[pickarooney]

Last month we ran the ninth instalment (tenth actually, but let's not get into decimals) of our short story competition Variations On A Theme. On this occasion each entrant was given a brief plot synopsis from the original 60s TV show The Twilight Zone. There are a few more details in this thread.

In total, 14 people made the deadline and their stories, of approximately 2000 words each, will appear in this thread over the course of today. There will then be a two week window for you to vote and comment on the stories before the winner is announced on Monday 16th July. Stories will be posted anonymously

Please give the authors as much feedback, positive or negative but above all constructive, as you can.

Best of luck to everyone who took part.

[pickarooney]

After landing on a planet, a spaceship crew finds an identical wrecked ship with their dead doppelgängers onboard.

Emile suggested that we leave. As he was the only person left with a working weapon we took his suggestion to heart. I packed the remains of my rations and pilfered an extra water bottle while Baker twitched near the open hatch.

"Where are we supposed to go?" he asked.

Emile was perched cross legged on a crate. He tapped the barrel of his gun lightly against the edge of it and shrugged.

"There's nothing out there," said Baker, his voice tight.

I shifted my pack onto my shoulders and joined them.

"Now gentlemen," said Emile. "I think we'll all agree that I've been very fair with the rations."

Baker made a noise.

"No," said Emile. "I could have sent you out there with nothing at all. I've given you a fighting chance."

"There's nothing out there," repeated Baker. "Once these rations are gone we'll starve."

"Oh don't be so dramatic," said Emile. "There's a whole planet out there, you never know what food you could find."

I looked out through the hatch at the seemingly never ending expanse of dry red rocks and turned back to Emile, who smiled.

I followed Baker outside and landed with a thud on the parched ground. I turned to see Emile reach out, grab the hatch and swing it closed. The ship was still perched at an awkward angle. The port engine crushed beyond repair. I waited a second, hoping that the slamming of the hatch would somehow tip the ship the rest of the way over. That would serve him right. But it didn't so I turned back to Baker, who was kicking up red dust as he shuffled around. He lapsed into a heavy silence as we began to walk, but my mind couldn't keep still.

"F*cking Emile," I said. "This is exactly the type of thing he'd do."

"What?"

"I knew it from the second I met him, with that...handshake of his."

"You couldn't have known he'd do this," he said. "I mean how could anyone predict this?"

I hmmed and we continued on in silence. It was a lot rockier south. Before we'd crashed the ground had been almost completely smooth. We'd been able to fly low and allow the outside equipment to gather the samples. It was such a time saver. When you consider how long it takes to land safely and get all of our hand held equipment ready. Everyone had agreed, they all said it sounded like a good plan. And I wasn't the only one who failed to notice the rocks. They couldn't lay the blame solely on my shoulders. No sir.

We had spent a long time onboard the hot ship arguing over whether our nearest landmark was a small mountain range or a very large outcrop of rocks. The argument eventually came to a head after 3 days with me clutching a bloody nose and Emile folding his arms smugly. But Emile wasn't here now.

"It shouldn't take more than a few hours to reach the Small Mountains," I said, giving each word the weight it deserved.

Baker spent the hours flitting between quiet brooding and excited optimism. After the first hour he had us dead of thirst. After the second hour he had decided we were going to make some incredible discovery beyond the mountains. Half way through hour three he was jabbering on excitedly while worrying some beef jerky with his teeth.

"This will show him," he said, jabbing a thumb back over his shoulder. "He's holed up there in the ship while we're out here making history. Who knows what we're going to find, maybe water, maybe food. He might starve before we do."

By the time he had us on the cover of Time magazine we had reached the foot of the mountains.

"They're not that big close up," he said, wiping his brow.

"They're big enough," I said. "They're mountains, we're not going to get into that again."

By the time we reached the top he'd half convinced me we'd see a green valley with a stream. So when I clambered over the top I was almost prepared to see anything. But not quite prepared to see what I did. Behind me I could hear Baker's fingers clasping at the edge.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Em," I said.

We stood on the summit and looked down into the cracked red valley below us. Baker turned to look back the way we had come, then down to what sat on the floor of the valley.

Our ship. Shiny and new. Standing on its landing feet, not listed at that terrible angle we'd grown accustomed to.

"F*cking Emile," I said.

"What?"

"This has his name written all over it."

What followed was a spirited discussion about what to do next. I was keen to march straight down, knock on the hatch, and challenge Emile to a gentleman's fight. That would sort things out once and for all.

"That's not our ship," said Baker. "It couldn't possibly be our ship. So Emile's not in there. He's back there doing God knows what."

"I'm going down."

He grabbed my arm.

"Ours is back there, we can still see it. Someone else got here first and crashed. These rocks are dangerous, they creep up on you if you're not paying attention..."

"I was paying attention," I said. "They crept up on us because they're the same colour as everything else on this planet, red."

"I'm not blaming you," he said.

But I knew he did, I knew he took Emile's side

"It has our flag on the hatch," I said. "And we're the first manned mission to this hell hole."

I yanked my arm away and skittered and skidded down the side of the mountain. When I reached the bottom Baker had started to make his way down after me. He clunked up behind me as I ran my fingers over the name stencilled into the side of the ship. Shaking his head he drew up beside me.

"Something strange is going on here," he said.

I laughed.

We each set off in a different direction and circled the craft, kicking the legs, checking the engines. By the time we reached each other we were both in agreement. The ship seemed to have no visible damage. I almost didn't care what it was or where it had come from. It could be our ticket home. We stood looking up at the hatch, which stood ajar, and did a quick rock, paper, scissors to see who'd go first. He gave me a boost and I grabbed the lip of the doorway. The lights were off so I squinted, but I couldn't make out anything more than shadows. I waited, listening for the sound of movement, but there was only silence. I dragged myself through and reached back to help Baker inside. We made such a clanging that anyone onboard couldn't fail to hear us. But still there was nothing.

I dug the torch out of my pack and swung the beam through the hold. All of our equipment was strapped into place, our sample crates were stacked against the wall. I pointed the light at Baker who was clenching his jaw so tightly it looked like it was going to snap. He nodded at the ladder running up the opposite wall.

When I emerged, noisily into the cockpit they didn't move a muscle. I could see the backs of their heads as they sat in the seats, staring straight through the front windows. Baker pulled up beside me.

"Hello?" he called.

Still no movement. I tapped the torch against the nearby wall but the metallic echo didn't seem to register with them either. We approached slowly. Baker moved towards the rightmost of the three seats, so I pulled off to the left. He reached them first and instinctively raised a hand towards his mouth.

They had been dead a long time. There was still flesh on their bones, but it was hard, and dry like leather.

"What is going on?" asked Baker, the panic rising in his voice again.

"I dunno," I said, "but this one's wearing your clothes."

I pointed at the 'Baker' patch on the body nearest me.

"Oh my God," said Baker, clasping both hands to his head. "Are they us?"

I glanced at the other two bodies, the middle one had a gun tucked into his belt.

"Look," I said. "Typical f*cking Emile, putting himself in the middle seat. I'm the pilot, I sit in the middle."

Baker looked at me in confusion and started to rock slightly.

"This can't be what it looks like," he said.

I looked around and jabbed a few buttons, but all the lights and screens stayed blank. Baker started to poke and prod at the body nearest him.

"How did they die?" he asked, as he ran his fingers down the back of the head and neck. I felt a shiver go through me as I realised that if Baker's body was near me, and Emile was in the middle then that was my dead body he was man handling.

"If they're us," I said. "Then they're our future selves?"

"Time travel is impossible," said Baker.

I spread my hands out across the three dead bodies.

"No," he said. "This is something else. An experiment or something, a psychological experiment."

He began to pace up and down.

"Don't you think this is all a bit too convenient?" he asked. "I mean the crash just happens to kill our communications and destroy our engines. There are too many fail safes and contingencies in place for that to happen. This has to be a set up."

"A set up by who?" I asked as I flipped switches to no avail.

"By the agency. They always seemed far more interested in how we'd cope psychologically than physically. Maybe it was for this. Maybe we weren't sent here to collect samples. We were sent here to become an experiment."

"You're reaching," I said. "Besides this whole thing would have been dependent on me crashing the ship in the first place. Unless you think I'm in on it."

I tried to give an ambiguous look so that he'd consider it a real possibility. Baker was always the most fun to mess with. He thought about this for a second and shook his head.

"No," he said. "You're right, you would have had to crash on purpose. And that whole thing with Emile and the food and the gun. No."

He chewed his lip and retreated back into his head.

"So, time travel?" I asked. "But if this is our ship and if this is us then how did we get here? Our ship is back over there, and its beyond repair. So how did all three of us end up here?"

I pulled a panel open and fiddled about with the wires, exposing them. As I rubbed them together I cocked my head, waiting for the noise of the engine kicking into life. But it was dead. Baker snapped his fingers.

"Parallel universe," he said. "We went through some portal or vortex. One version of our ship ended up back there, the other ended up here."

"Right," I said, which seemed to appease him.

"It's just," I began, and saw him tense. "Well if there are parallel universes, then how can two instances of our ship appear in the same one?"

He made a noise that sounded like "Argghhh."

I stopped fiddling with the wires as a realisation dawned on me. I slapped my hand against the chair beside me, rattling the Baker skeleton. The still alive Baker stopped his ranting and looked at me.

"How did we not think of that?" I said. I started to laugh. "The most obvious thing has been staring us in the face since we got here."

He looked at me, hopefully. I pointed a finger at dead Emile.

"The gun," I said, and reached over to grab it. The magazine was full. I gripped it tightly and stepped away from the bodies.

"Mr big shot with his gun. He think's he's sitting pretty with all the food and water. He probably thinks we're half dead by now. The last thing he'll expect is us showing up with this."

"What are you talking about?"

"Retribution," I said. "Emile is about to lose an argument."

"But what about all this?" asked Baker, spreading his arms.

"They're not going anywhere," I said, and swung onto the top of the ladder. "Are you coming?"

He didn't answer, just looked at me incredulously.

I clanked down the ladder, adrenaline and excitement pumping through me, making my hands shake. He wouldn't know what hit him...so smug...and arrogant...and always wrong...not that he'd ever admit it. F*cking Emile.

[pickarooney]

With a nuclear war about to begin, two men steal a spacecraft to take their families to a new planet.

“Frank? Hey, Frank! Are you going to act or what?”. Wednesday night poker. A ritual maintained by a group of men whose wives are friends. A ritual in place to sate the gathering's mutual need to gamble in a state which regulated such things. A ritual which, every passing Wednesday, was being exposed for what it was; pointless. The jovial small talk to small town affairs had been slowly chipped away, and, in its' place, a humour, which, had any of the men been comfortable enough to discuss it, would have been described as strange. This “humour” was the product of a group of men with a common death sentence. A group of men who, in the face of nuclear Armageddon, found themselves hilariously moving pieces of card and circular plastic chips around a kitchen table.

“Frank you're holding up the God damn game!”, cried John with faux-excitement. His mouth smiled, but his eyes were stoney. “You seem pretty eager to hurry this round along, John. Too eager. I fold”, replied Frank. A round of raucous laughter followed. Abiding the norms, going through the motions.

The clock read 10:17. Beer cans and snack bowls were empty. Around the table hung a cloud of cigarette smoke. Eyes were getting heavy. Julian Benson stretched back in his chair and, mid contortion, check his wristwatch. “Time's getting on, gentlemen. I think it's about time we settled”. They tallied up the evening's wagers. Frank was down $7.

People began to get jackets and check for keys and wallets. Frank was donning his coat when John asked “Hey, uh, Franko, why don't you hang back, help me clear this place up a bit”,”Yeah yeah, sure Johnny”,”I'll see you fella's tomorrow”, said Gordon, the last to leave, as he put on his trilby. “Yeah, good luck Gordon”, said John. Gordon closed the door behind himself.

Frank made his way over to the table and, eagle-claw fashion, picked up the empty bowls and glasses. He brought these to the sink and slid them into the warm, soapy water. He then pulled a bowl from the water and proceeded to work his way around the edge with a wet cloth. At this point John was wiping down the table.

“Good game tonight, huh?”, said John, not looking up from the table. “For you, anyway”, replied Frank, not looking away from his windowed reflection against the darkness.

He heard the noise of wet Jay-cloth on table cover stop, and the groan of a chair bearing a load. “Frank”. Frank set down the bowl and turned to face the table. “This whole, war, going on between us and the commies. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You've got to have thought about it”. Frank had thought about the impending Nuclear Holocaust, quite a bit, as he lay awake beside his sleeping wife. Frank had had a few ideas. Escaping to the countryside, as much good as it would do. Trying the slim chance of finding a bunker, or a place in a vault. Suicide had crossed his mind. “Yeah, I've thought about it. What are you getting at?”, replied Frank, a hint of aggression in his voice.” Well, I've thought about doing something”. John spoke in the manner of a timid teenager asking a girl out; trying to convey intention without explicitly saying anything. “I think, uh...”. He took his zippo out from his pocket and began to flick it open and closed, eyes fixed on the lighter. “You know the Jones' have that class 8 rocket?”.

Everyone had heard of the Jones' rocket. What's the point in buying something excessively expensive, if you weren't going to brag about it.Rockets themselves weren't anything out of the ordinary, but there were two things which made the Jones' rocket special. The first was , of course, its' class 8 rating. Class 5 was the standard fare for middle-income families; powerful enough for intercontinental travel, or a day trip to the moon. But a class 8 rocket was capable of interplanetary travel.

The second oddity of the Jones' rocket was that, presumably, it still existed.

Two months prior, the US government ordered a recall of all recreational rockets, so as that they could go towards the war effort. How they were being used was anyone's guess. Relieved owners were compensated in war bonds, and everyone watched and counted as, one by one, backyard irises opened and silver arrows shot off into the sky, never to return.

The launch of the Jones rocket was highly anticipated, but never materialised. The general consensus was that this had something to do with Ron Jones' military connections. Ron worked for the military, to what capacity nobody was entirely sure. That he was a scient hhh

Crucially, the rocket was presumably unattended. The valley of half drawn curtains and lifted venetian blinds spied the family filling their car with what, by all accounts, looked like more that a regular holiday's worth of necessities. No one had crossed the threshold since then.

“And what have you got planned”, asked Frank, a note of wonder in his voice, as if he was on the cusp of being relieved. “I've got it figured out, sort of”, replied John. “Friday night, we get our families to have everything we need packed, and go to some place out of town. Then you and me go over to the Jones', fly the rocket out to the others, pick them up, and leave.”,”Leave to where, John?”,”Leave to Mars.”. There was an audible pause. “We, we land in an undeveloped part and make our way into a settlement. Once we're there they can't deport us back to Earth”. Frank pinched the bridge of his nose, as he was inclined to do under stress. “But, John, what about...what about security at Ron's house?”,”I've got the EMP gun we use in work. Frank, I've got this worked out”. John stood up. “You're going to have to trust me on this. It's our only chance.”

Frank Bemis, a man down on his luck. A man who finished a night of gambling at a loss, and tried to earn it all back with one final wager. Unknown to himself, Frank has just gambled his way into, The Twilight Zone.

“The family all set?”, asked Frank. “Yeah yeah, all packed and ready”, replied John. The two men were standing in the backyard of the Jones' house. John had the EMP gun, a device which resembled the Proton Pack from Ghostbusters. ”Ready when you are”, said John. Frank gave a curt nod. John directed the gun at the house, then held the trigger. The supercapacitor in the gun's pack wined in ever-increasing pitch as they charged, before entering a sound frequency too high for humans ears. A filament bulb on the gun's barrel lit up, telling John that it was ready for use. The gun's simple internal electronics were all analogue, to protect it from itself.

Aiming the gun, John pressed a red button on the barrel. There was no visible emission, at least perceivable to regular eyes, but the effects could be seen.

The houses security alarm flashed a frantic, over-bright blue, before extinguishing. WhiteSec, the houses monitoring company, would be notified, but they had enough of a window to launch the rocket.

More worrying than the alarm was the audible crash heard from within the house. “What was that?” said Frank in a hushed tone. “I don't know, maybe Ron had a 'bot clean the place. Whatever it is it's 'safe' now”.

They made their way up to the back door. "So, why do you think Ron was able to keep his rocket?", asked Frank. " 'Cause he's in the military, isn't that what everyone's saying? You know it really gets to me that our taxes pay these guys and their the only ones who get a bit of security! And what do they need our vehicles for anyway? They're hardly practical for the war.". Frank shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, maybe they're using them for parts, building nukes and shipping them out to Nevada","Why Nevada?","Well where else would you hide a Nuke, but out in a desert". Reaching the door, Frank took off his jumper, wrapped his arm in it and proceeded to smash the door's window. He then dropped his hand down and opened the door from the inside.

The two men crept quietly into the dark kitchen. They crossed over the room to the hallway door. Upon opening it, they were confronted with the source of the crash.

Before them lay a 'dead' Norden Mark 15 military sentinel robot, in a heap, its' eye-lights dimly flickering. “What the hell is this doing here?”, exclaimed Frank, “This isn't right John”, “It's fine, Frank, it's dead!”,”We should get out of here, we go, and we get everyone else, and we forget about this”,”Christ, Frank! We've come this far. Come on!”. John hurried down the hall, and through the door to the stairs which led to the garage.

“Look for a light switch there” said John in the pitch dark room, a request met with with the sound of hands grouping walls, then the click of a switch and a momentarily blinding light.

After adjusting to the light, they were presented with a stripped room. Thick cables ran unorganised between tall, headless, reel-to-reel computer which coolly spun their spools of dark magnetic tape. And in the center, its' lower half sunk into closely fitting hole under the chrome aperture Iris, the rocket. “What are these computers here for?”, said Frank. “I don't know, maybe they're from Ron's work or something.”,“Why has the room been gutted like this?”,“Does it matter? We don't have much time. I'll get the Iris open, you check the rocket out.”. Frank made his way over to the rockets side door and pulled it open. He then clambered inside. The rocket, it seemed, had suffered the same faith as the room.

The mod-cons expected in a rocket of this calibre were not there. Carpets had been lifted, bunks had been removed. Doors had been taken out, as had wall panels, baring subcutaneous wires, pipes and ducts. Even stranger was the large, circular plate of metal in place over the passage to the rocket's nose, the observation deck of the ship. Frank carefully made his way over to the plate and moved his fingers tentatively around the edge, gently prying at the obstruction. The plate was uncompromising, seemingly welded in place.

John appeared at the door, his voice startling Frank. “Iris is ready. We need to get this started up. WhiteSec will be here any minute”. Frank didn't question the order, and they both made their way to the navigations room in the rocket. The room had suffered the same faith as the antechamber, though the terminal for entering in coordinates was still intact. John jabbed at the power button. Both men anxiously watched the boot up sequence.

Instead of the ordinary VTec Rocket Technologies logo that came up on every rocket's terminal boot screen, a green picture of the patriotic eagle was splashed for a few seconds, before lines of script began to run down the screen. “Hmm, Ron must have some custom ROM running on the rocket, I've never seen a terminal boot verbose”. A bead of sweat ran down Frank's brow, and dripped onto the cold metal floor.

Unexpectedly, the rocket's engines rumbled into life. “What in Christ's name?! Did you mess with this, Frank?”,“No! What's going on John?”. The rocket's door locked, and Frank felt himself become heavier as the rocket made it's way into the air. A series of numbers flashed on screen. "Those look like coordinates!", said John,"Coordinates...coordinates on earth. Yeah, 09...f9, that's Earth! 11...02. That's, that's, Russia? Was Ron a commie?". This makes no sense, thought Frank. He began to think frantically. The security robot. The computers in the garage. The gutted rocket. The sealed off nose. "I can't change the coordinates! I can't get it to....Frank?" . Frank dashed up to the rocket's nose. Looking around, he found a metal rod, and, wedging it in between the metal plate and the frame, pushed on the makeshift lever with all he could. The plate came away.

Filling the observation deck were dark green canisters, wired together with red and blue wire. And on the canisters was a universal symbol. The warning sign of a Nuclear isotope.

Frank Bemis. A man who placed one final bet. And lost. Mr. Frank Bemis in, the Twilight Zone.

[pickarooney]

A mean-spirited drama critic finds out that an old player piano he has purchased causes people to reveal their true feelings.

The Mood For A Melody

Submitted for your approval: Mr. Ed Grattan, a theatre critic who enjoys his job perhaps a little too much. Mr. Grattan likes making people suffer, whether or not they deserve it. But tonight he’ll be writing the best review of his life: one written from the stalls; row five, seat nine, of the Twilight Zone.

At ten to eight, a car pulled to a stop outside the Mercurial Theatre. From the drivers’ door stepped Ed Grattan, the world’s most respected, or perhaps most feared, drama critic. Grattan buttoned his coat against the cold night air and surveyed his surroundings.

After a moment, he found a young man in a red vest and threw the car keys towards him. “Be careful with that, my boy,” he said, already walking away. “It cost more than you’re worth.”

As the car pulled out from the curb, Grattan looked towards the theatre. A paparazzo stalked the square nearby, no doubt hunting a lost starlet of the stage.

To the right of the main entrance, a queue perhaps twenty deep snaked along the footpath. Grattan straightened his collar and hurried past the queue as if it was invisible.

“Two complementary passes,” he said as he reached the glass partition of the box-office. “Under ‘Grattan.’”

The young couple who had been next in line gasped in annoyance, but Grattan ignored them. Behind the glass, the young teller blushed and reached under the counter. She retrieved a slim envelope and slid it beneath the partition towards him. Grattan took the tickets and turned from her without another word.

Before he could move any further, a flashbulb exploded in his face.

“Think you’ll enjoy this one, Mr. Grattan?” somebody shouted as the bulb’s after-image floated across his view.

“I doubt it,” he said and pushed past the paparazzo in feigned irritation.

“You’ve never written a good review. Why is that?”

Grattan smiled, and turned back to face the young man. “All my reviews are good,” he said. “It’s the subject matter which is found wanting.”

With that, he turned and stepped through the main entrance, ignoring the outstretched hand of the usher holding the door.

He found his place with little trouble, unbuttoned his coat and draped it across the spare seat. He slid out his worn grey notebook and his favourite black and gold pen. After a few minutes, the lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and he began to write.

The play was called “Our Trusted Friend.” It dealt with two brothers hiring a hit man to kill a local police chief. It was good, Grattan knew. The writing was top shelf, as were the stage management and acting. But with a crooked smile, Ed Grattan touched pen to paper and found fault with everything he saw.

By the time the final act began, his notebook was full and his review complete. On stage, the protagonist and his nemesis stood in a bar, guns drawn. Grattan slipped his pen into his pocket and folded his notebook closed. The villain fired his gun and the hero fell backwards. He slumped against the player piano (the McGuffin of the plot) and collapsed, dead. As he fell, the piano began to play a jangling Western tune.

The curtain dropped and Grattan stood to leave. Around him, the audience burst into applause. The music of the piano continued and after a moment Grattan stopped in place. He felt a curious dizziness, as if he had just woken from a trance. He sat back down and listened, and felt a strange warmth flowing through him. He flipped open his notebook, and as the curtain rose and the players bowed, he ripped out the first few pages and crumpled them up. He took out his gold and black pen, and once more began to write.

Near the theatre’s exit was a telegraph office. As the show let out, Grattan made his way there, the piano music still playing in his ear. The review would appear in the morning’s edition of The Chronicle. As he left the telegraph office, he saw the young paparazzo, still stalking the departing patrons.

“What did you think, Mr. Grattan?” the youth asked with a grin.

Then, for the first time in his career, Ed Grattan replied honestly.

“I loved it,” he said.

* * *

The following morning, Jack Santos sat across Grattan’s desk, reading the early edition of The Chronicle. He laughed and shook his head. “I can’t believe you wrote this,” he said.

“Neither can I,” Grattan replied, pushing back from the desk. He stood and walked to the window, lighting a cigarette as he went, then stared down to the street below. “My reputation—my career is over.”

Santos shook his head again, distracted. “No, people love this stuff.” He snorted. “You thought the Henry Jones was ‘transcendent’ as Hector?”

Grattan sighed.

“Here,” he said, returning to the desk. He handed Santos the original review. “Compare it to that.”

As his colleague read through the original version, Grattan returned to the window. “Everything was all right until that damned piano started playing. After that I— It was like I couldn’t help but write the truth.”

“Bad news for your wife,” Santos laughed. He had finished reading both versions now. “You should take a look at that piano, see how it works.”

Grattan pursed his lips without looking around. Suddenly, there was a light knocking behind him. He turned and saw his secretary, Mrs. Greany in the doorway. “A visitor for you, Mr. Grattan,” she said.

An icy shiver ran down his spine. He had standing instructions: nobody he reviewed was allowed into the office. “All right,” he said. “I'll be right down. And knock properly, will you? I barely noticed you were there.”

Santos stood up as Mrs. Greany turned to leave. “I have a meeting in ten minutes,” he said with a grin and folded the newspaper beneath his arm.

“I'll see you for lunch, piano man.”

* * *

The elevator doors pinged open on the ground floor. Before Grattan could take more than two steps into the lobby, a large man grabbed his arm and began shaking it.

“Mr. Grattan,” the man said. “Mr. Grattan, thank you so very much.”

The man, Jim Prate, was in his mid-fifties and had a sweaty red face. He was also the director of “Our Trusted Friend”.

Grattan pulled his hand back in disgust, making a show of wiping it on the back of his trouser leg. “Hello Prate,” he said. “Come to gloat?”

“What? No!” Prate seemed genuinely taken aback. He released Grattan's arm and let his hands drop to his side. “I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Grattan. You're review— I can't express how much it means. It’s saved the show, let me tell you.”

Grattan took a step back and fixed the line of his suit's arm where Prate had grabbed it. “And that piano stunt, that was your idea, was it?”

Prate shook his head, bewildered. “Piano? No, you— oh, the final scene! That was from the script, but—”

At this, Grattan took as step forward and made an attempt to regain his composure. “Your show was sub-par, Mr. Prate. The direction was amateurish and the acting could be surpassed by a school play.”

Prate shook his head again, oblivious. “Your review, Mr. Grattan,” he said. “If there's anything I can do to thank—”

“It wasn't me, don't you understand? It was your damned piano! It—”

He trailed off. His eyes had wandered to the large revolving door that served as the main entrance to The Chronicle's huge lobby. Out on the street, a paparazzo - the same one from last night - lingered on the sidewalk.

“I'm ruined,” he said. He grabbed Prate by the lapels and shook him. “You've ruined me, Prate,” he said and turned back towards the elevator. The car had already returned to the upper floors, so he jabbed the call button and waited.

“What can I do?” the other man replied. “Anything, just name it.”

Grattan ran his fingers through his thinning hair. Santos’ words came back to him and he turned and jabbed an accusatory finger towards Prate. “You want to thank me?” he shouted. “How about you give me that damned piano of yours?”

“The piano?” Prate said.

Grattan nodded. “Your piano got me into this mess. I want to take a look at it.”

Prate’s brow furrowed, but after a moment's consideration, he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll send it over.”

Behind Grattan, the elevator pinged open. He stepped inside and punched the button for the eighteenth floor and watched the bewildered Prate disappear behind the closing metal doors.

* * *

The next day, Grattan sat in his car, watching the deliverymen unload his new player piano from their grey van. There were two of them, and Grattan could hear them talking through a crack in his car window.

“A woman's gotta know her place,” the stockier man said as Grattan stepped out and slammed the door closed. “You can never let 'em—”

He stopped. “Oh, hello, Mr. Grattan.”

Grattan walked past them, towards the suburban house in silence. Then he turned, and watched as they shuffled after him.

“A nice piece,” the stockier man said as they installed the piano in the front room. “It’s a 1925 Feinworth, right?”

“I neither know nor care,” Grattan replied.

The man knelt down. “Yep, Feinworth,” he said. “With the crank underneath.”

At first, his words meant nothing. Then, suddenly Grattan screamed. The piano had begun to play. “Out, get out!” he cried, and grabbed the men by their arms. “You stupid fools!”

Again, that strange trance crept over him. “Could I short change you—”

He opened the door and pushed them outside. Before they could complain, he threw a bundle of bills after them and slammed the door.

“—I would,” he finished, and collapsed, shaking to the floor.

Over the music, he listened to the men talking outside.

“What the hell?” the stocky man asked.

“We got paid. Let's go,” the other replied. “I'm working late.”

“I know,” the stocky man said. “I'll be around to sleep with your wife.”

Grattan stared at the still-playing piano, then stood and peered through the window. The two men faced each other near their van. Suddenly, the smaller man lashed out, knocking his associate to the ground. He then stepped over the fallen lothario and strode off down the street.

Grattan turned from the window and approached the piano.

“What are you?” he asked, splaying his fingers over its keys as the music came to an end.

He had intended to slate “Our Trusted Friend”, but having heard the music, had written the truth. Again just now, he had revealed too much.

He stood, lifted the piano’s lid and peered inside. The player’s music roll sat behind the key strings. “Let’s test you,” Grattan muttered, then knelt down and wound the crank as the stocky man had done.

Immediately, the piano began to replay its tune. Grattan took a step back.

He tried to claim Jim Santos was a hack. What came out was: “Jim Santos is the best journalist I know.”

He tried to give that damned play a bad review. Instead he said, “It was the best play I’ve seen in years.”

He tried to compliment his wife.

“Jeannie Grattan is a dimwit, an idiot and a fool,” he said.

Suddenly, the front door closed behind him. “Did I hear my name?” his wife asked. “And what’s that music?”

Grattan spun around and froze.

“Jeannie, I—” he began. He choked and bit his tongue.

“Ed, what’s wrong?”

Sweat dripped from his brow and a manic grin spread across his face. Jeannie stepped backwards.

“—I damn well hate you!” he shouted.

She stood there, her mouth hanging open as the music played.

“It pains me to even talk to you,” Grattan continued. “In fact, I only married you because of how pretty you are. It makes other men jealous!”

After a moment, Jeannie scowled. Her eyes took on a glazed appearance and she took a step forward. She jabbed a finger into Grattan's chest.

“Likewise, fella,” she spat. “You're rich, you monster! I like the money and the attention, but damn, I can barely stand to look at you!”

When her outburst was done, Jeannie's eyes widened and she slammed a hand over her open mouth. The music roll came to its end and the piano's lid slowly closed over. The only sound now was the slow ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.

“Oh, Ed!” she cried.

“You meant it,” he said. He walked around the piano once more and took a seat in front of it. “You meant it and so did I. It's this piano....”

Her eyes followed as he waved a hand over his shoulder. “It... does something.”

“…You meant it?” Jeannie asked.

He nodded.

“All right,” she said. “So did I, and I can live with it.”

Grattan frowned. He stood up and took a step towards her.

“Live with it?” he asked.

“You hate me, and I hate you, but we each get what we want.”

He looked at his wife then, as if for the first time.

“So I can live with it,” she said.

Grattan’s heart rate had begun to return to normal. “But we have to get rid of the piano,” he said.

In response, she gave him a thin-lipped smiled, and he realised:

He could live with it too.

Two monsters -- madly in hate, alone together in the Twilight Zone.

[pickarooney]

A sadistic former captain in the SS returns to the ruins of Dachau concentration camp after the end of World War II and meets someone unexpected.

Gravel crunched under Sigmund’s feet as he walked the final steps towards the Jourhouse entrance. He continued under the archway, tracing his outstretched hand along the rugged limestone. He felt his heart rate quicken as the arch enveloped him, cloaking him with shadow until he emerged on the other side. Even though he’d been an officer here, the fear and dread of the camp still affected him. You could almost sense the emotions of former prisoners flitting through the air. Sometimes Sigmund forgot where he was. Sometimes he forgot that they deserved what they got.

After the war, the camp had been deserted. It was strange to see the large expanse of the roll-call yard completely empty. Sigmund didn’t think even one person was on the grounds except him. What a shame, thought Sigmund, to waste such a big place because of the stigma attached to it. He wondered how different things might have been if the war had been won by the other side.

The maintenance building was as imposing as ever, a monument to the work he’d done over many years. As a doctor, some of the experiments had been a huge success, yielding results that would benefit the world for years to come. He didn’t quite understand the snobby attitude of some of his peers. The prisoners were going to die anyway, what matter if they help science in the process?

He went into the building through a familiar entrance, automatically making his way towards the experimentation rooms at the back. The corridor walls were faded, the paint peeling at the edges. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, the strands weighted down with dust and dirt. The dull light coming through the windows did little to illuminate the way. Sigmund reached for a light switch hopefully, but as he expected it didn’t work. He stepped over to a nearby door and turned the rusted handle, opening the door with a low squeak. He knew this room. The filing cabinets at the back of the room. The stack of papers scattered by the dust-encrusted wooden desk.
The ceiling window shone a pool of light onto the operating table, a cloud of dust particles wheeling around it like a miniature sandstorm. It was all so familiar, so… so strangely welcoming. He felt at home here, the place where he had done much of his research.

“Hello Doctor Rascher,” came a croaking voice.

Sigmund jumped, his heart pumping with fright. He looked around the room for the source of the voice, but the edges of the room were draped in darkness.

“Who’s there?” he asked. His voice was trembling noticeably, and he wasn’t quite sure why.

“Don’t you remember me?” answered the voice.

A figure stepped out from the darkness, a figure so grotesque that Sigmund screamed in horror. It was a man no more than thirty years old. He was barefoot, wearing stripey, too-small clothes that squeezed at his skinny frame. His face was gaunt, and the vacant stare in his eyes gave him a soulless, alien appearance. The arms on his shirt barely reached past his elbows, and were ripped at the cuffs to allow his hands to fit through. His hands… oh his hands, thought Sigmund. His wrists were raw, bearing deep cuts that went right down close to the bone. Blood had congealed and set into viscous scabs that ringed his wrists like rusty handcuffs. A blue star was emblazoned on the left sleeve.

“Get… get away from me!” shouted Sigmund, backing away towards the door.

Another figure stood in his way there, a young woman. Her skin was icy blue and several of her fingers had wasted away, blackened from hypothermia. She was barefoot too, though her feet were missing many of their toes. Her petite frame wavered back and forth in the door frame, her eyes covered by strands of thin, dark brown hair. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she had a narrow, toothy smile on her face. One eye twitched rapidly, the other was clouded over.

“Remember me?” she whispered.

Sigmund recoiled from her too, backing away into the shadows. Two hands reached out and grabbed him from behind, pushing him towards the operating table. Sigmund froze with shock, his body going limp with fright. He could feel the heavy breathing of the man behind him, his sulphuric breath blowing on the nape of his neck. He didn’t say anything to Sigmund, he just kept pushing him along forcefully until they got to the operating table.

The other man and woman came over to the operating table as well, and Sigmund felt their hands gripping his arms and legs. He kicked out, flailing with all his might to release their grip on him, but the stronger of the three prevented him from striking them. Sigmund was surprised by the strength of the two emaciated ones. The old leather straps on the table were as solid as ever, much to Sigmund’s dismay. The strong man held him down while the other two tightened the straps on his arms and legs. Sigmund could see dark red blood squelching up from underneath the skinny man’s wrist scabs when he pulled on the straps. The girl pulled off Sigmund’s boots to attach the leg straps, her long, dark hair tickling his skin. He shivered in disgust, turning his head to one side to look away from them. The strong man turned his head back, attaching a head strap to lock Sigmund into a forward facing position. Sigmund looked up at the strong man for the first time, and he suddenly realised why he didn’t speak. His blocky head was caked with blood, and a huge chunk of his skull had been opened and taken away. The brain was putrid black and pulsing awkwardly, sending tiny waves of blood trickling down the man’s face. Sigmund’s eyes widened and he tried to look away, horrified.

The skinny man walked over to the side, and returned with a heavy cloth-covered package which he placed on a side table. Sigmund could barely see him out of the corner of his eye, but he recognised the metallic clatter of scalpels and knives that he heard when the man had set the package down.

“Do you remember what you did to us?” asked the skinny man.

Sigmund tried to nod his head to the negative, but it was secured straight.

“No,” said Sigmund, “I don’t know who you are.”

The skinny man walked closer to Sigmund, twisting and turning a rusty scalpel in his hand.

“Oh, I think you remember all of us,” said the man.
He ripped open Sigmund’s shirt, using the scalpel to tear it apart and remove it completely. Sigmund wriggled and shouted out in fear.

“Stop it, stop it please!” he stuttered.

The skinny man brought the scalpel down once more, making a shallow cut in a line from Sigmund’s shoulder down along his arm. Sigmund screamed. Hot blood pumped out onto his arm and chest. He felt his bowels loosen and give way.

“Do you still not know us?” asked the girl. Her smile was constant and unnerving. “You met us all in this very room, many years ago. Research, I think you called it.”

Sigmund spat at her angrily. “Get away from me. You’ll pay for this. You’ll all pay for this.”

“The war is over, Doctor.”

The skinny man plunged the scalpel into Sigmund again, deeper this time. Sigmund squirmed and became weak with the pain. Another strike of the blade opened a deep gash across his chest.

“It is over,” the man continued. “You paid the ultimate price. And I still don’t think you realise it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sigmund.

The strong man leaned over Sigmund and looked down at him, a faint smirk on his bloodied face.

“Welcome to Hell.”

[pickarooney]

A woman is concerned over her parents' reliance on life-like robot servants.

Katie looked up eagerly as she heard the kitchen door opening,hoping to see one of her parents smiling faces. As the cleaning bot came through she sighed to herself, 'Morning Mary'. 'Good morning Katie' replied the bot,'How was your week at college'? 'Fine thank you,have you seen either of my parents this morning'? asked Katie. 'They're downstairs in the lab,they've been down there since yesterday afternoon' said the bot. 'Of course,the lab,where else would they be' thought Katie. Her parents were senior technicians at Smythe enterprises,the leading bot manufacturer for over 40 years.
Making her way downstairs she wasn't surprised to hear the voice of Wilson,her parents robot assistant. Wilson was programmed with every type of engineering data and a few added extras that only she and her parents knew about. All their house bots were. While most bots had voice and emotion recognition,her parents had spent years,decades even trying to improve upon their code,to make them more....Human
What they were doing was illegal,ever since the first robots with emotions had been made,at the beginning of the robot age. At first they had been greeted with fear and suspicion,then gradually people had started to trust them,to tell them secrets,there were even some human/robot romances. What hadn't been seen,behind the scenes was a robot revolution was starting,they joined together and killed their human owners. The death toll was in the thousands and it had taken months to track them all down and destroy them.
They had argued over this many times,Katie and her parents as they believed it was a bug implanted in the robots systems by an opposing manufacturer but no proof had ever been found of this. Two years ago they had made their most lifelike bot to date,a dog. In appearance and sound he was everything a living breathing dog should be,his coat grew and he ate and urinated but internally he was a network of chips and wires. If they were raided and the animal was found to be robotic they would be put into prison for life or worse. Stories abounded in whispered conversations about creators of animal bots disappearing for good. They were too lifelike,too difficult to tell apart from real dogs. If a human bot like that should ever be created and infiltrated a high up position in government or military the consequences could be devastating. The way things were going a real breathing,emotional,absolutely lifelike human robot could be a reality in five years.
As Katie walked in the door of her parents lab the object of her thoughts came bounding over to her,barking loudly. 'Hey Fido' she said laughingly,'keep it down,hey'? Fido cocked his ears and whined. He was programmed to behave like a dog,a very obedient one but a dog nonetheless. If she gave a command he would listen,but that didn't mean he would like it. The specially made nanobrain inside his head actually learned by itself,instead of being told what emotions to have,the dog's brain created new ones for himself. It was primitive and small,he was only a dog after all, but it was also a giant leap in robotics. The only way of telling the difference between fido and other dogs would be to cut him open or use a thermo imaging machine specially made for the purpose of raiding houses suspected to be involved in making clones. That's what they called the new animals,clones. The only major difference besides the machinery was that these animals were created,not born and soon that could change too.
Looking at her parents huddled over a computer screen,Katie thought they looked worried. Wilson of course looked serene as always. 'Is something wrong mum' asked Katie. 'No dear not at all' smiled her mum, 'whatever made you think that'? Her smile didn't look right though,it didn't quite reach her eyes. Thinking back over the years to her mothers brilliant wide open smile made Katie even more concerned. 'You would tell me if there was a problem wouldn't you'? she asked again. 'Yes Katie of course we would', her father replied woodenly,'We were just talking about maybe taking a vacation together,this week even,all five of us'. Now she was really worried,her parents never took a holiday anywhere,not in her memory anyway and to take Fido outside of the neighbourhood would be very dangerous indeed. 'Is it'? she began but the words died on her lips as the roar of a lot of vehicles screeching to a halt could be heard outside and they heard footsteps on the stairs to the lab,no time to talk or move even.

A body appeared at the lab doorway,one they all recognised,General McKearson,the head of the resistance force,tasked to root out 'Near Lifelevel Robots'. He had been a hero after the resistance 20 years before for destroying so many of the robotic threats but the years had not been kind to him and he had a permament sneer on his face now. He leered first at Katie who drew herself up proudly,she wasn't going to let him think she was upset although the trembling in her fingers would tell him that anyway. Narowing his eyes at her stubborness the general turned to her parents. 'By the power given to me by the NLR, to protect the citizens of this country,i'm placing you in detention for abuse against the laws set down in the new world constiution,Rule 4,subsection5,paragraph 89',' Namely for the insertion of emotion chips in five bots contained in the household and the creation of one near lifelevel animal'. Taking out a machine from one of his pockets he aimed it at Fido and it immediately lit up a clear green,indicating the prescence of nanotechnology. Turning to one of his sergeants who had come down the stairs after him he pointed at the dog and said 'Destroy it'. 'Nooo' screamed Katies mother in despair,she loved that dog. 'Shh my dear' whispered her husband,'he'll be ok,it'll all be ok'.
'I very much doubt it will be ok' laughed the general,'i'll make it my business that the animal is destroyed and neither of you two see daylight ever again'. That was enough for Katie,she launched herself at the general,beating on his chest, 'You great big bully,they've never hurt a fly'. In the kerfuffle the thermo imaging device fell out of the generals hands and onto it's side,turning it on. He pushed Katie off and threw her into a corner,glaring at her in disgust. 'Sir' said the sergeant. 'What the hell is it sergeant' he roared. 'Well' the sergeant replied nervously,'it's the device,look'. Pointing straight over at Katie and glowing the most luminous green the general had ever seen,the device was going crazy with readings. Picking it up slowly he stared intently at the readings for a minute before turning to her parents with a big grin.' Well,well,well,what do we have here'? Katies father stood up and said 'You leave her alone,she doesn't know,she's done nothing wrong'. 'Doesn't know'?,'how could she not know she's an abomination,filth,a threat against us all'! Spittle was now flying out of his mouth as his temper grew.
Unseen and forgotten in the background Wilson was edging slowly towards the side entrance that led to a drain across the road. Katie had found it when she was eight and spent hours playing in there playing with imaginary friends. It had a more practical use though,it was an escape tunnel with a titanium door which once locked with a certain code would not open again for 48 hrs. He beckoned Katie over to him,motioning at her to go slowly. She went grudgingly,still unsure as to what the general was so upset about,what had she done? The door slid open noiselessly as always and Wilson pulled her in,closing the door gently behind them and inputting the code to lock it. Her last glimpse of her parents was of them huddled together yet standing up to the General,refusing to look away as he ranted.
'Wilson what's going on' she asked quietly,'We have to get help for Mum and Dad'. 'Katie i'm sorry' he replied hesitatingly,'but we always thought this would happen,that you would be found and my orders are to protect you at all cost'. 'Me' asked Katie,'why me,i'm not special'? 'Oh but you are Katie,you are the most special thing on this earth right now' he said,'You are the first cloned baby,cloned with nano technology and grown inside a womb'. Your insides are so intertwined that it's impossible to see where human flesh ends and robot begins'. 'You are our future'.

[pickarooney]

A playwright has the power to create whatever he describes on his recording machine.

Click clack clickety clack. Clack click clackety click.

The sounds echoed off the walls of the bare room.

Clack clack click clack. Clackety clackety clickety clack.

I look down at what I had written.
Qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM 1234567890 . , : ; *

Amazing. All the keys work, after all this time.
The typewriter was a vintage model my Granddad had left me in his will. He was always protective of the old thing. I remembered at the age of five or maybe six I had wandered into Gramps’ den. I had pottered around, finding little of interest until I spotted the contraption on his desk. Marvellous thing for a curious boy. I jumped on to the chair and began bashing away at the keys. Not writing anything, just pressing randomly. Gramps had heard the cacophony and came storming in. I can’t remember what the old man shouted but he lifted me physically off the chair and deposited me on the ground. He spent a moment scrutinising the piece of paper before crumbling it and unceremoniously dumping it. It was only then that he noticed the small boy staring at his feet and trying not to cry too audibly. Gramps was apologetic and bribed the tears away with chocolate ice cream. That always worked. The man loved that thing. That was why I was so chuffed he left it to me.

Underwood. Number 5. Black and gold. Designed in that interesting old way before everything was mass-produced in China. Cogs and wheels. You see the workings of it through the side. Someone had shed blood, sweat and tears to make this and you could feel it. Heavy. Solid. Boy, did it make some noise. Not annoying though. Sharp. Decisive. Satisfying. It made me want to write.

And write I do.
Step one: Set the scene

<The rain is pelting down on a narrow street as it has been for some time. The pale gold streetlights are reflected and distorted on the surface water. Cars plough through the flood, dousing anyone if there were anyone to douse. Down a dark alley a blonde girl in a red coat is splayed out on the ground. The camera zooms in and we see blood trickle from her mouth. Fade out.>

I sit back a moment. Is the red coat too cliché? Or was it, you know, more of an homage? Homageful? Homageic? (Mental note to check if any of those are words later) At what point does it go from being a knowing reference to an even more knowing rip-off? Actually, I can’t even remember why it’s such a cliché, is it better if you can’t remember whose ideas you are stealing?

As I muse I reach for the box of Camel Lights and by the weight it’s empty. I throw it at the wastepaper bin and miss. Essential part of writing for me, cigarettes. I don’t smoke normally but I’ve become accustomed to them while writing. Tap tap puff. Tap tap puff. Technically there isn’t anything inspirational in nicotine but maybe I’ve seen too many films with writers clacking and smoking furiously.

Up off the chair, grab my jacket. Do a quick check; keys, wallet, phone. Out the door, bish bash bosh. I tear down the stairs after checking for bystanders and finding none (having been warned about my exuberant brand of movement on several occasions by the older and weaker-hearted of my neighbours). Bound out the door and suddenly I’m in a pair of wet shoes, wet socks and wet pant legs. The street’s flooded, it isn’t raining any longer but the water must be about a foot deep.

Nevertheless, I trudge on up the street towards the local convenience. Cars splash me as they pass by but I no longer care. Once my socks are wet I may as well be swimming. I reach the shop and make my transaction whilst making small talk regarding the utter desperation of the weather. I leave the shop and look around the street. I’m reminded of that scene I was writing about. I spark up a smoke and go for a wander. Inspiration. I meander around for a few minutes until I glance down a side alley and stop dead.

A blonde girl.
Splayed out.
Red coat.
What a cliché.

I fling what’s left of the cigarette into the street. It fizzles as it hits the water. I realise I’m staring. What do I do? Waves of paranoia wash over me. If I’m caught here, who knows what the police will say? The rain probably washed any DNA evidence away. There would be only me. Standing beside a dead body. I have to get out of here. I try to walk nonchalantly but it’s hard to do that when you keep looking behind your back to see if anyone is watching you.

I reach my building, all a fluster. I don’t remember walking up the stairs but before I know it I’m in my apartment with the door locked. I discard my wet clothes and turn on the shower. I keep going over it and over it. It was just what I had described. I shake my head vigorously in attempt to stop my racing mind. Coincidence. Must be. I turn off the shower.

I towel off and put on some fresh clothes. I sit back at the typewriter. Underwood. Number 5. Gramps’ beloved typewriter. I look at the paper still in the machine.

Words jump out at me. Rain. Dark alley. Blonde girl. Red coat.
Blood.

I hastily tear out the page. Crumple it. Discard it. I sit awhile and I think. And start typing.

<There was a sharp tap at the door>

There was a sharp tap at the door. I started, then regained my composure. Who taps at a door once? I must be hearing things. I keep typing.

<Another tap, followed by a couple more. Insistent>

Someone starts rapping. I get up to answer it.
“Hello?” I offer to the empty space. There was no one there. I look up and down the hallway. Still no one.

I close the door and sit back down again. This is getting weird. I begin typing again.

<Someone stands outside the door and commences knocking. It is an elderly man.>

I get up to answer the knocking. This time Old Sam was there, the janitor.

“Hi there” I say to him.

“Hi” he replies “Terrible weather, huh?”

“Terrible” I agree “Catastrophic” I try to one-up him.

“Just came out of nowhere”

“Nowhere” I concur and make a distracted almost-smile.

“A couple of tenants are having trouble with leaks, how’s your place holding up?”

“Dry as a bone.” What a cliché. And I’m supposed to be a writer.

“Alright then, let me know if you have any problems” He gives a warm smile.

“Will do.” I answer the smile with a rather lukewarm one. “Thanks Sam.”

I close the door and stand there pondering awhile. Then I return to my office and sit back at the typewriter.

I thought for a while. Lit a cigarette.

<A man walks ponderously up the narrow stairs. He is wearing a grey woollen coat and a black fedora. He walks with a pronounced limp due to a club foot. At his side he holds a nondescript black briefcase and grasps it with a steely grip. Inside are freshly minted and unmarked bills. Each fifty in denomination. He had counted them carefully. The number was one hundred thousand. They make an appreciable weight. He reaches the second floor and stalks the hall carefully. He stops outside number twenty seven, pauses for a moment, then deposits his briefcase. He leaves the same way he arrived, and in the same manner.>

I lean back in the chair and crush the cigarette into the ashtray. I exhale the last of the smoke and walk to my front door. I open it rapidly. Too rapidly, it hits hard against the wall. But I don’t notice.

On the ground is a nondescript black briefcase.

I stare for a moment, blink a few times but it doesn’t disappear. I am relieved. I think. I pick it up. It has an appreciable weight.

I close the door softly and open the case. It’s full of money. I sit on the floor, half in shock. I don’t know how long I sit there but I find myself back in front of the typewriter. I light a cigarette. Inhale. Start typing.

<A tall, slender, woman sashays down the hall. She’s wearing a slinky black dress that accentuates her combination of lithe limbs and shameless curves. Her golden ringlets cascade around finely boned features. Her sparkling eyes are an opalescent green. Her lips full and luscious. She moves with a feline grace. A purpose. She’s looking for a man and knows where to find him. She arrives outside the door and waits. Number twenty seven. She doesn’t knock.>

With no small amount of trepidation I get up and open the door. There she is. A goddess incarnate. She ushers herself in and I close the door.

It’s some time later and she is dressed again. With nothing more but the most perfunctory of goodbyes, she’s gone. The door closes with a neat click.
I lie back on the bed, my heart still pounding a staccato beat. This is all too much to take. What can I do with this power?

What can’t I do?

I need to slow the pump of my heart, cool the engine of my brain. I go to the living room and sit on the couch. I can feel the machinery grinding to a halt already. I flick on the television.

The news. I never watch the news but whenever I turned on the bastarding thing the news was on. It was like it was trying to educate me or something. I’m about to switch channels when I see a street name at the bottom of the screen. Moore Street. My street. I stop dead.

“An unidentified young woman was found bleeding in an alleyway this evening. She was taken to a local hospital but died en route. Initial reports are sketchy but it appears she was stabbed in a mugging. CCTV footage here shows the woman being accosted and collapsing down a side alley. The police are appealing for witnesses. The police also want to talk to a man, shown here, who walked past the woman hours before she was found. The paramedics say that if the alarm was raised earlier, the chances are, she would have survived….”

My mug was looking up at the camera. Bad picture. Grainy. Black and white. But me.

I turn off the television and go back to my office.
I take a deep breath. Light a cigarette. And start typing.

<Final Scene: We are in a small, blank, square room. There are no paintings on the white walls. There are no windows. The only furniture is a desk and a chair, upon which a man is at a typewriter. An Underwood Number 5. Rivulets of smoke from a lit cigarette spiral and swim around the man. There is a tinny clack of typing. As he types he tips the ash into a wastepaper bin. One of the ashes ignites the crumpled paper inside. A fire starts. The desk catches. We hear a click as the door locks from the outside. The man keeps typing. The camera zooms out to the sound of flames crackling. Fade to black.>

[pickarooney]

A newlywed refuses to let go of the memory of his deceased mother and his childhood home.

“For the love of Freya, I’m bored. Was it always your intention for us to spend our honeymoon on a Battle Cruiser?” she moaned, teasingly.
“Come on Lexxi, you know how important this is to me… I know the timing isn’t ideal, but I promise I’ll make it up to you. Once this whole thing is behind us, we’ll go on our Honeymoon and I assure you it’ll be worth the wait,” he replied, grateful that she had agreed to travel with him in the first place.
“And where exactly is it you’re planning to take me?” she asked, as she snuggled up closer to him on the bed.
“If I told you that, it would ruin the surprise.”
“Please Coll. Tell me. I need to know,” she persisted, right before she embraced him in a long passionate kiss, in an attempt to persuade him to reveal the location.

Once they eventually managed to cease pawing at one another long enough to take a breath, he smiled, looked her straight in the eye, and quipped, “You won’t get it out of me that easily.”
She crossed her arms and pouted in mock rage, but secretly she was happy he wasn’t willing to spoil the surprise so easily. She did love surprises after all, and she was confident she would not be disappointed, when the time came.
“Don’t be like that Lexxi.”
“Fine,” she said, quickly dropping the façade and allowing herself to break into a smile, “but at least tell me what’s been so important all day, that it’s kept you away from your beautiful young bride?”
“Spent most of the day on deck with the other Rebel Leaders, strategizing the attack, and after that I took some time to catch up with Jace and Mae and we spoke about…”
He couldn’t finish.

Lexxi didn’t press him on the matter. She knew it was hard for him to talk about his mother and he rarely spoke about her, but Lexxi knew he thought about her every day, and at night he often replayed the horrors that his family had endured, in his mind as he slept, waking up abruptly in a cold sweat. Lexxi also knew that he was incredibly relieved that she would be there next to him when he woke from his nightmares, to hold him until he could finally fall back into a slumber. It was one of the things that she loved most about him – how vulnerable he could be during the darkest hours of the night, and she was glad that she was the one who could be there for him at that time. And glad that she is there for him now, silently embracing him as he gathers his thoughts.

Although he rarely spoke about it, Lexxi knew the story of Coll’s past all too well – most of it he had revealed to her himself, when they first began courting. She had pieced together most of the rest of the story from Coll’s brother, Jace, and their aunt, Mae. The Island on which Coll grew up had been part of a sick experiment by the leaders on Planet Solar. The Solarian leaders had kept its people in the dark about the rest of the Galaxy, cutting off all communications with other races and leaving them with only the most primitive of technology, as part of a social experiment to see how they’d act in such a primitive environment and watching them worship false deities – none of them even aware of the teachings of Freya. For generations billions of lives were subject to this preposterous project, killing each other over petty quibbles, unaware of the opportunities that lay outside their little Island. The rest of the Galaxy of course, Lexxi’s people included, were completely unaware of this project for such a long time, believing the Solarians merely to be a recluse race of people, who wished to remain undisturbed.

Coll had been seventeen years old when the uprising took place. A Galifreian ship had lost its way and come to be within planet Solar and crashlanded on the Island, leading to absolute chaosm when the people of the Island believed the Apocalypse was coming. It was at this point that the creators of the experiment came in their ships to the Island and made themselves known, explaining to their people what they had been subjected to. Many were shockingly, unphased by the announcement, but the majority were outraged by the lie that had been their entire existence and rose up against the creators. Coll’s mother had been one of the leader’s in the uprising and was brutally murdered by the creators as an example that they still held the power and would not tolerate such behaviour. For years Coll’s people battled the creators and hundreds of thousands died - the creators having much superior technology and weaponry. It was only at this point that the rest of the Galaxy learned of the experiment and stepped in, freeing the Solarians and imprisoning the creators on the same Island in which the experiment took place.

Three years had passed since that day when the Solarians left their Island and took refuge on various planets across the Galaxy. That’s when Lexxi met Coll – he and what remained of his family had taken refuge on her planet, and when they met it had been love at first sight. They courted for just over two years before he proposed to her. They had been on a trip to Galifrey, the most beautiful planet in the Galaxy, when he finally proposed to her and several months later they were married. During this time, the creators back on Solar had been standing trial in the Galactic Supreme Court, in what was a lengthy case, for the crimes they had committed. It was during the wedding reception that Coll received word that the Court had ruled the creators would be acquitted of all charges and would be released from their imprisonment in less than a week’s time.

As soon as the wedding reception had ended, the Rebel leaders, people who had worked closely with Coll’s mother, arrived on a Battle Cruiser to pick up Coll and his family (which now included Lexxi), to accompany them in the final step of the rebellion. Despite the rulings of the Galactic Supreme Court, they could not allow the creators to go freely and their intent is to return to place they once called home and destroy it, before the creators are set free from their imprisonment there. Lexxi had at first been worried that the Galaxy Federation would then convict the Rebels of mass murder and destruction of land, but members of the Federation who had been outraged at the ruling of the Court to begin with had assured both Lexxi and the Rebels that a blind eye would be turned to their crime.

Finally Coll broke the silence. “It was just tough not having her at the wedding – a constant reminder that she is gone.”
“I’m sure she would’ve been very proud of you, and thankful for what you are about to do in her honour,” she assured him.
“I guess you’re right,” he agreed and pulled his wife closer to him in order to steal another kiss.
“So did anyone happen to mention, how much longer until we get there?” she asked as they broke away from their embrace.
“We’re not far from Solar now,” he replied, “I imagine it will be less than 24 hours until we reach our destination. Less than one day until I see home again. Less than one day, until we finally destroy Earth.”

[pickarooney]

Schoolteacher Helen Foley finds a strange and very serious little girl on the stairs outside her apartment.

Awake.

Light net curtains shifted from left to right and back again as a cool breeze blew through a half-opened window and rays of sunlight shone upon the face of Julie Carter. She rubbed her bright green eyes, pulled back a patchwork quilt, sat up – and her feet made their way to the comfort of a pair of old, worn slippers.

Julie slipped on a thick dressing gown and made her way down a creaking wooden staircase. A little girl sat on the bottom step with her back to Julie, the front door ajar. Julie paused for a moment, then continued on down the stairs. The girl did not stir as Julie approached her. Julie knelt behind her, touched her on her shoulder, and as the girl turned to face her, Julie noticed that the she was playing with a tatty doll in brown and white.

'What is your name?' said Julie.

'You know my name!'

'What do you mean? I've never seen you before in my life!' Julie began to study the child closely, holding her by the shoulders and staring into her face. 'And how did you get into my house?'

'The door was open. And my name is Lilly - you should know, you gave it to me!'

Julie's jaw dropped and she pushed the child back a few inches.

'What kind of cruel joke is this? Who put you up to it?'

'It's not a joke mummy! I'm back! You waited all this time for me and now i'm back!'

'This can't be true! My daughter is gone, she was taken from me a long time ago. I don't believe you, and this is a cruel joke -'

The child interrupted, 'Just look at my eyes mummy, they are your eyes! Can't you see it?'

Julie stared into the girls eyes as tears began to well up in and roll from them, down her face, to her chin. She pulled her in closer, her thumbs wiping the tears from her eyes, as they began to form on her own face. She pulled the child into her and hugged her tightly as she began to sob.

'Oh Lilly! My beautiful little Lilly! It really is you!'

Julie's hand held the back of Lilly's head and the two wept. After a few minutes Julie took her child in her arms and carried her into the kitchen. She let Lilly down onto one of the seats at the kitchen table and sat beside her.

'Where have you been? Those people who took you – what did they do to you?'

'I can't remember, I don't want to remember and I don't want to talk about it!' Lilly's face grew red and she turned away from her mother's gaze.

'It's okay, i'm sorry. All of that can wait. I just – I just don't know what to say. I'm so happy that you're here and that's all that matters right now!' Julie took her child's head in her arms, pulled it towards her and kissed her hard.

Lilly smiled 'Thanks mummy!'

'Let me get you something. A drop to drink? A bite to eat?'

'No thank you.'

'Lets go upstairs. I'm going to get dressed and we're going to go out. But this time I'm not going to let you out of my sight!' They hugged again.

Julie led her daughter through the hall and up the stairs, into her bedroom.

'Now, you just sit on the bed over there,' Julie pointed to the bed, 'while I make myself presentable.'

Julie took a brown dress from a wooden wardrobe, dressed herself in it, then took a white cardigan from atop a dresser and slipped it on over the dress.

'What would you like to do?'

'I just want to spend the day with you.'

'Oh we're going to have so much fun!'

They made their way down the stairs and out of the house. The street was busy, cars passed by in both directions and people went about their business. Julie spotted an ice-cream stand across the street. She took Lilly by the hand and led her up to the stand. She knelt down and looked into Lilly's eyes. They both smiled.

'What would you like darling?'

'I just want you mummy. That's all.'

'I'll get you a lovely ice-cream cone. You like ice-cream, don't you?'

'I don't know, I've never had it.'

'Never had ice-cream? Oh, you're going to just love it!'

Julie stood up. The ice-cream man was nowhere to be seen. She leaned over the counter of the ice-cream stand and turned her head from left to right, but the stand was empty. She turned and looked up and down the street. All of the people who had been there were gone, and cars sat abandoned in the middle of the street.

'Lilly, where did all the people go?'

'Who cares mummy? Now we have each other!'

Julie looked down into her child's eyes, held her hand against her cheek and rubbed it gently with her thumb.

'You're right, of course. It doesn't matter.' Julie smiled an uneasy smile, which she betrayed with her eyes. 'We're going to the zoo! You're going to love it there, it's my favourite place in the world!'

The mother and her child made their way through the deserted streets toward the zoo. Buses were parked at the sides of roads, their doors open and no driver at the helm. The wind blew loose newspapers across the street, their headlines unintelligible combinations of random words. A dog ran across their path, it's leash dragging across the tarmac, and nobody there to chase it.

They came to the zoo's gate, which was swung wide open, and made their way in.

'What would you like to see first?'

'I don't mind mummy, which is your favourite?'

'I like the meerkats. Would you like to see the meerkats darling?'

'Yes mummy, i'd love to see them!'

Julie led her daughter along the gravel path, past the gift shop, past the reptile house, past the aquarium. They came to a sand pit surrounded by clear plastic. Two light brown, overfed meerkats stood tall, their heads twitching from side to side, as a third burrowed in the sand.

'Aren't they beautiful darling?'

'They're so cute!'

'Yes! They're such cute, funny creatures. So much personality. And the family love each other so much, just look at them standing there together.'

Lilly looked up and directly into her mother's eyes, a frown crept across her face and grew in intensity.

'Why did you do it mummy?'

'What do you mean? What have I done wrong? I thought you would like it here.'

'Why did you let those people take me away from you?'

The two standing meerkats began to sneer and show their teeth to each other.

'I didn't let them take you, they took you from me! I would never let anybody take you -'

'You gave me away! I was your only child and you gave me away to those people! You never cared about me!'

The two meerkats began to tear into one another with their claws, blood and fur flew around them, and haunting, unnatural cries filled the air. The third meerkat dug itself into the sand frantically.

'I don't – I don't know what you're talking about! Why are you saying these things? I'm your mother and I love you very much!'

'I hate you! I hate you and I never want to see you again! Get away from me!'

Julie held her hands up to her face, screamed, then began to fade away. The little girl sobbed, the zoo and its animals faded to a white void, until even the void itself disappeared.

Lilly Carter sat on the edge of her metal frame bed and closed her picture book. The hall was lined on both sides with rows of the same beds, the windows barred. Children ran between the rows, from one end of the room to the other, and out of the wooden door.

An old woman in a light grey dress walked up to Lilly and put her hand behind the little girl's neck.

'Come now child, your supper will be getting cold.'

Lilly picked up a tattered old doll. The doll wore brown and white cloth and had bright green eyes. Lilly walked hand in hand with the old woman, out of the door. A gust of wind blew through Lilly's book, turning the pages from beginning to end. Images of a woman in bed, that same woman and a small child at the dinner table, at an ice-cream stand and at the zoo.

An image of a woman, a woman with bright green eyes, dressed in a brown dress and white cardigan, standing alone. A frown on her face and a solitary tear falling from her eye.

[pickarooney]

Two children, neglected by their bickering parents, escape from their unhappy lives to a never-never land by way of their swimming pool.

Pool

Eleven more seconds, that was all Dean needed. He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to keep them from bulging out of their sockets, and squinted at the ever-slowing flicker of his digital watch. His body was really fighting him now. His chest convulsed and his limbs twitched, but he held them tight—made them obey—as the passage of time slowed to a crawl and the seconds chugged past.

5:45. Dean released his hold and his body, bent on survival, let instinct kick in: pushing down, reaching up, breaching the surface and gasping great lungfuls of air.

For one glorious moment he could just enjoy being alive, until the pool drained from his ears and once again the sounds of discord replaced the hollow quiet of the water. They were still at each other’s throats, maybe literally this time. He swam to the edge to catch his breath.

Sometimes, when he emerged and everything was quiet, he wondered if they had actually finished each other off, but then there’d be a sound to rule it out. Like his father starting the mower or his mother humming some tune, both carrying on as though they hadn’t just been screaming blue murder, or threatening to, “tell Dean all about it.” He didn’t understand the threat—surely they knew that nothing they could let spill could make him hate them any more than he already did?

One more year, that’s all it would be before he’d finish high school and go to the furthest away state to offer him a college place. Then he’d never have to see either of their faces again, or listen to their phony bull****.

That was what got to him most, not the fact that they hated each other, but the way they pretended that they didn’t. Outside their four walls they were the picture-perfect happy couple, his father holding open doors and pulling out chairs and his mother with her ‘dears’ and ‘darlings’. But once they were back home, the doors were slammed and the chairs knocked over—and his mother’s terms were no longer of endearment. If Dean only ever achieved one thing in his life, he wanted never to be a fake like them.

There was a metallic clatter from inside the house, probably the silver tea tray again: a wedding present from his grandmother which sported more dents than there had ever been teacups carried on it. Dean rolled his eyes.

His nerves had settled again and his heart rate and breathing had returned to resting levels. He was recovering quicker and quicker from his bouts underwater. Maybe when he got to college he’d join the swim team and it would be an advantage—a happy little by-product of his attempts to avoid his parents’ screaming matches.

The rumble of his father’s voice and his mother’s high-pitched whinny in response spurred him on, and he pushed away from the edge of the pool to tread water. He reset his stopwatch, took a deep breath and plunged under the surface to settle on the pool floor.

The first few minutes were so easy that they were boring; he just had to remember not to waste oxygen by moving unnecessarily. To keep himself from looking at his watch too early, he liked to focus on the fourth grey tile from the bottom on the back wall. This time though, there was something distracting in the corner of his eye. He kept staring at the tile, but found himself thinking of the thing, whatever it was, and curiosity started to gnaw. He glanced at his watch. 1:19, much too soon to have checked, the run was spoilt.

He looked left towards the thing and was surprised to find that is was something so banal as a door. Granted, it was a door in the wall of his pool, but it was white and innocuous, and even though he had never seen it before, he knew it had always been there. He uncurled his legs and swam over to it.

It closed flush with the tiled wall of the pool and had a curved white handle. Set at eye level was a slim rectangular window. Dean shielded his eyes from the diluted sunshine and pressed his face to the glass. It took a moment for his vision to filter out reflection allowing him to see what was inside.

Momentarily startled, he jerked his face away before moving it slowly back to confirm what he had seen and, yes, there in the water beyond the door was a pair gentle eyes and a wry smile. A girl.

The girl grinned and cocked her head, inviting him in, then turned and kicked away into the darkness. Dean let himself float to the surface.

He pushed himself half out of the pool and looked around. His garden ended no more than ten feet from the edge of the pool and beyond that were large old oaks with deep roots. There was nowhere the door could lead, but then it must go somewhere, because he’d just seen someone swim back into it.

There was silence from the house, but Dean didn’t wait to hear the sounds of normalcy returning. He took a breath and dove down to the door. He looked again through the glass but there was nothing to be seen now. Bracing himself against the tiled wall he tried the handle and the door opened easily. Dean held the frame with one hand as he drifted into the room; the water within was cooler, having not been warmed by the sun.

He couldn’t make out the walls or the floor but he trusted they were there. Peering in the direction the girl had gone, Dean saw the mirrored shimmer of the surface a short swim away. His fingers gradually released their grasp of the doorjamb and he swam for the light.

The air was warm in the low-lit cavern he emerged inside, and it took a moment to find his bearings. A sound from behind made him turn, and he was faced with a pair of pale slender knees. Looking up, he saw the girl sitting on a low ledge, calf deep in the water. The same teasing grin played on her lips. She was older than he had first thought, maybe a little older than he was. The thin dark fabric of her wet dress clung to reveal everything and nothing. Dean released a breath. “Hi.”

The girl didn’t speak; she simply patted the space next to her on the ledge. Dean moved across and pulled himself up to sit beside her. “This place is pretty neat. So, how did you get in here? Is there another door?”

The girl shook her head and smirked at him as she kicked the water lightly. She was toying with a long silver chain around her neck and Dean found his eyes drawn to the motion of her fingers next to the subtle swell of her breasts. He checked himself and dragged his attention back to her face.

She was chewing her lip and looking at Dean in a manner that made him acutely aware of the immodesty of his bathing suit. Any embarrassment was soon forgotten however, when the girl leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. He’d never been kissed by a girl before—sure he had kissed girls himself, but to have one take the initiative was thrilling in its novelty.

He sank into it, slipping his hand to the dip of her waist and splaying his fingers to feel the softness of her skin through her dress. The lightest brush of her tongue across his top lip sent a shiver through him, and he pulled her closer. The girl broke the kiss and laughed.

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but the girl placed a silencing finger to his lips and then let the smile fade from her face. She slipped into the pool and looked sadly up at him as she treaded water. “Time to go.” There was emotion in her voice that Dean couldn’t understand, and he wanted to ask her what the matter was, but somehow he couldn’t find the words. The girl gave him a watery smile and disappeared below the surface.

There was a knot of worry in Dean’s chest as he followed her into the pool and swam down after her. He wasn’t sure of his bearings having been turned around in the cavern, but he could make out the kick of her feet ahead and powered forward to catch up with her. As he drew closer he realised that it wasn’t the girl he was following, but a man, and try as he might he couldn’t gain any more on him.

The grainy light from the door came into view and Dean watched the man swim out through. A thrill of terror crawled up his back as he watched the door close and the light narrow to that of the slim window. Dean swam faster, his terror becoming layered with panic as he reached the door and fumbled for the handle only to find, as he had suspected, that there wasn’t one.

He pressed his face to the glass and watched as the man swam across the pool and got out. Even though he didn’t realise it until that moment, he had known all along that the man was him.


* * *


Sylvia rinsed the cups at the sink and watched her son emerge from the pool. He’d been spending a lot of time swimming lately, and she couldn’t blame him. She and Ed had been arguing more than usual; money was tight and getting together enough for Dean’s tuition was putting them under extra pressure.

He was their son and he was worth every minute of stress they were going through, but she couldn’t help thinking that it would be easier if only he could acknowledge their effort once in a while. She watched him standing by the pool, towelling his hair dry and stopping his stopwatch, before walking around to the patio door.

She sighed and picked up the dishtowel and began to dry the cups and arrange them neatly in the cupboard. She heard the door slide open and Dean’s barefoot padding on the tiled floor. “I picked up that shampoo you wanted in the store, honey. It’s by the shower if that’s where you’re going.”

She heard him stop and then move towards her, likely for a glass of water or a piece of fruit. She jumped with fright as his cool damp arms wrapped around her from behind. His wet hair tickled her neck as he kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate it.” He released her again, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and left the room.

Sylvia smiled and used the dishtowel to dry her eyes.

[pickarooney]

A salesman has the ability to sell his customers exactly what they need.

Martha shuffled slowly to the front door and opened it to discover a besuited young man holding a briefcase. He smiled pleasantly and greeted her: “Good evening, madam. I’m a travelling salesman. Perhaps I can interest you in some of my wares?”
Martha was usually suspicious of callers as an elderly woman living on her own, but this salesman with one simple greeting had managed make her forget any apprehension. There was something about him – some strange charisma. Besides, she was curious. In no time (for all her shuffling and slow movements) he was sitting down at her table while she made tea.
“So what can you sell an old woman who doesn’t need anything anymore, young man?”
He didn’t look around, did not search for anything that might give him a clue, but instead replied immediately and directly.
“In my business, I have found that everyone needs something, though sometimes they don’t realise it yet. How are you sleeping lately?”
“I…well… since Henry died…” She fumbled with the cup as she turned around to look at him.
He opened the case and took out a bottle. “This gives restful and peaceful sleep all night. Only small amounts are necessary.”
She finished and sat down with their cups, and considered the bottle.
“Good sleep again? That would be something. It’s been 2 years, and I still wake up every night thinking he is there beside me. I think maybe the accident was a dream, that maybe he will be there laughing at my old foolishness when I tell him about it. But then he isn’t. His picture is beside my bed.” She fell silent. They said nothing for a while, and sipped at their tea. He was either compassionate or a clever salesperson.
She shook herself out of her painful reverie, saw a package in his briefcase and frowned. “Does that say fireworks? You know those are very dangerous. The Miller boys were playing with those the day their house burnt down and they were orphaned. It was a tragedy. Although with parents like those… still, you shouldn’t be carrying those around, they’re not safe. Is this sleeping bottle safe?”
He closed the case and ignored the first part of what she said. “I can assure you that nothing bad will happen from this simple sleeping draught, madam. As I said, it will give you restful sleep for much longer than you have had in recent years.”
“Do you know what I’d really want most of all? To have Henry back. The nights are worst, but even the days are a struggle. You think you’re past it, but then…” She shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know you and here I am, chattering away about this. Of course nobody can bring him back. Maybe one day I will see him again. I’ll try this draught. What harm can it do at this stage anyway?”
He smiled as pleasantly as ever. “I’m glad to hear that. Please take the bottle without payment for now. I can come back in 3 days. If it hasn’t worked for you as hoped, you may give it back to me and there will be no charge.”
He explained the dosage, they made their farewells, and he donned his hat and left.
She realised she’d never even asked his name, nor had he offered it. It didn’t seem to matter.

The first night, Martha was a little unsure of this draught, but in no time she was fast asleep. She woke up the next morning to sunshine streaming across the room. She had the vaguest memories of seeing Henry in her dreams; first together with her, then on the other side of a bridge she couldn’t cross. She could take a step or two, but then something stopped her. He was standing there, waiting patiently. It was bittersweet and troubling.

She went about her day as usual, but she found she had a lot more energy. She’d forgotten what a good night of sleep could do. A neighbour remarked cheerfully on how well she was looking. No, he hadn’t seen the salesman, although you’d think he would be stopping at each door in turn.
The salesman hadn’t stayed that long with her. Maybe she could ask him exactly how he got by next time she saw him.

The second evening, despite the previous good rest, she was unsure about taking a second dose. It was difficult enough coping day to day without seeing him in these strange dreams as well. And who knew what was in this thing anyway? She watched her evening programmes on TV, and thought about the clock ticking on toward bedtime, wondering what she would do. In the end, she decided good rest and seeing Henry again was far better than the endless nights of restlessness, heartache, loneliness. She drank from the bottle.

Tonight’s dream was similar: they were together at first. He seemed so young again, and they were walking through their favourite park, talking and laughing as they always did. It felt so real. Part of her wanted to tell him that she never wanted this to end, that she wanted nothing more than to be in this park with him forever. But then he was on the other side of the bridge again. Everything else was misty and unclear as is the nature of some dreams, but Henry himself was as real as ever. She managed to get halfway over the bridge this time to him. He still waited patiently for her, smiling his old smile.
She woke up with tears on her cheeks.

The day went by in a blur. The days had always seemed so long, and the nights longer, but now she was lost in thoughts and preoccupied. What was this drink doing to her? What had the salesman given her? What did all these new dreams mean, and were they worth this newfound energy? And yet she knew she wanted to dream them forever. What was left for her here?
She lost interest in her programmes and went to sleep earlier that night. The dreams were still the same, and yet more real. They spoke, they laughed, they were separated. This time she nearly managed to make it across to the end of the bridge. Each footstep seemed to weigh a tonne, becoming heavier as she progressed, but it seemed vitally important that she make it to him. She woke up as he was reaching out his arms to her, never moving from his position, but encouraging.
She cried again. The grief was now as fresh and raw as it had been at the start; an old wound re-opened. It had taken such a long time for this part of it to pass after his accident, and she’d thought she was finally adjusting to life again. It would never be gone, but dulled. This could not be worth it. And yet she wanted to return. The salesman was supposed to be back again this evening, and her niece would be making her weekly visit later this afternoon to fuss and talk about nursing homes, but maybe she could sleep for another while yet. She couldn’t face the world without seeing him again – maybe then she would give back the bottle and be done with this strangeness and overturned memories. She drank a deeper dose.

This time, she dreamt of the bridge first. The sense of urgency and importance was back again. Henry waited on the other side, still unmoving and smiling. Everything else was still misty, but she only had eyes for him anyway. She struggled across, step by step. She kept expecting to meet the invisible barrier, to be prevented from reaching him as before, but it was gone. She was finally on the other side of the bridge, with Henry. As soon as she reached him, they were in their park again.

“... don’t know, found…”
“…old, heart… may be too late…”

Strange beeps, sounds, fleeting images temporarily superimposed themselves on her surroundings, disturbing their conversation and making her frown. Henry paused and turned to her, concerned. She smiled at him and held his hand more tightly, and then it was just the two of them again, walking along through the sunshiny park on a beautiful day, hand in hand.

[pickarooney]

An American neo-Nazi is inspired by the ghost of Adolf Hitler.

White Noise

Abe screwed in the last connector to complete the circuit, then tenderly turned the small brown knob. The tubes slowly began to glow, and the radio unit fizzled into crackling life. Abe felt like a proud father, a buzz of excitement grew as he watched his baby come alive. He had made it work. The last time this old crocked Reico had made a noise could’ve been in the 1940’s. He smiled, and continued to turn the dial, listening to wavering static as if to a world class symphony.

Mostly his ears met only white noise, but now and again, fuzzy staccato burbling could be heard as voices made their way through the mechanism.

“...Von schweren Sorgen bedrückt, ....zu monatelangem Schweigen verurteil......., ist nun die Stunde gekommen .... endlich offen sprechen kann.....”

The voice was crackly and faint. Abe bent his ear closer to the set in fascination, his grin widening. The unit must somehow have picked up a bit of skip; a guttural German voice was transmitting from the ether. And from a German radio too. He smiled at this oddity. He had no clue what the tinny voice was saying, but the strident tone was familiar. He scratched his head and turned the radio off. No point in overheating it when he had only got it going.

He left his den, with its hot electrical smells, and wandered to the kitchen to put on some coffee. His head ached and his eyes were tired. He had spent his last few weekends on that particular set, he was glad it was finally showing some results. He had picked it up for a song at the swap meet in the city, part of some old guy’s jumble. Out of all the pieces he had bought that day, the Reico was the one he’d most wanted to have. It was rare as unicorn ѕhit. The weird old guy who sold it had looked at him funny when he expressed an interest, and said the strangest thing:

“Sure, you think its right for you. Question is, have you the right blood for it?”

Abe had still bought it off the old coot, just glad that his crazy wasn’t catching.

The odd scratchy voice from the radio echoed in his head, needling his brain with its familiarity. It sounded like something he had heard in old war archives or films - just like the big dude himself, the head honcho: Mein Führer. Abe snorted at the joke. Of all the sounds that could come out of that machine, he got good old Adolf. Of course, it wasn’t really him, just some crackly German news station, but still... His fingers idly brushed the fabric of his shirt, beneath which the bumpy lines of his newest tattoo were just beginning to fade. He could feel the outline of the bent armed cross inked onto his chest. It was ironic to get that voice, all the same.
Abe took his coffee and strolled back to the den, curiosity overcoming his headache. Sitting into the creaking swivel chair, he turned the knob on the old wooden radio and cocked his head to listen. He sagged into the chair and smiled when nothing but soft static filled the room. What had he expected? More spitting German vowels?

Leaving the unit to hiss white noise, he ran his fingers over the wooden casing, caressing the old patina, still handsome and bright in spite of its age.

“...Männer des Deutschen Reichstages!...“

The voice popped so suddenly from the hiss of static that Abe shot bolt upright in his chair. He stared at the radio. Interference? Hardly. TV‘s were all digital now, and he didn’t usually get hash like this. The voice was exactly the same as last time. It was very odd. He crouched close to the machine again, listening keenly, but it had gone silent. Nothing, not even a crackle. “Dammit!“ he thought. It must have blown something.
The sound of the doorbell burst his growing annoyance before it could get anywhere. He hefted himself from the chair and made his way to the door. Through the peephole all he could see was the back of a cheap suit. He opened the door.

The man turned and smiled at him.

“ Hi there, Mr Nash? My name is Bob Sinclair. I’m from Provident and Mutual Insurance. I wonder if.... “

The man didn't get to say anything more.

“Get off my porch, negro.“

Abe spat the words into the man’s face. He didn‘t care if Bob Sinclair came from the lottery with a million dollar cheque. He was coloured. He was filth. Abe didn‘t deal with ‘their kind‘. The man stammered as if he hadn‘t heard Abe’s words.

“I’m sorry sir?“

“You gawdam will be sorry if you don‘t leave now, niggеr. I won‘t tell you again.“

The man‘s shocked face hardened into a grimace.

“Well fuсk you too, Sir“

Abe clenched his jaw and both fists. He wanted to grab the black, drag him in out of the sunlight, and beat that sorry monkey face into pulp. But instead, he stood stiffly on his welcome mat, and let Bob Sinclair walk back down his path and get away. Hot rage poured out of him like sweat. That filthy niggеr smell offended his nose. Almost as bad as the sly eyed coons and thieving yids who were moving into every block. They were the cause of this latest depression, Abe was sure of it. Tainting his country‘s pure white bloodline and returning his noble land to a place of dark skinned savagery. He went back into his house, fury surrounding him like an unseen ghost.

He stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom, and removed his plaid work shirt. His arms and torso were milky pale, always covered outdoors, but instead of tan lines, his skin was marked and patterned by a wild array of dark imagery. Stiff winged eagles. Skulls and daggers. Gothic script - prayers and mantras - covering his skin from neck to waist. His arms bore whole sleeves of menacing designs. Across the front of his chest was the proudest mark of all, his newest acquisition. Thick and dark, with scarred flesh still peeling from the wound; a swastika.

Abe left his shirt on the bed and wandered back to the kitchen. He was proud of his ink. It made him feel powerful. This was who he really was behind the radio-nerd mask. He didn‘t like to hide, but Abe had some strong beliefs; they were the kind of ideas you didn‘t get to share unless you were among friends. There were far too many liberals running this country; fearful, weak politicians, who would lock up pure white folk for beliefs like his, leaving the ignorant lower breeds to fester and thrive and consume his country.

He stared out of the window as he took out bread and carved some cold cuts from a boiled ham; his coffee pot gurgled as it brewed. The window overlooked the corner of the street, it gave Abe a covert lookout point to observe the street. His neighbourhood was going downhill. It had been for years, since property values dried up and slant-eyed moes started to move in. He even had a family of them living four doors down the block. Ugly little yellow children with high voices and evil smiles.

A sharp yelp of violent noise broke him from his reverie, and he snapped around in the direction of the sound, his carving knife clattering to the floor. It came from the hallway. Pops and crackles, loud and uneven, like firewood burning.

“What in the name of blazes...?“

Abe wheeled through the kitchen door and down the hall, chasing the increasingly raucous disturbance. It was coming through the closed door of the den, louder than hell. He burst the door open expecting to find chaos, but as he did, the clamour stopped abruptly. The silence it left behind almost hurt his ears.

He stood not knowing what to do. The room was undisturbed, his workbench covered in its usual clutter of electronic work-in-progress. The old Reico sat quietly where he had left it, a soft glow coming from its small dial. Abe rubbed his forehead. He was sure he had turned it off. He reached out to the metal faceplate with its small bakelite knob to cut the power; a spark crackled and a stinging snap bit his fingers and shot voltage from the radio up his wrist.

“Sonofabitch!“

He sucked his tingling fingers and rubbed his numbing arm. The unit was live. He would need to take the whole damned thing apart again. This had been such a straighforward job, he couldn‘t understand it. As he leaned over the unit and pulled the power, he heard it, a soft murmur so faint it almost wasn‘t there. He stopped and listened, searching beyond the ticking of the clock and the hum of the aircon for this other, mysterious noise. He leaned closer to the speaker, hunting for the sound. He had to almost press his ear to the cabinet itself but there it was, that same voice, faint but strident, coming from the old device. He could feel his heartbeat getting faster inside his chest as he looked from the curious radio to its unplugged electrical cord, hanging useless in his hand.

He sat heavily onto his chair and placed his hands under his chin as he stared at the radio. He touched it again; no shock this time. He could see the soft glow of the valves. They seemed to be getting brighter. Abe moved closer, he could still hear the harsh voice coming from the speaker, it too was getting stronger, increasing in volume. Sweat begin to prickle on his bare skin, yet he shivered with a chill. The warm light from the radio was peculiar. It throbbed, and seemed to be pulsing to the beat of his own heart. He stared and leaned closer, the hypnotic light pulling him in until he felt unable to drag his eyes away. The voice, clearer now, was insistent and compelling. It wormed into his head, probing through the circuitry of his brain, till his mind was full of that sharp presence, he could feel its white heat and pressure inside his skull. But he couldn‘t stop listening. He didn‘t want to stop. At first the words had been a jumble of unintelligible sound, but inside Abe’s head, they began to make sense. For the first time in his life, everything was becoming clear to him. This strange voice understood him. The voice knew what was wrong. And the voice knew what he could do about that. He slumped, wide-eyed, in the chair, his entranced mind lost to everything but the strong words from the radio, his glassy eyes reflecting the orange glow from the machine. His mouth dropped open and hung slack till drool rolled from his lip and dripped in a shining sliver from his chin. Both arms hung limp at his sides. He sat like that for a long time, till the light in the room changed from bright afternoon to deep evening shadows. The sounds of children’s laughter and barking dogs filtered in from the street outside, but Abe heard none of it. He simply gazed, zombie-like, at the small wooden box in front of him. Listening.

Abruptly, the light on the radio went out. Abe‘s head lifted suddenly; his eyes stared blankly in front of him. He stood, turned for the door and walked slowly towards the kitchen. As he entered the room, his foot kicked the fallen carving knife, sending it skidding across the floor. He stared at it curiously, before stooping to pick it up. Gripping it in his fist, he walked to his front door and stepped out onto the porch. The last light of evening was fading from the sky, the red glow in the west reflecting in Abe’s empty eyes. Voices echoed from along the street, as neighbours enjoyed the end of a warm summers day. Abe blinked, and felt the firm handle of the knife in his hand. His bare shoulders felt the breeze; his tattoos glowed on his pale skin like evil stains. Tilting his head, he sniffed the evening air. He turned the knife slowly in his hand as he walked out into the middle of the street, where he stood and listened. Happy children‘s voices could be heard from the garden of the neat little house four doors down. He smiled a strange and distant smile, and walked slowly towards the sound.

[pickarooney]

An old west hired gun goes to the grave of his enemy on a dare.

Black Sacramento.

Kelly Baker woke up clinging onto the bed clothes and whimpering before quickly wiping away the tears that were streaming down his face. He sat up slowly and stared around the room. The sheets were drenched with his sweat. He spotted the empty space beside him and leapt out of the bed, running into the hall. He could hear someone pottering around the kitchen. Was it Rosie? He wasn’t taking any chances. Slinking back into the bedroom, he reached under the mattress and after pulling out his Bowie knife, he crept out to the hallway. Craning his neck, he tried to get a look in the kitchen but the door was blocking the view. He called out.

“Rosie, that you in there?”
“Now who the hell else would it be, you god damn fool?”

He walked into the kitchen and put the knife down on the table.

“What you doing up in the middle of the night?” He asked.
“You woke me up again with your hollering. That’s every night this week, what in tarnation is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, it must you who has the problem. You need to lay off the rookus juice, making you piss all night long.”
“You’re a pig, Baker. And you did wake me; you was pulling the sheets off me and screaming out a name; Beau Rider. Who is he?”

How’d she know that name? Kelly grabbed the knife from the table and pointed it at Rosie.

“Where’d you hear that name?”

She backed against the sink, grasping onto the worktop.

“I told you. You was shouting it out and mumbling something about revenge or avenge or something like that. I don’t know. Put that knife down. I ain’t your enemy.”

He thrust the knife at her. It caught in the frills of her nightgown, tearing a small hole. He wanted her to know he wasn’t afraid to shut her up for good.

“You sure that’s how you know. You’ve not been hearing stories from people?”

He backed off slowly, lowering the knife.

“No. I have not heard stories from people, geez. Calm down. Look at my beautiful frills now, all torn.”

Rosie shook her head as she examined the gown, tut tutting before letting it go.
He placed the knife back down before sitting on a chair at the table. Rosie sat across from him, placing her hand on his.

“Baker, you do know you can trust me. Hell, I’ve had my own share of runs-ins with the sheriff. I ain’t gonna go running to them no matter what you do. I know what type of man you are, there’s nothing you could tell me that’d leave me shocked.”

He stared into her eyes. He was going to tell her everything. He’d never told anyone about Beau Rider. But somehow felt he needed to talk about it and a man like him didn’t have many friends to unload his woes. Rosie had always been there in the background, ready and waiting for him. He’d shared secrets with her before but nothing on this scale. She was a good woman though he figured, been around long enough to know he was to be feared. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to go blabbing.

He picked up the knife again and started cleaning the grit from under his nails.

“You know old Rage Eye Corban?” He asked her, “He has a ranch about fifty miles from here, some of the finest cattle in Sacramento.”

Rosie nodded, “he’s that albino, right? Hair as white as a Wisconsin winter. Wait a minute, wasn’t he killed last week? Yeah, the girls were talking bout it, horrible death, they said. Tortured or something. Found his body with no finger or toe nails…” Rosie drifted off, staring at him open mouthed.

He scraped the underneath of his thumbnail with the tip of the blade, inspecting the dirt and grit scooped out before nodding.

“That’s the one.” He glanced up at her.

“You? No. Do you know what they’ll do if they find out? His family are powerful people. You’ll swing for sure. So that’s what these nightmares are about.”

He slammed his fist on the table. What did this broad know, talking bout him like he was some sort of yellow belly. He snarled; baring his tobacco stained teeth as he pointed the knife at her from across the table.

“Who said anything about nightmares, I ain’t no nancy boy. This is more than that, much more.”
“OK, I see. Still, I ain’t surprised you not sleeping. How any man could knowing a proverbial California collar’s round his neck? What are you going to do? Is there anything linking you to this murder?”
“That’s not what’s keeping me awake, Rosie. A man like me knows death is always around the corner. I ain’t afraid to swing. It’s him, Beau Rider, that’s what I’m afraid of… He comes to me. Every night.”
“So... who is he? This Beau Rider? And why you so scared of him?”

Baker sat back in the chair and began.

“He was hired gun, travelled all through The West with his side kick. A broad called Nettie ‘the Nymph’ Kelly. Everyone thought him a fool working with a woman but it wasn’t long before they silenced the critics. They made a great team; together they were unstoppable. Then one day they happened upon some street urchin, dirty little pest went by the name Scruff. Nettie fell for the boy, she always wanted a nipper of her own but god hadn’t blessed her like other women. After a bit of fussing Beau let her keep him, Nettie always had a way of getting what she wanted.”

Baker smiled to himself before continuing the story.

“They taught him everything they knew about the game. It wasn’t long before he could out shoot both of them. Nettie encouraged Scruff like any loving parent and at the beginning Beau did too. But something went wrong along the way. Beau started to feel jealous of the boy. Or scared or something. He distanced himself from him and left his care to Nettie. She knew something was up and one night after the boy went to sleep, she called him into the parlour to talk to him. She asked him what was going on and he told her he didn’t trust the boy. Said he had an evil streak or something stupid like that. Said he noticed him looking at Nettie in an unsavoury way. Like she wasn’t his Mamma no more, like Scruff wanted her the same way Beau did. Nettie laughed it off at first but Beau got angry. He said they had to leave the boy behind, he wasn’t a baby no longer and could look after himself, he argued. Nettie didn’t agree, she loved that boy like he was her own. She didn’t want to leave him. But Beau insisted. He gave her an ultimatum – him or the boy. Nettie sat at the table crying. Beau left her at the table; shouted to her he was going the saloon for a whiskey and he’d be back by sunrise. He never returned.”

Baker shook his head slowly. Rosie squeezed his hand, urging him to keep talking.

“Although she loved him, Nettie couldn’t bear to look at the boy after that. She blamed him for Beau’s disappearance, I guess. Figured that Beau left her instead of her deciding to leave him. But she never would have left Beau. And Scruff knew that. That’s why after listening to the whole conversation between the two, he slipped out back and murdered Beau Rider on his way to the saloon. Snuck up behind him, hitting him across the head with a blacksmith’s hammer. Killed him, stone dead. Dragged his body outside the town and buried him a shallow grave. Never to be found.”

“Then what happened? What’s this got to do with Rage Corban?”
“Nettie left the boy shortly after Beau disappeared. She didn’t say goodbye, he just woke up one morning and she was gone. But he never gave up hope. He spent the rest of his years searching for Nettie. And as time passed by his need to see Nettie grew. He was a man now. And the only woman he’d ever trusted was Nettie. He started to think they could be happy together, as husband and wife, you see. Seen as there was no blood relation. He dreamed of living on a ranch with beautiful Nettie. He intensified his search for her until finally, a few months ago he found her.”
“Where was she?” Rosie leaned forward, gripping Baker’s hand tightly.
“She was living on Rage’s Sacramento Ranch. As his whore.”
“Scruff, he’s you. I know that much and you killed him, Rage I mean. To get Nettie back. So where she now, didn’t she want you?”

He pulled his hand from her grip and rubbed his face.

“She’s dead. I went there to kill Rage Corbon. I wanted to rip him apart limb from limb. The dirty hard case; touching my Nettie. And I did, I made that son of a bitch scream out like the yellow bellied coward he is. But Nettie, she was there, I didn’t know. She came running into the room, I didn’t even look, just fired my gun. And she dropped dead in front of me.”
“You killed her? Oh Baker, I don’t know what to say. I wish I could help you but I still don’t understand everything. Why is Beau in your dreams?”
“Yeah, I killed her. And I gots to live with that for the rest of my worthless life. And now, He keeps coming to me, he wants revenge for her death. Says I better watch my back. He’s out there, somewhere, looking for me, I just know it.”
“Beau? But how could he be, you killed him?”
“I’m talking bout his spirit, his ghost. He didn’t pass on, I guess he had unfinished business. In my dreams he shows me an empty black skull. It’s me, me with no soul. I know you may not think it but I’m god fearing man. My religion’s all I’ve got. If I confess my sins I can save myself from the flames of hell. But if that bastard gets my soul… Well, that’s me finished, in this life and the next.”

Rosie jumped up from her chair and grabbed Baker’s arm.

“I have an idea. A way to save you. I think. I hope.”


They waited for sunrise, travelling the roads at night was never a good idea. They loaded the body onto the cart, hiding it under some tarpaulin and climbed into the seat before setting off. He hadn’t buried her yet, just wrapped her in cloths and left her in a concealed cave. He wanted to find the perfect place for her to rest. He supposed now that he had. They went as far as they could on the dust track before pulling the horse up and unloading the cart. She took the shovel while he carried the body.

Rosie followed Baker through the thick forest, twisting and turning all the time, she wondered how the heck he knew what way he was going. Then they reached it; a large wooden cross with no markings.


“Here lies Beau Rider,” whispered Baker to himself. He placed Nettie’s body on a large flat rock close by before turning to Rosie. “Gimme that shovel.”

He started to dig. Rosie stood beside him and watched; turning her back on the cloth bound body. He dug and dug, not stopping for a break until he saw some tatters of clothing. He stopped and climbed out of the grave, leaving the shovel in the hole.

“Ok, let’s do this.”

The two turned around and gasped when they saw the cloths scattered over the flat rock with no sign of Nettie.

“What the…? Where’s my baby gone?”
“I don’t like this Baker. How could it just disappear like that? Let’s get outta here. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere til I find my Nettie.”

Baker ran to the rock and checked all around it. Rosie watched as he shouted out and searched nearby the grave before climbing to the top of a tree to get a better view of the forest.

He began to descend when he heard a scream; it was Rosie. Her screeches echoed through the woods and Baker frantically climbed down the tree, trying to peer below to see what was going on. When he was low enough he leapt from the tree, rolling onto the ground before jumping to his feet. He couldn’t see Rosie. He called out her name. No answer. He looked all around before noticing something at Beau’s grave; a frilly piece of lace poking out of the hole. He fell to his knees and crawling over to the grave he forced himself to look inside. There lay his two women. Nettie was lying down, head first, her long blonde locks covering Rosie’s face.

Baker jumped into the grave and swept the hair away. He let out a powerful howl when he saw the empty black skull looking back at him. Standing up, he took his gun from its holster and held it to his temple before confessing his sins out loud to the lord. As he finished he heard a noise behind him. Turning round he felt the cold metal of the shovel as it hit him across the face. Falling to the ground he cried out, “Lord, I am not worthy-”

He felt a long bony hand thrust down his throat deeper and deeper, grasping at something inside him before everything went black.

[pickarooney]

When a spaceship lands on a planet for repairs, one of the crewmen finds a tiny society.

All The Small Things

Kane bounced another pebble off the rock and watched as it sailed over the hole he was aiming at. Dammit! The last of his stash and he still hadn't hit the target.

He shuffled out from the shade of a boulder and raised a hand to ward off the glare of the sun; no wonder this was a lifeless rock. He silently cursed the eight white-robed figures who were on their knees, arms outstretched on the bare surface, praying to whatever God they believed in.

"Keep an eye on them," the captain had said. "Make sure they don't get lost."

He could have been studying for his Astrogator Level Two exams, but no. He had to babysit a bunch of religious nutjobs that Earth didn't want anymore. The sooner they were deposited on Harmony along with the cargo, the better. They could live on their own island with their own kind. Until they decided to invade and convert the next island, of course.

He gathered some more pebbles and looked back at the ship. It stood proud on its struts, black cerametal against uniform yellow rock. Chief Engineer Lambert and the new guy, Weaver, walked along its upper surface in their mag-boots, doing ... whatever engineers did. All he knew was that the warp coils had inexplicably failed, blowing a hole in the hull, and they weren't going anywhere until the coils were working again and the hull patched. They were really lucky they had been so close to the planet, or they would have had to limp through deep space until they joined the long list of pirate victims in this sector.

The nutjobs were chanting something now. He went back into the shade and flicked pebbles again. Too far left ... too far right ... Yes! Right in the middle. He walked over to have a look at his triumph when something caught his eye.

A thin fissure ran from the hole through the rock surface. All along it lay tiny blue structures, all straight lines and looking remarkably like ... buildings.

He dropped to his hands and knees and looked closer. A miniature city lay in the shade of the fissure, with streets, houses; even what looked like a church. Specks of colour -- about the size of a fingernail -- moved about.

He jerked back, his heart hammering. Aliens! Tiny human-like aliens in a tiny human-like city, stretched all along the fissure, for a hundred yards at least.

He jumped up, pebbles and nutjobs forgotten, and ran to the ship. It was blessedly cool inside, but sweat still blurred his vision as he knocked on Captain Giger's door. She was looking at a screen when it slid open.

"Aliens." He waved towards the gangway, breathless. "Outside."

She raised one eyebrow. "Aliens?"

"Loads of 'em. Little ones, in the rock."

"Little ... green men?"

"Well, more of an aquamarine. But, yes. Little green men. And women."

Giger's face was impassive for a moment. Crap. She doesn't believe --

She hopped up. "Show me. And if you're lying, you'll be bunking with the Chanters for the rest of the trip."

He led her down the ramp and out into the withering heat. The nutjobs weren't where they had been. His stomach tightened when he found them, prostrate over the fissure with the city.

"Hey!" he shouted as he broke into a run. "Get away from there."

As they approached, the leader stood; a man with long grey hair and piercing blue eyes.
"Captain," he said.

"Father Scott."

"It's simply amazing. To have found something like this, all the way out here, and so serendipitously as well."

"Let me see." Giger brushed past him and bent down. When she srood back up, her face was set in grim determination. "Okay, it's a first contact. The first contact. We have to alert the Deep Space Exploration Commission."

"Not at all," the Chanter said. "We must contact our High Priest on Harmony and tell him we have seen God’s face."

"Er, what? That's God?"

"God will be found in the smallest of places. That's what the Book of Chants says."

Giger folded her arms. "No," she said. "The DSEC manual says that whoever makes first contact is obliged to inform the authorites on the nearest Regulated planet."

The Chanter's eyes narrowed. "It's a moot point anyway, isn't it? Until the coils are repaired, we can't send a faster-than-light message."

"True, but ..." She raised her wrist-comm. "Vasquez? Take another two personnel, arm up and get out here."

She fixed the Chanter with a withering glare. "I'm quarantining this area, so head back to your quarters now."

"I see." His expression suggested he didn't like what he saw. He gestured for the others and they trudged away, each casting a baleful glance in her direction.

"As soon as those coils are fixed," Giger said when the others were out of earshot, "you make that call."

"Okay, Captain."

They stood there for minutes, staring down. The aliens were more numerous now, and moving faster.

"What do you think they are?" Kane asked.

"Who knows? I don't know how they even survive; I suppose they don't need much to live on. They could have been here for millions of years, undiscovered. Few come out this far, with the pirates."

"But the Chanters think they're gods," Kane said. The aliens had stopped moving. Were they looking up? "I wonder if they think we’re gods?"

#

Kane was having breakfast when his wrist-comm went off.

"General alert," Captain Giger's voice said. "Everybody meet me at the ramp, now!"

When he got there, all seven of the crew -- except for Vasquez and her two colleagues -- were already gathered.

The captain wasted no time. "Vasquez and her team have disappeared."

The crew let out gasps of surprise.

"How?" Kane said.

"No idea, but they're not responding and scans can't find them on the ship or the planet. The Chanters are gone too, so I can only assume they've taken our people. Lambert ..."

The Chief Engineer stepped forward. "Captain."

"How long 'til we're ready to go?"

"Another twenty four hours."

"Right. You and me stay here. The rest of you, form into pairs, take pulse rifles and follow a search grid. Keep in radio contact."

Kane spent the next four hours walking along the bare rock with Weaver, the engineer. They found no crewmen and no Chanters. What they did find were more aliens. They were all over the place, filling the cracks in the rocks.

Back at the ship, the captain was replacing a hull plate with Lambert. They told her they'd found nobody. Her brow creased. "Damn. The others are on their way back. They drew blanks too."

Kane got himself a drink and waited, looking out from the ship's bridge, hoping they would all come back soon -- without the Chanters, maybe -- so they get off this bloody rock. But nobody came, not even the four others who had gone out that morning. A knot of anxiety worked its way up until he felt sick.

He found the captain at sunset, staring out from the open hatch.

"Anything?" he said.

"No radio contact. No nothing. Close the hatch; we're staying in tonight. Once the ship is fixed, we'll try and find them from the air."

#

Kane knocked on the door to Engineering. When it opened, he saw they were all there, all the remaining crew; Captain Giger, Weaver, Lambert.

"Can't sleep?" Weaver said.

"No. You too?"

Weaver and Giger nodded. Lambert stayed where he was, doing something with a warp coil. “Just a couple of hours,” he said. His face was drawn and his eyes red. Not surprising; he was working like a dog to get them out of there.

Kane sat on the floor, his back to the door; it gave him enough security that he closed his eyes.

#

Bump.

Kane woke with a groan. He was lying on the floor, his feet higher than his head. The floor lurched. He rolled into a bulkhead and a body fell on top of him. He shoved it aside; Weaver stared back at him, eyes wide in terror.

"Captain!" Kane called out. He struggled to his feet, standing on the bulkhead. "Captain!"

"They're gone!" Weaver shouted. "Just like Vasquez and the Chanters and all the rest."

Kane grabbed the front of Weaver's uniform and tried to shake some sense into him. "Gone where?"

"I don't know. I closed my eyes for a minute and now the captain and Lambert are gone."

The ship rocked again and threw them against the ceiling. Weaver's head slammed into Kane's nose and everything went dark.

#

He shook his head; everything felt wrong. He opened his eyes and saw a ridge of rock but it was upside down. His head swam, thick and woosy, and he realised he was the one who was upside down. The rest were all around him; Vasquez, Lambert, the Chanters,everyone from the ship and all upside down. He struggled to look at his feet and caught a glimpse of a rope tied around them. The little aliens were gathered on the ridge in their thousands. Some were clustered around the ropes holding one of the Chanters.

"Look down there," Giger said. She pointed down beyond their heads, where a thick red liquid bubbled and roiled. "You asked if they thought we were gods ..."

Through the pain and the haze of blood rushing to his head, Kane remembered when he had thought the aliens were a harmless, incidental finding; that they’d stumbled upon them by pure dumb luck.

"They don't think we're gods," Giger continued. "They think we're food."

A flapping noise rushed by, and a white-robed Chanter landed in the liquid with a viscous plop. He sank immediately.

"Bye now."

The voice drew Kane back to the ridge. Weaver was there, sitting calmly amongst the aliens.

Kane managed a pained "How ..."

"It will be your turn soon," Weaver said as he stood. His face shifted, his featues dissolving in a blur of small, aquamarine bodies. When they stopped moving, Weaver had the face of a dark-skinned woman, and when he spoke, the voice to match. "I have to get to a Regulated planet and bring another ship back. It's a fulltime job, supplying the planet."

Kane felt his body sway. He looked up to see them clustered about his rope. He jerked to the side, desperately trying to shake them off, but the rope gradually unwound until, with a final throat-splitting scream, he fell.

[pickarooney]

A lieutenant serving in World War II suddenly gains the mysterious ability to discover who is about to die via a strange flash of light across their face.

Halo

It was hard to believe these fragments, when assembled, had once made a living city.

Anti-aircraft fire unfurled in orange blossoms overhead, revealing the tangle of rubble again for a snapshot moment. Kurt ducked back down and pressed himself against the wall, feeling the vibration of the bombing run overhead. The rumble of friendly planes was a lullaby when you were tucked comfortably behind your own lines, less so when you were playing hide-and-seek with Russian snipers in the drop zone.

The other men squatted in the darkness, checking their weapons with deft, practiced movements, waiting for the run to finish. Lieutenant Woermann eased his bulk down next to Kurt and gripped Kurt's arm. "Two of them in the stairwell," he said into Kurt's ear. "We clear them, Himmel's platoon will hold the building. You take left."

Kurt nodded and signalled Klein and Adler. The men were slipping through the darkness toward what remained of the corridor when Kurt felt Woermann stiffen beside him.

"Down! Out of the light, you fools," Woermann hissed.

Light? Kurt could see nothing but the men's eyes, glistening in the darkness. Still, this was Woermann; they all dropped and flattened themselves obediently, cheeks pressed to the wet concrete floor.

Long moments passed. Kurt tried not to imagine the thud of a sniper bullet cracking his skull like an egg. He listened. The sound of the planes dissolved into the night until the only noise that remained was the staccato spatter of local gunfire and the thud of his heartbeat in his ears. Kurt raised his head. "Sir?" He could just make out Woermann's face, a smear of lighter grey against the shadow of the wall. "Sir?" Kurt repeated. Woermann didn't answer. The men began to shift and mutter.

Kurt levered himself into a crouch and touched Woermann's shoulder. "Are you okay, sir?" he whispered. This close, he could see that Woermann's craggy brow was crumpled in confusion. To Kurt, this was just as terrifying as the imagined sensation of a bullet ripping through his skull. Woermann was their rock. Woermann could happily sleep through a mortar attack.

Woermann turned, and Kurt could see the lines of his face rearrange themselves into something only slightly resembling his usual granite nonchalance.

"You didn't see the spotlights, Kurt?" Woermann asked.

"No, sir. Nothing."

"Adler and Klein lit up like Christmas trees?"

Kurt shook his head.

"Carry on then, soldier," Woermann said.

Neither Adler nor Klein returned from the mission that night.

-

There was a new offering on the shrine outside the bunker.

Kurt was bone-weary from a night of sentry duty and nearly missed the Russian hat nestled among the group of objects like a furry, grey animal. It was obviously a new addition. Everything else was rimed with a layer of frost: the crude Madonna whittled from a piece of all too precious wood; the tin cans, priceless for heating food and melting snow; even a few medals -- including a solitary iron cross -- embedded into the frozen clay of the bunker wall, much to the disgust of the commander. Never food, though. Not even the possibility of salvation might pry a scrap of ration bread from the men.

Kurt knew Woermann didn't approve of him taking the offerings -- not because they were meant for Woermann (they were), but because Woermann feared that even acknowledging the shrine at all might encourage the believers and enrage the dissenters. Kurt had no such qualms. He snatched the hat up and tucked it into the folds of his greatcoat. If it wasn't a sign that God wanted to save his frostbitten skin, then what was?

He ducked under the blanket tacked across the entrance of the bunker and into the gloom, cradling his prize to his chest. Woermann was in his usual place: wedged into the corner and squinting over his makeshift desk, a pen clenched in his fist. His huge frame looked like it was the only thing holding up the roof. Woermann had been as big as Atlas before the war, but the dwindling supplies and the icy grip of the Russian winter had worked together to knead the flesh from his bones -- from all of their bones. Still, the ghost of Woermann's bulk meant that he took up more space than most men.

He looked up at Kurt and raised an eyebrow. "So, what is it today then, soldier?"

"Oh, nothing, sir." Kurt flopped onto one of the cots and started unwinding the scarf, wrapped like a turban against the cold, from around his head. Uniform regulations had relaxed as soon as men had started losing fingers and toes to frostbite. He produced the fur hat from his coat with a magician's flourish and pulled it down over his ears.

"Nothing, eh?" said Woermann, gruffly.

"This? Oh, this is just a late Christmas present from the Führer. He delivered it personally." Kurt said, and grinned through cracked lips. "He sends his regards."

"Kurt." Woermann had a way of transmitting parental-levels of disapproval with just one word.

Kurt tugged the blankets around himself. "Well, if they're going to leave you gifts, we might as well make use of them," he said.

"Don't encourage them. It's bad enough that half of them won't look me in the eye, but when they start treating me like a saint..." Woermann sighed and ran a grimy hand over his face. "Why aren't you afraid?"

"Who said I'm not? Anyway, as long as I'm standing next to you, I'm not in your field of vision."

Woermann laughed. He was silent for a long time before he asked, quietly, "Is it better to be a demon or a saint, do you think?"

"As long as you stay alive, what matter?" Kurt closed his eyes and nestled into the cot, trying to will his extremities into some semblance of warmth. Sleep took a long time to arrive.

-

The column of prisoners wound its way ahead of him and into the distance -- a ragged grey line that echoed the curves of the frozen river beside them -- until it blurred into the vast white expanse of the steppes.

This was more men in one place than Kurt had seen in the entire war. They looked less a captured army and more a rabble of refugees, hollow-cheeked and swathed against the cold in whatever scraps of material they could find, barely a trace of their uniforms visible.

Kurt trudged alongside what remained of his platoon, trying not to slip in the muddy snow-slush created by the churn of thousands of feet. They were all weak from starvation, but a fall could mean a bullet in the head from their captors. The guards had taken his hat and his blanket, and the wind pried at his greatcoat with insistent, icy fingers. Woermann was quiet beside him, but it was a silence that shouted. Kurt glanced at him and looked away quickly. The question had been hanging on his lips for the past hour or so, but he had been keeping a grip on it for as long as he could. If he didn't ask, he wouldn't have to know.

Still, the question erupted anyway: "What do you see?"

"Nothing," Woermann replied.

Kurt chanced another glance at Woermann. The man was staring intently at his own feet as they rose and fell, rose and fell, one in front of the other in the brown slush.

"Tell me the truth," Kurt asked. "How many of us?"

Woermann finally looked up and out across the column of men that stretched for miles ahead of them, and Kurt knew then. He could almost visualise what Woermann was seeing: flashes of light undulating across the entire column, like the glare of enemy spotlights.

"All of them?" Kurt said. He stumbled and Woermann gripped his arm to stop him from falling, to keep him moving. He tilted his head at Kurt, and couldn't quite hide the flinch, the tightening of his eyes as if at the glow of a bright light.

All of us, Kurt thought.