Fiction Vortex - July 2014

by Fiction Vortex

  Tillie tried to keep ahold of her mother, but the stream pulled them apart. Her mother’s head bobbed further and further ahead of her. Tillie tried to swim off to either side into a store, but instead was tossed ashore into the atrium right beneath the giant skylight.

  In the corner of the atrium was the all-pink Elvis’ microphone cart. Only today, he was neither pink nor Elvis. Instead, he was dressed in lime green, head to toe, heavy framed glasses balanced in the center of his face. He pointed the mic at her and grinned. “Keep your chin up, Peggy Sue.”

  Tillie smiled at the floor and tried to jump back into the stream of shoppers, but was instead just jostled back into the same place.

  “May as well get comfortable, and enjoy the show,” he said to her. He smiled again, then concentrated back on the microphone. He began his demo. “Every day, it’s a-gettin’ closer,” he sang.

  Tillie sighed and settled in to watch the all-green Buddy Holly. Now that he started, it seemed rude to leave, and she wasn’t looking forward to trying to surf the shoppers. She was safe there, in the atrium, a deserted pocket of air, just her and Buddy Holly.

  No one was looking at them. They all had their own problems.

  Tillie watched the lime green Buddy Holly and decided that beneath the weird, bright outfit and clunky spectacles, he was actually pretty cute.

  “Goin’ faster than a roller coaster,” he continued. “And folks, every day the holidays are getting closer and a perfect gift will surely come your way-a-ay-ay if you give them the gift of quality sound.” Lime green Buddy Holly waved his free hand at the crowd, who still ignored him. They all held their shopping bags above their heads as they were swept by.

  Then, there was a wave in the stream.

  At first, Tillie thought they were balloons popping. Or firecrackers. Gunshots never sound like one thinks they are supposed to, especially if one has never heard gunshots before.

  Tillie had never heard gunshots before. She didn’t know to panic until she heard the screaming and feedback from the microphone as it dropped from Buddy Holly’s hands and rolled out into the tumbling river. Then, Buddy Holly tackled her.

  They hit the floor hard. He was heavier than he looked when he was singing, and a little sweaty in the lime green suit. More balloons popped, firecrackers cracked, and through the din, Tillie heard voices: “He’s got a gun!” and “Someone’s shooting!”

  Above them, there was popping and cracking and screaming and din. And the cold-burn started in her fingers and toes.

  “Are you okay?” Buddy Holly whispered into her hair, which was already clumping beneath him. She wanted to say yes, started to say, “Oh no,” but her mouth froze in the no, her lips hardening and growing long and black. A beak. Lime green Buddy Holly rolled off her as wings pushed out above her scapula and raised her up. She could see his face, baffled and afraid, as she tripled in size.

  Tillie tried to say something, but only cawed.

  Tillie flapped her wings. She looked at the sunlight streaming through the skylight above them. She pointed her beak at the window and cawed again.

  The popping and cracking and screaming and din moved closer.

  She jumped nervously on her black legs, talons tapping the floor. Get on, she cawed. Trust me.

  Buddy Holly seemed to understand. He grabbed and pulled out a fistful of feathers as he clambered up her back. He was heavier than he looked when he was singing.

  Tilled flapped her wings. She scanned the river of faces and cawed down at them. She passed once, twice, until she saw what she was looking for, the one human face she knew. She cawed at it, flapped down, and as she dove, closed her talons around the soft nesty fabric around the face. The face yelled, “Tillie!” at her.

  Mom, she cawed back.

  She had to flap hard to rise again, but they ascended to the skylight. She kept flapping there and cawed at the human on her back. He had thicker legs. He understood and kicked out the thick safety glass. The glass rained to the floor below them, covered the crowd in glittering shards of snow.

  The human on her back held onto her tightly. The one in her talons grasped her legs. They all looked down at Black Friday for a second. Everything looked frozen in time and quiet. Tillie liked how the glass caught and bent the light. She was happy. She was born for this.

  She flapped and flapped and flew them away.

  ~~~~~

  ~~~~~

  Caren Gussoff is a SF writer living in Seattle, WA. The author of Homecoming (2000), and The Wave and Other Stories(2003), first published by Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Books, Gussoff’s been published in anthologies by Seal Press, and Prime Books, as well as in Abyss & Apex, Cabinet des Fées, and Fantasy Magazine. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West. Her new novel, The Birthday Problem, will be published by Pink Narcissus Press in 2014, and her first contact novella, Three Songs for Roxy, will be published by Aqueduct Press in 2015. Find her online at @spitkitten, facebook.com/spitkitten, and at spitkitten.com.

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  Small Snatches of Life from Before

  by Steve Toase; published July 15, 2014

  Hannah sat staring at the thirty smooth, haematite pebbles balanced on the teacher’s desk. Her mouth felt clammy and tasted of peppermint from the RNA spray.

  Miss Stenson pushed her chair back and walked over to the window, the beads of the pull-cord sliding through her gloved fingers as she pulled the blinds shut. Shadows moved across the room like ravens crowding roadkill.

  “So here we are again class CT11. Memorial Day,” she said, walking across to the classroom door and turning the key. “Doesn’t a week just fly by?”

  Hannah half listened, too busy staring intently at the small, spherical grave stones. They were supposed to be identical. That way you experienced a different memory every week. Unless you were clever and observant and attentive. Hannah was all these things.

  Miss Stenson was back behind her desk, hands folded, bulging eyes scanning her students.

  If she concentrated, Hannah could still feel traces of the memory from the previous week — the sun on her bare shoulders and the brush of confetti on her face. Her bridegroom’s suited arm against the bare skin of hers and his kiss tasting slightly of whiskey. The cheers of the family surrounding them as they walked through the park to the long white car.

  She let herself drift back into the room as Miss Stenson went through the weekly introduction, explaining how as they were now 17 it was their responsibility to keep alive the memories of those who didn’t survive. How it was important that the memories were selected at random so the pain of remembrance was shared. But there was no pain for Hannah, because she was clever and attentive and observant.

  “So class,” Miss Stenson said, clapping her hands together. “We will proceed as we do every week, with the highest achieving student from the previous week choosing the first grave stone.”

  Hannah could almost taste the champagne on her tongue, and the light-headedness that built with every mouthful. After the first few times with the memory she researched what the liquid was, with the bubbles and tang of alcohol.

  Miss Stenson extended her hand. Hannah pushed her chair back, ignoring the groans from her classmates. Their resentment and gossip in the rec hall was nothing. This was too important to her for their petty opinions to matter.

  Walking between the desks was her only opportunity to examine the stones. After each memorial day lesson they were meant to be cleaned, any distinguishing marks removed. Miss Stenson was never as thorough as the guidelines told her to be. Hannah was observant.

  Hannah ran her tongue over her lips, the greasy smear of lipstick, two shades lighter than the grave stones, bitter after the peppermint foam. Second in, third row back. She could see the ghost of her mouth on the surface from the previous week. Smiling at her teacher, Hannah reached out and picked up the grave sto
ne, the metallic surface cold to the touch.

  She sat back at her desk, turning the sphere over in her hands until the rest of the class had all made their selections.

  “You all know the procedure. I will play the tune of memoriam,” Miss Stenson said, reaching under her desk for the old metallic tape player. “Then you will all place your selected stones in your mouths.”

  Each of them held their individual memory, solidified from the life of Caroline Tracer. Some were good, some bad. All significant. Small snatches of life from before.

  Frozen notes of a piano echoed out of hidden speakers, the tune scratchy and discordant. The music came to an end, and as one, all the pupils placed the pebbles in their mouths, the RNA foam releasing the information from the coded DNA on the surface. Hannah smiled. Already she could almost smell the blossoms falling like snow and getting caught in her veil. She knew what to expect. Hannah was clever and attentive and observant.

  As the memory unraveled, Hannah knew something was wrong. The body she was in was scaled and scarred, the stomach bloated and empty. In the corner of the room, something like a pile of clothes moaned. She was glad the person who’s memory had Hannah caged didn’t want to look any closer. Outside the window, black gales streaked the glass. Bending down, she picked up a plastic bag, cheap with some kind of logo on the side, stuffed to splitting with cans of food.

  The pile of clothes in the corner choked and shifted. Hannah tried to spit out the grave stone, guessing what lay outside the door, but the trismus inducer embedded in the mineral locked her jaw tight.

  In the corridor her host walked on bodies unrecognisable under the streaks of dust. Each footstep caught on moist, ragged clothes. Hannah tried to block out the sound of crunching, but these weren’t her ears to block. The nausea though? That she could lay claim to. Pausing at the end of the corridor she turned and stared at the apartment door one last time, her host peering at the address to make sure she never forgot. 42 Ascendance Towers. Tears streaked down her cheeks and her host stepped out into the street.

  The grave stone fell from Hannah’s mouth to the desk and the memory faded. She sat staring at the pebble as one by one her classmates filed past her returning their grave stones to the front of the room. Miss Stenson reached over, smiling to herself and took the stone back, placing it in the tray, ready to go back in the cupboard until the next memorial day. She left the classroom, turning off the lights as she went, leaving Hannah sitting in darkness.

  ~~~~~

  Hannah soon found the building, the streaked, hollow concrete still standing as a reminder. All the doors had rotted long ago. She walked down the corridor counting the flats until she stood outside number 42. Running her nail down the plastic seal, Hannah stepped inside the single room. The pile of clothes was gone, but glass and crockery broke underfoot. Just being in the room made her feel sick, the memory starting to play again. As much hers now as her host’s. She crouched, holding her stomach tight.

  In the corner something pulsed, a reflections cube still catching images from the linked citizen’s life. Hannah walked across, covering the screen with her hand and holding the object in the air, ready to smash it against the damp walls. Then paused. One by one she moved her fingers and gazed at the screen. The first captures showed a young girl playing on the lawn outside the tower block. The next few cycled through different scenes from an idyllic childhood in the small flat, until the girl turned nine and the black dust hit. From then on the photos were all of refugee stations and hospital beds. Hannah recognised Miss Stenson by her gloved hands and bulging eyes, standing outside her teaching college. She closed her eyes and in the memory that wasn’t hers the pile of clothes twitched one last time.

  ~~~~~

  ~~~~~

  Steve lives in North Yorkshire, England and occasionally Munich, Germany. His stories tend towards the unsettling and unreal, dealing with revenge, loss, faery, chess playing bears and ancient gods. In his writing Steve explores the places where other worlds seep into ours.

  His work has appeared in publications such as Cabinet de Fees’ Scheherezade’s Bequest, Pantheon Magazine, Innsmouth Magazine, Jabberwocky Magazine, Sein und Werden, Cafe Irreal, streetcake magazine, Weaponizer and nthPosition. His story Call Out has recently been selected for the Best Horror Of The Year Anthology 6.

  To read more of Steve’s work please visit www.stevetoase.co.uk www.facebook.com/stevetoase1

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  Yet Another Invader

  by Sean Monaghan; published July 22, 2014

  Night came quickly out this way. Always did.

  It felt like the sun blasted the desert clean all day, as if some spectacular furnace was set on high and aimed right at this one spot before dropping off the side of the world.

  I’d been here sixteen years now, at altitude, watching the sun pass overhead each day. When I arrived they called me Mr. Harding, but now I’m just Fex. I guess I can fix your stuff up better than most. Take a look at whatever’s ailing and tweak here and there and you’re good to go. Tractors, well-pumps, shoes, bearings, metal detectors, phones, watches, flashlights, kids’ toys, medical equipment, televisions, refrigerators. Practically anything that can break down, I can get going again. Kind of a useful skill three hundred miles from anywhere.

  Until tonight.

  Tonight I was scratching my head looking at the thing that’s planted itself right in the middle of young Tessa’s solar collector. Really not sure if I’d be able to fix this one.

  “Maybe you gotta come back in the morning?” Tessa said to me. “Can’t collect any solar energy this time of day anyhow.” She nodded at the quickly vanishing scrapes of red on the horizon, clouds, and contrails. Tessa was twenty-three, but she ran the little farm like an old hand. She had a thousand acres clean and eighty-seven head of buffalo-sheep. Moved them around, and kept the pasture fresh.

  Couldn’t say I knew the first thing about ranching, but I did know some people who had land in better shape than hers but couldn’t manage more than one head every twenty five acres. Some of the real old timers muttered about when you could run one to one, animal to acre, but those were different times.

  Things are quieter these days. Fewer people around, less stuff to break down. I might have to shift down to Mexico or Florida, into the heat and ocean to see if I can’t make a better living. Can’t make the break though, just can’t let go. So I stick around here, trying to keep things ticking over. Shoot a few deer from time to time, not for sport, but to fill the freezer. I wouldn’t have done that five years ago, but now? Well, a man’s got to eat.

  Walking around the solar collector, I tried to get other angles on the thing in the middle. It looked like it’d fallen from a height with the way it had bashed a hole in the middle of the unit. My flashlight picked up bits of machinery and rock and, oddly, something that looked like fur. It was as if a meteorite hit a UAV on the way down and then landed on a skunk.

  “I think I’ll work on it tonight, anyway,” I told Tessa. “You’ll want the collector up and running first thing.” Cattle prices were low again, and she’d already sent some off to slaughter at a loss. She was going to need power to keep drawing moisture from the ground and air to keep her herd hydrated.

  “I’ll put on the coffee,” she said. “You want something to eat?”

  Tessa’s cooking was on the average side — I could cook better myself — but I hadn’t eaten since breakfast “Won’t say no.”

  Tessa smiled her wide toothy smile. “I’ll nuke something.” She turned and went into her big adobe place. I remembered that some of the house’s corners had cracks and could do with patching. She’d asked about it a couple of months back and I hadn’t gotten onto it. In a way she wouldn’t have wanted me to. Deferred maintenance. Putting off the non-essential stuff until she could get things squared away. I would have done the work free, on account of our friendship, but she wouldn’t have allowed that.

  I turned back to the solar collector
and reached over to try to pull out the thing. My hand slipped on something rubbery and I pulled back. Something in the middle of the collector assembly squeaked. The sound was just audible.

  Stepping back, I crouched and shone the flashlight beam around under the collector, in between the support poles and cabling. The thing had burst through the bottom, but only just. Fragments of fuzz dangled. I stretched out, reaching to grab it and jerked back, rewarded with an electric shock for my efforts.

  I heard crackling.

  It hadn’t been a big shock — maybe twenty or so volts — but I was sure it wasn’t from the collector. I was a long way from the capacitors and the battery and the unit had effectively shut down for the night. I glanced at the sky, seeing the stars and glints from the usual collection of scudding habitats.

  Standing, I backed away from the collector and looked the thing over again. In a way I thought Tessa might be right: It would be easier in the light of day.

  Darned if I was going to let the thing beat me.

  I got my ladder from the truck and propped it up. Before I got up on it I used my voltage meter to check if there was any current in the ladder or any of the exposed metal or the solar collector. Dead as a fencepost.

  Tessa called over to ask if I wanted white in my coffee and I called back, asking if that was any way to treat a perfectly good cup of coffee.

  She laughed. “Black then.”

  “You got it.”

  When it came, it was bitter and strong and I still hadn’t made any progress with the collector. I had gotten myself a couple more shocks.

  “Something fell off an airplane, you think?” Tessa said, sipping on her own cup.

  “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen fall off of a plane.”

  “Really, what kinds of things you seen then? Falling from planes.” Her grin about split her face.

  “Some suitcases, bathroom supplies, you know. Livestock, usually. Pigs mostly, since they’re the worst fliers.”

  “Oh, I hear you.”

  I could see a kind of depression in the side of the thing, in a part that was less stone- or fur-like and was clearly machine. The hollow looked almost like a handle, as if I could reach right in with my fingertips and pull a part of it open.