9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE #12
© Copyright 2017 Bride of Chaos/ All Rights Reserved to the Authors.
Edited by A.R. Jesse
Cover Art by Turtle&Noise
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First electronic edition 2017
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9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE #12
Table of Contents
MY HEAD IS NOT A COCONUT by Shane Porteous
SAILCOATS by Kenneth O’Brien
MURPHY’S LAW by Charlotte H. Lee
THE CHANGED by Mandi Jourdan
TEEN ANGELS by Tim McDaniel
THE TINDER BOX APP by Garth Pettersen
GOOD NEIGHBORS by Stephen Heuser
SARS 21 by Peter Markson
TRAP by Eliot Foerester
NEED MORE TALES IN YOUR DIET?
MY HEAD IS NOT A COCONUT by Shane Porteous
Bash Kesadet stood on the only cliff the island had to offer, watching the water of the only ocean in sight. It would be a lie to say suicidal thoughts hadn’t swam through her head the way the sharks below her swam through the ocean waters. But for the time being anyway, she didn’t feel suicidal, although a separate species of sadness stirred within her. She could see a ship, or as she liked to call them a wooden whale. The wooden whale wasn’t abandoned. It was close enough for her to see the cutlasses and cheeks of the sailors that stirred upon it. She was disappointed in them, for how she loved to dance, but dancing without music was like catching a fish and not eating it, a worthless endeavor.
She had gotten dressed for the occasion as well, put on her favorite skirt, decorated by squares of red and dark brown. Her favorite shirt as well, as black as a night whose stars had been washed away. She had even combed her hair, well half of it anyway, the rest remained wild, tied at the back of her head, where the strands stood like a bush. She had never been able to tame her hair completely, nor had she ever wanted to, but on nights like these she thought it best to meet civilization half way, thus half of her hair remained sleeked back, held by the tie that allowed the rest to remain wild. She had even put on her dancing boots, black boots that remained brilliant for she wore them rarely, because rarely did she have a chance to dance.
Ships that came close enough to the island were becoming scarce. But this had to be the first time such a ship came close enough to the island that was without songs. Sailors sang, it was one of the few things she liked about the wooden whales, she always found their warbles wonderful. They filled her the way worms filled dirt and made her move in marvelous ways. Yet the ship remained silent, or at least without a song.
Disappointed she found herself looking up at the night sky noticing that the moon was missing, which was a pity. During the nights of a full moon, her beautiful blonde hair shone, rivaling the sun in its strength and contesting the wealth of gold. It shone so supremely someone had once called her a living lighthouse, for such light could be seen from miles away. Of course, she may have been that someone, she couldn’t remember, it had been far too long since she had spoken to anything capable of speaking back.
Within the darkness, her hair didn’t shine and so the sailors had no reason to look in the island’s direction. Still that didn’t explain why they weren’t singing and apart of her wanted to go to the ship, of course doing so would likely ensure screaming instead of singing and she couldn’t dance to screaming.
She watched the ship as it got further and further out of reach of both her eyes and ears, all the while it stayed silent. When she could no longer see it, she sighed, the sound carried by the wind over the waters, but unfortunately not far enough to reach the now unseen ship. Looking every bit like a maiden whose man had been lost at sea she stood in silence, her head lowered, her great big eyes closed. When she opened them they seemed wet and sad, of course this probably had more to do with the fact she was staring at the water below, instead of just sadness, although sadness indeed played a part in wetting her eyes.
Slowly she got undressed. Her boots were the first thing she removed. She felt neither self-consciousness nor shame as she stripped naked, for there was no one around to belittle her bareness. Even if there was she would have cared little, she was proud of her body, for it was firm and formidable. It had served her well since the day she was born.
Now naked she plunged off of the cliff, her hands held above her head, streamlining herself as she stabbed into the water below like a spear into a stomach. Even with the water and nocturnal dark to contend with she could see clearly, the blue in her big eyes was so dark it was almost black. The sharks were in a feeding frenzy surrounding her in a tornado of torn-apart-tuna. Yet still she could see them distinctly, this cyclone of carnivores as they dined upon their delicious dinner. She had dived deep to reach them, yet showed no sign of panic despite the depth of water that now whirled all around her. She watched the sharks but they did not watch her. A woman was hard to notice with such tasty tuna around and thus Bash Kesadet watched and waited without interruption or irritation.
Before long, one of the sharks grew bored with its banquet and decided to dine on something without fins or gills. Since Bash Kesadet was the only thing without such features, the shark broke out of the cyclone and into the center towards her, its teeth stained with tuna, its body a behemoth by any measure. She didn’t seem to panic at the sight of this predator and while her body didn’t tremble, it began to do something far more noticeable. It began to transform, not so much in shape, for her womanly frame remained, but in colour and skin. Her cream-colored skin changed to a dark bronze and not the kind the sun delivered to sailors’ skin. This bronze was much more of the metal breed as a set of dark blue symbols stretched from the beginning of her feet reaching to the brow of her hair, which became white in colour but did not change shape.
The shark was moving so fast that it didn’t have time to fathom the sudden change until she bared her own teeth, small, sharp and undoubtedly serrated. They looked like the spear points of a phalanx as if she had once ate an ant-sized army and now wielded their weapons as her teeth. As the shark’s eyes widened, hers did the same. The difference being its eyes moved in panic while her eyes moved in predatory.
Before the shark could do anything, she lashed out at it with her hands, grasping its nose like it was a flower she planned to fillet. Small claws had formed on her fingertips, only she did not use them to seize control of the shark, the strength of her hand more than sufficed. Before the shark could even bite the water let alone her, she pulled it towards herself smacking it under its jaw. The force of the blow seemed to summon a billion bubbles in the water and every single one of them rushed to the surface as if running away from her strength. She didn’t pursue them, at least not intentionally, as the power of the punch caused the shark to ascend into the air above the water and because she was still holding onto it she too ascended into the air.
Together the shark and she drove higher into the air than any whale she had even seen and she had seen many a whale flip out of the water before. The ascension was so sudden that both she and the shark were completely dry, the water unable to ke
ep up with them. It was then and only then, that she heard something snap within the shark, the sound of its instant death. The second she began to descend back towards the water she threw the shark where it sailed through the air and landed upon the cliff. She hoped it would be the first in several courses.
But when she descended back into the water, the sharks had disappeared. She couldn’t blame them, nothing she knew of liked to be punched and then eaten. There was tuna to choose from, several who had been stunned by both the shark attack and the battalion of bubbles her punch had caused. But she didn’t want to eat them, well she did but she couldn’t bring herself to dine on them. She was sure they had lost family during the feeding, which meant they had lost enough this evening, they deserved their lives. Maybe one shark will be big enough of a meal, she thought to herself the way an alcoholic thinks they will be satisfied with a single mug of ale. She didn’t mind eating the shark because it had tried to attack her. She had no problem dining on something she had defended herself from.
As she attempted to figure out a way to make one of the tuna try and kill her she saw something on the seabed. It was white and wide, making her wonder if it was a whale-worm, she had never seen one before or knew if they even existed considering she only just made up such a name. She swam deeper into the water towards it, her legs moving like fins. As she drew closer, she saw that it was sarcophagus sized and the white was actually sheets wrapped around it. A collection of chains encircled it as well, their heaviness halting the item from floating. On the sea floor she stood over it watching as something wriggled within it. Unable to tell if it was filled with many small worms or simply one large one she clutched it with her claws tightly, ensuring that she didn’t slice through the sheets.
With one powerful burst, she ascended from the sea floor into the sky, holding the item across her shoulders the way a lumberjack carried his axe. She propelled herself back onto the cliff, where the dead shark waited for her. It would have to wait a little longer to be eaten for she was more interested in the sheets for the time being. Gently she placed it down on the ground where it continued to wriggle. More perplexing than its movements were the moans it made, as if speaking underwater, even though it was above water. The problem, at least for her, was the moans weren’t very musical, certainly not good enough to dance to. Still she wondered what lay within the sheets and decided that she would get dressed again before removing them.
She liked to get dressed up for special occasions and this occasion certainly was special for she had never seen anything wrapped in a sheet and weighed down by chains before. By the time she had put her boots on, she had changed back to blonde hair and cream-colored skin simply because all clothes looked better on her when her skin wasn’t bronze and blue. As she did so she watched the sheet-covered-something as it continued to wriggle and moan, a part of her hoping it would move enough to make the chains clatter and perhaps create some sort of symphony. When that didn’t happen she sat beside the sheet watching the wriggles, wondering which she wanted to meet first. She decided to begin at one end, where the moaning seemed to be coming from, wondering what kind of worm moaned. She ripped open that part of the sheet and saw something she didn’t expect.
A mouth filled with badly kept teeth.
She was so startled by it that her hands recoiled as if fearing being bitten. The entire sheet-covered-something began thrashing about as she watched the small tear of a window she had created. The mouth wasn’t moaning, although it was making a sound that was anything but musical. As it thrashed around she caught glimpses of what she imagined was a head, its sun-stained-skin dark and dirty.
“Let me out of here!” the mouth spoke in a scathing voice.
When she did no such thing, it continued thrashing, causing the tear to spread, which revealed a nose, which was used like a big blunt knife to cause further tearing. A face began to emerge with the pleasantness of fecal matter falling during defecation. The man’s face was revealed, his eyes were dark and seemingly too small for his head like the buttons of a poorly made teddy bear. His breaths were swift and sharp, like he was munching upon each one like a mendicant having their first meal in a month. While her eyes stayed, still his eyes darted up and down her frame like a pair of parrots stuck in a cage, too stupid to realize that the cage door had been open for them a decade ago.
“Let me out of here!” he said again, his voice reminding her of a rat who thought it could get the better of a rhinoceros in a horn measuring contest. “Let me out of here!” he bellowed and she shuffled back, her eyes wide with worry. A moment passed and neither moved, then Bash Kesadet carefully looked down at her own body as if expecting it to banish before her eyes.
“Your spell doesn’t seem to be working,” she said with a voice that was soft yet sharp, like a blade made of butter.
“What?” the man asked, his wriggling weakening.
“Your spell,” she said. “The one you are casting, the one that would make me get you out of there.”
“What?” the man said, the word leaving his mouth like an almond he didn’t like the taste of. “I am not casting any spells!”
“You’re not?” Bash Kesadet asked with a bewilderment so big, it had to be genuine.
“No!”
“Oh,” she said calmly shuffling closer to him. “May you please do me a favor? Can you please wriggle around some more, like a fish out of water?”
“What?” he asked with confused concern.
“Like a fish out of water, surely you seen such a thing before,” she said, not waiting for a response before she gave him a presentation of what such movements were like.
He watched her wriggling about for only a moment. “No I will not, let me out of here!”
Bash Kesadet stopped wriggling and with a wondering gaze asked, “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because I want to be let out of here!”
“But if you can’t cast spells what is the point in saying that.”
He grunted or perhaps groaned. It was hard to tell with this man.
“Oh I see,” he said, his head nodding, although it appeared more like it was gyrating. “I get it now.”
“You do?” she asked, leaning her head on her hand, settling in for what she hoped would be an interesting conversation.
His head kept gyrating but he didn’t speak for a short moment.
“I do,” he said finally. “It is because you’re afraid of me aren’t you? I know you are,” he added despite the fact fear was the farthest thing from her facial expression.
“You are afraid, knowing what I am capable of! If we were to get in a fight I would most assuredly get the better of it.”
She blinked several times in bewilderment, although he didn’t seem to realize that.
“Yes, I realize now you don’t feel like fighting, knowing that you would lose. But too bad for you, because I feel like fighting. You are going to be sorry, yes you are, once I get out of these sheets I am going to smash your face and beat your bum. You hear me I am going….”
His speech stopped with the suddenness of a bug being hit by a falling boulder for between finger and thumb she crushed a link in the chain, like it was a biscuit.
With a frozen face his eyes fell down upon the crippled chain and as the sheets fell away he looked every bit the caterpillar that didn’t want to leave the cocoon. Silently he stared back and forth between her and the chain she had crushed as patiently she waited for him to throw the first punch.
“Um,” he said ever so softly. “I no longer wish to fight,” he added, keeping himself very still as if hoping that somehow would make her lose sight of him.
“That’s good,” she replied before rolling onto her back. “Because I don’t feel like brawling either.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, his voice becoming more boisterous. “It would be wrong of me to best you in a brawl, after you saved me.”
She somewhat agreed, it would be very wrong if he could beat her in a brawl.<
br />
“Indeed,” she said with a small smile, feeling like a tigress speaking to a titmouse.
“Well I thank you fair maiden,” he said, flipping onto his feet, he was surprisingly swift for a man of such size.
As he stood there, stretching with all the grace of a giraffe trying to knit, she studied his shirtless body. His muscles were molded and to some his chiseled cheeks and strong jaw would be considered attractive. But such a physique seemed more forged from lifting weights than labor intensive work, something that didn’t impress her all that much.
“Now I must return.”
“To the bottom the sea?” she asked.
To this he laughed and if such sound was a disease, it wasn’t contagious.
“No silly one! To the main land.”
To this she sat up.
“How are you going to get there?”
“By swimming!” he proclaimed as if he was the one who invented such an action.
“But the mainland is over a 1000 miles away,” she said, her face looking like she had just heard a piece of fruit fart.
He laughed again and apart of her hoped he would die from such a disease.
“That’s easy for a man like me. I’ll make the journey in three minutes, four if I decide to slow down a bit.”
Before she could say anything else, he had leapt off the cliff, screaming in pain as he smashed into the water below and began swimming. He got about 100 meters out before he began to sink below the waves.
After Bash Kesadet swam out, saved him, skinned, cooked, and ate the shark he regained consciousness again.
“Damn,” he said, holding his head like a hammer had hit it, but only for a second of course. “I shouldn’t have eaten that biscuit earlier, it slowed me down.”
It was hard to take seriously how serious he seemed to be when he said this.
“Perhaps you should lie down for a bit longer,” Bash Kesadet said and meant it.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 12 Page 1
