Stories of Hope

by Aussie Speculative Fiction

  So, guy dressed like he’s from the 1950s comes through in a 1930s car, and I just assume that he’s really committed to the whole retro aesthetic and I’m am pretty impressed to be honest, but it isn’t until he opens his mouth that I start to think that things are entering high strangeness territory.

  “Hello Gloria. You’re looking well. You’re looking young, I should say. I hadn’t realised how lovely you were at this age.”

  So, now it’s weird and a bit skeevy. But despite the fact that what he’s saying is potentially cringey, it didn’t alert any alarm bells in me. I’ve got an excellent bullshit detector and it wasn’t going off yet. He felt, what’s the word? Authentic. That’s it; he felt authentic.

  So, here’s me with my hand out waiting for payment for his order and he’s just looking at me. I mean, sunglasses are hiding his eyes but I can tell he’s looking at me.

  I say, “Thank you very much sir, that will be $8,” (or whatever it was), hoping he’ll just give me the money and drive on. It’s not like anyone was behind him (remember it was 11pm) but getting involved in conversations with odd men in the middle of the night isn’t really my jam.

  He says, “Of course, here we are,” and drops something into my hand. And while I’m staring at my palm wondering what he’s given me and whether it’s some foreign currency (it used to happen, trust me), for what couldn’t have been more than five seconds, he disappears.

  As in, actually disappears. Well, I didn’t see him go ‘poof’ or anything, but he was gone, and the boy in the next serving window didn’t see him, and his order was never collected so I’d say that constitutes literally disappearing, wouldn’t you?

  Of course, now I get it. Now I wouldn’t blink twice, but back then, well, it was odd.

  But, and I have an absolute certainty that this is one of the reasons that I was given The Knowledge, it wasn’t that shocking to me. It didn’t blow my mind totally. Because, of course, I’ve seen other weird stuff in my life.

  So I just went, “Well that’s a thing”, slipped the piece of paper into my pocket and kept working. A double shift, because your girl had to make coin, you know.

  It wasn’t until I was back home that I took the time to look at it—which you might think is an unlikely delay given the fact that it was given to me by a guy seemingly from the past who then disappeared. But what can I say? I’m a really good worker. I stay on task. (I’m a Virgo, after all). But I did eventually look at it. I just expected a phone number or something equally underwhelming, but it was a set of coordinates. Longitude and latitude, which piqued my interest because I’d been getting into geocaching during the last few months, so the idea wasn’t totally foreign to me.

  What, you think a high school dropout can’t be into geocaching?

  Good, just checking.

  As I said, my interest was piqued, because I’m not a stupid person. I’m just a person doing an exhausting job with little to no cash flow or career options ahead of me, so of course I followed the coordinates. You would have too. Or maybe not. But I’m guessing you would have. A little mystery is good for the soul, right?

  I mapped them out first, of course; I’m not naive enough to just randomly go running around the bush at the behest of random disappearing guys (do you want to get murdered? Because that’s how you get murdered). But once I determined that they did not lead to the middle of the Belanglo State forest, then I grabbed my pack and headed off into the city. That’s where they pointed to; a rundown and not yet gentrified part of the city.

  Sure, it could have been dangerous there too, I guess, but the city doesn’t make me nervous the way the bush does.

  I know the city.

  Well, that is, I thought I knew the city. Because there I was, walking up an alleyway, just where the coordinates directed me (and yes, keeping an eye out in case anything starts to kick off), and then . . .

  I understand ‘time portal’ is something that may make you slam this journal shut and write it off as a joke, but you’re holding it in your hands, right? You’re holding a book in your hands made of a material that you’ve never seen before, right? It might look familiar, but try to tear the cover. Go on, try. Now try to ball the whole thing up in your hand. Yes, the whole journal, see if you can ball the whole thing up, and . . .

  There you go. You can’t do that with a book from your time period, can you? Manipulate the temporal dimensions of a material object and then reform it again, just like that?

  Don’t worry, you don’t need to understand it. You just need to believe me.

  But yeah, I went through a time portal. What can I say? That makes it sound a bit simple, a bit trivial, but, of course, it was anything but. Quite a few of us were given The Knowledge, so that we could send messages back to you. Some people have actually come back in person (old mate in the Ford for example) but I’m the ‘journaling girl’, apparently. That’s my mission. This isn’t the only one of course. But it’s the one intended for you.

  And this is what I need you to hear.

  I know that things are really really hard on our planet at the moment. There have been some terrible decisions by people in power. There has been so much exploitation of the planet and the things that make their home on it; human, animal and plant. It’s like we don’t even know that we’re connected to the Earth, isn’t it?

  I’m here to tell you that it will be alright. There is time to fix it, and that’s what will happen. Don’t give up though; it’s people like you who will fix it. Your anger and your passion. Your inability to take no for an answer.

  For a start, you completely rejig the way decisions are made; you get rid of these huge governments who just care about making money and exploiting you. There is a return to small, local governments, little communities, villages, dealing with your own problems in real time, with people who know each other.

  The big cities didn’t work. Sorry if that’s hard to take, but they all break down. They started in the Industrial Revolution, after all, so it was time for a change.

  And fossil fuels; they’re gone. So, sad for a while (no more driving all over the place!) but also thank god, right? It’s the main thing that finally turns the planet around. Just in time, too. You have to let some things go though. The internet was a fad. More bad than good. Sorry, but there it is.

  An amazing new renewable resource is discovered too, but if I tell you that I’d have to kill you (just kidding). But trust me, it changes everything. I might have had a big part to play in that, but that’s another story

  But what I need you to take away from this is that everything is going to be all right. It’s going to look different, sure, but it’s going to be better for your children’s children than you could ever imagine. The looming dread that so many of you feel right now will be gone; those memories will just be stories from the ancestors—stories from when the planet was on a precipice—but the Great Wheel of Life was recalibrated once again.

  Read through this journal, read about how life will be, and what you can do to help bring that about, because a brighter future is coming.

  Just have hope.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: EVA Leppard lives in the bush with her husband, children and a disturbingly large number of rescue animals, many of who she raised by hand whether they liked it or not. For someone who claims never to have enough time to get everything done, she subscribes to a lot of streaming services.

  Cloudy with a Chance of Smoke by Nikky Lee

  BIG BEN’S CHIMES RUNG through the fog six times. Dawn. I rolled my shoulders and felt the ice break away in small flakes, crackling under my stone claws. I shifted on my perch, sucked in a breath of tobacco smoke and then expelled it through my nostrils, adding to the smog that hazed the rooftops.

  Below, the first hubbub of traffic sounded. Car wheels sloshed through the snow and somewhere in the distance a diesel truck rumbled. Black umbrellas bobbed along the footpath, their owners trying to beat the work-day rush.

  I sighed and let out a yawn. While
the humans below clocked on, I clocked off. With a final drag of my cigarette, I close my eyes, snapped my beak shut and settled into my foundations to become still stone once more––

  “Eysteinn.”

  One eye popped open and I turned my beak, owl-like, to glare at the human.

  “What is it, Father?”

  It had been some years since he’d sought me out. His hair had grey streaks in it now, and there was a certain looseness to his face that predated the onset of wrinkles.

  “There’s a situation.”

  “Can it wait? It’s been a long night and I’m tired––”

  He stamped his foot. “Christ, Eysteinn. If I’m here then the answer is no it can’t.”

  Older yes, but his temper hadn’t changed. I felt sorry for his parishioners. I shifted my weight, putting a fresh cigarette to my beak. With a cock of my head the end of the cigarette sparked, then settled to a glow. I rocked back, folding my arms across my chest and I surveyed the Father from the corner of my vision.

  What must he think of me nowadays? Probably more weathered and nicotine addicted. The human ran a hand over his receding hairline, gaze lingering on the foundations at my feet.

  “Things have changed, Eysteinn.”

  “True.” I cocked a beady eye at him. “Last time you had hair.”

  The Father scowled. “This is no time for jokes––”

  “Indeed,” I chimed. “It’s a serious condition. I’m sorry.”

  The human’s eyes flashed, his lips tightening to a thin flat line. “Eysteinn, shut your beak and listen. And put that out.”

  I’d gone too far. I held back another taunt and did as he asked, squashing the cigarette into the stone at my feet, but couldn’t resist lifting a claw to pick away a new piece of bird poop from my beak. He watched, transfixed, then pulled his gaze away.

  “There’s no easy way for me to say this,” he began.

  I waited, stifling a yawn. What would the assignment be? A marauding demon? A witch? I hadn’t eaten one of those in a while. Would he let me have it toasted? Distracted, I flicked the bird poop off my claw. It sailed through the air and splattered against the Father’s robe.

  Oh shit––

  The human let out a great sigh. “You need to go.”

  I hid the offending claw behind my back. “To where, Father Bob? Where? Or have you forgotten that reading minds is not one of my many and awesome powers?”

  “You’re not listening.” He met my gaze. “You can’t stay here anymore. You have to go.”

  What? I shook off the last of the stone transformation to face him properly. “Come again?”

  “Our lease has run out.” Father Bob pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the bird poo away, leaving a decidedly worse white smear in its place. “The church is rundown. We’re relocating. It’s time for you to do the same.”

  “Wait.” I held up a claw. “You’re firing me?”

  Father Bob winced. “Don’t think of it like that. Think of it as retirement.”

  My beak fell open, then clacked shut. “You can’t. I’m part of the church.”

  “The council is knocking it down. In six months this place will be another block of flats.”

  Flats? Flats? I gaped at him. “They can’t do that,” I managed after a few tense seconds. “This is my home.” I folded my arms and set my hind claws into my foundation. “I’m not going.”

  “Eysteinn, you’ve been here for what, four hundred years?”

  “Four hundred and fifty.”

  “You’ve done a good job. But this church is on its last legs. It’s time to find a new one.” He hesitated. “You could fit in quite nicely with the Catholic Church on the hill. Their architecture is from the right period.”

  “Catholic?” I echoed. “Are you off your rocker? What do you think the Anglicans wanted me to guard against when they made me?”

  “Well, there’s always the library.”

  “And what am I supposed to guard against there? Dust?” I dug all four claws into the stone, ruffled my wings on end and glared at the human. “I won’t move. You can’t make me.” I sniffled a couple of times to make him feel guilty.

  Father Bob massaged a temple. “All right, if not the Catholic Church or the Library . . . Where do you want to go? Don’t say nowhere.”

  I curbed the urge to snap at him. I’d forgotten how pushy he could be. This was absurd. Beyond absurd. My beak stayed shut in stony silence.

  Father Bob threw his hands up in the air. “Eysteinn, work with me here. You can’t stay, but you won’t go. Where does that leave us? What do you plan to do once the church is gone and your bond to the grounds annulled?”

  Good question. Hell if I knew. I’d have to sleep on it.

  In three strides the space between us vanished. “Don’t you transform yet, I’m not finished.” He rapped my beak with his knuckles. The dull vibration of it thudded my sinking consciousness alert enough to hear him say:

  “Fine. Do what you want. You’re fired, you hear me? Fired! Your bond is void. So, don’t be here when the bulldozers come.”

  Odd. It almost sounded like he cared.

  THREE MONTHS LATER:

  I can’t say I expected to see him, but here he was, with less hair. I had woken early to find him there, standing cross-armed and silent, waiting with a growing impatience—if the jig of his foot was anything to go by.

  “A visitor. And out of uniform too,” I said, shaking off my stone transformation to flex my claws in the grass. “You could have woken me.”

  “I would have, but it would have troubled the tourists.”

  Fair enough. I looked about the hilltop—dusk was fast approaching and I could see the cars of a few stragglers in the car park. “How’d you find me?”

  A newspaper slapped at my feet. The headline peered up at me through the green stalks: Gargoyle at Stonehenge: Prank or the Paranormal?

  Oh. No wonder he looked so grumpy.

  “What are you doing here Eysteinn?”

  I held up a claw. “Hey, don’t get snippy at me. You threw me out.”

  “This”—the father threw his hands up, indicating the Neolithic pillars—“is far from what I had in mind.”

  I shrugged. “You never specified where I couldn’t go.”

  Father Bob let out a sigh, shoulders sinking a few inches. “And you picked Stonehenge?”

  “I’m rediscovering my roots. You know, tracing back my origins and all that.” I folded my arms, looking out to the sun as it set through the window of stone. Soon the fog would roll in.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  I hunkered down, snapping my wings shut. “Watch me.”

  Father Bob put both hands on his hips and glared. “Ever heard of the Stonehenge Music Festival, Eysteinn?”

  “A music festival?” I arranged my face into a look of mock horror. “Is that supposed to put the fear of God into me, Bob? A little music never hurt anyone.”

  “It’s no Gregorian choir, Eysteinn.” Father Bob pointed to the empty field behind the monoliths. “That will be packed with people in two days’ time. They will be drunk, high on who knows what, and you will stand out like––”

  “What, a sore thumb? Please be more original.”

  Bob thrust an index finger at the newspaper on the ground. “Like a Fifteenth Century gargoyle at Stonehenge, Eysteinn. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get carted back to London to be placed amongst some garden gnomes.”

  I scowled. “At least I might be appreciated more than some other places I could name.” I cocked my head at an afterthought. “And the conversation would be infinitely better too.”

  The human pursed his lips, putting a hand into his coat pocket. He produced a cigarette and held it out to me. A cheap peace offering I knew, but took it anyway.

  “Why don’t you come home with me?”

  Oh there it was. I should have known the present wouldn’t come for free. The cigarette ignited with a bang between my claws a
nd I fixed the human with a glare. “What home? You destroyed it.”

  “Eysteinn, hear me out.”

  The earnestness of his voice surprised me. I considered him for a long moment, then put the half-burned cigarette to my beak. “You have thirty seconds.”

  “I realise there’s no church for you to go back to, but you can come live with me.”

  Say what? My eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  “What’s to say you won’t turn me into a garden ornament?”

  “God help me, no. You’d make a horrific garden gnome.”

  Oh really? I imagined his reaction to finding my stony bottom by his letterbox and was almost won over. The postman would never know what hit him.

  “What about pay?”

  Father Bob blinked. “Pay?”

  “I’m a gargoyle. I guard things. That’s what I do. You expect me to work for nothing?”

  “But, at the church––”

  “Times have changed. Fair pay, workers comp, this time I want all the bells and whistles.”

  The human gaped at me. “Eysteinn, you don’t have to guard anything.”

  I paused. Not guard? The thought had never even occurred to me. “Then how am I going to afford my cigarettes?”

  Father Bob rolled his eyes. “For Heaven’s sake. I’ll buy them for you. You’ve worked for four hundred years––”

  “Four hundred and fifty.”

  “Whatever, my point is you have worked long enough to have as many cigarettes as you like.” He turned, heading back towards the car park. “Are you coming?”

  I huffed and threw my cigarette onto the grass, stamping it out. The sun was down, and the cold was setting in—and the thought of four hundred and fifty years’ worth of cigarettes was an inviting one.