The First Stain

by Dakota Rayne et al.

  Oscillating wildly, he thinks, remembering a favorite song of his youth.

  He then receives a new transmission. “Step through the wall? Are you sure, little Grays?” He hesitates a moment. “Okay.”

  Stan approaches the wall with caution. He reaches out and lays a hand on it. His whole arm vibrates, as though he has touched a railroad track with a train speeding down it. He yanks his hand away. “Are you sure this is safe, Little Grays?” After a moment, he responds to the voices in his head. “Okay.”

  With that, Stan closes his eyes and takes a step towards the wall. His feet tingle as he watches them disappear into the black and white madness. Another step and he is through. The shimmering stops, and the seclusion room resumes its normal appearance.

  Outside, Liam is playing a game on his phone and has not noticed anything amiss. After a moment, he puts down his phone, and looks into the window to check on the patient. “What the . . .?” He stands up and opens the door. “Where’d he go?”

  Rushing to the door of the anteroom, he peeks out to find Moby returning from the bathroom. “Dude, get back here.”

  The tech cocks his head, giving Liam a confused look. Liam shakes his head and rushes back to the room which previously held the patient Stan.

  “He’s gone, dude. Look.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go look in there.”

  “Dude, seriously? I don’t have time for pranks.”

  “It’s not a prank, go look in there,” Liam said, his tone frantic.

  Moby sighs and shakes his head, but does as he’s asked.

  Nothing. The room is empty.

  “What the fuck?” Moby grabs his keys and unlocks the door.

  “Shouldn’t we call for back-up?” Liam asks him.

  “You’re my back-up. Just in case he—”

  The door opens and both techs walk in. The seclusion room is empty. They frantically look all around, even up at the ceiling.

  “What the fuck?” says Liam, running his hands through his hair. “How could he be gone?”

  Blue eyes stare ahead, unblinking. Reflected in Stan’s pupils is an image of a small, hairless head, with pale gray skin and unusually large black eyes. The Little Grays stare back at him.

  Stan finally speaks. “Thank you, Little Grays. I’m eternally grateful to you for getting me out of there. I am at your service.”

  In his head, Stan hears the response.

  “YES, WE KNOW YOU ARE.”

  Shea Ballard

  Shea Ballard has been a reader and a writer all his life. He walked into a library at eight years old and never looked back. He loves fantasy and science fiction, as well as tales of the macabre. His stories seek to take us away from our ordinary world and into places full of magic and wonder.

  When not writing, Shea enjoys reading, watching movies, and feeding a Netflix addiction. He dabbles in astrology and tarot. He is passionate about history, languages, and mental health advocacy. Get him talking about these things, and you may not get him to stop.

  In 2013, Shea self-published a short story to Amazon called The Light That Never Goes Out. Since then, he’s self-published two books in his Faerie Tale series, Noble (2016) and Brave (2017) which will be re-released by Inked in Gray.

  Desolate

  By Clarence Carter

  The apocalypse implies the end, but nobody expected we would live through it. I was nine when the arms race began, just a snot who couldn’t work a fishing pole without tangling the line. The first mention I can recall about the war started with Russia. Anchors on our television spoke about our jets flying over their skies, tanks treading across their soil. It didn’t all happen fast. At first, the war was something mentioned on television and in bars, until it came to our doorstep—the east coast of America taken overnight.

  The distant memory of our elementary school principal pulling us into the cafeteria comes to mind. Tears ran from the eyes of teachers and parents surrounding us, which added to our horror. We were only in the fourth grade. She asked us to gather our hands in prayer, which would not have been acceptable under any other circumstances, given the separation of church and state. I will never forget what life had been like before, lest none of us survivors should. I vividly remember seeing terror in their eyes as they huddled together on the linoleum floor. I tried to console them, unlike any of my classmates.

  My mother’s attempts to comfort me fell on deaf ears. “Craig, don’t worry,” she’d say. “It will be over soon.”

  The day the missiles started, the power went out first. Thunderous crashing, buildings collapsing. My mother had been watching the news in the kitchen and I had walked in for breakfast, catching a glimpse of some of the horror before it stopped working. Nobody told me it would never work again.

  When I walked outside, brilliant flashes sundered the horizon. The vibrant explosions rendered the world silent. Cars stopped driving in the middle of the street like they had all simultaneously broken down. Nobody took the time to explain an electromagnetic pulse to a child—all of our electronics were disabled by our enemies, all at once. Loud helicopters flew overhead, and sometimes men with guns would yell at us. It seemed no matter where we were, it was always the wrong place.

  I had to adjust to the silence. Boston was eerie without the sound of traffic, construction, or people’s chatter. The streets were empty. Everyone hid in their homes. In stores, cars. Whatever meager protection they could find.

  Around that time, my uncle Al went into hiding. He told my mother he wasn’t going to fight this war. He said he’d fought plenty as an army man and he wanted to stay home to protect us. Al called this war unwinnable. When they came knocking on his door, he’d already slid into the bunker.

  I’d overheard all of this—my parents’ frantic and confused—but didn’t know what to think of any of it.

  After the missile fire ceased, a convoy came down our street, gathering all the men old enough to fight. My father was one of those men. He had tears in his eyes, sitting in the back of that military truck, sandwiched between equally terrified civilians-turned-soldiers. An assault rifle looked foreign to him, and he looked strange holding it.

  They even took Mr. Sawyer, the older man with gray hair and the bum knee. Without any hesitation, they slapped a rifle in his hands, even though they had to hoist him into the back of the truck. Families lined the streets, crying and begging for their men to be returned to them.

  Shortly after the military came for my father, more planes swarmed the sky. This time, they didn’t drop missiles. Instead, canisters with poisonous gas plummeted to the ground. I saw them falling, but didn’t know what they were. Al knew. I didn’t know what type of gas, but I knew the gas burned through people’s skin.

  We were almost in my uncle’s bunker when one of the canisters burst. Instinctively, I covered my face with my hands and, luckily, we were far enough away to only get some of the blast. The backs of my hands burned. If I’d been wearing short sleeves the entirety of my arms would have been singed. The pain seared. My skin bubbled. It took a minute for me to realize all the shrieking came from my own mouth.

  Tucked inside the bunker, surrounded by canned goods and bottled water, my mother tended to my burns. She poured water on them, which soothed the burn. There was a first aid kit in the bunker, and she wrapped my hands after cleaning them with peroxide. That caused more screaming. Somehow, she and my brother had escaped the attack unscathed.

  Among the stacks of canned food and bottles of water were books. My eyes only touched them between waves of agony. I couldn’t look down at my hands. I couldn’t stand the sight of them, disfigured as they were. But I did wonder, why books?

  Still, to this day, I have nasty scars on the back of my hands. They aren’t pleasant to look at and rough to the touch, but I walked away with my life, which is more than I can say for billions of others.

  My uncle Al must have spent his retirement and money building this bunker. I think he knew something we didn
’t. Perhaps he knew the upcoming war was inevitable. He was a good man, generous and sweet. It was this courtesy that saved our lives and we were all grateful for that.

  Naivety led me to think the walls of the bunker were impenetrable. We were safe from missiles and gunfire, but we weren’t safe from the gas. We had been in the bunker for three hours when we knew something was wrong. The bunker was underground, so we needed a ventilation system. The ventilation system wasn’t airtight, which is how the gas snuck inside, only detectable to my brother’s nose.

  “What’s that smell?” he’d asked innocently before slumping over.

  Al used his last breath to save my life. I tried to protest, pushing the gas mask away, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Craig, I love you. Don’t take this mask off until you see someone else without one.”

  I lived by those words long after the chemicals killed my brother, my mother, and my uncle. Turning my head from them wasn’t enough. Their choking seemed even louder than the bombs. The inside of the gas mask filled with tears in the first hour I wore it.

  The radio said the enemy had been dropping several types of poisons on us as one of its final transmissions. There was nothing we could do. There was only one gas mask.

  I stayed in the bunker with them for a long time, too afraid to climb to the surface. I’d dragged them all into a tight corner, out of sight. I covered their bodies with a shaggy little quilt and tried not to think about them. From then on, I sat with my back turned away from them.

  Supposedly, the inside of the bunker was stocked with enough canned goods to last a family of four for a year. I was by myself. I wasn’t sure that would be enough, so I rationed what I had. Anything that didn’t come from a can made me sick. Violent spouts of vomiting and diarrhea occurred often. At points I thought I was going to die. The food was unpleasant, and I missed my mother’s cooking.

  I missed my mother more than anything in the world.

  With nothing else to entertain me, I took to the books. A lot of them were too advanced for me given I was only nine when it started but I learned to read better. I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what certain words meant, especially some of the grownup words. One thing Al forgot to pack was a dictionary.

  Days, weeks, possibly months went by.

  I sat in the bunker.

  I could eat canned food, but I didn’t know how much to eat and taking off the mask still horrified me, so I pushed myself not to for long periods of time. My stomach ached every day, and I weighed practically nothing when I finally decided to go to the surface.

  I spent a lot of time talking to myself. A habit I’ve yet to outgrow.

  The explosions kept me awake. My uncle had a watch—my only connection to the outside world. Even though I couldn’t see outside, I knew what time it was.

  Randomly I’d had a quarter inside my pocket. I played this game where I would spin the coin on a shelf and catch it between my fingers. It wasn’t the most exciting game on the planet, but it was one way to combat the mind-numbing boredom. During this time, I consumed every book on the shelf.

  I kept a close eye on my uncle’s watch, wondering how long I had been underground. I used the empty cans to build a wall, further hiding their bodies. Judging by the empty food containers, it was probably several months.

  One morning, the bombings stopped. A penetrating silence broke the perpetual hum of booms. There had been breaks in the noise before, but never silence, an unmistakable quiet. I had become accustomed to the noise, and I was confused without it.

  Several times I walked up to the hatch and pressed my ear to the door, listening outside, hopeful. I wanted to hear people, even if they were screaming. I wanted to hear something, anything. Most of all, I wanted to know I wasn’t alone. Fear of being alone outweighed the fear of dying in the bunker. I couldn’t imagine living the rest of my existence as the last person on the planet.

  When I finally gathered the courage to open the door, I did so with tears in my eyes. I thought there might be someone outside waiting for me, possibly with a gun. I couldn’t let that thought stop me. I forced myself up to the hatch, again.

  Placing one hand on the wheel to the hatch, I thought deeply about what could be outside. I wondered if there were other survivors. Judging by the all the bombings, I wasn’t hopeful. The door moaned as I turned the lock. Before opening it, I took a giant breath. The respirators whirred at the end of my vision. Whatever remained outside, good or bad, was my new reality.

  With all my weight pushed against the hatch, I forced the door open.

  The skyline was decimated.

  The familiar buildings I had been in and around all my life, destroyed.

  As far as my eyes could see, the city skyline didn’t exist anymore.

  My uncle's modest house had been reduced to a pile of splintered wood and ash. Remnants of my neighborhood lay charred and decomposing around me. Leveled.

  I looked for other survivors, hopeful. Maybe we were not the only ones with a bunker. I wished they’d come out, if they existed at all.

  Above me lie thick, dark clouds, blocking the sun. The second thing I noticed after the decimated world, the weather. I didn’t know what month or what year it happened to be, but I had a strong suspicion either something had changed drastically or it was winter.

  Down the street, all the neighbor's houses were simply gone. The broken pavement protruded from the streets. There were divots as big as busses. Mailboxes were scattered, some of them unrecognizable. Cars littered the streets in crushed chunks of metal.

  The silence was deafening. Never in my life had I heard nothing. There wasn’t even wind blowing through the trees because there weren’t any trees. I’d never truly known how it felt to be alone. In the bunker, I was allowed to dream. Now? Now those dreams were crushed.

  Atrophied muscles rendered me weak, tiring easily.

  I could never forget my first day above ground. I had to be careful where to put my feet because of the charred bodies littering any surface that had managed to stay intact. Scattered across the remaining streets were limbs, bodies of those who didn’t get out in time. Their skin was covered in bubbles from the gaseous fumes. Other parts were burned, like the back of my hands, but worse. Their faces blistered.

  Hot, acidic bile filled my mouth. I remember vomiting until I passed out from the shock.

  Five years have gone by, and I know they are out there. I can see them sneaking amidst the shadows, afraid to come forth. I hear them whispering, perhaps afraid to be heard. I see signs of them, fresh tracks in the snow, empty cans of food half-buried beneath the ash. I don’t know why they haven’t come to me. In these desperate times, I could use a friend. If I had the strength, I would run to them or call.

  The New England winters seem so much worse when you spend nine hours a day outside, scavenging. I didn’t know someone could get to that level of cold, where the tears froze to my cheeks. At times, I thought my pee would freeze midstream.

  I had to collect my winter apparel in pieces, freezing in the meantime. The snow outfit didn’t come together in one season. I had to dig through mountains of snow and scavenge through demolished department stores. Even when I was finished, my boots didn’t match.

  Five years have gone by, and so much has changed.

  Everything is gnarled and destroyed. I wish the trees would start coming back so I’d have something pleasant to look at. The greenery that survived looks sick. The sprouting ones look just as ill. I haven’t been brave enough to remove the mask, holding my uncle's advice at heart. I won’t remove the mask until I see someone else without one, even if that never happens. The masks filters, like all the other supplies, are scarce, so I hope it’s soon.

  Every morning I hear something. It takes me a couple of tries to determine if the noise is a bird. Cawing, if that’s what you want to call it.

  Its cries are weak and pitiful. It does come as a relief to know I’m not alone. I consider looking for the bird, but don’t think I ca
n help it even if I find it.

  In those five years, I have traveled but never stray far from the bunker. I don’t want to wander too far in case war breaks out once more, though I can’t imagine why it would. I don’t think whoever sent those missiles is around to command anymore strikes.

  On the outskirts of town is a department store, reduced to nothing. I spend an entire day pawing through the rubble, searching for things I could keep. I have precious few cans left. I need to find more food.

  Among the many things undamaged is a fishing pole. I grab it and tell myself I’ll learn how. I also find a box of fishing line buried deep in the wreckage.

  My family has the burial site they deserve now, and I am proud. It had taken me a long time to find a shovel, but I did, and I put them to rest. Periodically, I return to their graves to mourn.

  I have been fishing off the Boston harbor for months now, hoping something will bite. Even a single nibble would alleviate some of the loneliness.

  I don’t have worms, but I did find a can of sardines, which I assume will work. If a fish is as hungry as I am, maybe it will eat anything, too. I’d be lying if I say I used all the sardines as bait.

  Every day, same time, I find myself at the harbor, looking off into the distance, hoping to see a boat. My stomach rumbles and aches everyday. I could use a friend. It’s been so long since I’ve heard someone speak. I miss the subtle chatter of a restaurant and the cheers from little league games. I even miss my mother nagging me to pick up my socks. I’d give anything to find someone else, anyone.

  I try my best to make my supplies last. The pain in my stomach has outlasted the rumbling and the weakness in my legs. My legs are thinner than I can ever recall them being, and nearly every bone is visible.

  I scream into the void but nothing echoes back. This land is barren. Devoid. Someone must be out there. I’ve seen their footprints gather in the ash. I try to follow them, but the wind always blows them clean.