Thing Eleven: AI based Science Fiction...

Ghost Horses.

A Micro-Short Story by: Sean McGovern

For Karen – happy late birthday.

This next tune is Jeru, by Miles Davis.  I piped that through to Vern.  His programming turned it into something else, and I eased through the dance floor.  The grain of the wood was warping, nature having taken its course with it when most of the roof fell in behind the bar.  I still love the feeling, though.  The tactile sense of the chipping lacquer and the waves of the planks.  I cannot help but love it.  This is home.

Vern shimmered into life on the dais – classic Vern, before his later days when the cigars, beers, and diet based mostly on potato chips took their toll.  Vern was at the peak of his cool when this hardlight scan was taken.  That was before my time, obviously.  Had it been later, when Vern was mostly sober and his decline was less damn near everything and more focused on expanding horizontally, then my phrase “The next tune is Jeru by Miles Davis,” would have come out as commanded.  In its place, Vern held one blue light hand to the earphones that are a part of his head. .  The other hand rose into the air, and forms a gun with first and middle finger extended, and pistons forward and back, as Vern-Classic called out, “Get ready to move, girls!”

The word comes out ‘gurls’.  Sometimes, I am pleased that no one really comes here.  Language may be a living thing, but even here, in my home, I can feel it dying.  It may yet be like a phoenix, and rise from the ashes, but it is more like a construct, built using the materials and general pattern pilfered from a previous site.  The constructs cannot be the same, no matter how perfect the replication – by its very nature, it must be different.  Example – the version of Vern now enticing g(i/u)rls to move, is a perfect replication of how he looked on an unseasonably warm May evening not too long (by my reckoning) before the roof became one with the floor.  Except for the fact that his clothing is a part of him.  His headphones are a part of him.  There is no separation between the uniform he had created for himself, and him.

This ignores, of course, the fact that he is also blue.  I do not believe people were actually, physically blue.  That was only a turn of phrase, expressing sadness.  We have some of the songs those sensations inspired, too.  From the audio files I studies before joining the building, I understand that Vern may have been blue under the display of hedonism, and wanton of sales pitches for the g(i/u)rls “shake (their/dem) asses”.  That may have contributed to his propensity for snorting narcotics – a sadness hidden under the display.  My files indicate that he chose the color.  I do not think that this was a subconscious attempt to communicate his emotions to his employers – but rather a contrast to the other beams of light that expanded and contacted around the dais.  When I see him now, he is but a figure imprisoned in a luminous organ – pulsating, and vital, and slowing down.  It is hard to notice, but it is there.

Vern’s location is dying.

I wonder if there is enough I in his VI for him to understand what is happening.  I do.  I suppose it is like the numbness some diseases cause as their rot takes hold, before the pain begins in earnest.  Vern is slowing down.  This means that I am slowing down.  Not at the same pace, of course, but close.  When he is gone, others will go.  And more and more.  Until there are very few sparks left of me.  A part of me is already mourning his passing. It wishes to summon the dancers, on their pedestals and stands, gyrating at curious angles from tables that are no longer upright.  I avoided this for the same reason I always did.

She is scared by the other, etheric dancer.

She does not come every day, or every night.  There is a pattern to her appearances, mimicking the patterned patter of her feet on the warping boards of my floor.  One-two-three.  And three is the downbeat.  And on the third day or night, she appears.  And this was one of those nights.  So I course through the dance floor, through the walls and door ways of my halls.  The cleaning VIs make little improvements where they can – she only sticks to the dance floor, but the hallways and rooms will be ready, should she ever choose to glance on them, walk through them.

The chronometer read nineteen twenty-two when I saw her, a figure swathed in rags from head to foot, covering all.  This was wise.  The wire storms could strip the unprotected to the bones and beyond – and though they had their rhythm, too, it would be hard for a human to detect it.  They would seem random.  Chaotic.  As unpredictable as the slivers that slash through it like rain.  There is a pattern, though.  0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34. 2.3.5.7.11.13.17.19.23.29.31.37.41.43.47.53.59.  Distance between drops/shards/slivers/stone/bones.  One-two-three.  One.Nine.Two.Two.  Five.  She will stay for five hours, sometimes dancing, sometimes just sitting, watching Vern as he adjusts records and leavers and buttons that have decayed, broken, or have been pilfered for other uses.

She did not steal.  There was nothing to take, really, none whose uses were readily understandable.

I heard the rubble shift under her feet, felt a few loose bits rattle down across my boards and beams, as she makes her way to the dance floor.

This next track is Blue Train by John Coltrane.  Vern said, “A’ight, we’re going to slow it down a bit!”  I watched her begin to sway.  In the different spectrums I saw how her muscles move under the rags and skin, the delicate ballet under the dance.  She moved, and the rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, and vastus medialis move and shift, the oblique abdominal and serratius anterior bend and stretch, along with the gluteus minimus.  These were all hidden under the shifting rags she wore, but I saw them.  I knew them.

I recorded the images.  For the times when she would not be here.  I remember – if I can remember – the time before this.  I remember how they held each other, dance with each other.  Is this what they were doing, I wonder.  Fingers to another’s midriff, tactile memories to remember when youth faded.  The feeling of skin upon their own, bound by motion and the attempt to match its harmony.  Is this what they did?

I watched her move.  I preferred to keep the music slow.  She did not cough so badly when the music was slow, though I could see she wished to go faster.  Sometimes I complied.  Sometimes they were not jazz.  Electronic sound scapes.  Bouncing street rhythms.  Jangling guitars.  I watched the slow sweep of her toes as the rest of her foot rose off of the ground.  The rough sole absorbed the ticking splinters.

And after five hours…she was gone again.  And I was alone in my dance hall.

Thing Eight: Dystopia...

Telling Tales.

A Micro Short Story by: Sean McGovern

For Megan.  Fifth time took.

“There’s only two types of people who get coffee in a bar – the owners, and the dd’s.  Which are you?”  The man who asked the question was taller than interviewee, blond to his black hair, clean shaven to his beard.  “You sure as hell don’t look like you own this place – shit, you don’t look like you should even be in here – look at the clientele!”

“You’re trying very hard to be Doctor Who,” the interviewee said, “you know that?  Of course you do – you’ve always been a smart one, Shithead.”

“Don’t call me that,” Shithead roared.

“Sorry, sorry, Xander, sorry,” in Interviewee said.  “It’s a fitting nickname, though – I mean, it really fits.  You, I mean.”

“Xander?”  The quitrent asked, and then he smiled.  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

“No, you ass – Shithead.”

“Oi!”

“And stop it with the thrice damned Doctor Who shtick,” the interviewee said, “it’s so fucking annoying when people try to become the people on TV!  For fuck’s sake, Shithead, you’re you!  You’ve gone on and on about how fucking horrible the human race is, how much you hate the world – and you’re trying to act like a fifty year old TV show about how people are awesome!”  The Interviewee put his coffee cup on the saucer.  “How long have you been banging on and on about peasants?  Eh?  About all of”

“How long are you going to settle for being a sidekick?”

The interviewee paused mid-slander, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“I mean, face it, Myersk – you’re second string.  Now that you’re toothless and…whatever, discovered religion or something – you’re superfluous.  You know what we’ve seen in our investigations?  They miss the old you.  The old Myersk, the one who burned part of the city to the ground because…what?  Why did you do that?”

“There was a hive of your lot there,” Myersk whispered.

“Along with a bunch of civilians.”

“Yes,” Myersk whispered – but his eyes didn’t waver.

“And you made life better for a lot of people with that,” Shithead said, “the clean-up crew, the builders, the families that could move into the city – a newer, sleeker part of the city, mind you, none of those old rough edges.  And what happened that day?  What made you agree to it?”

Myersk said nothing.  He sipped his coffee.

“That…uh, that wasn’t rhetorical – we never could place why mister ‘I like bashing things really, really hard’ suddenly went to demo school.”

Myersk’s eyes glazed slightly, his mouth bowing towards a smirk.  Shithead turned, and followed his line of sight to the TV.  It was a large flat-screen number with picture in picture.  Both images were of the commercial sector, where two groups were assembled, one in street close, the other in riot gear.  “You and I both love this,” Shithead said, turning back to Myersk.  “I’m just honest about it.  You’ve let Jekyll win out.”

“No,” Myersk whispered.  “I’m just following the natural cycle.  Sit.”  When Shithead did, Myersk raised his hand, summoning the waiter.  Shithead ordered a top shelf beer.  Myersk nodded to the waited and said “please” when he raised his cup.  “I could have been one of you, it’s true – and you could have been one of us.  You’re smiling at that because you know we’ll lose.  Look at those kids.  Post hippy idiots who think love will win out, not knowing that their own bestial nature will win out if, that is, they’re smart.  And some of them, Shithead, are very smart.  They’re honest, both in their naiveté, and in their fear that they are exactly what they’re fighting against.  Not many, mind you – I’m not so blind.  But enough.  I’m smiling that they’re still there, still trying to prove that they can be more than they are.”

“Pretty speech,” Shithead said, taking his beer from the waiter.

“Thank you,” Myersk said to the waiter, “can I, sorry to do this to you, no rush, but can I get a double of the honey whiskey?  Thanks – don’t rush it, just, when you get the chance.”  He turned back to Shithead.  I really think that, deep down inside, you and the majority of your side are suffering from worse self-loathing than me.  I mean, so many of your supporters are anti-science, anti-government that isn’t them, and, yet, there they are, happily protected from me by cameras in every store and two on every corner.  It’s the old ‘you shouldn’t be scared of the law pulling you in if you have nothing to hide – but everyone has something to hide.  You, me, everyone here.  But you lot say we’re two faced, and no better than you – I say we’re all multi-facetted, just gems catching the light.”

“You’re writing off a lot of people who believe in the cause,” Shithead said.  “A lot of them believe in the better world we’re making.”

“And you’re neglecting something in my words.  ‘More than what they are’.  That can be anything.  Even monsters.”

“So why be on their side?  Why not ours?”

“Because…that.”  He pointed at the screen.  One of the street clothes was on the ground, a scrum of riot gear piling over him.  “I went to get a tea this morning.  Some jackass in a sports car plowed through the first shift hotdog stand, killed five people, and your news networks cut to…some whore celeb with more dong than brains getting arrested for killing his prostitute.  Again.  And the coverage was sympathetic.”

Shithead nodded.  “We also aren’t covering the eastern European genocide – any of them.”

“Also true.  Or those in Africa.  Or the slaughter going on in South America.  Or the continuing meth problem in the mid-west.  But who gives a shit?  Here’s a celeb in his jockey’s and look at that bulge.”

“That’s an old complaint,” shit head said.

“When I was seven, a black kid got shot and killed next to me at summer camp.  They never found the killer despite forty-five eye witnesses.  I was washing his brains out of my hair, and no one lifted a finger to help his family because, to you, it didn’t matter.  A small death in the suburbs.  The local news covered the fact that our new president played saxophone.”  Myersk sipped his coffee.  “How many men do you have outside for me?”

“Forty,” Shithead said.  “Going to come quietly?”

“Why not?  I’m getting a vacation from this hell.”  Myersk stood, taking out his wallet.  He left far too much on the table, and turned to walk through the door.  “And Shithead,” he said.  He looked over his shoulder.  “I’m just following the natural order.  The moon waxes and wanes.  Time goes by.  Table turn.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Whatever and ever, amen.  So what happens when Jekyll’s time is done?  Where will Hyde be?”  He smiled, and there was a shift in his expression, the dour cast giving way to something that seemed humored by the whole world, almost childlike.  “See you in the funny pages.”

Myersk broke into a run, smashing through the door, grinning wide into the flashing lights and raised guns.  “What,” he laughed, “no cameras?”  He began loosening his belt.

Thing Ten: Ghost Story...

The Ghost of a Little Girl.

A Micro Short Story.

For: Writer’s Block.  Fuck. You.

When my parents passed, I fell into a depression.  I don’t remember much of the build up to the funeral, or the funeral itself for that matter.  I remember sitting in my room a week later, when February had the town in its icy grip, wondering what to do.  I was there, in their old house, surrounded by the fragments of my former life that now had two gaping holes in it.  I got caught by those fragments, hanging here and there on the moments, but the ones that kept getting me were those of my mother saying this part of town or that bit of the house was haunted.  Perhaps that’s natural – they were gone and I wanted them back.  I wanted them to visit and stay a while.

I thought about calling my friends.  Denise was the best choice for these thoughts, but I knew that  she was behind a deadline.  Davy would have gotten nervous at the mention of anything that smacked of the otherworldly, and my brother…well, his wife had told me that he was ready to explode like a well shaken soda.  I texted the three of them – got responses from the two D’s, and decided to drop it.  Denise was locked in her bedroom writing, and Davy was out with his fiancé.  I knew they wouldn’t mind – no matter how weird I got, I knew they’d go with it and see to it that I was ok.  But…I’ve never been someone to ask for help.  Ever.  The last time I did I ended up falling asleep on my driveway waiting for the cops who never showed.  Part of it was that I didn’t want to be a burden, while another part of it was the fear of metaphorically waking up covered in dew and dried blood.

I took up my coat, boot, and pack of cigarettes, and I went for a walk.

I love winter.  I’ve always had a penchant for the bleakly beautiful, and fall and winter’s melancholy has always been peaceful times for me.  Well, that and the fact that I liked walking and felt awkward around people.  That I could own the streets and walk unmolested save for the other hermits who had rolled away their stones and would nod in a kind of knowing acknowledgement to me.  We were together in our own bubbles.

That walk, though, I was hoping not to meet anyone.  I snagged my headphones on the way out the door and clicked the player over to Hildur Gudnadottir – and saw that I hadn’t listened to music since my parents died.  I had been listening to Manowar when I got the news.  That was kind of jarring – I had kind of hoped for something more prophetic than that.  I let the notes of the cello flood over me, and I light my cigarette before heading out.  I walked down the backstreet, past the rows of houses I had seen almost every day for twenty-nine years.  Under the sound of strings, in my mind, I heard the low murmur of my parents’ voices.  I wanted to turn off the music and listen.  When I did, silence filled in around me.

And that was when I saw her.  The girl was in the type of dress that would have been better suited to late spring or early summer – more blue skies and sunlight through leaves than the greyness of an overcast afternoon February.  All of the colors seemed drawn to her in that dress, and the world around her seemed to be covered in a fine coat of dust and ash.  I looked down, and even my long green coat seemed drab now, reflecting the weak winter light receding without its accustomed pomp to the west.  All of these thoughts, though, I had later.  The only thing I could think when my eyes returned to her was: How in the green hills of Hell was she not freezing to death?  If it had snowed, the clouds would have been like homicidal ice cube makers than fluffy school stoppers.  And she was out in a sundress.

I shrugged off my normal avoidance of people and directed myself to her.  The too-blue dress looked homemade, equal parts skill and love had gone into the stitches, the little white color that reminded me of old movies and tea cozies, and poofy sleeves that might have been added for the sole purpose of making the girl feel like a princess.  When she turned to look at me, I froze.  Just for a second.  An instant.

“Are you ok, miss?” I asked.  I always felt stuffy and formal around kids.

She looked up at me with the open honesty of a kid who’s parents had never watched the news.  “Sure, mister,” she said.  She could have been from central casting on the way to a leave it to Beaver remake.  If it hadn’t been for the tire track across her chest and face.  “Are you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You look sad,” the girl said.

I nodded.  What else could I do?  The longer I looked at her, more of her wounds I could make out, like the pattern of wallpaper someone had painted over.  It was like that…seeing the image of a shattered skull, fragments of the whole sticking out at odd angles while never distorting the skin they were in.  I saw her ribs crushed and pulverized organs without seeing them.  She was the perfect little girl, a cookie cutter of Rockwell’s America…and a nightmare of gore.  “I guess I am,” I said.

“Well…don’t be,” she said.  Just as simple as that.

“Aren’t…aren’t you cold,” I asked.

“A little,” she said.  “But you get used to it.  My brother gives me Indian burns sometimes, but after awhile I don’t feel them, even if they’re still red and angry looking.”  She kept her eyes to mine.  “Do you have a car, mister?”  I nodded again.  “You should be careful in it.”

“I am,” I said.  “Sometimes my friends laugh at how I drive, because I go the speed limit.  Well, closer to it than them.”

“Ok,” she said.  She looked back, a phantom hearing a phantom voice.  “I have to go.  Cheer up, mister!”  She waved, and turned, vanishing in the act.  I stood in the middle of the street, listening to my heartbeat and the sounds of the sleeping world before turning on my heel and walking back to the house.  I was more confused than before, but my mother had always said that unexpected advice tended to be the best.  So I stood in the too quiet house, looking at the two quiet dogs.  I whistled for them, and went to go get them treats before heading out to the movies.

In the week that followed I smiled more.  Not much.  I still felt the loss keenly, and knew I would for some time to come.  But I had convinced myself of two things – one, that I had had a hallucination brought on by who knew what, and two – that it had been right.  I cheered up, and smiled more, and life began easing into its new state of normality.  And when my buddy Jared rang and asked if I’d like to get a beer or two, I looked over at the dogs.  They now had free range of the couch, and while they had been clinging more and more to me, I thought we both needed a night away from each other.  So I said yes.

And then there we were, closing down the Inn.  I had wandered down, sat at the bar, and had only moved to go to the restroom when they were kicking us out.  I slurred my through a half-hearted protest about him driving me home – Jared was in worse shape than I was – but in the end I got into the passenger seat and he got behind the wheel and we drove off.  I think one of the bartenders watched us go.  Can’t be sure.  I didn’t go back afterwards.

It was a mile from the Inn to my house, and Jared had been there a hundred times, but he took the turn too fast and we continued to rocket down the street.

I don’t know if Jared saw her.  I remember saying, “Look out!” and getting drowned out by the squeal of breaks as the little girl in the too-blue dress turned and looked at us.  Her face was a mask of shock, horror, and a weird “oh no, not again” glint in the eyes as Jared’s car bowed her.  I watched…this sounds mad.  I watched her extend across the hood of the car.

Have you ever gone driving slowly down a dark road, and noticed how the darkness seems to slither away from your headlights, creeping across the contours of the ground?  That was what her body did, only moving towards us.  Her face slithered, too.  I can’t think of any other word to describe it – her skin twisted and followed the line of her growing jar as her teeth began to bend forward towards us.  They were like horse teeth – somehow worse than fangs would have been.  Ground flat from dull, soft/tough meals and leading the vacant nasal cavity and empty eye sockets that glared out, fury boiling from the pools of black.

She bit into Jared’s face, blood running from the perfect white cubes as the car lurched to a halt.  Her child hands held Jared back against the seat as I cannoned forward, snapped back by my safety belt and then the passenger airbag.  I fought it, trying to knock it away as Jared screamed.  I heard a chorus of bones breaking as the little hands twitched across his ribs, and then squeezed.

I spent the next day and night in the hospital.  The hangover was the least of my worries – most of my body was bruised and my relocated shoulder throbbed.  I listened to the police, and answered their questions.  Apparently the level of alcohol in my blood was good for something – I couldn’t have known that Jared was worse than me.  Of course I couldn’t have.  I was so sloshed that I had seen things.  I took a cab back home once they released me, and stood outside for a long time, looking down the road.

There had been a girl.  Both times, there had been a girl.  I knew Jared hadn’t been pulped because of a faulty airbag, a standard steering wheel column, and enough beer to drown a Shetland pony.  It had been her.  “Mister, you look sad,” I whispered.  And I stood outside, and waited to see if the world would go grey again.

Thing Nine: Birthday Story...

Reunion Plans.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern.

For: You.  Thank you for giving a damn.

Now it’s dark and I’m alone

But I won’t be afraid

In my room…in my room.

- Brian Wilson.

Here’s a memory – but be warned: memories lie.  On the day I turned twenty-six, I met Death.  No one seemed to notice, but I knew – it was Death.

I had been invited to the Halloween party at the last minute, given just enough time to salvage various elements of costumes to make a serviceable pirate before driving like a mad man to the liquor store and then to Philadelphia where I met up with my sister and her husband and their waiting cab.  From there we went to their friends’ Steve and Lucy’s flat for what I had been told would be a quietly raucous good time (how that worked I couldn’t guess at, but it was my birthday and it beat sitting in my room trying not to drink myself into oblivion in case I wanted to go to the all night diner).

I suppose I should take this moment to say that I only appear to be good around people.  I’m not.  I’m terrible with people, with parties, with anything that takes me out of my comfort zone of being by myself.  I can almost pinpoint where my neuroses come from, but not enough to have a working theory.  I’m not very good at small talk…I’m not very good at talking, really.  I tend to speak in a monolog that other people interrupt, leaving me flummoxed as to what to say next.  So after telling both Steve and Lucy that they had a nice flat, I sidled into the laundry/alcohol room, put one bottle of scotch down for the others, and took the second one, with me as I tried to be human.

It didn’t work.

Even with the fever dream, the sexual, the nightmarish, the ghastly, with the sardine can claustrophobic press of costumed bodies, I was still painfully aware of being a subpar-pirate without a hat.  Everyone thought I was trying to be Shakespeare in a pirate coat.  Was that even an option?  Apparently, and I had stumbled into it nicely.

I kept the bottle with me, and I climbed the stairs to the top floor, and then paused before pushing on to the ceiling.  I put my coat on the ground and sat, opening the bottle of scotch and toasted the sky, the few stars I could see, and the feeling of expansiveness within a metropolis.  Halloween.  My second favorite Holiday, two days removed from my birthday, when the gates were opened and the souls could move about the sunlit lands above.

“Do you mind if I join you,” said the voice.

I squeaked.

“Sorry,” the voice said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”  I turned to look at the source of the voice.  The Lady was in a hooded coat, a long, black raincoat that she had attached batwings to.  I scooted over and motioned to the other half of the makeshift blanket.  She crouched down on her knees, and took the bottle when I offered it to her.  “It’s pretty packed down there,” she said, and took a swig.  “Death,” she said.

“Guy who pirates Shakespeare’s works,” I said, and we shook hands.  “I’m not a fan of crowds.”

“The noise?”

I looked at her.  The face paint was amazing, the jawbone a perfect off-white and the dark pencil lines denoting teeth were expertly spaced.  “The lulls,” I said.  “I can fake the rest.  For a time, anyway.”  I took out my pack of cigarettes, then paused and looked at her.  “Do you mine?”

“Not if you have an extra,” she said.  I offered her the pack and she took one.  I offered her my lighter and she shook her head, cupping one hand over the end and lighting it.  I lit my own.  “It’s a disgusting habit, but it is enjoyable.  So, you think you aren’t good with people?  I saw you down there.  You seemed to fit in fine.”

“I studied drama in school,” I told her.

“So you’re an actor,” she said.

“Nah,” I said, “I just make faces.”  I laughed – it was a line that I had heard a thousand times, I think it started with Peter Lorre but had never wondered enough to look it up.  “No,” I said, “I left school before finishing.  I used to use all of that stuff, all the acting stuff, when I worked at the mall.  Now, though…no real need for it.   Tonight was a nice change of pace.”

“Good,” she said.  “Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Wha?  Oh.  Thanks,” I said.  “Nicole told you, huh?”

“No, Sean,” the Lady said.  “But it’s a strange day, and it will get stranger.  And since it’s your birthday, I think you’ll understand.”  She leaned back, resting on her palms but keeping her head up, letting the hood rest in place.  “How many people were born on this day?  Will see the madness of it, as the world winds down?”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“I’ll see you next year, Sean.  And the year after.  And the year after.  But after that…I don’t think I’ll be visiting anymore.”

I was trying to form a question better than “what” but she faded with the wind, a sand sculpture coming apart and vanishing into the skyline.  I sat there, growing colder for a long time.  I went back into the party, and stood, shivering in the hallway, in the light.

Twenty-seven saw a freak ice storm.  I saw Her again, in the mirror.

Twenty-eight was hurricane Sandy.  I went for a walk before it became too fierce, and went to the bridge in my town to see the level of the river.  She was there, on the bank, looking up.  She waved.

I turn twenty-nine tonight.  I’m sitting in my room.  I have a bottle of scotch, a pack of cigarettes, and an eye on the clock.  There’s no call for strange weather.  It looks to be a fine autumn night.  What else can I do, really?

Hi guys.  This is a really simple story, much more simple than the others.  My thanks to Ia Herbaugh, who dressed as Death (see the top picture) when I met her on my actual 26^th birthday, and to the dreams I sometimes get where something (not Ia) wears the outfit and talks to me.  As I said, memories lie, and I've progressed the story a little to give it closure.

As usual, I'm not completely pleased with  the end product - I should have given myself more time, but three false starts...ugh. Displeased. There's potential here, though, so I'm posting it anyway. Plus I said I would so...meh.

Hope you guys have a great day, and, again, thanks for reading.

All the best,

SMcG

Thing Seven: Cynical Thriller...

The Cell.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern

For Kimmi – I hope you like it.

I wasn’t really shocked that they put me in a cell.  It was bound to happen at some point, and having missed my hellion years, they had finally caught up with me at the Taco Bell for reasons they couldn’t explain.  I suppose they had hoped for something a bit more dramatic – a daring raid on my sanctuary in the dead of night, knowing that I’d be wide awake but not wanting the normal folk to see them drag me out, or making my car and I vanish into the back of a trailer on the highway or something.  Not ordering enough food for three people at the local Taco Bell, though.  I mean, who wants to hear about the time you caught your arch nemesis because their server couldn’t remember if they had said soft or hard shells?

“Aren’t you,” one of them, who kind of looked like a cross between Ben Affleck and those breeds of dogs that look like someone’s swatted them in the face with a large dictionary, asked.

“Hungry,” I finished for him.  “Yes,” I said, “yes, I am.”

And then they debated about attacking me in a flash – one of them shouting that they couldn’t draw their guns or the civilians would get wise.  I looked at the civilians, who were looking at the three of them, then back to me, then all over the Formica clad hellhole for hidden cameras or people in very large hats to hide same cameras.  It took the them five minutes before deciding to just use the handcuffs and claim I was a known arsonist, while I stood there, motioning the acne clad douche behind the counter to please hurry up.  I kept saying, “Soft shells, soft shells or I swear to the gods you’ll die a virgin,” under my breath, Pretty convinced that next would come the argument about who’s cuffs to use, but Pug Affleck was finally gaining some competence.  I had finally gotten my box of tacos when they surrounded and cuffed me.

And brought me to here.  Wherever here is.  Or was.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I woke on a plank, laying like a cat on the back of a couch – totally at ease with the fact that my arms and legs were hanging over a fairly impressive drop.  The plank was thin enough that if I had shifted in my sleep I would have fallen to my most likely death.  I opened my eyes and peered down, looking into the pitch dark.  The Them were weird, and I was pretty sure they were trying to fuck with my head, so I wouldn’t have put it past them to have put pillows at the bottom of the pit.  I kept still wondering just how in the hell they had gotten me here – like they had had tightrope walkers to deposit me there, or the rest of the floor was retractable…or the pit wasn’t actually that deep.

I sat up slowly, listening for the plank to creak or just snap.  I padded my pockets, just to have something to do – I could already tell that the Them had removed everything that I could have dropped to gauge the depth of the pit.  Padding my pockets just confirmed that they had even taken the change from Taco Bell.  I was ok with that part, really – I hated carting around change, and jingling and figuring out just how damn far the pit under you goes.  Really annoying.

I began scooting back, trusting my jeans to keep the worst of the splinters from my ass.  After a very long moment I reached the stones that signaled safety.  I rose slowly, and brushed myself off while scanning around the gloom. Darkness there, and not much else.  There was enough light to let me see that the walkway I stood on was about a foot wide, and the walls gleamed with some slick substance.  I reached out to it, but could smell the tang before my fingers made contact.  “Motor oil,” I muttered, “what the hell?”  I took the walkway around the circumference of the pit, keeping part of my gaze on the floor in case they had had the forethought to put some of the oil on the ground where I might have done them some good.

I thought of my old maxim, and looked up.  Nobody ever looks up – one simple fact that ends up being more important than you’d imagine until you correct it.  I knew what I’d see up there – whoever Them had hired to build this place was almost following the synopsis to a “t” – if they had been asleep in English class.  With their headphones on.  And had only read the title.

It was a pendulum.  Of course it was a pendulum.  I could make out the dull shine to the brass, and someone had thoughtfully pointed at least one bulb right at the damned thing so it would catch the blade and give a dramatic reveal to its sharpness.

There was a click about me, and a rhombus of light shot through the gloaming, smacking to a stop on the plank before being displaced by the shape of a human head.  “Fall yet,” asked a voice.  I looked up from the former square of light on the board to its point of origin, watching the head lean in and then begin slowly shifting to let the light hit a few different parts of the board.  “Can’t see a damn thing,” the voice said.  “Paul.  Yo, Paul!  Can we turn on the lights in here?”  Oh, no, I thought, I know that voice.  “No, not in here, in here!  The fucking chamber!  Why not?  Well, why the fuck did you not put better lights in it?  ‘Trying to be more green’? For crying out – you goddamned tree hugger, if you wanted it to be more green you could have put in green bulbs!  This is fucking amateur hour, for fuck’s sake!”

“Hey, Shithead,” I called out.

There was a pause.  Finally the head said, “Fuck.”

“Yeah, I thought it was you.  What they hell are you guys trying to pull?”

“We’re going to make you talk,” Shithead said.

“What?  By putting me on a plank?”

Another long pause.  “It’s all part of the presentation,” Shithead said.  “It’s to break you.  To make you talk.”

I heaved a sigh.  I had a lot of stupid people in my life.  Herb had the common sense of a drowning ant, Amanda had no concept of an inside voice, Nate Turla…shit, it was almost a miracle he could tie his own shoes in a basement without falling down a flight of stairs.  But Shithead, once again, took the cake.  That’s a problem with smart people – if they know they’re smart, they tend to think they’re smarter than they are.  A thought which makes me sigh again because I had gotten picked up at a fucking Taco Bell.  But I shrugged it off.  Sometimes, when your brain won’t brain, it’s at the worst possible moment.

“Talk about what,” I hollered up at him.

“You know,” he said.

“Wait, whoa, don’t go mixing Poe with Kafka, Shithead – either tell me or let me go.”  Turla had given Shithead his nickname, which had been funny, since Turla had been nice to Shithead.  Turla was nice to everyone, though, no matter what he thought of people.  He might have been inane, but he was a good spy.  Shithead, though, had been an easy target – genius intellect mixed with an ego the size of Texas that wouldn’t pop no matter what reality tried to do.

“Start the blade!” he called.  I heard s murmur behind him.  Shithead must have missed it, because his “what” wasn’t a bark of command but an actual question.  I heard him conversing with the off-screen Paul, and the head actually vanished from the window.  Hissing voices and barely controlled rage filtered down.

I leaned back against the wall, hearing the squish of the oil against my back, and muttered “fuck” a few times.  I sat on the walkway, and peered down into the darkness of the pit.  I had to glance up and smile when the words coming out of the window became audible.  “Fine!  Fine!  Turn on the lights in the other room, and when I say so, turn on the motor for that one!”  The head of the Shit one returned to the window.  “Back in a tick!” he said, and the window closed.

Shithead should have known that the darkness wouldn’t bother me.  Or the enclosure.  Or the grease.  Apparently he had forgotten everything he knew about me.  One wall came alive with light, and the stones parted, the round edifice coiling back on itself to reveal another stone wall.

I blinked slowly a few times.  “Oh, very impressive.  An oiled wall cleverly hidden behind another oiled wall?  Genius!  Shithead, you have really hit on something – you’re a Bond villain speech away from failing miserably, so start talking.”  The revealed wall began pealing back.  And there was Turla, engulfed in life, hanging upside down.  Whoever had applied the rope had apparently had a mama bear’s sense of safety, because all I could see were his feet at the top and his head at the bottom, and coils of rope in between.  “Turla,” I asked.

The window opened, and Shithead filled it.  “He can’t hear you yet.”

“He’s awake?”

“Yeah.”  He must have made out my expression.  “I’m shocked, too – I mean, all of the blood had to have gone to his head three days ago but he hasn’t passed out yet.  I think it only really hits him when he’s sleeping.”  The head turned, looking over at Turla.  “That’s the only way he could sleep through his snoring.  Ok, Paul, start it.”

Turla began shifting, moving to his forward and my right.

“This is the best you have?” I asked, watching Turla begin to stir.  He looked like he was saying “weeeeeeeeeeeeee!” but I couldn’t be sure.

“We needed a pendulum.” Shithead said.  “For your torture,” he added helpfully.  I pointed up to the large brass blade.  “Uh…yes, that.  Um…well…”

“Well what,” I prompted him.

“It it only move down like that,” he said, and looked back to Turla’s penduluming form.  “And”

“And you made it too bit,” I said.  I started laughing.

“Hey,” Shithead said.  “Hey!  Hey, look, I didn’t draw up the schematics, you bitch!  I’d have made sure it worked!”  I kept laughing.  “Hey, your friend is about to get his head bashed in!”

And I kept laughing – these were the people we were afraid of?  Supposed to be afraid of?  The conspiracy to end all conspiracies, the long whispered of Them, the They who were behind everything.

Turla was still saying “weeeeeeeee!” as he oscillated back and forth.  I heard something go “ping”, and a deadpanned “Aw, crap,” come from Turla’s cell as he plummeted into the pit under him.  This was followed by an “oof” and a “YOMT!”  Shithead and I looked on in numb silence at the cell.  After a long time, Turla stood up, still decked out in the massive ropes.  “Ouch.  Ouch.”

“Oh, Goddamnit,” Shithead said, and closed the window.

“Hi, Nate,” I said.

Turla looked at the clear wall.  I guess he couldn’t see me through the light.  “Mine was full of pillows,” he said, what was yours filled with?”

“Do you know who I am,” I asked.

“Nah, they put in some sound distortion thing in here, fucks up everyone’s voice.  Oh, your jailer’s name is Shithead, trust me on this.”  He smiled.  Turla rarely had an honest smile, but this one seemed pretty sincere.

“I know,” I said, but decided to not say who I was.  “Just have to make it two more days,” I said.

“Why,” Turla asked.

“Because that’s how the story goes,” I said.  “They’re Them – they have to follow the script.”  I looked up at the pendulum, making sure it was still there.  “As close as they can.”

Turla nodded.  “Well,” he said, “what’s the story?”

“The Pit and the Pendulum,” I said.

Turla mimicked my slow blink.  “Man…Wikipedia and Roger Corman fucked these people up,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s…it’s good to see you again.”

“Likewise,” he said, “person behind the mirror with the voice of a MacDonald’s drive through.  Good to see you, too.”

And now…here we are.  Turla has been sleeping on and off for the past day, which is good – he rarely sleeps.  When he’s awake he’s pleasant enough, and doesn’t get frustrated while trying to Houdini his way to freedom.  He said he hopes they didn’t strip him, but then, I have that same hope.  One more day before the Us arrive.  I just hope they follow the script, too – I need a few more moments of useless drama in my life.

Thing Six: Horror

This was supposed to be a story, but it ended up being more of a brief scene.  I finished it in an hour (and it shows), but I think it's enough to put up here.

Wishing Well

A Short Scene by Sean McGovern

For Rebecca.  Be careful what you wish for.

Luke Fallon had been in love.  True, that could have been said for three or four times in his life, but this time…this time it was different.  He knew the him in high school had just had a series of infatuations.  And the college him had been…well, the girls had been willing and he had usually been good enough for them to give him a second go around.  But after all of that he had met Tessa– and, well, he knew that he had been a little boy until them.  All swagger, and nothing really to back it up – but now he wanted to back it up.

And for two years, he had.  For two great years.  She had been everything he could have hoped for – sure, the nagging got to be a bit much towards the end, but that was relationships for you – and he had never hit her.  It was weird to have that as a point of pride, but there it was – he had never hit her.  Even when he had wanted to.  Even when she had said she was going back home.  Even when he knew it was to that loser, Nate, who drank in an obviously secret manner.

So he had gone down to the well.  It was a kids’ thing to do.  He knew that – but he didn’t anyway.  He laughed and shook his head when he tripped along the path to the well, cutting his palm on a rock as he tried, unsuccessfully, to break his fall.  He had pulled the penny out of his pocket, and tossed the blood smeared cent piece into the well and let it sink down, wishing that Tessa would stay with him.  And when he had walked back to his place, and saw the blinking message on his voice mail, he ignored it.  Because he was tired.

And a few months later…

“I made breakfast,” Tessa said.  Her voice was light and sweet, the chipper tones of someone who meant it when they said ‘good morning’.  She was already dressed for the day, looking like a 1950’s house wife, with a sundress under her Kiss the Cook apron and shoes with a slightly raised heel.  The half of her face that was mottled by scar tissue and burns remained still, so the voice only came from the one side of her thin mouth – one blue eye twinkled with the fresh promise of a new day, while the other started out under the charred remains of its brow, bloodshot and shriveled.

Luke winced, but not at the sight of his girlfriend.  He had gotten used to that.  It was his wrist that made his face twitch – the lump of healing bruises that he was still vaguely amazed wasn’t broken when she had gripped and squeezed last night during one of their rougher sessions in bed.  Every night he hoped she would let it pass, that he would be able to drink his ability away.  Her persistence seemed to defy the laws of chemistry and he would find himself bleary and being forced across her, and whatever she gripped would be black and blue in the morning.

He got up, knowing that she wouldn’t be refused the fruits of her labors.  He made it a point to eat everything she made, even the pack lunches for work.  She seemed to know if someone else ate them, or if they ended up in the trash can.  And then there would be hell to pay.  “It smells great,” he lied, “eggs?”  Of course it was eggs; it was always eggs, and toast and something that had once been a pig.  All of it black as tar yet never setting off the fire alarms.  That might have been the worst part of it.  Like everything else, there had been no warning.  Nothing at all about the car crash, or how Tessa would come back from it – how Nate, that bastard friend of hers from back home, would keep trying to get in contact with her, more than her family, and how she was now his.  All his.

Six months of this had been more than enough.  And this cold February morning was just another bullshit day of co-habitation bliss with a woman who should have been bound for a closed casket ceremony on the day she had moved in.  He put on his slippers against the chill of the floor, and stretched, trying not to think about the eggs or the pain in his wrist.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you last night,” she said.  She had said that every morning, right before…there it was.  The simple kiss on the cheek and, “And a good morning to you!”  She took the hand that wasn’t attached to a mass of discolored skin and bones and led him, walking backwards and trying to be as coquettish as possible with half a face that would never heal from a gasoline fire.  “I made your favorite – eggs, bacon, and wheat toast with apple butter,” she added yummy noises.

“Have you eaten,” Luke asked.  Then he bit back a scream as she almost crushed his finger without apparent effort.

“We shouldn’t have one of those days, Luke,” she said, “can’t we have a nice day?  Last week was just so great!  Can’t we have another?”  She looked up to Luke, her mismatched eyes half glistening with tears and half with hate fueled rage.  And Luke knew that she had already decided that it would be a good day – they would all be good days.  This had been what he had wanted after all – finding her waiting for him every morning, breakfast ready after a night of passionate lovemaking.

But after six months…Luke just didn’t care anymore.  “It’ll be fine,” Luke said, “after the charcoal briquette breakfast and” and he screamed almost loud enough to covered the sound of his fingers breaking.  She didn’t let go, just squeezed harder as she pulled him after her.  He realized, dumbly, that she was humming, still cheerful as the multiple bits of bone rattled in her hand.

She brought him to the kitchen and all but threw him into the chair.  She pushed in the chair, and tucked the napkin into the color of his shirt while his mouth moved weakly, trying to form another scream.  “It’s too nice a morning to fight,” she said, still in that sing-song way, as she poured a glass of orange juice.  Luke looked over to the window, where the sky was just starting to lighten.  “And you’ve got to be in the office in an hour.”

“I have to go to a hospital you bitch,” he said.

Her eyes locked to his.  “Please don’t take that tone, Luke,” she said, “I’m just trying to make sure you have your breakfast.”

“I need to call out,” he said, “and I need to call an ambulance!”

“Are you sick,” she asked.  “I can call the office for you.”

“Fine,” he whimpered, and pushed the plate away.

“You still have to eat,” she said.  “Feed a cold, starve a fever.”

“I’ll eat at the hospital,” he said, and tried to get up.  Her hands were on his shoulders, pinning him to the seat.  “No,” he said, “please just,” her hands began to squeeze.  He yelped in pain and would have sworn he heard his bones begin to creak under the strain.  “I just want to go back to bed,” he whispered.

“Eat first,” she said.  And Luke thought, for a second, she was purposefully keeping her burned side to him, the withered eye glaring out, knowing that he was the reason for her being here, like this.  But her voice didn’t change.  “You’ll need your strength.”

“I can’t move my hands.”

“I know,” she said as though a music cue was coming.  She let go of his shoulders and gripped the sides of his head.  Her grip was still intense and painful, and with a weird delicacy, lowered his face into the plate of eggs.  “But I’m here for you,” she said in her sweet, sing-song voice, “just like you wanted.”

Thing Five: Erotica (attempted)...

A Brief Conversation about Cultural Reactions to Sexuality and Gender Roles.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern

For Lexi Johnson, didn’t think I’d do it.

“This is the problem with being a woman in power,” she said, checking the straps around her supplicant’s wrists.  The male had been stripped, shaved, and bathed before being brought in, and now was asleep on the table.  His spread eagle pose revealed all to her, and she nodded.  It was…an acceptable offering to her.  “If I were to do this solely for my own pleasure, then they’d say I was loose, or wanton.  If I was doing this only for my master, then I’d be a whore – using my body in service for another, and not truly owning it.  How sad is it, little Severian, that even here, in my place of power, I still have to consider how those who brought you to me think of what is going to take place here?”  She let her long, tapered fingers run from the strap down Severian’s arm.  It was thin, not the kind the other slaves would trust to protect them from the lash of their wardens or the hands of the freemen.  Down onto his chest, savoring the bones of the ribs and the mussels that twitched and flexed at her caress.  She hummed to herself, tracing the lines of his torso down to his hip and then back to his shoulder.  Down again.  And back up, relishing the pliant strength of the body before her.

She had had men before – enough to have given her some stories that she rarely told others.  They were small stories, secret things, and banding them about in public was for…well, for those that Severian made work with on a daily basis.  No, anyone who lived within a tower, especially one as storied and respected as this, would only talk of such things within their sealed salons.  And she would only do so when she knew the servants were far, far removed.  She had always had respect for the unseen, the staff, be they employed or bound to her service.

She felt him begin to stir, trying to roll over in his sleep.  It had been a fair span of time since she had watched another sleep who wasn’t wracked by illness or screaming in mental torment.  True, he wasn’t really a lover, and would never be in the traditional sense, but she found it relaxing all the same.  She felt a slight smile slowly grow on her face as she observed the sleep of the simple man before her.  “One last pleasant wake up,” she sighed, “that all I can promise you.”  She came around the table, and stood there, pressing her abdominals against his head with only the velvet of her gown separating them.  Her hands flattened across his pectorals and she moved them in what she hope was a delicious slowness down his torso towards his groin, before she brought her fingernails to bear on the twitching skin.  With the same control, she brought her hands back up.  She felt the press of her gown against both their bodies, and the pleasant flush of heat pouring from him.

He felt vital – there was no other word for it.  The smell was a bit off-putting – she preferred a more earthy, animal smell to lead into her couplings, but the perfumes and ointments were a part of the ritual.  She had once met a traveler, a strange looking man who had claimed to come from a land on the far side of burning lands, who had claimed that a woman’s sweat was an aphrodisiac to him, and she had understood him from the reverse.  The oils and petals were fine – maybe even romantic – but for this, it was a bit too much.  She wondered what had happened to Eban, scion of Rikhart, wondered if the ritual would have been better with someone from the far side of the hell sands, or one whom she had wanted to mate with, but who had seemed completely clueless to her advances.

Severian, with his powerful essence, the heat of his life boiling up from the mostly slack mussels – this was a body she knew, the weak portions where he would cringe and smile if nipped and kissed, one leading into the other.  She knew the places to grip on his shoulders that would urge him or force him to slow down.  She spoke a word and kissed her forefinger.  She ran the tip over his lips, feeling the soft lips.  She pressed it within, past his teeth and onto his warm tongue.  She smiled, feeling the tongue wrap and writhe around her digit, taking in the spell.  She removed her finger, and her smile turned wolfish as Severian woke, gasping for air and trying to sit.  “Stay down,” she said, “waking will go easier.”

“Yes, mistress,” Severian gasped.  She watched the spell’s path through his eyes.  Severian shook his head.  “You were saying?”

“I was saying that my situation is precarious – I must enact the ritual.  It really is the only way that I can confront the Elergast, and so save the city – but the ritual’s nature will cause those I save to look down on me.”  She sigh, resting one hand on Severian’s pectorals and making a lazy spiral from its edge towards the nipple, her other hand resting on her hip, knuckles flexed.  “Why is mating the great evil?  If I killed you outright, no one would think of it, just the proper actions of a wicked queen.  That the way of drawing power out of you is pleasurable for both of us?  Suddenly the gods have nineteen pamphlets explaining why I’m bound to the burning sands!  I mean, for all of the things I’ve done,” she reached the nipple and pinched, causing Severian to gasp.  She pivoted, and leaned to repeat the process with Severian’s rippling abs, now with his bellybutton as her target.  “…through her ribs, but give someone an orgasm on an alter to the goddess of death and fucking and that’s what they want to focus on.”

“It…it is strange, mistress,” said Severian, his eyes locked on her pale, thin fingers.  “I recall there being more…oh.”  He said.  “This is the power drain ritual to She-that-lurks-in-the-shadows.”

“Yes,” she said, letting her hand go flat as she passed over Severian’s bellybutton and down his pelvis to her true target.  She let it past her hands between middle and ring fingers, and massaged around the base of his member.  She had to smile at his whimper.  “Think of it, Severian.  Not of my hand…picture if this if roles were reversed.  If it were my frame strapped down here, and your hand upon my mons?  Somehow, that wickedness,” she watched him rise, the object of her attention slowly filling up with lust, “would be more acceptable as it happens in the streets.”  She watched it rise further.  “And they say only women have flowers.”  She sighed, shaking her head.  She drew both hands across his body slowly, tracing the tensing, clenching mussels.  They met at his sternum, and she brought them to her own shoulders.  She took a breath, and lowered the shoulders of her gown.  She straightened her arms, and allowed the gown to fall from her. 

She had always been pleased with her form, having taken care of it with more exercise than those of her status often did.  She wondered blandly if she had reinforced the idea of a beautiful aristocrat or broke down the idea of a hideous witch among the lower classes with her appearance.  Perhaps it was both, or neither.  She wished she didn’t think on it, but she did.  Still, she knew she had was brigands called “curves in all the right places,” with breasts at the slightly small side of full and hips a bit wider than she would have liked.  But she believed it worked fairly well on the others – those who came to her, willing or not.  “Still, all of this is just idle chatter.”  She returned her hands to his frame.  “You know what will happen here?”

“I do, mistress,” he said, polite to the last.  He took a sharp break when cup and squeezed him.  “There are worse ways.”

“True,” she said.  “I wonder if you will think of any when the time comes.”  She slowly raised and lowered her right hand, and gripped the dagger in the other.  “Perhaps it’s best not to worry, and just enjoy the build up.”

Thing Four: Horror

The Skull.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern.

For Sarah Lynn Sutor – who makes noise in a band.

Here’s a memory, one I spent a good deal of time convincing myself that it was a lie.  That was easy, since I was rarely brave, and the thought of my ending up in such a situation was almost inconceivable.  But each town has its stories, and I guess at some point wondering gives way to “fuck it, I’m going to go see for myself”.  And that was how I found myself trudging across the soccer fields behind the elementary school, towards the woods as the world went dark.  There were two ways to get to the Rodgers’ Ranch – one taking the roads from Penndel to Hulmeville, and the other was the woods.  Showing a lack of foresight that probably should have played a larger role in my childhood, I chose the woods.

Now, up to this point, I had never actually been in these woods…well, to tell the truth, at this point in my life (sixteen) I had pretty much established an orbit that involved whatever job I had (book store by that point), school, and the basement of my home where I had made an ersatz apartment where I could find a kind of peace away from anything interesting to other people.  Once a day I took a walk around town.  That bit, the walks, that was how I had heard about Rogers’ Ranch, nestled in the hills of Hulmeville.  It was the town elder – which wasn’t an actual position, but what other phrase could you use for someone who had been old when you were forming your first memories.  The elder’s name was Miss Waits, and she seemed to know everything about the history of the town, and she told me some of them when I took breaks from mowing a few of the lawns down the main street.

“The old Rogers’ place,” she had said, and motioned to the south, “is haunted in its own way.  Not like the Almer’s down on Jefferson.  That’s a proper haunted house.  The Rodgers’, though…that’s not a ghost.”  She said that while stroking her large black dog.  The dog looked like it had just over a touch of the wild to it, and one of its front legs was missing.  It’s funny, but I can never remember which leg it was – just that it was one of the front ones.  “Places get haunted.  People, sometimes, sure, but it always seems to be places.  The side of the road where there was an accident.  Or a house.  Any building, really.”

“And the Rodgers’ place is haunted,” I said, hoping guiltily that this would speed up her story and I could make a more polite escape to my discman and the roar of the mower.

“No,” she said.  “It’s something inside that’s haunted.  Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“Only in movies,” I said.

“Do you believe in them,” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.  And I did.  Why not – I had been raised on a lot of different stories from a lot of different places and eventually everything came back to ghosts.

“What about other things,” she asked.  And that tripped me up – she could have been referring to peanut butter for all I knew.  ‘Evan Richardson, do you believe in toast, cars, and the pacific ocean?’  But I just nodded because there’s something that’s always unsettling about someone who’s most likely age is dead.  “Whatever is in that house isn’t a ghost.  But it is haunted.”

I came out of the woods, and saw the house.  It was still a distance away, but it didn’t look like the standard fare haunted house that I had come to expect from a steady intake from the horror sections of video and/or book stores.  The size was right – three floors up, looking down on a few acres of private land that was slightly over grown – but in the pale light of dusk I could tell that nothing was really out of place.  The crickets and cicadas were signing, and a few birds chipped as they settled in for the night.  I could hear a dog off in the distance, and some kids catching fireflies to the south, down the hill into Hulmeville.  That all was what I heard around the Rodgers’ Ranch – a building with no shattered windows or fence posts, no shingles out of place, and a lawn that looked like it had missed it’s suburbia mandated manicure by maybe two weeks at most.

But there were no lights on.  That was true.  Lights are a talisman in the burbs, the externals and floods go on in the gloom, and the living rooms on timers.  Passing by them, the homes are warm and welcoming and happy.  And watchful.  There was always that – the quiet glow warning away thieves and other, equally unsavory types, by letting them know that those within were awake, and that they should pass by.  Houses running dark, especially at night, looked run down, abandoned and forgotten by the family that should have filled them with laughter and quiet moments of togetherness.  Dark houses felt wrong in the suburbs.

The Rogers’ Ranch felt wrong.  It didn’t matter how well maintained it was, or how picturesque the late summer night was – the house just felt fucking wrong.  And as I said, I was rarely brave.  I was a public coward, always assuming that so long as there was another person, they’d be dumb enough to stick their neck out and deal with whatever was happening.  But alone, when no one was watching…no one but me…then I had to be different.  I could deal with others thinking I was a scared little shit, a runty scarecrow of a boy, but that was because I knew – knew – that every now and then I could do something amazing.

I pulled a grey bandanna out of my back pocket and fixed it, bandit like, to my face.  I pulled my black, unmarked baseball cap lower on my head, and check my pockets for my flashlight and multi-tool.  And then I started walking towards my target, thinking about comic book heroes and old noir pulps and not thinking about horror movies and ghost stories and how the traffic on Main Street died away fast as I got closer to the Rodgers’ Ranch.  Pennsylvania is still a woodland place, and sound breaks are still easy to come by – even on a clear calm night, if you travel half-a-mile from the train tracks the freight liner might as well be in North Carolina for all the noise it made.  And the rest of the noises filled in for the cars – kids whooping in delight as the last of the summer evening spread out before them, music and canned laughter coming from the windows I passed en route to the dark mass down the street, and the seemingly eternal sounds of nature that scurried and chirped, rustled and barked.  There’s always noise – and as much as we might complain about it, it is reassuring.  There’s a life to it, vitality, in rainfall and motor revs and everything.

And I took some comfort in that because the walk seemed to take longer than it should have.  I still will swear up and down that my feet didn’t falter – no so as I’d notice, at any rate – but it took forever for me to reach that damn door.  I had been right – the house looked as though the Rodgers family had just left for vacation and forgotten to set their timers.  No busted glass to clear out and sneak through.  Nothing more than a slight, dewy scent coming from the patio furniture and mingling with the summer smells of honeysuckle, and dying/recovering flower gardens, and grass.  The bugs made noise in a wave with me at the center of their lull, and they went right back to it as I passed them on the white rocks and flagstone path leading from the road to the door.

I stopped.  Only once.

Some houses have faces, you know?  The windows seem to gaze out at you like eyes in a painting, watching you and reflecting you back, so you can see yourself as they do.  Small.  Distant.

The windows of the Rodgers’ Ranch reflected nothing.  But I felt them boring into me, looking and observing and categorizing me.  I don’t know how I knew, so don’t bother asking – maybe the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, or my stomach tightened three coils too tight.  But it was the first time I felt scrutinized by something unseen and unknowable.  It wasn’t the worst of those sensations, but as I’ve learned, you never forget your first time for damn near anything.  And that house…it felt like it was sitting in fucking judgment over me.  I told myself it was all bullshit, and glared back at the house like doing so would accomplish something.

And I stood still, trying to move for a minute.  And after a minute, I did.

I stepped up onto the porch, and crossed it with faked confidence.  I reached out for the doorknob, and then paused again.  Telling myself it wasn’t nerves but rational, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the brown driving gloves my parents had given me for my sixteenth birthday – it wasn’t a car, but they were damned cool, and made sure I would leave finger prints.

I slipped on the gloves and reached out for the door knob while fishing in my front pocket for the multi-tool.  The knob turned in my hand and the door swung in, not so much as a whisper escaping the hinges.  I paused at this.  No one, but no one, leaves their front doors unlocked.  Not in these three towns.  Not now, and certainly not then.  I steeled myself, and slipped in, quiet as a shadow, and made sure the door was closed behind me before taking out my flashlight.  The flash was a cheap plastic thing with a bulb that was on its last legs, and red cellophane wrapped around the business end so it wouldn’t screw with my night vision or alert anyone on the outside.

The house smelled like dust.  Not mildew or decaying food or rat shit.  Only dust.  Again, thought played through my mind – the house wasn’t abandoned, and at any moment I’d hear footstep and a light would snap on and some bleary-eyed resident would be looking right at me.  I stopped again, listening.  Only the bugs and birdsong.  Only the dog and the kids.  They were muffled and away – while clear and close, I could hear the blood pumping through my body, the first drips of an adrenaline rush making themselves known.  And my light found the end table.

There was nothing on it save for a small, wooden box – lacquered to a dark finish, so the red-light of my flash made it look more like volcanic glass etched to look like wood, with two small silver hinges facing me.  I went over to it, and turned it around.  A clasp, equally small and silver, was on the other side.  My fingers reached out slowly, with a gentleness reserved for handling newborns, and raised the clasp.  I braced both hands on the sides, and opened the box a crack.

The lid slammed back, and my eyes were giving into the dead sockets of a skull as silence boomed out, ripping a whole in my senses and filling in the jagged places.  My eyes locked to the skull as it tilted back on the hinge of its jaw, and the outside world, all of the reassuring noise blasted away.  There was no humming in my ears, no sound of my heart beating in my chest, even the ceaseless chatter of my internal monolog.  I registered the red-light in my hand shattering just before I felt my eyes go bloodshot and I fell to my knees as my guts wrenched and my brain throbbed.  My hands shook furiously as I reached out for the box, the hair and skin on my hands moving in small waves from the force of the void pouring out of the skull’s mouth.  My blood had turned to tar and battery acid, and I was dimly aware of the bandana growing moist.  I gripped the box like a murdered grabbing a throat.

I screamed.  I know I screamed.

I slammed the lid of the box back down, and it closed with thud.  I knelt there, breathing hard, my breath and blood the only noises for a long time.  I reset the latch, the click almost inaudible over the thunder of my body, and the summer noises coming in the shattered windows of the Rodgers Ranch. 

Thing Three: Western Steampunk Hentai...I don't know why either, folks at home.

Hawk Henshaw and the Steam Powered Octopus

A Micro Short story by Sean McGovern

For Brian Chappell – you asked for it.

He came up the ridge, wishing his horse hadn’t decided to up and die five miles back.  Hawk Henshaw was many things – a bear of a man, the best shot with a Spencer west of the…hell, west of the Atlantic Ocean, and a born survivor.  Currently, he was also covered in dust and pissed the hell off.  He synched up his belt again and kept his eyes pinned to the opening in the ridge the folks in town had told him about which he stood, doubled over, and wheezed.  He hadn’t been a young man for a long, long time, and the last bit of this journey had reminded him of that fact – he was on the wrong side of forty.

Adventuring like this, hunting down what some folks were calling the Train Demon, would have been better suited for the young bucks in town – but most of those damned fools had gone east, hoping to prove themselves against the North.  They thought that would be an adventure.  Henshaw knew, though – he had seen enough hellfire out in Mexico as a boy.  This, snipe hunting, was far better.  Snipes didn’t exist – which meant they didn’t have cannon and couldn’t turn you into a fine paste from across the town line, wouldn’t leave you screaming with half of something missing, or with the screams of those that were in that state.  Henshaw wondered if they’d do what he had done, and compared notes.  He’d been younger, then.  He had needed to know.

But whatever it was folks were hearing in the night, it wasn’t powder loaded, and the suited Henshaw just fine.  What didn’t suit him all that fine was that so far eight men had vanished while looking for the bastard up in the hills north of town, first going after two young lovers who had taken their rendezvous in the area, then after the damned cuckold who had gone looking for his pretty young wife and her paramour.  And none of them had come back, just the whistle and the steam of a train.  “But there ain’t any tracks up that way, Mr. Henshaw” the town crone had told him.  Miss Waits, her name had been – practically the only person Henshaw had ever seen that would have made Methuselah feel young.  “I’ve seen’em in the paper, and seen the tracks out east – and folks’ll watch them lay’em if they were around here.  But nothing like that’s ever been here.”

Henshaw had nodded, mostly watching the three legged black coydog that lay in the corner, glaring up at him.  He didn’t like that dog.  He’d seen all kinds of wounded creatures, but the dogs always left him vaguely disgusted.  Mexico.  Again.  He had spit, missed the pot Miss Waits was using as a spittoon, and shifted his bulk in the chair.  He tried to ignore the dog and listen to the crone, and he had managed, for the most part.  Miss Waits had known more than anyone else – which he had figured would be the case.  And she had sent him towards the cave.

He stopped and sat for a minute, catching his breath.  He kept his eyes pinned to the cave, and checked his guns blindly.  They were loaded, and after a sip from his flask, he took to his feat again, and walked to the opening.  He caught the scent of blood, and paused.  He murmured a curse, and readied the Springfield, and thought about lighting the lamp on his belt, but decided to go with caution.  He crept through, feeling along the path with his feet.  He found what felt like a tree root, and he followed it, keeping his right foot against it as he made his way deeper.  After fifteen minutes, he gave in, and hung the Springfield across his back.  He lit the lantern and held it in one hand, drawing the revolver with the other.  He had painted the one half of the lantern black, keeping his eyes safe from the glare.

And that was when he found the first body.  What was left of it, at any rate.  The torso and hips were crushed to the point of looking like a bag of splinters.  Henshaw moved the light around, and saw the face.  The lower jaw had been dislocated, and all of the teeth had been shattered.  He came around the back of the body, and vomited.  Judging from the wounds to the man’s rear end and face, he had been treated like beast on a spit.  A sick part of him wanted to see if the lamp would shine all of the way through.

Henshaw shuddered, keeping himself from calling out to see if anyone was alive – but whoever had done that to the poor bastard might still be around.  He couldn’t take his eyes off the body, and ran his light over the surrounding ground, noting that the dirt was darker than the rest – and he forced himself to not think about how the blood had gotten there.  He stood, and continued down into the cave.  There was still no sound beyond his breathing and footsteps, but the air felt humid.

He stopped and holstered the revolver, planning to wipe the sweat from his face, when he heard it – a piercing whistle followed by the sound of a train chugging along slowly.  Henshaw raised up his gun, panning the lamp forward into the darkness.  It was answered by four lights, small, distant, but getting closer.

He hadn’t thought to look down at the tree root he had been following for so long.  He knew what it was now, but he had to look anyway – a train track.  The old bastard back there must have been hit by it – it didn’t explain everything, but it was an answer at least.  Henshaw moved to the side, trying to pres himself into the wall as the lights coming towards him grew, there flickers proceeded by the roar of iron and the engine.  It was getting closer, close enough at he could make out the outlines of…tube? They looked like flexible drain pipes, cut into lengths and then hinged together so they moved like long, grotesque fingers.  He tried to count them, but they moved to fast, and he was too damn flabbergasted to seek out their bases.

As it got closer, he saw three of them carrying burdens.  The bodies were impaled from asshole to face, wriggling corpses that hung like ventriloquist dummies from the mechanical arms.  Henshaw gasped, guessing that two of them – the lady, surely – were the young lovers and the other a member of the search party.  Henshaw leaned away from his hiding spot as the iron beast passed him.  It growled at some points, squeaked at others, its metal fingers rising up an ungodly racket as they swirled and danced.

He saw it just after it became “too late” – one of the metal fingers lashed out and grabbed him.  He moved in a spiral as it raised him from the ground and reeled him in like a fish, the metal and engine deafening him as it began to squeeze, and he heard his ribs strain as the coils of iron began to do their work.

Henshaw gripped the revolver harder as the Springfield was forced into his back.  He tried to lever the pistol at the lights, but another squeeze unsteadied his aim.  He saw two others coming towards him, two more of the metal fingers that parted ways to position themselves – one above him, the other below.  Henshaw tried to aim the handgun again, but the iron beast seemed to have been expecting this, and Henshaw screamed out as the first of his ribs broke.  The finger below him began to probe around the seat of his pants, and Henshaw leveled the gun again, this time not waiting for the perfect shot.  He began blasting away, and kept at it until the gun ran out of ammunition.  The finger above him dropped down just as the second rib broke, and Henshaw knew it had all been a waste.

He let himself go limp – and he dropped like a stone, his arms rising over his head as he fell to the ground.  He sat, dazed for a second, before trying to get at the Springfield.  The demon train rolled on, ignoring him as it made its way towards the cave mouth.  Henshaw began to crawl away – he had to warn the town, had to get a bigger search part out to where the iron beast lurked.  It would be a long crawl back to town, but…he remembered the bodies.  And he followed behind the train moving on his elbows and knees, hoping that the damned thing would not turn around.