist on genetics and extraterrestrial life.”

I rolled my eyes at her declaration of being the world-renowned expert. Hardly.

“Space Force gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I brought my work on genetics with me when I joined.” She nodded her head to the aquariums that held the now dead insects. “Remember when you said that genes are not altered in space? You were wrong. The genetics of all those insects—flies aside—were in the process of rewriting themselves. Quite a remarkable finding despite working under the guise that my job aboard this station was to study the effects of space and radiation on a human’s body.”

“You were trying to figure out how long we can live in space before the elements, cosmic rays, or whatever change us into, like, primordial goo?” Tyler said, his voice heavy with disdain and disbelief.

“Something like that.” By her tone, she was annoyed, but she had a captive audience. “My theory is correct in that exposure to the environment of space and unprotected radiation over a prolonged period does in fact alter a living being’s DNA sequence. Changing them into an entirely new and stronger being.” She glared at Tyler. “Not primordial goo.”

“But you said you ran the experiments on the insects, not the flies. Are you doing something different to them?” I asked.

The dark smile spread across her face again. “Those beautiful little flies… Well, space doesn’t seem to alter their DNA. At least from what I can hypothesize at this point in time.”

Tyler and I looked at each other in confusion.

Her smile dimmed as she saw we weren’t understanding. “The flies aren’t from Earth.”

A cold tingle shot down my spine. Not from Earth?

“Wh…What?” Tyler stammered.

“What I commandeered from NASA was a meteorite that had landed in Alaska. An old dogsled trainer found it on his property. He got in contact with the government, then NASA got involved, and the meteorite was given to me to identify its makeup. I couldn’t because the elements of the rock didn’t trace to any anything on our periodic table. It’s something that isn’t from our known galaxy. However, that wasn’t the most interesting aspect of the discovery. While scraping samples off the meteorite’s surface, I found little bodies hidden within the pitted crevasses of the rock. The carcasses of extraterrestrial lifeforms.”

She narrowed her eyes at the wall behind Tyler and I. “NASA kept most of my work secret. Anything that did get released to the public went under the name of my department’s head scientist instead of me. I kept the carcasses a secret from NASA and reached out to Space Force with a proposal. They gave me more than what I asked for—free rein. When I got aboard the Parallax three years ago, my real work began. I figured out how to reanimate these lifeforms.”

“You brought creatures—no, alien creatures—back to life?” Tyler said.

She said nothing, but pride and power glinted in her eyes.

“What happened?” I asked, numb to her comment, and nodded toward the shattered aquarium that used to house the colorful flies. I didn’t care how she did it. All I cared about was what happened and what we could do to keep ourselves safe.

“The commander came in about an hour after you left yesterday. His anger got the best of him when he found out the nature of my real research. He tried to stop me. So, I freed them. He stood right next to the tank, about to take it. I threw a Bunsen burner at it, shattering the glass. My babies swarmed him, covering his face, and he ran from my lab. They followed him out.”

“But what’s going on aboard the ship?” Tyler asked. “My friend Paul was eating some lady’s face. Then he tried to eat me! I had to… I had to kill him.”

She swooped her hand toward the intact tanks. “After bringing the flies back to life, I became curious about how they’d interact with the insects from Earth. I placed a single fly into an inhabited tank and observed. It turns out, the flies reproduce via parthenogenesis and are larviparous.”

I looked at Tyler. His face was set stone cold.

She sighed. “All the flies are female and carry live larvae within their reproductive system. There were no male lifeforms found in the meteorite. In other words, a female can asexually give birth without a male. Each fly that I put into an inhabited tank injected her larvae into one of the insects, then the fly immediately died. Within a few hours, the larvae essentially took control of the host’s body. The host then ate the other, non-infested insect. The same thing happened in every tank.”

“Ate the other insect?” I asked.

“Larvae need nutrition to quickly grow. My theory is that the host will eat whatever protein it can find to nourish the larvae, helping them to grow.” She put her finger to her chin and walked around the lab looking at the ceiling. “Once the larvae transform to adult stage, which seems to happen within twenty-four hours, the adults burrow out of the body—through soft tissue like the eyes or nose. The host is no longer animated once the flies leave.” She chuckled.

Tyler narrowed his eyes. “People are eating each other!”

I placed my hand on Tyler’s chest. We needed to stay levelheaded to get answers. “How long ago did you bring these flies back to life? Yesterday was the first time I had seen them in the lab.”

“The ones you saw were six months old. They were growing in the back room. I only brought this batch out here to begin the experiment with the Earth insects. The average lifespan of a housefly is about a month. This lifeform doesn’t seem to die until they’ve injected their larvae. It’s like their larvae are their source of life.”

“This batch? You mean you have more of these flies?”

“I have more carcasses that I haven’t reanimated.”

Tyler’s face turned red and through gritted teeth he asked, “How did you bring them back to life?”

She ignored him and went over to a long table on the other side of the room with an equally long black bag on top and wheeled it over to us. “I had to tape up all the cracks to keep the flies out. And I taped up the windows so the infected didn’t see me and break in.”

She unzipped the bag. The stench was so overwhelming that I turned and vomited. Dr. Miriam looked at me, disgusted. The commander’s body and head was cut open in the bag, brain exposed.

“I needed to see what happened to the body once infested.” Her voice sounded detached and far away. “I caught him after he was bit and conducted my observations on the larval stages of the flies. It was a messy dissection since I didn’t have time to drain the fluids.”

Present Day… Twenty-four hours remaining

When the buzzing stopped, I knew I was doomed. My arms contour around myself, swatting and slapping, tossing my hair, shaking my clothes. Anything to make the buzzing start again, because if it’s alive, then I’m alive too. As I shake myself all over, praying to God that my mind is playing tricks, I catch sight of a black dot, the size of a nickel, on the floor in front of my shoe.

“Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead.”

I touch it with my finger. The little fly doesn’t stir, remaining on its back with her gross little legs pointing into the air. It’s dead. And soon I’ll be the same. Picking up the disgusting creature, I run to the sink and drop it down the drain. Water splashes everywhere as I turn on the faucet to wash down the tiny corpse.

In the bathroom, my clothes lay in a pile at my feet as I stand in front of the mirror, naked, inspecting my body for the spot where the fly injected her children into my body. It’s a fruitless venture because the injection site is a little red pinprick and painless. The moment the larvae are injected into the skin, they burrow down into the muscle and catch a ride in the blood stream to the brain. There are no welts or bruises left behind as evidence. Once in the brain, the larvae dig into the grey matter and feast.

That is what happened to Dr. Miriam when we tried to leave her. Tyler opened the door, and a fly flew in, landed on her face, and bit. In the next twenty-four hours, we watched her transform and go insane from the larvae burrowing into her brain. We killed her before she could attack us.

The same fate now stands before me.

Present Day… Fourteen hours remaining

“I found the bones of a bird. Like a parakeet,” Tyler says as he slurps up his pasta packet.

“Probably one of Miriam’s test subjects. How could the commander not know what she—” I cough, choking back tears. “—was doing.”

“Yeah, the bird probably saw some shit and had even worse stuff done to it. The bones were picked clean. I’m just happy I didn’t run into anyone out there.” He holds his packet in his hands and stares at his half-eaten meal. “Annie, I don’t know how many are left alive aboard the ship. We may be the last. Just us and the flies. I hope that it’s just you and me. I can’t take killing people anymore.”

I shiver as the thought of Tyler beating me with a pipe shoots through my head. “Let’s talk about something happier.” I didn’t want to think any longer about death. I still have time.

Tyler starts reminiscing about sports, football specifically. He loves football and has missed it since we launched nearly five years ago. I try to hang on to his every word but start to feel a little sick to the stomach. I shake my head and collect our dinner’s trash, all the while he keeps talking about football.

In a daze, as I walk over to the sink, the mostly empty packets fall to the floor. I stare at my hand that just let them drop. My arm straightens, my fingers pinch together to my thumb then open then pinch together again—of their own accord. Tyler looks at me and I laugh, muttering something about butter fingers.

The crunching sound starts when I crouch and, with the hand I still have control over, try to wipe up puree that had oozed from a packet onto the floor. My heart quakes in my chest. The crunching is maddening, reverberating in my head.

“Annie, what are you doing…” He watches me crouched, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, puree underneath the soles of my shoes. Tyler walks over, taking tentative steps. He loops an arm under my armpit and tries to help me stand. My body doesn’t cooperate. Twenty-four hours, a lie. I’m nearly out of time.

Present Day… Fourteen hours remaining Five minutes remaining

I fall out of his grasp, crumpling to the floor. Tyler brings his hand up to my neck, palpating the skin for a heartbeat. The moment I fall, the quaking in my chest ceases.

“You’re infested!” He runs over to the spacewalk suit and nearly tears through a leg as he tries to pull it on. “Sorry, Annie.”

I’m sure he is remorseful, but his voice comes out panic stricken as he speaks to my clinically dead body. All the while I lay there, my mind still conscious, watching him. I’m dead, yet at the same time, still alive.

I will Tyler to move faster, to run away from here, to get away from me.

Present Day… One minute remaining

The first jerky movement makes me want to scream, if I could still control my mouth.

Tyler, fully suited, pushes the sofa out of the way and tries to override the door locks.

Three months ago… 2,139 hours remaining

The larvae of the Apocephalus miriamus—which is what she named her babies—must continually take on nutrients to grow.

“The host must constantly eat to provide that nutrition. To conserve energy and focus all nutrients to the brain for the larvae. I—” She coughed up blood. I moved forward to help, but Tyler held me back. She continued, “I believe the larvae shut down most of the body’s functions—lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, fifty percent of the nervous system—leaving just the brain, muscles, and digestive system active.”

She concocted her theory with her dying breath that once the larvae hatch and start eating the brain, the larvae emanate electrical pulses that override the human driver of a body. The electrical pulses not only took control of the brain but stimulated the muscles to move the body.

“Those who succumb to the larvae are clinically dead and their body becomes a puppet. Being confined to the space station, the only food for a reanimated human to catch is another human.”

Miriam truly brought to life a monster that was the size of a nickel. She was successful in achieving her true mission but left behind a legacy that still swarmed the corridors. The more that hatched, the more of the Parallax crew died.

“I am God” were her last words as her children ate her brain.

We hadn’t written down her theory for her because one moment she was speaking to us, the next she was coming at us. I bashed her head open with my pipe, and we ground her brains under our shoes to kill the larvae before they reached their adult form.

Present Day… Zero minutes remaining

“Fucking MOVE!” He isn’t able to override the door. My arms and legs figure out how to work without my control and pull my body upright. I feel nothing, but my eyes lock on him. As a prisoner in my head, I watch myself advance on him. He grabs my pipe that leans next to the door and without hesitation, bludgeons me. A sharp crack echoes as metal connects with my skull, but I feel nothing. My body stumbles, yet even with my right eye now gone blind, my body still moves toward him.

I beg my body to stop, to hold back, to spare him. I try to bargain with the larvae in my brain. They don’t listen.

“Annie, stay away.”

The pipe strikes me in the chest. When it cracks my sternum, my hands grab it, wrenching the weapon from him. Inside of his spacewalk helmet, Tyler’s eyes are wide. Tears sparkle, illuminating the brownish-amber tint of his irises that I love so much.

Even if I could break through and stop my body from attacking, it’s only a matter of time before someone else catches him or he’s bitten by a fly. I can’t let that happen to him, to be killed by something unfamiliar. It’s best if I’m the one that helps him leave this world. At least one of us will be immediately free. I’ll stay trapped here until the flies burrow out of my head. Then I’ll be free too.

We can be together again.

Yes, it’s better if things happen this way.

We’re out of time.

I Will Meet You There
by Brennan LaFaro

TWO DAYS AGO

Every day was the same—like being trapped in a loop.

Matt woke up and threw some water on his face. He’d given up on showering weeks ago. Even a pick-me-up splash ran the risk of depleting the water supply, but he needed to retain some semblance of humanity. Matt’s ability to monitor the readouts—water, fuel, oxygen—disappeared when the control panels went down for good. No way to be sure how much of each precious commodity remained. But he knew the answer.

Not enough.

Dressed and ready, Matt closed his eyes. A distant tapping sounded. Two long, two short. He expected the constant beat to relegate itself to the background like the humming of an appliance or the din of traffic outside a city window, but the pattern never let up. It pervaded his consciousness taking on different timbres and following wherever he went.

He checked his tablet, maybe the last thing still working since the pattern decimated the rest of the mechanics aboard. Matt made a mental note of the time before tucking the tablet under his pillow and leaving his room. No sense taking it when it would stay safe there. With a grunt of exertion, Matt pulled the door shut. The sound of scraping metal told him the door would soon break for good—one more casualty of the failing ship.

Over the last four weeks, Matt’s morning routine consisted of a bath followed by strolling through the hallways. The grated metal floor was as welcoming as the bars of a prison cell, and the more time that passed, the harder it became to tell the difference between the two. The clacking of Matt’s boots against the metal walkway echoed through the empty vessel; a minor-key symphony played to a crowd that couldn’t be bothered to attend.

Matt paused before he trod onto the catwalk. The rails—only four feet apart—created the illusion of being closed in. Squeezed. He took the first tentative step, careful not to focus on the gaping void below. The engines used to radiate a bluish glow, but when the gears stopped turning, the engine room transformed into a stygian chasm; a shadowy murk sheltering what dwelt below. Matt didn’t look because the darkness always roiled and squirmed.

It’s alive, he thought as he gripped the railings with white knuckles and crossed.

His reward was a window looking down on Earth. He’d heard nothing from mission control in four weeks—or anyone else for that matter—and the fear of something catastrophic having happened to his home grew every day. The pattern knocked out communications along with everything else. At least that seemed to be the case. Two long, two short. He even heard it in his sleep. Matt sent daily messages to his family back on Earth. The messages appeared to go through, but the lack of returns over the last month sowed doubt.

He pressed his hand against the glass and felt the cold tracing the lines of his palm. Knowing it couldn’t be the cold of space—the glass was too thick to allow that transference—Matt let the chill enter him.

The window held no answers, just like yesterday. Just like the day before.

FOUR WEEKS AGO

First, it came for Captain Weston. Kill the head and the body will die.

Nearly fifty days into a one-year mission, everything churned along smoothly. At least until Matt brought the pattern to the captain’s attention. Terry Weston spent the morning at Matt’s station, pressing buttons and cycling through screens. If the man’s actions held logic, they went over Matt’s head.

The temperature gauges spiked, which meant the engines were overheating. Under normal circumstances, this caused major concern, except the spikes were almost imperceptible unless the person monitoring kept their eyes locked on the display. The jumps occurred in three second intervals, then returned to normal, followed by a two second wave. A steady rhythm played in 5/4 time.

Every time Matt checked in, he found Weston hadn’t moved an inch. After several hours of eyes focused on the screens, following the pattern and barely blinking, Weston walked away without a word. He left the bridge at a marching pace and moved down the hall to his room with purpose, closing the door behind him. The other crew members traded looks, trying to explain the irrational behavior of a rational man.

Matt returned to his station, the pattern now moving steadily in two longer beats followed by two shorter beats, still maintaining the same rhythm. The beat hadn’t changed, but the addition of pulsating lights lent a mesmerizing quality. Making no move to press any buttons, Matt lost track of time as he watched the lights blink.

A high-pitched scream cut through his trance. It could only belong to Nora, one of the mechanics and the lone woman onboard. Matt turned toward Nora’s post, recalling her being just a few feet away when he took his terminal back from Weston. Finding her station vacant now, he sprung from his seat.

Matt rushed toward the scream, followed closely by the rest of the ship’s meager crew. Nora stood fish-belly white outside the captain’s door, blood pooled around her feet. A coppery scent filled the air. Matt studied her up and down, deciding she wasn’t the source. It came from under the door.

Trying the door but finding it locked, Matt searched the eyes of the crew surrounding him. They needed to get in, and no one else was taking action. He’d have to knock the door off its track.

He threw his shoulder into it. Then again, this time with more force. Harder still on the third go, and finally felt something give. Wedging his fingers into the small gap he’d created, Matt wrestled the door open.

“Holy shit,” whispered Chuck, the other mechanic. He’d taken up position next to Nora, giving him a bird’s eye view into Weston’s quarters and the horror within.

The captain’s legs stuck out from behind the bed, so much blood puddled around them on the floor that it looked fake.

Matt kneeled to assess the situation, joined by Nora, who’d recovered some of her color. Matt’s eyes lit on the jagged cut across Weston’s throat. Deep enough to prevent any outcry, the gash hadn’t killed him. His eyes were bloodshot, capillaries burst from trying to call out. They flicked back and forth, not coming to rest on any one crew member. His mouth gaped wider than Matt thought a human jaw capable of. When it seemed Weston’s coarse breathing couldn’t possibly continue any longer, it ceased.

Nora closed Weston’s eyelids.

Tearing his gaze from the captain’s face, Matt surveyed the rest of the body. His attention stopped to rest on the switchblade clasped in Weston’s right hand.

Matt stood up, smoothing back his hair in disbelief. Chuck appeared in shock, his face tinting green as Nora tried to comfort him. Fleming, the ship’s navigator, stood at the back unsmiling, his eyes impossible to read.

TWO DAYS AGO

Matt kept his forehead pressed against the window, eyes closed, listening for any sign of activity on the ship. Nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Click, click. Click, click. Two long beats, two short.

Hope endured that any day now the blue orb might be closer, even by the most insignificant distance. Perhaps tomorrow would be the day communications came through—a letter, even a single word from his family. His hope fought against the innate knowledge that the ship ferrying him through space was dead. A coffin suspended in zero gravity.

Matt steeled himself to cross the catwalk back to his quarters. He told himself the writhing shadows living in the engine room couldn’t be closer, but still they clambered up the walls; taking over the areas the light usually occupied. Not for the first time, he silently accused the shadows of being alive. Their jerky, animated movements offered the clearest proof yet to support his allegations. Trying his best to ignore the shadows grazing the edges of the catwalk, Matt shuffled across. The crosshatch pattern sank into the soles of his boots, the ship becoming a part of him.

From his peripheral vision, black fingers wrapped around the edge of the catwalk—tendrils of smoke, not so much physically present as the absence of what should be there.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he arrived on the far side. Nerves made the window feel less worth the journey every time he took it. The next stop on Matt’s list was the bridge. Without expectations, he pushed the same buttons and checked all the connections for at least the thirtieth time. The results, or lack thereof, no longer surprised him.

After checking the window to make sure Earth still existed and then traveling to the bridge only to find it non-responsive once again, Matt returned to his room—one of the smaller cabins. He’d considered taking over one of the larger ones with the rest of the crew gone, but it didn’t feel right. The other cabins held their individual terrors and though cramped, this room felt closest to home.

He removed the tablet from under his pillow to write letters home. First to his wife, Jennifer—writing her for at least the tenth time, maybe more. Next, the kids, Carter and Holly—their letters like a memoir, trying to teach them all the things a father can from 250 miles above the Earth.

His letters complete, Matt put the tablet down and found he’d been awake for fourteen hours straight. No surprise. Just another part of the loop, losing himself in correspondence and marking another day off the calendar.

He popped open an MRE—tender beef feast tonight, and it tasted every bit as good as what he used to feed the cat at home. What it lacked in quality, it made up for in quantity. The mission administrators packed enough food to sustain a crew of five for over a year. Enough servings to last one person a whole lot longer than that.

The day came full circle. Matt lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take him. A shiver proceeded through his body, unable to shake the thought of the shadows dragging themselves from the engine room, clawing their way up the catwalk to seize him. He’d sealed the door to his cabin before going to bed, but couldn’t be sure that mattered.

FOUR WEEKS AGO

The captain’s death didn’t linger on the minds of the crew for long. The pattern that took over Matt’s console—the same one he believed drove Terry Weston to open his own throat—spread like a virus from the central panel to the other controls. Oxygen, fuel, maps, and more all became useless. A constant ticking resonated. After hearing it so many times, Matt thought it reminiscent of the beat of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s song, “Take Five.” Following the shutdown of the controls and the fuel gauges going dark, the temperature gauges plummeted to zero. The crew watched the haunting blue glow of the engines reduced to a faint shimmer before they dissipated altogether.

Chuck and Nora descended to the engine room to see what could be salvaged. That left Matt and Fleming to clean up the captain’s quarters.

The mission’s training didn’t cover what to do with a corpse, so they improvised. Jettisoning the body out with garbage didn’t sit right with either of them, leaving the storage capsules as the best bet. The ship housed eight, with only five in use. Weston weighed easily over 200 pounds, so it took everything Matt and Fleming had to stow him away and seal the capsule. They made their best attempts at cleaning the bloodstains, but no matter how hard they scrubbed, the crimson tinge only faded, never vanished. They locked Weston’s quarters as they left.

Exhausted, it took Matt a moment to realize Chuck and Nora hadn’t returned. A hasty discussion convinced Fleming to help Matt check on them, but the elevator didn’t respond. The call button played the same rhythm as everything else on the damn ship: two long, two short.

Fleming set to work on the elevator while Matt went to the catwalk. A chill crawled up his spine as he looked down at the engine room, seeing it without the blue glow for the first time. Matt knew the floor was only twenty feet down, but darkness consumed everything. He called out for Chuck and Nora. No response. Not right away. Then an anguished cry ripped through the air, cut short after a wet gurgle.

A man’s laugh replaced the scream—not the kind that stems from a well-told joke. Matt froze as the laughter ascended in pitch and intensity, sounding more like the initial scream. It lasted nearly a minute. Another wet gurgle cut off the laughter, followed by the sound of metal clanging on metal, then silence. Complete and total silence except the pounding of Matt’s heart and the rasping of his breath.

YESTERDAY

Another day, another bath. Another trip down the catwalk. Every morning Matt thought about staying away, but what if something had changed? Bile rose in this throat as he crossed. No writing off the moving shadows to imagination today; they grabbed and snatched at his feet like the talons of a raptor zeroing in on its prey. The thirty-foot walk across became a dance. One wrong step could bring on…

Matt tried to guess what, but his imagination didn’t stretch far enough to envision what might be living down there, growing bold enough to creep a little further out every day. Sweat covered his brow by the time he reached the relative safety of the viewing platform.

He approached the glass, thinking the Earth appeared a little closer. His imagination must be prone to hallucinations after today’s escape from the shadows. Floating around in a glorified cargo container, he knew Earth couldn’t actually be closer. Yet Matt couldn’t shake the feeling he was going home.

Keeping a good thought as he started back across the catwalk, he almost believed the positive vibes could keep the shadows at bay.

Almost.

Light shone on one side, giving him a path the width of a balance beam to cross. The coal-black, vapory fingers grasping at the other edge of the walkway took full purchase, leaving less than half the room he had before. Matt walked one foot in front of the other—a circus performer on a tightrope, the safety net removed for the final act. He placed each step with care, bringing the toe of his boot down within millimeters of the shadow’s border. Some strides required Matt to hold the foot up in the air a moment while he searched for the right spot to bring it down. A single wrong movement and he’d be thrown off-balance, falling into the void. More than once, he suspected his toe grazed the boundary and imagined the murkiness slithering across the surface of his shoes.

Arriving on the other side, Matt refused to look back. He was sure he’d see an inky blackness wriggling over every square inch of the catwalk if he did. Instead, he set out toward his next destination.

Silence consumed the bridge, giving the emptiness a tangible quality. He made a half-hearted attempt at pushing the same old buttons, then meandered back to his room. Time for another letter to the children.

Dear Carter and Holly,

I think I’m coming home. I don’t know when, but don’t give up on me just yet. Leave my place set at the table. I will meet you there.

Love, Dad.

He sent it off into the ether, and yawned. Though it felt like he’d only been awake for a couple of hours, sleep came easy.

TWO WEEKS AGO

Time slowed to a crawl following the presumed deaths of Chuck and Nora, as well as Weston’s suicide. Neither Matt nor Fleming dared to venture down to the engine room and verify the mechanics’ demise. Even if they wanted to, the elevator no longer functioned. Silence had chased the symphony of gurgles and death rattles Matt had heard from his position on the catwalk. No further answers came from either of them.

Chuck and Nora may have been the mechanics, but anyone chosen for this mission brought with them enough knowledge for basic repairs. Matt and Fleming approached the situation with a can-do mindset but found themselves no closer to getting the systems back online, so frustration set in.

Never the best of friends, Matt and Fleming nearly came to blows more than a few times—usually over why the other person was wrong. Even with the shutdown of every unit on board, the clicking pattern remained. It followed both men to every corner of the ship. The day they threw tools to the side and gave up on being able to revive the vessel, they still couldn’t figure out where that damnable pattern originated from. Matt spent more time every day isolated in his cabin, occasionally emerging to visit the Earth.

He saw Fleming less and less. Sometimes days passed without sound or sight of him. Matt caught himself engaging more and more with the idea of what Fleming was up to. The navigator had no family to write to, and no matter how carefully Matt listened, he never heard a sound from the other cabin. Whatever Fleming might be planning, Matt deduced he took pains to keep it secret.

After hours spent listening with no reward, the pent-up suspicion in Matt bubbled to the surface. He needed to find out, even at the cost of a confrontation.

Fleming resided two doors down. Matt closed the gap with purpose, unsure what to say, but trusting the words to be there. He knocked twice, but no answer came. It was possible he had slipped out to skulk around the ship, but Matt hadn’t heard him leave his quarters. He always noticed when Fleming left. He must be inside.

Matt put all his weight into wrenching the door open, no longer caring if he alerted, or even frightened, Fleming. The door pulled back to reveal Fleming, or at least his remains—it turned out he’d been writing after all. Fleming’s body slumped in the corner, his tablet’s stylus jammed into his carotid artery. Arterial bloom painted the landscape—a vicious way to leave things—and Fleming’s contorted face left no mystery whether he’d suffered. With eyes and face pallid, a mix of shock and disgust, Matt backed out of the room.

He yanked the door closed, trapping the grisly sights and charnel smells inside Fleming’s tomb. Matt stumbled back to his room, never taking his eyes from Fleming’s door. Collapsing on the bed, rocking back and forth, a breed of fear coursed through his veins he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in the past two weeks. Fleming hadn’t been his favorite person, but any company beat being alone.

Almost on cue, the clicking returned—two long beats, two short. Repeat, ad nauseum. Louder and more insistent than before, the old familiar pattern assured Matt he wasn’t actually alone. Not really.

TODAY

Matt wakes up feeling different today, but he can’t put his finger on what changed. It was like the air held a different quality. He could almost taste it.

He skips the bath, heading directly for the catwalk over the engine room. Despite spending weeks trying to locate the source of the looping rhythm, the new day provides an eerie clarity. The pattern is coming from the engine room. There’s not a doubt in his mind.

Something about locating the sound makes the trip over the chasm more bearable. The shadowy limbs engulf the walk, reaching and squirming, but Matt passes through them as though they aren’t even there. The lingering fear from days past disappears. As if the shadows are smoke, he feels no pressure or substance against his feet, only a sense of cold as they claw and climb up his legs.

Confusion racks Matt’s brain. This should feel wrong. Terror should be dominating, but keeps its distance. The pattern—two long, two short—breathes a faint gasp of life into the ship, keeping it alive after all. He sees that now.

The Earth looks the same as ever, but the 250-mile gap doesn’t seem so insurmountable today. Matt closes his eyes, cutting off the view of his big, blue home and feels an inexplicable hope surge through his body.

Eyes still closed, he envisions the bridge a month ago, almost like he’s watching a movie. From the point of view of an observer, Matt watches himself—his other self—study the controls when for a split second, everything goes dark. Matt doesn’t remember this happening. The newfound hopeful sensation flickers as he observes his body perform the actions of a stranger.

The unit doesn’t turn off, it’s more like the screen gets taken over by a shadow. The effect lasts barely long enough to register before a blinking light replaces the gauges. It’s displaying a pattern that will become very familiar to Matt over the next four weeks.

Two long, two short.

Matt watches his doppelganger stare at the screen, breaths shallow and body still, as the shadows that took over the screen wriggle across his hands and crawl up his arms. Matt silently implores the other crew members to notice what’s happening to his other self, but to no avail.

Minutes pass, maybe hours before someone bumps into his other self, but by then it’s too late. You know what to do, a gravelly voice stage whispers. No one else reacts, but Matt can tell his other self heard it.

Matt continues to watch as other-Matt retrieves the captain and brings the issue to his attention. Weston becomes fixated long enough to allow other-Matt to slip into his cabin and wait. Matt struggles to keep down his MRE as he watches his other self attack and eviscerate the captain. Whoever’s point of view he maintains won’t let him look away.

Other-Matt arranges the captain’s body to look like a suicide, clicking his tongue all the while. Two long, two short.

Matt’s view grows hazy then reforms, this time focusing in on Fleming’s back. Other-Fleming, Matt thinks. The man looks around, then taps a code into the elevator’s control panel. Not the elevator’s usual code. In the distance, Matt can hear his other self calling for Chuck and Nora.

Matt has no choice but to follow Fleming into the elevator which glides down to the engine room. Fleming rides in peace, except for the sound of his knuckles rapping against his thigh—two long, two short. When the doors open, Fleming slinks out, hidden in shadow. He picks up a curved shard of metal debris and clambers behind pieces of machinery, sneaking up on the two mechanics. Matt goes numb as he’s forced to watch Fleming execute their crewmates and friends.

Another hazy fade and Matt sees inside Fleming’s room as the man, overtaken by mania, scrawls at his tablet. Tears cascade down his cheeks, and his writing hand shakes as he moves the stylus around the screen. Panting as he finishes, Fleming lays the tablet flat on his lap.

Matt, it hurts to write. I can’t speak it at all. Something is on the ship with us. The clicking. The flashing lights. It’s all tied together. It knows our bodies; it knows our minds. We have to fight. YOU have to fight.

As Matt reads the last word, Fleming plunges the stylus into his neck. His left arm, taking on a life of its own, scrabbles for the tablet, but the man’s lifeblood runs out before it can grasp on. As his body collapses against the wall, the tablet spills from his lap, landing just out of sight under the bed.

Another haze comes on and dissolves just as quickly. Matt finds himself back in the present, staring out the window at the Earth. Something is different. He’d grown so used to the black abyss underneath the catwalk, the rising blue glow catches him by surprise. The shadows no longer pervade the catwalk.

So now you know.

The same gravelly voice from his vision, his memories.

“What are you?” asks Matt.

The shadows haven’t disappeared or retreated, the voice says, ignoring Matt’s question. They’re with you now. I’m with you now.

“What are you?” repeats Matt.

I’m simply a hitchhiker, looking for a new home. A moment passes. I’ve been through every inch of this vessel. The electronics are fully operational once again, and it can be run by a single crewmate. It might take a few weeks before we enter the atmosphere, then gravity will take over. As we prepare for our approach, I’m afraid I’ll have to take the controls more often. You may find yourself losing track of more hours in a day than you’re accustomed to, but it’s all in service.

I’m part of you. Part of the ship now.

Matt offers no response. Why bother when the entity already knows what’s in his head? He thinks of Jennifer kissing him goodbye as he boarded the ship at the start of this mission. He thinks of Carter, of Holly—their births, their first words. He hopes they’ll get the communications he’s been sending.

We’ll see them soon.

Visions of his life on Earth cycle through his head, suddenly replaced with nothing but shadowy black and a pulsing light.

Two long, two short.

A Monstrous Hunger
by Simon Clark

Falling…

…falling in darkness. Utter darkness.

Falling. Fast. Hard. Violent. Absolutely violent. Head smacking against the sides of the capsule into which he fitted so tightly, walls pressing hard against shoulders, arms, hips, thighs—feet shoved up firm against the bulkhead.

A sense of dropping fast. But why darkness? Why no controls visible? Now weightless, belly rising to smack against the ceiling of that small vessel, which contained him in a pouch of stale air that reeked of his own saliva, then—

BANG! Abrupt deceleration—impact punching air from lungs: head cracking against the wall, driving such a brutal pain through his skull that he yelled—a wordless scream of agony. The capsule disintegrated, a thunderous cacophony smashed against his ears, and suddenly he was struggling from the debris, fighting free of wreckage, punching away ruptured bulkheads, desperately kicking out at the remnants of the hard shell, needing to get out before fire engulfed his ship.

Crawling free of the wreck, Miguel Sal’Hamdra rose to his feet in a vastness illuminated by flashes of lightning. Thunder crashed so loudly he felt the immense sound in his guts as much as he heard it with his ears. His muscles burned; vicious stabs of pain skewered his joints. And he was gasping for air so hard his throat and lungs felt as if they had been scraped raw by jagged shards of glass.

Where have I landed?

From a gloom-blighted sky, one abruptly turned white by explosions of lightning, more capsules fell, striking the flat surface of this world. Capsules were long, with flat sides, not much larger than an adult human being. These objects impacted with enough force to raise clouds of dust—one slammed into the ground just ten paces from him.

If it had hit me…

Capsules became missiles, raining down. One struck, just in front of him, bursting open in a flash of debris that turned his world grey. Pieces of the vessel struck him in his face, chest and belly: the force of those blows sent him lurching backwards.

Then a voice from far away: “Let me out!” The screaming voice blazing with terror. “Let me out! I’m dying in here!”

Where are the screams coming from?

From the sky? From the capsules? Miguel couldn’t be sure. However, what mattered now was to find shelter from the falling objects—there were hundreds, all tumbling from lightning-ruptured darkness above him. He would be killed for sure if he remained out in the open. Miguel began to run, though his hips and spine hurt like bloody fury. Must have been lying in the vessel for days.

Blundering through a world of thunder, lightning—through a dreadful storm of movement and deafening, crashing sounds. A dry world, where dust stuck to his lips, tongue, throat, filling his lungs with their stinging attack. Vessels crashed down, falling all around him, one skimming his elbow with such violence—he cried out, hurting, and fearing that a bone had been shattered. Though he managed to reassure himself that there was no broken bone when he realized he could still move his arm without incurring more pain.

“Let me out!”

And yet again, that screaming plea to be saved. But who needs to be saved? And where are they?

One of the tiny ships hissed through the air overhead, striking the ground just five paces in front of him, grey hull bursting open, its structure exploding into nothing more than splinters. A woman lay there amid the debris, in a white nightgown, her lips painted red, long yellow hair forming a sunburst pattern around her head.

Is this the person who had screamed? He bent down to draw her free of the wreck; however, he saw that she was dead, her hand cold, flesh somehow like rubber.

Once more, struggling onward through detonations of light and painful deluge of skull-pounding thunder. Capsules still fell, many bursting open. The second they shattered, they released their passengers—one to a capsule—all those people were dead. And, he realized, they had been dead for a while.

At that moment, the lightning somehow stabilized itself into a constant glare of white. High above him, an astonishing sight. Shocking enough to cause his heart to give a stinging lurch. A massive conveyor belt had come adrift from the steel framework that supported it. Though the conveyor belt still functioned, rumbling with a sound as big as thunder, cogs turning, driving a belt that carried the capsules. However, when the capsules reached the point where a catastrophic failure of the supporting structure caused the conveyor belt to slope sideways at a forty-five-degree angle, the capsules spilled from the machine. This is why they tumbled to the ground or, rather, the floor, because he saw that he was inside a building, a huge warehouse of a place. Eye-searing flashes of lightening had been the result of an electrical fault, cables shorting in sparking bursts of electric-blue. Thunder, the sound of the conveyor belt and those objects violently striking the floor.

Miguel stared at the capsules in horror. But they weren’t capsules after all. They were coffins. Dozens of coffins fell from the damaged conveyor belt a hundred metres above his head. When they struck, they burst open, flinging out their deceased occupants. Have I been transported here in one of those coffins? Just asking himself that question set his mind ablaze with panic.

Meanwhile, the deadly rain of those long boxes, with their grim cargos, continued. At any moment, he’d be struck. He was sure of it. The impact would shatter his skull before mashing his body down against the floor. He ran—that’s all he could do. That and screaming in terror, heart pounding, lungs dragging in dust-filled air that stung his throat.

Shards from bursting coffins punched into his face and chest. The corpse of a gnarly-headed woman, ejected from a ruptured casket, rolled over toward him, arms and legs loosely flapping, the torso smacked into his running feet, causing him to stumble onto his hands and knees.

Before he could flee, however, from the seemingly never-ending cascade of those long boxes, a figure lurched from the swirling fog of dust, threw their arms around him, thrust their sweating face toward his, and with eyes bulging out so furiously that they seemed in danger of bursting, yelled: “Help me! Get me out of here!”

The stranger, a man in his thirties, with a shaved head, and eyes that seemed to scream horror at the world. He clung to Miguel as if he had found a life raft in a stormy sea and that life raft was his last desperate hope for survival.

“Help me!” His eyes blazed with terror. “I don’t want to die again!”

Above them, the conveyor belt clattered to a stop, cogs that drove the massive belt becoming still. Even so, such was the steep angle of the conveyor belt, coffins continued to slither off, tumbling end over end before crashing to the floor, shattering, and flinging out the dead—men and women of all ages, with loose limbs, jaws that flopped open, lifeless bones breaking with many a shockingly loud SNAP!

The stranger yelled: “Get me outta here!” Then came an outpouring of breathless words: “I remember the hospital—being so sick I could never eat, doctors said they could do nothing to put my heart right. Pain all the time. Then the pain stopped. I couldn’t move or talk, but I knew they took me to the morgue—they put me in a coffin. A coffin! A damn coffin! I wasn’t dead, but I couldn’t tell them.”

Miguel couldn’t recall being in hospital. Though…yes…fragments of memory surfaced: piloting a rock-hopper across one of the methane fjords. A red warning symbol onscreen…oxygen level low. Then the shriek of an alarm… After that, oblivion. Nothing more until he awoke inside the falling cannister.

Abruptly, there was movement from a pile of wrecked coffins just thirty paces away. A man of around seventy, with long white hair, staggered out of the debris. He wore a smart black business suit and cowboy boots. He limped toward where Miguel stood in the grip of the panicking stranger.

The white-haired man held up his left hand to attract their attention. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Gentlemen, I find myself in difficulty. I wonder if—”

That is as far as he got. A coffin, plunging from above, struck him squarely on top of his head with such violence that his skull ruptured, spraying out jets of crimson.

“Oh, God,” panted the stranger. “That’ll happen to us. Get me out of here!”

Just then, a vehicle buzzed toward them, weaving left and right to avoid broken caskets and dead bodies littering the floor. The vehicle consisted of a flat trailer pulled by a small tractor unit. Sitting in the driving seat, a hunched man, his large head rooted between bulbous shoulders. The driver’s bloodshot eyes glared out from a face so deeply lined it looked as if the skin had been scored with a blade.

He yelled: “Jump on. Hang on tight. It’ll be a fast ride. I said: jump!”

The stranger scrambled onto the trailer first, kicking his feet back in a way that hinted he wanted to be the only passenger. Nevertheless, Miguel clambered on, too, a coffin smashing against the ground, just where he’d been standing a moment ago. The vehicle sped off, once more dodging morbid wreckage, until the machine plunged through an open doorway. A steel door rumbled shut behind them, clunking into position, sealing them off from the carnage in that cathedral-sized hall.

The stranger, tears in his eyes, clung onto Miguel’s hand. “We’re safe…we’re going to live.”

Now they were in the passageway, which was closed off from the vast room where that morbid cascade was taking place. They were safe. Air here was cool as refrigerator air and smelled pungently of bleach. The stranger remained sitting on the back of the trailer even though the vehicle had stopped, and its driver had leaned out of the cab, impatiently gesturing for them to disembark.

Miguel spoke to the frightened stranger: “C’mon. Our driver wants to talk to us.”

The stranger, however, muttered, “They tried to bury me alive. They put me in a coffin… They shipped me out here to bury me.”

The driver called back in a loud voice: “Hey…you two. Get off my truck. I got to clean up. Them boxes that fell, there must be hundreds of the bastards to shovel up. Get off my truck!”

Miguel took hold of the stranger’s arm to ease him off the trailer. “My name is Miguel. And you’re…?”

“Culver… My God…trapped in that box. It’s a miracle I’m not dead.” His eyes were somehow raw looking, like wounds that were open and wet in his face.

Miguel said, “Follow me, Culver. We need to speak with our driver.” With that, Miguel headed toward where the driver sat in his cab and asked, “What happens now?”

“I gotta clean up,” said the driver. “Hell of a mess back there.”

“No, what happens to us.”

“Uh?”

“Well, we aren’t dead, are we? There’s been a terrible mistake. We were put in coffins and brought here.”

“Oh.” The driver thoughtfully picked his nose with his thumb. “Yeah, happens more than people think. You’re Lazzers.”

Miguel frowned. “Lazzers?”

“The name derives from Lazarus.” The voice was female. “Now, like Lazarus, you’ve risen from the dead.”

Miguel turned around to see a woman step out of the shadows where there was an alcove with chairs and a table on which stood coffee mugs and plates of cookies.

The woman’s face had been gaudily made up with a thick smearing of reddish-brown foundation, and then a glistening lipstick in vivid purple had been daubed onto her mouth. Miguel’s first thought was: She’s been made up like that in the funeral parlour. Make her pretty for family when they come to view her. Yet he saw that the makeup was grotesquely overdone. An insensitive notion of what a beautiful woman should look like.

She spoke in a clear voice, very much in control of her emotions. “Of course, you haven’t been raised from the dead. An overworked doctor didn’t check carefully enough when you became immobile and unresponsive, and decided you were lifeless when you weren’t. Same happened to me. I’m a Lazzer, too.”

Culver grunted. “We could have been killed. Think about it. We were in coffins that fell such a long way. We could have died.”

“Yeah.” Her purple lips tightened into a grim smile. “Dying inside your own coffin. What are the chances of that happening?”

“You do realize where we are?” Miguel said. “We’ve been dumped on Serenity. We’re on a planet that is, from pole to pole, just one big cemetery.”

“At least we are still alive,” she told him, “unlike the rest of our fellow passengers.”

Culver trembled. “I feel sick.” With that, he hurried over to one of the chairs where he sat down, still in the grip of terror, his eyes burning holes in the air in front of him.

Miguel knew plenty about Serenity. It was a long-established custom to ship deceased family members to this remarkable world where dead flesh simply did not decay. Legend stated that anyone interred here would occupy a liminal state between life and death. People even bought decorative plates that portrayed fanciful representations of individuals entombed here, remaining in a state of fleshly beauty for thousands of years. Other legends suggest that coffins were, in effect, like birds’ eggs, and cadavers became gestating embryos that would eventually hatch from the coffin as radiant beings that will live forever and ever. All wishful fantasy, of course. Yes, corpses deposited here on Serenity never rot. Flesh remains pleasingly firm. Eyes do not shrivel back into the skull. Corpses resemble people who are only sleeping. But nobody had ever hatched from their coffin to come dancing joyously back to the land of the living. The closest to that happening must have been when the so-called Lazzers, who had been wrongly certified as deceased, had broken out of their plastic containers, or as had happened to Miguel, been roughly evicted when it had been smashed open.

Miguel turned to the driver who was using his thumb to prod at symbols on the dashboard screen. “There must be some procedure for Lazzers.”

“Sure there is.”

“And that is?” asked the woman.

“I’m a landsman. I look after the northeast territory. Nothing to do with shipping live folk.”

She gave an impatient sigh. “But there will be a procedure that you initiate when people climb out of their coffins.”

“Sure. They’re collected by ferry and taken back to their home planet.”

Miguel called across to Culver. “Did you hear that? We’re going home.”

“When?”

The landsman belched. “Onions. Never should eat raw onion…” He then thoughtfully rubbed his jaw with this thumb. “Don’t know when. You need to go to the transit centre. There’s accommodation, hot food—wait there until the ferry comes.”

“Okay, sir,” said the woman. “Where do we find the transit centre?”

“Go through that door, yonder. See? Got a big red ‘E’ on it. Then you walk ten minutes outside, then you’ll see a building with ‘Transit Centre’ written on the wall. Just go in, they’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you, Mr…?”

“I’m just a landsman. Now, I’ve gotta start clearing up.”

He stomped on a pedal, and the vehicle hummed away along the corridor.

“All right.” Miguel shrugged. “We go to the transit centre and check in.”

“You know,” she said, “the company that owns Serenity makes billions planting dead folk here, but there’s chronic underinvestment in this place. Did you see the state of the conveyor belt? All the rust? Oh…the name’s Astrid.” She held out a hand, which Miguel shook.

“Miguel, and that’s—”

“Culver. I heard.”

Miguel loosened his necktie—it was making his throat itch. “To think, my wife was going to consign me to eternity in the most uncomfortable clothes I’ve got.”

Realizing that everything had gone terribly wrong didn’t hit Miguel for five trouble-free minutes after passing through the door that the landsman had indicated. Nor did he have any reason to conclude that the landsman was the vilest of liars during those five minutes.

Culver trotted ahead of Miguel and Astrid, eager to reach the comforts of the transit centre, maybe anticipating a hot shower, followed by a tasty dinner. Above them, sky, consisting of black clouds, punctuated with smoky streaks of red. The ground appeared to be formed from crushed chalk: a pale, hard surface that yielded puffs of dust as their feet took them in the direction of a group of tall, flat-roofed buildings. Alongside the path, shallow gullies contained mist that was a dazzling orange in colour. This was a world of strange chemistry. And, no doubt, the elements brewed here prevented the decay of human flesh, nurturing legends about corpses that maybe, just maybe, are merely dozing within their graves.

Astrid said, “I work in a news office. Rumours abounded of the company running this place bribing politicians to prevent the next of kin from visiting the graves of their loved ones.” She glanced across at the sad shell of a sky ferry rusting down to its ribs on a stretch of cream-coloured sand. “The under investment is palpable, isn’t it?”

“Nobody ever checks if the company is running the place properly?”

“Nobody. If you ask me, the company ships dead folk out here and dumps them without ceremony, and without a shred of respect.”

Miguel shot her a grim smile. “Won’t we have some news to break when we get home?”

Astrid’s claim that the company unlawfully breached its contractual obligations to properly inter the deceased was powerfully reinforced when Miguel noticed hundreds of tombstones on the far side of a gulley. Lying flat, they littered desert sand, still partially wrapped in the plastic membrane that was designed to protect those grave markers when they were shipped out here. The tombstones were all moulded from black glass in a variety of shapes: simple oblongs, pyramids; a few were slender obelisks, echoing the design of Cleopatra’s Needle. They all bore the names of the deceased, together with the usual kind of epitaphs that had been around for at least five thousand years—Rest in Peace, In Loving Memory of—, Gone but not forgotten. Many had the likeness of the dead man or woman embedded into the black surface—the image possessing an animation system which revealed faces that constantly moved: smiling, nodding, eyes that were eternally ‘alive’ and brightly twinkling. No attempt had been made to erect the stones upright. They had simply been dumped there, possibly miles away from the graves they were intended to mark. Torn plastic membranes fluttered in the cold breeze. A mournful sight to be sure.

Before Miguel could point out the forlorn dumping ground for tombstones, Culver gave a shriek of dismay. “We’ve been tricked! There is no transit centre!”

Culver pointed at buildings that they believed would offer comfortable accommodation until the ferry collected them, a trio of Lazarus characters, back from the dead—at least that’s what their families must think on hearing the news. However, the only buildings at the end of the path were a collection of flat-topped silos: big industrial-looking buildings, ruined by decay.

Astrid stared at them in dismay. “Those silos are part of the mortuary complex. Just look what’s spilling out through the sides.”

Deceased men and women in their thousands had been stored in the silo. When decay breached the curving walls, the bodies had simply slithered out to form mounds, pretty much like grain would form a mound when leaking in sufficient abundance from a sack. Consequently, there were heaps of corpses at the foot of the silo walls. Though flesh here did not rot, clothing did. Nude bodies, plump with flesh, skins gleaming a youthful glow, all due to whatever exotic elements here preserved the dead.

“You know what the landsman has done?” Astrid’s expression was grim. “He sent us out there to die.”

Culver ran toward the silos, even though the man must have known there would be no cosy bedrooms in those buildings, which were nothing more than makeshift tombs.

Culver shrieked. “We’ve been tricked. They know we’d tell. They’re going to stop the truth from coming out by leaving us to starve!”

Miguel looked at Astrid, her funeral parlour makeup, with its iridescent purple lipstick, the brightest object in this gloomy world. “Do we go back there?” He nodded in the direction of the huge building that housed the recalcitrant conveyor belt that had spilled its grim cargo. “And hope the landsman will let us in?”

Astrid shook her head. “He won’t, and we both know he won’t.”

“Just how do we survive out here? There’s no food.”

Just then, howling, screaming, wide-eyed, lips wet with saliva from all the yelling, Culver came running back. “There are animals back there. Big brutes. I don’t know what they are, but…”

What Culver yelled next couldn’t be made out—the man raced back toward the big building, which was presided over by the landsman, though Culver would undoubtedly find all the entrances sealed shut.

Astrid’s eyes went huge with fear. “Culver’s right. Here they come.”

Loping on all fours, a pair of short limbs at the rear, long limbs at the front, six creatures, belonging to a species Miguel could not identify, appeared from behind one of the cadaver silos. Enormous beasts they were. When they paused to scan the brutal terrain, they reared up onto their powerful hind legs, big faces thrust forward, eyes staring hard into the distance, maybe observing enemies or prey Miguel could not see. When they did stand upright, they were easily twice the height of an adult human being.

Then, terrifyingly, came the inevitable. All six of those monster heads turned from left to right. And that is when they fixed their predatory eyes on Miguel and Astrid. With alarming speed, they moved toward the pair.

“Come on,” she shouted. “The landsman will let us in—I’ll convince him, somehow!” A statement that contradicted the one she’d made just minutes ago. Desperation had kicked in now. A time to clutch at any opportunity that offered a chance of survival.

As they ran, a cold wind tore across the landscape, raising dust. Ahead of them, Culver jogged, exhausted, along the curving path that would take them back to the only building here that offered protection.

“Shortcut!” yelled Miguel, seizing Astrid’s hand, before leaving the path and running into the gully full of mist that glowed with that eerie orange hue. A swift current of liquid ran beneath the mist. Water? Unlikely. The warm fluid was rapid though, tugging at his legs.

Storm winds began to moan across the landscape, rising to sobbing shouts that were so loud the noise alone hurt Miguel’s ears. Meanwhile, a gritty dust had got inside his clothes, causing his shirt collar to become abrasive against the tender skin of his neck, hurting him whenever he turned his head.

Pebbles rolled beneath his feet, making wading difficult. Astrid yelled in dismay as she tripped and fell into the rushing spate beneath the mist. Miguel thrust his hands down through the murk to where the now unseen woman must be. He found the hard roundness of her skull, floating hair wrapping around his hand. Seizing her collar, he pulled her upwards; she emerged, gasping, from the torrent of whatever witch-brew of chemicals ran along the channel. Her face glistened with a wetness that possessed bands of different colours—the effect of liquid rainbows painting her face. Starvation might not be their killer, nor the monsters that ran toward them. Death, itself, might flow along this misty gully.

Flailing their limbs to help maintain their balance, they made it to the bank, then began to scale a hill. Immediately, Miguel saw that Culver had slowed to a plodding walk, his head hanging down until his chin bounced against his chest. Exhaustion had ripped the strength right out of the guy. Culver was clearly too fatigued to even try and save himself when two of the creatures caught up with him. And when the inevitable violence came, it wasn’t even directed at Culver so much, because the two monsters each grabbed hold of Culver then tried to claim their prize, like two children grabbing the same toy and trying to pull it out of the other’s hands.

Culver’s eyes went white with terror. His limbs flailed; his mouth opened in a massive O of agony. Screaming as ligaments snapped, muscle tore asunder, and skin parted at its weakest points to release a gush of blood that steamed and slopped and pooled on dusty ground. Then the creatures were feeding. Their own massive eyes going all dreamy with sheer bliss as they tasted Culver’s blood.

Miguel and Astrid continued up toward the crest of the hill. Once at the top, the landscape spread out before them. A vast plain, now smoky and indistinct as cold winds gouged dust from the ground. Even though the view was a misty one, what was clearly visible were millions and millions of coffins that had been scattered there, as if a mad god had diligently seeded the world with long boxes that contained lifeless flesh. The funeral company hadn’t even dug any graves. No doubt automated craft without human crews had simply disgorged cargos of coffins. Those classically morbid geometric shapes in their millions, carelessly dumped there, was too much for the eye to bear. The very ground beneath his feet pumped out waves of dread and horror that engulfed his mind with a soul-crushing despair. His heart pounded so fiercely his chest ached, and his blood turned cold within his body, sending prickling shivers from his scalp to the soles of his feet.

“Miguel,” she panted, “they’re coming.”

At the bottom of the hill ran another gully, filled with sinister-looking orange vapour. On the far bank, there prowled one of the creatures on all fours, this one much closer than the others. Miguel saw its physique in greater detail, especially the massive bottom jaw that was somehow Neanderthal in appearance. The creature was naked, skin pulled drum-tight over a powerful structure of muscle—there was some quality there that spoke of residual humanity. Miguel wondered if he was in the presence of a hybrid: alien and human mated into grotesque form: the broth of Homo sapiens genes stirred together with the inexplicable quiddity of alien life. Yes, there were exotic characteristics, such as a mane of something that resembled sea-urchin spines, bristling erect the full length of its back, from a bull-thick neck to the knotting muscles of its rump. And the nightmarish way its eyes slid outward from the face into bulging domes of blood-red before withdrawing through slits, back into the fleshy pouches that contained them. Despite the strangeness, a disturbing sense of the familiar—of humanity—of a human body that had been rendered soft and plasticene, before limbs were stretched out at the front, and limbs shortened at the back, and the head then being moulded into the brutish skull he saw now.

The creature reared up onto its back legs when it caught sight of the two humans—those eyes, which had only just retracted into concealing pouches, bulged redly outward, pushing through slits, emerging into the cold breeze to stare with a blazing lust of hunger at Miguel and Astrid. And now it raised its front legs, revealing a pair of three-fingered hands, with an opposable thumb from which extended the curving blade of a claw—one as black as coal—that claw a butchery tool, no doubt, for slicing meat from bone.

Miguel heard the pounding of feet at the same time as Astrid. Both turned to see three of the monsters bounding across the hill toward them.

“I’m scared.” Her voice was small sounding, almost like a little girl’s. “I’m not scared of being dead. It’s knowing how much it will hurt when they catch us.”

“Then we won’t let them catch us!”

Miguel grabbed her hand, and both ran downhill, toward where the lone creature approached them across the gully. Before the monster had made it halfway across, Miguel and Astrid jumped into the chemical river.

He had taken a huge breath of air, hoping he could remain submerged long enough. And the current was swift beneath the mist…if the torrent could carry them away…transport them silently and quickly out into that vast wilderness…away from hungry brutes that would rip away their faces and gouge their bellies with those terrifyingly sharp thumb claws. Miguel kept his eyes tightly closed. His heart pounded as warm liquid surrounded him—like being gripped tight by a wet fist. No water this. The liquid would be hostile to human life. Maybe dangerously toxic. Maybe painfully corrosive. A roar filled his ears—his own lifeblood thundering through veins. His eyes stung as liquid evil penetrated the gap between eyelids and facial skin. Bitterness intruded through even tightly closed lips. Impossible flavours smeared themselves across his tongue.

How can I continue to hold my breath?

However, to return to the surface would reveal him to monsters. And he recalled Culver’s mouth—that massive O shape as agony ripped through his body.

Miguel did not need to swim: the swift current carried him along, just above the riverbed. When he extended his hands downward, his eyes still firmly closed, his fingers encountered rounded skull-shapes—possibly just boulders, or they might be the heads of corpses that had been dumped into the channel.

His heart pulsed more slowly now, pushing the liquid in his veins out to extremities, feeding the brain with a dwindling supply of oxygen. And Miguel surrendered himself to his fate, wondering how long before the hand of Death reached out to touch him.

Hours gone by…days gone by? He had no way of knowing. All he did know was that beneath a sky of gloom, rendered ominous by the weight of clouds, he slithered out of the river onto the shore.

Slowly, he crawled over shingle to higher ground that stretched out into the distance. Once again: coffins. Millions of coffins, randomly scattered—some lying flat, others standing upright, probably upright by sheer chance when, dumped from the transporter, the end of the narrow box embedded itself in desert sand. Upright coffins formed thousands of grim obelisks. All in all, to his eyes, they were grey eggs containing mortal clay.

Miguel managed to stand upright, though the act of standing felt strangely awkward. He looked down at his hands.

And there, at the end of each limb, three fingers, along with an opposable thumb, from which a long black claw emerged, very much like the curving blade of a scimitar.

“Ah…” He understood.

He now knew the truth about this place. The legends were wrong. The cemetery world of Serenity did not resurrect the dead. No…it mutated the living. Serenity’s mysterious charisma transmuted human beings that were immersed in its chemical rivers—this resulted in a diabolical baptism, an evil alchemy of skin, muscle, and bone. Humans were re-formed into huge beasts with Neanderthal jaws and blood-red eyes.

Beasts, Miguel realized, that are forever hungry.

In the distance, more of the same beasts prowled the desert. The monsters would pick up a coffin in both hands, bite off the end of the coffin, then raise it upright before shaking the contents, so they slid down to meet the massive, champing jaws—an image perversely reminiscent of a gourmand devouring wet-bodied oysters from their shells.

Joyously, he bounded across the bleak tract of dust to the nearest coffin, smashed one end open with a rock-hard fist, then raised the coffin so that the deliciously pliable morsel within slid out from its container until the head entered his mouth. As he eagerly fed, his teeth crunching through crisp skull bone, he tasted such lovely flavours, a cascade of delicious juice drenching his lapping tongue.

And as he fed, one of his fellow beasts gambolled playfully up to him, a slab of veined belly-fat swinging from its jaws. There were still smudges of purple lipstick on the creature’s lips. What is more, instinct told him that this was Astrid transformed.

Miguel had his beautiful mate and an entire realm of flavours to explore. All the food he could ever eat, so neatly preserved here in long boxes. In this vast larder. In this world of plenty.

To Sing with the Choir Invisible
by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

It was getting late and Professor Conlan Pomeroy was about to dismiss his graduate students who had attended this monthly dinner gathering to discuss cryptobiology, rather than the evolutionary biology they studied in class and the laboratory. They had had a very useful evening, comparing what they thought about whether or not aliens had actually arrived on Earth, which would account for the alarming outbreak of unexplainable deaths that had been documented in the Northern Hemisphere. No usual causes would account for them, and the Internet was bristling with rumors—the numbers of theories increased steadily from week to week as the inexplicable deaths continued, and the mystery deepened.

“Two thousand nine hundred twenty-one deaths that we know of, almost all in the Northern Hemisphere.” Professor Pomeroy had cautioned to begin their discussion. “We have very few accounts from the Southern Hemisphere, which we need to pursue.”

“Not that we should consider anything they offer as reliable, all things considered,” Brandon Horning countered, not surprisingly. Brandon had insisted that there were no aliens on Earth and was convinced he was right—he was developing a strong case of pomposity early in his budding academic career.

“Just what do you have against the Southern Hemisphere—or is it only Africa and South America you mean? Australia’s not included, nor New Zealand?” Hallie Nutrebon, African-American and proud of it, had disagreed emphatically, as she always did. If aliens were not responsible for the heaps of chemicals, tissue, and minerals that were all that remained of the humans who were the victims of the peculiar subsonic bursts that were the apparent cause of these most perplexing deaths, then what was?

Dawn Whitty chimed in, proclaiming that she was convinced that there was no reason to look to aliens to explain things—national hostilities could account for the deaths as the result of covert tests on some new, individually-targeted weapon.

Seth Osterland, as self-effacing as he always was, wanted to hold off on forming an opinion until more evidence could be gathered. “No reason to go rushing off on wild hunches.”

Lorelei Murchison, slender, intense, and ferociously opinionated, stated her belief that the deaths were incidental. “We’re dealing with a kind of alien presence that is likely to prove to be a probe of some sort, here to analyse the various lifeforms found on this planet as a prelude to possible exploration, not an actual alien manifestation, and not intentionally destructive. We don’t need to assume that there is an active invasion underway.”

“What about those subsonic bursts?” Professor Pomeroy asked. “We obviously can’t record them in any effective way. What do they have to do with the deaths? Or are those bursts a result, not a cause, of the deaths?” He sat back and watched as his students wrestled with his questions.

Padric Daleman, who thought of himself as the most philosophical of the group, proposed that there was nothing alien about the deaths. “Evolution is still continuing on Earth and this might be a local problem, a mutation of a species here on Earth, but in a new form. Subsonic bursts—if that is what they are—could also be associated with the emergence of a new species. It’s something we have to figure out and deal with, or go the way of the dinosaurs. Had to happen sometime.”

Only Chloe Hastwell, meticulous, neat, and thoughtful, kept her opinions to herself, poking at her dessert with her fork while her fellow grad students had at one another over their cheesecake, coffee, and port. Twice that evening she had declined to be dragged into the dispute, finding no enjoyment in this kind of speculation—she wanted some sort of verifiable base to work from, not endless “what ifs.” She sat, her expression one of mild distraction, staring at the low-burning candles in the five elaborate candelabra that stood at regular intervals on the long table.

Professor Pomeroy pushed back from the head of the table and rose. “Stimulating as this evening has been, it’s growing late and we have class at eight tomorrow morning. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need my beauty sleep, so I’ll wish you all good night.”

His company knew the drill. They abandoned their places and clustered toward the front door with ritual thanks, before stepping out into the English-style garden and onto the graveled path illuminated by solar-powered lamps marking the way to the street, where their cars waited.

As usual, Chloe lagged a little behind the rest, dawdling so as not to be dragged into more imaginative extrapolation. She arrived at her Rav4 hybrid after two of her colleagues—Hallie Nutrebon and Padric Daleman—were already driving away from Doctor Pomeroy’s English house that nestled in the eucalyptus trees that mixed with redwoods in the Berkeley Hills.

“Hey, Chloe,” Seth Osterland called out, pausing in the act of opening the door of his ten-year-old Subaru. “Why didn’t you say much tonight? You’re usually more willing to participate.”

Chloe did not answer at once; when she did, she sounded apologetic. “I guess because I agree with you. We don’t have enough information to start shopping theories, as much fun as that can be.”

“Oh,” said Seth, making no move to get into his car quite yet.

Encouraged by his lack of response, Chloe continued, “If we had some idea about why the victims were chosen—if it wasn’t just because of dumb luck—we might get enough sense of what’s going on, and that would give us something to work with.” She unlocked her door and pulled it open. “Sorry, Seth. I’ve got to get going. I’ve still got a thirty-minute drive ahead of me.”

Seth flushed, looking faintly purple in the streetlight. “Sorry,” he said, hurrying to get into his Forester. He slammed his door more emphatically than usual.

Chloe watched him hurry away, then got into her Rav4 and made her way toward Grizzly Peak Boulevard, the first lap of her drive toward Fish Ranch Road and the freeway that led past Orinda. This was the route of less traffic and, even at this time of night, shaved five minutes off her journey to her Uncle Loren’s home, where she rented the au pair unit at the rear of the main house. On the way she found herself puzzling about the few things that were known about the peculiar killings that were causing panic throughout the Northern Hemisphere. All the victims had been adults. Every death—that we know of, she added to herself—had left messy heaps of minerals, chemicals, patches of tissue, and bloody liquid where the person had been ten minutes before, usually (though not always) on the very spot where he or she had disappeared from sight. That last aspect stopped Chloe in her musing. What made the victims vanish? Was that caused by an unknown force field, or was something else at work? Did the subsonic bursts have something to do with it? Why and how were the victims chosen? Every person who had witnessed these murders insisted that the victims had simply vanished before the…their residue, Chloe decided, was discovered.

She crossed over the Caldecott Tunnels, made the final turn down to the freeway, and merged with the traffic, headed east into the warm September night.

Uncle Loren was still up, practicing on his bassoon for the San Jose Symphony’s next week’s concert. He was a lean, tall fellow, who looked all elbows and knees. His lived-in face showed every one of his fifty-six years, and his perpetual demeanor of sardonic disbelief was displayed at full power. He broke off as he heard Chloe park next to his five-year-old Lexus. After a moment’s consideration, he put his temperamental woodwind down on the chair he vacated and went to let her into the house, moving carefully around a second, larger version of the instrument that waited on an open case next to his chair. He was secretly glad to have an excuse to break off. “The Rites of Spring” was a demanding piece for the orchestra, especially the bassoon, and he had been working on the opening solo notes. As he went to greet his niece, he sang softly to himself, “I am not an English horn: this is too high for me. I am not an English—” He interrupted himself as he pulled the front door open just as Chloe reached the porch. “Come on in,” he greeted her.

“You’re still up?” Chloe asked, accepting his invitation.

“How’d it go?” he inquired, summoning up some interest. He closed the door. “Keep in mind that you’re the scientist and I’m the musician.”

She hesitated, then said, “We were discussing those weird deaths—the ones that leave bits of minerals and tissue behind?”

“I’ve heard about it. Sounds like a bad sci-fi story to me.” He raised an eyebrow, encouraging her to tell him more.

“I wish it were,” Chloe said with feeling; she set down her tote, ready to talk awhile with Uncle Loren.

“Did you reach any conclusions?” Loren started into the great room, going past his music stand and bassoons to the very modern dining table.

“Not really.” She hesitated before pulling out her usual chair.

Loren nodded. “The usual academic finger-fu—” He stopped himself. “Sorry.”

“I agree with you,” said Chloe, smiling for his benefit. She had already realized that he wanted to talk; she saw him gesture for her to sit down. “What’s on your mind?” she asked in the hope of shifting their discussion to music. “What’s your opinion of the conductor?”

“Haven’t made up my mind yet; we’re still getting used to him,” her uncle obliged her. “I just have to exorcise Stravinsky if I’m going to get to sleep tonight.” He ran his hand through his badger-gray hair and took the chair at the head of the table, belatedly asking, “You want anything? Coffee? Something stronger?” He made a one-sided smile and added, “I have spiced rum and Amaretto.”

Chloe shrugged. “What are you going to have?” It was her usual ploy when he made such an offer.

“Coffee with Amaretto. Light on the Amaretto.” He stood up again. “I’ll make you one, just in case.” He walked toward the kitchen, glancing back over his shoulder as he went.

She did not say anything until her uncle was in the kitchen. “I need to do some exorcizing, too.”

There was noise from Loren’s preparations, and then Loren said, “That disturbing, was it? Your discussion?”

“Perplexing,” she suggested, frowning.

“That’s an interesting choice of words, perplexing. Care to elaborate?” Loren observed. “Whipped cream on top?”

“No, thanks,” she said, not specifying which of his questions she was answering. “After Pomeroy’s dinner, I’m well over my daily calorie allotment.”

“Whatever you like,” her uncle said, pouring a dollop of Amaretto into both mugs of steaming coffee. “Elaborate away.”

“I’ll have to be out of the house early tomorrow,” she told him. “Which means commute traffic.”

“Which you’re allowing for,” said Loren. “So you’ll be out the door by six at the latest?”

“No doubt.” said Chloe.

“Are you going by Fish Ranch Road?”

“Probably,” Chloe responded automatically; it was an exchange that they had so often that it had become a litany between them.

Loren put the mugs on a small tray and returned to the great room, setting one mug in front of Chloe. “The Amaretto will counteract the caffeine.” He resumed his place at the head of the table. “Why so early? If you care to tell me about it.”

Chloe tried to come up with an answer. “It’s Pomeroy’s pet project. The same events we were talking about tonight at dinner.”

“And you have to be there because…?”

“There’s some kind of Zoom conference with biologists in Chicago and Boston. Pomeroy wants me and his other pre-phds”—which she pronounced prefuds—“to attend along with his teaching assistant.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” asked Loren. “To be asked?”

Chloe picked up her mug, tried a little sip and set the mug down again. “Too hot.”

“Let it stand for a few minutes,” he suggested.

“Good idea,” Chloe said, sounding worn out.

Loren recognized that his niece was avoiding framing an answer; he persisted. “If being asked to attend the Zoom meeting isn’t good, why not? Isn’t it a good thing to be asked to attend those kinds of meetings? Particularly prefuds?”

“Pomeroy is trying to get me to tell him what I think about the strange deaths,” she said in a rush. “He’s up to something.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Loren was truly curious.

Chloe shrugged.

“Hey, Chloe, this is me, your uncle. I’m on your side. Talk to me.”

“Because I haven’t figured anything out yet,” Chloe admitted, hunching her shoulders. “I don’t know what I think yet.”

“Why is that a bad thing? No one else has either, right? Not really.” Loren picked up his mug. “This is a toast to your success.”

“Whatever that may be,” Chloe said as Loren took a first sip. “Are you going to practice some more tonight?”

Loren nodded, licking his lips. “The contrabassoon. I need a change from those damned opening notes of “Rites.” Beware of honks, and low notes. It’s pretty hard to handle, especially on the lowest notes.”

“Like minor earthquakes,” Chloe added for him. “I don’t know how you can play that thing. Don’t you ever worry about…damage?”

“Damage?” Loren repeated.

“You know—like those subterranean groans that the faults make, that most of us can’t hear? Could that have an impact on your health?”

“I wonder about that, too, especially when I play flat.” He winked to show Chloe that he was joking. “Don’t worry. Your unit is far enough from the main house that you shouldn’t hear it.” He realized that his humor had failed. “Not funny.”

Chloe took refuge in another hot sip.

Loren tried again. “So, do you have any good ideas yet?”

“I’ll let you know if I see you in the morning,” she said, and made another try at her mug. This time it was drinkable, and she gulped down a third of the contents.

Her uncle nodded his approval. “Sleep on what you’ve been trying to work out about those deaths. You may have a theory by morning.”

“You mean ‘Morning is wiser than evening’?” she asked, recalling one of many aphorisms her grandmother, and Uncle Loren’s mother, used frequently.

“She really was one for quotations, wasn’t she?” Loren smiled at the memory. “Mom had a maxim for every occasion, and she wasn’t afraid to use them.”

“She sure did,” said Chloe, finishing up her Amarettoed coffee and getting up from the table. She picked up her tote, prepared to leave.

“Sleep well, and good luck tomorrow,” Loren said, waving to her as she went to the side-door.

Chloe put down her tote next to her bed and undressed, then showered, toweled dry, brushed her teeth, tugged on her pajamas, and lay down, hoping to sleep well. After setting her old-fashioned alarm clock to 5:10, she tugged the duvet up to her shoulders, pummeled the pillows into a nest for her head, and told herself to fall asleep quickly.

But midnight came and went, and Chloe was still staring at the ceiling, half-awake while scraps of thought chased one another through her mind. Bits and pieces of the dinner at Professor Pomeroy’s mixed with Uncle Loren’s bassoons, and then she recalled something about one of Tesla’s experiments, something about sound generation. During the kaleidoscopic images of her dreams, she heard her grandmother’s voice warbling To sing with the choir celestial, the last word occasionally morphing into invisible. She tried to make sense of it all, and at some time in her efforts, she fell deeply asleep, still puzzled.

Uncle Loren had been right about the traffic; it was crawling westward at fifteen miles per hour, slowing as she neared the Caldecott Tunnels. She carefully edged into the right-hand lane to exit onto Fish Ranch Road, when a BMW veered into the lane ahead of her and bolted for the upward-curving ramp, the impatient driver waving a raised finger at her as he went.

Chloe slowed down as she drove up to the stop sign, breathing deeply to ease her suddenly racing pulse. She signaled for a right turn and started the climb up the winding, two-lane road, staying just under the speed limit as she made her way upward, saying softly to herself, “It isn’t the what, it’s the why. Why are these things—if they are real—disassembling people?” Finding no answer to her question, she decided to concentrate on driving. She took the shortcut that came down behind the Claremont Hotel, then Ashby down to Telegraph. From there she sought out the new Biological Sciences building—Childress Hall—on Durant, across from the art museum. Professor Pomeroy’s lab and offices were on the top floor. The real problem was parking, and she finally found a place on the third floor of the parking structure half a block below Telegraph at Durant, leaving her a two-and-a-half block walk to Childress. As she shouldered her tote, she glanced at her watch and was satisfied to see that she would be ten minutes early.

“Hey, Hastwell,” she heard behind her. It was Brandon Horning, rigged out in his academic best: tweed blazer, burgundy turtleneck, slightly worn jeans, and running shoes. He had his laptop in a zippered case, which he carried as if it were a football. The morning fog had not yet burned off, but Brandon was wearing his wrap-around sunglasses. “Wait up!”

“Good morning, Brandon,” she said, slowing down to keep pace with him.

“Have you come up with a theory yet?” He sounded smug, which annoyed Chloe enough to make her raise her voice.

“You’ll find out when we’re all together in Pomeroy’s lab.” She picked up speed again and reached the door to Childress’ lobby a good twenty feet ahead of Horning. She pulled the door open and hurried toward the elevators instead of taking the stairs, and had the satisfaction of having the elevator doors close before Horning could catch up with her.

As the elevator moved upward, Chloe calmed herself, keeping her thoughts on the why of the deaths rather than the what or how. By the time the cab doors whisked open, the glimmering of a possible explanation was forming in her thoughts. She stepped out of the elevator and made off in the direction of Professor Pomeroy’s part of the top floor. The meeting room was squeezed between Pomeroy’s lab and office. As she went in, she was pleased to see she was the first to arrive. She turned on the overhead lights, selected a chair at the long, oval meeting table, put her tote next to her chair, and took her laptop out. Now she was ready.

Two minutes later, Brandon Horning came through the door, glowering at the sight of Chloe. He took a stance and was about to speak when Lorelei Murchison burst through the door, pushed around Brandon, and pulled out a chair for herself.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed as she dropped into it. “You wouldn’t believe the traffic on 880.” She pulled a comb from her very large purse and went to work on her hair. “I must look a fright.” She did not wait for a response, but hurriedly emptied her purse and searched among the pile for her tablet.

The door flew open and Padric Daleman rushed into the room. “Am I late?” he asked as he chose a chair across from Brandon. “Okay, Hastwell. What’s your latest theory?”

Before Brandon had a chance to expound, Lorelei broke in. “I don’t know any more today than I did yesterday,” she announced, looking around the table. “Pomeroy isn’t here yet?”

“No, thank goodness,” said Padric, and was echoed by Dawn Whitty, who had slipped into the room, a large mug of Cuppa’s coffee in one hand and her laptop case in the other.

The next grad student through the door was Seth Osterland, who looked as if he had slept in his clothes; his hair was standing out in irregular spikes, and he yawned as he took a place at the table. “I don’t know about you all, but I’ve racked my brains and haven’t come up with—”

Whatever he had not come up with was lost as Professor Pomeroy entered the meeting room, carefully groomed and bristling with energy. He paused to look around at the graduate students, all of whom were staring at him expectantly.

“Good. Most of you are here.” He moved to the head of the table; the television screen behind him framed his head like a rectangular halo. “One or two of you might get a major opportunity today, so pay attention.” He looked at his watch. “Where’s Nutrebon?”

“No idea,” said Brandon, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

“We’ll start without her,” Pomeroy decided aloud, and reached for the remote for the television that lay in the small drawer at the head of the table. It was one of the very advanced ones, with a keyboard for access to Zoom. “We have people waiting.”

Once the screen provided the appropriate codes, a pair of faces emerged, one on either side of the television: Eli Derrington in Chicago was dressed for a safari; the noted cryptozoologist moved so energetically that he almost seemed ready to explode. The other face on the screen was the distinguished Nobel Laureate, Kristoff Konstantine. His disheveled white hair — Konstantine’s internationally recognized trademark — glistened. He was dressed in faded navy blue running gear. Both men greeted Pomeroy with the casualness of long association.

“Good morning, Kris, Eli,” Pomeroy said, then introduced his grad students. “We’ve all been working on the problem you sent to me; I’ve passed it on to this lot. I’ll let the prefuds explain their thoughts to you.”

Brandon was the first on his feet. “I’ve given this problem a great deal of thought,” he began portentously, preparing to launch into his theories, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Hallie Nutrebon, who rushed into the meeting room, her Black Lives Matter tee-shirt warning that she had a theory regarding the mysterious deaths to propose, and that she anticipated opposition. She chose one of the three remaining chairs, sat down, and brought out her tablet.

“Sorry,” she said by way of greeting. “Missed my bus.”

“We’ve just got started,” said Pomeroy.

“I am about to put forth a theory,” Brandon told her, full of umbrage at Hallie’s untimely entry. His pique only increased as Lionel Hawks, Pomeroy’s teaching assistant, finally came in, offering no explanation for his tardiness.

“Carry on,” said Pomeroy without introducing Hawks, which Chloe realized meant that Pomeroy’s TA was already in the loop.

Disgruntled, Brandon cleared his throat and held forth. “Assuming that these deaths are accurately reported, then it appears to me that although the manner of death is perplexing, that it does not mean that aliens from some other planet must necessarily be the cause.” He took a deep breath and continued with his theory that genetic anomalies combined with environmental pollution had triggered this dreadful result. “So we can be sure that aliens have nothing to do with it.”

As soon as Brandon was through, Seth warned against leaping to conclusions with so little information to work from, and outlined broader research before settling on any theory. Lorelei went next, expanding on her belief that the deaths were the result of alien probes, here to assess the nature of the most prominent life forms on Earth. Padric opened his old-fashioned composition book and got to his feet ahead of Dawn Whitty. Reading from his notes, he opined that humanity could have turned an evolutionary corner—there was no good reason to assume that the deaths were extraterrestrial in origins. When he sat down again, Dawn rose and put forth her notion that covert military development could be the source of these provocative deaths; she cautioned that it could be a prototype that got out of hand. “Like viruses that got out of the labs where they were developed and ended up killing millions of people,” she concluded.

This possibility was rejected by most of the students, even though Professor Derrington nodded twice as Dawn was speaking.

When she sat down, Pomeroy motioned to Chloe. “You’ve been silent quite a while on this topic. Would you care to tell us the reason for this?”

Chloe blushed as she stood. “I think we’re approaching this whole mystery the wrong way around. We’re trying to work out what’s doing this. I think we’ll know the what once we know the why.” She paused, expecting to be challenged on her position regarding the deaths. No one spoke, so she went on. “Most living creatures do what they do for fairly simple reasons—for nourishment, to reproduce, to be secure—and I believe if we can identify which of these needs are being met by the killings, we will be able to define what the instruments and purpose of these deaths are, and from that, we can deal with them. If we can figure out what those very low sounds that precede the killing are, we might be able to reduce the deadliness of the attacks.”

“How do you propose to communicate with them?” To Chloe’s astonishment, it was Professor Konstantine who asked. “Do you have any idea about how to approach them?”

“I’ll figure that out when I know the why,” she replied, startled by her own audacity. Embarrassed, she sat down.

Hallie got to her feet at once and began to put forth her thoughts, speaking rapidly, giving no opportunity for interruption.

While most of the prefuds listened, Chloe stared at the far wall, trying to come up with an explanation for her uncharacteristic assertiveness. Padric was halfway through his take on the deaths. “—which we can view metaphorically as well as actually. There must be something in the victims that attracted the attention of whatever-they-are. If we can identify that, we should be able to develop a way to immunize likely subjects so that they will not attract the beings—whatever they may be—and we can then work out an effective way to communicate with—”

“You don’t know if they want to communicate with us, Padric” said Lorelei, running out of patience. “Or if they would recognize any sounds we make as communication. Chloe’s right about that: their hearing may respond to much lower pitches than any sounds we make.”

Seth muttered something under his breath.

“Are you sure about that?” Brandon inquired sarcastically.

Chloe did her best to change a giggle to a cough.

“Let me show you something,” Konstantine said, and his side of the screen was filled with tracings of complex sounds. “This was picked up during the last observed death. The instrument can ‘hear’ well below what we can. This was recorded in the Pacific three days ago, where a woman in the Galapagos was shaken to bits. This is the sound that came ashore shortly before she died.”

“Which goes to prove what?” Hallie asked before anyone else could speak.

Again, Chloe spoke up. “That there is a purpose in the choice of victims,” she said almost as the conclusion emerged in her thoughts.

Brandon raised his voice. “Can we get back to what we were discussing?” He cleared his throat, preparing to continue.

Unexpectedly, Pomeroy stopped him. “I think we should discuss what Chloe is proposing.”

“But it is wholly unsupported and—” Brandon objected.

“Sit down, Mister Horning,” Professor Pomeroy said quietly.

The gathering at the table went silent and still; Professor Pomeroy almost never gave such orders.

Chastened, Brandon sat down, his face rigid with embarrassment.

“Go on, Chloe,” Pomeroy said, returning to his usual geniality.

Chloe swallowed to banish her sudden wash of nerves. “Whatever is doing this, it seems to me that it needs whatever it gets from apparently low-pitch-vibrating a human into his or her composite parts. The two most usual reasons for attacks among the animal species we are familiar with are nutrition and reproduction. What we need to find out is which this is, and how we can deal with it.”

On the television screen, Professor Konstantine gave a soft whistle of approval. “Can you join my expedition to the Galapagos Islands? We leave in three weeks. Is your passport up to date?”

Before the meeting room burst out in excitement, Chloe had one splendid thought: that she might be able to sing with the choir invisible, the source of those astonishing tracings. That realization sealed her determination to take advantage of this remarkable offer. “My passport has three more years to run. Thank you, thank you, I’d love to go.”

“You don’t know what you might get into,” Seth warned her.

“That’s the point,” Chloe said, knowing beyond doubt that her decision would change her life.

“It’s dangerous,” said Pomeroy. “I don’t want you to underestimate the risk you’re taking.”

“It’s worth the risk, whatever it may be,” said Chloe. “It’s dangerous, yes, but think what we can learn, and what it can mean in terms of addressing the problem.”

Pomeroy nodded. “I’ll email you the paperwork and you can bring it to class on Monday, if you still want to go.”

“Oh, I will,” Chloe pledged.

The meeting ended with Pomeroy, Konstantine, and Derrington exchanging pleasant goodbyes. Chloe gathered her laptop and tote and rushed out into the hall before any of her fellow prefuds could say anything more. She was so giddy with excitement that she almost forgot where she had parked her car as she burst out of Childress Hall, and paused to get her bearings. The Galapagos Islands! A real mystery to unravel, and with a Nobel Laureate, no less! She was going to have a busy three weeks.

Uncle Loren heard Chloe out dubiously as they shared brunch on Sunday. “Are you certain about this?” It was not the first time he had asked this since Chloe had returned from her meeting at Childress Hall. This was the last brunch they would share until Chloe returned from South America. “These things are killers—worse than killers, they are obliterators.”

“But we need to find out what they are after,” said Chloe at her most reasonable. “If we can find out the why, we’ll have made contact with creatures wholly unlike ourselves. It will be our first real step off this rock.”

“You mean our planet?” her uncle inquired politely.

She poked with her fork at the remaining bits of eggs Benedict. “It’s what I’ve been studying for since I was in high school.”

“But everyone who’s encountered the…the whatever-they-are has been killed,” he protested.

“That we know of,” said Chloe, undeterred. “We might find survivors who can tell us what the aliens are seeking, and that’s the first step. I wish I could explain it to you.”

“Me, too,” said her uncle.

“I’m not going alone, Uncle Loren; Professor Pomeroy is going and so are three other prefuds: Padric, Hallie, and Seth will be going, too. And Professor Konstantine is famous for his search for extraterrestrials. If anyone can figure this out, he can.”

Loren did his best not to sigh. “I get your point. I do. I do. But this is scary, and you could end up as heaps of tissue and minerals. I don’t think you understand how hazardous this whole undertaking is.”

“But I do,” Chloe told him. “I might get killed, but I might find answers, and that’s worth all the risk.” That thought had been with her since she had decided to go with Professor Konstantine.

This time Loren did sigh. “I want to support you, but not when that support could lead to catastrophe.”

Chloe drank the last of her mimosa. “I get that, and I appreciate your concern.”

“But,” said Uncle Loren.

“But I’m going. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

“That’s a strange choice of words.”

“It’s the way I see it,” Chloe assured him, not adding that either way, she could sing with the choir invisible, and that justified the undertaking.

“Okay, but I don’t like it,” said Loren.

“That’s fine with me—I like it enough for both of us.” She got up from the table and picked up her glass and plate, ready to carry them into the kitchen. “I’m going to finish packing. If you’ll drive me to Professor Pomeroy’s tomorrow, I’d be grateful.”

Uncle Loren capitulated. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Send me a postcard while you’re gone.”

Chloe smiled. “Will do.” With that she took her first step on her wonderful adventure, spirits high, and hope shutting out all the sensible reservations that had worried her while she readied herself for her encounter with the unknown beings that were ravaging the Earth.

Too Many to Count
by Jeremy Hepler

Dean “Tuck” Garrison didn’t hear the wet thud on the carport roof when the pod landed. Eight hours of fielding calls for Blue Cross Blue Shield had dulled his senses. Despite two cups of coffee and the brightness of his laptop screen, he was struggling to keep his eyes open much less focused on the child psych notes he needed to study for tomorrow’s test.

His boyfriend, Miguel, and sister, Ruby, didn’t hear the splat either. Miguel had dozed off on the couch while watching the Rangers game, and Ruby sat on the floor in front of the couch, sketchpad on her lap, earbuds in her ears, nodding to a beat as her hand worked.

Tuck’s Chihuahua, Kami, did hear the noise, though. She rose off Tuck’s feet under the dining room table and trotted with a purpose through the doggie door out into the backyard. Within seconds she erupted in an aggressive, this-is-my-territory yipping, and Tuck closed his laptop. He made his way to the window near the back door and parted the blinds just in time to see Kami dart off the porch, running toward the side of the moonlit yard that butted up against the carport.

Tuck rapped on the glass. “Kami! No! Don’t!” He tried the porch light a few times before remembering the bulb had gone out a few weeks earlier.

The hollering roused Miguel from his sleep, and Ruby pulled an earbud free. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Kami took off after something again,” Tuck said.

Ruby shook her head in amused disbelief. “She’ll never learn, will she?”

In the thirteen months they’d lived in the rental house on a two-acre property west of Fort Worth, Kami had been in spats with feral cats, raccoons, squirrels, and God knows what else. She’d attack anything that moved. On one occasion, she received five stitches in her belly for her efforts; on the most recent, she lost partial sight in her left eye.

“I doubt it,” Tuck said. “I better go check on her. I can’t afford another vet bill.”

He slipped on the flip-flops he kept next to the back door and then confirmed his shirt was tucked into his shorts. For as long as he could remember, he’d insisted on tucking in his shirt. It didn’t matter where he was—home, school, church, the lake, mowing the lawn. Or what he was wearing—shorts, jeans, sweatpants, pajamas, slacks. Like carrying a security blanket or brandishing a shield, tucking in his shirt (or undershirt in sweater weather) made him feel complete, confident, equipped to endure. According to his mom, the habit began when he was four, shortly after his father ran off with another woman, and the nickname “Tuck,” which stemmed from her affectionately calling him “My Little Tucker,” soon followed.

Miguel jumped to his feet. “Wait, I want to go, too. Just let me grab a smoke from the bedroom real quick.”

According to Burke County Kami was officially Tuck’s dog, but Miguel had been the one to bring her into their lives. He’d bought her for fifty bucks from a lady in a grocery store parking lot two years back (“She practically jumped out of the box into my arms. I couldn’t just leave her there. The way she looked at me with those big brown eyes.”). But since he’d lived in a no-pets apartment complex at the time, he took her to his new boyfriend’s home: Tuck’s mom’s house. Tuck agreed to watch the energetic dog for a week or two until Miguel worked something else out, but within a day or two he’d fallen in love with her. They came up with the name Kami together, short for Kamikaze.

Ruby aimed her sketchpad Tuck’s way after Miguel left the room. She was a year and a half younger than Tuck, and along with having their mom’s petite frame and disarming smile, was following in their mom’s footsteps by majoring in art history. She spent every free hour she had creating—whether drawing or painting or whatever—somehow, someway.

“What do you think?” she asked. “We’re supposed to sketch a representation of our ideal animal self.”

Tuck took the pad to get a closer look. She’d drawn a raging waterfall with a huge tree lording over it, the leaves twisted by wild wind. In the crotch of a limb jutting out over the turbulent waters, almost within reach of the spray, a tiny yellow bird sat in a tiny nest, calm and content amidst the chaos.

“I love it,” Tuck asked. “I don’t know how you can draw something this detailed in such a short amount of time.”

Ruby simpered, looking pleased with herself.

He passed the pad back to her. “You should take a picture and send it to Mom.”

Ruby positioned the pad on the couch and was snapping pictures when Miguel returned with a cigarette dangling from his lips. “I’m ready,” he announced. “She’s still barking like crazy out there, so she probably hasn’t—”

The yips suddenly gave way to sharp yelps. And as the yelps faded to silence, he locked eyes with Tuck.

“Shit,” Tuck said, and turned toward the door.

He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. He unlocked it, twisted and jerked, but the latched chain stopped his efforts after a few inches. “Damn it!” He unlatched the chain, threw open the door and hurried outside with Miguel on his heels.

They stopped on the edge of the porch and scanned the yard.

Tuck fished his cellphone out of his pocket, turned on the flashlight and aimed the beam to the right, highlighting the hurricane fence that bordered the huge backyard. “She went that way.”

They searched around the compost bin nestled up against the metal fence, played the light over the trash cans and recycling containers next to that, calling out her name, whistling, but saw no signs of her or any other animal.

“Maybe she got out again,” Miguel suggested. “Chased after a raccoon that was messing around by the trash cans or something.”

“No way,” Tuck said. “She didn’t have enough time to dig another hole, and I checked the gates earlier and they were shut.”

Continuing to call and whistle, they moved along the fence-line toward the shed in the corner of the yard. The shed was propped up on cinderblocks, leaving a good six to ten inches underneath, a perfect hideout for rabbits, snakes, or other small critters.

“Maybe she’s under the shed,” Tuck said. “Remember…”

He froze when his phone’s light landed on a mound of dark movement near the fence where it separated the backyard from the carport. It wasn’t Kami, but it looked like a Kami-sized mound. His chest filled with dread as he inched forward, casting brighter light on the mound, separating what had initially looked like a single thing into individual forms. Five or six of them.

“What the hell are those?” Miguel whispered, grasping Tuck’s upper arm and forcing him to a stop. “Are they…rats?”

Tuck shook his head. They were similar in size to rats, but definitely not rats. They were smooth and black with light specks buried in the darkness here and there, as though carved out of the starry night sky. From where he stood, he couldn’t make out any specific features, but he could faintly hear them. They were burbling.

“Do you hear that?” Tuck asked.

Miguel aimed his ear their way for a moment. “Yeah. Sounds like running water.” His grip tightened on Tuck’s arm, and he pointed at the carport roof. “What is that?”

Tuck angled the flashlight upward and lit the pod. It was about the size of an average wrecking ball, give or take, and had the same dark, smooth, night-sky exterior as the creatures. The top was flayed open in precise flaps, implying it had opened voluntarily rather than being busted out of like an eggshell.

“The noise is getting louder,” Miguel whispered, and Tuck moved the beam back to the ground.

The creatures had made up half of the distance between them, leaving what Tuck could now see was Kami’s mauled corpse in their wake. They were moving on all fours, bounding, front legs slightly longer than the back like miniature hyenas.

“Kami!” Tuck yelled in desperation. His heart begged him to rush to his dog’s side, but instinct demanded he run. He took off for the porch, Miguel right there with him.

Ruby was watching from the open doorway. “What’s going on?”

“Get inside!” Tuck hollered, his flip-flops flying off as he ran.

Miguel reached the door first and ushered Ruby inside.

Tuck stole a glance back over his shoulder before shutting the door but didn’t see the creatures. He could still hear them, though, burbling, closer and closer.

Miguel parted the blinds on the window near the back door, eyes wide with nervous anticipation.

“Do you see them?” Tuck asked, locking the door.

“See what?” Ruby replied.

“There they are,” Miguel said. “They’re on the porch.” He snapped his gaze to Tuck. “The doggie door.”

Tuck began sliding the blocking panel down, but before he had it locked into place, the bottom flap of plastic pushed open and two of the creatures forced their way into the house.

Ruby squealed, dropped her phone, and hopped onto the couch.

Miguel followed suit with the elevation-is-good reflex, climbing onto the table behind him, knocking Tuck’s coffee mug and laptop to the floor.

The creatures paused a few feet from Tuck and quieted. Then they twisted in small circles, as though surveying the room.

Other than in the corny Syfy Channel shows Miguel loved to watch around Halloween, Tuck had never seen anything like them. Not in any of the biology or zoology classes he’d aced. Not on any of the National Geographic specials he’d binged. They had no tails, no obvious eyes or ears, and slightly glistened in the bright light. The lower half of their front legs were honed to fine needle points and three tiny sickle-shaped toes adorned the bottom of the back ones. Spideresque pincers protruded from the oblong bulbs serving as their heads.

Tuck backpedaled, trying to get some distance while keeping his eyes on them, but he only made it a few feet before they burbled and charged him. Driven by youth league soccer instincts, he side-kicked the lead one with all he had, and it slammed into the hearth with a squelching thud. Viscid purple goo squirted across the bricks with the impact, and its burble faded.

The second creature leapt onto Tuck’s right calf. Hooked its tiny claws into his skin, stabbed its needle-tipped legs into muscle, and tore into his flesh with its pincers.

Pain knifed up Tuck’s leg. He screamed and grabbed the creature with his right hand. It felt tacky and gelatinous, like a water balloon covered in doughnut glaze. When he jerked, it clenched its claws tighter, jabbed its pointed legs up and down faster, all while its pincers sliced. But he was able to wrench it free and hurl it into the door, leaving a purple splatter just above the doggie door similar to the one on the hearth.

“That one’s alive,” Ruby yelled.

The creature near the hearth was on all fours again, oozing purple from a gash on its torso, struggling to stay upright. Ruby hopped off the couch, grabbed a dictionary off the bookshelf and slammed it onto the creature. She jumped up and down on the Merriam Webster until it was nearly flush with the floor, ropes of purple liquid shooting out from underneath.

Following Ruby’s lead, Miguel hopped off the table when the injured creature near the doggie door started to rise. “Toss me a book, Ruby!”

She threw him the thickest book on the shelf—The Bread Bible—and as he smashed the creature, she squatted in front of her brother who had sat on the floor to examine his calf. She covered her mouth with her hand when he twisted his leg, revealing the wound. Blood gushed from the jagged mess of shredded skin and muscle.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Are you okay?”

Miguel appeared behind her, knelt and eyed Tuck’s leg.

In contrast to the distressed look on his face, Tuck nodded.

Miguel removed his t-shirt and began wrapping the wound. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

Ruby stepped back to give Miguel room to work, glanced at the Merriam Webster, The Bread Bible, the splat on the hearth, the one on the back door. “What are those things?”

Tuck met eyes with her. “I have no idea.”

“Where’d they come from? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I think…from a pod or something on top of the carport.”

Ruby’s expression screamed confusion. “What do you mean by ‘pod’?”

Tuck didn’t bother trying to elaborate. He couldn’t. Not fully. He was just as confused as she was.

Her gaze cut to the doggie door, and her brow rose, eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, no.” Her hand found the hollow of her throat. “Did they get Kami?”

An unspoken message of sadness passed between Tuck and Miguel, then Tuck swallowed down the bubble of emotion in his throat and slowly nodded.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” Ruby said, searching her brother’s eyes. “How many of them were out there?”

“Maybe six or seven,” he said, and Miguel nodded in agreement.

“We killed two, so that means…” Ruby hustled to the window overlooking the porch, raised the blinds and leaned her face to within an inch of the glass. She cupped her hands around her eyes. “Uh, guys. You need to come over here.” She looked at them. “There’s way more than that now.”

“How many?” Tuck asked, following Miguel to the window, favoring his wounded leg.

“I don’t know,” Ruby said, turning back toward the window. “There’s too many to count.”

Tuck and Miguel sidled up next to her, and they all stared in silence.

The cement slab was nearly covered with the creatures, facing the door and window, and more were in the yard beyond that. Their collective burble sounded as loud and powerful as Tuck imagined the waterfall in Ruby’s drawing would sound. For a few seconds they didn’t move much, but then, as suddenly as if a light switch had been flicked on, they began crawling on top of one another, wedging together seamlessly, building upward.

“What are they doing?” Miguel asked. “Making a ladder or something?”

“It looks like they’re sticking together and making legs,” Tuck whispered, the realization bringing gooseflesh to his arms. “Bigger versions of their own legs. Look, the front two are pointed at the bottom.”

Miguel gasped. “You’re right. And look how they’re building bridges between the legs now to make the body. It’s going to be a fucking huge copy of one. Oh, my God. What are we going to do?”

“We need help,” Ruby said. “I’m calling 911.” She ran to the couch and frantically searched the cushions for her phone.

Tuck gestured at the front entryway. “Grab my gun out of the coat closet, Miguel. I’ll go get some extra bullets.”

The single barrel shotgun had been a gift from his uncle Benny, a man filled with more machismo than brains, a man eager to change “the fatherless boy” from a “girly sissy” into a “real man” via hunting and Playboy. Tuck hadn’t taken to either, and although he hadn’t shot the gun in five years, he was a crack shot.

“I can’t find my phone,” Ruby announced in desperation, tossing cushions onto the floor.

Tuck stopped on his way to the bedroom, dug his phone out of his pocket. “Here.” He tossed it to her, and then limp-hurried down the hall. When he returned with a handful of bullets, she aimed the locked screen at him.

“Did you change your password? It’s not working.”

“It’s 9896 now,” he said, looping around the couch on his way to the window where Miguel waited with the shotgun.

Wide-eyed, Miguel pointed at the window and told Tuck to look as if he wouldn’t have otherwise.

The huge creature was almost complete, an exact copy of the smaller ones, the legs three or four feet tall, the pincers large enough to sever a head clean off with a single snip. The last of the small ones scurried up a back leg and snuggled into the backend, filling in the last gap of imperfection as smoothly as wet clay on an unfinished pot.

“No one’s answering,” Ruby hollered in a panic-stricken voice, pacing in front of the couch. “Why is no one answering?”

Tuck’s pulse doubled when the creature faced the window, the burble rattling the pane of glass. “Give me the gun,” he said, and Miguel did. He quickly loaded a shell into the barrel, shoved the others in his pocket, and was backing up when the creature thrust its front sword-like legs into the window, shattering the glass.

Ruby screamed.

Miguel turned to run but slipped on the laptop he’d knocked off the table earlier and fell onto the floor.

Tuck twisted sideways and held up his forearm to shield his face. When he looked back at the window, the creature jumped inside, knocking the dining room table into him and scattering the chairs. He stumbled backwards and had to hop over Miguel to stay upright. By the time he steadied himself and leveled the gun, the creature was yards from Miguel.

He sighted the working pincers and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening.

Purple liquid erupted from the impact area, splattering the ceiling, walls, floor, everything. The smell of day-old damp towels filled the air. The creature disassembled in an instant, the smaller individual ones separating as seamlessly as they’d joined, a countless number, cascading to the floor in a wash of night-sky color. They stayed motionless, seemingly stunned, disoriented from the change.

Tuck cut his eyes at Ruby. “Run!”

She did, toward the hallway.

Then Tuck glanced at Miguel who was rising to his feet. “Come on!”

The creatures’ idleness didn’t last long. They jump-started just as Miguel turned to follow Tuck, and he was their nearest target. Tuck stopped and turned around when Miguel screeched, and he saw the creatures leaping onto Miguel’s back, neck, thighs, all at once, ramming needle-legs into his flesh, slicing with pincers. Miguel crumpled to his knees, reaching back over his shoulders and around his sides, frantic to stop the assault.

Tuck’s eyes bulged with concern and his chest tightened. “Miguel!”

He lifted the gun like a bat, ready to swing, but before he took two steps forward, there were already twenty or more creatures on Miguel, one on the side of his head with a leg jammed into his cheek, about to jam the other into his ear. Within a blink of an eye, thirty or forty covered him. Blood coated his clothes and skin in the visible gaps between their busy bodies. Tuck froze. He didn’t know what to do. His stomach turned to cement. What could he do? There were too many. And now some were headed for him. And Ruby. So he ran.

Ruby stood in her bedroom doorway at the end of the hall, waiting with Tuck’s phone in her hand.

Tuck rushed past her and spun around. “Close it!”

She looked down the hallway. “Where’s Miguel?” She flinched when she saw the creatures bounding toward her like a pack of hungry wolves.

Tuck grabbed her by the wrist, jerked her into the room, and closed the door.

He paced around the coffee table in front of Ruby’s daybed, his eyes welling up, screamed and smashed a hole in the sheetrock with the butt of the gun. When he locked eyes with his sister, tears were forming in her eyes, too. “They got Miguel,” he said. “They got him, and I couldn’t…” He tilted his head back and looked upward, tears streaming down his cheeks. “It happened so fast. I was right there, but there were too many.”

Ruby hugged him, but before he could wrap his arms around her, the creatures began hitting and clawing at the bedroom door. He pulled a shotgun shell out of his pocket, reloaded the gun, and aimed at the door while Ruby dialed 911 again. Long seconds passed with nothing but rings on the other end, tips of pointed legs and tiny pincers jutting in and out of view at the base of the door.

“Why won’t you answer?” Ruby screamed into the phone, tears leaking from her eyes.

“We have to get out of here,” Tuck said. He hurried to the window on the far wall, ripped away the blinds and looked outside. “It’s going to get big again, and we’ll have a better chance to stay alive out there than trapped in here.” He glanced at Ruby’s socked feet. “Put on some shoes so it’ll be easier for you to run.”

She glanced at his bare feet, Miguel’s blood-soaked shirt wrapped around his calf.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Hurry.”

Ruby shoved the ringing phone in her back pocket, rushed into her small walk-in closet, slid on her Keds, and on her way out, snagged her softball bat for good measure.

“We need to get to the carport,” Tuck said. “There’s a spare key in the Scion’s wheel well. And if we can’t make it to the car, we’ll run to the Goodman’s, okay?”

Ruby nodded. The Goodmans were their nearest neighbors, one of only eight other houses scattered along Spruce Lane.

After drawing in a deep breath, Tuck unlocked the window’s latch.

“Wait,” Ruby said, grabbing a small section of his shirt that had come loose. She re-tucked it. “Okay.”

He gave her a quick nod of gratitude before he lifted the window and pushed out the screen. “Go.”

As she maneuvered through, he picked up the shotgun and watched the door, listening to the intensifying burble.

“All right,” Ruby said, peeking back inside. “Come on.”

A wood-splintering crash rang out as Tuck climbed through the opening. He didn’t look back to verify what he knew—the huge creature had busted through the cheap particle board door, on the hunt.

They ran along the side of the house with Tuck leading the way, a jolt of pain shooting up his injured leg each time it slapped the ground. They curved into the front yard, and seconds later, Tuck knew the creature had rounded the corner of the house. He glanced back when the burble suddenly doubled in volume and saw the creature barreling down on them. Ruby looked back over her shoulder, too, which caused her to trip over her own feet and fall to her knees.

Tuck stopped and aimed the gun but thought better of firing when she started to stand. He didn’t have a clear shot. But he needed to slow it down. He sprinted farther out into the yard for a better angle, but he wasn’t fast enough. The creature impaled Ruby, ramming its sharp front leg through her back and chest, lifting her a foot into the air. Her softball bat fell from her hand just before he fired.

The shot destroyed the shoulder of creature’s leg holding Ruby, and it immediately disassembled, the small ones unlocking and tumbling to the ground along with her. Like before, they seemed slightly stunned or disoriented. But Tuck knew it wouldn’t last long.

On the verge of vomiting, he stole one last look at his little sister, Ruby, silent, limp, buried in a mass of night-sky, then ran.

He reached the Scion wheel well with a fifteen-yard gap between him and the creatures. He grabbed the magnetic box holding the spare key, threw open the unlocked door, and hopped in. Right after he shut the door, small ones began slamming into the side of the car. Within seconds, they were coalescing, beginning to build back up.

When he cranked the engine and flicked on the headlights, the beams lit on the mess of bloody fur and flesh that had been Kami. The radio was on, tuned to 107.9 The Bear, Linkin Park’s “Breaking the Habit” blasting from the speakers.

He threw the car into reverse and peeled out from under the carport. The pod on top of the metal roof became visible once he’d moved halfway down the driveway. Another creature was crawling out, like a product from a fucking factory line.

Once the Scion’s tires hit Spruce Lane, he sped north. He slowed as he approached the Goodman’s home, and his breath caught when he saw a pod on the roof, another in the center of the driveway. The garage was open, front porch light on, someone face-down on the cement and another body in the yard, both covered in blood. He glanced in his rearview mirror. The large creature from his home was chasing, bounding down the center of the road.

He floored the gas pedal, and as he accelerated, a second large creature darted out from behind the camping trailer parked on the edge of the Goodman’s property. He swerved left to dodge it but jerked the wheel too hard. The Scion skidded off the road and crashed into a telephone pole.

Tuck briefly lost consciousness, and when he came to, a series of beeps was interrupting the radio broadcast. His head was ringing, awareness ebbing in and out, so he only caught glimpses of the two creatures merging into one, snippets of the DJ’s terrified voice.

“…some kind of attack…isn’t a joke…UFOs…”

“…sightings all over the world…videos online…dropping these pods…”

“…stay inside…any weapons you have…”

His scream drowned out all other noise after the massive creature roared and shattered the windshield.

A Cat Named Sue
by Jennifer Soucy

Sue’s dying, and it’s all Shane’s fault. I will never forgive him for this.

I hate running. And running through the dark is even less fun. Jagged stones bite through my thin socks—stinging, at first, but numbness quickly spreads up and over my body. A defense mechanism, that’s what they call it in psychology class. Sounds good to me, that a brain can act independently to protect its body from trauma. Any defense is welcome in a home where fights spring up on a whim, without rhyme or reason.

Tonight, the violence escalated so fast I didn’t even have time to find proper shoes before fleeing. Another argument about money—or the perpetual lack of it—inspired by Sue’s fading health.

Momma, I think he needs a vet. He didn’t eat today.

Had it only been minutes ago that I’d spoken, stroking the warm, purring body stretched across my feet. God… Sue had been so big once, rippling with muscles and vitality. He’d shrunk in the past few months, reduced to a bony shadow. Cancer, maybe? Hard to say. He hadn’t seen a vet in years. Not since Shane joined the family.

Oh baby, he’s just old… But the asshole had interrupted Momma, as usual. No one’s ever allowed to have a conversation without including him.

You must be out of your goddamn mind. We ain’t takin’ that fleabag to a vet. You got any idea how much that costs? Bad enough my money’s wasted on a brat like you, Shane had spat through his customary sneer, slamming the empty bottle on the scarred tabletop. Doctor for a damn cat… Why don’t you take your lazy ass out to find a job? And feed your damn self, while you’re at it.

Maybe I will. I’d stood, beyond caring about consequences. I was fed up, tired of the same argument we’d repeated every week since I turned sixteen. Maybe I can get a job, then Momma and I won’t need you at all.

Kaylee…honey, don’t—

The slap had knocked Momma’s head back, hard enough my eyes watered. I’d shoved my chair aside, ready to defend her. He’d grabbed my throat, fingers compressing veins and vocal cords, squeezing the defiance down. You shut your trap before I smack the shit out of you, too. Trying to drain me dry…greedy-ass bitches. Y’all got another thing coming—

We’d all froze when a yowl pierced the air, building in volume like the town’s air-raid siren to announce a tornado was on the way. The smoked silver mass of fur had launched from the floor, clutching Shane’s free hand with a series of belligerent snarls—a whirling ball of teeth and claws intent on tearing meat from bone.

Sue, no! But of course, I never moved fast enough when it mattered most.

Then Shane had pushed me, freeing both of his hands to battle my enraged protector. The fierce feline hisses and human curses had brought tears to my eyes. I’d begged him to stop, apologized even though I wasn’t sorry…anything to end the attack. The cacophony had reached a peak, abruptly ending when Sue flew across the kitchen. His bunched form had unfurled then slammed into the wall—bang! A series of painful crunches made my dinner lurch in my belly, but the silence that followed had hurt worse—a beating more thorough than anything Shane could’ve delivered.

Get that fucking thing out of here before I crush its skull!

Before he could finish, I’d scooped up Sue and raced out the back door. Momma hadn’t said a word, burying her face in her hands. The protests she may have voiced always ended in incoherent whimpers, anyway. She never fought back, not for any of us. Any fight she’d once had disappeared along with Daddy.

This time, I wouldn’t hang around and wait for Shane to make good on his threats. Sue needed me. That was more than enough reason to kick my ass out the door.

Help—we need help, but where can I find that?

Maybe the vet’s office? The bus passes it every day on the way to school, right off the town square. Dr. Randall and his family live beside the small office. If I can get there—seven miles, will we make it?—surely he’ll do something. Didn’t doctors take oaths to help all patients, no matter what?

The bundle in my arms whines, an insistent sound that fades into a breathless wisp. I hold on tighter, only a fraction, shifting Sue’s negligible weight into a more comfortable position. “Shhh, Suzy… I got you. Don’t cry. We’ll find help, I promise.”

I spare a moment to gaze into his little face, charcoal fur in the center spreading to silvery-white, blue eyes slitted in pain. His mouth yawns, revealing a pink tongue flapping between stained teeth; he’s panting, probably scared to death. A weak meow slips out, half-growl and half-sob—can a cat cry? I kiss the top of his head, biting back my own instinct to cry.

“Hang on, boy. Please, just hang on for me.”

Through the trees and onto flat ground again, the vacant field spreads before us. Harvest time ended only a couple of weeks ago, and the loamy earth bleeds emptiness as far as the eye can see. I’ll take the shortcut through the field, meeting the road into town on the other side. Every shortcut will count tonight. Sue can’t handle much more of this pace, if his pounding heart and staggered breaths are any indication.

Maybe someone will be home at one of the houses scattered along the road? Or a car might pass, a sympathetic driver willing to take us into town? Anything was possible. I steady my nerves with a deep breath, exhaling a wordless prayer for a miracle, and step onto the field. We can do this.

My socked feet sink into the cool dirt, which feels kinda nice after taking a beating on the ragged path through the pines. Our tiny house used to have such a nice yard and clear trails—a cute hideaway in the swath of woods, but it’d become a shack in recent years. Shane didn’t care about upkeep. Daddy had always been working on something, maintaining the yard or repairing the faded clapboard. Yellow with white trim, flowers and shrubs lining the building—Daddy had called it a country castle for his princess. All of it went to seed now, the structure crumbling in surrender without a loving caretaker. Vanishing, lost to the wilderness. Lost like Daddy. MIA, missing in action…a hero missed by his wife, his daughter, by the life he’d left behind.

“Only a little longer, then we’ll be on the road. It’ll be okay,” I whisper, trotting faster as I grow accustomed to the new terrain. Harder than the forest path, surprisingly. Socked feet aren’t meant for trudging through a recently plowed field. The soft earth sucks against my feet like the time I ran on the beach, trying to keep up with Momma and Daddy. It’s difficult, but what choice do I have? The only thing to do is push forward and be careful. Try not to jostle him, or he’ll start crying again.

I trip over a root, not falling, but Sue still exhales a shallow screech. His heart thumps alongside mine, lurching while I right myself. Too damn dark out here with only those icy stars, useless pinpricks across a black canopy. Why couldn’t we have even a sliver of a moon? Anything would’ve been better than this. Maybe a little light would offer a spark of hope that this journey might end happily.

Now I’m panting, too, squinting through the opaque atmosphere. The road has to be close enough to see now. Low-key panic chatters from inside, undermining my determination. I hear it in the back of my mind, each of my worst fears gossiping with the other, plotting their next move. Hungry zombies, vampires, demons, ghosts… What lurks beyond the outer horizon, rubbing against the curtains of the night, licking its chops at a pair of tasty and defenseless morsels on the run?

“No such thing as monsters. Grow up.” I stare straight ahead, ignoring every flicker in the periphery. Momma’s right, I read too many scary stories. Nothing could be out here with us, waiting for me to drop my guard…

Still a bit farther, it’s okay. C’mon, distract yourself. Don’t pay attention to whatever might be—but definitely isn’t—out there.

A nervous song begins—a squeak, at first, smoother as my vocal cords warm up and stretch. Singing always helps, especially when it’s one of our songs. Daddy and I always loved anything by The Man in Black. He used to play this song and trot through the living room, pretending to ride my toy horse even though he was way too big. Crooning about ghostly cowboys, mimicking the trumpets between his folded hands until the giggles snatched my breath away.

But it was the other song I loved best, the one that inspired my kitty’s name—Sue, a girl name for a boy cat—his last gift to me.

A kitten for my kitten, he’d said, setting the squirming bundle into my waiting arms.

I wanna call him Sue! My statement got us both laughing—Momma, too, when we’d told her later.

Guess that works. He’d kissed my forehead, snuggling closer while we both petted the ecstatic kitten. Name like that will toughen him up, just like in the song. Make him strong enough to look out for you while I’m gone.

Another memory interrupts, the night before he left for a war that meant nothing to me. A war in a land I’d never see, filled with people I’d never meet… Maybe they were safer now, thanks to him. But me and Momma had been left vulnerable, wide open for someone like Shane to swoop in and destroy our peace. Daddy couldn’t have approved of such a trade. Maybe if he’d known what would happen, he wouldn’t have left us at all.

What am I gonna do if the monsters come when you’re gone, Daddy? I had sniffled, failing to hold back a river of tears. Sad, this would be the last time he tucked me in for who knew how long—forever, it turned out. But he’d only smiled, always knowing just what to say to get me calm again.

Sing your heart out, baby girl, anytime you’re scared. Monsters hate music. They’re nasty things, miserable whenever we’re happy. And keep Sue close. He’s a good, strong boy. He’ll watch out for you when I can’t.

I blink back fresh moisture, almost hearing that soothing voice right now, warm as the easy smile shining through his coarse, black beard. My voice rises, strengthened by the recollections I treasured, bright enough to banish the outer wall of shadows… But only if I keep believing, like Daddy would’ve wanted.

It’s working. The lines of each furrow are easier to spot. And what’s that strip of gray up ahead? The road, yes!

An agonized cry overpowers my song, cutting me off as quickly as a power outage. The precious bundle spasms, and Sue hits the ground. I join him, on my knees as my useless hands hover, waiting for their chance to help. He rolls in the dirt, too fast for someone in such pain. I want to touch him, to make him better. How can I ease his suffering when I don’t know what’s broken or how to fix it?

“No no no, Sue—stop, you’re hurting yourself!”

He curls then flattens, back arching and mouth open to scream, but nothing comes out. The lumpy chest rises and falls in uneven hitches, one last groan fading into a sizzling hiss…and nothing. He’s still, he’s—

“Oh no, please no.” My hands slap against my mouth, blocking the inadequate words. Talking to myself, that’s not good. Shouldn’t talk to yourself when no one’s around. And he’s gone, my best friend, my Sue.

What am I supposed to do without him?

The low rumble fills my ears, battering the sudden silence. A throaty moan heightens into more, an echo of Sue’s final sound. Not Sue, it’s me; wailing like the banshee from one of my storybooks, lamenting another loved one stolen by greedy, selfish Death.

Alone, I’m alone. Forever now…

I scoop him up once more, cradling that wasted body, rocking us both as if that could help either of us now. He’s even lighter than before, empty now that his spirit fled. A better place awaits. God needs another angel, wasn’t that how it goes? My left arm curls over his hindquarters, right hand cupping the back of his skull where the fur’s still silky soft. The pieces of my broken cry reshape, the notes lengthening into a dirge; a melody I never heard before, but somehow it’s familiar.

Where do I know that from?

A spotlight blazes above. The beam of light knocks me backward, fast and powerful as an ocean wave. Crazy, I’d been so afraid of the shadows but the light’s way worse, smothering all sense and extinguishing consciousness, gobbling me into its infinite maw.

A new song begins, sonorous tones weaving into multiple pitches and keys—like a church hymn, tapping a ponderous beat on my eardrums. Rumbling bass, soaring tenor, and a brassy soprano…orchestral threads form a tapestry, but the image is hidden—a deliberate secret, maybe. White light bleeds through my fluttering eyelids; they close again, a moment of privacy until my brain catches up and nudges me back to consciousness.

“Hello?” My fingers search, sliding along cool steel. I sit up, squinting beneath that invasive light—white and bright, more relentless than the Georgia summer sun. “Who’s there?”

Someone has to be here. The music’s too real, too present, to be a recording. Singers must be lurking, watching from just beyond that incandescent border.

“Hey there, baby girl.”

The lights dim, bending to admit a massive silhouette. Those shoulders, hands, the wild mane of hair… No, that’s impossible. I cry out, a breathy denial propelling me backward. The creature pauses before crouching to rest on its heels.

“Daddy?”

That same crooked smile perches in a craggy face, softened by shaggy black hair and a beard, but the eyes…they used to be golden-brown, like mine. Now they have a strange slant, colorless and impenetrable as the deepest edges of the night sky.

“Once, but now we’re more.” The words are clear as day, but his lips aren’t moving. Who is this man with my father’s face? “We heard your call, a sign that it’s time for The Change—a new union to repair this ravaged planet. It will be better, you’ll see.”

“What?” I struggle to my feet, and the man (thing) follows. “You can’t be him. My daddy’s gone.”

“Rescued, not gone. Saved…” the Daddy-thing’s words melt into a new song. The lyrics twirl between us, something about a promised land that’s coming for us all. A new world, a new life, a better future.

My eyes close, a lid on fresh tears of grief. I remember that voice, even if not the words. His voice was just the same as it had been before. I join in, unable to help myself… Singing, even though screams swirl just below, aching to escape the hollows of my broken heart.

“Yes… Sing along, child. Your song, it pleases us.”

My voice soars, unable to deny the command. The lyrics smooth after an initial stutter, but I refuse to open my eyes again. I refuse to look at that face, an imperfect reflection of the one I loved, different enough it might overwrite the few memories I have left. Those precious memories, fragile as the thin glass of a lightbulb, are in danger of being pulverized beneath the weight of whatever fever dream is overtaking me.

The fight, fleeing across a night-stained field, and poor Sue dying in my arms. Where am I? Help me…

I scream at the song’s peak, startled by a purring shape encircling my ankles. Sue?

I bend, eyes still shut, to scoop the lively cat into my arms. The purring increases as a wet line traces along my cheek, a kiss in greeting from my good boy. He made it…but who saved him?

“Go home, baby girl. Time for that change to roll on in. We’ll be back for you soon enough.”

Cold wind flaps at the sleeves and hem of my t-shirt, followed by the sensation of falling. My toes curl in the damp socks, scared by the lack of solid ground beneath. “Daddy, wait! I don’t—”

…understand.

The words waft away with the vestiges of our song, mimicking the notes I still hum even if no one’s listening. Or are they listening? Doesn’t matter, it’ll be okay. The last traces of anxiety float into the darkness, drifting in space just like me and Sue. Together again…

Stars.

They’re bright, finally, flaring like birthday candles in a dark room. And some of them—is it even possible?—shoot across the sky, trailing a path along distant highways toward unimaginable destinations. Had they really been too faint before, denying their light, isolating me in fear and panic? Dozens or more blaze brighter than any light I ever saw, waving and iridescent… Maybe not stars, after all.

“Sue?” I bolt from the dirt bed, a new round of purrs answering my question.

He’s by my side, waiting, turning his gaze from the same starry sky. Still the same cat, thin and delicate as before, but different… Those eyes are all-black now, no more robin’s egg blue, just like—

“Oh my God.” I freeze, torn between running and leaning in for a closer examination.

Rescued, not gone. Saved… Wasn’t that what the Daddy-thing said? We’ll be back for you soon enough.

“Jesus Christ.” I gulp back the irrational denial, shaking my head. I’d witnessed an actual miracle. No getting away from that when the proof stared me right in the face. I have to tell someone. Maybe Momma will listen? She has to understand. We all heard Sue’s bones break when he slammed into the wall, and now…

Sue’s purrs hiccup when I lift him and stand—even though part of me squirms, wondering what else lurks within his recently emptied shell. He’s been resurrected, somehow; but is my friend still inside, or did he become something else?

The sandpaper tongue licks my cheek, wiping away my doubts. His little heart thumps beneath my hands, strong and true. Each rich purr ends with that same hitching squeak—the one that happens whenever he’s excited instead of simply content. He’s really back, my good kitty, my Sue. Daddy—and whatever else was in him—returned my friend to me.

“He’ll be coming home, too… Yes, he will,” I coo, kissing Sue’s head and scratching that special spot under his neck. “We gotta tell Momma. Come on, boy.”

The house lights are off, and Momma’s car is gone. Where did everyone…

“I see you there, slinking around. Up to no good, ain’tcha?” The voice pauses, followed by a wet glug. It sounds thicker, lacking the fizz of carbonation. He must’ve moved onto the liquor. “Got your momma all riled up, out looking for you instead of resting before her next shift. Hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“Leave me alone, Shane.” I hold Sue tight, his body responding to the implied threat, coiled and ready to attack. No way. We were not going through this again.

“Oh, excuse me! Apologies, your Highness. I must’ve forgotten myself,” he drawls, lumbering from his seat to block the path. He sways once, taking another heavy step forward.

Cheap whiskey burns my nostrils, the odor seeping up from his digestive tract, strong enough to make my head buzz. I step to the side, never breaking contact with Shane’s bloodshot eyes. “I just want to go inside and call Momma to let her know I’m back. Let me pass.”

“There’s that little fleabag—alive and well, just like I thought. All that drama for nothin’. Must’ve used his last life.” Shane chuckles, moving down the first porch step, then the second. “Your momma tried to give me hell for throwin’ him. Thanks to you, I had to pop her again and teach her a lesson. Remind her of her place.” On the last step, he stares; a smirk spreads along his mouth, slimy as a snail’s trail. “Maybe I need to remind you of your place, too.”

Instead of the purrs I’d hummed along to on the walk home, Sue’s throat births a menacing growl. The ominous rumble builds, a feral sound I’d never heard in all the years we shared. The warning lifts the hairs along my forearms and neck, a coat stiffening with wariness that turns into icy fear. My beloved companion bunches in my arms, tensing for an attack that can’t end well.

Please don’t do it, Sue… I can’t lose you again. But I can’t say that out loud. If Shane acts, renewing the vicious assault from earlier, there’ll be no one to bring Sue back.

“What’s wrong, little princess? Not so high and mighty now, are you?” Shane mocks me, arms spread wide as if announcing he couldn’t possibly be a threat. I know better, every nerve and muscle already thrumming with the need—the instinct—to run, flee, hide. “I been too easy, lettin’ your momma baby you. Awww, don’t be so mean, Shane. She lost her daddy. Poor, little Kaylee—boo-hoo!” I hate his laugh, watching him rub his eyes to mimic a giant, sobbing baby. But when he looks up again, the glint in his narrowing eyes says it all. I waited too long, and now trouble’s back—hungry to teach me a lesson I’d never forget. “Time to remind you what a daddy’s job really is. Now get your ass over here.”

Sue’s growl unleashes, accelerating as his voice seemingly splits into two—one a bass rumble, the other a soprano shriek high enough to shatter glass. The cat leaps between us, tail lashing, while we stumble back with our hands against our ears.

“Sue, stop!” But he either can’t hear me or pretends not to. Although, who can hear anything over his battle cry, magnified into something too big for such a small animal.

Shane stumbles, trips, and lands flat on his back. His eyes bulge as the furious cat stalks closer. He kicks out, but Sue nimbly dodges the denim-clad leg.

The screech lowers a fraction, enough that I hear a new noise paired with a curious action. A series of pops slither from Sue’s open mouth—measured beats from opposite sides, gradually increasing. Once I identify the source, my scream joins the chorus.

A pair of fleshy stalks emerge, slender as flower stems, extending beyond the cat’s fangs. They stretch, waving slowly as if working out some kinks. The pointed tips pulsate, tasting the air surrounding the object of their attention.

“What the…” Shane’s hands still press over his ears, his strong legs scrabbling to push him further up the steps. Not quick enough, as Sue leaps to land on Shane’s flattened gut. The pair of antennae whip, quick as snakes, to strike either side of his throat.

Before Shane even thinks about fighting back, Sue’s gone again. He prances toward me, unbothered as I swoon. The antennae flap while retracting into his mouth, slurped up like two strings of spaghetti.

“Sue, what did you do?” I sink down, falling onto my ass as the nervous energy evaporates from my muscles. My hands slide from my ears, resting on my own neck. The blaring dissonance is gone. It’s safe to listen again.

But Sue doesn’t respond, other than to purr and gently rub against my side. He circles, watching me with those calm, all-black eyes, before sitting primly on the ground. Waiting, as he used to, for me to pet and make much of him for a job well done.

Wet gurgles drag my attention away from the patient cat (not a cat, not anymore; oh my god, what is he???) back to the massive man thrashing on the porch. Foam bubbles spray from his open mouth, saturating each choked gasp. Shane’s eyes roll back, his cheeks darkening from red to crimson to purple…drowning in that never-ending stream of pink foam.

Tires crunch up the dirt driveway, twin beams of light expanding against the clapboard house, better illuminating Shane’s death spasms that continue to rattle the warped porch steps. Oh no, Momma… I can’t even finish the dreadful thought. She can’t see this, another husband dying—even if Shane isn’t worth mourning. She can’t know the truth, or she’ll lose her mind.

“Hey, baby girl.” The headlights die as the car door creaks open then slams shut. Momma’s slender frame glides forward, too fast for me to block the porch—the scene of the crime. The death rattle quiets as Shane groans one last time.

“Momma, I don’t know what happened—”

“It’s okay, Kaylee. Don’t be scared.” Momma’s stride easily cuts the distance. But her voice… “We’re not angry.”

My mouth drops open, stunned by the sight. Momma’s eyes…

“We found her while she was looking for you. She was so happy to see him again, the man she loved most. Such a touching reunion.” Two pitch-black orbs gleam, reflecting the starlight above. “Don’t worry about that other one. He was bad, not worth saving. We took care of him just as we’ll take care of others like him. There isn’t room for wickedness in the new world.”

“Oh Momma, I’m so sorry.” The automatic apology seeps out with my tears as I hug Sue again. Never flinching as my mother (not my mother) opens her arms to hold us both, crooning a sweet song that blends so well with the cat’s purrs. The same song I sang earlier in the field when this all began, as if somehow the music summoned them.

This is all my fault.

“No, good girl, this plan has long been in motion. But don’t be scared. You’re safe.” The Momma-thing’s chilly lips press into my forehead. A comfort and a blessing, but more—maybe absolution. “The Change is coming… The promised land, where we’ll join together and live in peace. We’ll be a family again, Kaylee. Your daddy, he’s coming home. Isn’t that wonderful?”

I burrow into Momma’s soft embrace, safe with her as I hadn’t been for years. The monster was dead, at last. Sue nuzzles us, his cold nose making her giggle. We’ll be a family like before. My dearest wish coming true at last, a gift from beyond the stars.

The Bluehaul
by Lee Murray

“Easy does it,” Commander Louie Pataka whispered into the comms.

She pursed her lips as she followed the manoeuvre on her screen. Not yet.

The team were good, possibly the best in the system, but after two years drifting the outer reaches, plus a further four in cryo, everyone was keen to get home to Earth36, and haste tended to make people careless. Haste and fatigue. This tour, her third as commander of the BlueHaul, had been especially long. But resources on Earth36 were scarce and her mission was succinct: no resource, no return. And the consortium hadn’t meant for her to haul home any old rock, either.

The thing is, after a while you can’t help tiring of the same personalities. Quirks that had seemed endearing in those first months out of cryo-sleep quickly became annoying. Then there was the tainted taste of water recycled for the millionth time, the perennial silence, the endless darkness. A long tour indeed. But now, with this iceberg in their sights, they had a chance to go home.

“Berg is coming in fast, ma’am,” her navigator warned.

Louie glanced through the porthole. Suited up on the starboard side, Sacha Mafaleo was a Lego toy off in the distance. Waiting on her signal, he raised his harpoon, the action jerky and stilted.

Louie checked the monitor. “Ardern?”

“Looking good, ma’am. Estimates on the protuberance are accurate. Maybe a two per cent deviation.”

“Three thousand metres…” the navigator said.

“In your own time, Mafaleo,” Louie said into the comms. She turned again to watch through the porthole.

There was a short delay before Mafaleo pulled the trigger, simultaneously sending out the silver lasso and thrusting his jetpack to counter the action. The lasso’s sphere of titanium-alloy coils whipped through the stygian darkness, the expanding net reaching out over the craggy ice protuberance—the way a net-casting spider launches its web to drag in its prey.

Louie held her breath. Would the iceberg slip though the noose? If the lasso fell short, or went wide, it would take the BlueHaul weeks, possibly months, to circle back and make another pass.

No resource, no return.

But the net closed neatly around the knob, the ceramic spikes sinking deep into the ice. It was done. Louie smiled in relief. The iceberg, with an estimated volume of 14,000 square kilometres of water, was tethered to the BlueHaul by the knob like a Christmas bauble on a string.

In the control room, and in her headset, the crew cheered. At last. They could go home.

Louie blew out a slow breath. “Come on in, Mafaleo.”

Louie ran along the corridor to the science labs, footsteps thrumming on the metal walkway. After just a half day of analyses, her chief science officer, Pip Bridges, had found an anomaly in the berg.

“I need to show you something,” she’d said. “In person.”

Louie placed her hand against the console and the doors slid open. She strode into the laboratory, her second in command, Brent Matthews, on her heels.

Bridges turned at their approach. “Commander. Officer Matthews.”

“What have you found?” Louie demanded.

Bridges pulled up the wall screen, punched her keyboard, then stepped aside, the pointer in her hands. “Take a look for yourselves.” She lifted her chin towards the screen.

“Holy fuck,” Matthews breathed. He steadied himself against a console.

Louie gasped. “What are they? Rocks?” Even as she said it, Louie knew these weren’t just two random rocks somehow embedded in the ice and then flung off-planet or chipped from an asteroid in some long-past event. The shapes were too perfect, too identical—too deliberate.

With a click, Bridges changed the view on the screen, then changed it again. The structures pivoted before them, their outlines opaque against the chiselled facets of the blue ice.

“Could they be crystals?” Louie asked. Crystals were uniform, weren’t they, formed in orderly repeating patterns? Perhaps the lozenges had been formed by heterogeneous nucleation on the ice surface. Except Bridges wouldn’t have called them away from the control room for a gander at a pair of crystals, no matter how interesting they might be. These structures had been manufactured. Constructed.

But by whom? And for what purpose?

Matthews pushed away from the console and approached the screen. He peered at the structures. “What’s the scale here?”

“They’re about the same size as one of our cryo-chambers,” the scientist said.

“So human-sized,” Louie said.

Bridges nibbled her lip. “Or something else.”

Matthews’s eyes widened “You mean, they’re…”

“Yes. As far as we can tell, each of the capsules contains a life form.”

Louie whipped her head around, stared her chief scientist in the face.

“In stasis,” Bridges added.

Louie sat down heavily on one of the lab chairs, the plasti-fibre moulding to her body shape. Life forms. In this godforsaken galaxy. “What do you propose we do?”

Bridges gave a grim smile. Taking the seat opposite Louie, she kept her eyes on the structures on the screen, flicking through the various views with her pointer. “You’re asking the wrong person, Commander. I’m a scientist. It’s my job to investigate.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Matthews said, shaking his head.

“Nor have I, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t occurred,” Bridges replied. “I’ve started a literature search of the consortium’s databases to see what I can uncover.” Her voice hummed with excitement. “Studying these particular specimens will take some doing, though,” she went on. “We’d need to extract them first, and they’re deep, about kilometre into the blue core.”

Matthews backed away from the screen. “Tricky. But we can do it.”

“The real question is, should we?” Louie replied.

“Of course, we should,” Matthews said. “After all, they’re probably human, aren’t they? Given the size and shape of the capsules.” He paced the circular room. “Maybe they’re refugees from one of the newer terraformed planets. Last I heard, there was a civil war raging on Earth82. Or maybe they’re survivors of a failed exploratory mission. God knows, there have been a fuck of a lot of those…”

Bridges shook her head. “I don’t think that’s the case here, sir. The ice at the core is too old; surface sampling suggests the iceberg formed around a thousand years ago.”

Matthews stopped his pacing and gave a low whistle. “A thousand years. Holy fuck.”

Her elbows on the armrests, Louie laid her chin on steepled fingers. “I’m not sure we should rely too heavily on the capsule dimensions to infer that they’re human, either. Even the earliest studies suggest that sentient lifeforms from like planets could show a similar morphology to ours; they might even have developed through parallel evolution.”

Bridges nodded.

“Alien life!” Matthews crowed. “Wouldn’t that be fantastic? We’d finally have one over those pompous arses on Earth54.”

Louie couldn’t help smiling. Ever since an Earth54 exploration mission had discovered the nomadic Amalfi people with their mammalian photosynthesis gene, the ‘newly rich’ inhabitants of Earth54 had been insufferable. A century on from the Amalfi-Earth54 treaty, they were still full of themselves.

“There’s no reason to believe any newly discovered life form will be as benevolent as the Amalfi,” Bridges said wryly. “In fact, Hawking implies that advanced aliens will wish to conquer and colonise.”

“You really think these travellers are sinister? That they’ll pose some kind of threat to us?” Matthews said. “You said yourself that they’ve been drifting in a bloody ice cube for near on a thousand years. You ask me, more than likely they’d be happy just to get out and stretch their legs.”

“What if they’re using the ice as gift wrap?” Louie said. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Have you never heard the story of the Trojan Horse?”

“That’s just an old legend,” Matthews scoffed.

“Perhaps,” Louie said. “But the lesson remains the same. I can’t risk the BlueHaul dragging this iceberg all the way back to Earth36 if there’s a chance the payload contains an alien threat.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting we cut the iceberg free?” Matthews squawked. “Do that and we could have a fucking mutiny on our hands. Who knows how long it might take us to find another iceberg? Or any other resource on the consortium’s requisites list. We’ve been gone six Earth36 years, if you count the four in cryo-sleep, and even without a delay it’s going to take another four to get back. That’s a decade breathing this foul air. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to go home, eat real carrots, maybe even see my mother again.”

Louie sighed. They were all tired. For her part, she had a hankering for a swim in the ocean. She turned to her chief scientist. “And if I say yes to an investigation?”

Bridges folded her arms across her chest. “We have protocols in place, and the truth might be less dramatic than we imagine. My best guess is this is one of ZeroEarth’s early cryo-experiments, sent out in the dark days before the Lypse. I propose we extract the capsules and study their…contents…while we’re on the journey home. If Matthews is right and they contain human travellers, our more advanced microflora means we’re a graver threat to them than they are to us, and, historically speaking, there’s a lot we could learn from them. But if you’re correct and the occupants of the capsules aren’t human, then even a few months of quarantined study should be sufficient to determine if they pose a threat to Earth36 and our sister planets.”

“And if they are a threat?” Louie asked.

“Well, at that point,” Bridges said, pausing briefly, “they’ll have already been extracted from the ice, won’t they? So, we could still salvage the berg.”

“You mean jettison the specimens?” Louie said carefully.

Bridges shrugged. “And the capsules if necessary,” she said. “Either way, Matthews would still see his mummy inside a decade.”

The capsules had been the talk of the ship for weeks. Which was good because drilling them out of the ice and getting them safely inside the quarantine lab had taken the better part of a month. But even before the capsules had been isolated, external scans revealed that one of the devices had been compromised, a corner slightly crumpled. Whether it had been damaged during the vessel’s launch or by collisions with debris during the years the life support had drifted in space—no one could tell.

“Just to confirm, the two capsules each contain a living organism,” Bridges told Louie and Matthews. They were seated at the conference table in the observatory adjacent to the quarantine lab. Beyond the scientist, behind the shatterproof duro-glass, the capsules were parked lengthwise, like a pair of antiquated missiles. Several small drones and robots hovered about the foreign objects, monitoring them.

“And you’re certain they’re human beings?” Louie asked.

“Yes, Homo sapiens sapiens. Well, you saw the imaging reports. Those looked like human skeletons to me. I’m as sure as I can be, short of taking a tissue biopsy, and for that we’ll have to wait out the quarantine period.”

“It’s amazing to think they’ve survived so long,” Louie said. “Like a fairy tale.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Bridges replied.

Matthews scoffed. “I guess that makes us Prince Charming, since we’re reviving them after years of slumber. When exactly do we give them the kiss of life?”

“Soon,” Bridges said. “It’s the reason I called you down here. The capsules are vintage technology, and they’re weathered, which means opening them could be hazardous.”

“We can use the drones, though, right?” Matthews said. “No one has to enter the quarantine lab.”

“Yes, of course, everything can be carried out using universal procedures, so the crew won’t be at risk. But with little knowledge of how these old devices work, if we open the capsules simultaneously and something goes wrong, we could potentially lose both travellers—”

“So, we open one capsule first,” Louie said.

“The damaged one,” Matthews added, without hesitation.

Louie and Bridges stared at him.

“What? It’s standard battlefield triage, isn’t it?” Matthews said. “The occupant of the damaged capsule is probably injured or compromised. Even under the best of circumstances, they might not survive the thaw. Hell, the capsule’s life support systems might be the only thing keeping them alive. But opening the damaged capsule will arm us with the knowledge we need to successfully open the other. That way, we increase the chances of saving at least one traveller.”

Bridges nodded. “I’d hate to lose either of them, given the knowledge they could have of ancient civilisations and technologies.”

Matthews chuckled. “And on the other hand, if they’re not human, and this is a sinister alien plot to board the BlueHaul and devour us all, then one less evil alien isn’t such a bad thing, right?”

Bridges grimaced. “Right.”

“So, we’re agreed?” Matthews said. “We open the damaged one first.” He swivelled in his chair. “Commander Pataka?”

Louie hesitated. She hated this part of command: playing God. Making decisions she had no business making. She cleared her throat. “The two capsules were tethered electronically, is that right?”

“We can’t confirm that yet, but our initial findings suggest so,” Bridges said. “It’s unlikely the two capsules could have remained together all this time without some sort of homing tether.”

“Which suggests the occupants are linked somehow. That means if we fail to successfully resurrect the occupant of the damaged capsule, we could be sacrificing a colleague or a partner. Or worse, a child.”

Bridges paused. “Yes, that’s a possibility.”

“The survivor might not thank us for our decision,” Louie said.

“What are you saying? That we should start with the other capsule—the intact one?” Matthews said.

Bridges drummed her fingers on the desk. “That’s not a silly idea. If we succeed, we’ll have the intact capsule as a blueprint, and who knows, maybe the occupant will have insights about how to safely open the damaged one.”

“Assuming they speak one of our known languages,” Matthews said.

Louie smiled. “We can always keep Rapunzel in the tower until we learn. We’ve got a few years: the time it takes to get home.”

“True.” Bridges nodded, getting to her feet. “And the person in the damaged capsule can hardly complain. Given they’ve been in stasis for a thousand years; what’s a few more?”

The traveller was a woman. Petite, but muscled, with thick dark eyebrows and anxious darting eyes. She spoke a primitive form of English, and a dialect of Chinese, long since defunct, but the ship’s Babelsplore system provided a real-time translation which was adequate for communication. Her name was Marta. At least, that’s what she’d told Bridges’ team, two days later, when she’d recovered from the inevitable shock of waking from a cryo-sleep of several hundred years. In the BlueHaul’s control room, Louie watched the scientific proceedings on her feed.

“We’re from EarthOmega, Octavius and I,” the Babel translation said, its noise cancelling function laying the words over the woman’s own voice. “Octavius is my partner. He’s in the other capsule. The one you haven’t opened yet.”

“Your partner is alive,” Yamamoto reassured her, “but the capsule is damaged, so we’re afraid he might be injured.” The ship’s empath-psychologist was seated in the observatory with Bridges. Their voice was low, gentle, no doubt intended to put the newcomer at ease.

Marta nodded. She plucked at the knee of the scrubs she’d been provided. “Yes. It’s possible he’s been injured. When we left…there was… It was…” Her face crumpled, and she dropped her head.

“Please. Take your time, Marta,” Yamamoto said.

The woman took a sip of water and replaced the cup on the table, where a drone whisked it away to be sterilised. Marta lifted her head and smiled weakly at the science staff. “It’s silly really. Getting upset. After all, it happened years ago now: 2132.”

“We understand,” Yamamoto said, leaning forward in their chair. “You’ve been in cryo-sleep; whatever happened must still feel very recent.”

Marta swallowed hard. She clasped her hands together. “Yes. Very recent. As if it were yesterday.”

“You don’t have to talk about that now,” Bridges said.

“Yes. Why don’t you tell us about your planet?” Yamamoto asked. “EarthOmega, I think you said? Is that right?”

In the control room, Louie straightened in her seat. EarthOmega wasn’t a planet she knew. It had to be one of the early terraform experiments, discovered when the consortium was still in its infancy. Or a colloquial term for Earth2, perhaps?

Marta lifted her chin. “Omega is beautiful, a utopia of sorts. I wish you could see it. Mountains, lakes, forests. The air there is so sweet and sharp that it stings your nostrils. And at night—” She sighed. “The moons are simply glorious, breathtaking; there’s Aethernet with her golden rings and the giant red sphere of Takitimu at her shoulder. In the chronicles, the ones the old-timers wrote, it’s said that of all the new colonies, Omega’s landscape most resembles the original planet, ZeroEarth, the way it was, back in the days before the Lypse.” She scrubbed at her eyes, and Louie noted the glance that passed between Bridges and Yamamoto. A tiny movement, almost imperceptible.

“Did you ever go back and visit ZeroEarth?” Yamamoto asked gently.

Marta shook her head. “No, not me. I was born on Omega. Third generation. The planet was small, but we had everything there. Why would anyone want to visit ZeroEarth? After the Lypse, it was just a frazzled husk.”

Bridges smiled. “Still. There’s always nostalgic talk, people wanting to recolonise the old planet.”

The woman snorted. “Not us. We’re happy where we are.”

“Except you did leave,” Bridges said quietly. “Because we found you drifting.”

Marta trembled.

“Where exactly is EarthOmega, Marta?” Yamamoto asked. “In relation to ZeroEarth? We can’t find it in the consortium databases.”

At that, the woman gave a shrill cackle, the sound bitter even through the Babelsplore. “That figures. No doubt your precious consortium expunged us from their records.”

“Expunged you? Why would they do that?”

Marta looked up, her face pinched with pain. “Because the bastards abandoned us, didn’t they?”

Abandon a planet? That simply wasn’t possible. Even if it were, the consortium was a reservoir of public good, its edicts intended to serve all of ZeroEarth’s descendants. There was no way the governors would willingly sever contact with one of its colonies.

Louie stood up. “Matthews, take the helm.”

By the time Louie reached the observatory, the woman was calmer, her face serene. She was cocooned in a lab bed set to oscillate gently in parasympathetic sleep mode.

Bridges approached Louie. “Marta’s very agitated, commander. I’ve ordered one of the drones to prepare a sedative. I’m concerned about the stress to her heart after such a long period of cryo-sleep.”

“But she was about to tell us about the events that lead to her departure,” Louie said, pushing forward.

Yamamoto raised their hands. “It isn’t just her physical health that worries us,” they said softly. “There’s an emotional toll of being so distant from her people and her world, of knowing she can never go back. Not to mention the risk to her partner.” They glanced towards the damaged capsule, where a light flicked dully on the surface.

The Babelsplore stuttered. “It’s okay,” Marta said from inside the weighted blankets, and Louie stepped up to the duro-glass, so close that her breath misted on the surface. “I’ll continue.” Marta hiccupped. “I want to. As our rescuers, you have a right to hear what happened.”

Yamamoto raised an eyebrow, but Bridges signalled to the medical drone about to administer the sedative, instructing it to stand down. Louie stepped back from the glass and joined the scientists at the conference table.

“To start with,” Marta said, “you should know that EarthOmega was the envy of the system. The resources at our disposal…they were unparalleled, and Omegans are a peace-loving people. We spurned the use of weapons. What happened to us…we didn’t want any of it.” She stared at the ceiling.

“You were invaded?” Yamamoto said.

There was a pause. “It’s not what you think. We weren’t invaded by another colony. It wasn’t that. Omega had its own indigenous species, some of which we knew little about. In our arrogance, we believed we’d conquered the planet.” She sat up, turning to face them, the weighted blanket wrapped about her shoulders. “I guess it’s not the first time humans have made that mistake.

“Octavius and I are biologists. We worked for the classifications department, documenting new species and their potential for exploitation, all within sustainable parameters, of course. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened on ZeroEarth. And Omega is brimming with life. Even a century after the arrival of the old-timers, there was still so much to discover. But greedy corporates and corrupt officials exist everywhere, don’t they? People started to cut corners.

“It was Armstrong Cade, a second-generation scientist, who discovered the isopod. A great example of parallel evolution, the parasitic louse was like ZeroEarth’s Cymothoa exigua, its microscopic nymph phase invading an aquatic organism’s breathing apparatus. Once inside its host, the isopod severed the animal’s tongue, replacing the organ with itself. Macabre. Some might even say it was brutal. But it was extremely effective in ensuring the parasite’s success. Then Cade observed that certain species, when infected, would consume more food, to the extent that the host almost doubled in size. He saw an opportunity to double Omega’s biomass yield, a way of providing favoured aquatic protein sources for ZeroEarth’s less resourced colonies. Well, naturally, the consortium jumped at it, investing millions to develop Cade’s technology.”

Suddenly chilled, Louie shuddered. No resource, no return.

“Octavius saw it coming, tried to warn everyone.” Marta glanced fondly at the damaged capsule. “I’m just a technician, but Octavius, he’s the true scientist, superb, a pioneer really. He warned the consortium that Cade’s work was dangerous, but Cade was influential and there was so much off-planet demand for Omega’s resources…”

She coughed and a little medical drone rushed to her side. She waved it away. “You can guess what happened. In the space of just a few years, aided by Cade’s team, the aquatic parasite was thriving. With its short lifecycle, it evolved quickly, adapting to new hosts, new environments…”

She choked, bringing her hand to her face. The little drone zipped in and thumped her on the back.

“It came out of the water,” Louie said.

Marta nodded. “When triggered, the nymph became aerosolised, dispersing like swarms of tiny spores. There was no stopping them after that.”

“It moved on to human food sources,” Bridges concluded.

Tears welled in Marta’s eyes. “The nymph entered through the respiratory system, hiding in people’s lungs, while the adult invaded human mouthparts, replacing them with the parasite’s own hideous structures. Waxy white things, with powerful foreclaws to grasp its prey and long teeth for shredding flesh. People became little more than walking mouthparts, their eyes forced back in their head. But the nerve endings of the mouth were still raw, driving the infected hosts mad with pain. Either that or the infection caused some chemical change in the make-up of the host. In any case, there was no reasoning with them. Blinded and mute, they became animals. Brutes. People ate their pets, their partners, their own children.

“As soon as it started, we contacted the consortium, pleading for help, but they cut all communications and destroyed the public launch sites. Octavius had us evacuate to a remote laboratory, several of us holing up there with our families. Not everyone made it. One of the technicians had her throat shredded in the car park, her oesophagus yanked out by a huge brute of a man.” Marta winced. “She was still twitching while he consumed her.”

Yamamoto stood up. “We should stop these proceedings now.”

“No!” Marta said, her eyes flashing. “I want to… I need to finish.”

Yamamoto frowned. Louie gestured for them to sit down.

“Some of the scientists wanted to get off-planet,” Marta went on when Yamamoto had settled again in their seat. “The laboratory had its own launch facilities, but they were only ever intended for small shipments, not sufficient for us all to leave. How do you decide who gets to live and die? No one wanted to make that call. Anyway, at that point, we still believed the planet could be saved: we had personal pandemic equipment, and the building was fitted with air filters, so we were safe enough from the spores. And we had a purpose: Octavius organised us into research teams, with one group trying to determine what triggered the release of the nymph spores, and the other looking for a way to down-regulate the isopods without killing the victims. Octavius said there had to be an answer. He insisted the adaptation made no sense ecologically, since a parasite doesn’t normally kill its host.”

“No sense at all,” Bridges agreed. “What you’re describing isn’t sustainable. By killing other hosts, the parasite was jeopardising its own future.”

Yamamoto shivered. “And, all the while, it was decimating Omega’s human population.”

Marta nodded. “We’d been at the laboratory for several weeks, and Octavius’s team was making good progress, when Cade found us. By then he was huge, a muscled hulking eating machine. A monster.” She shook her head “We remembered too late that his DNA was essentially unchanged; he simply opened the doors and squeezed in. He found a child first, made short work of her. Her parents tried to fight him off…

“The survivors scattered. Octavius and I ducked into the launch suite as Cade’s grunts echoed through the corridors.” She trembled. “Without weapons, we were helpless. The screams of our friends as Cade rooted them out…” Marta clenched her fists. Even translated through the Babelsplore, her voice was charged with emotion. “We had no choice but to save ourselves.

“Octavius started the pre-flight protocols, yelling at me to get into one of the life support capsules. Cade was close. We could hear him shuffling in the corridor, sniffing us out. We were frantic. My capsule was closing when Cade shouldered his way through the door, smearing blood on the walls. It was everywhere. Cade was slathered with it. He drooled blood from those needle teeth and those grasping clutching rows of mouth-claws. The blood of my friends. By then my life capsule was on the belt, moving into the launch portal. Cade must have heard the mechanism whirring because he whirled to face me, gnashing those translucent mouthparts. He lunged, finding the lid of the capsule, grasping it with his mouth pincers. Octavius—Octavius should have been saving himself, instead he rushed in and bashed the appendage with a fire extinguisher.

“Cade roared and my capsule filled with the stench of fish and blood. But it was free of Cade’s grasp. The mechanism resumed. I tried to fight it, to stay with Octavius, but the porthole was already fogging with cryo-amniotic fluid. Enraged, Cade grabbed a stool and swung it like a sickle.

“Then the capsule ejected, and I lost sight of them both. I don’t know how Octavius got in the life support, how he got away.”

Louie leaned forward. “Could it be Cade in the capsule?” she asked quietly. With the occupant still suspended in cryo-amniotic fluid, there was no way to know who was behind the murky porthole.

“No.” Marta shook her head. “It’s not possible. Cade was too big to have folded himself into that tiny space. But I suspect he’s responsible for the damage.”

“And the spores? Could he have released them in those final moments?”

Marta dropped her eyes. Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

There was a crackle in Louie’s comms. She turned away from the screen. “What is it?”

“It’s the ceramic spikes anchoring the ice to the ship, ma’am,” replied Ardern. “Several of them have broken loose.”

“Is the load at risk?”

In her earpiece, Matthews chuckled. “Only in the event of unexpected debris.”

Damn. These outer reaches were littered with debris. Mafaleo and his team would need to suit up, do another spacewalk. Louie broke the communications. “I have to go.”

“Thank you for your testimony, Marta,” Yamamoto said. They gestured to the medical drone, still standing by with the sedative, to go ahead, then punched the desk console to reset the lab bed to its previous parasympathetic oscillations.

Turning off the Babelsplore, Bridges got to her feet. “And the damaged capsule?”

Louie signalled to Bridges then pressed her hand to the wall console. The outer doors swished open and the two of them stepped into the corridor—out of Marta’s view and Yamamoto’s earshot. “You still want to open it?” Louie said. “But you heard Marta: assuming he’s survived, Octavius might be infected. If the consortium had opted to sever all ties, surely it’d be safer to simply eject the capsule.”

The chief scientist lifted her chin. “For another ship to come along and find? What if he has crucial information which could allow us to restore the entire planet?”

Louie’s skin tingled. What might the consortium offer if the Bluehaul were to return with that knowledge? Marta’s testimony suggested EarthOmega was full of resources. Still, opening the capsule posed a risk.

The doors slid open again and Yamamoto joined them in the corridor. “I’d like to propose we remove Marta from quarantine,” they said. “Her saliva tests failed to detect any sign of parasitic infection.”

“Yes,” Louie replied. “Let’s do that. Please go ahead and make the arrangements to move her into the guest quarters.”

Yamamoto smiled. When they had scuttled away to make the preparations, Bridges raised an eyebrow.

“No point risking the resource in hand,” Louie said.

It took hours to resecure the load, after which Louie was in desperate need of a sleep cycle, so it was more than a day before she made it back to the observatory—plenty of time for their latest guest to awaken from a few centuries of cryo-sleep.

She arrived in the middle of a one-man riot. Behind the duro-glass, the capsule’s occupant dashed the lab equipment against the walls.

Bridges turned on the Babelsplore to a high-pitched screech. She turned it off again.

“What’s the matter with him?” Louie asked. “Does this rage have anything to do with the parasite?”

“We can’t tell,” Bridges replied. Her eyes were smudged with fatigue. “He won’t let the drones near him.”

“Spores?”

“We haven’t detected any.”

“Seeing Marta might calm him. Someone familiar,” Louie suggested.

Bridges nodded. “Yamamoto already went to fetch her.”

The man slammed his fists against the glass. There was a swish behind them and Yamamoto entered with Marta, the outer doors closing behind them.

Marta gasped. “Octavius,” she screamed. She charged forward, barrelling through them and slamming Louie’s hand against the desk console.

No!

Louie snatched her hand back, but it was too late. As ship commander, her DNA was all-access. Marta had known, had seen. The duro-glass dropped exposing them all. Marta rushed in, throwing her arms around her lover, even as Louie and Bridges backed away.

Louie’s pulse thrummed with dread. They were trapped. Opening the outer doors would mean condemning the crew.

“It’s okay,” Yamamoto whispered. “It doesn’t mean we’re infected. We haven’t detected any spores, remember?”

But pulling away from Octavius, Marta turned and smiled.

Slowly, Octavius tilted his head, his eyes rolling backwards. He opened his mouth, the jaw dislocating somehow, his human head replaced by the creature’s maw. Razored foreclaws, translucent and glistening, reached out and seized Marta by the throat. The pincers pierced her skin, traced a thin line, dark blood beading in the well.

Yamamoto moaned.

Marta’s giggle turned into a gurgle as Octavius tore the tendons from her throat. Still smiling, she crumpled at his feet. But her artery was severed, gluts of blood pumping bold stripes across the floor.

Why would Marta just stand there? It was as if she’d wanted to be devoured.

“Damn,” Bridges whispered. “She’s like one of those demented snails, climbing to the tip of a blade of grass and offering themselves up to the birds.”

Louie shook her head. What was she talking about?

“She told us herself,” Bridges said. “The parasite acts on people’s brains.”

Comprehension dawned. Invaded by the parasite, some people became predators, but under certain circumstances, to ensure the survival of the species, some would become prey. There was no question which camp Octavius fell into. The Omegan dipped his head, extruding his monstrous mouthparts to shovel up a pool of Marta’s blood.

Yamamoto had seen enough: yelping, they scrabbled for the outer door, slipping on the blood, and tumbling over Marta’s still-pulsing corpse.

Bridges grabbed Louie by the arm. “The blood…we’ve got to get out,” she said. “Before—” She shuddered, her eyes widening as Octavius belched, eliciting a wave of tiny black spores. The swirling cloud filled the room, swarming into their eyes, their mouths. Yamamoto screamed, swallowing the parasite spawn. Louie felt the swarm sting her tongue, smelled the iron tang of blood in her nostrils, and was overcome with hunger.

Not yet. No! Resistance made her shake with effort. The blood was the trigger. As soon as she succumbed, the parasite would change her. Which would she be, predator or prey?

“Fuck this!” Bridges screamed. Releasing Louie, she dashed into the lab, signalling to a drone. She fell to her knees and held out her arm, the appliance driving a needle into her flesh, ejecting its contents. Her eyes met Louie’s. “Sorry.” She slumped over the device. A lethal injection or just a temporary oblivion? Louie didn’t know. Either way, her chief scientific officer had clearly lost her passion for investigating.

Suddenly, Octavius was there, stamping on Louie’s knee, cracking bone, and she collapsed. The pain was excruciating, so bad Louie barely felt the slice which removed her hand. She marvelled as the blood pumped. The observatory was slick with it, so much you couldn’t tell whose blood was whose. She longed to lick it up. Instead, Yamamoto crawled over and lowered their head to the puddle.

Louie understood now. The parasite wasn’t concerned about depleting its hosts because humans would always seek out humans. When it reached its last host, all it had to do was pack its lunch into a life support capsule and wait for the consortium to welcome it in. In a few years, the BlueHaul would deliver the parasite to Earth36, whose inhabitants would go on to infect another colony, and another.

Octavius and Marta would have their revenge.

Wait! No resource, no return.

“Matthews,” Louie croaked, opening her channel to the control room. “Cut the berg free now.”

“Cut it free? Commander, you can’t be serious. Mafaleo and his boys just spent ten hours tying a granny knot so it wouldn’t come undone. Look, ma’am, I wasn’t kidding when I said the crew would mutiny…” Matthews droned on.

Her throat constricted in Yamamoto’s translucent pincers, Louie couldn’t interrupt.

Octavius pressed Louie’s severed palm to the console, and the observatory doors swished open. Smiling through blood, he stepped into the corridor.

The Little Voice
by Gabino Iglesias

“How hot is the sun, Daddy?”

It’s not a question; it’s a ghost. Lilith’s voice comes to him at random times, out of nowhere. It’s at once precious and painful. Andy remembers his answer: 27 million degrees Fahrenheit at its core. He’d explained more about heat variances, photosphere temperature, and nuclear fusion. Lilith hadn’t registered any of it. After a few minutes, she asked who had measured the sun’s temperature and how big their thermometer had been. The memory is tattooed in Andy’s heart, and every time he hears his daughter’s voice—“How hot is the sun, Daddy?”—he imagines the tattoo radiating a neon light strong enough to blind an entire city.

Outside Andy’s window, the purple light that signals dawn in XC-1291 covers the top of the tall, fern-like trees and makes the sky look like a soft, diluted watercolor. His wife Lana loved to buy paintings with colors like that at discount stores. She’d bring them home, paint ghosts on them, and then sell them to friends or in her online store. As Andy looks out his egg-shaped window into the alien forest outside, he imagines a lonely ghost standing in the strange foliage, impervious to the lack of oxygen or the reduced gravity of XC-1291. On bad days, he wishes he was that ghost.

“How far is it where you’re going, Daddy?”

Andy remembers that answer as well: a chuckle and the word “far.” If explaining the temperature of the sun to a kid is hard, explaining interstellar travel is like teaching calculus to a fish. And XC-1291 was indeed far. Four months away from home is how Andy put it to his mom on the phone. That meant he’d have missed Lilith’s birthday and his anniversary by the time he got to this mining mission. His contract is for one year and then there’s another four months to get back home. Twenty months. Two birthdays. Two anniversaries. Thinking about it breaks his heart, but remembering what his bank account will look like when he returns puts the chunks back together.

Burke’s voice shatters Andy’s thoughts as it comes from the speakers in his room.

“Meeting in the classroom in three minutes. Everyone needs to be there.”

The meeting room in the Valdez Station is not a classroom, but it has tables facing an interactive screen, so it looks like one. Someone made a joke about it on their first day of training and the name stuck. Now, three months later, they’re heading back there to talk about something they hadn’t received training for.

Andy takes in the gray walls of the station as he makes his way to the classroom. They look clean, smooth, and boring. Every minute he spends inside the station feels like a minute spent in something that shouldn’t be. The station, which he sees from the outside twice a day as the automated pod takes them to and then back from the mine, looks like a high-tech cancerous growth sticking up out of the ground in what otherwise would be a pristine ecosystem.

Shawl, Burke, Mata, Dr. Sulzer, and Johnson are taking up the usual spots by the time Andy gets to the classroom. The only one missing is Kolesnik. He’s in the med room. Andy knows they’re here to talk about it.

Johnson doesn’t tap the screen before he starts talking. That means there’s no presentation or data to show. He looks tired. The bags under his eyes look like they’ve been recently punched. He clears his throat before speaking.

“As you all know, Kolesnik developed a strange cough followed by a fever yesterday morning, so he didn’t make it out to the site with the rest of you. His condition has worsened significantly since then. It’s something we need to address, so we kept you all here today. I…I’m gonna hand things over to Dr. Sulzer. She can talk about the medical stuff and what comes next.”

Andy hopes they will finally learn why they’re here and not in the mines. That’s where he makes money. Here, sitting and waiting around, is not how work gets done. Also, sitting around is how the voices come to him. “When will you be back, Daddy?” That’s the one that hurts the most.

Dr. Sulzer is tall and lean. She has thick green veins on the back of her hands that look like they belong to an old woman, but her face makes her look like she just graduated med school. Space does weird things to the human body. The doctor walks up to the front and stands next to Johnson. She’s not holding papers or a folder, which is strange. She also ignores the screen behind her. That’s a bad sign. She always has something to show them. Andy knows not showing anything now means something, and he’s not sure he wants to know what.

“As Johnson says, Kolesnik developed a cough two nights ago that progressively worsened as the night went on. By morning, he was breathing hard, and the oximeter indicated his blood oxygen levels were lower than expected. He didn’t respond to bronchodilators. I took a blood sample and found his red blood cells unaltered. That’s when I performed a bronchoscopy and…well, there’s something in Kolesnik’s lung that shouldn’t be there.”

Dr. Sulzer stops talking and looks to Johnson. She’s obviously asking for permission to continue. Andy watches as most of the bodies in the room either sit up straight or lean forward. Johnson nods.

“I found what looked like mite eggs coating Kolesnik’s lungs. They’re covered in a viscous film that’s—”

“Eggs? He has fucking eggs in his lungs?” Mata interrupts.

“Yeah, the white capsules are attached to his pleura, the…the thin tissue that covers the inside of your—”

“Hold on a minute,” says Burke, “When you say eggs, you mean something that’s alive, right? There’s something inside those eggs?”

“Well, yeah. The microscope I used for the bronchoscopy showed—”

Burke threw her hand up and spoke again. “Nah, hold on, Kolesnik has some kind of eggs in his lungs. That’s fucked up. Tell us what they are and if that shit is contagious because—”

“That’s why we’re here,” says Johnson while taking a step forward. Everyone kept quiet. “In the last few hours, the eggs in Kolesnik’s lungs have grown in size. A lot. Nothing Dr. Sulzer has tried so far has done anything to slow down or stop their development. We don’t know what he has. Out of an abundance of caution, we’re keeping everyone in today. Dr. Sulzer will give you all a checkup. Those are your orders for this shift. We’re starting now. Save your questions. Once we know more, we’ll meet back here. Now line up and head to the med room.”

Even tired, Johnson is an impressive man, and his voice leaves no room for questions. They all get up and started walking to the med room.

Andy is first in line outside the med room because he had been the last to walk into the classroom. Dr. Sulzer walks past him and presses the white card that hangs from a lanyard on her neck against the pad to the left of the door. The door slides open without a sound.

Andy sees Kolesnik’s body on a gurney pressed against the right wall of the med room and has a hard time processing what he’s looking at. Kolesnik’s torso has doubled in size. He looks like his chest is pregnant with twins. His breathing is a ragged, wet thing that escapes his mouth in short bursts. It sounds like the man is gargling pancake syrup. Kolesnik’s eyes are open wide and glued to the ceiling. His body twitches slightly, as if processing the last jolts from an electric shock.

“Johnson, get in here!” Judging by her tone, Dr. Sulzer wasn’t expecting to see Kolesnik look like bloated roadkill after a week under the Texas sun.

Andy feels Johnson’s bulk bump him out of the way as he bursts into the room. He takes two steps toward Kolesnik and stops. Johnson turns to the rest of them. They had walked in and were piled together by the door, looking at the distended body on the gurney.

“Dr. Sulzer, what—”

Kolesnik makes a sound and rolls over to his side. A foamy mixture of blood and something slimy and white pours from his mouth and splatters against the floor.

“What the fuck?” asks Mata.

Kolesnik tries to push himself to a sitting position. His chest ripples as if something is running around inside him. He makes another noise, something wet and ragged.

Andy hears a loud pop as Kolesnik’s torso explodes, shooting a went mess of red and gray into the air. Andy feels something hot and wet smack against his chest and right cheek. There is a lot of screaming. Johnson turns, his eyes wide, and vomits while moving away from Kolesnik’s body. Burke paws at her uniform and screams. Her pitch is so high it gets Andy to focus. He looks back at Kolesnik’s body. What’s left of the skin of his torso flaps at the edges of his empty chest and abdomen like curtains of flesh. Andy sees movement and peels his eyes from Klesnik’s remains. There is something long and gray moving on Burke’s chest. Her right hand hovers over it as if she’s debating whether to grab it or not. She does, and throws the thing against the wall, where it ruptures. Inside, it’s full of the same stuff that came from Kolesnik’s mouth.

“Out! Now!” Dr. Sulzer screams from outside, waving her arms to get them out of the med room. Movement catches Andy’s attention and he looks at the floor. The things that came from inside Kolesnik look like slugs and have three tiny appendages on each side that resemble human hands. The floor is covered in them and some are starting to climb up the walls. He doesn’t need to see more.

As soon as they’re all out, Dr. Sulzer presses her card against the pad again and closes the door.

“What the fuck was that?” asks Shawl. Her big eyes look even bigger than usual. Andy wonders if she’s in shock.

“Classroom, now,” barks Johnson.

Back in the classroom, no one sits down. The walk there was a cacophony of curses and questions. No one cared about the former and no one tried to provide answers for the latter. As they stand in the classroom, their eyes going from one to the other, it’s Dr. Sulzer who takes the reigns instead of Johnson.

“Listen up, everyone” she says, sounding more confident and in control than Andy thought possible. “We need to check everyone. There’s a chance—”

“I’m not going back in there,” says Shawl. Burke nods in agreement. “I don’t want to be anywhere near those things.”

“We’ll get weapons and get you whatever you need, Sulzer,” says Johnson. The front of his gray uniform is speckled with blood and vomit.

“I need the bronchoscope,” says Dr. Sulzer.

“You think those fucking things are inside all of us?” asks Mata.

Dr. Sulzer makes eye contact with everyone before replying, “Yeah…well, except Johnson and myself.”

“How come?” asks Shawl.

“It’s something we picked up in the mines, isn’t it?” The idea had been brewing in Andy’s mind, but as he ran to the classroom, it coalesced into something that approached certainty. Hearing Dr. Sulzer say Johnson and her are clean sealed the deal.

“I think so,” says Dr. Sulzer.

“How the fuck did Kolesnik get something like that while wearing his protective suit?” asks Mata, his voice somewhere between anger and desperation.

“The eggs were in his lungs, so my best guess is they start out small enough to get through the cheap suit air filters,” says Johnson.

“Every other crew before us used suits with an internal oxygenation system,” says Burke. She’s the crew’s unofficial mechanic. Normally, she can fix anything. “Then they realized there was some oxygen here, so they switched it to a supplementation system that relies partly on outside air. The filters are pretty old and—”

“Yeah, they’re old and cheap because no one gives a fuck about our health,” says Mata. “We’re all here because we need the money, and InterCorp knows it. My wife kept showing me stuff about how the first crew fucking vanished, and they still sent a second one up here. They were the ones to report the mantids. We all know the rest of that story.”

Andy knows the story of every crew before his. He knows why they were taken to the mine and brought back in an armored vehicle. He knows the mantids—bizarre creatures the size of a bear that resemble a decomposing praying mantis on steroids—have devoured more people than InterCopr cares to admit. He even knows the company is unsure of what else is under the ground in XC-1291, but the amount of money they get paid to extract the illirium is enough to make them forget about everything they know and risk life and limb for a full bank account.

“We need to get the weap—”

Shawl coughs. Every eye on the room lands on her. She takes a step back.

“We need that bronchoscope now,” says Dr. Sulzer.

“I’m the only one with access to the weapons, so I’ll go,” says Johnson. “The rest of you should stay here. Don’t enter the med room without me, understood?”

They all nod.

Johnson gets the weapons and comes back, huffing and puffing like a wounded animal. He seems hesitant to hand them out, but everyone gets a gun.

Before they can head to the med room, Shawl starts coughing and can’t stop. Fear moves into her eyes and settles in. The silence in the room speaks volumes about what they are all thinking.

“We need to get moving,” says Johnson.

They leave Burke with Shawl and move to the med room. They are still halfway down the hallway when they see the remains of the door on the floor, the thick wetness atop then glinting under the artificial light.

“Those things got—”

Johnson doesn’t get to finish because a mantid jumps out of the med room. Its insectoid head looked like a brown set of jaws that open sideways sitting under a pair of glossy baseballs covered in think black lines. There’s blood over its face and childlike arms and bits of flesh dangle from the rows of sharp teeth that adorn each side of its jaws.

Johnson shoots first. The bullet whizzes past the creature and hits something at the end of the hallway. Then they all pull their triggers, the rain of bullets bringing the mantid down in a trembling heap of brown flesh, chunks of what looks like an exoskeleton, and an oily black liquid that appears to be the only thing inside its body.

Then they hear the screams. Johnson tells them to go as he moves toward the med room. Andy wants to move away and head to the classroom. He doesn’t want to see what’s left of Kolesnik, but the idea of leaving Johnson alone doesn’t sit right with him. Without asking, he walks to join him.

Inside the med room, Kolesnik is now a pulpy puddle of something red with white fragments sitting on the floor next to the gurney.

“Those things grow faster than anything else I’ve seen.” Johnson walks to a set of wall cabinets and pulls out the bronchoscope. “Let’s go. Keep your eyes open.”

Andy doesn’t need to be told that, but he nods anyway.

They both want to run down to the classroom, but they don’t. They walk slowly, listening, eyes scanning the hallway in front of them and giving quick glances back. There’s a squishy sound coming from somewhere.

A bizarre sense of déjà vu slaps Andy as he walks into the classroom a few steps ahead of Johnson. On the floor near the door is Shawl. Her chest is a mound of flesh. It has grown so much it’s ripped her uniform. A long wail erupts from her mouth and then tapers into something sad and wet. Burke is kneeling next to her.

“No, no, no.” Mata shakes his head.

Dr. Sulzer moves toward Johnson and grabs the bronchoscope. Burke jumps up from the floor.

“I wanna go first,” she says. “I fucking need to know.”

Dr. Sulzer nods. “Sit down over here. I’m going, to ask you to tilt your head back and open your mouth so I can carefully slide this little tube down the back of your throat and through your vocal cords so I can get it into your airways and see what’s there. It’ll be uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t hurt, okay?”

Burke is already sitting. Instead of answering, she tilts her head back and opens her mouth.

They all look at Dr. Sulzer as she works. She seems to be having trouble getting the tube down. Her hands are shaking. Then Andy notices why: Burke’s chest is already visibly larger. She must have been hiding her coughs. He wonders if he caught this thing and suddenly sees himself like Kolesnik, a dead body on a gurney, his chest cavity and abdomen empty, his insides being digested by slimy gray alien monsters.

Dr. Sulzer finally manages to get the tube in. She has a small digital screen in her left hand that shows her Burke’s insides. Then she takes half a step back.

Burke pulls the tube out of herself and coughs.

“It’s inside me, isn’t it?” she asks. “That shit’s inside me!” She coughs again.

Behind Andy, so does Mata.

“When will you be back, Daddy?”

The question comes out of nowhere. Andy’s heart breaks all over again. He wants to scream, to yell “Soon!” so loud that his voice will carry across space and reach Lilith to reassure her that her dad is coming.

“You gotta do me now, doc,” says Mata between coughs. He takes a step forward and then stops. “Shawl’s ab—”

The sound of Shawl’s torso bursting is worse than the one Kolesnik made. The loud pop brings with it a rain of flesh, blood, white slime, and gray slugs. The things plop down on the floor or slither out of Shawl’s empty chest cavity. They’re covered in slime and have no discernible eyes, but the slugs immediately start moving toward them. There are too many of them to count. They all start shooting and stomping simultaneously. The classroom becomes a room in Hell. Gray bodies explode in a maelstrom of screams, gunshots, and curses.

Andy has no idea how long it takes, but he feels like it took them ages to kill all those things and also as if it was all over in a few seconds. He looks toward the door. The rest of those things, the big ones, surely heard all that. It’s time to do something, to move, to hide, to leave.

Johnson looks to Dr. Sulzer and moves his head. Andy was looking at him to get instructions, to receive orders so that he could convince himself at least someone was still in charge of this situation. Instead, he saw him tell Sulzer things with his head he wouldn’t have dared utter out loud. Dr. Sulzer puts the bronchoscope down on the table.

“We have to assume everyone who was down in the mine has it. Kolesnik didn’t respond to anything, but maybe if they’re not as developed, we can try to remove the eggs before they hatch and—”

“This place has three or four pieces of shitty equipment,” says Mata. “They didn’t even give us decent filters! We have to call for help.”

“The rate of growth would make any call for help a waste of time,” says Dr. Sulzer. “We have to try—”

“We need to get out of here now,” says Andy. He doesn’t even care about the money.

“When will you be back, Daddy?”

He hears the question again.

“The escape pods have a beacon that will activate as soon as—”

“There is only one escape pod,” says Johnson. Everyone looks at him. “This is a low-budget operation. InterCorp had to pay a lot of money to the families of the miners who died during the first and second—”

“You’re saying we’re stuck here?”

“No, I’m saying Dr. Sulzer and I are going to use the remaining pod because we’re healthy.”

Johnson’s words fill the room with a pregnant silence that’s quickly shattered by Burke’s coughing. As Andy looks at her, Burke grabs her throat and falls to her knees.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” says Mata, the word now a sacred mantra that’s helping him hold on to the last sliver of sanity he has left.

“When will you be back, Daddy?”

Andy hears Lilith as he watches Burke lie down and hold her bulging chest. She’s fucked. They’re all fucked. Or maybe he isn’t. He hasn’t coughed. He hasn’t coughed even once that he can remember.

“I think we need to calm down and—”

“No!” Mata’s hand is up now. He’s holding his gun, aiming it at Dr. Sulzer. It shakes like a leaf in a summer storm. “No. We’re all leaving. We’re all leaving right now.”

The left side of Mata’s face vanishes in a puff of red dust. Andy isn’t sure he heard Johnson’s gun go off, but the results are obvious.

On the floor, Burke is gurgling and her uniform is stretched to its limits and is starting to tear apart.

Andy looks at Johnson. The man’s face is inscrutable, a block of black ice.

“When will you be back, Daddy?”

The work, the money, the worries; everything vanishes as Andy lifts his gun once more and shoots Johnson in the chest. When he turns to Dr. Sulzer, she has her gun trained on him.

“I’m sorry, Martinez,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

Andy pulls the trigger. The gun clicks.

“I want to go home,” says Andy. “I want to see my daughter.”

“I…I can’t let you get out of here. We don’t know what those things are. I’m going to get in the pod and immediately activate the beacon. Help will come, I assure you.”

Andy knows help won’t come. It’s not fair. Things are never fair. Distance isn’t fair. Having to take a risky gig just for the money isn’t fair. Fucking aliens in your lungs eating you from the inside out is not fair.

A mantid’s head appears at the classroom’s door. Dr. Sulzer turns and pulls the trigger once. The creature’s head explodes like a melon dropped from a rooftop. The black stuff inside it splatters the door and the two closest tables.

Dr. Sulzer bolts out of the room.

Andy drops his gun and thinks about running after her, but knows she won’t hesitate to shoot. Instead, he stands there, waiting to hear a scream. If the mantids get her, the pod is his. It’s a horrible thought, but one he has no reason and no energy to fight.

A loud clunk reverberates through the walls. Andy knows the emergency hatch is open. Sulzer made it to her pod. He feels like going to a window to make sure, to see if he can see the pod making its way out of XC-1291, but he doesn’t. Sadness and anger have congealed into something heavy that sits like a hot rock at the bottom of his stomach and is sucking all his energy. He hears a high-pitched sound. The mantids. How many? He doesn’t know, but he might be able to call for help from the comm center and get the fuck out of here, so he walks over to Mata and picks up his gun. Then he picks up Johnson’s as well. He’s ready.

As he’s reaching the classroom’s door, Andy coughs. He stops. An icy feeling runs down his spine and something squeezes the back of his neck. He takes a deep breath. It feels normal. As he exhales, he coughs again…and again. When he stops coughing, he hears something else, a little voice.

“When will you be back, Daddy?”

Count Backward From Ten
by Meghan Arcuri

Slither.

This is not a word you would necessarily associate with your fingers. But I would. Because—honest to God—that’s what they were doing.

I was sitting in the office, waiting for Dr. Knutsen, and my fingers were slithering.

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Two days ago, I had surgery. Routine shoulder surgery to clean out all the crap that had built up over the past forty years. Apparently, you discover this crap when you’re a personal trainer. All the lifting and stretching. My husband and I own our own gym. Aren’t we adorable?

I’d been in pain for a while. I’d tried physical therapy and cortisone shots. When they didn’t work, the doctor suggested surgery.

“Are you sure?”

Going under the knife? Anesthesia? Not really my thing.

“Look, Tillie,” Dr. Knutsen said. “We could keep going with the shots, but eventually they start to wear away the ligaments, and then we’ve got a whole host of other problems to worry about. With surgery, we go in, we go out. Bing, bam, boom, we’re done.”

“Would I need anesthesia?”

“Do you want me to cut into your shoulder without it?”

“No.”

“Then, yes, you’d need anesthesia.”

“Local?”

“General.”

I moaned.

“There are risks,” he said, “but they’re small. And chances are, Dr. Ward will be there that day. He’s the best anesthesiologist at the hospital.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What are you worried about?”

“Oh, I don’t know…dying?”

Dr. Knutsen chuckled. “You’ll be fine. There are worse things than dying, you know.”

“Gee, Doc. That’s comforting. Where’d you learn your bedside manner: Little Shop of Horrors?”

He chuckled again and slid a hand onto my shoulder. The good one, not the injured one.

“I’m not a dentist. I’m an orthopedist. And I’m good at my job. You’ll be happy you did it.” He held his hand out. “What do you say?”

I hemmed and hawed.

“Think of a pain-free life,” he said.

Doing triceps dips or overhead presses without any pain would be nice.

“Okay.” I shook his hand.

He had sweaty palms. Ew.

“Lisa will help you with scheduling. Let’s get it done in the next week or so.”

“Whoa… Why so soon?”

“I’m headed to Nova Scotia, and I’d like to get it off my plate before I go.”

“What’s in Nova Scotia?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“I’ll try.”

“I’m an eclipse chaser, and the next solar eclipse is exactly three weeks from tomorrow. Nova Scotia happens to be in the path of totality. Should be cool.”

“You’re going all the way to Nova Scotia for an eclipse?”

“I’ve been as far away as Kathmandu, so Nova Scotia is basically my backyard.”

“Wow…so, you’re an orthopedic surgeon and an astronomy geek?”

“Among other things.” He opened the door to the exam room. “We’ll get you on the schedule as soon as possible. It’s going to be great.”

“Uh-huh.”

As long as I didn’t die.

“Tillie?” The nurse poked her head around the pre-op door. “Come with me.”

I peed in the cup. Nope, not pregnant.

I disrobed to my skivvies: mismatched, cotton. The black lace ones are only for my husband. Duh.

Gown on, opening in the back—thank you very much.

I answered the same questions three times for three different nurses: calcific tendonitis, left shoulder, no allergies; calcific tendonitis, left shoulder, no allergies; calcific tendonitis, left shoulder, no allergies.

The last nurse inserted the IV needle (ouch, Nurse Ratched!). “It’s just saline right now. We’ll add a sedative in a minute and the general anesthesia in the OR.”

“Got it.”

Then the anesthesiologist glided in. Scrubs on, complete with mask covering just his chin, and knee-high booties.

Were they expecting an ocean of fluids?

He held out his hand. “Dr. Ward. I’ll be doing the anesthesia.”

His grip was strong, his handshake easy and smooth. And dry. Unlike Dr. Knutsen’s. Ew.

He asked me three questions.

Calcific tendonitis, left shoulder, no allergies.

Then he said something about nerve blockers, IVs, and general anesthesia.

“And then you’ll wake up, and it’ll be like nothing happened.”

“I hope something will have happened.” You know…like fixing my shoulder.

He smoothed the mask over his chin. “Something will definitely have happened.”

“Good.”

“Indeed.” He nodded at the nurse.

“You’ll feel a warm sensation in your arm,” she said, adding something to the IV.

And not two seconds later, the warmth spread through my arm, then my body.

Mmm…powerful drugs.

Dr. Ward watched. “Your shoulder, arm, and quite possibly your fingers will feel numb for about twenty-four hours.”

“Will there be painkillers?” I said.

“There will be painkillers. See you shortly.”

He slipped away.

Enter Dr. Knutsen.

I held up a hand. “Before you even open your mouth: calcific tendonitis, left shoulder, no allergies.”

“We just don’t want any mistakes…wise guy. Lean forward.”

He scribbled something on my left shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you sign the work of art after you’ve finished?”

Was I slurring?

“We’ll get started in about ten minutes”

“What’s that snaky thing on your cap?” It was a patch with a vertical rod and one snake wrapped around it.”

“The Staff of Aesculapius.”

“Ess-cue-what-ee-us?”

“Ess-cue-LAY-pee-us. The symbol for healing and medicine. A lot of people confuse it with the caduceus—the one with two snakes and wings—but…you’re not paying attention any more, are you?”

I shook my head. “Too much talky, Doc.”

“Who’s out in the waiting room for you?”

“My husband, Sam.”

To the nurse he said, “Why don’t you call him in now?” To me he said, “See you in a few.”

Sam came in and kissed me. Mmm…he’s so sweet. He grabbed my valuables.

“Keep it quick, okay? I’ve got things to do.” He winked. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

They rolled me down to the operating room.

“I need you to slide onto this bed,” one of the nurses said. He helped me shift over.

All kinds of hustling and bustling, people slipping in and out of the room, was someone lurking in the back corner, bright lights overhead.

Someone moved my arm, someone else tugged at my blankets. More hustling and bustling. My head spun. My eyelids were heavy.

Dr. Ward appeared out of nowhere above my head, mask now covering his nose, mouth, and chin. Did he have one of those snaky things on his cap, too?

“Ready?” he said.

“Are you?”

“Always.” He nodded at someone outside my line of sight. More warmth in my arm. “Count backward from ten.”

“Ten…nine…ei…”

“Tillie… Tillie…”

Sam’s smiling face. And bright lights. Very bright lights.

I closed my eyes.

“Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”

I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Is it over?”

“Yup. You did great. Dr. Knutsen said everything looks good.”

My shoulder had all sorts of gauze and bandages and dressing. Like a giant shoulder pad.

“I’m like half a football player.”

“I was going to say half an ’80s runway model, but football works, too.”

A nurse came in with water. Thank God—I was parched. He ran down the list of dos and don’ts for the next few days. Drugs, exercises, sleep. Helped me dress and put on the sling.

“I can’t feel my fingers.”

“Dr. Ward says that’s normal,” he said.

“I can’t move my fingers.”

“That’s also normal.”

My poor fingers. Little useless nubs, drooping in the sling.

“Let’s get home,” Sam said.

“Yes. Home.”

“Still useless. Still nubby. Look…”

I tried to move my hand again, but I had zero control.

“Dr. Ward said the nerve blocker would last for twenty-four hours, right? No worries. It’ll be better in the morning.”

But it wasn’t better in the morning.

Or the morning after that.

“Call Dr. Knutsen,” Sam said.

So I did.

The slithering started when I arrived in the waiting room. Sam wasn’t with me. Naturally. This kind of thing only happens when you’re alone.

My useless hand and its useless, nubby fingers, rested in the sling, on my thigh.

The fingers started waving, undulating side to side, as if they had no bones. Like a small nest of vipers.

Every one of them but the pointer.

I yelped. (I’m not much of a screamer.)

“What’s the matter?” the receptionist said.

“I need to see Dr. Knutsen. Now!” (I am, however, a pretty decent yeller.)

He walked in and smiled at me.

When was the last time your doctor greeted you in the waiting room?

“Come on back.”

“Look!” I said before he closed the door to the exam room.

I removed the sling and held up my left arm with my right hand. My limp arm bent at the wrist; my hand and fingers dangled. They didn’t move. No slithering, no writhing. Nothing.

Figures.

“What’s going on?” he said.

I couldn’t say, “Hey, Doc. My fingers were just moving on their own, like snakes.” That’s Looney Toons. So I went with: “I have no feeling in my hand or fingers. Dr. Ward said the numbness would last no more than twenty-four hours. It’s been forty-eight. What the heck?”

My voice was panicky, pitch increasing with each syllable. Because of the wriggling. Not the numbness.

“Everything’s fine,” Dr. Knutsen said. “You’re strong. Fit. Makes you a perfect host.”

“A what?”

He took my hand. Numb as I was, I couldn’t tell if his fingers were moist, but this time? This time his fingers started moving. Wriggling side to side like a snake.

My fingers responded in kind. Every one but the pointer.

“What the hell?”

I tried to pull my hand from his, but I couldn’t.

My head got light. My breaths became shallow. I wobbled.

“Here.” Dr. Knutsen guided me to the exam table and had me lay down. He tapped my pointer. “We’ll get this fixed right up.”

Dr. Ward appeared out of nowhere above my head, mask covering his chin. Had he been lurking in the corner?

“Why are you here? What’s going on?”

“The adjustment is almost complete.”

“What adjustment?”

He pulled down his mask. Instead of a beard, dozens of tiny snakes grew from his chin, slithering. Writhing.

(Now I screamed.)

“Welcome to the club,” Dr. Ward said. “We’re always looking for new members. You came to us at the perfect time.”

“Club? What’s happening?”

“The solar eclipse is next week. Nova Scotia, remember?” Dr. Knutsen said. “She only comes during the solar eclipse. Scientists have mistakenly called it shadow snakes, but it’s really Her.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I remember my first time meeting Her.” Dr. Knutsen smiled and sighed. “I envy you.”

“I do, as well.” Dr. Ward’s beard snakes swayed in unison. “She is always looking for recruits. For the Descent.”

“The Descent?”

“We just need to fix your pointer. Then we can start with the other hand.”

A needle stuck into the crook of my numb arm.

“Count backward from ten.”

Midnight Dreary
by Owl Goingback

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”

Tap, tap, tap.

He awakened and knew not why, but something had disturbed his slumber. An unfamiliar sound perhaps. An air current out of place in the normal stillness, dancing across his flesh, tickling the back of his neck like spider legs and causing the tiny hairs on his arms to stir.

But he saw nothing threatening, only the darkness covering his eyes. And he heard nothing unusual in that blackness, just the steady drone of a narrator’s voice.

Pushing his uniform cap back on his head, Corporal Alex Brown opened his eyes and sat up straight in his swivel chair, staring at the console of switches and flickering lights directly in front of him.

Removing his wireless earpiece and setting it on the console, he sat motionless, listening carefully. He had heard something out of the ordinary, he was certain of that, a noise interlaced with the narrator’s voice on the audiobook.

But all he heard now were sounds associated with commercial space travel: the whirring of tiny fans keeping vital electronics cool, the click of automated switches, the breathing of life support systems, and the constant hum of electrical motors.

They were familiar noises, ones he had grown accustomed to on his many journeys between New Earth and the mining colonies. Familiar clicks, hisses, and beeps that meant their ship, The Condor, was doing its job, keeping Alex and the other three crew members safe.

He noticed several of the computer systems and viewscreens were flashing and coming back online, indicating a recent power surge. Nothing to worry about, because every system had multiple backups, but it might explain what interrupted his slumber.

Passing his hand over the master console, he summoned floating holographic keyboards and another bank of viewscreens, checking to make sure the others still slept soundly in the crew quarters one deck below.

He touched a keyboard, switching one of the screens to the camera view in the crew lodging. Even in the darkness of the ship’s artificial night, he could see the four sleeping nets suspended from the wall, three of them currently occupied.

Everything looks normal.

He let out a sigh of relief, happy one of his crewmates was not out of bed and trying to sneak up and scare the bejesus out of him. Sergeant Bill Monahan, a burly load specialist with a fondness for practical jokes, had done that to him on their last voyage. Nearly caused him to soil his one-piece flight suit

The corporal heard a faint voice, “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing.”

Looking down, he saw the wireless earpiece and realized his audio book still played. Touching one of the other keyboards, he paused the audio and exited the program.

Alex had loaded his extensive library of digital and audio books into the ship’s system prior to liftoff, including the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, a little something to help pass the time on a long and always boring voyage. The ship was fully automated, so there was not a lot for the skeleton crew to do in deep space. They only got busy during liftoff, landing, and docking. Ground crews handled the loading and unloading of cargo.

Tap, tap, tap.

Startled by the sound, Alex spun around in his chair to view the rest of the room. Not his imagination, or part of a dream. He had definitely heard something. A metallic knocking that echoed through the control room.

“Fuck. I’m hearing things.” He stood, happy the ship’s artificial gravity was running, keeping his feet firmly on the floor.

He had read about some flight crew members going a little bonkers on long voyages through space. Especially the rookies. But this was Alex’s fourth tour to the Kuiper belt. He had never had any problems before during the six-month journey, and he had undergone the mandatory mental and physical evaluations prior to boarding. According to the tests, he was fit for the trip.

“Relax, you’re not cracking up,” he told himself, walking into the center of the room.

That could only mean he actually heard something, and strange knockings were not good news in space, not in a pressurized tin can traveling at two hundred thousand miles per hour. Unexplained tapping could be a warning something was wrong. They were all trained to know the difference between normal sounds and things which could mean trouble.

Alex knew he should report what he heard, but he did not want to wake the captain and others without a good reason. Maybe it was just the metal surface of the ship cooling, or expanding. Outer space was an extreme of temperatures, ranging from hundreds of degrees below freezing to hot enough to boil your blood. Unusual sounds could also be created by radiation, solar flares, and microscopic particles.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He looked up. The tapping resonated from above him, in an area of ceiling void of electronics, wiring, air ducts, or anything else prone to make noise. There was only ceiling tile, insulation, the ship’s hull, and…

Outside.

The knocking came from outside, three distinct raps spaced equally apart, like someone trying to get his attention. Someone wanting in.

The corporal hurried back to the console, touching buttons on the holograph keyboards, changing the images on the viewscreens to outside camera feeds.

Could someone really be out there? A launchpad worker, or maybe even a stowaway? Had they somehow fastened themselves to the ship’s outer hull?

But that was impossible, and he knew it. A person could not survive the gravitational forces on the outside during liftoff. Even if they had been wearing a spacesuit capable of long duration spacewalks, they could not have survived days of extreme temperatures and radiation.

The viewscreens showed only ship. No mummified or bloated corpse in a tattered spacesuit clinging to the hull, hitching a ride.

He started to turn the monitors back off when something moved past one of the exterior cameras causing the image to momentarily blur in and out of focus. Black and fluid, shapeless as a shadow, like interstellar fog, something seen but not defined.

His heart skipped a beat. He looked at the images on the other screens but saw nothing.

Corporal Brown turned away from the console, knowing protocol required him to wake up the ship’s captain in unusual circumstances. He was halfway across the room when he heard it again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Alex spun around, a tingle of fear marching down his spine. The knocking had changed position, coming from off to his right rather than directly above. And it resonated sharper, for the tapping was not on metal. Instead, it sounded on glass.

“No fucking way,” he whispered. “This can’t be happening.”

The rapping came from the crew access door. Something was outside the door, striking against the tiny viewing window.

He glanced around the room, feeling very alone and vulnerable. Taking several deep breaths to steady his nerves, he approached the access door.

Tap. Tap. Scrape…

Alex froze, staring at the door. Not just knocking this time. Something scratched against the tiny window.

He glanced up at the security camera mounted in the corner of the room, knowing his every action was being recorded and possibly monitored by someone back at company headquarters. If he just stood there, he might be judged incompetent and unfit to be part of future missions.

Taking another deep breath for courage, Alex lunged the remaining few feet to the crew access door. He actually crashed against the door, grabbing the heavy rubber seal lining the frame to keep from falling backwards.

Holding onto the seal, he thrust his face close to the window and looked out.

At first, he saw only the blackness of space and the glow of a million distant stars, but then he spotted something even darker blocking out the tiny points of light behind it. Ebony feathers, eyes that burned like smoldering brimstone, and a beak so sharp it could pierce a man’s heart.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Alex cried out, staggering back. A feathered creature clung to the outside of the door, pecking at the window with its sharp beak, attempting to shatter the glass.

The corporal turned and fled across the room, rushing to the console and hitting the alarm button. Instantly, bells sounded throughout the ship. Warning lights went off, bathing everything in flashing yellows and reds. In the viewscreens, he saw three men struggling to get out of their sleeping nets and don their flight suits.

Sergeant Bill Monahan reached the control room first, turning off the alarm. Engineer “Doc” Howard and Captain Lang arrived moments later. All three men looked to Alex for an explanation.

“Corporal Brown, what’s going on here?” Captain Lang asked, looking around the room. “Why did you hit the alarm?”

Alex pointed at the tiny window in the crew access door. “Something’s out there.”

Captain Lang looked toward the door. “Out where?”

“Out there,” Alex replied. “On the other side of the door. It knocked on the window, wanting in.”

Monahan burst out laughing. “You were dreaming, kid. You fell asleep and had a nightmare. I told you not to listen to those spooky books.”

The captain turned around and looked at Monahan. “Sergeant, did you have something to do with this? Is this another one of your practical jokes?”

Monahan quickly lost his smile. “No, sir. Not me, Captain. I had nothing to do with it. Scout’s honor.”

“I’m not making this up,” Alex said, his voice cracking. “See for yourself.”

The captain crossed the room and peered out the tiny glass window. “There’s nothing there. Nothing but a million miles of empty space.” Stepping back from the door, he turned and studied the corporal. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?”

Alex lowered his gaze, feeling very foolish “A raven, sir.”

Monahan again burst out laughing, slapping himself on the thigh. “A raven? That’s a good one. I swear, kid. You—”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The rapping sounded directly above them, loud, sharp, undeniable, causing all four of them to freeze in place. They stood there, staring at the ceiling and listening carefully.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Monahan spoke first. “It has to be a loose piece of cowling, something flapping around out there. We must have popped a few rivets during takeoff.”

“But why didn’t we hear it earlier?” Captain Lang asked.

“It must have taken time to work loose,” replied the sergeant.

“It’s not a piece of cowling,” Howard disagreed. “Not a piece of the ship flapping around. The taps are too evenly spaced apart. Someone is out there.”

“Or something,” Alex added.

“Must be a load crew member,” Monahan said, staring at the spot on the ceiling. “They must have somehow gotten stuck.”

“You know that’s impossible, Sergeant,” Captain Lang said. “Even with a suit they wouldn’t survive this long.”

“Okay, what then?”

Alex cleared his throat. “It’s a rav—”

“Don’t you say raven again,” Monahan warned. “There’s no such thing as a space raven.”

“Look for yourself,” Alex replied. “The cameras recorded it.”

The captain strode across the room to the console. The others joined him.

“Here, look.” Alex touched a button to play the camera footage. The others watched the mysterious shadow glide over the top of the ship and disappear from sight.

“That’s only a shadow. It doesn’t prove anything.” Sergeant Monahan shook his head.

“It proves something’s out there,” Alex argued.

“It’s electrical,” Doc Howard said. “The image blurred as it moved past the camera. But it could be just a glitch, or caused by a burst of gamma rays.”

Captain Lang nodded. “Gentlemen, I think—”

Ding…ding…ding…ding…ding…ding…

For the second time that night, alarm bells sounded, startling all four men.

“Now what?” Monahan asked.

They all looked at the viewscreens. A bright yellow warning light came on.

“Aft airlock door.” Howard pointed, turning off the alarm. “Something set off the sensors.”

“Something wants in,” Alex whispered.

“All right, let’s check it out.” The captain opened a drawer and grabbed several electrical tasers, passing them out.

Alex hesitated when taking one.

Captain Lang smiled. “Just in case your boogeyman turns out to be real.”

They descended to the ship’s lower level and moved aft, following a narrow walkway between workstations and storage lockers, passing the tiny galley and lavatory.

Reaching the cargo area, Captain Lang opened the access door and stepped through. The others followed in single file through the narrow doorway.

The cargo hold was crowded with metal barrels, crates, and enormous shipping containers filled with supplies for mining ships working in the Kuiper belt. There were containers labeled in English, Chinese, Arabic, and New Russian. Along the ceiling above them were massive payload doors that opened during loading and unloading of cargo.

All of the containers were fastened in place to keep them from shifting during the long journey. It would not do for a metal cylinder containing tons of mining equipment to go rolling freely and slam into the ship’s walls. A breech in the hull could mean instant depressurization, and death for all of them.

They were halfway through the cargo area when Monahan stopped. “Hello. What’s this?

The others stopped to see what had gotten the sergeant’s attention. A few feet away, a large wooden barrel lay on its side. It was not secured, and a dark liquid was leaking from one end.

“How the hell did that get onboard?” the captain asked. “Wooden containers aren’t authorized for space flight.”

“It’s leaking,” Howard said, stating the obvious.

Monahan stepped up to the barrel, touching a fingertip to the liquid puddled on the floor next to it. He sniffed his finger, then tasted it.

“Monahan, no!” warned Captain Lang.

The sergeant’s face broke out in a large grin. “It’s wine, sir. Good wine.” He cupped his hand under the drip, filled his palm, and drank it.

“Must be a gift for the miners,” Howard suggested. “Maybe someone is having a birthday party.”

“Monahan, enough of that. You’re on duty,” Captain Lang said. “Stand that barrel back up and get some straps to tie it in place. Catch up with us when you’re done.”

“Yes, sir,” Monahan replied, still grinning.

The other three men continued toward the rear of the ship.

As he walked, Alex looked back and saw Monahan fill both of his hands with wine and drink deeply. The sergeant then grabbed the barrel and stood it up. As he did, part of a name came into view, painted in black letters along its side: Amontill—

The name seemed familiar, and Alex wondered where he had seen it before. They did not do a lot of business with Italian or Spanish companies, but he must have seen it on a loading manifest somewhere.

Nor did it explain how a wooden barrel had been cleared for space transport. If it was for a special party, then someone had greased a few palms to get the wine smuggled aboard. Maybe the palm greased was Monahan’s since he was the load specialist and it was his job to check the cargo.

Reaching the ships engines, they proceeded down a narrow catwalk elevated above the four big hyperdrives powering the ship. The room was cavernous; the heavy throbbing sounds of the engines bounced off the metal walls, sounding like a giant heartbeat.

Leaving the engine room, they finally reached the interior door of the back airlock. Beyond the first door was a small chamber, and beyond that a second door set in the outside hull of the ship.

The aft airlock was the doorway they used when doing spacewalks outside the ship for scheduled maintenance or emergency repairs. The chamber allowed air pressure to be lowered before stepping out into the abyss and raised so their bodies could adjust before reentering the ship.

To the left of the door hung six bulky sixteen-layer spacesuits, each equipped with a heating-and-cooling unit, self-propulsion jets, and a portable life-support system.

Despite the alarm warning, the door to the pressure chamber looked to be in perfect working condition. No damage to the rubber seal or the door itself.

The viewscreen to the right of the door showed oxygen levels and air pressure as being normal in the room. Still, they had to visually inspect the exterior door to confirm nothing was wrong with it. A little crack or tear could quickly develop into much bigger problems.

“Everything appears to be normal,” Captain Lang said, stepping back from the viewscreen.

“I better check to make sure.” Howard grabbed one of the spacesuits off the rack. “Better safe than sorry, especially with a ship this old.”

The captain nodded.

“Alex, give him a hand getting into that suit.”

Once fully suited, Howard opened the first door and entered the pressure chamber. The suit was bulky, and he had to turn sideways to get through the doorway. It also weighed several hundred pounds in full gravity, and he moved slowly to keep from falling.

Captain Lang closed the door and resealed it after Howard, watching the engineer’s progress through the small window in the door.

Howard almost reached the other end of the chamber when the handle of the exterior door jiggled and then stopped. The engineer froze.

Alex also saw the handle move. “Captain, did you see that?”

“I did.” Captain Lang nodded. He touched the communicating button to the right of the door, broadcasting his voice to the speaker in Howard’s helmet. “Probably nothing, Doc. We must have caused an air current when we opened and closed the interior door. Just a ripple. Carry on.”

Howard looked back at them and nodded, then continued forward to the exterior door. He reached out to inspect the seal when the handle moved again, jerking up and down violently.

“Captain, I don’t think it’s an air current,” Howard said.

There was a sharp ping as the handle snapped in half, the interior piece falling to the floor at the engineer’s feet.

“What the hell?” Howard’s voice sounded miles away.

The screech of tearing metal filled the pressure chamber as part of the exterior door was torn and pulled outward, creating a gaping jagged hole.

“Doc, get out of there!” Captain Lang yelled.

And in that hole a nightmare appeared, bright orange and hairy, with a wide black face and deadly fangs.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Alex could not believe his eyes.

Thick black fingers grabbed the edge of the door, bending the metal outwards, making the hole even larger and revealing what was on the outside trying to get in.

Instantly the pressure chamber filled with the scream of oxygen rushing out into the vacuum of space, venting through the hole. The vacuum caught Howard, dragging him against the door.

“Howard, hang on!” Captain Lang adjusted settings on the viewscreen, tying to stabilize the atmospheric pressure inside the chamber.

“It’s a fucking monkey,” Alex said, pointing. Not a monkey, but a large powerful primate covered in orange fur. An orangutan.

The orangutan ripped the door away and entered the chamber, making the tiny room much smaller. It was an impossible nightmare that could not exist in the airless vacuum of outer space, yet somehow did.

Howard screamed and tried to back away, but the primate lunged and grabbed him, slamming his body against the closest wall. Once, twice, three times, it bashed the engineer against the wall, crushing his flesh into pulp and causing his bones to snap like brittle pieces of chalk.

Howard’s plastic and fiberglass helmet exploded into tiny shrapnel, along with his skull, blowing blood, brains, and clumps of hair across the chamber. Blood and bits of flesh splattered against the window of the inner door, sliding down the glass. An eyeball bounced off the door, rolling across the chamber floor.

As blood and gore hit the window, tinting his view of the carnage, Alex remembered the name on the wooden barrel in the storeroom, and where he had seen it before. And he realized what was happening.

Amontillado.

He turned and grabbed Lang by the shoulder. “Captain, we’ve got to get out of here. Now. Before it’s too late.”

The captain tried to pull free. “Corporal, have you gone mad? Release me.”

“Captain, listen to me. I think I know what’s going on.”

A loud crash sounded, causing both men to jump. They turned and saw that the orangutan had tossed aside Howard’s lifeless body and now stood just on the other side of the door. It stared at them through the window, its hot breath steaming up the glass.

“It’s Poe, Captain. Edgar Allan Poe.”

Captain Lang looked back at Alex, trying to comprehend. “The writer?”

Alex released his hold. “I was listening to Poe when all this started. Something else must also have been listening, because it’s pulling stuff out of the stories. The tapping we heard, it’s from ‘The Raven.’”

“And that?” Captain Lang pointed at the orangutan.

“‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’”

The orangutan jerked on the handle and pounded on the door, trying to get to them.

“That door won’t hold long,” Alex said. “We have to get to the control room.”

Captain Lang nodded. “Okay, let’s go.

They reached the cargo hold at a dead run, both men breathing hard. Halfway through the hold, Captain Lang stopped and looked around the room. Alex came to a halt beside him, trying to catch his breath.

“Monahan!” Captain Lang yelled, looking around. There was no sign of the big man. “Sergeant Monahan, answer me!”

Alex looked to his left, spotting the wooden barrel about thirty feet away. It now stood upright, the name Amontillado stenciled on its side.

A few feet beyond the barrel stood a wall, but not constructed of space-age metal. On the contrary, it was built of ancient brick and mortar, like the walls erected a thousand years ago on Old Earth—like the walls that existed in the 1800s Baltimore home of Edgar Allan Poe.

“Oh, my god,” Alex said, fear digging icy fingernails deep into his guts.

The brick wall measured over twenty feet wide, running between two gigantic shipping containers, and reaching from floor to ceiling. In the center of the wall, about five feet off the ground, one of the red bricks had been pushed out and lay upon the floor. A man’s hand protruded from that tiny opening, scraped and bloody, knuckles ripped to the bone, fingertips raw and jagged, two of the nails torn loose and bent completely back.

“Monahan.”

Alex approached the wall, touching the hand. It was cold and lifeless, the hand of a dead man. The burly sergeant who delighted in playing practical jokes on his fellow crewmen had died the victim of a prank in one of Poe’s more famous stories.

“‘The Cask of Amontillado,’” Alex whispered. He released the hand and stepped back. “Goodbye, Wild Bill.”

The sound of a metal door slamming echoed from the rear of the ship. The murdering beast they left behind must have breached the airlock and was now in hot pursuit.

Wasting no more time on Monahan, they hurried on. They secured doors behind them as they moved from compartment to compartment, but they knew locked doors would be only a temporarily hinderance for the orangutan.

They finally reached the control room, latching the door. Captain Lang rushed to the console, remotely shutting and fastening doors and airlocks throughout the spaceship in a desperate attempt to buy them time. He also turned on all the interior monitors, watching the views from dozens of cameras. It only took a few seconds to spot the orangutan. It moved along the elevated catwalk in the engine room, perhaps following their scent.

Alex hurried to the console, summoning holographic keyboards and pushing buttons.

“You said you knew what was happening?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir. I think so.”

Captain Lang glanced up at the viewscreens. The orangutan had already crossed the engine room, entering the cargo hold. The security door between the two sections had not even slowed it down. “You better have a plan.”

Alex did not look at the captain, focusing his attention on the task at hand. “Earlier, when I was listening to stories by Edgar Allan Poe, there was a power surge. At least, I thought it was a power surge. But now, I’m not so sure. I think we were probed by something.”

“An alien lifeforce?”

The corporal nodded. “I think it’s fluid energy, a shadow, but the avatars it creates are solid and very deadly. It scanned our computers and is using the stuff from Poe’s stories against us. Maybe the damn thing is still in the system.”

He slid the holographic keyboard out of the way and pulled up another one. “That’s why I’m deleting the book, giving it nothing more to use. If I remove the book from the system, maybe I’ll also remove the alien infection.”

“Sounds crazy,” Lang said. “But it’s worth a try.”

Alex pulled up his list of books, the titles appearing on one of the viewscreens.

“Nine hundred and sixty-two?” Captain Lang asked, shocked.

“It’s a long trip, sir. I’ve made it several times. I added titles to my list before each voyage, but never erased any. Now, I just have to find the Poe file.”

“Get rid of them all,” the captain said. “We don’t want it creating something else from another book.”

“Right. Delete them all. Might take a few minutes, some are big files.”

Captain Lang glanced up at the monitors. The orangutan was in the crew quarters. It paused to sniff the sleeping nets, then tore them off the walls in a fit of rage.

“Please hurry, Corporal.”

“All set.” Alex touched a button on one of the floating keyboards. On the viewscreen before him the number started counting down as book files were wiped from the ship’s system. He was halfway done when something crashed into the door guarding the control room.

They both looked up at the security monitors. The orangutan was on the other side, attacking the metal in a furious rage.

“It knows we’re in here,” Captain Lang said.

Alex nodded. “Maybe the alien knows what we’re doing and wants to stop us.”

The pounding grew louder, the metal door shaking with each angry blow. The orangutan grabbed the latch, violently jerking on it.

Captain Lang opened a drawer, grabbing several more stun guns. “Damn, I wish we had something more powerful than these. Should have gotten a laser torch from cargo.”

Alex glanced at the viewscreen, numbers still counting down. He touched the keyboard, bringing up the titles to correspond with the numbers. He was not sure where the collected works of Edgar Allen Poe appeared on the list.

921…876…821…

The captain looked at the stun guns in his hands, two in his left hand and one in his right. He switched them on, listening to the shrill whine as they powered up to full charge. He crossed the room to the shaking entrance door.

“Careful, sir.” Alex glanced up from the monitor. “That door isn’t going to hold much longer.”

791…732…650…

“You just get those books erased.” The captain smiled. “Here, monkey, monkey.”

Captain Lang touched the business end of all three chargers against the metal door handle, sending several thousand volts of electricity through it. From the other side of the door came a primal scream of pain. The pounding stopped.

615…550…491…

They both stood staring at the entrance door, a heavy silence descending over the room. Alex was afraid to say anything, afraid to move. A full minute passed. Two.

450…413…375…323…

Lang turned to look at him. “I think I killed it.”

Corporal Brown turned around to look at the security monitors above him. The area on the other side of the door was in camera view. There was nothing there.

301…275…263…

“Sir, I don’t see anything.” He pushed a button on the console to turn the camera to see the rest of the room on the other side of the door. “The orangutan’s not there. It’s gone.”

213…197…175…

The captain nodded, turning back toward the door. “Good. You were right, it’s electrical. The zap I gave it sent the damn thing back to its maker.”

159…145…127…

Alex looked back at the monitor, shocked by what he saw. An orange shape appeared from the darkness at the far end of the room, racing toward the door at full charge. An enraged mass of fur and muscles, deadly fangs, and unimageable strength.

111…97…91…

“Captain, get away from the door!” Alex screamed, grabbing two of the stun guns and switching them on.

86…79…70…

The orangutan slammed into the door like a furious, furry locomotive, ripping it completely off the hinges. The door flew into the room with the primate pressed against it, slamming into Captain Lang and sending him flying into a wall.

67…59…47…

Tossing the broken door aside, the creature roared with anger. It glanced around the room, then turned and advanced toward the captain.

41…36…31…

The captain lay dazed and unable to move, a trickle of blood running down the side of his head, his stun guns scattered across the floor.

27…24…21…

The beast grabbed Lang’s right leg and snatched him off the floor, shaking him like a rag doll.

19…15…13…

“Nooo…” Alex raced across the room, jamming the two stun guns against the monster’s lower back and squeezing the triggers. There was a rapid popping sound, and the scent of burning hair, as the stun guns fired their electrical charges.

10…9…8…

The orangutan howled in rage, dropping the captain on the floor. It spun around and slammed a massive fist into Alex’s chest, knocking the breath from him and causing his vision to flash white hot.

7…6…5…

The corporal flew backward, crashing into the computer console hard enough to crack plastic and shatter electrical components. Sparks popped like fireworks as systems shorted out, backup systems immediately turning on. Warning lights flashed, and alarm bells and whistles sounded. Clouds of white smoke shot up from the damaged equipment, the stench of burning wiring filling the air.

3…2…

The orangutan of Poe’s nightmares stalked toward Alex. But the young man was stunned, unable to move, and could do nothing to save himself.

The primate nearly reached him when it flickered, flashed, and faded out of existence, leaving the two men alone in the room.

Alex leaned forward, holding his sides until his breath returned, then stumbled across the room to Captain Lang. The captain had taken a nasty bump on the head that would require minor first aid, but nothing was broken. They were both lucky to be alive.

Helping the captain to his feet, they looked around surveying the damage. The sparks and smoke had stopped, and the warning bells no longer sounded, backup systems taking over for the damaged equipment.

“We did it,” Captain Lang smiled. “We won.”

Alex nodded. “You’ll definitely have something to say in your log.”

Captain Lang patted him on the shoulder. “I better report—”

The room shook, lights dimming and alarms again sounding.

“What now?” The captain looked around.

The room shook again, the entire ship shuddered, and they heard the sound of metal being bent and twisted. Rivets popped like pistol shots, hydraulic and steam pipes burst with a hiss.

The captain rushed to the console, switching the monitors input to the cameras mounted along the exterior of the ship.

They both saw the image on the viewscreens, not believing their eyes. Something big had hold of their ship. Something really fucking big.

“Open up the shield,” Lang ordered.

Alex flipped several switches, and the heavy lead and metal shield covering the ship’s large windshield began to retract upward, offering a clear view of the front of the craft.

As the shield retracted, Alex glanced at a viewscreen in front of him and saw a flashing number 1. To the right of the number was a title. The computer system had been damaged before his entire library could be erased. One title still remained. Not even a novel, but an illustrated short story written by an obscure writer banned for his politics and racist viewpoints.

Captain Lang saw where Alex was staring, saw the flashing number. “You erased the books?”

Alex nodded. “They’re erased, sir. All but one story.”

Something tightened around the ship’s hull, crushing sheet metal and exterior cowlings. The ceiling above their heads crumbled. Hydraulic fluid spilled down through light fixtures.

“What story?” Captain Lang asked, frightened.

Alex raised his head and looked out the window, the shield now fully retracted, staring in horror at the monstrous creature filling the view, a demented mixture of humanoid, dragon, and octopus, with wings as big as dwarf planets, and a face of twisting tentacles, its prodigious clawed hands crushing The Condor like an empty beer can.

“Who is the author?” Captain Lang screamed, his mind reeling from the sight before him.

Ceilings, floors, and walls crumpled inward, engines exploded, and cargo containers spilled their treasures out into the vastness of outer space.

“H.P. Lovecraft, sir.” Alex dropped to his knees, gazing in absolute terror upon the ancient god of pulp fiction brought to life, watching as the Old One delivered pain and merciless death upon them from the inky depths of space, embracing the insanity that entered his mind tearing his thoughts apart.

“Hail Cthulhu.”

Skin Tags
by Vivian Kasley

Lorna grumbled under her breath as she swept the various clumps of hair on the floor into the dust pan. She’d been doing hair for over thirty years and had yet to be given her first client since being hired over two weeks ago. It was true that she’d only worked at chain haircutteries over the years, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of the same level of service as the other stylists at the highfalutin salon. She was starting to think they’d hired her to do their dirty work, and it wasn’t sitting well with her one bit. The broom slipped from her hand when she looked up and saw a man sitting in her chair.

“Hello? May I help you?” Lorna gave the man her best smile.

“I was told you could give me a haircut,” the man said. He didn’t smile back.

“Oh, well, of course. Just give me a minute.” Lorna picked up the broom. She was annoyed that no one had alerted her that she had a client and pretended not to see the smirks on the faces of her co-workers in the mirrors as she went to wash her hands

The man in her chair was fidgety, like he had a terrible itch he couldn’t scratch. His clothes hung from his rail thin frame and he was as pale as watered-down milk. A full salt and pepper beard covered most of his face and he had a head of thick white hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed or cut in some time. Lorna introduced herself as she put a cape around him. He nodded, but didn’t offer his name. He said he didn’t want his hair washed, so she sprayed his bird’s nest of a mane with water and tried not to meet his bloodshot eyes in the mirror.

“I got back not too long ago… I was on a mission,” the man said.

Lorna stopped spraying. “Excuse me?”

“I was on a mission. That’s why my hair hasn’t been cut. I should’ve shaved, I know, but I actually grew to like the beard and I’m not too sure I want to see what’s underneath.”

“Well, the beard suits you. Do you mind if I ask what kind of mission you were on?” Lorna combed through the man’s tangles and feigned interest.

“Space…I was in space.”

“Did I hear you right? Did you just say you were in space?”

“Yes. Space.” The man sighed a long-exaggerated sigh.

“Wow! Now, that’s really something. What were you doing all the way up there?” Lorna had heard a lot in her years of cutting hair, but this was something completely new.

“I’m sure you may’ve heard or read recently about a few certain big shot entrepreneurs getting involved in the field of asteroid mining.”

“I don’t have cable right now, but I do remember seeing a news article or something on Facebook about platinum mining—”

“Platinum? Ha! Precious metals! They aren’t the only materials these people are interested in. Water…that’s the real meal ticket.”

“Water? Who would’ve thought? Well, a big kudos to you for being brave enough to go up there and help those who’re doing God’s work for the good of the country!” Lorna met his haunted gaze in the mirror and suddenly became uncomfortable.

“God’s work…? For the good of the country?” the man scoffed.

Lorna frowned. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Those greedy narcissistic bottom feeders didn’t care about the good of the country, the world, or even the galaxy. They sure as hell didn’t think about who or what else might’ve already been on those ugly rocks! All they wanted was to become trillionaires and the poor bastards they sent to do their dirty work had no idea what awaited—never mind. Anyway, I wasn’t sent there to mine. Mistakes were made, and I was supposed to save them from themselves and it all went to hell in a hand basket.”

“Jeesh, that sounds like an absolute pickle for sure.” Lorna could tell the subject was upsetting the man, and even though she normally let her customers get things off their chest, she didn’t think it was a good idea to continue the conversation. She was also starting to think he was a bit off his rocker and wondered if he’d ever really been to space at all. She parted his hair and asked, “Well, um, all right then. So, how would you like your hair cut?”

“My hair?” The man stared off in the distance for a few seconds then said, “Just get rid of it all.”

“We can do that,” Lorna chirped.

She began to focus only on his hair. First, she had to cut away the bulk, then she could use her clippers to do the rest. The man had closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep, which wasn’t unusual—clients did it all the time. She noticed as she was cutting away that he had several large skin tags clinging to his neck. Most were flesh colored, but some were a rusty brown and reminded her of pieces of cooked ground beef. She looked up, and upon further inspection, she could see some of the flesh-colored stalks protruding from his eye lids also.

A shudder rippled through her body.

The guard she chose for the clippers was a four, which would give him a short cut but leave enough as not to expose his scalp too much. Lorna wondered how previous stylists got around all the skin tags at the base of his neck and wasn’t sure how she was going to, but she would worry about one thing at a time. The buzz of the clippers didn’t seem to stir the sleeping man, and she was glad for that. She ran them over his head once without incident, but then her clippers hit a snag and got stuck. When she tried to gently pull it free, blood spurted like a geyser into Lorna’s eyes and rained down her face.

A piercing scream erupted from her throat, causing the man’s eyes to pop open. He looked at Lorna’s blood splattered face and sprang from the chair.

Everyone in the salon was frozen in horror, including Lorna, who stood motionless except for her slick trembling hands. The clippers hung from the wild-eyed man’s head, still caught on whatever had snagged them. He looked around as if he was lost, then his breathing became labored and he bent forward with his hands on his knees until he could catch his breath again. Suddenly, he ripped his cape off, threw it to the floor, and shouted, “I shouldn’t have come back…you’re all doomed!” Then he fled from the salon leaving a trail of his blood behind him.

At first, everyone was too stunned to breathe a word, afraid that if they did, the man would hear and run back in. Seconds felt like hours as they looked around at one another with their hands to their chests, then everyone began moving and speaking all at once. They checked on one another and made sure everyone was okay, and then went to grab cleaning supplies to help clean up the mess the man left behind.

After washing up as best she could, Lorna tried to explain through frantic sobs what she thought must’ve happened. The manager wrote up an incident report, but didn’t call the authorities, because she said she wasn’t sure an actual crime took place. Still in hysterics, Lorna replayed the incident over and over and tried to explain to her dismissive manager about the man’s large skin tags. “They were all over his neck, but I didn’t know they’d be on his scalp. I thought I was being so careful,” she cried.

The manager looked at her coldly, then spat,” Well, you should’ve been even more careful. I need you to go home until further notice. Let’s just hope we don’t end up with a lawsuit on our hands.”

Lawsuit? Been more careful, she thought. What about me? His blood went into my goddamn eyes! I could contract something… He didn’t look well!

Lorna shivered the whole way home. She had become a hairdresser when she was just twenty years old, and not once in her career had anything like that ever happened. Not to mention, being reprimanded by a woman who was young enough to be her daughter was humiliating. She wondered if she should go to a doctor. What if some of his blood went into her mouth when she screamed? Why hadn’t the manager instructed her to go to the doctor? She was forced to sign the incident report, so why shouldn’t she go get checked out too?

First thing tomorrow she would call the salon and tell them she wanted to go to the doctor and that they were going to pay for it. She might even call a lawyer. Afterall, she was genuinely traumatized by the incident and none of her fellow coworkers seemed to give a rat’s ass.

Once home, Lorna scrubbed herself pink in the shower, then stood under the hot water until it turned cold. Still wrapped in a towel, she downed four shots of Tito’s, hoping the vodka would race through her veins and kill whatever cooties could’ve gotten into her. A couple more shots later, Lorna was feeling somewhat better, but she wished she had someone to talk to about what had happened. With no parents, kids, or siblings, she wondered who she could trust to listen to her worries. Most of her so-called friends were too busy with married life to ever give their full attention to their single burden of a girlfriend. There was her ex-husband, but he was an ex for a reason. Still, she wanted to call someone, anyone, but in the end, she chose to go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

Morning knocked on Lorna’s brain like a sledge hammer. Not only did she have a pounding headache, but she couldn’t turn her neck without wincing. It felt like her lymph nodes might be swollen. Her eyes felt like dried figs in their sockets, and she could barely peel them open against the laser beams of sunlight coming in through her blinds. There was a fleeting thought that she should stay snuggled up in her blanket and go back to sleep, but it evaporated when she remembered why she was still home in the first place.

She hung her feet over the bed, yawned, and consoled herself. The man was an astronaut or something, right? How tainted could his blood actually be?

Lorna looked in the bathroom mirror and cringed. Her normal rosy complexion was pallid, and her eyes were bloodshot.

Maybe I am sick, she wondered.

All she wanted to do was go back to bed and forget about everything, but she needed to phone work and see what was going on. She couldn’t afford to be without a job again, plus, she still wanted to go to the doctor.

The work phone was busy, so she dialed the doctor. They told her they couldn’t get her in until the following Monday. She could go to the emergency room, but she wasn’t sure if it was an actual emergency. She dialed work again and finally got through. It was her boss that answered.

“Yes,” she snapped.

“I was just wondering when I could come back to work? Also, I’m not feeling so well, and thought I should go—”

“Take the rest of the week off Lorna, and on Monday morning we’ll have a meeting to see what we’re going to do.”

“But I…okay, all right then. See you Monday morning.” Defeated, Lorna ended the call. The salon was closed on Sundays, but that meant she’d be without tips for several days.

By Thursday morning, Lorna noticed a few skin tags on her wrists and along both sides of her neck. They sprouted from her skin like rows of corn. Fright tickled her innards like ice cold fingers. She’d had a few small skin tags already, but these weren’t ordinary skin tags. They were bigger for one thing, and they looked similar to the ones that had been on the astronaut. She began to think maybe it was a virus of some sort and decided she might need to go the hospital after all. But without decent insurance and limited funds, she wasn’t sure how she’d pay.

“Besides, skin tags aren’t contagious,” she told herself. “I probably had some of these all along and just now noticed because I’m paranoid. Better to wait until Monday, have that meeting, and then go to the doctor so they can pay for it.”

Hot tea with honey and a healthy dose of the internet consoled her. She read that skin tags were harmless and found nothing about viruses that could cause them. She’d searched enough Google images to reassure herself that what she had, were, in fact, harmless skin tags. Though most of the articles said not to cut them off yourself, she’d cut a few off before with a pair of nail clippers, and other than a little blood, nothing bad had happened. Lorna decided she’d only clip the bigger ones. Isn’t that what the doctor would do anyway?

After a shower, Lorna glugged some vodka to prepare for her procedure. She laid a towel on the bathroom floor, then she sanitized her nail clippers and the areas she wanted to cut with rubbing alcohol. She needed to egg herself on so she wouldn’t chicken out.

All I have to do is snip and they’ll be gone. They don’t grow back. Just do it!

She took a deep breath and squeezed the clippers. It really hurt, but she found that if she took a deep breath before each snip, it was manageable. One by one, they fell like heads from a guillotine onto the towel.

When she was finished, she examined the little blobs stuck to the towel, then shook them into the bathtub. Most ran down the drain when she sprayed them with the stream from her shower head, but a few of the larger ones stuck to the tub like glue. Lorna shrugged and decided she’d get rid of them later. Miraculously, many of the spots had stopped bleeding almost immediately after she’d clipped them.

She chuckled. Who needs a doctor when you have the internet, a good pair of nail clippers, and a bottle of vodka?

It was still dark when she sat up in her bed. Her tiny wounds throbbed and itched something fierce. Her throat was raw, like she’d been screaming in her sleep.

Probably shouldn’t have had all that vodka before bed.

She groggily wandered to the bathroom to pee. When she turned on the hall light, she shrieked. More skin tags, bigger than the last, had cropped up on her wrists. Her hands flew to her neck and she could feel several of them roll under her fingers. She raced to the bathroom in a panic.

They were on her eyelids, under her armpits, and on the sides of her stomach. Some of the larger ones were engorged, like overfed ticks. She touched one, and it jiggled. Then she pinched it between her fingers, and it fell off onto the floor. Lorna’s mind reeled with fear. She’d have to go to the hospital. There was no other choice.

Queasiness caused her to lift the lid on the toilet, where she hung her head and eventually threw up buckets of foul-smelling goo. Stars danced in front of her eyes and dizziness overwhelmed her. She caught her breath and leaned against the wall to keep herself from fainting.

“What’s happening to me,” she whispered.

A strange sound from the bathtub startled her. It sounded like the squelch of a wet mop. All she had to do was peel back the curtain and look in, but she was afraid to. More chunky acid rose in her throat as she moved her feet.

It’s nothing, it’s nothing at all. The squelching continued. It’s something, it’s definitely something.

Lorna closed her eyes and gripped the curtain. Slowly, she peeled it aside. She opened her eyes and gasped. What she saw moving around the tub made no sense.

“I’m asleep,” she murmured. “This isn’t real and I’m asleep.”

Lorna pinched herself until tears sprung to her eyes. I’m definitely not asleep. The skin tags that hadn’t gone down the tub’s drain, had somehow merged and morphed into a large blob and it was rolling around in a frenzy.

“What the fuck is happening!”

Who should she call now? The police? The military? Maybe a fucking mental institution? It was the space man, he had something to do with this, she was sure of it. Lorna continued to watch in horror as the thing undulated around her tub. Like rising bread dough, the gelatinous mass seemed to be getting bigger by the second. When what looked like two small limbs poked out of it, the single thread of sanity she’d been holding onto snapped and she hit the floor.

She was cold and her eyelids were almost too heavy to lift. Where am I? Lorna remembered she was in her bathroom and had passed out on the tile. Then she recalled why she had passed out and shot up.

Her ears rang as she looked around. She didn’t see anything. The tub. But there was nothing in there either. She started to giggle, and then it turned into a full belly laugh that echoed around her. None of it was real! None of it!

Except she still had the skin tags and she still felt like hot death warmed over. Her legs were wobbly when she stood and she felt weak. She couldn’t remember when she ate last, and despite the alarming situation, she was ravenous. The reflection in the vanity made her recoil. It was her face, but it was gaunt and dark circles underlined her sunken eyes. Every single strand of hair on her head had turned white. Lorna’s shoulders shook as she tried to cry, but no tears fell.

A sound like glass shattering came from inside the house and she stiffened.

Someone was in the house. Lorna was sure of it. They were walking around and knocking things over. She needed to get to her phone. It was charging in the kitchen on the counter where she left it. Why hadn’t she ever gotten a gun or even a dog? She looked for something to defend herself with, found a pair of scissors in the bathroom, then tiptoed out.

Whatever Lorna was looking at, she wasn’t sure if scissors would cut it. She didn’t dare move a muscle or take a breath as she watched the grotesque human-like figure move around her kitchen. It was hairless with no discernible face and its flesh reminded her of melting candle wax. The refrigerator doors were open and the floor was littered with its contents. The thing’s foot slipped in the slime of some broken eggs, but it caught itself from falling.

Lorna watched as it grabbed an entire bunch of bananas off the counter and pushed them into where a mouth would be. Then it ate a roll of paper towel and a bottle of dish soap. It seemed to pick items at random. Most of the stuff stayed in, but some of it came flying back out as if it found it unappealing. It pulled her phone from the wall and consumed it, cord and charger still attached. It must’ve liked it because the phone didn’t reappear.

A million thoughts raced through Lorna’s head. What the fuck was this thing? How could this be happening? Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. It may’ve slightly resembled a human, but it wasn’t one. With her phone gone, she had to get out and find help. At the time, renting a secluded bungalow on a dead-end road seemed perfect. Not so much anymore.

She tried to creep quietly backwards, but she tripped over her own feet and bumped the wall. The thing looked up in her direction. Lorna wasn’t sure if it could see her since there were no eyes on it anywhere that were detectable. It made an earsplitting noise similar to a squealing pig and with surprising speed, it moved toward her as she raced to get away.

Lorna’s legs buckled and she fell. She was too weak. The thing was on her in an instant. It held her down with its gummy hands. When Lorna cried out, it squealed in return. It seemed to be blindly studying her, moving its fingers over her skin, until it reached what it was looking for. A soft gurgle similar to a cat’s purr came from it as it tenderly caressed and stroked each of her bloated skin growths. It lowered its featureless face only inches from her own, and a thick snot like substance reeking of blood and rotten mushrooms dripped from it, saturating her.

Dry heaves racked Lorna’s stomach, and she tried once again to fight, but her body just wouldn’t put in the effort. The thing forced two of its slimy fingers into one of her eyes, and she screamed. As it rotated its fingers around like a drill, she shrieked over and over until it felt like her eardrums would bust with the effort. When it ripped forth her eye from its socket, Lorna alternated between blood-curdling screams and choking on the acidic vomit that scorched her esophagus as she watched with her remaining eye as it pushed her eyeball into its face. It looked down at her with one familiar blue iris and squealed with what sounded like delight. A moment later, it held up one of her bloated skin tags for her to see, then gently placed it down beside her.

Lorna’s chin trembled as she turned her head and watched the ball of mutant flesh roll around and begin to morph. “Oh my God,” she panted. Though she knew no God was coming to save her. As the thing squealed and began to dig out her other eye, she screamed and screamed until the blinding darkness consumed her for good.

Virescent Sky
by Tim Meyer

A bold green flash of lightning cracked the sky, and the world was never the same.

Some in the kingdom saw the heavens separate, the clouds drifting apart like magnetic opposites, the dark expanse splitting like a loose stitch, and witnessed something plummet from the Great Above, descend into the mountainous terrains of Boulder Ridge, the outskirt lands of the north. No one knew exactly what had fallen, but the olive blur couldn’t have been anything short of a miracle, a message from the Almighty Himself. Some in the surrounding villages like Townsend (the fishing community that lay to the most northwest of the Kingdom of Garrison) claimed the celestial object was buried in the mountains, that the fantastic emerald glow emanated from somewhere deep within the cliffs.

In response, King Elder Garrison IV, King Gary to most, sent his two sons, two of their bravest knights, and one lonely scribe to document their discoveries.

I am that scribe.

This is that story.

The tale of five men who set out to investigate the source of the thing that changed the sky over Garrison forever.

That changed life itself.

1

“I was always father’s favorite,” John Henry Garrison said proudly from his saddle. His grin ate up most of his face.

“You keep wishing, brother,” Bryce replied, calm like always.

“Eldest sons are the best sons. Plus, the throne will be mine once the old man kicks it. That has to account for something.”

“Don’t let your head swell with such grand delusions. You might float away like a jester’s balloon.”

John chuckled. So did Bryce. Even the knights, stony statues of men they were, cracked a smile.

“I love you, brother,” John said. “Such a wit, you are.”

Bryce eyed the mountains. They were approaching the base of Boulder Ridge, and Bryce, the expert navigator of our quintet, searched for the cleanest way to the top, where the green light leaked upward and across the cosmos in a shimmering pool. The virescent beam bathed the entire mountainside in the alien glow, painted our flesh and armor with the same hue.

Everything was green.

Green was the color of God, so the people in the villages now believed. Those who lived inside the castle grounds had different, more sensible opinions. The king was no fool. Any offering that came from The Great Above should be looked at with a cautious eye. After all, harsh storms came from above, sometimes resulting in lasting damages, destruction of property and untimely deaths. But that was the way of life. Garrison dealt with it. Had always.

And they would deal with the mysterious glow now, today, deal and conquer.

“Think we’ll reach the top?” I asked Bryce as the man’s eyes traced the route. “When’s the last time a man climbed Boulder Ridge?”

“You ask too many questions, scribe.”

“’Tis my job, my lord.”

“Yes, I know.” Bryce nodded at me, shining with confidence. “Aye. We’ll make it. Good horses we have. Courageous beauties. Not more than a day, we’ll reach the peak.”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t the horses I worried about. That it was the men I feared for. Nothing felt right about the green flash, the aura that had brought forth peculiar changes, to the town, its people. It was a feeling that crawled inside me, bringing me to question everything about the nature of our world and its potential fate. Was this our conclusion? That often-advertised apocalypse? That prophetic end which the men who came before us often spoke about, the belief that The Almighty would one day descend from His throne to reap compensation for our sins? It sure felt that way. I was feeling firsthand the influence of these new skies. The unnatural quality regarding our task was starting to affect me in ways I dared not speak of, announce to my company.

But the simple fact was—I started to hear things.

Whispers. Frail voices. Garbled, inarticulate syllables strung together, sounding like they were coming from perdition itself, the chorus of low devils, legions upon endless legions boasting of their future wicked accomplishments, and they sounded very angry with our pursuit of the knowledge these mountains now held.

2

The whispers followed me up the mountain, fading in and out, intensifying depending on how close we were to the source’s center. I did not dare speak of them to the others. Bryce and John Henry did all the talking, their conversations enough for ten men, let alone five. Half a day’s ride up the rocky path and I started to feel weak. Not from lack of water or nourishment (we had a healthy supply of both), but from the light. Something about the glow got inside my head and cleared my thoughts. Dulled the activity between my ears.

“Are you okay?” Bryce asked me. I hadn’t realized I drifted off. “Scribe?”

I was about ten gallops from them. The noblemen collected at the top of the path, me below them. I was confused. How long had I drifted? I did not know the answer, nor did I care to know. The possibilities left me with a haunted touch, an icy crawling sensation that brought my skin a frosty touch.

“We are almost to the top,” John Henry announced. His face suggested he wanted to add, Don’t crack on us now, good boy!

But he said nothing. Only stared.

I nodded, regaining my footing in the world I had so easily sailed from. An unfamiliar scent found my nose, and I caught myself wincing. “What is that odd smell?” I asked no one in particular.

“We don’t know,” Bryce said. “But we think it’s coming from the source.”

The source. That terrible lime color.

My doubts were now doubled.

“Shall we press on?” John Henry asked.

The group waited for me to answer. I wrestled with my conscience. A part of me wanted to turn my horse around, ride back to the king and tell him that this was it, this was the end, make peace with your maker because oblivion was coming down around us all. Another part of me was curious to discover what secrets the voices were keeping, what green treasures awaited us atop the mountain. Riches beyond our wildest dreams? I hardly believed that. These were riches of a different kind, and we were not the beneficiaries.

“Yes, let’s go,” I said, though I believed those incoherent whispers were telling me to do quite the opposite—that they implored me to return to Garrison’s castle, ride back without setting eyes on the source of that heinous hue.

3

When we reached the top, the horses were tired. We gave them drink and wet our own tongues. The men were drained too, see, and I was beyond exhausted, but we all wore the best masks we could. Men in our position were not permitted to show wear or sluggishness; we were heroes mind you, protectors of the King’s realm, and the King’s realm had no room for false paragons. Somewhat of a celebrity myself, I couldn’t risk my public image altered in any fashion, should one of the men speak off-handedly of our adventure. An easily-exhausted, unfit-for-duty scribe might get forgotten come the next quest, perhaps all future expeditions. And I couldn’t risk that. My position in society granted me certain privileges, certain pleasures—wealth, fame, women. Things not easily obtained otherwise by a man of my undesirable looks and frail build. So I wore a tough mask, a shroud over my concern, and hoped the men would forget about that little incident on the mountain, my temporary spell of thoughtlessness. I dared not to mention the increasing frequency of the dead whispers. Dared not mention them at all.

“It looks like it’s coming from in there,” John Henry said, nodding to the entrance of the cavern ahead. The green light burned strongest there. It was hard to stare at directly, but as we trespassed the opening and journeyed several steps inside, our eyes quickly adjusted.

We followed the tunnel to the source. The cavern eventually opened to a sprawling chamber bathed in the emerald glow of the earthbound object. At first we took several moments to stand before its magnificent existence, memorized by its strange allure. In the center of the chamber, an egg about the size of a newborn foal rested, half-embedded in the cavern’s soft rock. I glanced up at the vaulted ceiling, spotting the sizable hole where the egg had punctured through, where the light escaped and spilled across the sky, tainting our lands with that unearthly shine. The light flowed like a river, strange currents coursing from the source, spreading across the grand expanse above, the lid over our world.

“Good Lord,” said John Henry, his eyes swimming in the light. “It’s incredible.”

“Yes,” Bryce agreed. “But what is it?”

“Are you blind, brother? It’s…it’s an egg.”

“I see it’s an egg. But what is it? What’s its nature? Where did it come from? And furthermore…what sleeps inside?”

Lord Bryce’s last question iced my blood. A certain, unsettling chill dashed across my shoulders and down my back. Teeth chattering, I tried to open my mouth, a failed attempt to beg our crew to abscond from the cave. Flee for our lives, because surely, whatever this was, meant us harm. Whatever was in that egg, it would destroy us. The Kingdom of Garrison included. I was sure of it.

Still, the light held our intrigue. And the whispers had eased off. I was beginning to feel welcome here in the presence of the egg.

“We should move it,” John Henry announced. “Bring it back to father. He’ll want a look-see.”

“I do not think that is the best idea, brother,” Bryce said, moving away from our pack. He circled the landing site, inspecting the fallen treasure through narrowed eyes. “It might be evil.”

“It doesn’t feel evil.”

I knew what John Henry meant. The longer we spent inside the chamber, the less the egg felt sinister. In the direct presence of the glow, my nerves were somewhat at peace. I wondered why that was. Surely there was a good reason for it. The entire journey I felt on edge, all the way up the mountain. Spells of panic accompanied my every moment, but here, in the midst of this healthy, vibrant green, I was relieved from the stress.

Still, I had my doubts. It felt like a trap.

“Should we crack it open?” John Henry asked, stepping toward it, withdrawing his sword from the scabbard on his hip. “Maybe we should see what’s inside? There could be presents in store for us. A gift from the Almighty Himself!” John Henry’s brow curled like a snake tail, his lips following the same serpentine formation. “At the very least, we might be able to cook the world’s biggest—and most delicious—omelet.”

“Jest all you want, brother,” Bryce said, approaching the egg with caution, “but I believe that would be a very unwise decision. I don’t understand much of this strangeness, but I would speculate this egg contains nothing you’d want to throw down your gullet.”

“Won’t know unless we try,” John Henry grumbled, still grinning. “The wife was stingy on the eggs and bacon this morning. My belly grumbles for a taste of this sky egg.”

“I think we should leave it be.” Bryce’s hand hovered over the object. I saw the tremble in his fingers, the hesitancy of getting too close. I couldn’t tell if the shell repelled his touch or if he was too frightened to set his flesh upon its surface. “I can almost feel something inside. Growing.”

John Henry stepped to the egg, lifting his weapon. “I think we should end it. Right here and now. Not give it a chance to breathe, whatever’s inside. It may be father’s wish after all. And I’m starting to feel differently toward it. Something about its presence sours my gut. I don’t like the strangeness of it. What say you, brother?”

“No,” Bryce said, putting out his hand, as if that would stop the strike of John’s sword. “There’s something beautiful inside. Something…pure.”

“You’re giving me the freaks, brother. A second ago, you thought this thing was evil.”

“Never said it was evil. Said it might be. I can’t explain it, but…I think whatever’s inside means us no harm. Yes, I’m sure of it now.”

Something changed in Lord Bryce’s eyes in that moment. What exactly, I cannot describe with a stroke of my pen. He was just…different.

Altered.

John Henry communicated his disapproval with a wheezy sigh. “Father does not trust anything that comes from The Great Above. You know that. We should proceed with caution. Things are not always what they first seem. Is that way with people, and certainly that of things sent from the gods.”

“No…”

I watched Bryce grow enamored with the egg. His fingers fell toward the surface of the leathery shell, threatening the object with his gentle touch. There was reluctance in Lord Bryce’s movements, as if deep inside he knew the idea was rotten. But still, he was going for it. I waited with bated breath to see if the egg would receive such human interaction.

“I’d think twice if I was you, brother,” John Henry warned, but the advice went in one ear and out the other, and Bryce didn’t so much as acknowledge it.

“It’ll be okay,” he replied, not really to John Henry. Not really to anyone. Maybe to himself. It was as if he were trying to convince the room, himself, the whole kingdom waiting back home, that this was the correct course of action—let the thing from the sky exist. Let it glow. Let it shine across the lands. Let it shine across us all.

I couldn’t voice my own apprehensions. Instead, I watched and scribbled down what I saw.

I blinked and Bryce’s hand was upon the egg, running his fingertips across the surface, petting the shell like a reliable mare. His eyes smiled.

And that was when the glow grew brighter, the cavern bellowed, and the entire world came undone.

4

Bryce backed away when the sound erupted from some unknown source, sounding like an entire bog’s worth of bullfrogs joining a hellish choir. The light intensified, nearly blinding us. I shielded my eyes from the emerald wash, hoping the terrible moment would soon end, hoping Bryce’s curious fingers did not damn the entire kingdom for all eternity.

After the surge, the chamber returned to its original form, the glow present but tolerable. My head ached behind the eyes, but nothing unbearable.

Bryce uncovered his eyes, his stare immediately returning to the egg. “What the hell was that?”

“You pissed it off,” John Henry said. “Don’t do it again.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

“Maybe we should leave it be,” I suggested, ignoring my place. A scribe was hardly in the position to advise princes. In some corners of the world, this could earn the owner of the loose tongue a beheading. Luckily, Garrison was not one of those corners. “Maybe we should not disturb…whatever it is.”

Both brothers looked at me as if my proposal were daft. It was probably best to keep my mouth shut, to keep the thoughts galloping across my brain inside, but I was on a roll. There was no stopping me.

“This thing…” I swallowed heavy air. “It’s not…right. You see that, don’t you? You see the green light that…that doesn’t come from anywhere. I mean, do either of you see its source?”

The brothers examined the egg, as well as the knights, and no one could come up with a proper answer. No, the light came from somewhere, but where, not an eye in the room could determine.

Invisible marionettes danced upon my shoulders, the tap-tap of their invisible feet shredding every active nerve.

“We should seal this place up,” I continued. “Leave. Head back to your father’s castle and report what we’ve seen. Tell him the thing that landed here is evil, something that should not be poked or prodded, studied or attempted to be understood. We should leave, of that I am certain.”

The brothers exchanged looks.

“Father entrusted us with the quest of taking care of the problem,” Bryce said, stating the obvious but also seeming to remind himself of his current chore. “To return with no solution would make us look foolish, not only before the eye of our father, but in the eye of our kingdom.”

“I agree, brother. Maybe not on much, but of that—aye.”

“What would be foolish,” I started, immediately regretting my audacity, “is to attempt to understand something that came from The Great Above. To assume that you can ‘take care of it.’ As if it’s a thing so easily disposed.”

Bryce pointed to the thing. “It’s just an egg, scribe. A rather large egg, but an egg nonetheless.”

“I still like the idea of an omelet,” said John Henry, a grin appearing in the depths of his bushy beard. “An egg that size could feed the five of us. Even this big belly.” He grabbed the pudge beneath his chain-silk armor. “So full of tasty ales and Chef Calico’s meals it is. Had I known it ’twas an egg we would be discovering, I’d have brought the salt and pepper!”

Bryce ignored his brother’s jest. He studied the egg once more, looking upon its surface, examining every inch. I waited for something bad to happen. It was only a matter of time. Since voicing my concerns, the whispers returned. Quieter than earlier but present. Like the friction of dead leaves farther on down the path. No articulation. Just noise that further fueled my dread.

“There’s a crack,” Bryce said after several moments.

John Henry came over for a better look. I did the same, though I kept my distance.

Sure enough, the egg had split. A syrupy substance the color of fresh sage was leaking out of the fissure.

Bryce leaned forward for closer inspection.

I opened my mouth to warn him, but I never released so much as a syllable.

The egg moved. It rocked back and forth at first, slowly, as if whatever inside was just awakening. Then, it shook with force, the thing inside clearly seeking a rushed exit.

The knights jumped in front of Lord Bryce, unsheathing their swords and raising them for battle. Crouching, they waited for the birth of the unknown enemy.

Then it stopped. The egg lay still, as if the thing inside had given up or gone back to sleep. Maybe it died.

No. Though I wished for it, I did not believe those scenarios to be true. I believed the thing inside was playing dead, faking its demise, hoping we lowered our guard.

And it worked.

The knights straightened their posture, slipping their weapons back in their scabbards.

“No…” I heard myself say. “Wait.”

But as soon as the words left my mouth, it happened. The egg’s shell divided in four separate pieces and split like the first bread of a fine feast. Green slop spewed forth, splashing the knights and Lord Bryce. One of the knights took some of the gunk on his face, and he began to scream as he attempted to scrub the stuff from his skin with his bare hands. It did nothing, and a fine smoke rose from the infected area. Even though the man was several paces away, I could see the damage the embryonic substance was inflicting.

It was melting his skin and the muscle beneath it. His flesh turned to soup, a scalding broth, and the more he tried to rid himself of the gross matter, the more he damaged his own appearance, wiping away layers of his own identity, reducing his image to leaky pus and skeletal offerings. It wasn’t long after the man fell to the ground and began writhing on the cave’s pitted surface. It wasn’t until after that he stopped moving and lay dead.

Lord Bryce and the other nameless knight quickly shed their armor as the acidic afterbirth began to burn away their outer layers. The material held on longer than the man’s flesh had, but eventually the chemical reaction would have the same effect.

Once the men were safe, they reacted accordingly, meeting the fractured egg with a wave of their swords.

From the ruins of the egg, a snaking vine, thick as nautical rope, unfurled from the steamy pit of post-birth. Its head was a single eyeball, about the size of an ogre’s fist. For several breaths, we watched the alien thing, unable to make the first move toward ridding it from our domain. It was an odd sight to see, a terrible image we’d likely revisit with crystal clarity until the ends of our times, a ghastly gift sent from The Great Above.

What was it we were looking at? Some sort of…god?

The thing had no mouth to speak, so when John Henry asked, “What are you?”, the Eye gave no reply.

“What do you want?” Bryce followed, though talking was pointless.

The thing would not answer.

Only it did. To me. Silently. In the form of infinite mouths voicing their secrets.

“Do you hear that?” I asked, my pen trembling against my tablet. I hadn’t realized my pen had run dry, and the tip of my utensil was scratching, tearing the surface of my paper. “Do you hear them whispering?”

Bryce and John Henry looked to me as if I’d grown several new heads.

“I hear them whispering,” I admitted, “yet, I do not know what they say.”

“Scribe,” Bryce said. “Maybe you should try whispering back.”

I closed my eyes, but it was of no use. I tried to communicate with the voices, asking them to quiet, to let only one speaker hold court at a time, but the effort was wasted. These speakers were designed to whisper, not to listen to the pleas of some celebrity scribe.

I shook my head.

“Damn the Above!” John Henry said, staring at the Eye. “I say we kill it then.”

“Kill it?” Bryce said. “This is…this is a magnificent discovery, brother. Surely father will want to see it.”

“Are you daft, boy? The thing is a murderous beast! It killed Wallace, tore the flesh off his poor face. Look at him. There’s hardly anything left to burn and kick out to sea!”

It was true. Wallace, the loyal knight, from the neck up was now a melted skeleton. Even the bones had begun to disintegrate.

“But, John,” Bryce pleaded. “It’s…it’s a brilliant discovery. This will change the Kingdom. The entire realm!”

John Henry pointed his sword at his brother. “Brother, no. You are not thinking clearly. This thing is obviously a threat to our existence. It’s come from the sky, true, but Godly it is not. You can see that, can’t you?”

For a moment, Bryce looked at the wandering Eye as it stretched around the immediate area. I couldn’t see if the vine-like body had anything hiding beneath the rising smoke near its base, but the Eye appeared rooted in the ground like the stem of a flower.

“We will not harm it,” Bryce announced. “It hasn’t harmed us. What happened to Wallace was accidental.”

“Pigshite!” John Henry said, and he moved toward the Eye with a determined step. Before he could get an inch farther, the Eye whipped around and turned its gaze on the sword-wielding prince, stopping John Henry like he’d hit an unseen wall.

The Eye was upon him. Blinking, the nightmarish observer scanned the being before it, taking its time to educate itself on human anatomy. Once the scan was complete, the vine lengthened, growing stiff.

“Nope,” John Henry said, “don’t like it.” He swung his blade at the Eye’s body, intending to sever the alien creature right where it sprouted. But his sword met another.

John Henry glanced up and found his brother’s eyes. “Out of my way, fool.”

Bryce shook his head. I could see something changing in his eyes, and that something was green. They glowed with that hideous color.

“I’m warning you, brother.” John Henry grimaced. “Your sword is no match for mine.”

“We shall see,” Bryce said, in a voice that was unlike his own. He freed his sword and swung for his brother’s head, a heavy stroke that was awkward as it was inaccurate.

John Henry ducked, the blade missing him by at least two heads.

“You trying to kill me, brother?” John Henry asked, crouching in his defensive pose. “Your own flesh and blood? Over this silly plant?”

Bryce glared at him with unbridled hatred. I, personally, have never seen a man look so hateful. His penetrating stare was that of fairy-tale villains, the evil-doers who have no qualms laying waste to an innocent village at the snap of two fingers. Lord Bryce Garrison was not the same man who had entered this chamber. He was changed. His head had been lost amongst the green shine of this place.

Bryce heaved his sword again, a lackluster attempt at removing his brother’s head. John Henry backed away, grinning.

“This is not you, brother. You have become something else. Someone else.”

“Shut up,” Bryce growled, aiming his sword at John Henry’s legs.

John Henry skipped over the swipe, and then planted his foot on his brother’s chest, kicking him backward.

The other knight, whose name I would never know, approached Bryce from behind, his sword down but arms out, looking like he wanted to bear hug the man. I opened my mouth to warn him, but it was too late. Bryce had heard—or sensed—him and spun, swinging with every ounce of muscle his body contained.

The motion looked effortless. The knight’s head came clean off, and there was hardly any blood. At first, that is. There was a delay, a moment of stillness. In that time, my brain caught up to what my eyes had witnessed. I began to breathe again. Then, after the knight’s head hit the cavern floor and rolled off into the shadows, the gaping hole between his shoulders squirted dark liquids like the exotic geysers in the lands west of the Maroni Desert. The headless body collapsed on the rocky terrain like a horse having its heart seize up mid-gallop. The blood continued to stream from the smooth cut, spilling a puddle beneath the fallen knight.

“Lord in Heaven,” John Henry said, and although he hid it well, I could tell the big man was frightened. Terrified that his brother was lost to this virescent influence. “Brother, what has become of you?”

“I can hear them,” Bryce said, grinning, his head clearly unbalanced. “The whispering.” His crooked lips faced me. “You hear them, scribe? Can you hear their beautiful hymns? Collective ballads from The Great Above?”

“You’ve lost what’s inside your skull, brother,” John Henry said, and then he poked at his brother’s sword, attempting to disarm him while his gaze was elsewhere.

Lightning quick, Bryce parried the assault and ran his blade through his brother’s midsection. The sword’s tip pushed through him, skewering the big man’s bowels, and came out the other side, bloody as a newborn babe.

John Henry choked on his surprise.

“Sleep now, brother. Your wounds will heal in The Great Above, that green abyss where all dead souls wander.”

But John Henry didn’t die. Not yet. Before he drifted off to whatever afterlife awaited him (maybe, indeed, the hell Lord Bryce had mentioned), he revealed a stunted knife and dragged its sharpest edge across Bryce’s throat. Shades of cranberry poured like wine from a tipped goblet. John Henry’s beard caught most of his brother’s blood. As Bryce opened his mouth to scream, the cavern filled with primordial sounds, a collection of screams and whispers. Shadows scaled the walls, darkening the green glow of things. The Eye watched on, and although the cyclopean organism had no mouth to speak, no means of discernible expression, I could tell it was satisfied with the spilled blood, the ghastly murders that had occurred under its influence.

The two noblemen fell to the ground, the king’s lineage severed in a single dark moment. The cavern’s corrugated bottom channeled the royal blood, gravity spreading little rivers of red like webs of varicose veins.

The Eye turned to me, I to it. There was a sudden connection, the creature having some hypnotic effect over my thoughts, my actions. I tried to look away, wanted to avert my eyes from whatever terrible knowledge this organic oculus desired to bestow upon me—but there was no escape from its all-seeing eye. Universes unfolded before me, infinite wisdom of the cosmos, the Great Above explained, eons and epochs of inconsequential information passing between my ears. It was too much. My head felt like it would explode, overloaded with every tiny detail of our long-spanning history, our endless future.

The Eye burned images into my brain, filling me with unearthly comprehension. I saw as The Eye saw, as Bryce had seen until the moment his brother opened his throat.

And that vision will be shared.

Will be recorded.

Because I am a scribe and that is what I am, therefore, that is what I must do.

As I exited the cavern, I glanced up at the shredded clouds tumbling across those virescent skies and over the hell-bound kingdom that would soon see what I saw—the glory of an untethered and ancient beyond that shall run the length of the lands, all lands, from here to eternity.

Sometimes All of Our Thoughts Are Misgiven
by Janine Pipe

12:30 p.m., Sunday June 1987

“Honest, mate, d’you think I’m thick or somthin’? There’s no way I’m going out there.”

“I’m not making this up. Why would I even bother?”

“I dunno, but it has to be bollocks. This ain’t Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

“If you don’t believe me, fine, but just come and see. It’s not like I can borrow my mum’s camera; she’d do her nut in.”

“You’re such a bellend. Urgh, I don’t know how you talk me into this shit. If Anna Perkins is waiting for me there, I’ll fucking brain you.”

“I swear! I— I swear on my Tiffany poster! And you fancy Anna, anyway.”

“As if! And I wouldn’t touch that poster with a bargepole; bet it’s covered in jizz. Fuck’s sake. Come on, let’s just go now then, get this over and done with.”

“No. We meet back here at 4:00 p.m. ’kay?”

“Whatever, loser. You’ll get a hairy palm, you know?”

“Fuck off. See you later.”

“Wanker…”

Watching Lucas bike away, Tim had known he would win him over in the end. He always did. He might bitch and moan, but he came around every time. It was a constant game, with Tim forever the valiant victor. It just took a while to get there sometimes.

Peddling home on his BMX, he used the time to wonder yet again if he was doing the right thing. Lucas was his best friend, had been for almost eleven years now ever since they met the first year at primary school. They’d been through a hell of a lot together. It was true Lucas could be a bit of a blabber mouth. He hadn’t meant to tell the entire class Tim had finally managed to kiss Amanda Housen behind the bike sheds. Apologising profusely, claiming he was just so proud of his buddy “becoming a man,” Tim had forgiven him. The high fives and congratulatory smacks on the back from the boys and few come-hither looks from the girls helped. Amanda, of course, gave him a real telling off and retracted the promise of more kissing, but for five minutes, he was king of the world.

This, however, was a whole other level. Lucas could not be allowed to tattle about what Tim had revealed and what he was going to show him. He didn’t understand in full what Tim had discovered, why it was there or how no one else had ever seen it or reported it, but that was by the by. It was all a bit of a blur, to be honest. If Tim was forced to expand upon what he’d been up to prior to his discovery and why he’d ended up in that exact spot, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He didn’t own a dog, wasn’t known for enjoying long walks in the countryside or anything so cliché. There was no secret porn-mag stash and a hole in a tree, or a crumpled packet of cigarettes he didn’t want to be caught with. No, he didn’t have any inkling as to how he ended up so deep in the woods that day, several months before. But whatever the reason, the very last thing he’d ever expected to find hidden in the depths of the trees was a perfect wooden staircase.

At first, he had been unable to fathom it. No plausible explanation had come to mind.

March 1987

In the middle of the Somerset countryside, deep inside Monksdale Woods, stood a full-sized set of stairs like one might find in the newer houses where the rich kids lived. There had been nothing else surrounding the dark staircase other than very old oak trees with thick, gnarled branches and weeds sprouting up from the grass where possible. The stairs themselves were spotless; not a mark on them, no sign of any plants having rooted themselves within the steps. Not even a bird shit to be seen. It seemed to Tim as if the steps were made from Blackthorne. He wasn’t sure why that might have been an important factor; it wasn’t as though the trees had somehow mutated themselves into a fucking staircase, now, was it? But it remained the element that irked him most.

In ordinary circumstances, he would have sprinted straight home, BMX’d over to Lucas’ place or called him on the off chance his sister, Tash, wasn’t tying up the line gossiping with her stupid friends. But there was something about this perfect set of stairs that didn’t belong in the woods, where no plant could grow and that no bird used as a toilet, that made him want to keep it to himself. How the fuck could he have never heard of it before?

He’d known all about the storm drains where some kids were messing around one Christmas and one got bit by some dog and went mad. It was alleged there really was some sort of magic tree some older boys from the other secondary school in the town had the rights to and everyone knew about the weird old house where Scotty McKinley had died.

But he would have thought someone might have mentioned a bloody great structure in the middle of a shit load of trees. Wouldn’t they?

Inevitably, his sister was on the phone when he got home, which cemented his decision not to share his weird discovery. What surprised him, however, was the stern expression his mother wore, which greeted him as he raced through the door.

“What time do you call this, huh?” she said.

What?

It had been around 3:00 p.m. when he had left for a ride about, and he hadn’t been gone more than an hour, surely? He’d neglected to wear the Casio watch his dad proudly bought him from some poker-night winnings, so he didn’t know for certain. Now that he came to think of it, his tummy had felt a tad empty. But it couldn’t have been anywhere near dinner time.

Before he could respond, his mum added, “There’s shepherd’s pie in the oven, but no doubt it’ll have dried up by now. Serves you right.” Giving him the stare, she reached out to touch his left ear. “And put some antiseptic cream on that. How the heck did you cut the inside of your ear?”

He watched her storm off in a huff upstairs, muttering under her breath. He hotfooted it into the kitchen. The digital clock on the oven explained why she was so annoyed. It was almost 7:30 p.m. An hour after supper would have been put on the table. He’d been gone for over four hours. How was that even possible?

The morning following his discovery all those months ago, instead of hanging out down at the park, kicking a ball about like usual, he peddled down to the library and spent the better part of two hours poring through the microfiche, looking for something, anything to do with Monksdale Woods.

He rubbed his ear as he flicked through the machine, trying not to irate the scab that was forming. After his mum told him off last night, he hadn’t wanted to mention the ringing noise (it had to be some sort of tinnitus, it could not be voices) that morning. Or the headache. He was sure it was nothing.

Frowning, he came to the end of the search, having come up with bupkis. However, he hadn’t got to be an excellent student and an avid reader of coming-of-age horror books without learning a thing or two. He knew if anyone in the town had heard stories about the woods, it would be Mrs. Lutzke, the librarian. She looked older than his grandma and always smelt faintly of lavender and Werther’s Originals. Sidling up to the desk, he returned the pile of old newspapers he’d asked to look through that weren’t on the microfiche system, citing some spurious school project, and handed over a book he wanted to check out.

“Hey, Mrs. Lutzke. Say, you ever heard any funny stories about Monksdale Woods?” It didn’t pay to beat around the bush with this woman; he knew he may as well get straight to the point.

She looked at him over the top of her glasses, hanging on a golden chain around her neck. She didn’t blink for a few seconds, and Tim wondered if he had made a huge mistake. A single drop of sweat rolled down his back. He then let out an audible sigh of relief when she smiled in what at least appeared to be a genuine fashion.

“Funny how, young man? But no, not that I can recollect. Why do you ask? Is that what your essay is about?” She date stamped the book and wrote on the index card.

“Oh, you know, just any funny stories. Jazz up a boring history paper. Ha ha. Never mind. Thanks, Mrs. L. Bye!”

Tim tore out of the library like a bat outta hell, stowing the book under his jacket, and rode home in the rain. He couldn’t wait to start it.

The house was empty as to be expected. Tash was at her dance class with Mum, and his dad at the local pub, ready to listen to the football match since his team was away and he only went to home games. Tim grabbed a bag of crisps and a soda and ran up the stairs. Throwing himself down on the bed, he ran his hand over the book he had checked out of the library, Communion – a True Story by Whitely Strieber. It was brand new by the looks of it, and sure enough, his was the first date stamp on the index page. He turned over his pillow, trying to ignore the blood on it. For the next few hours, he read.

Tim wasn’t sure how many times he had previously visited the stairs before he felt the need to share his secret that day with Lucas. To be fair, he had been running out of excuses to miss going to the park or hanging out by the neighbourhood shops. Luck had been on his side, as Lucas’s parents were divorced, so Tim had every Saturday to himself whilst his mate spent time with his stepfamily. His parents never really bothered about where he was so long as he wasn’t escorted home by the police and he continued to do well in classes. Sometimes he had even taken his school bag to the woods to do his homework, resting against that bottom step. If anyone had asked why, despite having spent hours there, he’d never actually climbed them, he wouldn’t be able to give the reason.

Somehow, it was just implicit.

Do not go up the stairs.

Ever.

It had been a blessed relief that Sunday morning, to finally spill the beans. He hadn’t embellished on the time he’d previously spent in the woods or how long ago he’d made the discovery. Hadn’t gone into the fact he’d checked out Communion for the third time and had read it cover to cover so often he could almost recite parts without looking. And he definitely hadn’t mentioned about the missing time or the voices in his head…

Just as not climbing the stairs had been implied, he had also accepted that he was being used as some sort of communication device. Hence the headaches and bleeding ears, he supposed. Despite no idea how or why and being unable to decipher what any of the noises (not quite words) meant, he nevertheless took it on board and rolled with it. If pushed, he’d suppose the noise—voices, he presumed—didn’t sound malevolent or like they wanted to cause him any harm. Intuitively, he knew not to tell. He’d be okay so long as he stayed quiet.

Just like he knew he’d be okay so long as he delivered on his promise…

4:00 p.m., Sunday June 1987

“What the actual fuck? I can’t believe it, Timbo! I thought for sure you was being a total lying tosspot.”

Tim grinned at his mate, who stood staring at the steps; a wide-eyed look of wonder etched upon his face. Lucas always was the sceptic. He might have loved to spin a good ghost story in the dark, likely in the vain hope it would scare some girl from school into his arms, but he wasn’t one to believe in any mumbo-jumbo. They had watched Aliens, Poltergeist, Hellraiser together, but it was all just made-up nonsense to Lucas. However, the act of seeing the oddity, the perfect (Blackthorne?) staircase in the middle of the oak trees, appeared to cause him much consternation. Like Tim, he knew it shouldn’t be there, that there was no logical explanation for it. Nothing surrounding the steps had been disturbed, and it couldn’t have just miraculously appeared or fallen out of the sky, could it?

Yet, just as Tim knew without ever having been told and despite the usual urges when something is forbidden, Lucas now seemed to realise what was required. Gravitating towards the steps, an unseen force guided him. Without a moment of apparent hesitation, he began the ascent. As he seemed to marvel at the smoothness and workmanship of each step, Tim wondered—albeit, briefly— if it also bothered Lucas why nothing seemed to grow there.

Upon reaching the top stair, he turned. As he grinned at Tim, something in the atmosphere seemed to shift.

And then it happened …

Watching the events unfold in front of him, Tim’s suspicions were confirmed. They weren’t conspiracy theories. This was real. There was no other plausible explanation, and despite the incredulity, this made sense. Sort of.

He hadn’t been a hundred percent sure whether he was being used as some sort of portal or was acting as a transmitter for them, but he’d seen enough episodes of Doctor Who and Lost in Space to know whatever was out there, it wasn’t looking for companionship. He could only speculate if Lucas would become dinner or the subject of a thorough examination, but whatever the outcome, Tim knew he would never see Lucas again.

Looking up at the bright beam of light from overhead, he felt a trickle of warmth run down his leg. Even though it had been thus far implied he was off the menu, he was still witnessing his oldest friend being ‘taken.’ Tim had led him to his demise—like a moth to a flame.

He looked up at Lucas now, that shit-eating smile stretched upon his face, his skin spread too tight as if it were a mask. That ginger hair standing up on end, making him stand out like a beacon. His expression no longer seemed wondrous; the grin now more of a grimace. He made no attempt to escape; didn’t even scream.

And neither did Tim. He didn’t move whilst he watched his friend being literally sucked up into the beam of light. Didn’t scream as Lucas’s skin appeared to peel off his body piece by piece as it hovered upward, followed by muscle, then blood and viscera. He was almost sick when he realised in dismay that despite sucking up all of the other organs, the beam had left the two staring, gaping eyeballs attached to the skeleton, so even as the last bones were pulled up into the hovering craft, he’d been able to look right into the soul of the boy he’d grown up with.

And then it was gone.

No light.

No craft.

No Lucas.

Tim felt the release.

He fell to his knees and wept.

September 1987

He didn’t return to the woods for a long time. At first, he wasn’t allowed out at all. Not because his parents suspected any wrongdoing, but after the sudden disappearance of fifteen-year-old Lucas Cain, they were too scared to let Tim or Tash out of their sight.

The police talked to him, and somehow, he was able to lie. He didn’t have to fake how distraught he was, but everyone accepted it as shock and grief, not guilt and remorse.

Finally, he went back. He wasn’t sure whether he was surprised to see barely any evidence of the mysterious staircase. The headaches and noises had dissipated the day Lucas…disappeared. The area of ground the structure had covered was almost grown over, the grass seeming to have been there for years. In fact, there were only two things left, two things that a passerby might not even notice. First off were the woodchips, not too many of them but a distinct scattering, dark brown in colour, remained in the spot marking where the steps had been. Right in the middle grew a single flower. Tim didn’t know much about foliage and fauna, but he was pretty certain his grandma had these in her garden in early spring and therefore it was unusual to see a perfect, bright orange geum in the late summer…

Whatever You Want Most
by Megan E. Hart

It all begins with the stars.

Planets, really, three of them aligned in the sky in what was meant to be a spectacular celestial event that wouldn’t be seen for another six hundred years. It was all over the Internet, the talk of the office. Everyone was planning to go out tonight and look.

Sandy stares up at the dark sky and waits to be amazed, but clouds obscure the view, and the boys make rude jokes as they jostle each other on the deck, wrestling and hollering until Sandy gets fed up with all of it and goes back inside to pour herself the rest of that bottle of wine.

“Mom, we wanna order pizza.” Jared shuffles in her purse for her credit card.

Five seventeen-year-old boys crowd around her kitchen table. They’ve already, like locusts, consumed the bulk of the snacks from the pantry. Now they lay out packs of cards and poker chips and more bowls of snacks, and they insult each other and throw punches and belch and use rude language and knock stuff on the floor…

And ahhhh. Ah, yes. There, finally, is the warm and spreading glow of the “medicinal” gummy she’d eaten an hour and a half ago, when Jared, her oldest, told her his buddies were coming over to play.

Saturday night, and Sandy is drunk and high, a terrible chaperone for a pack of teenage boys. But that’s the reason they come to her house, isn’t it? Because they know Sandy will be passed out by nine, and they can have the run of the place.

In times past, Dan would’ve been here to help her keep an eye on things. In times past, Dan would’ve taught them a new way to play cards before joining her upstairs to giggle and sneak a joint together. But Dan is not here, Dan is gone, and Sandy is the worst kind of cliché—a woman who hates her husband for leaving her when she still loved him.

“You’ll let your brother play with you,” she says now.

Jared groans and rolls his eyes, but she’s got just enough…barely, but just enough—Motherness in her to give him a glare sufficient to make him back down.

“One game,” Jared counters.

“Until eight-thirty,” Sandy says with an eye on Thomas, her middle child, who’s looking both hopeful and as nonchalant as he can, so the bigger boys don’t know how badly he’s yearning to be allowed at the table with them.

“Moooom,” Jared protests.

“Ah, let the little buttnugget play.” This comes from Carter, who’s been Jared’s friend since preschool. Once upon a time he’d been a charming little boy with gapped teeth and dark curls he now wears long enough to cover one eye. He’s over six feet tall and can palm a basketball.

“I have my birthday money,” interjects Thomas.

Sandy pauses with her oversized wine goblet halfway to her mouth. “You guys play for real money? Never mind. Eight-thirty,” she adds sternly to both Thomas and Jared.

Thank God her youngest, Hannah, is at a sleepover. It’s all Sandy can do to manage this crowd. She just doesn’t have it in her tonight to deal with her daughter, who’d want to snuggle on the couch and have a book read to her at bedtime, who still needs help brushing her teeth properly, who sleeps with the nightlight on, who wakes several times a week with nightmares about her father leaving. Sandy’s barely holding her shit together tonight. All she wants to do is finish getting fucked up, take a hot bath, go to bed. Tomorrow is another day, but unlike Scarlett O’Hara, Sandy’s not optimistic that it will be a better one than today.

“Hey,” she says sharply to get the pack’s attention. She chooses her words slowly and carefully, aware she might slur, otherwise. “Clean up after yourselves. And keep the noise down. I don’t care how late you stay up, but if you wake me up, I’m going to come down here and whip your butts.”

“Promise?” asks Carter.

Carter has a smart mouth and a big dick, and he thinks both of those are going to take him far in life, but Sandy knows only one of those traits will, and it’s not the one he thinks.

Thomas snags the sleeve of her faded terrycloth robe before she can leave the kitchen and the boys. “Mom, do you think the conjunction will be visible later tonight, or have we lost our opportunity?”

The wine and weed are working their magic; Sandy ruffles her middle’s hair. “Maybe. You can go out later and look. Not after nine, though.”

He’s a weird fucking kid, her Thomas, small for his age, perpetually pale, way too interested in his creepy pets than making friends, yet desperate to be included. Stuck in the middle between his popular, handsome older brother and his adorable but dumb-as-bricks baby sis, Thomas is also her favorite. He’s going to have a hard row to hoe in life, Sandy always thinks, and wishes she could do better for him, but some people are just a mess, no matter what you do, and she suspects Thomas is always going to be the odd one out.

“I’m going upstairs,” she announces to the room, aware none of them are paying attention to her. “Be…good.”

Step by step, she manages to heave herself up the stairs. Her elbow knocks a framed photo of the five of them in a hospital room, Hannah an infant in her arms, the boys all smiles, Dan behind her looking exhausted. Other photos line the walls. Memories. She can’t bring herself to look at them. Dan is in those pictures, but he is no longer here, and she hates him once again for leaving them all. For leaving her.

In her bathroom, she considers taking the other half of the gummy. It will probably completely obliterate her, something she tries not to allow on nights that she has any kids at home, especially not other people’s kids. Surely Jared and his friends can handle any emergencies, though, can’t they? Last weekend, they overflowed the basement toilet and dealt with that, unbeknownst to her, and a month or so ago, they patched up Bailey after he fell off the deck and cut his head open. The wound probably needed stitches, but they’d used superglue and a maxi-pad to stanch the bleeding—they’d all been scouts together.

Truth is, Sandy wants to be obliterated, and she’s finding it harder and harder to think of reasons not to fall down that hole.

A swell of laughter, disturbingly adult and male, drifts up the stairs. When had those boys become men? She’s known those kids since they were toddlers, most of them, and now they tower over her, sporting mustaches and muscles and machismo.

Sandy lifts her wine glass toward her reflection. She’d been a boy mom, now she’s a wine mom. Cliché.

She swallows the other half of the gummy.

The bath is cold by the time she rouses herself enough to get out of it. Her hair is wet and her ears, waterlogged, but hey, at least she hadn’t drowned. Too bad.

Wrapping herself back in her robe, she collapses onto her bed, only to be startled upright by the outside floodlights going on. They’re mounted on the wall directly outside her bedroom window, which overlooks the deck. The light is too bright for her to ignore.

Whoops and hollers, the pounding of feet on the boards, alert her that the boys have gone outside again. Sandy staggers to the window to look out, but she can see only the Stygian depths of the forest at the far end of the yard. Her property backs right up onto state game lands that stretch for acres and acres. She can barely make out the boy-shaped shadows that cavort across the grass.

What the hell are they doing? She’d told them all they had to do was not wake her up, which, considering the booze and the gummies, should have been really difficult to manage. Now they’re waving flashlights around, shouting and hooting, and, oh, shit…she hadn’t forbidden them from lighting a fire, so of course that’s what they’re doing.

No, they’re not lighting one, but something is burning.

Sandy pulls on her robe, the one Dan had bought her for Hanukkah the year she was pregnant with Hannah. Struggling with the sleeves, the tie, she finds not slippers but a battered pair of rubber flip-flops that will not really protect her feet. Somehow, she makes it downstairs without breaking her neck.

Outside, the boys shout at each other, daring each other to go beyond the tree line. Sandy tries to call out to them, but her voice is rough and faint. Thomas, always on the fringe of things and never in the midst, appears at her side. He has his own flashlight, an obscenely bright shining one that, she realizes with a lurch of her stomach, had been Dan’s.

“What are they doing?” she asks him.

“They said a meteor came down, and they want to go find it.”

“No. No. Boys!” Too late, they’ve disappeared into the woods.

By the time Sandy and Thomas reach the scorched patch of earth on the far side of the yard, the flames have died into embers. The two of them stare at it in silence. Little bigger than the fire pit, the spot has been cleared to bare earth, but there’s no sign of what left the mark. Thomas goes after the bigger boys.

They’re back in minutes, running across the yard. Sandy stares up into the sky. The clouds have dissipated, but no matter how hard she searches, she can’t find the brightness of the three planets that were supposed to be there.

Later, the creak of her door alerts her to the presence of someone in her bedroom. She is used to this, the nighttime creep of children waking from nightmares, but the figure that slips into bed next to her is not one of her children. Carter’s hands and mouth and yeah, that big dick, have not yet become familiar, but he’s not a stranger, either, and they move together without finesse to some kind of finish that leaves them both sweating and breathing hard. Sandy tries to feel sober, but she is not. Embarrassed, she realizes she called him Dan.

“You miss him, huh?” Carter’s voice is low and shaking and muffled against the sweaty flesh of her bared breasts.

“Yes,” she says, simply.

It would be easier if Dan had left her for another woman, but the virus took him after weeks of fighting for every breath on a ventilator. Carter’s mom had also died during the pandemic, and now he shudders against her, his face wet and hot with tears and not passion. They fuck again. This time, it’s quicker, and she thinks he doesn’t finish the second time, before he withdraws and leaves the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

The bed is empty, but worse is the vast, relentless void inside her, the aching, bloodless wound that cannot seem to heal.

Monday, time for work and school. Jared and Hannah are up and ready, but Thomas lingers in bed. He feigns a fever and stomach troubles. Sandy can’t afford to stay home with him. She also knows he is not really ill.

“You were in the woods again last night, weren’t you?”

His shoes, the soles muddy and covered with leaves, gave him away. So does the guilty way he cuts his gaze from hers. She should care more, if not about the reasons why he’s pretending to be ill, at least about the lies. Dan would have sat on the edge of the bed and encouraged Thomas to open up, but Sandy…

“You call me if you need something.”

He won’t. She will have to phone home if she wants to talk to him. She won’t, either.

“No Internet.”

“Okay.”

Knowing he won’t obey, she changes the Wi-Fi password before she leaves for work. The doorbell stops her before she can open the garage. The man on her doorstep is in his forties, handsome in a rugged way. Lean body. Jeans, cowboy boots, a dress shirt but no tie. A bundle of keys hangs from his belt. He wants to know if Sandy has seen anything unusual in the neighborhood.

“Other than you?” Her voice is light and sounds flirty, but she’s not trying to be sexy. They live in a rural, wooded neighborhood. Nobody comes to the door without a real reason. If he’s a bill collector, she wants to get on his good side.

“Animal control,” he says so smoothly she knows he’s lying, even though the card he hands her does, indeed, say Animal Control on it. “We have reports of an escaped illegal exotic pet from a private zoo.”

“What kind of pet is this, exactly?” Sandy doesn’t open the door any wider, wary of him trying to stick his foot inside.

“Uh…primate. Uh…reptilian.”

“There’s more than one?”

“It’s exotic,” he repeats.

In Sandy’s warm fist, the card bends and smears, like the ink is fresh—or it was homemade. “Is it dangerous?”

“It could be. There’s a reward,” he adds. “If you see or hear anything, call me.”

The card gets pinned to the corkboard in the kitchen, where it will molder amongst the takeout menus and outdated calendars she cannot bring herself to remove.

Eight hours plus a forty-minute commute later, she’s back home to find the house a mess, the kids locked away in their rooms, a pile of medical bills on the table and no way to pay them all. She will not start the night with vodka, but she might end it that way.

Ten minutes later, Sandy promises herself this drink will be the only one but finishes it in minutes and pours another at once. From upstairs, something thumps. Sandy tenses, glass to her lips, waiting for Hannah to scream that one of her brothers is torturing her.

Silence.

Sandy puts the glass back on the counter and steels herself to confront her children with a smile and a promise of a home-cooked dinner they won’t want to eat. She used to be a cookie mom, the classroom volunteer mom, the field-trip chaperone mom. Now what is she? A fucking mess.

“Hannah?”

No response. Sandy puts her hand on the handrail at the bottom of the stairs. Jared is supposed to get home from school before his younger siblings, to be here in case of emergencies. At six, Hannah is too young to be in the house alone, and Thomas is…well, he’s not capable of any real responsibility. Sandy knows it’s perhaps too much to ask of her oldest son, to give up his afterschool freedom to bear the burden of taking care of his younger siblings, but Jared doesn’t complain. He invites his friends over to the adult-less house and they run rampant in the few hours before she gets home, leaving behind the smell of sweaty sneakers and body spray and the weed they snitch from her bottom drawer.

“Thomas?”

Sandy’s heart pounds as she climbs the stairs. A chill sweat wends its way down her spine, collecting with uncomfortable precision in the crack of her ass. At the end of the upstairs hall, the faint booming sound of rock music filters beneath Jared’s door. Hannah’s room is the closest to hers. The door is closed. Thomas’s door, the one in the middle, has been cracked open. Sandy stands outside it, head turned to the side to look in.

The room is a shambles. When she pushes the door with her fingertips, it swings open with a creak. The stench of dirty diapers assaults her. Her stomach, which always seems queasy these days, lurches. Her throat closes against a surge of bile.

“Fuck,” she mutters too quickly to clip back the curse with her teeth. Louder, “Thomas!”

A shuffle and rustle from the closet turns her toward it. The home’s former owners had indulged some quirks in taste when they designed this house—while all the closets are generously sized, the one in Thomas’s room is also tucked into the eaves in such a way that it features an entire extra space large enough to house a Jack-and-Jill bath that was never installed. They use it for storage. The access is through the back of Thomas’s closet.

Its door is also cracked open.

“Thomas,” Sandy whispers.

A fresh wave of stink wafts toward her, sending her out of the room with her hand clapped over her mouth and nose. She reels, shoulder hitting the large, framed wedding portrait that has hung there since they moved into this house—the year Jared was born. The glass splinters. Her flesh stings. With a gasp, Sandy touches the spot on her work blouse. Her fingers come away spotted with blood. The glass is still in her skin.

Shaking, she makes her way to her bathroom, where she does her best using tweezers to clean the wound. She stares at her reflection, at the crimson threads running down her arm, at her belly crisscrossed with silver scars, at the small tattoo of a rose on her hip, the one she got before she even met Dan. Her breath catches, sharp as thorns in her throat, hurting more than the glass in her shoulder, when she thinks of the first time they made love. He had lingered over that tattoo, his lips pressing warmth onto her heated skin before moving lower, lower.

“Rosie,” he would call her sometimes. “Rosie, Rosie, my sweet Rose.”

Bent over the sink, Sandy grips the counter and tries without success to stifle the wracking sobs that tear through her. Her knees give out. She sinks to the cold tile and presses her cheek to it, fingers curling desperately and finding no purchase on the smoothness. She has not swept or mopped in months. Dust bunnies gathered beneath the vanity drift in front of her guttural exhales.

“…Mom…?” Jared’s voice, concerned, pokes at her, but when she looks up, he’s not there.

She can’t blame him. She can’t expect him to comfort her, not when his own grief is huge and powerful; he’s still her baby and she’s supposed to be the one comforting him. Still, knowing he’d seen her this way is enough to get Sandy up on her feet again. She washes her face with frigid water. Cleans the tiny pinprick wounds on her skin with alcohol. The bleeding has stopped.

A shout, faint but definite, turns her toward the door. It sounds like Jared. She waits, but it doesn’t come again.

Sandy pulls on a T-shirt and heads for the source of the noise. It came from Thomas’s room, where the door is now closed. She doesn’t knock but instead flings it open hard enough to bounce it off the wall. Her hand goes up to block it from hitting her.

“Thomas!”

Her middle stands in the center of the room, face blanched, pajamas streaked with brown fluid. Again the smell of soiled diapers forces Sandy to cover her mouth and nose. It doesn’t seem to bother Thomas at all.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mom,” he says, so she knows immediately that the shit has hit the fan.

Based on the stench, maybe literally.

“What’s going on? Where’s your sister? And Jared?”

Thomas shrugs.

It’s a standoff of sorts. Sandy straightens. She ought to cross the room and press the back of her hand to his forehead, check for the phantom fever she knows he contrived. She can’t make herself move.

“How are you feeling?” she asks instead.

“Fine.”

From the closet comes a sigh. Both of them turn toward it. Sandy’s foot moves without warning, taking a step that way. She stops, halted like she’s run into a wall.

“Thomas,” she tries again, “where is Hannah?”

Moments tick by. She stands across from her son, neither of them moving. Another of those soft noises comes out of the closet. Thomas tenses, then his gaze flickers toward the door.

Sandy breaks her frozen state and launches herself toward the closet door. Thomas cries out and tries to get in front of her, but she’s faster than he is. Bigger. Stronger. She pushes him to the side and yanks open the closet door, pushing aside the clothes half-dangling from hangers, kicking more aside from where they’ve been tossed onto the floor. Aside from the usual mess, there’s nothing unusual in the closet.

She shoves aside the clothing and opens the door to the storage space.

Inside, the packed-up history of their lives greets her. Bins of Hanukkah decorations, old and outgrown baby clothes she’s always meant to sort and donate, her grandmother’s china, boxes of old taxes and receipts, more boxes of yearbooks and memorabilia. The pile of old stuffed toys and dolls at the room’s short end could be new, although she hasn’t been in this room for a long time.

Sandy looks at her son. “What have you been doing in here?”

“Playing.”

“What is that smell?”

Thomas says nothing.

Sandy leaves the storage space and Thomas’s room, heading for Hannah’s. Empty. The bad smell is in here, too, but fainter. Or else she’s getting used to it. She searches for her daughter. Under the bed, in the closet, behind the rocking chair. Beside the chair, their copy of Peter Pan is face down, the spine cracked. Sandy had stopped reading at the scene where Tinkerbell dies. No matter how hard you clap your hands, you can’t bring the dead back to life.

At the end of the hall, Jared’s room is also empty.

He was in it not long ago. The music still thumps, heard only through his discarded headphones on the rumpled bed. The faint smell of pot lingers, although the open window with the fan blowing toward it has dissipated much of the odor. His phone buzzes, the screen lighting with a text, from his desk. He would not have left the house without his phone. Not ever.

Sandy curls her hands into fists. Her head lowers. She closes her eyes and tries hard to make herself breathe in a regular, even, in-out-in-out pattern, but she keeps fucking it up with strangled moans. Her nails dig deep into her skin. More sting. More blood.

Back in Thomas’s room, she confronts him. She doesn’t want to. Sandy doesn’t really want to know what Thomas has done to his sister and brother. She wants to down a bottle of wine, maybe a few shots of vodka, she wants to eat a marijuana gummy and pass out in her bed where she can dream that all of this is the nightmare.

“What have you done, Thomas?” The whisper tiptoes out of her lips.

From the closet, a moist sound.

He doesn’t try to stop her from going in there this time. Again, Sandy flings aside the hangers of clothes and goes into the storage space. The pile of dolls and stuffies has fallen over, and in its place…

“Dan?”

It is Dan but not-Dan, a squirming, pasty thing glistening with something thick and slick like mucus. It has the beginnings of Dan’s face, his form, but the rest is mushy and unfinished. A grub torn too soon from its cocoon.

Sandy turns her head, certain she’s going to vomit, but no matter how hard she retches, nothing comes up but a string of sour bile. She leans against the doorframe, her head buried in the crook of her elbow. Sandy waits for the nasty thing behind her to rise up, but when she manages to turn back toward it, it’s gone still. Almost, but not quite, lifeless.

“What have you done?” she asks her son.

“I found him in the shed. He was hurt. He…he’s my friend. No,” Thomas corrects himself with a shake of his head. “He’s Dad. He’s Dad!”

Sandy stands up straight. “That is not your father.”

A low, groaning garble issues from the thing’s Dan-shaped mouth. Another wave of that dirty diaper smell chokes her. Thomas waves a hand in front of his face.

“He wasn’t Dad,” he says, “but then…he ate Hannah.”

A wordless stream of exclamations surges out of Sandy’s mouth. She flails, not sure what she’s trying to find with her fists, only knowing that she has to hit something. Thomas tries to block her blows as they rain onto his thin, hunched back. One catches him in the face, splitting his lip, and horrified, Sandy gets herself under control. She gathers him to her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she mutters, wiping at the blood with her fingertips. “Oh, God, Thomas, I’m so sorry.”

Thomas, stoic under the onslaught, now buries his face against her bosom. His bony shoulders shake. His face, tear-streaked, contorts when she put her hand under his chin to force him to look at her.

“He ate Hannah and started to look like Dad! I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Hannah, Mom, I just wanted Dad back! I just wanted Dad!”

The not-Dan sighs again. More stink. Sandy risks a look at it. The features are soft, Dan’s face beneath a layer of mayonnaise. She can’t stop herself from looking at the body now, the broad shoulders, the dip of his belly below his ribs. At the end, he was so much thinner, but this Dan is fit, not emaciated. Lower, lower, the bulge between his legs is familiar, and she closes her eyes again.

“It wants to be what we want the most, Mom,” Thomas whispers.

“How do you know this?”

He taps his temple with one finger. “I just know.”

When she doesn’t answer, Thomas continues, “That guy with all the keys came, asking questions. I told him you were at work, and he forced his way into the house. He came up here. He was going to kill my friend, Mom. He had a gun.”

Sandy gulps air but is incapable of speech.

“But then my friend ate him, and he started to change. But not into Dad. Keys Guy wanted someone else, a lady, I guess…but I figured out what was going on. I figured it out.”

Thomas falls silent.

“You’ve always been good at figuring things out, love,” Sandy says on the trembling huff of her breath. “And then what happened?”

“He ate Hannah, and she must’ve wanted Dad, like I do, because that’s when he started to become Dad. And then he ate Jared. And he became even more like Dad. You see, Mom, he’s almost all the way there.”

The thing on the floor’s eyes roll toward her. It reaches out a hand. The mouth moves, forming sounds that slither free on another wave of that same horrific smell.

It is not Dan. It cannot be her husband. This thing had come from somewhere—yes, from outer space, probably—and if the man who came looking for it can no longer come back to find it, others like him will take his place. All Sandy has to do is give it up to them when they do. They will come and take this thing away.

But they would not be able to bring back her children.

“I didn’t want him to eat Hannah and Jared,” Thomas says, but Sandy thinks he is lying.

She understands. She, too, wants Dan back more than anything else in the world. On the floor, the not-Dan shudders from head to toe, every twitch causing its body to squelch against the carpet stained with its…juices. When it goes still, Sandy risks a breath.

“It’s not Dad, Thomas. It’s just a thing that looks like him.”

Not-Dan’s mouth opens again. A single word emerges. One she knows. One she has longed to hear for over a year, one that tears her open as easily as if she were a sodden paper bag.

“Rosie,” the thing on the floor says in her dead husband’s voice.

Sandy finds her voice. “What happens if he eats something…someone…else?”

“Whatever he eats tells him what to become. See, Mom, there’s just a little bit more he needs. Just a little bit more to be Dad, all the way—”

It takes no more than a few seconds for her to shove her son forward. She kicks his feet out from underneath him, so he goes to his hands and knees, inches from the sopping, dripping body that now thrashes and bucks. Stuffies go flying. Thomas lets out a high-pitched wail, quickly silenced when the not-Dan’s mouth opens impossibly wide, like an anaconda, and bites off his head.

Sandy forces herself to watch the entire consumption. She feels drunk. Stoned. She thinks she is asleep; she has to be asleep and dreaming, but she can’t wake up.

The thing that fell out of the sky writhes on the floor. She watches the lines and curves of its face become firm. Settled. The body, too, loses the softness and becomes solid. Real.

Sandy falls back, shoulder hitting the doorframe, when Dan gets to his feet. His skin glistens with a thin sheen of something quickly drying into nothing. The shit smell is gone, replaced with the odor of his skin, a smell she would know in any time, any place, no matter how far the distance. His cock thickens between his thighs, and Sandy lets out a fascinated, horrified moan when he reaches out his hand.

“Rosie,” Dan says. “Come here.”

And she does.

Who Built the Moon?

by Tyler Jones

They should’ve been back by now. The snow’s coming down harder. When I hobble outside on my crutches to take a look, the sky is the color of dried blood. All except for some smoke-colored clouds and the full moon, yellow like dad’s skin before he passed.

I ain’t worried yet. They know these woods. Hell, we’ve been coming to this cabin since the summer my brother John got nabbed for robbing the liquor store and went to juvey. Still, it’s late and the snow is falling thick.

I wasn’t even going to come on account of my knee. Tore it up on the job—concrete work is a bitch. At least I got worker’s comp, so there’s that. John and Darren begged me, said tradition can’t be broken, even if I don’t actually go on the hunt.

This trip’s a big one for John. His first since he started dating Laura and she got him to go to AA. Been a few months since he took a drink, but he says he still misses the booze, just not the blackouts and hangovers. Said he wanted to come out into the woods and kill something to celebrate the fact he’d killed his addiction. Even though I don’t understand it, I’m just glad he’s sober.

Darren wasn’t too happy about Laura coming along, and he let me know it once we got to the cabin. Said it’s always been just us guys, and things would be different with a woman here. I told him John wouldn’t be sober without her, and what does it matter? That he was just pissed because he couldn’t fart and scratch his ass whenever he wants? I told Darren this while he was pouring a vodka soda.

“Come on, man, if you gotta drink just wait until later, when they’re sleeping,” I said.

Darren took a long sip, said, “I ain’t changing just ’cause they got problems.”

Keeping one crutch tight in my armpit, I grabbed the glass from him and dumped it in the sink. Darren’s face got all red, but I didn’t give a shit. “Just wait.”

Darren put the vodka bottles in the cabinet, looked at me with his jaw all tight. “Yeah, Trev, this’ll be fun. Maybe we’ll do some knitting later and read a Bible story.”

That was over nine hours ago.

I go back out on the porch and watch, listen. The space between all them trees is black, and that full moon must be hidden behind clouds, because it’s so much darker now. The snow looks like silver colored stone covered in glitter.

They should be back by now.

There ain’t no cell reception or TV out here, so I go back inside and over to the bookcase filled with all them old Westerns that’ve been here since we started coming. Covers bent, pages all yellow and stiff. Every year, I read one—sometimes two, depending—and I’ve made it through half the bookcase.

I grab one called The Vanishing Sky, get an icepack from the freezer, and sit in the ratty old chair by the window. The curtains are a sun-faded blue that remind me of the curtains in the room John and I used to share when we were kids. I used to wake some nights to John crawling through that window, arms and legs all scratched up from thorn bushes. Said he’d been sleepwalking. He’d come to out in the yard, or in the empty field ’cross the road, shivering in his PJs and confused all to hell.

By the time I get to the chapter where Ezra Stone, this badass bounty hunter, is searching for a young boy kidnapped by a gang of bandits, my knee’s gone numb and I can barely keep my eyes open. Besides wood cracking in the fireplace, it’s quiet. The snow makes a soft sound though, piling up on the roof, slipping off the trees.

My eyes are getting blurry when a woman’s voice jolts me awake. She’s yelling outside, and the voice is in so much pain it’s damn near close to crying. Then I hear another voice shouting, “Just keep going, don’t look back.”

Darren. The voice has that growl in it.

I crutch over to the door, open it to see two shadows coming through the woods. The snow looks like ash falling out of a low sky. It’s full dark now.

I cup a hand around my mouth, shout, “Everything all right?”

No one answers, but that one voice keeps on moaning. One shadow walk-runs in front, and the other kind of stumbles along behind. The shadow wearing the hat with ear flaps, that’s Darren and he’s got his rifle in both hands, high-stepping through the snow. The shadow in the bright orange jacket is Laura. She walks like she can barely lift her legs, and it’s her who’s crying and moaning. Darren keeps looking back, and he grabs Laura by the jacket and drags her along.

The closer Laura gets the more it’s obvious something ain’t right. One arm just hangs there all limp, and her orange jacket is missing a sleeve. Her voice is all broken and pleading when she says, “Trevor? Trevor?”

They’re so close now the light from the cabin falls on Laura. It looks like her jacket sleeve got ripped off and there’s just the red shirt underneath. Wet and red. Thick snot has dripped out of each nostril and frozen on her upper lip.

Darren shouts at me, “Trev, help me get her inside.”

I look past them, but there’s no sign of my brother. “Where’s John?”

Laura lets out a scream so high pitched and full of pain it makes all the air go out of me. Darren pulls her so hard that Laura trips and almost goes down. That one arm though, it doesn’t even move to balance her.

They hit the porch and I drop my crutches, grab Laura as Darren turns around and kneels, points his rifle into the woods. Darren breathes fast and ragged.

Laura kind of falls into me and makes my knee angry. My hand on her back, there’s fever heat coming through the fabric.

I get Laura to the couch and she just slides off my arm, slumps onto the cushion. Her eyes looking up at the ceiling, they’re huge and bloodshot. Her teeth are clenched together like a smiling dog, and her feet scratch at the floor as she tries to not scream again. Sweat drips off her nose, her chin.

Darren backs into the cabin, still crouched, still aiming into the woods. He grabs the truck keys from off the hook.

“Darren,” I say. “Where is he?”

He ignores me and moves back to the open door, then out into the dark, gun barrel moving side to side.

My hand closes into a fist and it’s sticky, like when we used to put glue on our palms in elementary school, but this stuff is all red. I flip on the lamp by the couch and something in my chest drops down into my guts. I swallow wrong and cough, try to breathe but just choke.

I take a step back and Laura sees this, starts moving even more frantically. Trying to get up, to say something.

That arm, it isn’t wearing a red shirt. There is no shirt, just like there’s no skin.

The flesh, all the way from the shoulder to the wrist is split open in a bunch of long cuts, all of them straight and deep. Raw, purple-looking meat is pushed up out of these cuts, bubbling through them, and throbbing with what must be Laura’s heartbeat.

I step back and choke again, taste stomach acid and gag.

The sound of an engine trying to turn over comes from outside.

Laura’s whole left side is just soaked, like she tripped and fell onto a floor someone was painting dark red. She moves her chin down, tries to angle her eyes to see the arm. I put a hand to her forehead, gently push it back.

“Don’t look,” I say.

Her chin quivers like a punished kid. “How bad?”

“Just keep looking up.” Then I catch a whiff of the inside of her. A raw meat smell like bloody steaks, and I can’t hold it back anymore.

I run to the kitchen and barf into the sink. After I rinse out my mouth, I start going through the drawers. There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom, but that ain’t got nothing for stuff like this.

The truck engine goes one more time, but it doesn’t sound any better.

In the drawer by the oven, I find some plastic wrap. When I get back to Laura her face is fish belly white and there’s a pain in my chest, like I want to cry. It’s that feeling that says “things ain’t as bad as they’re gonna be,” and I’m worried like hell about John.

“Laura,” I say, “listen…I’m gonna wrap your arm so nothing gets on it.”

Laura moans. Her head rolls a little and one eye, all drained of color, comes to rest on me. Her voice makes some noise. “John…”

“Hang tight,” I tell her.

This close to the arm, it’s not like any cuts I’ve seen. It’s like one of them bad movies where a guy with a mask and a machete is after some kids—just hacked all to pieces. But the cuts aren’t wild, and that’s the part what makes the acid burn in my throat again. The cuts are so precise, so perfect, it looks like Laura just had some fucked up surgery.

“What the hell happened?” I ask her.

Laura moans again and moves her head from side to side. Her arm is mostly inside out, but it’s not really bleeding. Blood all over her, but the arm is pretty much dry. That gives me a flutter in the belly.

Darren stomps up to the porch as I’m tearing off long strips of the plastic wrap and putting it around Laura’s arm. She hisses at the pain but doesn’t really move much anymore. Darren slams the door shut, bolts it, then stands with his back to the wall. He moves the curtain with his rifle and sneaks glances outside.

I give Laura a pat on the knee, then go over and pick up my crutches. Darren jerks his head my way. His eyes are big and scared, like the time we rode a shopping cart down Eat Shit Hill. His chest heaves like a rabbit’s, all fast and shallow. I smell the sweat on him.

Fear’s a funny thing. Sometimes it’s a howling in your chest, and other times it’s just a hissy whisper in your heart, telling you things ain’t quite right.

I hear that whisper now, looking at Darren. I say, “Where’s my brother?”

Darren looks out the window again, kind of crouched like he’s still a cop. He turns away from the window, puts a hand on my shoulder, and looks into my eyes. “Something’s out there, Trev. I don’t know what it is, but it got John. I tried to help him, but it happened too fast.”

I breathe through my nose to see if there’s any vodka in that sweat of his. Darren’s eyes move back and forth like something’s gonna come busting through the door any second.

“Got him?” I try to keep my voice down so I don’t stress Laura. “What the fuck do you mean, got him? Was it a bear, a cougar?”

Darren shakes his head and opens his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything.

I lift one crutch and shove the padded shoulder part into Darren’s neck, push him against the wall and get in his face. “John was attacked and you left him out there, you piece of shit?”

I push the crutch even harder until Darren chokes. I stare into his eyes and wish my eyes could suck out some part of him through the sockets, something bloodier than blood. Darren’s a whole head taller than me and still as wide as a linebacker. The cords in his neck pop out and he breathes like a bull, air shooting through his nostrils. I stare into his eyes like I’ll jam the crutch up through his skull if he moves.

When I let off the pressure, Darren starts coughing. I grab the rifle out of his hand and let the crutches fall to the floor—fuck my knee, it’s already busted anyway. Then I grab my coat and hat from the pegs by the door.

Darren’s voice is hoarse now. “It’s not like that, Trev. Do you hear me? You have no idea what happened out there.”

I don’t even want to look at him. My hand is twisting the knob when Darren slams his arm against the door.

“It wasn’t an animal,” he says.

“What then?”

Darren leaves his arm on the door, wipes sweat from his eyes with the other arm. He moves from foot to foot, like dancing, like nervous energy. “I can’t explain it.”

“Darren, I swear to God, if he’s dead because you left him out there all torn up, I’m coming straight back here and blowing your fucking brains all over this room.”

He swallows so hard I hear it. His eyes get wet and he won’t look at me. “I know what I saw…”

I shoulder the rifle and zip up my coat. “I’m walking out this door in thirty seconds whether or not you tell me what happened.”

The wind howls outside and rattles the window. There’s the creak of snow piling up on the roof. A draft sneaks in from around the door. Darren moves his arm away and rubs his eyes with the heels of both hands. Then he reaches into his coat pocket and takes out a cell phone, hands it to me. The screen is streaked with dried blood and there’s a crack that looks like a pitchfork in the lower right corner, from when it was dropped in my kitchen a few months back.

“Why do you have John’s phone?” I ask.

Darren nods at Laura. “She had it. Was filming John.”

Her eyes are still closed but she’s breathing.

I back up, put a couple of steps between me and Darren and press the button on the phone. The camera app is open to the last video recorded. I push play.

The forest at dusk, full moon hanging in the sky, all grainy and out of focus. John is up ahead kneeling in the snow, gun trained on an elk, a big one grazing in the distance. Laura’s hand shakes a little and fog drifts into view from her breath. The sky gets darker and the elk stops, lifts its head, and looks up just as the moon slowly falls out of place. It slides down and turns sideways, hovers right over John. Then there’s a blast of bright light that turns John into a black shape, and he’s screaming something, holding his arm up to the light. Laura is screaming too as John lifts up off the ground, like he jumped without jumping.

The view changes as the phone falls out of her hand. Now all I see is the black sky, the tops of the snow covered trees, and Laura is shouting, “Don’t shoot it, don’t shoot it!” The light is loud, but there’s a crack like a rifle. Laura is crying now. There’s another light, glowing at the edge of the screen, and this one is orange.

Laura screams like I heard when they were coming back from the woods. It’s full of pain, and she’s screaming John’s name. Then there’s a boom, and the light is gone. Everything is quiet except for Laura, who is crying and saying “It burns” over and over.

Footsteps crunch through the snow, and the phone lifts up. For one quick second I see the place where John was standing; instead of snow, there’s a perfect circle filled with flowers. Flowers with bright red thorns and petals that shimmer like an oil slick on asphalt.

The video ends.

Darren’s eyes are more than watering now. He turns his face to the ceiling, blinks a few times.

There’s a little flutter in my chest, like a bird with a broken wing, ’cause I don’t know what I just saw. But I heard a gun go off, I’m sure of it, and John isn’t here.

I say, “Darren, hey, look at me. I’m going out there to find my brother. You stay and take care of Laura, okay?”

His head lowers slowly until his eyes meet mine, and they’ve gone dry. “You can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous.”

I lean in a little closer. “I don’t give a fuck what you say, I’m bringing John back.”

In the time it takes my heart to thud and stutter twice, Darren’s hand reaches behind his back and comes up holding a Glock, barrel pointed at my chest. “Get away from the door.”

The backs of my legs go numb, but there’s a sharp, bone scraping pain in my knee.

Darren’s got the gun in both hands now, holding it like they trained him to at the academy. Back before he was a cop, then a disgraced cop for pulling his weapon on an unarmed man. Then just a former cop for beating his wife.

“I said, back the fuck away from the door!” Darren yells.

I take a step and my knee almost buckles.

“Give me the rifle!”

I slip it off my shoulder and hand it over. My trigger finger itches a little and an image of Darren laid out on the floor with a bloody hole where his eye used to be develops in my head like a Polaroid.

“No one goes outside.” Darren puts the rifle strap on his shoulder, his eyes wide and crazy. “They can’t know we’re here.”

I hate that look in his eyes. We always used to call it Blood Blind, as in, Darren can’t see anything until he sees blood. It’s all he wants. His fingers open and close around the pistol grip. In and out through his nose, he’s breathing louder than the wind outside. The back of my neck itches with sweat crawl. I watch Darren and the way he looks makes me remember a psychology book I half-read back before I quit college.

De-escalate.

A word I don’t think I’ve ever used in a sentence before, but there it is, glowing in my head like a beer sign in a bar window. If he’s all worked up, I have to go the other direction. He’s got a gun aimed at my heart, after all.

I hold my hands up. “Hey, put yourself in my boots, man.”

His breathing doesn’t change, but his eyes get a little less wide. They meet mine.

Laura moans from the couch. Her teeth make a grinding sound that make my own teeth hurt.

I say, “Hang in there, Laura.”

My heart thumps in my knee, so I slowly reach for one crutch, keeping eye contact with Darren the whole time. “None of this seems real.”

“It’s as real as anything.” Darren shakes his head. “I’m not lying.”

I lean on the crutch, and it’s so good to take the weight off my busted joint. “I didn’t say you were, but my boots, remember? How does it sound to you?”

I’m not gonna cry, but suddenly I am. If it’s true, if any of what he said is true, especially about John, then a hole just got blasted through my heart and my chest is filling with blood. I want to breathe, but the air won’t go where it’s meant to. What do I tell mom?

Darren sees the tears and looks away. He looks at the gun and his eyes go big real quick, like, what am I doing? and he lowers it. “I’m just trying to protect you. You didn’t see what I saw. John is gone, and I’m sorry as hell about that, but going after him will just get you dead. And guess what, nothing changes for John.”

I jerk my head toward the couch. “What about her? We just let her bleed out?”

Truth is, Laura isn’t really bleeding. Maybe she did when whatever happened happened, but she’s not now.

Darren’s shoulders slump, the hand with the gun turns it up, like, what do you want me to do? “If we were on a ship in the ocean in the middle of the storm, you don’t just jump overboard.”

“No, but you try to get to safety.”

“Fucking hell, Trev, this is safety, man. The danger’s out there. Look, if Laura goes, she goes. But I sure as hell ain’t going outside and drawing attention to us, and I’m not letting you go out there either.”

Laura makes a noise, like she’s swallowing back vomit. I turn to see her holding a hand over her mouth, eyes scrunched up tight.

Darren’s sweating again, and it’s got the sour-sweet smell of someone who’s got a lot of vodka in their blood.

“What makes you think we’re safe inside?” I ask him.

Darren waves his gun hand at the room. “We’re still here, and we’re alive.”

The rifle he took from me would take a few seconds to pull off his shoulder and fire, and the Glock is pointed down. I breathe in quick and swing the crutch with all I’ve got—like swinging a baseball bat one-armed. It whistles, and there’s a metallic ring as the crutch connects with his wrist. The bone snaps, the gun drops, and his hand hangs at a sick angle.

Darren screams and doubles over.

I pull the crutch back and swing again, this time into the side of his head. The impact wobbles up my arm and stings. Darren hits the floor, screaming. By the time he figures out what’s happened, I’ve picked up the Glock and have it aimed at his head. His face melts from agony to rage like a candle dripping wax, and it scares me how fast it happens.

“You stay where you are,” I say.

“Drop the weapon,” Darren wheezes.

That makes me laugh a little. “You don’t control this situation. You’re not a fucking cop anymore.”

Darren’s eyes move over to the rifle that slipped off his shoulder when he fell.

“Hey, look at me,” I say.

His eyes move back to my face. His teeth are clenched together and bared, a Halloween werewolf mask.

I push the gun a little closer to his face. “What did you do to John?”

“I told you what happened.”

“What did you do to John?”

The pain face is back. He puts a hand to the side of his head that’s leaking blood all down his ear.

I take a step closer, about to shove the barrel so hard into his forehead that it makes a mark, when Laura starts coughing. More like a hack, like there’s something thick in her lungs she can’t get up. She moans again, looks up at the ceiling. Her eyes roll so far back she looks like a demon-possessed woman in a movie.

I keep the gun on Darren but limp over to the couch, put a hand on Laura’s shoulder. Her hair is dark with sweat and stuck to her cheeks, her forehead. I brush a strand away from her mouth. “Hey, hang in there. We’re gonna figure this out.”

My voice seems to calm her because the muscles in her neck relax enough to let her look right at me. That bird in my chest flaps its one good wing. Her eyes, there’s something different about them. They’ve always been blue, but this is like blue mixed together with purple and glitter. I move my head a little and the color shifts, changes.

Laura puts her hand on mine, and it’s cold like she just came in from outside. Her mouth opens and makes a sound. I put my ear to her lips, my one arm still stretched out, still pointing the gun at Darren.

“…John said,” Laura whispers. Her voice is weak and hoarse. She closes her eyes. “He said, ‘Not now, I’m not…’” She coughs again, and it’s an explosion in my ear. “He said, ‘I’m not ready.’”

The bird in my chest is flapping like it fell out of the nest.

I look over at Darren, and he’s staring at us. I can’t tell if he’s scared or pissed. He sits up, and I let him. But when he tries to get to his knees, I motion with the gun for him to get back down.

Laura’s cold hand squeezes mine. She whispers, “I didn’t move fast enough. The edge of the light got my arm.”

She coughs more. It lasts a while and sounds so bad, like her lungs are coming apart. Her face folds up in pain, as if she’s trying not to make a sound but can’t help it. “Something’s happening.”

I don’t know if she passes out, but her body relaxes. Her eyes close.

I put two fingers to her neck and feel a slow pulse. Then I limp back to Darren and stand over him. The bird has been beating its wing so hard my ribs are sore. The air coming out of my nose is loud. “I’m going to ask one more time. What did you do to John?”

Darren shakes his head, “No. No, no, I didn’t do anything.”

“You couldn’t wait. You had to drink.” I stare into Darren’s eyes, watch as they get a little wider with each second-hand tick from the clock on the wall, like they’re connected. I wipe sweat and tears from my eyes with the hand not holding the gun. “You always blamed everyone but yourself. Your whole life is someone else’s fault.”

“You saw the video,” Darren says, and it comes out squeaky and pathetic.

The gun is heavy, and my muscles quiver. “Did you get an elk?”

He blinks once, confused.

The grip of the gun is slick with sweat. “Because your rifle was fired. I can smell the gunpowder from here. And there’s no elk, and there’s no John. So what the fuck did you do?”

Darren looks past me, to the couch. His mouth falls open and his eyes widen. I know it’s probably a trick, but I hear the creak of couch springs and turn my head to look.

Laura is standing up, her eyes like what those flowers on the video looked like, oil, like colors moving in and out of each other. Her face is blank, and it’s eerie how much she looks like someone pretending to be Laura. She looks at the plastic wrap on her arm and pulls it off, starts walking toward the door.

Suddenly the cabin starts shaking and there’s a roar outside, like a storm, loud like a plane taking off. It’s a throbbing sound that vibrates deep in my guts. Then a bright yellow light blasts through the windows, around the edges of door. It’s blinding and when I close my eyes, I still see it, still feel its heat.

I open my eyes and hold up a hand to shield them. Laura is almost close enough to touch.

There’s movement from the floor. I turn to see Darren stretched out, reaching for the rifle. I know what happens next if he gets it and I know what I should do, but my mind can’t make sense of everything happening all at once.

He killed John. He killed John. He killed John.

I hold the gun in both hands now. Darren sees me and scrambles faster. His fingers touch the rifle, pull it closer. I take aim and pull the trigger on the Glock. The sound of the shot is lost in the roar coming from outside, but the damage is clear. Darren’s head snaps back like it’s on a hinge. Blood sprays against the wall behind him and a red mist hangs in the air for a second.

I turn and point the gun at Laura, because I don’t know what else to do. Those eyes look at me and I feel them in me, in my thoughts, searching through everything I’m thinking. I feel frozen in place, and I want to say something but I can’t find and connect words.

Laura raises one arm and gently pushes down my gun. It’s the arm that was injured, but it’s not hurt anymore. All those cuts are gone and the flesh underneath has changed. It’s smooth and gray and reminds me of shark skin. She keeps walking. The door is a black rectangle surround by bright yellow lines. She opens it, and the light comes rushing in.

Laura goes outside, into the light. I squint and see something hanging in the sky, a round metal shape that’s pulsing, reflecting the trees, the snow.

The moon.

The moon that fell out of the sky in the video on John’s phone.

Out past the truck, in the trees, a figure stands beneath this metallic moon.

“John?” I don’t hear my voice, just feel it. But the figure is too tall, too thin, to be John.

Laura walks toward this thing. They meet and there’s a flash, then they’re gone. I stand there in the doorway and the light coming from the moon changes color, becomes orange. When it does that bird goes frantic, beating like it wants out of my chest. I scream because my blood feels like it’s boiling and rushing all through my body, setting everything on fire. My knees hit the floor, and I scream harder at the snap in my bad knee. I look at my hands and the skin is turning bright and splitting open. Raw flesh is underneath, and the blood that comes out dries and turns hard.

The path of snow in the orange light has melted and flowers are blooming up from the dark soil. Flowers with thorns as red as my skin, and I’m burning up inside.

The light shuts off. There’s a crack in the sky, and the moon is gone.

I fall to my face in the open doorway, half in, half out. It’s stopped snowing. The sky is clear and glowing purple just above the trees. Something in me bursts, down in my belly, and a warm liquid feeling moves down my legs. I start screaming again, but that makes the pain worse. All I can see is that burned path of ground, those flowers shivering in the breeze. Memories flow like a videotape on rewind, people and places going in reverse. They’re also see-through, and growing younger. I’m back in my mother’s arms, and Dad is rewound too. His skin isn’t yellow anymore. There’s John next to me, and we’re as we’ll always be in some version of the world that I just can’t reach anymore.

Black moves in from the edges of my vision, closing on the light like the curtains over the window in the bedroom John and I used to share as kids, the curtains over the window where they first came for him. Under that window is where all the strange flowers grew. John always said they’d be back, but I never believed him. But they came back, and now he’s gone.

Now I’m gone too.

Stasis
by John Lynch

Lynne opened her eyes and shuddered. She sat up and kicked her legs over the side of the stasis pod, arching her back to get the kinks out. After a long sleep, the first stretch always sounded like microwave popcorn.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Fuck, I’m cold.”

Lynne tried sliding her feet into the slippers she kept under her pod, but they were missing.

“Great, now I’ve gotta walk across this icy fucking floor.” She made her way to the datapad, struggling to see through the darkness. A siren blared, and the emergency lighting system kicked on.

Where is everybody? she thought.

All five of the other pods were open, all of them empty.

Lynne walked over to the maintenance terminal and navigated through the readouts.

Twenty-five years, she thought to herself. We’re supposed to be asleep for another five. What the fuck is going on here?

The mining expedition had been a success. There were one hundred crews that had deployed to various moons throughout the Andromeda galaxy. It was a simple mission, mine whatever resources the moon offered, load as much as possible into the ship, and get out. Upon completion of the mission, crew members re-entered a cryo-sleep where they remained until their rendezvous with the parent ship, the New Dawn.

Lynne continued to parse through maintenance logs, searching for clues. Being well informed could mean the difference between life and death on one of these missions.

According to the readout, a status abnormality had caused Mike’s reanimation. His internal body temperature had steadily risen, triggering the process. After Mike’s pod started the emergency medical reawakening protocol, someone had opened the other pods manually.

Why would Mike do something like that?

Protocol dictated that only Decker, their medical specialist, was to be released in the event of a medical emergency.

Lynne reached the end of the data logs. There was no mention of any emergency aside from Mike’s temperature. The ship’s AI didn’t function under emergency power, so she would need to make her way to the command center to gather more information.

I’ve gotta find the others, maybe they know what’s going on. But why didn’t anyone stick around to fill me in?

Lynne walked over to her locker. She grabbed a t-shirt, sweatpants, and a pair of sneakers. Fully clothed, she exited the stasis room. The lighting situation in the main hall was no better.

Before heading to the command center, she needed to go to the sickbay. If Mike was sick, he and Decker would be there. As for the rest of the crew, they could be anywhere.

The New Dawn itself was gargantuan, a necessity when considering the size of the transports repurposed for mining operations. Ships with birthing space for hundreds had plenty of room for payloads when they housed minimal crew.

Lynne continued forward, using her hand to shield her eyes to preserve her night vision. She stepped on something slick and her boot slipped, sending her crashing to the floor. The floor was saturated with God knew what.

She wiped her hands on her pants and took a deep breath. A harsh stink assaulted her nose. She could almost taste the metallic tang. In between the pulsing lights, Lynne saw blood smeared across her pant legs.

“What the fuck?” she screamed, and rolled over onto her hands and knees.

The viscera-covered deck made it difficult to regain her balance. Something collapsed under the weight of her palm, and she heard a sickening squelching noise. She was wrist-deep in a torn-open chest cavity.

Lynne turned her head and vomited.

A mass of small, black worm-like creatures, three or four inches each, filled the open cavity. They writhed over each other, feasting on the corpse. Its internal organs were strewn about the hall, leaving spatterings of gore along the walls and ceiling. Lynne gagged. The sight and smell were too much for her.

Lynne stood up but almost slipped again. This time, she kept her footing and raced down the hall, listening for sounds of life within the otherwise deserted halls. The sound of her heart jackhammering in her chest made it difficult to listen to her surroundings. Once the surge of adrenaline left her, she slowed her pace. She crept onwards toward the sickbay, keeping her hand against the cool, metal wall for guidance. It wouldn’t do to get turned around in the dark. Not when something had so easily rent the flesh of her crewmate. She thought again of the exposed cavity and it brought to mind the image of a child pulling the wings off of a fly.

Lynne didn’t know which one of her friends had been murdered; the remains of the corpse were unidentifiable. The body was obviously female, so it had to be Kat or Stacy.

A sealed door blocked her progress. The sickbay. Lynne punched her access code on the panel next to the door, breathing a sigh of relief as the door slid open.

She entered, following the wall to the right and using her feet to probe the darkness. The essential areas of the ship contained supply lockers for emergency use. If she could find one, it would make her task easier.

Safe to say this qualifies as an emergency.

Lynne stumbled over something. The locker. She dropped to her knees, opened the latch, and flipped the lid. Aided by the locker’s interior lighting, she found what she was looking for—a headlamp. After pulling the straps tight and raising its red-plastic tint, Lynne was ready to continue now that she could see short distances in front of her.

She observed her surroundings. The entire room was a mess. Viscera painted the room a grisly mosaic of blood and entrails.

In the middle of the room sat a gurney. The sheets were strewn about. Someone had been in here.

More of the black worms wriggled around on the sheets. A baseball-sized mass of them crawled over and around each other. Another cluster of them detached from the mass and landed on the floor with a wet, slapping noise. They smelled like shit, and for the second time, a stream of vomit erupted from Lynne’s mouth.

“Lynne…” a voice croaked from behind the gurney.

It was Decker.

He sat slumped against the metal wall of the sickbay, a pool of blood growing beneath him. Worms wriggled all over his body. They dropped from his hair. Crawled out of his mouth. He didn’t seem to notice.

“What the fuck is going on, Decker?”

“It’s Mike,” he responded. “He…woke me up… He was sick, had a fever. I helped him to the sickbay, and he started puking up these worms. Everywhere, hundreds of them.”

“Jesus Christ…”

“He died. Right after he puked, right there on that table. But he’s not dead. He came back…”

“What the fuck do you mean, he came back?”

“I mean he was dead, and then he wasn’t. I was cleaning myself in the sink when I heard something moving behind me. There was a horrible sound, like something tearing… I turned around and he was sitting up, screaming bloody murder. There were…things coming out of his back. Some kind of appendages…four of them. They looked like spider legs. The ends of them were razor-sharp.”

“You’re telling me that Mike died, came back to life, and grew a set of spider legs? Decker, you’ve lost a lot of blood; you’re hallucinating. We need to get you patched up and then we can figure out what’s going on.”

“C’mon, you don’t believe that,” he said. “You’ve seen something. I can see it in your face. Why else would you be skulking around in the dark, shaking like a leaf? You’re terrified.”

Lynne crossed the sickbay and stopped at the sink. There was a plasma torch on the counter. She picked it up. “You’re right. I found a dead body. I couldn’t tell if it was Kat or Stacy—the body was too fucked up—but what you’re telling me is absurd. It doesn’t make sense.” She walked back to Decker. “And where the fuck is Mike? Why isn’t he here?”

“He’s not Mike anymore. I told you, he’s something else. He attacked me. Cut me open with one of those legs and puked on me. Got those fucking worms all over me. I tried to fry him with that torch, but he ran away. I don’t know where he is now.”

“Shit.” Lynne paced back and forth. “Then who woke the rest of us up?”

“It had to have been Mike. After he took off, I passed out.”

“So, Mike is some kind of monster, but he’s still able to work the transport’s controls? Are you telling me he can still think?”

“I guess so. How the fuck should I know? I’m telling you what I saw. You need to get out of here. Get to the command deck, signal the New Dawn and request an emergency evac. Once you’ve done that make your way back to the stasis room. Once inside, use this torch to seal the hatch before you enter one of the pods. Hopefully, that will be enough to keep Mike out.”

“What about you?”

“There’s no hope for me. I’m bleeding out and I can feel something inside of me. I think it’s those worms. I’m burning up and I think whatever happened to Mike is happening to me. From here on out, you need to assume that I am like him. Do not trust me.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry, Decker. I’ll figure this out.” She turned and exited the infirmary, trying to hold it together. Her life depended on it.

Her sense of time was in disarray. Minutes of skulking through the shadows felt like hours. As she approached the area where she had discovered her disemboweled crewmate, she steeled her nerves in anticipation of seeing her friend’s eviscerated remains a second time.

The body was gone. There was no evidence it had ever been there. Aside from a pool of blood and a cluster of black worms, there was no sign of anything amiss.

Click-click-click.

A sound like animal claws against the metal floor. It was coming from the ventilation shaft running along the base of the wall.

Click-Click-Click. Closer.

Lynne aimed her headlamp at the vent but saw nothing.

The vent cover blew off of the wall and flew down the corridor.

Two segmented legs appeared from the shaft, grasping for purchase on either side of the opening. The creature used the legs to pull itself out. Its head emerged, what was left of the victim’s human flesh dripping off of its skull like wax dripping down the side of a candle. Black, soulless eyes sunk into hollowed orbital cavities. Its mandible dangled from tattered strands of flesh, dragging uselessly across the floor as the creature pushed its way out of the vent.

“What the hell?” Lynne said.

She pointed the plasma torch at the nightmare creature and squeezed the trigger mechanism. Lynne held her weapon steady as the creature howled, writhing in pain as the torch cut through one of its appendages. The abomination whipped its head back and forth, waving its other leg wildly around while the stump of the first smoldered.

Lynne pointed the torch at the creature again, ready to take its other leg off. Once more, she squeezed the trigger, coughing violently as the acrid smoke drifted into her nostrils and the smell of charred meat filled the hallway.

The creature, now lying helplessly on the floor, stared at Lynne.

Didn’t Decker say Mike had four of those legs? Does that mean there are more of those…things?

Lynne inspected the monstrosity closer, unless Decker was mistaken, it couldn’t be Mike. Whoever it was had mutated into some kind of monster, similar to what happened to Mike, but anatomically different.

Lynne screamed, a primal howl from the depths of her soul. She stomped on the creature’s skull repeatedly, until there was nothing left but a pulpy mess of bone fragment, blood, and brain matter.

And worms.

Lynne turned and sprinted through the hallway, running as fast as her legs would take her. She was no longer concerned with moving silently. She needed to get to the control room and send a distress signal. Whether rescue was in her future remained to be seen, but she had to let the New Dawn know that something was horribly wrong. She did not know where the rest of the crew was, including Mike. She had to assume that if this corpse and Mike had somehow turned into monsters, the rest of the crew might have as well.

Lynne made her way along the corridor and slowed as she approached the command room. She was out of breath from running and exhausted from the rush of adrenaline.

The command entrance slid open.

Lynne held the torch in front of her as she snuck inside. Against all odds, she had arrived at her destination but couldn’t afford carelessness in the home stretch.

She approached the communication terminal and trained her headlamp on the terminal, once again punching in her pin. Lynne tried to hail the New Dawn.

“Shit!”

With the ship being on emergency power, two-way communication was no longer a possibility. She would have to send a distress signal and hope that whoever received the transmission, whether that be the New Dawn or some other ship in the vicinity, could rescue her.

But what about the creatures? Lynne could only assume anyone missing had been transformed, and with no way to communicate, any responding ship would not understand the horrors inside the vessel. That left Lynne with one option. She had to prepare a self-destruct sequence. If she could somehow seal the creatures off from the rest of the ship, and manage to get herself to safety, she could blow the ship remotely without killing herself in the process. That was a big if. Even if she didn’t send out the distress signal, the New Dawn was still scheduled to rendezvous in five years for pickup. She might not make it that long, but there was no way to know if those things could survive if left alone.

Lynne hurried toward the navigation terminal.

Plop.

Something landed on her head. She swatted her hair, brushing something onto the floor. It was a worm.

“Fuck,” she whispered as she looked up.

Another creature clung to the ceiling. This one with four legs, exactly as Decker had described the thing that had once been Mike.

Mike clung to the ceiling, suspended in place by the arachnid-like legs protruding from his back.

He dropped in front of Lynne and let loose an ear-splitting shriek. Then he lashed out at Lynne with one of the legs. She tried to jump back but wasn’t quick enough. The razor-sharp edge of the leg cut through her shirt, slicing the skin just above her navel. She fell flat on her ass and dropped the plasma torch.

Mike’s reanimated corpse stalked toward her.

Lynne scurried backward, using her hands and heels to scoot back as fast as she could until she bumped into the terminal.

Mike continued his approach, stalking his prey.

Lynne ran her hand along the deck, brushing something metal. The plasma torch!

She took aim and squeezed the trigger. A fiery burst seared the rotting flesh of the thing that was once Mike. It shrieked.

Lynne kept the torch trained on him, burning necrotic flesh. Mike crumpled to the ground but would not relent. It crawled toward Lynne.

The flame sputtered and died. Out of fuel.

Mike stopped in front of Lynne. Its face a charred mess and body still engulfed in flames. Using its remaining strength, the creature rose off the ground with its rear legs. It stretched its mouth impossibly wide, projectile vomiting black worms all over Lynne before collapsing to the ground.

Mike was dead.

Again.

She spit. Worms fell from her mouth. They crawled over her body and wriggled their way into her wounds. They used any opening as a point of entry. The worms ate their way through her flesh, through her muscles. They attached themselves to her spine, taking over her central nervous system. Some of them made their way through her skull and latched onto her brain.

The worms had taken control.

Lynne could…feel them. The worms were nothing more than an invasive parasite. They devoured the host and manipulated its body to spread more parasites, using the host’s own mind as a tool. Helpless to resist, she was a prisoner in her own body.

The worms forced her to walk back to the communication terminal and send the distress signal. They marched her back to the stasis room where they input her pin on the datapad.

The pod opened.

Lynne removed her clothes, entered the pod, and laid down. The lid closed and the locking mechanism engaged.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. It froze in place as stasis took hold.

Fourteen Gallons
by Red Lagoe

Sideways sunbeams illuminated the fog rising from cool wet grass and decomposing corpses. Evaporated bodily fluids ascended from the melted skin-bag bodies peppering the neighborhood. Their insides eviscerated into liquid. The fog swirled and levitated above the neighbor’s body like a delicate ghost trying to escape, but clinging desperately to the only life it knew.

It reminded Meredia of steam from a hot cup of tea. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the smell of an herbal blend. She could taste it on her lips. It was quiet enough to transport herself out of her home and to the beach, listen to the waves crash against the shore. Elle would sit by her side like they did when they were teens, slathering on sunblock as the sun rose higher, they soaked in the salt life, sunrise to sunset. That was back before life became filled with other things to do. Back before they journeyed into adulthood which was supposed to be full of adventures galore. Their beach days became work days and before they had a chance to realize they weren’t living the lives they wanted, the world ended.

Last month, the stars disappeared. Only a faint orange glow of the moon shone through a muddy sky. In daylight, one could stare directly at the sun without squinting. Scientists from the ESA claimed remnant dust from the creation of the solar disk was to blame. A haze so thick, it blotted out all starlight. A nebula that had been floating unseen through space since the formation of the solar system billions of years ago. Others theorized the nebulous structure had regathered—bits and pieces of dust pulled together over time and encroached on Earth’s orbit.

Whatever it was, when Earth blasted through the planet-sized cloud, bits of rock and ice crashed through the atmosphere and lit up the sky as meteors. The shooting stars burned so bright, they could be seen in daylight. In the evening, there were so many the darkened landscape lit up as if the world was on fire. It rained starfire all day and night.

When the meteor storm was over, stars pierced through clear black skies once again, and everything went back to the way it was before. Everything seemed okay. Photographs and news stories faded into the background noise within a couple of days. Meredia and Elle returned to work and their adult-life routines…until the first cases of sickness appeared days later.

Before the emergency messages became permanent on TV screens and devices, the news had warned about contaminated water supplies. Some alien microorganism, brought to us by the dust cloud. It ravaged the human body, mutilating muscles and connective tissues. It turned tough skin and organs into a puddle of goo. When ingested, the contaminated water was like salt on a slug.

About a week ago, Meredia’s neighbor had crawled from her house, elbows giving out beneath the weight of her body as her insides melted. A leathery shell deflated, skin clinging to bone as pureed insides oozed out of orifices. Like a fast-food restaurant’s pink slime meat—the same meat Elle had refused to put in her body for years, for the sake of the planet. The excessive use of water and land for raising livestock—to be slaughtered and mashed into a patty of unidentifiable substances—had to be reduced. And Elle loved the planet enough to make the necessary changes. And Meredia loved Elle enough to give up meat three times a week.

She’d kill for a burger now. Or to sit outside on a beautiful spring day. If the outside couldn’t kill her, today would be the kind of day she’d like to skip work and go to the beach. She wished she skipped work more often back then.

Fluffy cumulus clouds hung against an electric blue sky. Meredia imagined all that burning dust of the meteors being snatched up by the clouds. Tiny rain droplets collecting on the dust and then falling to the earth and ocean as rain. Bits of the universe crashing to the ground and making puddles full of tiny alien beings—puddles that her bare feet would never again get the chance to splash into.

“Why do kids stop splashing in puddles?” Meredia asked.

Elle’s eyes raised from her lap to meet hers.

“It’s still fun, splashing in puddles, so why do kids stop as they grow up?”

Elle’s shaking hand brushed some hair from her forehead. She’d been wasting away faster than Meredia. Her metabolism was a beast, requiring an insane number of calories just to breathe and blink. Elle entertained the question. “I stopped because I liked wearing nice clothes.”

Meredia tried to smile. Even smiling felt like a struggle for her muscles.

“Seems like a silly reason now, doesn’t it?” Elle asked.

“I suppose so. Nice clothes don’t matter so much.”

“We got so caught up in doing all these important things… SAT prep, studying, volunteer hours, work-studies…” Elle huffed.

“None of it mattered.”

“Beach cleanup? Water conservation? What good was saving the planet?” Elle said. “I guess it was all for nothing. Nothing to do now but suffer defeat.” Elle licked her lips, dry and cracked from dehydration.

They ran out of bottled drinking water two weeks earlier. Since then, they’d rationed and sipped the fluid from canned beans and mixed veggies. Their food dwindled as quickly as the world’s population.

Meredia and Elle sat at the kitchen table and watched the empty bird feeder outside as the morning sun rose above the neighbor’s fence. There’d been no sign of a bird in weeks. Or a squirrel, or the neighbor’s hound dog who used to bark incessantly. She’d love to hear that damn dog bark again. She’d love to see and hear a lot of things if she had the chance, but all the things she wanted involved being out there where it wasn’t safe.

The outside world had dew on the grass and thick humidity. Microscopic killers floating in the breathable air. Windows and vents had been shut for weeks, stagnating the air inside their home. Potted plants went dry without watering, withered, and stopped producing oxygen. It was only a matter of time before Meredia and Elle succumbed to the fate everyone else had to suffer.

All those people out on their lawns, in a final and frantic escape from their homes for help that would never come. Melted insides returning to the soil.

“I read somewhere that the human body has 14 gallons of water inside,” Elle said. “We just carry it around with us.”

A weak smile twitched at the corner of Meredia’s lips and her eyes grazed over Elle’s gaunt frame. “Not anymore. We’re so dehydrated, I think I’d be surprised to find an ounce of water inside of us.”

“I guess the Earth is getting some of its water back, huh?” Elle raised an eyebrow. “Take that, humans.”

Meredia felt a hint of humor in her heart, but she couldn’t laugh. Soon, they’d go into organ failure from starvation, and she figured they’d suffer a long and painful death. The thought of it haunted Meredia so much that she’d considered ending it all. The two of them could pop some pills—if they had anything stronger than Tylenol—and let the world dissolve away.

The thought of escape disappeared as the screech of tires on pavement cut through the silent neighborhood.

They leapt to their feet and ran to the picture window in the living room, craning their necks to see down either side of the street. They hadn’t heard a vehicle—not even on the nearby highway—in days.

“I think it came from that way.” Elle pointed to the east.

An engine grew louder and a car appeared with the sun chasing it. A glowing beacon of hope but also a harbinger of terror. Early on, there was looting. Most people weren’t interested in robbing those who were still alive—just the houses of the dead. But a lot of confusion and mistakes were made when people were hungry and desperate for survival. Man could turn savage when faced with life-or-death situations. Meredia hoped they wouldn’t become those terrible people who hurt others to survive, but survival instinct is a strong influence.

The blue Mustang convertible tore a hole through the sunlit fog. The sound of screaming followed.

“It’s Dave!” Meredia said.

“Who?”

“…Disco Dave!”

Dave stood from his seat, shirtless, fist pumping in the air while he screamed “Wooooohooooo!”

The old man, Dave, lived around the corner, stuck in the ’70s, always in bell-bottoms and listening to disco, he lived freely and did what he wanted all the time. Even if that meant mowing his front yard in his underwear. Elle had been jogging by one day and said Dave waved with a smile, donning a pair of tighty-whities, claiming, “If you’re not gonna live now, then when?” His antics were the topic of many dinner-time conversations.

As the car whizzed by, Dave smiled, wind in his long hair. He turned to face their house and did a double take. The Mustang screeched to a halt.

“Oh no.” Elle shut the curtains to the picture window and backed away. “He saw us.”

Meredia peeked from behind the edge of the curtain as Disco Dave leapt from his car. He wore board shorts and his silver hair streamed behind him as he jogged across their yard. “He’s coming to the door.”

“Don’t answer it,” Elle said.

“He saw us.”

Elle sat pressed against the front door, as if her frail body was strong enough to act as a barricade.

Dave banged on the door so hard, Elle jumped away with a squeal.

Meredia’s heart thumped between her ears. Perhaps Dave had news. He was their neighbor—the weird one—but a neighbor nonetheless. She had to at least talk to him. She whipped open the curtain to the window by the door.

Dave pressed his hands against the glass. His skin clung to his bones. Bags under his eyes more pronounced than ever. “Hi!” His voice was slightly muffled through the thick glass. “You don’t got no water left, do you?”

Meredia shook her head. “We ran out.”

Elle stood behind Meredia tugging on her shirt.

“Me too.” Dave said. “I’m taking a drive to check some stores and houses. Maybe get a bit of a joy ride in, at last.”

“It’s not safe out there,” Meredia said, but it felt ridiculous exclaiming the obvious.

Dave shrugged. “You ladies should come on out of there. It’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” He said it with the cool, collected confidence of a sane man, someone who believed without a doubt that everything would be all right.

“Do you have news?” Elle said, leaning over Meredia’s shoulder. “Is there an update?”

“Yeah, I have news…” Dave looked to the sky and held his arms out wide. “It’s a weather update. Partly cloudy with a chance of a breeze.” Dave’s peace-sign pendant swung across his sparsely haired chest. A sputtering chuckle spit through his clenched teeth as tears formed in his eyes. “It’s too beautiful out to stay inside, ladies.”

“We’re fine in here. Thank you for checking in.” Meredia nodded. “Let us know if you find anything.”

“Oh…I’m not coming back.” Dave pressed his face against the window.

She jerked away.

His face smeared across the glass. “I said you should come outside!” His lips parted and he pressed his mouth to the window and blew hard, billowing out his cheeks and raspberrying hot breath onto the glass like a kid.

Elle covered her mouth and backed away. “What’s wrong with him?”

Dave’s saliva clung to the window.

“He’s contaminating the house,” Elle said.

“It’s already all over your house!” Dave twirled away from the window. “It’s everywhere.” He charged back at them. “Just get it over with and get out here!” Dave lifted a plastic chair from the porch and swung it at the window. It ricocheted off and fell to the ground. He banged again with his fist. And again.

Elle screamed. Shaking, she backed into the kitchen. “Meredia! What do we do?”

Meredia dove for the baseball bat in the corner and held it up so Dave could see it. “Get the fuck out of here!”

Dave’s hand smashed against the glass and a crack formed. He admired it with a smile and took a few steps back with his hands up. “All I’m sayin’ is it’s a beautiful day.”

Dave ran to the car, jumped in, and burned rubber, peeling away.

Elle rushed to the window donning rubber gloves and ripped a long strip of duct tape with her teeth. She covered the crack, then tore off another strip. And another. Covering the crack at least five times. “Is it going to get in here? I think that crack goes all the way through. Is it in here?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the hell was wrong with him? Was it the infection? Does it mess with your brain first?” Elle rapid-fired unanswerable questions. “Did he just lose his mind being alone? Is that going to be us? Are we going to lose our minds?” She buried her face in her hands. “Or are we going to just die of thirst?” She dragged her fingers down her red, puffy face, but no tears escaped Elle’s eyes. Not enough fluid in her body for tears.

The sound of Dave’s tires were long gone and the midday sun beat down on the house. No more than a can of kidney beans remained in the cabinet, from that time Elle tried to make chili. That and the one special thing they’d been holding onto.

“Hey, you want to do something fun?” Meredia asked.

Elle shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible anymore.”

“We have to try, or we’ll end up losing our minds like Dave. Let’s eat the rest of it now.” Meredia walked into the kitchen.

“I thought we were going to save the rest for our anniversary.”

“That’s a month away. And we need the calories.” She opened the microwave and pulled the Tupperware from inside. The top tier of their wedding cake had been in their freezer since last year. A couple of weeks ago when the power went out, they moved it to the microwave. They’d been picking at it for extra calories, and Meredia hoped that if they could make it last until their one-year anniversary next month, that maybe they’d make it out of this. That maybe they’d make it forever. Now, they weren’t sure if they’d make it until tomorrow.

“Do this one thing for me,” Meredia said. “It’ll be fun.”

She pulled their wedding dresses out of the storage chest, and Elle and Meredia prepared for a final romantic dinner.

Meredia squeezed into the fitted lacy thing that fit better last year. She broke off a bit of the cake with her fingers. Elle did the same wearing her A-line white classic gown. They stood at the end of the table and fed each other a nibble of cake from their hands. After Elle took a bite of the stale cake, Meredia shoved the remaining piece into her face. Cake crumbled easily into dry clumps, frosting smooshed into her face and fell to the floor.

Elle jammed her piece back at Meredia. As she pulled away laughing, screaming with delight, cake smeared across her neck. For the first time in weeks, they both laughed.

Meredia’s eyes went to the floor, where there were crumbs and frosting at their feet.

“That was wasteful…” Elle’s face turned serious in an instant. Laughter fell to regret.

Meredia hung her head, wiping cake from her face and neck with the curtain.

“What are you doing?” Elle laughed. “Those are nice curtains.”

“All of our hand towels are gross.”

“So you use the curtains? What’s next? Wiping our bottoms with the bedsheets?” Elle’s mouth was agape for a moment before she broke into hysterical laughter. She held her ribs.

Meredia felt it too. An ache inside. Organs angry with the lack of nutrients. Muscles weak without protein and calories…without water. Now their stomachs churned with the stale chocolate cake. It was the first thing in their bellies since they shared half a can of chick peas the day before, slimy fluid and all.

They couldn’t stomach anymore. Chocolate smears on the front of their dresses. Dresses that were once kept in boxes to be preserved for some reason they couldn’t explain. A future life that would never come. Elle’s hair was twisted up in a clip. Messy fly-away strands stuck out in all directions.

Elle held her stomach and cringed. “Cake was a bad idea.”

“Probably…but it was fun.”

The temperature soared and before long they were stripped out of their wedding dresses and lounging in their underwear. Sweat soaked cotton clung to their skin.

“Any more fun ideas?” Elle asked fanning herself with the unpaid mortgage bill. “I need more laughing. Less existential dread.”

“If things were normal, what would you want to do?”

“You mean, if I didn’t have to go to work?”

“Yeah. Anything. Today is a regular day. The contamination never happened. And you don’t have to work or save the planet. What do you want to do?”

Elle closed her eyes and inhaled through her nostrils. “Go to the beach. See the ocean again. Smell the salty air…”

The sight of her joy made Meredia want the same thing. They were beach rats as kids and even though they were only a twenty-minute drive from the shore, they rarely visited in their adult years after life got so busy with work and keeping up with the house.

Meredia leaned in, took Elle’s hands, and smiled. Eyes stinging with the need to cry, her teeth chattered. “Let’s go to the beach, Elle.”

“What are you saying?”

Her lip quivered. “Let’s go to the beach.”

“You want to give up?” Elle’s spine became rigid.

“It’s not giving up.”

“It’s accepting our fate. It’s walking into the fire! I’m not going to kill myself.”

“No. We’re not killing ourselves. We’re taking the last of what’s left of our lives and, instead of withering away behind the walls of this mortgage we’ll never pay, we’re choosing to live.”

“I want to live as long as we can.”

Meredia backed against the wall. “I do, too.” Wet skin clung to the cool surface. She pulled away quickly. It wasn’t just her sweat clinging to the wall. Humidity had soaked through. Condensation had formed on the interior walls.

“Is that outside water that got in?” Elle asked. “Or is it moisture that’s been cycling inside the house?”

The water on the walls dripped down. Meredia was thirsty enough that she wanted to lick it off, whether it had little alien organisms in it or not.

Elle hugged her arms around her waist. “Oh my God. We’re not safe anywhere anymore, are we?”

“I don’t think we ever were. It was only a matter of time, right?”

She nodded. “Is it going to hurt? It looks like it hurts.” Her eyes darted to the window, beyond which billions of people had suffered unimaginable deaths.

“I don’t know. Dave didn’t look like he was hurting. But if we wait to starve, or die of dehydration, I think it’ll be so much worse.”

Elle used the curtain to wipe the moisture from Meredia’s back.

“Who knows? Maybe Dave was onto something. Maybe it’s not in the air anymore. Maybe we can find some water on the shelves to hold us over for a few days. And then another few days… Maybe…”

“Yeah… Maybe…”

Meredia knew as well as Elle that neither of them believed in any of the maybes. But they had to hope for something.

Without an item packed, Meredia and Elle stood hand in hand before their front door in their undergarments.

“Are you ready for adventures galore?” Meredia asked.

Elle nodded. “It’s about time.”

The front door cracked open, peeling away from the swollen frame in the heat of the afternoon. Keys in hand, Meredia swung open the door and was met with thick humid air. The smell of death lingered in the neighborhood. The rustle of a breeze through the trees met her ears.

“Here goes.” She took a long deep inhale and felt free for the first time in weeks. Maybe the air was clean now and they’d be free like Disco Dave, or maybe she’d just inhaled a lung-full of microorganisms that would start dissolving her from the inside out over the next few days.

They removed the top of the Jeep and settled into their seats. Meredia backed out of the driveway, peeling her tires on the pavement.

Elle stood from her seat, fist in the air, screaming, “Woooohoooo!”

Wind in their hair, they drove to the shore. Only a few dead bodies peppered the beach—souls with the same idea to enjoy their last moments taking in the beauty of their planet. The salty beach air sat in Meredia’s nose and filled her body with delight.

“Earth will be fine, you know,” Elle said.

Meredia scanned the bodies on the beach. Deflated skin-bags, liquid insides oozing into the sand and ocean.

Elle’s lips twitched into a grin. “Maybe not us. Not people. But our planet…she’ll be fine.” She leaned back on her elbows, soaking in the sun as waves crashed into the shore.

Meredia wondered how many other people were out there now, still alive, enjoying their final days. And how many were holed up in their homes, ready to shrivel away to nothingness in misery—holding on to some hope that there’d be more than just this miserable end.

More to life than becoming 14 gallons of water recycled back to the Earth.

Broken Star
by Lucas Milliron

Mount Rainier

“We’re lost,” Michael huffed, sitting on a log.

Michael's pocket was weighing him down. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on without saying something. Swallowing his pride, he tried to clean his smudgy glasses with the sleeve of his blue flannel shirt. It only smeared them worse.

“No, we’re not!” Rachel smiled as she sat down beside him, playing with her compass.

“All right,” Michael nodded. “Where are we?”

“Base of Mount Rainier,” Rachel snapped the compass closed, smiling as she nudged Michaels’s shoulder. “How’s the ankle?”

“Hurts.” Michael looked at his foot.

“I bet.”

“I’ll admit, some guys weren't built for high heels.” Michael chuckled.

“It was a wedding party!” Rachel’s laugh was like honey to his ears; a sweet sound that warmed his heart. “You’re supposed to get silly.”

“So long as I have you to pick me up.”

Michael leaned in and kissed the crook of her neck.

“I’m just amazed Steven and Karla are married! I never pegged him as the settling down type.”

A beam of sunshine accentuated Rachel’s honey-colored eyes. There was a wildness to her passion, a wanderlust in her eyes Michael followed anywhere she went. She was equally at home in the forest as she was back in Miami. A second of silence, and Michael realized he wasn’t paying attention to a word she’d just said.

“So,” Michael said as he stood up to stretch, “when’s this comet due?”

“Soon as the sun sets,” Rachel cleared her throat and looked at her watch. “Swift-Tuttle passes Earth’s orbit once every one-hundred-thirty-three years. Whenever we watch the Perseid meteor shower, we’ll be looking back in time, watching Swift-Tuttle’s tail collide with the Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Maybe we can get a better view of the—”

A branch snapped beneath Michael's foot, sending him tumbling down the side of the mount. His fall was broken by a soft patch of cold mud along a shallow riverbed. He laid there a moment, wiggling his fingers and toes to make sure nothing was broken. It wasn’t until he looked himself over that he realized he’d lost his glasses. Rachel raced over to his side, handing him his glasses and helping him to his feet.

“I’m all right.” Michael grunted, adjusting his bent frames as best he could.

He was about halfway up when he fell on one knee again. The bottom three buttons of his shirt were torn out, but aside from the ankle he felt otherwise okay.

“Take your time.” Rachel held his arm for support.

“Holy crap!”

Michael looked up at the sky.

Rachel followed his gaze. The sun was setting behind the mountain, staining the clouds red and the sky a deep purple. A spark flared in the heavens. The comet was a sight to behold, but Michael was too preoccupied.

Michael looked into Rachel’s eyes. Now or never. He retrieved the burden from his pocket. Still kneeling, he presented a small velvet box. He opened the lid to reveal a gold engagement ring with a single round brilliant-cut diamond.

Rachel gasped, covering her mouth.

Michael cleared his throat. “Over the last five years, you’ve brought me places I’ve only imagined. You stood by me through med school, and showed me beauty in the heavens I didn’t know possible. Every time I fall down, you pick me up. Rachel, will you marry me?”

“Yes!” Rachel cried.

Michael held her close, sharing her air, her scent, her kiss. From the graveyard of long dead stars, the cosmos watched as they consummated their love.

The Broken Star

Rachel fell out of the bunk, smacking her head against the floor. Panic turned her blood cold as she tried to remember where she was. The teak paneling was all it took to remind her. It was Steven’s Mochi Dolphin 44, a small Italian yacht called Broken Star.

The forward cabin was snug with a double birth on port and single on starboard. There was access to a private head and shower, a hallway to a galley kitchen, and VIP quarters across the landing with similar accommodations. The forty-four-foot yacht reminded her of a luxury RV with its lavish finishes and white granite counters.

There was something else, something metallic about the air. The scent of ozone stung her sinuses with a chemical malodor. The scent conjured dark thoughts that floated around the room like schools of jellyfish, waiting to sting as she tried to reach for them. Probably echoes of the dream that flung her awake and onto the floor.

Rachel’s heart settled in her chest. Her body ached as if she’d fallen down stairs with her hands in her pockets. Thin threads of light peeked in from behind the drawn curtains. Even that was enough to trigger a migraine.

You’re not as young as you used to be. Well…maybe not as young as Michael’s friends.

As if summoned by the thought, Michael stepped into the room carrying a plate of eggs and toast, leaving the door open behind him.

“You all right?” Michael set the plate on the mattress and helped Rachel up.

“Yeah.” Rachel rubbed the side of her head.

“I made you breakfast.” Michael moved the plate to give her a place to sit.

“Not hungry.” Rachel sat down, her guts tumbling.

“Toast might settle your stomach?” Michael tried his hardest to pass a believable smile, but his eyes always betray him; the way they softened around the edges like a sad puppy.

Rachel grabbed the buttered slice of whole wheat, biting into a corner. The dry crust soaked all moisture from her mouth. Chewing made her head throb. She pushed the morsel of toast into her cheek, hoping it would dissolve enough on its own to swallow.

Rachel wasn’t sure what Michael was thinking. She wasn’t even sure she cared. Some part of her wanted to put herself in his shoes and imagine what he went through. Those thoughts were squashed before they could even gestate. After all, she was the one trapped on that space station.

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

Rachel swallowed the morsel of toast before continuing.

“About last night—”

“I should have known better,” Michael interrupted. “You were drinking. It’s been a while since you’ve had any wine.”

“That’s not what I was gonna say.”

Michael didn’t reply. He measured her slumped shoulders and tired face.

Rachel looked him over. He was wearing that awful blue flannel shirt with the missing buttons at the bottom. His salt and pepper hair was a greasy mess, and he stank of sweat.

“I can’t keep apologizing.” Michael didn’t raise his voice above a whisper.

“Then stop!” She didn’t mean to yell, but was surprised at how good it felt.

“What would you like me to do?” Michael leaned back in the bunk, hands folded behind his head.

“Nothing.”

“None of this is fair.” Michael rubbed his eyes with the meat of his thumbs.

Rachel wanted to bite his head off at the waist. Before she could act, Suzan’s laugh proceeded her down the steps through the galley kitchen. Rachel’s nostrils flared as she took a breath, gathering her strength.

“Don’t mind us!” Suzan’s dolphin laugh machine-gunned Rachel's ear drums. “Just using the potty!”

Suzan waved as she walked past the open door, stepping into the VIP bedroom across the narrow landing.

Suzan was a bombshell model with blonde hair bright as the sun. She wore a floral bikini that, no doubt, cost as much as Rachel’s space suit. Unlike most of the supermodels Rachel remembered seeing growing up, Suzan wasn’t skinny. She was an hourglass sculpted from strict diets, supplements, exercise, and a few surgical enhancements.

Rachel was surprised Steven didn’t follow her into the bathroom. The man was always sniffing behind her like a truffle pig. He leaned against the doorframe, watching Michael and Rachel. A cigarette dangled between his pinched lips.

Steven was a lanky ginger aside from the gut poking out of his unbuttoned blue Hawaiian shirt with banana and coconut print. His distended belly hung over his flamingo swim trunks like a popped can of biscuit dough. He looked more drop out surfer than the CEO for a clothing company, specializing in women’s 3D printed leggings.

Rachel felt her heart pounding in her chest. Her mind was already starting to spin out of control, flashing with terrible memories.

The ICE-Queen

I’m aboard the International Colonial Explorer, The ICE Queen. It’s humanity's most ambitious space project; a seven-year voyage in search of life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The ICE Queen’s construction reminds me of a stick insect with its long shape, solar wings, and array of satellites and antennas.

Kit’s floating in front of me, her long hair a halo of golden tendrils hovering around her skinned face. The flesh from her nose to her chin has been peeled away. The flaps float like crimson wings. Her grotesque musculature shimmers in the red emergency lights. The brilliance of her blue eyes have dulled to a pallid gray.

The rest of my crew members are floating in a slurry of their own decomposition, their faces peeled in similar fashion. Blood and bodily fluids soak their clothing, staining the air with the sickly-sweet miasma of rotting meat.

“Rachel,” said Kit’s corpse.

“No,” I shake my head. “No, stop talking. That’s not Kit.”

Her voice is wrong. Too deep, too masculine.

“It’s all in my head.” My throat is scratchy; I haven’t spoken in weeks. “Your body knows how to breathe.”

I look away, repeating the mantra until I start to believe it. I don’t know how long—minutes, hours, days. I close my eyes, forcing myself to believe everything will be okay. I look back. Kit is gone.

“Is it fear or the thrill that quickens you?” Kit’s corpse whispers in my ear.

My body shudders with goosebumps. The stink on Kit’s breath clings to my skin like dirt. Her voice is a violation to my sanity.

“It’s all…in my head.” My voice is shaking, but I must believe. “I’m all…by myself. Your body knows how to breathe.”

I can feel tears floating around my face. They cling to my hair and clothing; droplets drifting around the cabin. My heart is a pulsar ready to explode.

“Your body knows how to breathe,” I tell myself, “Your body knows how to breathe.”

I take Kit by the hand and lead her to the lander. I collect Jason and Akira and lock them inside with her.

Maybe I won’t hear their voices behind the airtight seal?

The Broken Star

Rachel looked at Michael, eyes glistening, nose burning with the smell of ozone. Michael ran his fingers through his hair, the way he always did when he knew he’d done something wrong.

“Steven?” Michael stepped into the narrow hall.

“Yeah?” Steven mumbled behind his cigarette.

“We’re kind of in the middle of something.” Michael rubbed the back of his head.

“Yeah?” Steven’s shit eating grin was pissing Rachel off.

The toilet flushed before Michael could reply.

“So much better!” Suzan slapped Steven’s butt as she walked by.

Steven followed her back on deck.

“How old is she?” Rachel closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

If that woman spoke her mind, she’d be speechless.

“Younger than Steve.” Michael collapsed beside her. “He likes her. She’s a nice person.”

“There’s something sleazy about it.”

“Can we not talk about how old she is?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hit a nerve?”

“Don’t.” Michael sat up.

“Don’t what?” Rachel slithered up beside him. “You wanna focus on our problems? What was her name?”

“What?” Michael turned, looking Rachel dead in the eyes. “You wanna know who I cheated on you with? How is me telling you her name gonna make you feel any better?”

“How old was she, you fucking cheater!”

“You were supposed to be dead!”

Rachel gasped. Her jaw went slack, eyes furrowed, and face flushed. Michael flinched at her stinging glare.

“That’s not what I meant,” he pleaded.

“Fuck you.” Rachel slapped him.

Michael cupped his cheek and began to sob.

“You were gone for three years,” Michael said between heaving breaths. “NASA didn’t tell me shit! With a global pandemic and everyone getting sick, I was so lost. Lost without you to pick me up.”

“So you fuck the first woman you meet?” Rachel’s fury was a solar flare.

“What?” Michael looked up from his hands. “No!”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through!”

“How can I?” Michael stood up. “You’ve been catatonic since you got back! If I didn’t tell you…tell you something, you’d still be locked in your room!”

“So I should be grateful you fucked someone?”

“No!”

“Get out!” Rachel threw her plate of food against the wall. “Get out!”

Michael got up, rubbing his eyes and sniffling back the tears. He glanced at the splattered plate, but not the woman who threw it.

“Are we giving up?” Michael sobbed.

“Get…out!” Rachel could feel her rage tearing at her vocal cords.

Michael left the cabin. Rachel was alone.

Why did you do this me? I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry.

Rachel threw herself on the mattress and screamed into her pillow. She coughed at the stinging in the back of her throat, agitating her hoarse vocal cords further. The cabin felt like the inside of a pressure cooker; the atmosphere crushing her like a tin can.

Europa

It was supposed to be a quick expedition. Land, drill, launch. My lander, named Toto after the Wizard of Oz, is built like a Hercules beetle with six dune buggy wheels and a massive drill up front. Even with Toto’s shielding, an hour on Europa’s surface is the equivalent of two chest X-rays.

It’s been six hours since Toto slipped over the edge of a ditch. A sharp sliver of glacial ice sliced through Toto’s fuel cells. I’ve used most of the battery backup trying to jerk Toto free from the ice. I’m running out of air.

Emergency lights paint the small cabin with a green hue. I hear my crew calling my name over the intercom, but I can’t make it out behind the veil of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Rachel!” Kit’s voice crackles over the speaker.

They’ve been trying to override Toto’s computer remotely from the ICE Queen. The power flickers on and off. No power means no air filtration. Each breath I take is killing me.

I’m sitting behind the drive stick and launch panel. It’s hard to focus. Everything is spinning. The lights blink out. The crew goes silent as the emergency power dies. It’s freezing. I can’t lift my arms to reach the control panel. Something's shaking—either me or Toto, I can’t tell which.

Looking out the dome shaped forward window, I watch the frozen horizon. It’s a vast, endless hell of blue and white glacial formations. Rust colored mountains reach for the black sky. Geysers pepper the landscape like acne bursting with plooms of steam two stories high.

Delirium stains my living nightmare in a prism of terrible colors. The frozen wasteland shimmers with purple, red, orange, and gold. A neon green crack streaks across the surface. Red lightning oozes from the icy wound, radiating purple steam.

My lungs are burning. My face is flush. Darkness encroaches my peripheral. It’s so cold. Michael, where are you? I can’t see you. Michael…I love you.

The crack in the ice explodes. The force throws Toto end over end. My head bounces against the window; my body slams the ceiling and walls. Toto comes to a rest upright. I don’t have the strength to pick myself up. What’s the point? I’m dying on this moon. My fingers cling to my wedding band. I will always love you, Michael.

I hear something tapping against Toto’s hull. It’s negative three-hundred degrees outside. Nothing can survive Europa's frozen surface. Perhaps it’s the sound of the heat melting ice buildup on the ship’s exterior? Or it could be more life support clicking off and on?

No. There’s rhythm to the tapping, an organic fluidity unlike any sound Toto’s ever made. Curiosity gives me a second wind. My heart races. I’m on the edge of human experience; the verge of discovery looming just outside. My last breath shall not pass in fear.

I pull myself back into the driver’s seat. I lean forward, looking out the window. The crack in the ice is a massive crater, radiating green and orange mist. It’s hard to breathe. I try to peer around the corner at the lander’s sides, but I can only see so much.

What was that? A foot, a leg? I can’t tell. It’s gone. Maybe it was glare against the glass.

The creature steps into the open. Its body is in a perpetual state of flux. Watching it for more than a minute hurts my eyes. Its body morphs; an indecisive cephalopod with two eyes on top of a gelatinous head. The creature hovers towards the glass. The sclera encapsulating its slitted pupils are like blots of blue and green oils sprinkled with flakes of gold. Never have I seen such beautiful eyes.

There’s an intelligence to its gaze, a strange curiosity not unlike what I feel for it. I press my hand against the glass. A tentacle reaches for my palm. As it touches the other side, fingers sprout from the tip, mimicking the shape of my hand.

Between me and an alien lifeform is a sheet of safety glass four inches thick. Mankind has traveled lifetimes to experience this very moment. For the first time since we’ve embarked on this journey, I feel like I’m not alone.

Cold. So cold. As death envelopes me, a smile creeps across my lips. I did it, Michael. I did it. We are not alone.

The Broken Star

Standing outside the cabin with his back to the door, Michael sighed. He reached for his phone to check the time, then remembered he left it in the car.

Wouldn’t do me any good in the middle of the ocean anyway.

Michael was still itching behind his ears. His chin and cheeks were spotty with acne. He licked his lips. They stung with sunburn. Sixteen-hour hospital shifts in a surgical mask was wearing down his face, but at least his glasses weren’t fogged out.

This couldn’t have been a worse time for Rachel to come back. If she’d come home sooner…or later…or…

Michael wretched. The very thought turned his stomach into knots. All he wanted to do was crawl into a corner and die of exposure.

I shouldn’t have brought her out here. What was I thinking?

Steven and Suzan were waiting for Michael on deck. They sat on the starboard bench nursing beers from an open cooler full of frosty green bottles.

“Looks like you could use a cold one.” Steven offered a bottle stuffed in a lemon colored koozie.

“I’m all right.” Michael sat down on the bench across from them. “Isn’t it early for beer?”

“Dude…” Steven cracked a smile, shaking his head. “It’s five in the afternoon.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Michael groaned, covering his face with both hands as he leaned back.

“You’ve been in the cabin all night and most of the day.”

Steven tapped the bottle against Michael’s knee.

Michael took the beer and gulped it down.

“I’m sorry for interrupting.” Suzan sighed, twisting her pink koozie with trembling hands. “I really needed to pee, and we wanted to check on you guys.”

Michael gasped as he pulled the empty bottle from his lips. “It’s all right.”

Steven handed him another.

“No, it’s not.” Suzan shook her head. “I was nervous. Rachel isn’t well. Something about the way she looks at me, it’s…scary.”

“Yeah,” Michael slipped his beer into the yellow koozie before looking at Steven. “Thanks, by the way. For the boat and coming out here.”

“Nah.” Steven patted Michael’s thigh. “You’ve put up with my bullshit since college. It’s the least I can do.”

“No, I mean it.” Michael peeled the label off of his beer. “This is the most she’s talked to me since she’s come home.”

“You’re welcome.” Steven nodded.

“I was hoping…maybe,” Michael said, wiping his tears, “maybe seeing the Perseids meteor shower would remind her I loved her. Bring our spark back. I screwed up.”

“You’re only human.” Suzan threw her koozie in her lap. “NASA said she was dead. What were you going to do? Fly up there and go looking for her?”

“No.” Michael rubbed his face as he tried to explain how he felt. “My wife was only…reported…dead a few days before I…I…”

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Suzan said, leaning forward. “She was gone for three years. You’ve been dealing with a global crisis for the last eight months. You’re a good man and a good doctor.”

“This is going to take time,” Steven said, fishing for another beer. “We still don’t know what she’s been through.”

“Because she won’t talk to me!”

Michael covered his mouth to hold back the tears.

“Not yet,” Suzan reassured him, “but she will. She’s your wife. She loves you. She came back for you. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

Steven rubbed Suzan’s back.

Watching their affection was like an icepick in Michael's temple. It wasn’t overt—they weren’t even kissing—but it was enough to remind him just how broken Rachel was.

The ICE Queen

Tomorrow is my first landing mission. I’m so nervous, I can’t sleep. My quarters are simple, just a padded room the size of a shower stall. I keep a few books anchored to the walls with Velcro along with some photos and my laptop fixed on a swiveling arm.

Someone’s screaming. The alarm sounds. I unzip the cubical door and climb out of my quarters. Red emergency lights stain the station crimson. I can’t find the crew. There’s nowhere to hide on board the ICE Queen. The narrow corridors are cluttered with wires, panels, and ongoing experiments.

“Kit?” my voice cracks as I whisper for my crew. “Jason? Akira?”

No reply. The smell of ozone stings my nose.

As I glide through the lab module, a drop of moisture kisses my cheek. I touch it. The oily substance looks black in the emergency light. I press it to my lips.

Blood.

I look up. Kit floats in front of me, locks of her long golden hair sticking to her peeled face. Jason and Akira are also dead, their faces disfigured in the same fashion.

A flood of shadowy tendrils envelops the lab. Fingers of lightning tear through the sheer fabric of darkness, revealing an alien lifeform. Its main body is an amoebic sack with two slitted eyes. Jellyfish tentacles sprout like mycelium, clinging to the ship's interior.

The alien swells into a defensive pose, filling the room with its bulk. It’s tentacles fractal along the walls, surrounding me. I look into its eyes. It’s studying me, looking at me with the same keen eye as I am it. There’s something else, something familiar. Despite the terrors around me, I am not afraid.

With nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, I approach the alien. My body jitters with nervousness. I hold out my hand. A single tentacle reaches out, clutching my palm. It burns like ice. The cold chill crawls up my arm, neck, and across my head.

It’s inside me, reading me like software. Its touch is gentle as fingers across a keyboard. My mind is racing with electricity and light. My eyes have been hacked. I have seen this creature before, but not yet. I remember a landing mission I’ve not yet taken. Alien thoughts fill my head as the station fades into oblivion.

A low and terrible voice calls from the darkness.

“I am infinity.”

The Broken Star

The sun sank into a wine-colored ocean. Michael was nursing his tenth beer on the forward sundeck while Steven and Suzan laughed at the portside dinette table behind the helm. With no land in sight, Michael felt consumed by the vast and empty horizon.

Nights in Miami were far different. Light pollution stained the black skyline shades of sulfur and glittering blue. Miami nightlife was a constant bombardment of thundering club music, muscle cars, and bustling crowds walking along South Beach.

Michael drank up the intoxicating silence. The Broken Star’s gentle rocking was about to lull him to sleep when a flash jolted him awake. By the time he looked up, it was gone. A star shot across the sky. Then another, and another, until thousands of thin pearls of white raced across the sky like embers from a campfire.

“It’s starting!” Michael called out.

“We see it!” Steven hollered back.

“I’ll go get Rachel.” Michael grunted as he tried to stand.

As he found his footing, something else in the sky caught his attention. At first it was just another shooting star, but it didn’t burn out. It continued, a brilliant white speck growing brighter by the second. Dark clouds obscured the horizon, coming from the same direction. A breeze swept across the boat, threatening Michael’s balance.

“Hey, Steven,” Michael shouted. “You seeing this?”

“Seeing what?” Steven yelled.

“Those clouds!” Michael pointed.

The white speck was the size of a car headlight when it was obscured by the growing thunderstorm beneath it. The column of swirling gray sparked with lightning. The winds intensified, churning the waters around them. Michael fell, smashing his knees against the deck. In seconds, the clouds were only a few miles away.

“We’ve gotta move!” Michael yelled.

His cries were squashed by a roll of thunder as the storm washed over them. A massive swell rose up under the Broken Star, lifting it into the air and dropping it into the choppy waters. Michael wrapped his arms around the rail. Torrents of water flooded his eyes and nose with salty spray.

The craft pitched down as a massive wave yawned like a terrible mouth two stories high. The Broken Star roared into life too late to save them. The wall of water, black as asphalt, crashed down, swallowing the yacht.

Michael fell into the turbulent waters. He swam as hard as he could against the current pulling against him. In the dark, there was no telling if he was even swimming towards the surface. He couldn’t even see the bubbles pouring from his nose and mouth. His lungs ached for breath, his eyes and sinuses burned with saltwater.

Feeling nothing beneath his feet, Michael's innards clenched. His mind flooded with terrible images. Sharks circled him in the shadows. Tentacled creatures reached from depths as black as space. Massive jaws opened below, ready to eat him whole.

Michael’s hand felt air seconds before his face broke the water’s surface. He gasped, choking on water. The Broken Star idled a few yards away. The eye of the storm fell over the boat. The waters were still as grave.

Light flooded the sky, bright as a second sun. Michael treaded water, shielding his eyes as best he could. The light went out. Michael rubbed his face, trying to acclimate to the darkness. A large gray saucer the size of the football stadium hovered above the Broken Star, quiet as a cloud. The dreadful silence was broken by screams coming from atop the deck.

Michael swam as fast as he could. He hoisted himself onto the swim platform, crawled over the transom, and tripped over the bench. Michael tried to catch himself, but slipped in a puddle of blood. He landed on his chest, spattering his eyes and soaking his blue flannel shirt with gore. His fingers slipped in the syrupy substance as he tried to get to his feet.

He wiped his face, smearing it with blood. Touching his eyes, he realized he’d lost his glasses. Everything twenty feet and closer was a blur. He crawled on his hands and knees stopping when he felt the edge of a shoulder.

Michael’s eyes traced the blush musculature of two cadavers before him. His mind filled in the details his acuities couldn’t make out. Steven and Suzan were collapsed dolls stargazing from the teak floor. Their faces were peeled oranges. Ribbons of flesh lay scattered about the helm and dinette table like bits of grizzly zest.

Bile crawled up the back of Michael’s throat. He swallowed it as a glint caught his eye. A light flickered below deck, illuminating the galley kitchen with a strange amethyst glow. His nose burned with the smell of chlorine. Michael rose to his feet, took a deep breath, and descended the steps.

The ICE Queen

Through the aft window, I have a 180-degree view of Europa. It’s all I can see, a nightmare I will never truly out run. Yet, I’m sad as the frozen, rust stained sphere disappears in the distance.

Until death do us part. I’ve kept my promise. I’m coming home.

With the crew locked inside Toto, I’m the last ant in the ant farm left to pack away the bodies for a funeral with no moaners but myself. I managed to get the ICE Queen’s autopilot on course for home. When you’re adrift in the void without Earth’s rotation around the sun for reference, time is meaningless. Only distance traveled matters.

Something flickers out the starboard side window.

I glide over, grabbing the handle next to the porthole and pull myself up to the glass. I see Earth.

Another flicker catches my periphery. Massive storm cells blanket the African continent. Lighting flashes in weird rhythms and patterns. It’s as if the storms are talking to each other, their language spoken in a dazzling display of electricity. We look so far away for signs of intelligence, that we can’t see the forest through all the trees.

Here I am, trapped in a small bubble of Earth shot out into space, too brittle to taste the naked vacuum of the cosmos. How can we quantify life while understanding so little of our own? Floating in a space station full of dead astronauts, I’ve learned more than I care to know.

The Broken Star

Michael looked at Rachel standing beside him. He couldn’t move. He was trapped by the black Man-Of-War-like tendrils. Its gelatinous body hovered in the air with two wicked eyes slitted like a cephalopod radiating blue-violet colored light. Its venomous touch tingled his skin with pins and needles.

Rachel’s eyes were glowing with the same ultraviolet as the creature that bound him. He cried out for Rachel, but as he exhaled, the tendrils squeezed his lungs tighter, so he could not draw breath. He was falling, falling into madness, but Rachel couldn’t pick him up.

Oblivion

I’m standing between time and space. My entire history collides into one finite moment.

The room shudders as it burns black as carbon, swallowing the ocean with it. I see mountains, stars, jagged glacial geography, and Michael standing beside me. The lines around his face are artificial, as if drawn by novice artisans. The alien has him, squeezing him with its tendrils.

Everything is pain. My flesh is stifling. My skull is swollen with dark and terrible thoughts.

“Get out of my head!”

The room grows still. We’re standing in the forward cabin of the Broken Star with the aft window of ICE Queen behind me, looking over Europa’s rusty blue surface. My pain fades to a dull ache.

“Why did you kill my crew?” I ask the alien.

“Fear.”

The words echo in the depths of my subconscious.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Curiosity.” Its tone narrows, solidifying with each syllable.

“What?”

Michael’s mouth moves as if speaking for the creature, but the words match like a poorly dubbed foreign film, “You do not fear me.”

“I’m terrified.”

“You are curious.” The cadence of its speech tightens.

“What do you want with me?”

“I am curious.” His face contorts, a meek attempt at empathy.

“Do you have a name?”

“Yes.” His mouth and words are synced.

“What is it?”

He tilts his head. I feel heat inside my skull, like a microwave buzzing around my gray matter. His eyes are blue-green with flakes of gold. He’s reaching inside my mind, pulling from fifty plus years of life experience.

“Cronos,” he says.

I feel his touch from across the room. Tendrils wipe the corners of my eyes, brushing away the tears.

“I have seen your journey,” it says. “I have rewritten your path. I know all you know. You are far stronger than you know. I will show you oblivion.”

“But…Michael…”

“His mind would not endure.”

“I can’t leave him. Not forever.”

“You will survive the void without him.”

“I love him!”

“I have bent space and time for trifle curiosity. I have unmade your death. Should I return to the void alone, you will go back to the moon from whence you’ve perished to die again. Your Michael shall provide nourishment for my journey back into the void.”

Cronos flexes his tendrils. Michael groans, unable to breath. He won’t survive much longer.

“Don’t hurt him!” I cry out.

“Choose. Follow me into oblivion, or perish.”

The Broken Star

Rachel turned to Michael, her face red and eyes glossy with sadness. Tears cascaded down her cheeks like shimmering grains of crystal. Michael thought he saw a smile peel across her lips. Rachel’s jaw went slack.

“I will always love you.” The words spilled from her lips without moving them.

White hot light radiated from Rachel's mouth and eyes, blinding him before he lost consciousness.

Michael woke to the sound of gentle waves lapping the sides of the boat. He was laying on the aft cockpit, face down in a pool of gore. When he saw everything was blurry and out of focus, he touched the bridge of his nose, forgetting he’d lost his eyeglasses. The afternoon sun was beating down his back with blistering heat, unabated in the cloudless sky.

Michael rose to his feet. His throat burned and head pounded. He went to the minifridge and grabbed a bottle of water, downing it in one gulp.

For a fleeting moment, Michael thought he might have hallucinated, might have made it all up. Then he looked himself over. His favorite flannel shirt was stained with his friends’ blood. He took it off and tossed it overboard, then washed his arms and face in the sink above the minifridge.

His friends' bodies lay face up on the cockpit deck, their faces peeled like grapes. He wanted to cry for them, but Rachel…

Michael looked at the staircase leading below deck. His heart pounded in his chest. Goosebumps prickled the back of his neck and arms. He swallowed hard, sighed, and made his way down the steps into the galley kitchen.

Below deck was dark. Michael tried flicking a light switch by the galley kitchen, but the power was off. He made quick work of searching the bedrooms. The VIP suite looked clean and unused, as did the forward estate room. The ship was empty.

The last place Michael remembered seeing the key was Steven’s pocket. With hundreds of surgical hours under Michael’s belt, he thought he was ready to search his friends’ body. After all, Michael was no stranger to gross anatomy and traumatic death. The grizzly musculature was no different than any other cadaver brought in from a homicide or car accident, until his eyes met with Steven’s.

Perhaps it was Michael’s blurred vision, or the time spent baking in the sun. There was something about Steven’s greenish-blue eyes, a disarming innocence Michael never noticed before. His friend was dead, killed by a creature in the most brutal fashion, and here he was, fishing for his boat keys and satellite phone.

Michael fell backwards on his butt, his face wrecked with sadness. His brow crinkled as he sobbed, his body convulsing with hysterical heaves and huffs. He was done rummaging his friend's corpse.

Michael sat behind the helm. The ocean was vast and featureless, the dark blue sky and water separated by a thin white horizon. He glanced at the helm and marveled at its modern technology. There was sonar, weather radar, and GPS tracking systems, all of which he knew nothing about. Even if he found the keys, he couldn’t navigate the ship.

We’re not alone in the universe, yet here I am. Rachel’s gone. No one will ever believe me.

Chittering
by Bob Pastorella

The motel room wasn’t going to work anymore.

One, Dave was out of money. He knew he could get money, but he didn’t want to have to resort to pulling money out of an ATM. Last thing he needed was a paper trail. He figured he had about a day or so before he’d get kicked out. He’d paid for two nights in advance, and night number one was already kicking off his paranoia.

The old lady next door eyeballed him in the hallway when he went to refill the ice bucket, and it took every ounce of willpower not to look at her.

Trust me lady, you do NOT want to make eye contact with me.

Two, it was only a matter of time before the police found him.

The local news wasn’t helping. There was an eyewitness. Dave could almost see the newscaster’s eyes widen when they made their first comments on the air. “…a blood mist, floating through the air…pronounced dead on the scene…the victim’s body was completely bloodless…”

What pissed Dave off the most was the composite drawing the police released based on the witness’ statement. Strange how every damn cop show in the world almost never got the sketch even fucking close to the perpetrator, but this guy managed to capture Dave’s likeness to the T. Damn drawing looked like a photograph, forcing Dave to part his hair on the side, which made him look even more like a 1970s serial killer. Good thing he was too paranoid to leave the room and pick up some razors. Shaving was overrated, and he was starting to feel it wasn’t going to matter anyway.

He sat on the bed and took out his wallet. He had a five-dollar bill and three ones. Eight bucks. The man on the five was Lincoln, but he couldn’t remember the man on the singles. Dave knew the man was important, significant even, but he couldn’t recall who he was or what he did that was so special. Tucked behind the bills was a picture of Dave and a pretty woman. It was taken at the beach, the woman sitting in his lap in a halter top and cutoffs, her shoulders splotchy with sunburn, auburn hair lifting in the breeze. He repeated her name, “Mandy,” his voice barely a whisper.

When he was a kid, he learned if he recited things he needed to remember again and again, he wouldn’t forget them, and he damn sure didn’t want to forget Mandy. She was an LVN, working morning shifts at the local emergency center. They’d been together for a couple of years, and they always told each other it was nothing serious, but it was serious enough to move in together. It was like Mandy asked him to stay with her one night and Dave never left. He wasn’t sure if they loved one another, wasn’t even sure exactly what love was. He cared about her, and he couldn’t deny she was a big part of his life.

Maybe that’s what love was, caring and giving people space in your life. If that’s all it took, then Dave was in love, and he kind of thought Mandy felt the same about him.

Things were slipping away from him. It took Dave a little effort to make all the connections, the hows and whys of what was going on. There were gaps in those connections, fuzzy like the morning hangover after a hard night of hitting the bottle, but Dave didn’t drink anymore. He concluded this was a feature and not a bug.

Ha ha ha, not a bug.

A bug was exactly what had happened to Dave.

Right out of Grigsby city limits was Turner Lane. Two miles down was Lindy Road, and from there you drove six miles to the old Shear estate. Dave’s boss, Fern Shear, owned the land and periodically wanted someone to check on the old house and walk the grounds. Most of the land was undeveloped, but Fern liked to keep the yard up around the house. Dave wasn’t expected to do the landscaping…only to survey and get bids on who could cut it for cheap. Dave didn’t mind driving out there every once in a while.

Except this time.

This time, the greens were different. Behind the house, right where the trees started to get thick, was a large track, about the width of an eighteen-wheeler, literally scorched into the ground. At first, that’s exactly what Dave thought had happened. How in the hell did an eighteen-wheeler get through there?

Walking the path, Dave found the grass was actually burnt.

Vandals.

Fern had her share of them over the years. Drunk ass kids looking for a place to hang out and fuck, or meth heads looking for a place to cook. As he walked the scorched ground, he realized it was more than the grass that was burnt.

The dirt was seared as well.

Why would they burn the ground?

It didn’t make sense.

In some places, the mud appeared porous, as though heated to an extreme temperature then cooled, which really wasn’t possible. Dave wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but he did have a good idea of how hot lava was, and there damn sure wasn’t a volcano on the Shear property.

The end of the blackened path was a coagulated mess of mud, grass, rock, and what appeared to be glass. About the size of a washing machine. Whatever it was, it was hot; he could feel the steam rising off of it. Inside this mess was a strange liquid. Or maybe it was a solid. He didn’t want to touch it with his fingers.

Dave found a stick and poked the slime, watched the stick sink into it effortlessly. He lifted up the stick, hoping to scoop up some of the slime on the end, but it was too thick. It stretched out an almost unbelievable length before splashing back into the puddle.

That’s when he noticed the things swimming in the slime.

He dropped the stick and stepped back from the puddle. There were little critters whirling in the muck, darting around the viscous liquid like they were in a freshwater pond, unaffected by the thickness of the slime.

At first, Dave thought they were shrimp, or some kind of strange crustacean. He remembered seeing a video of hagfish on his phone once. The fish were like nature’s very own chemical spill, floating in a gooey sludge that only got thicker the more you touched it, according to the girl narrating the video. He could still see her fingers gliding through the mucous mess in his mind.

He picked up the stick again and stirred the slime, trying to agitate it enough so the tiny critters would rise to the top. One of the things latched on to the branch, and Dave was able to lift it out of the goop and get a closer look.

It wasn’t a shrimp. He’d never seen anything like it before. Grey and purple with tinges of blue along its many legs. Two fluffy antennae sprouted from one end, each strand lifting from the slime to spread out. The antennae fanned, like it was sniffing the air.

What the fuck is this shit?

At the other end was a longer antenna, or was that a single leg? The thing wasn’t segmented like an insect, it was more like an eel, or a large salamander. Except its legs. The legs, if that’s what they were, jerked about, just like if you picked up a bug.

A cross between a grasshopper and an eel?

The antennae lifted in the air, spreading out like a butterfly’s wings. It rose from the end of the stick and hovered as if about to fly away. Dave didn’t want it to fly away. He wanted to catch it, take it to someone who might know what the fuck it is.

Dave looked at the creature suspended in the air, the crystalized slimy mess, the scorched grass. This wasn’t something from around here. No sir, this was something from out there.

An alien.

Holy shit, I found a fucking alien.

As delusions of grandeur filled his mind, the spoils of fame and fortune, the creature turned to face Dave. He watched as the alien saw him. It knew he was there; that was absolutely undeniable.

The critter darted at Dave.

He backed away instinctively. No way was he going to actually touch the damn thing. He didn’t know if it was dangerous or carrying a disease no human had ever contracted before.

The alien rushed at him again.

Dave moved back but didn’t see the divot in the ground behind him. He stepped into the small sinkhole, which was deep enough to make him lose his balance. He felt his ankle twisting, and before he could lean forward to catch himself, Dave fell back onto the grass.

The alien came at him again, landing on his chest.

Dave woke up at his house, in his bed, but still wearing his clothes. He had no clue how he got home, or even how long he had been home. He went into the bathroom to pee, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight pouring from the bathroom window. Mandy had probably already gone to work.

When he finished peeing, Dave looked at his face in the mirror.

His neck itched, like he’d gotten into some poison ivy or stung by a wasp. There was nothing in his memory remotely suggesting he’d been stung by a wasp. He remembered going out to the Fern estate and seeing the scorched grass, finding…something…

It was right there, on the tip of his tongue, as they say. But he couldn’t get a grip on the memory.

His neck was warm, and there was a large, oozing wound at the center of the rash. Looked like some kind of bite. Dave touched the liquid from the wound and watched in horror as it stuck to his finger and stretched out. It reminded him of something he’d seen before, something recent.

Was it the video of the truck running into all those hagfish?

Dave shook his head.

He wiped his finger on his dirty jeans. He was filthy, as though he’d been rolling around in the dirt. The bed was streaked with mud and grass stains from his work boots. His pillow was flecked with tiny dots of a rust-colored liquid.

Did his neck bleed while he was sleeping?

He stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the hamper. He needed a shower, but coffee first. Mandy usually made a pot in the morning, leaving it to stay warm on the percolator. Dave needed his phone as well, but he didn’t find it in the pockets of his dirty jeans, or on the nightstand beside the bed where he normally left it to charge.

Still in his underwear, Dave went into the kitchen and saw the wreckage. Mandy usually kept the entire house spotless, so seeing the floor littered with cereal flakes and wadded paper towels made Dave wonder if a possum hadn’t somehow gotten into the house. Wouldn’t be the first time. The window above the sink was open to let a little air in, but all it was letting in now was flies. They were everywhere, zooming around the kitchen, but more concentrated in the corner by the refrigerator. He could hear them buzzing and chittering. The table was shoved back near the refrigerator, and one of the chairs was lying on the floor.

Mandy, or what was left of her, was shoved under the table. At first, Dave thought maybe she was hiding under the table, trying to play a prank on him. She liked playing little pranks on Dave, sneaking up behind him, goosing his flabby love-handles to make him jump. He bent down and saw she wasn’t hiding. She might have been hiding before, or maybe something pushed her under the table, but now she was just dead.

Her head was bent at a weird angle, and her face was set in a permanent grimace. Her t-shirt and shorts were covered in rust-colored stains.

Dave crawled over to her under the table, hoping for a miracle.

Her skin was cold and rigor mortis was already setting in. The stains on her shirt were stiff, long dried. There were tiny rust-colored dots all over her skin, as though someone had poked every inch of her with a needle. Her hands, arms, legs, face—they looked like the dots that marked his pillow.

Mandy’s flesh sagged, as though deflated.

Dave pulled himself up next to her, wrapped his arm around her shoulder, feeling her bones poking through her shirt. He choked back a sob and coughed. His vision blurred, tears burning his cheeks. He screamed, more of a long, drawn out wail. Part of him worried if the neighbors would hear him, another part didn’t care. He hugged Mandy tighter, sobs racking his body. Everything he cared about was gone, and all he wanted to do was sit under the table and hold Mandy in his arms, but having his arm around her bony shoulders, shoulders that under normal circumstances felt a little plump—muscular even—was giving him the creeps.

Maybe that was shock.

Buzzing from the flies filled the air, and buzzing from something else.

He stood up and walked over to the counter by the sink. There was his phone, and someone was calling him. Dave watched the screen flash FERN WORK for a few seconds. He didn’t want to pick up the phone. He looked down at the phone and saw the 11 MISSED CALLS notification. Then he noticed the date.

He had gone to the estate Monday, the 12th, and unless his phone was malfunctioning, the date read the 15th.

Three days.

What had happened to him during those three days?

He picked up the phone to call the police, then placed it back on the counter. If he called them, there would be a record of the call, and he didn’t want any record of any of this. The police would probably think he killed Mandy—that was usually how these things went down. Better to get away, think about what to do next. Go far, far away.

Dave went to bathroom to clean up, no time for a shower. He carefully washed the tender bite on his neck. There was a patch of dry itchy skin radiating down his shoulder and arm, made worse by the water from the sink. Dave didn’t pay it any attention. Likely poison ivy, though he was having a hard time remembering exactly what had happened in the woods.

Did he need to call 911?

He knew he should go to the police, but what could they do? He kept going through it in his head, imagining how the call would go. If he remained calm, would they suspect anything? Dave was pretty sure he hadn’t killed Mandy but couldn’t offer any explanation as to what happened to her. Sometimes people forgot bad things they had done, which he’d always thought sounded more like a convenient means of getting out of trouble more than anything else. Now bad things had happened to him, and of course Mandy, and he wondered if maybe it was his fault.

Obviously, there had been some kind of struggle. He examined his arms and shoulders, but other than the bitemark on his neck and the itchy rash, there were no scratches, nothing that indicated he had been in a fight with Mandy. And they had never gotten physical with each other before. Sure, there were disagreements—one time Mandy was so pissed at him she didn’t talk to him for almost a whole week—but they’d never actually fought each other. The concept was ludicrous.

He dressed in dark jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Something told him to wear clothes so he could blend in.

BLEND IN.

Why?

Dave couldn’t figure it out.

He would need some water, maybe a few other things he could get on the road. Starved, he grabbed the loaf of bread on top of the refrigerator and pulled two paper towels off the roll on the counter. There was ham and cheese in the drawer at the bottom of the fridge. He squeezed some mustard on the bread, slapped on two slices of ham, and peeled the wrapper off the cheese before assembling the sandwich. Chewing the first bite slowly, the bread and meat filled his mouth, closing off his throat.

Dave coughed the chunk up, spit it into the sink. He ran the water, washing the bite he spit out down the drain and tossed the rest of the sandwich in the garbage can.

For some reason he didn’t want to take the truck. It made sense to get out as quickly as possible, and the truck was his best bet for covering some miles, but he didn’t feel like driving, as though getting behind the wheel of his truck would be a massive mistake. But he also knew shock could make people think strange things, and this was definitely strange.

He pocketed his keys and started walking and arrived at the gas station at the end of his block. They usually carried those giant bottles of water, so he went in. He tried to carry three of the bottles to the counter, but his arms felt weak. All his energy was gone. After a few days of sleeping, he knew this was hunger. Dave was so hungry he wasn’t even hungry anymore. With two of the water bottles in one hand and one in the other, he lifted them as high as he could to the counter so he could check out. One of the bottles slipped from his grasp and crashed to the floor, bursting down the side. Water splashed everywhere as an elderly woman wearing a faded sundress with curlers in her hair walked in the door, the skin on her wrinkled arms jiggling.

“Hey, watch it,” the lady said. She lifted her sunglasses to her forehead and gave Dave a stern glance.

“Sorry,” he said. The clerk behind the counter was already walking to the back, probably to get a mop.

The lady took a step forward, her thin-soled shoes slipping on the puddle of water in her path. She gripped the side of metal rack full of fried pies, knocking several to the floor. “Get the damn wet-floor sign out,” she yelled at Dave.

“I don’t work here.” Dave really didn’t know what to do.

“Thank God.” The lady coughed loudly, not even covering her mouth.

“I said I was sorry.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that’s all anybody is good for anymore. Goddamned country is falling down left and right, and his dumbass is sorry.”

Dave picked up the busted water bottle and tossed in into the trash can next to the counter.

The old lady continued her rant. “I bet you’re sorry about a lot of things. I bet your mama was just a sorry ass drug whore who didn’t even have the decency to raise her kids right. How many kids like you did she have? Please tell me you’re an only child. God, that’d be something, if there was only one of you. That’d be something else if—”

She stopped talking, her face looking like she was about to cough again. Her mouth opened wider and wider, in obvious pain. She squinted at him, then she blinked rapidly several times. Her left hand balled into a bony fist, trembling as though she was having a seizure. Tiny red dots appeared all over her skin, tiny needle pricks, growing in size until they looked like red polka dots.

Then the dots rose from her skin. They rose from her face and hands, her wrinkled neck and through her scalp. Even her eyes bled. That’s what the dots were, Dave knew now. The dots were blood.

Dots on his pillow.

Mandy covered in dots.

The dots weren’t coming from him. They were coming to him.

Dave watched as the dots drifted through air over to him, coming to rest on his skin, which absorbed the blood like sweat evaporating under a fan. The old lady’s face crumpled, deflated from all its spite and rage.

That’s what Dave had felt listening to the old woman’s tirade: Rage.

All he did was look at her.

He grabbed the water bottles off the counter and ran, cutting through back alleys and staying off the main road. Making sure no one could get a good look at him. He didn’t know where to go, but the woods next to the Shear estate seemed like as good an idea as any. Why there, he wasn’t sure, but he knew even if they did come looking for him, it would be hard to find him. It would give him a chance to see what he could do, what resources he could pull together. The thought of getting really far away, like to Mexico, scared Dave. He didn’t know anyone there, didn’t know if they would make an agreement with the Mexican police. He’d heard stories about the jails in Mexico. They were bad enough in the States, but a Mexican jail was the last place in the world he wanted to end up.

No, he’d be safer in the woods.

The woods by the estate. That’s where he needed to go.

After the sun set, Dave felt very tired. There was an old motel about a half mile up the road. Cheap rooms with sheets like sandpaper and cockroaches the size of small farm animals, but it would allow him to rest, give him some space to clear his head.

He remembered paying the clerk, doing his best to not make eye contact because of what happened with the old woman. He gave the motel clerk cash, and the man gave him less cash back and a key.

It all felt so useless now.

He looked at the cash from his wallet, unable to make out the denominations. Laying one of the bills out on his thigh, he looked at it for a long time, staring at the face on the bill, unable to recall exactly who this person was.

The bill fell to the floor. He let the others fall from his hand.

There was a photograph on the bed, a man and woman outside. He focused on the photo for a long time, his lips mouthing a word over and over again, not making a sound. Going through the motions, but it wasn’t good enough.

Scratching his neck, he decided to take a shower, get the stink off his skin.

The soap and hot water burned the bite on his neck. Blood rolled down his shoulder and chest, turning the water at the bottom on the tub a bubbly creamy rust.

While drying off, a flap of his skin caught in the threads of the towel. Pulling it, it ripped from his neck, down his collarbone, and over his left breast. It didn’t hurt, no pain at all. The part under the skin was different, not flesh. Or maybe a different kind of flesh. It felt tougher, stronger. Peering into the fogged-over mirror, the bite mark on his neck squirmed and rolled, finally erupting through the flesh.

An appendage.

Long and sinuous, it moved on its own.

A similar wound was growing on the other side of his neck.

From there, another leg would come.

All part of the plan.

Nothing to worry about.

Later, sitting naked on the bed, he looked at the rectangles of paper on the carpet, thinking how meaningless they had become. Not knowing what had robbed them of their power, the paper no longer felt like a god anymore.

He didn’t need a god, anyway.

The pants and the shirt felt funny, but not as weird as the boots. A finger fell off his hand and landed below near the rectangles.

Outside.

The woods.

The ground.

Yes. That was where he needed to be.

They were looking for him, whoever they were. There was a time when he was the they, but now they were someone else. Someone he couldn’t trust.

They were looking for…

He looked at the television, the image of the man on the screen. Someone he thought he knew or was supposed to know. A voice said they were looking for him. The TV remote in his hand meant nothing to him, the buttons with their symbols and words, so he pulled the cord out of the wall, turning the screen to black.

The man smiled, part of his cheek cracking away from his face. Two teeth spilled from the crack in what he called his face onto his shirt. He pushed them away and went to the door.

The ground.

He should go underground.

It was dark but he could see outside. As bright as the time when the sun was out. He could see where they could not. As long as he stayed in the area they could not see, he could walk to his home.

Home in the woods.

Home underground.

The man walked through the ditches, in the fields, getting closer and closer to home. He was driven there, an unseen compass inside of him showing him the way. Another piece of the man fell away as he walked, and another, and still another. He pulled off his shirt and cast it aside, then his boots and jeans. His shadow cast unnatural shapes in the moonlight. Every step brought him deeper into his becoming.

When the man reached the clearing, he wasn’t a man any longer. The odor of scorched mud and grass alerted the receptors that told him he needed the GROUND to rest. There were others becoming as well, long resting in the GROUND, and still others arriving soon.

The time wasn’t right, but it was close.

Time to REST.

Legs and arms touching the ground, burrowing into the dirt, finding a path through the roots and rocks, so deep they won’t care to look, deep enough to REST. The grass and dirt wet, so cold to slip into.

Soon the grass grew back, covering the scorched ground. Eventually, Fern Shear returned to the estate, trailing a small crew with her. She never noticed anything wrong with the forest, but none of the crew liked staying near the woods for very long.

Especially at night, when they heard a strange chittering from the darkness.

Biographies

Meghan Arcuri is a Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author. Her work can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 (Borderlands Press), Madhouse (Dark Regions Press), Chiral Mad, and Chiral Mad 3 (Written Backwards). She is currently the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association. Prior to writing, she taught high school math, having earned her B.A. from Colgate University—with a double major in mathematics and English—and her masters from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. Please visit her at meghanarcuri.com, facebook.com/meg.arcuri, or on Twitter (@MeghanArcuri).

Rob E. Boley likes to make blank pages darker. He lives with his wife and his daughter in Dayton, Ohio. By day, he manages and analyzes big data. Yet each morning before sunrise, he rises to strike terror into the hearts of the unfortunate characters dwelling in his novels, stories, and poems. His fiction has been seen lurking in places such as A cappella Zoo, Pseudopod, Clackamas Literary Review, and Best New Werewolf Tales. His poetry has been known to prowl in publications such as Eye to the Telescope, California Quarterly, Horror Writers’ Association Poetry Showcase, and Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghosts and Ghouls. He co-founded Howling Unicorn Press with his wife, author Megan E. Hart, to conjure tales that thrill, chill, and fulfill. You can learn more about this weird figure of the dark by visiting his website at www.robboley.com.

At a young age, Shelly Campbell wanted to be an air show pilot or a pirate, possibly a dragon and definitely a writer and artist. She’s piloted a Cessna 172 through spins and stalls, and sailed up the east coast on a tall ship barque—mostly without projectile vomiting. In the end, Shelly found writing fantasy and drawing dragons to be so much easier on the stomach. She’s published a grimdark fantasy Under The Lesser Moon with Mythos & Ink Publishing and a coming-of-age horror Gulf with Silver Shamrock Publishing.

Simon Clark is the author of many novels and short stories, including Blood Crazy, Vampyrrhic, Darkness Demands, Stranger, Secrets of the Dead, Bastion and the award-winning The Night of the Triffids: his adaptation of the novel has been broadcast as a five-part drama series by BBC radio. Simon has penned many Sherlock Holmes stories over the last three decades and has edited two anthologies featuring the great detective, The Mammoth Book of Sherlock Holmes Abroad and Sherlock Holmes’ School for Detection, both for Robinson Books.

Tim Curran is the author of Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, Dead Sea Chronicles, Clownflesh, and Biohazard. His short stories have been collected in Bone Marrow Stew and Zombie Pulp. His novellas include The Underdwelling, The Corpse King, Puppet Graveyard, Worm, and Blackout. His fiction has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. Find him on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/tim.curran.77.

Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her latest work includes the folk horror collection As the Wheel Turns – More Tales from the Weald and she is due to be published in the Brigids Gate Press Were Tales anthology coming this autumn, as well as Scott J. Moses’, What One Wouldn’t Do. Her longer fiction includes the novel, The Five Turns of the Wheel, and the novella, Bottled. She is also a poet with work featured in the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume VI and VII and also online at VisualVerse. She is an active member of the HWA and can be found at https://stephanieellis.org and on twitter at @el_stevie.

Owl Goingback has been writing professionally for over thirty years, and is the author of numerous novels, children’s book, screenplays, magazine articles, short stories, and comics. He is an HWA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, a two-time Bram Stoker Award Winner (for novel and first novel), and a Nebula Award Nominee. His books include Crota, Darker Than Night, Evil Whispers, Breed, Shaman Moon, Coyote Rage, Tribal Screams, Eagle Feathers, and The Gift. In addition to writing under his own name, Owl has ghostwritten several books for Hollywood celebrities. He has also lectured across the country on the customs and folklore of the American Indians, served in the military, owned a restaurant/lounge, and worked as a cemetery caretaker.

Kay Hanifen was born on a Friday the 13th and once spent three months living in a haunted 14th-century castle. So, obviously, she had to get into horror writing. She’s a certified monster nerd and a former contributor to Screen Rant. Her short stories have appeared in the Strangely Funny VII and Crunchy with Ketchup anthologies. When she isn’t reading, writing, and taking in pop culture with the voraciousness of a vampire at a twenty-four-hour blood bank, you can find her on Twitter @TheUnicornComi1.

Megan E. Hart writes books. Some of them use bad words, but most of the other words are okay. Some of them hit bestseller lists and win awards and some don’t, but that’s the way it goes. She can't live without music, the internet, or the ocean, and she writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance. Find out more about her at meganhart.com, or if you really want to get crazy, you can follow her on Instagram.com/readinbed, Facebook.com/readinbed, and Twitter.com/megan_hart.

With a love of scary stories and folklore, Amanda Headlee spent her entire life crafting works of dark fiction. She has a fascination with the emotion of fear and believes it is the first emotion humans feel at the moment they are born. Most of her work focuses on dark fiction associated with folklore and cosmic horror. The fear of humanity’s insignificance in the vastness of the Universe intrigues her. By day, Amanda is a program manager; by night she is a wandering wonderer. When she isn’t writing or working, she can be found logging long miles on one of her many bicycles or hiking the Appalachian Mountains. You can find Amanda on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and at www.amandaheadlee.com.

Jeremy Hepler is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Cricket Hunters, The Boulevard Monster, and numerous short stories and nonfiction articles. He lives in central Texas with his wife and son and is currently working on his next novel. For more information, you can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Goodreads.

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, professor, editor, and book reviewer living in Austin, TX. He is the author of Coyote Songs and Zero Saints and the editor of Both Sides and Halldark Holidays. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker Award twice, the Locus Award, and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His nonfiction and literary criticism have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, NPR, Electric Literature, Locus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He is a columnist for LitReactor and the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine. He teaches creative writing at SNHU’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

Tyler Jones is the author of Criterium, The Dark Side of the Room, Almost Ruth, and Burn the Plans (story collection coming from Cemetery Gates Media in 2022). His work has appeared in the anthologies Burnt Tongues (edited by Chuck Palahniuk), One Thing Was Certain, 101 Proof Horror, Campfire Macabre, Paranormal Contact, and in Dark Moon Digest, Coffin Bell, Aphotic Realm, Cemetery Dance, LitReactor, and The NoSleep Podcast. His stories have been optioned for film. He lives in Portland, Oregon. www.tylerjones.net

Vivian Kasley hails from the land of the strange and unusual, Florida! She’s a writer of short stories and poetry which have appeared in various science fiction anthologies, horror anthologies, horror magazines, and webzines. Some of her street cred includes Blood Bound Books, Dark Moon Digest, Silver Shamrock, Ghost Orchid Press, Hellbound Books, and most recently The Denver Horror Collective. She’s got more upcoming, including a tale in Vastarien, and poetry in Black Spot Books inaugural women in horror poetry showcase: Under Her Skin. When not writing or subbing at the local middle school, she spends her time reading in bubble baths, snuggling her rescue cats and dogs, going on foodie dates with her other half, and searching for seashells and other treasures along the beach. You can find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bizarrebabewhowrites and Twitter at @VKasley

Born and bred in Tennessee, Ronald Kelly has been an author of Southern-fried horror fiction for 35 years, with fifteen novels, twelve short story collections, and a Grammy-nominated audio collection to his credit. Influenced by such writers as Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Joe R. Lansdale, and Manly Wade Wellman, Kelly sets his tales of rural darkness in the hills and hollows of his native state and other locales of the American South. His published works include Fear, Undertaker’s Moon, Blood Kin, Hell Hollow, Hindsight, The Buzzard Zone, After the Burn, Midnight Grinding, Mister Glow-Bones, The Halloween Store, Season’s Creepings, Irish Gothic, and The Web of La Sanguinaire & Other Arachnid Horrors. His Silver Shamrock collection of extreme horror tales, The Essential Sick Stuff, won the 2021 Splatterpunk Award for Best Collection. Kelly lives in a backwoods hollow in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife and young’uns.

Samantha Kolesnik is an author and film director living in central Pennsylvania. She is the owner of Off Limits Press, a small press specializing in horror fiction. Her debut, True Crime, is currently available from Grindhouse Press.

Brennan LaFaro is a horror writer living in south eastern Massachusetts with his wife, two sons, and his hounds. An avid lifelong reader, Brennan also co-hosts the Dead Headspace and Unburying the Dead podcasts. His debut novella, Slattery Falls is available now through Silver Shamrock Publishing. You can read his short fiction in anthologies such as Shiver, ProleSCARYet, and Blackberry Blood. Find him on Twitter at @brennanlafaro or at www.brennanlafaro.com.

Red Lagoe grew up in rural central New York on 1980s horror movies and has always had a fascination with the macabre. When she’s not spewing her horror-ridden mind onto the page, she enjoys spending time under dark skies with her telescope. Find more of Red's work at www.redlagoe.com.

Chad Lutzke has written for Famous Monsters of Filmland, Rue Morgue, Cemetery Dance, and Scream magazine. His short fiction can be found in several dozen magazines and anthologies, and some of his books include: Of Foster Homes & Flies, Stirring the Sheets, The Pale White, Skullface Boy, The Same Deep Water As You, and The Neon Owl. Lutzke's work has been praised by authors Jack Ketchum, Richard Chizmar, Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen Graham Jones, Tim Waggoner and his own mother. He can be found lurking the internet at www.chadlutzke.com

John Lynch is a writer and Marine Corps Veteran. A member of the HWA, he currently resides in Cranston, Rhode Island. You can reach him on his website, JohnLynchBooks.com and on twitter @johnlynchbooks

Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s an author, screenwriter, husband, father, podcast host, blogger, coffee connoisseur, beer enthusiast, and explorer of worlds. He writes horror, mysteries, science fiction, and thrillers, although he prefers to blur genres and let the stories fall where they may. His novella, The Switch House, won the Indie Horror Book Award in 2018 for Best Novel/Novella. His screenplay adaptation for The Switch House has won two finalist awards Semifinalist, ScreenCraft Horror Competition 2020 & Semifinalist, Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards). His work has been reviewed in places such as Cemetery Dance Magazine and SCREAM magazine. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies by Silver Shamrock Publishing, Crystal Lake Publishing, and Bloodshot Books.

Lucas Milliron has been through some shit. Haven’t we all? The difference isn’t really the baggage, but how we carry it with us. He was born and raised a native to Florida, the oldest of three siblings to a loving mother and father. Lucas still resides in in South Florida with his wife.

Brian Moreland writes a blend of mystery, action-adventure, dark suspense and horror. He has written several books, including The Devil’s Woods, The Witching House, The Seekers, Darkness Rising, Tomb of Gods and Savage Island. His short stories have appeared in several horror anthologies. An adventure seeker and world traveler, Brian has visited over twenty countries. He enjoys hiking, caving, and exploring new places. He currently lives in North Texas, where he is writing scary books and short stories. Website: http://www.brianmoreland.com/ Follow on Twitter: @BrianMoreland.

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author-editor from Aotearoa-New Zealand (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows), and a five-time Bram Stoker Award®-nominee. Her work includes military thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and debut collection Grotesque: Monster Stories. Her anthology projects include Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, co-edited with Geneve Flynn, and the AHWA’s Midnight Echo #15. She is co-founder of Young NZ Writers and of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers, HWA Mentor of the Year for 2019, NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow for 2021. Read more at leemurray.info.

James Newman’s published works include the novels Midnight Rain, The Wicked, Animosity, and Ugly As Sin, the collections People Are Strange and The Long N’ Short Of It, and the novellas Odd Man Out and Ride Or Die. He has also co-authored several fan-favorite collaborations, including Dog Days O’ Summer (with Mark Allan Gunnells), In The Scrape, and The Special (both with Mark Steensland). The Special was recently adapted as a major motion picture by direction B. Harrison Smith (Death House), and can be viewed on most major streaming platforms. James lives in North Carolina with his wife and their two sons. When he isn’t writing, he loves listening to rock n’ roll and watching horror flicks or UNC basketball. Sometimes all at once, because life is short.

Jason Parent is an author of horror, thrillers, mysteries, science fiction and dark humor, though his many novels, novellas, and short stories tend to blur the boundaries between genres. From his EPIC and eFestival Independent Book Award finalist first novel, What Hides Within, to his widely applauded police procedural/supernatural thriller, Seeing Evil, to his fast and furious sci-fi horror, The Apocalypse Strain, Jason’s work has won him praise from both critics and fans of diverse genres alike. He currently lives in Rhode Island, surrounded by chewed furniture thanks to his corgi and mini Aussie pups.

Bob Pastorella is the co-host of the This Is Horror podcast and the author of Mojo Rising and They're Watching (with Michael David Wilson). His short fiction has appeared in Borderlands 6, Lost Films, Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, In Search of a City: Los Angeles in 1000 Words, and TheBooked. Anthology, as well as numerous publications online and print. Bob resides in Southeast Texas and is currently working on a weird crime vampire novel.

Having traded her police badge for a pen, Janine Pipe is a Splatterpunk Award nominated writer living in the UK. As well as writing, she is an avid reviewer and contributor to Scream Magazine, Cemetery Dance, and Horror DNA. She is also an editor for the women led indie publisher Kandisha Press. You can find her short stories in various anthologies including Kandisha Press Women of Horror Vol. 2 and 3, 25 Gates of Hell, Campfire Macabre with Cemetery Gates Media, and Diabolica Britannica. She is currently working on a top secret collab, her next collection, and unlocking bucket-list achievements along the way. When she isn’t trying her hand at splattery stuff, Janine also has a booktube channel and Patreon. With the few hours left in her day, she loves spending time with her husband and daughter, dreaming of Walt Disney World and drinking far too much coffee. You can find her on Twitter here @janinepipe28 where she spends way too much time procrastinating about writing when she should be writing...

Jennifer Soucy is just a regular New England girl, born and raised in Connecticut. A wanderer by nature, she moved to the Atlanta area with her family when she was nineteen and enjoys being called a “Damn Yankee.” She also spent nearly two years in Las Vegas, her home away from home. Back in Georgia now, she started writing again to fulfill her childhood dreams. This writer, assistant editor, and service induastry veteran is a proud nerd who enjoys anything involving horror and dark fantasy. She hopes to continue writing stories that occasionally make people sleep with the light on. If you'd like to learn more about her other books, visit https://www.jenniferlsoucy.com/

Kristopher Triana is the Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Gone to See the River Man, The Thirteenth Koyote, Full Brutal, and many other terrifying books. His work has been published in multiple languages and has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, drawing praise from Rue Morgue magazine, Cemetery Dance, Scream magazine, and many more. He lives in New England.

Antonia Rachel Ward is an author of Gothic fiction and horror, based in Cambridgeshire, UK. Her short stories and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in anthologies by Blackspot Books, Black Hare Press, and Orchid’s Lantern, among others. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Ghost Orchid Press, and is currently working on an historical Gothic novel. You can find her on Twitter @antoniarachelw1, Instagram @antoniarachelward, or at antoniarachelward.com.

Since 1969 Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has published nearly 100 books and more than 110 pieces of short fiction. Her most famous creation is the 4,000-year-old vampire Count Saint-Germain, whose adventures Yarbro have chronicled in a bestselling series of historical horror novels. She has also composed music for the orchestra and theater. In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored. She has received two Lifetime Achievement Awards — from the Horror Writers Association in 2009, and from the World Fantasy Association in 2014. Yarbro lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with the Gang of Two (her cats Butterscotch and Crumpet). When not busy reading or writing, she enjoys the symphony and opera. For more, see www.chelseaquinnyarbro.net.

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- Attack of the Killer Tumbleweed!
- Abduction Annie
- Roadkill
- Embryo
- Scan for Life
- Unravelling
- Snow Blind
- Death and Decay
- The Fear of Fallen Leaves
- The Bulge
- Phantom Limb
- Incident on Saddle Road
- Skin-Wrapped Gift
- We Still Have Time
- I Will Meet You There
- A Monstrous Hunger
- To Sing with the Choir Invisible
- Too Many to Count
- A Cat Named Sue
- The Bluehaul
- The Little Voice
- Count Backward From Ten
- Midnight Dreary
- Skin Tags
- Virescent Sky
- Sometimes All of Our Thoughts Are Misgiven
- Whatever You Want Most
- Who Built the Moon?
- Stasis
- Fourteen Gallons
- Broken Star
- Chittering
- Biographies