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.

Thing Two: Boogeyman (For JK)

Boogeyman

A Micro Short story by Sean McGovern

For Jen Kleinot, because Cheez-its rock.

He woke, knowing only that he had to pee.  This was new – normally he was smart enough to stand on the stool and use the toilet before saying good night to his mother and father, before even brushing his teeth.  But tonight had been different.  Totally cool, but different tonight mom was out of town, at a convention for her job, and it was just Joey and his dad – and his dad had promised him a special guys night.  And boy, had he ever kept that promise!

His dad had ordered pizza and a bottle of soda, and they had left the TV on so they could watch it while they ate.  He had had to promise not to tell mom they had done it, and Joey knew he’d be keeping that one just like his dad had kept his.  And dad seemed different.  Joey had been on his third glass of soda – a whole three glasses – and his dad had laughed, saying he didn’t know a six year old could drink that much and not belch!  Not even once!  And as soon as his dad said that, Joey had let it rip – the loudest, longest burp ever.  It had rattled his body, stung his throat like nothing else, and he and his dad had sat, dumb struck at its majesty.  His dad had held up a finger, and then let go a bellow of a burp, so deep that it was just an “urp”, and had held the note like a singer.  His dad had matched him glass for glass – only his had been bigger and filled with thick brown beer, not soda – and the air stank of his drink more than Joey’s.

And they had giggled.  Man, oh man, how they had giggled at the sounds!  Then dad and he had brushed their teeth, and dad had tucked him in, making sure that the Superman nightlight was plugged in and ready to go.  Joey had wanted Batman.  Batman was way cooler, and he worked at night.  Superman was powered by the sun – everyone knew that!  Heck, even his mom had known that – and she didn’t even like comics!  But his dad had made sure Superman was plugged in, and went around closing the draws and the closet door, and making sure Joey’s shows were under his bed.  He offered to check under the bed like he used to.  Joey had rolled his eyes – which he knew was the mature thing to do.  He was six now – and big for his age!  And his mom and dad had told him when he was little: There’s nothing there in the dark that wasn’t there in the light.

And he had a light.  He had Superman!  Just like he looked on the cartoon and the Batman and Superman Adventures comics his dad came home with for him on Saturdays.

He had told his dad this, and his dad had laughed.  Kind of.  The sound didn’t really get past his throat.  Joey knew that laugh – it was the laugh his dad always had after it got dark and he had forgotten about work.  It was his after dinner laugh, the one that sounded tired.  Joey liked that laugh.  He wanted to laugh like that when he got to be as big as his dad.

But now he was in bed, and his bladder was straining.  And the nightlight…that didn’t seem so strong right now.  It was across the room from his bed, near the closet.  And…and his dad had closed that door.  Right?  Yeah.  Yeah, he had – his dad had definitely closed that door.  He had heard the click.  His dad didn’t close it the way his mom did, didn’t turn the handle so you could only here the thunk.  With his dad there was always the click-thuck on the door being closed properly. 

But it was open.  Wide open.

Joey lay there, looking at the doorway.  The light didn’t go past where the door should have been.  Like it was scared.  Superman was there, rising out of his plug, but usually he seemed full of light.  You couldn’t even make out the bulb – it was that good a nightlight, the kind that cast the glowing image of Clark Kent out like a reverse shadow.  But now…but now it seemed a little dimmer, as thought it was shrinking away from the door.

He felt his stomach lurch.  Not his stomach – something else near it.  He knew that sensation – and door open or not, he remembered his mother’s threat if he ever wet the bed again.  He was six now, and only babies, and one kid in school who smelled like pee to begin with, wet the bed.  But he kept looking at the door, even as the thing behind his stomach flinched again.  He knew his dad had closed it – he remembered the click of the door shutting.  Or did he?  His father had done it so often that maybe he was only thinking that he had heard his father close the door, the same way he sometimes only thought his mom had come in to wake him when she herself was still asleep.

The thing twinge did it – Joey threw his legs over the side of the bed, feeling the little wobble in his knees that holding back always gave him.  He remembered his parents’ words – there was nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light.  He caught a glimpse of his feet in the slightly blue light of Superman, and was about to stand when he saw them.  His feet stuck out of his polar bear pajamas, still a little grimy since his dad hadn’t made him wash.  The pajamas were a deep blue, with white polar bears turning the heads to look out at the world, some of them raising one paw as though waving, and from a distance, the material looked like the end of a Spring day, light enough for white clouds, early enough to keep the sky from going red.

They were fading.  Pajamas and feet, they were fading into the gloom that seemed to be taking over his bedroom.  He watched as the pale skin of his feet began to look more like shadows than skin, and polar bears that looked like clouds vanished into the deep, dark blue that surrounded them.  Joey gasped, and looked to Superman.  The reassuring figure was growing fainter.  Joey tried to think, but found his mind chugging slowly as he watched the light recede, crawling back into the plastic, and the bulb within.  He watched the darkness crowd it out.

He wanted to say something, wanted to hear a voice, even his own.  He wanted to call for his dad, what the big guy to burst in and change the light.  Because that was all it was.  It had to be.  Some lights did that – they didn’t pop, just…they did that.  Didn’t they?

There was the whisper then.  That was what it sounded like – but not when a voice whispered.  It was a whisper of old cloth.  Of snakes over sand.  Of moth wings.

For a flash, the room was completely black, but the light returned. Dimmer.  Dimmer.

The whisper slid up the wall, and Joey followed the sound with his eyes.  Whatever was making the noise lurked high, near the ceiling, beyond what was left of the nightlight’s reach.  Joey looked at the spot where he thought it was.

Knew it was.

He knew it was there in the corner.  Just as he knew it would come for him once the light was gone.

The voice was the sound of skin chirping open.  It slithered down from the corner, and he knew what it would say, as the bulb in Superman finally went out.  “Don’t worry,” it said.  “There's nothing there in the dark that isn’t there in the light.”

Thing One: Science Fiction (for NS)

Black Box.

A Micro Short Story by Sean McGovern

For Nathaniel Swartz.

“Toren – check your spike,” the voice said.  It was female, and seemed live, by Toren was in that in-between state where his mind was blanking.  “I’m showing that the sync is incomplete.  Are you sensing it?”

“I can’t feel anything,” he said.  You bitch, he added, and hoped that the sync is incomplete.

I CANNOT FEEL ANYTHING, the speaker blurted.

“Yeah, there’s a disconnect,” he said.

YES THERE IS A DISCONNECTION.

Oh, fuck off, he thought.  His mind swam, felt the world rising as he fell, the notion that he was plummeting down, as though he was falling asleep, directly into a dream.  That was the way of it, equally familiar and alien, known only in the way that dreams were.  If he dreamed.  Truth to tell, he could no longer remember anything he saw during his sleep cycles beyond the neon and halogen glow of the grid.  The glow currently denied him by – well, by whatever wasn’t clicking.  “Can you send a tech?”

CAN YOU SEND A TECHNICIAN? The speaker blurted.

The voice again: “Acknowledgement of your request, pulse sent and technician in route.”  He was glad that the voice did not give him a time estimate.  It was better to just weightlessly plummet – closer to the sensations he would soon be feeling once all of the waiting was over.  Once he was in the sky.  But the sync’s incompleteness was becoming irritating – he could feel his skin around the induction nodes, and knew that they were red around the metal and plastic that let the spikes enter ports.  But he couldn’t move, couldn’t scratch the red skin.  He knows it’s for the best, and at least the straps weren’t biting into his arms, legs, chest, and hips.  He was aware of the one on his head, crossing his brow and holding it fast to the padding.  “Toren, there will be pain.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Toren said.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, the speaker said.  It then roared, breaking into static and fractions of sounds.  It gibbered, raged, and screamed, the noise reaching beyond inhuman pitches and into the outright demonic.  And then it ended.  TESTING, the speaker said.

“Sync showing within acceptable parameters – exact center.  Good morning Toren, you are clear to enter flight AA dash 4430, en route from Boston.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, the speaker said.

The air was a shock after the amniotic fluid, bur he was still scrapped smooth, and felt every molecule of chill on his frame.  And the air and fluid were cold, there was no mistaking that, both cold in the same way, seeping into his bones.  It ran through the curves and contours.  And like that, Toren came aware.

“This is Captain Allen.  Tower do we have connection?”

The woman’s voice crackled through him.  “Captain Allen, this is the tower.  We have unity.  David Toren is with you.  Mr. Toren?”

AGREEMENT.  WE HAVE UNITY.  GREETINGS CAPTAIN ALLEN.

The captain’s voice was distantly present, like a voice in the back of his mind.  “Greetings Mr. Toren.  How is the sync strength?”

SYNC IS AT NINETY-FIVE PERCENT.  THERE IS A SLOW LEAK WITHIN OUR FOURTH ENGINE THAT WILL NEED REPAIR UPON ARRIVAL.

“Any danger to this flight,” the captain/thought asked.

NEGATIVE.

Aware.  That was the proper word for it.  The plane was a giant eye, a giant ear, a giant bone.  He knew all of it, as surely as he knew his flesh body floating back in the amniotic tube being watched over within the tower.  His mind accepted it all.  His seeing in three hundred and sixty degrees, and that eye buffeted by the fierce winds, and hearing the blood and electricity in his flesh body, and the oils and electricity of this new one roaring over the outside world in a quiet hum and slosh.  He felt the leak like a bug bite on his left hand.  But all of that was far away – and he couldn’t have cared less if he tried.

Below him was the city, its lights glowing in haphazard grids.  He liked these flights, this time of year.  Early autumn was truly the best time to be one with the planes – no real travel heavy holidays until the end, no real vacation rushes packing the lanes so that, in addition to the always present threat of machine failure, there was also the chance (no matter how remote) that the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, their systems, and the tower, and the harnessed tower acting as the plane would miss seeing the other large aircraft and crash.

But that wasn’t as big a concern.  Not now.  He felt the cold air against his eyes, ears, skin.

The runway was a solid strip of darkness pockmarked by carefully spaced lights.  That was probably the worst part of the landing.  Seeing all of the tiny cracks and fissures in the cement as the wheels that were his eyes, his skin, came and pressed down during the landing.

He had heard the pilots say that there was nothing quite like flying.  Toren knew that that, for them, was utter bullshit.  They might as well have been driving a car.  This, this was flying, actually flying.  The machine was his body, the combustion, the electricity, the oils – this all was him, just as surely as…as surely as…

Somewhere far off he whispered, “my hand is bleeding,” and he knew it wasn’t true.  The flesh body was fine.  The flesh body was safe.  The flesh body was.  It was.  It.  He felt the ports, then, the spikes seeming to expand within, and clamping down on the human portions within the tubes.

Oh for fuck’s sake, his mind roared, but it clamped down on the mental words, keeping them from the machine, from its voice.  But he wanted to scream, the connection’s correction of his thoughts of two separate entities was somehow worse than the actual connecting.  Then he roared, and his mind roared back my hand is bleeding! They felt…weak.  They? Yes, they.  Plural.  His hand and his elbow.  No.

THERE IS A COMPLICATION. The machine voice said, while Toren was muttering, “Aw, shit.”  LEAK HAS SPREAD TO ENGINE THREE.  No, his flesh thoughts said, not spread.  It couldn’t be, the wiring was all wrong.  “My left arm is dying,” his flesh voice said, the fluid moving from his lungs to join the rest within the chamber.  ENGINE FOUR IS NOW CRITICAL.

He heard the captain’s terse voice but understood none of the words.  He could feel his hand growing heavy, as though the veins within were leaking.  He could feel it swelling, rotting.  No, no, it’s not, it is not.  MY FUCKING HAND!  And then the ports came alive again, pain drilling into his spine, his ribs, his neck.

ENGINE FOUR IS IN DANGER OF FIRE.  CORRECTION.  ENGINE FOUR IS EXPERINCING FIRE.

The captain’s voice was screaming, trying to get the fuel to stop pumping, but all that Toren knew was the pain engine strapped to his body, trying to get him back to the proper parameters for the sync, punishing him for his lack of focus by causing him to drift further.  His body went ridged, arms and legs locked, spine pulled so straight he felt sure it would finally snap.  He was suddenly very aware of his left elbow growing warm, just before pain exploded within the joint.

The spikes within the ports lanced in once more, but Toren was trying to look to his left arm, the screaming of the pilots and the tower now distant echoes.  He knew it would be missing, that everything from the elbow down had just been ripped violently away, as his heart pumped fire through his flesh body and the amniotic fluid reverberated with his screams.

ERROR.  ERROR.  ERROR.  ENGINE THREE AND FOUR ARE NOW OFFLINE.

               The spikes were withdrawing, but Toren was still one with the plane, lurching with it as the world began to spin.  He felt himself rising up in the fluid as he came through clouds to stare at the lights of the runway rising to meet him, nothing but a deeper darkness with its blinding, swirling lights.  Weightless, he plummeted down, he voices as hands tugged within his brain, trying to get him to rise and glide, to at least level out, screaming about their parents and passengers and how they didn’t want to die and he didn’t either but he needed both arms to fly.  That was how planes worked, for Christ sake that was how planes worked, and there he was, lacking that part, that arm that would make him whole, that would get him back to flight and shut up that damned pilots - idon’twanttodieidon’twanttodieidon’twanttodie – but the ground was coming up and the spike were still there.  He knew it.  They had dug too deeply into the human parts of the ports.  He felt them, whirling quickly, almost frantically, within him.  Trying to disengage, to get him out of the plane by getting out of him.  And from this height, just now, he couldn’t make out the cracks in the runway.

Mission Statement (What's all this then)...

Greetings, People of Earth.

Ok, here's the deal: you pick a genre, I'll try to write a micro story in that genre.  Most likely one scene, at least one thousand words.  I'm not sure if they'll be any good - but I'll do my best, and I'll take all critiques seriously.  For the most part.

Tweet your requests to @SMcG29

Thank you in advance, and I hope you enjoy!
All the best,
Sean