by Apex Authors
Garlic you keep burping all day. Hiccups. Broken fingernails. Stuck behind a 45-mile-an-hour grandma on the highway. Socks that don't match. Shoes that give you a blister. Split ends. [Insert evil laugh here.]
The world is my oyster, the universe at my fingertips. The possibilities are literally endless. Even if none of these things ever comes to pass, the simple act of thinking them up on the spot and imagining them happening in great detail to the victim is worth every second.
Shall I give you an example?
A few weeks ago, I woke up a little after three in the morning. Groggily, I wondered if the phone had rung. You know when you're half in the dreamworld and half out, when you can think you hear something but are sure you have only imagined it? Right. So I was betting the phone hadn't actually rung in the real world, and I turned my head to try and fall back asleep.
Thirty minutes later, the phone did ring. Again, apparently. Only once. I was lucid enough to hear it, and opened my eyes in time to see the light on the display go out after a brief moment.
Thoughts instantly started pouring through my head. What if someone was trying to get a hold of me and couldn't get through? What if someone was ill ... or hurt ... or trapped in some foreign country with a stolen wallet, a rip in their trousers, and a concierge refusing their hotel reservation? (That one's for you, sweetie.)
I went from sleepy to adrenaline-driven in sixty seconds. I took the phone off its holder and set it next to the bed, so that I might catch it if it happened again. Just in case. And twenty-nine minutes later, when it rang once more, I picked it up in time to hear the click.
Excuse me?
I'm still wondering what—or whom—that might have been. The half-hour timing seemed almost electronic, but a fax machine wouldn't have hung up after only one ring. Which left the human element. A very annoying, very evil, very sadistic human element that deserved at that moment to die a slow, painful death. (And no, it didn't occur to me to star-69 ... it was four in the morning. Sleep was really a priority at the time. Give me a little credit.)
I did not freak out. I kept my cool, unplugged the phone, and went back to a fitful sleep.
It wasn't enough.
Work the next day was torture. I crawled through meetings and yawned through orders. I drank coffee like it was going out of style. My friend Janet told me that the hours between three and five in the morning are the most crucial in the circadian rhythm. Oh yeah. I believe it. That day I was living proof.
And somewhere in between the second and third cup of blessed caffeine, divine inspiration came to me: a stubbed toe.
A toe stubbed so badly you'd think it was broken. The kind of stubbed toe where it hurts to walk, and putting on shoes is excruciating. It doesn't bruise right away—maybe never at all—but you can feel it. You can't take your mind off the dull throbbing. It only lasts maybe a day max, but for that one day it is the most supreme annoyance you can possibly imagine.
THAT was what my 3 a.m. caller deserved, and I wished a Badly Stubbed Toe in his direction with every fiber of my gypsy-DNA being.
I could almost hear Fate giggling, tickled by the perfect justice of it all.
So watch your step next time you cross me—I'm armed and dangerous, and I'm not waiting until I'm a haggard old white-haired witch. The twenty-first century is all about progression. Wear protection, and treat me and my friends (and pretty much everyone else you know) with the utmost respect.
I walk softly and carry an evil eye.
Sara King is an Alaskan writer who wrote her first full-length novel at the age of 12. “The Moldy Dead” represents the very first dollar she's earned with her writing. Sara has short stories upcoming in Blood, Blade, and Thruster Magazine and Aberrant Dreams. Check out her website at www.kingfiction.com
THE MOLDY DEAD
By Sara King
Unnamed Planet, 8th Turn, 93rd Age of the Huouyt
It took eight and a half turns to reach the mold planet. During the envoy's journey to the Outer Line, seven members of their crew died: three to suicide, two to old age, and two more simply didn't wake up, their bodies rotting inside substandard Congressional casks.
* * * *
Esteei had risen that morning to find that only eight of their original fifteen were left. The Ooreiki were whispering foul play, giving the Huouyt suspicious glances, but Esteei was accustomed to the inter-species angst. He was more worried about the other Jahul, whose frozen corpse now drifted somewhere in their wake.
The senior Jahul Emissary was one of the three who had simply put on their spacesuits and thrown themselves into the ship's backwash while everyone else slept. It left Esteei, the only remaining Jahul on the ship, in charge of an ill-fated mission nobody wanted anyway.
Now, staring out at the clammy, glistening black landscape spread out before him, Esteei wondered if he should have done the same.
The entire planet was covered with mold.
The only areas clear of the glistening ebony organism were along the beaches, where their ship now rested. The rolling black waves halted at the highest tide line, leaving about five rods of shoreline where Esteei and his envoy could set up for their turn-long stay.
It was a pointless gesture. There were no beings here for Esteei to make contact with. Anyone could see the only thing that lived here was mold.
Endless miles of mold.
Grimacing, Esteei stepped back onto the ship to fill out the death reports.
* * * *
Crown's peers buzzed with conversation. The ship had descended at an angle perpendicular to the ground, as the Philosophers had thought it might. It meant their visitors were well beyond the aero-based technologies, as they had foreseen. In fact, everything about their visitors had been theorized long in advance ... except for the way they looked.
Not even the Philosophers could predict Nature.
Nature, it seemed, had produced three other sentient species, each vastly different from the next. Most of the visitors were short, squat, brown things with tentacles bearing long metal instruments, probably some form of energy weapons. They had large brown eyes with slit pupils, the surfaces sticky with clear mucous. Yet, despite their grotesque appearance, their simple intentions were clearly written in their expressive faces.
They were the guardians. The brown bipeds spread out in a fan, testing the area, ready to draw enemy fire from their wards, should they encounter hostility.
Of course, they encountered none.
The Philosophers had been waiting for this a very long time.
Soon, they would be free.
The other two aliens were different. The first was tall with white cilia coursing over its skin, giving it a downy appearance. It alone had the biological compatibility to leave the ship without wearing a protective suit. It walked on three muscular legs and appeared to have some aquatic ancestry, since its upper body had a hydrodynamic cylindrical shape and it had trouble keeping itself upright.
It was the eyes of this one that bothered Crown's peers. Those Philosophers who could see them said the tripod's eyes were unnatural, blue-white and difficult to read. They determined that he was a leader of sorts, as it was he who struck out along the shore, following the waterline.
The third alien intrigued them. The guardians ringed him, their sticky brown eyes alert and watchful. Whatever his purpose, he was very important to their group.
It walked on six legs, though from the way its splotchy green skin folded in the center of its back, it appeared as if it could shift its weight onto the back four legs and manipulate objects with two three-fingered hands.
The hexapod was not physically strong. Like the aquatic alien, it appeared to be struggling under the gravity of the Philosopher planet. Its six legs were spindly, almost out of proportion with its long, dome-shaped body. Its eyes were even more of a mystery. They were completely black, yet they somehow conveyed more emotion than the other seven aliens combined.
When Crown discovered they were heading in his directi
on, he grew excited. He was tired of subsisting on thoughts passed through a million others before they reached him. He was tired of listening to second-hand accounts, tired of theorizing, tired of hypothesizing, tired of imagining.
Crown wanted to see them.
* * * *
They began to explore the shoreline first, putting off wading through the endless acres of black mold as long as possible.
The Ooreiki youngsters, desperate to find some form of life on the planet other than the omnipresent black mold, picked up several odd-shaped stones and suggested they were broken carapaces of aquatic critters, and that possibly the dominant species of the planet lived in the oceans and not on land.
Esteei and Nirle, the only two survivors who had been on a Congressional envoy before, gave them the benefit of the doubt, though it was painfully obvious to both of them that the stones were just that.
Bha'hoi was not so tactful.
"Those are rocks, you ignorant Ooreiki morons. Jreet hells, I've had enough of this. I'm going back before their stupidity rubs off.” Frustration flaring off of him, the Huouyt Overseer turned and stormed back to the ship, leaving the seven of them alone on the beach.
The young Ooreiki dropped their prizes dejectedly, their expressive faces wrinkled in shame.
Nirle lifted his rifle and watched Bha'hoi go through the scope. Tempers had flared ever since they'd been assigned their destination, and for a horrible moment, Esteei thought the Ooreiki was going to fire.
"Two hundred credits says I can kill him in six shots."
Esteei was curious, despite himself. “Why six?” He knew a Huouyt was hard to kill, but Nirle was a trained Ooreiki Battlemaster. They prided themselves in their weapons mastery.
"I'd have to blow his legs and arms off first."
The younger Ooreiki snorted.
Esteei, who had not been trained in the arts of killing Huouyt, was lost. “Why?"
"Because it would hurt more,” one of them answered. “Five for the limbs, one for the brain."
Nirle grunted and dropped his rifle again.
They moved on, dutifully scouting the empty shore for life—an endeavor that was becoming more pointless with every tic that passed. Eventually, the younger Ooreiki became more animated, their shame disappearing with their Battlemaster's anger. They even began picking up odd-shaped stones again.
Anxiety suddenly rolled over Esteei's sivvet in a tide. He frowned, glancing at his companions. “Is something wrong?"
"Yeah. I didn't pull the trigger.” Nirle looked down at his gun like it had betrayed him.
Esteei glanced at the younger Ooreiki, who were watching him with curious, sticky brown eyes. Which one of them was anxious? And why?
His sivvet continued to burn, the acidic-metallic taste right before fear. None of them, though, appeared worried. As Esteei scanned the endless expanse of black mold that seemed to be creeping toward them as they stood there, shock hit his sivvet like a cold splash of alcohol.
"Boys, let's get our Emissary back to base. If there was something here, he would've felt it already."
"Wait."
Nirle paused on the flat, wind-lapped stones. “Wanna give it a few more tics? Don't blame you. Truly, Jahul, I'd shoot myself if I had to have the Huouyt in my head."
Esteei frowned out over the waves of mold, feeling the anxiety growing to something bigger. “There's something out there."
Nirle's face hardened with seriousness. “Where?"
Esteei scanned the glistening mass, but saw no break in its rolling perfection. “I don't know. Maybe underground."
"What'd you feel?” Nirle asked, coming to stand beside him.
"Shock,” Esteei said. “Fear."
"So we've been sighted.” At his words, every Ooreiki in the group took a position around Esteei, protecting him with their bodies.
They waited.
Nothing.
There was one rock that kept drawing Esteei's attention. It was shaped like an upside-down teardrop, weather-beaten to near oblivion. The sticky black mold had crested the top, gleaming in the sun like an ebony raindrop.
As Esteei watched, the mold moved.
Like wind over a field of grass, it rolled. The rolling spread outward from the tear-shaped rock, until every glistening black surface was moving.
"You see that?” Nirle whispered.
Esteei felt sick. “Take me back to the ship."
* * * *
Never in his life had Crown been so impatient. He heard reports that the tripod aquatic alien had turned back, some sort of dispute, and that one of the guardian aliens had aimed his weapon at the aquatic one's back.
Please, Crown thought, Just let me see you.
As if the universe was answering his prayer, the seven remaining aliens stopped on the beach in front of him.
When Crown saw the hexapod's face, he flinched in shock. It was the same face that had haunted his subconscious for thousands of turns, the face that Crown had always thought to be a construct of his own boredom.
But here it was, and it boded poorly for the Philosophers.
Replaying in a tiny corner of his mind for a thousand years, the face had always watched them die.
They're going to kill us. Crown sent his message out, and immediately the other Philosophers responded. Their fear was increasing, not because of what Crown had said, but because the aquatic alien had changed form.
It had changed form. It had placed a tiny piece of material into a receptacle in its head, swallowing it with squirming red appendages, and then its entire body shifted into something else. Something that could move unseen under the Philosophers.
And now it was spying on its fellows.
* * * *
It was a young Ooreiki who finally named the mold.
Wiping it off his boots after another slogging adventure through the glistening black terrain, he wrinkled his meaty Ooreiki face. “Man, this stuff's as nasty as geuji."
Geuji.
Or, in Old Poen, ‘Draak shit.'
The name stuck. It became so colloquial that Esteei even used it in his reports to Congress by accident.
Outraged, the Botanical Committee immediately came up with a new name—something in ancient Ueshi meaning ‘great black sleeper'—but to everyone actually living with it, the mold was known as the Geuji. Fondly capitalized, since it was a lot of geuji.
The Geuji resisted every attempt to control it. With the high tides threatening to invade the ship, Nirle led patrol after patrol out over the glistening landscape, attempting to carve a landing clearing into it with fire and shovels. It was pointless—the Geuji healed in hours, leaving unblemished, glistening terrain behind.
Esteei caught Nirle on his way back from another failed attempt. Frustration emanated from the Ooreiki in an emotional barrage on Esteei's sivvet.
"Still doesn't work?” Esteei asked, nodding at the slime-covered shovel the Ooreiki carried with him.
"If you look hard, you can see it growing back,” Nirle growled. He stalked onto the ship. Inside, Esteei heard a shovel clang against the wall, then hit the floor in a clatter.
Esteei glanced down the beach. The Geuji remained in a perfect line above the high tide mark, never dipping below, following it with extreme precision.
If they grow so fast, why haven't they grown toward the water?
Suddenly conscious of being alone outside the ship, Esteei hurried back inside.
Panic was spreading amongst the Philosophers. Something horrible was going on, something they had no control over. The aliens were fast, terrifyingly fast, yet their minds were slow. The aquatic tripod seemed to be the only one to realize what the Philosophers were, but for some reason it hadn't told the others.
Something was wrong.
* * * *
Two days later, the patrol came back one short.
It was an odd day, one where the Geuji erupted in constant motion around the ship, coursing with wave after wave of activity that almost appeared to have
a pattern to it. Entranced, Esteei had stepped outside to watch it.
It reminded him of the rolling oceans of grass on his home planet, yet here there was no wind. The mold had been moving since early morning, a few hours after Nirle had left with his ground team. The longer Esteei watched it, the more it made his pores itch, yet he could not look away.
"Esteei,” Nirle called, breaking the spell. He was jogging up the beach in a heavy, lumbering Ooreiki gait. With him were four of his five ground mates. All of them emanated fear. “Did Tafet come back?"
"No,” Esteei said, tearing his gaze from the Geuji. The waves stopped suddenly. They were now as utterly, glistening calm as if they were fields of ebony. “There's nobody here but me."
Esteei had been choosing to stay behind lately. He'd quickly learned that the mold was some sort of emotional magnifier for the Ooreiki, giving his three sivvet the equivalent of an emotional beating when he got too close. He could only handle one or two hours at a time without feeling sick.
And now the Ooreiki were afraid. It was as palpable as if someone had opened up Esteei's skull and wrapped his sivvet in wet, putrescent cloth.
"Where's Bha'hoi?” Nirle demanded.
"Down the beach."
"Which direction?"
"West,” Esteei said, stunned at the fury emanating from the Ooreiki. “You think Bha'hoi would—"
"You haven't been to war with the Huouyt,” Nirle said. “I have. They're smart and they're psychotic. If he thought he could kill us all and get away with it, he probably would."
Esteei stared.
"But we went east,” Nirle said reluctantly. “Climbed through a rock formation, and that's where we lost Tafet. Spent all damned afternoon looking for him. He's not answering his headcom."
"Did he fall asleep?” Esteei asked.
Nirle gave him a dark look.
"What about your PPU?” Esteei quickly said.
Nirle brought it out and showed it to him.
Five small green dots clustered near the point Nirle had marked ‘Slime Removal Station.'
"Where's Tafet's?” Esteei asked, confused.
"There's only two ways the PPU stops picking up the signal,” Nirle said. “Either something fried his tag, or something killed him."
