Burning Bridges: A Renegade Fiction Anthology

by Benjamin Sobieck

  The truth was I didn’t know anything anymore except this one thing, this line I saw on one of the kid’s t-shirts when I was interviewing all of them. It said, `ANYONE ANYTIME ANYWHERE’ and, friend, I knew what it meant. Any one, any time, any where and for any reason or for no reason at all, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. And why and for what? For any reason or for no reason at all. Death’s always waiting for us out there up ahead until that day when it isn’t anymore. And I couldn’t stand it. I could not stand it. I’d wake up in the night hearing Claire breathing next to me and I’d know, I mean really know, that she was going to die. Watching Lisa get on the school bus in the mornings it was all I could do sometimes to stop myself from running after her, hauling her back down the steps and locking her up in her room. But what would that do? What would anything do? There was nothing else to do but what I did. You know history, friend? You know about Masada? What’d they do surrounded by the Romans and knowing what was coming? What’d they do? They killed themselves. Yeah, well, I did them one better. I didn’t take the easy way out, okay?

  You want the confession straight? I’ve got no problem with that. I broke open the capsules from my pills and put them in the cake that night of Lisa’s birthday. There was so much frosting and sprinkles they couldn’t even taste the meds. I made sure they’d had a little wine, well, more than a little, really, with dinner. What? She was eighteen. What’s wrong with a glass of wine with dinner?

  Once they were both sleeping peaceful and quiet I just put the pillow over their faces, Claire’s first and then Lisa’s, and sat down on them like a chicken nestling down on some eggs. But I wasn’t hatching any omelets there, friend, I was hatching eternity. They were both silent and still and, friend, they were both safe.

  Did I cry? Why the hell would I? They were with God now. Let me tell you this, friend - you love your family? You better kill them. `Cause if you don’t, somebody else will - and they won’t be so nice about it either. You got to think of safety first.

  The End

  Joshua J. Mark is a freelance writer who lives in upstate New York, USA, with his family. His short fiction has appeared in Writes for All Magazine, Fiction Brigade, Five Stop Story, Pagan Friends Magazine, and Edge Piece among others. His non-fiction appears on the Ancient History Encyclopedia site, Suite 101, and Ancient Planet Magazine. When he is not writing or exploring old ruins, Mr. Mark teaches philosophy part-time at Marist College.

  Killing Deities

  ~ L. Vera

  When Sawyer had approached the center of the town, among the houses with glowing lights, he had thought he was at a junk heap – he was. Wires shot out of old monitors and the smell of copper and iron whisked through the air and left a dead, dry air for him to inhale. It was more of a lake than a heap, as if they hollowed out the ground to fill it with their old, useless technology. The useful sun was missing. Gone, yet a glow hovered over the horizon as if the sun tried with all its might to be seen. The fight was still be waged as Sawyer stood ready, his hands across his chest. Determination painted a tough smile, one that refused to be wiped away because today he was going to kill a god.

  Sawyer stood at the edge, his shoes tapped a broken cassette player, its brown lid was broken like everything else that inhabited the lake. Across the heap lied his destination - an old shack.

  “You know, you don’t have to do this,” the lips were hidden behind his companion’s cloak. “I smell death in the air.”

  “I smell nothing,” Sawyer replied.

  “It’s because you don’t have the right nose,” the man replied tapping his nose with his long branch of a finger.

  “Yeah, well I have the right tools,” he said as he tapped his sheath. “Tonight, I will kill my first god,” he said and placed his foot gently on an old typewriter, the carriage snapped off and he fought back and caught his footing again. “I was once useful, I was important to someone,” its ghost spoke to him and Sawyer listened, steadying himself with his hands, thanking the machine for holding him while his companion stood like an old gravestone, reminding him of the death that followed him.

  He took another step and his foot traveled deeper than the step before. Sawyer glanced back again; the thought of someone waiting for him comforted him but like the breeze that carried the smell of copper and oil, Sawyer saw the man disappear. It had reminded him of the first time he had met the man, high amidst the clouds and among the chiseled mountaintops.

  “What do you want?” the crow said to Sawyer, it stood atop a neatly stacked stone pillar. The sun was bright here and the heat was almost unbearable which made the journey more pleasurable to Sawyer.

  “I wish to talk to the old man,” he yelled it as he competed with the rain and thunder that stormed below them. Down below he could only see the dark clouds butting against each other and then he couldn’t breathe.

  Sawyer clasped at his chest and turned at the foot of steps that were embedded into the mountain and the man appeared in a cloak of smoke. His hands were brittle and his arms almost skeletal; his skin was crisp like a dead man whose been left in the sun.

  Sawyer felt a tingle on his leg as he stepped forward among the forgotten electronics. He stopped and reached down between the mess of guts and memories, up his right leg and pushed a live wire that tapped on his leg. “Hi,” it said and Sawyer responded back, “Hi.”

  He met another wire that left the taste of electricity in his teeth as it pushed him back into the void. It was like he had fallen into an actual pool of water with large sharp stones floating in its body. There was no air down in the mechanical cesspool. He grabbed his chest and it brought his mind back to the day he had met his companion.

  “Boy! You are too far away for any god to care for your well-being.” The old man stood in a silk black robe, with a large collar the size of a water jug. Sawyer looked at the man as he struggled to suck in air. Any words would have been sufficient but none came - none.

  “Boy, look into my eyes,” he said as he bent down and placed a boney finger under his neck. “Now breathe,” and the air from the mountains and the molecules from the clouds swirled around him in a cool blanket and he could breathe again.

  “Boy? Why did you climb way up here, among the forgotten and unworshipped?”

  The old man reached out and grabbed him like the mechanical arm that had reached deep into the pool of computer parts. The moonlight reflected like pieces of glass on the hard beaten gravel. The sun had lost.

  “Air,” he said as he lifted his palm that was dotted with loose gravel. They left little red dots that resembled the red lights that lit up around him. Those lights stared at him from their mechanical stalks above a wire mess that resembled rats.

  “Don’t mind them,” the voice sounded like static tuned to a deep child’s voice. Sawyer stared into the silhouette that lifted him out of the rubble - it was a god. The god dug through the trash that had almost stolen Sawyer’s life, the machine was more interested in digging through junk than addressing Sawyer. “Are you the god that dominants this realm?” Sawyer asked.

  “God?” The god’s rectangular head hid in the silhouette of darkness.

  He walked over much like a spider would if it had two legs, and his face lit up with the bright LEDs that made up his face. A huge monitor rested on his body like a head and his neck was fashioned with twisted wires and rods. Among the reds and blues of cords was a blue tie that dangled where a neck would be, instead held more steel, copper and plastic. “I’m no god. I am alive, normal, much as you are, boy,” the words lifted the tiny speakers that protruded from underneath the large screen that displayed two large eyes and a mouth.

  “If I were a god, what business then, would you have with me?” the god broadcasted through his speaker and then the screen, which was his face, went black. Sawyer reached at it, mesmerized by the life that inhabited this being. “I have some news from the other gods. Can we please speak in public?” Sawyer lied and the god si
mply nodded and walked towards the shack.

  Sawyer followed slipping once in the gravel, causing his palm to bleed. He looked up and found one of the robotic rats staring at him with its one blue light. Sawyer asked the rat, “Why do you have a blue light instead of a red?” but the rat replied by turning itself into a question mark with the blue eye as the dot. “Amazing!” Sawyer said scooping up the rat with his hands and then he ran to catch up with the god who had already disappeared into the shack.

  As soon as Sawyer and the rat entered the shack a blast of cold air pushed continually at them. Sawyer shivered and crossed his arms while he walked down the corridor of wires. From the outside the shack looked like it was made from boards but now Sawyer noticed it was made of many different wires creating the walls, the floor and the ceiling. He entered the hallway was lit by a dirty blue light that got stronger as he followed the skeleton- like- god, until he reached a large opening full of monitors.

  The room contained over forty screens all broadcasting twenty more in split screens. Sawyer spun and found a screen that held a recording of his conversation with the old man.

  Sawyer stared at the old man. “I want to kill all the gods, every single last incest-ridden, worshipper-sucking bastard of a god that they are,” Sawyer said with spit joining in the anger he shared.

  “You know these creatures are less than gods. Gods rarely interfere with you mere mortals. They are more like,” the man spun and on the back of his head was a large Greek symbol – omega -, “manifestations of the world’s prayers and devotion. You can’t kill an idea,” the man spun around and he looked out into the clouds where a mechanical bird flew with one red glowing eye. He nodded to his crow and it chased the bird.

  “I can try,” Sawyer responded.

  “I got a better idea. I’ll help. I know how to kill every one of those bastards” he smiled and his teeth shone over his thin lips. “So whom do we kill first?” and the crow destroyed the bird, and the screen, which contained the little window of Sawyer’s past, had turned to static.

  “Sit,” the God of Media had instructed the boy.

  “But there is no chair? Would you have me sit on the floor?”

  “No. We are not barbarians here. We are flesh and bone - humans. We sit in chairs,” the god said.

  Sawyer sat and as he bent his buttocks closer to the floor, wires escaped like snakes and formed a chair. He sat staring at the wall of monitors and the god had joined him. “So many things to watch, not enough time to watch them all,” he said.

  “Um, don’t you,” Sawyer wanted to remind the god about his lie.

  “Silence. You see this girl,” he pointed to a small dark window, “She is going to die.” His screen had turned into a face again, two eyes and a weird smile.

  Sawyer placed his hand into the sheath that held his small sword and pulled out a little rectangular device. He looked for a place the drive would fit in and there it was, hidden behind the god’s head, a rectangular slot.

  “You know people love to watch television and scour the Internet but they are missing the good bits. The stuff that happens in real life, like death,” and Sawyer reached behind its head that hung low on the god’s hands and with a click the god turned his head and the whole shack came to life like snakes.

  Sawyer organs felt like water balloons about to burst and his hands felt like sausages being tore by blades. He tried to scream but his mouth was full of plastic and copper and when he thought he was going to die the wires gave slack and fell apart.

  “You know, you are the craziest person that has ever climbed those mountaintops to see me,” the old man said as he pulled the limp wires off of the boy. “But I knew you could do it. Look,” he said.

  His whole body had been rubbed raw yet he managed to see what the old man wanted him to see. The whole town was encased in a bright light and the inhabitants had opened their doors. They all blinked their eyes as they adjusted to the strong light and they approached each other and - the awkwardness was strange almost childlike - they spoke to each other, celebrating the sun’s victory.

  “What will happen to this realm?”

  “Like others before it, it will return back to the Earth. Today is not the first time this has happened.” The old man’s skin seemed to regain a little color and his muscles seemed to grow and fill his loose skin.

  “Come on, boy. Your wife isn’t going to avenge herself,” he said as he took the boys hand and they vanished. The little rat blinked its blue eye when it arrived at their new destination. The little hitchhiker realized that they were standing at the edge of the ocean and grew frightened.

  “Within the sea lies one of the most hideous of the manifestations,” he said swiping his hand across the air. “Today we will kill the Mermaid of Love and Infatuations, the whore of the world.”

  The End

  L. Vera started off writing short stories and posted them everywhere. Out of that emerged a serial novel titled “Diary of a Madman” where every week a new piece of the crazed mind of Todd Casil was released along with other written forms of media that told a story of murderer obsessed with killing women with green eyes. It was his start in horror, before he had written many “speculative” fiction and science fiction pieces that have been published at Death Head Grin and The Wifiles. Other stories found a home at DeviantArt where they won tiny short stories and awards.

  “It’s a start to my long beginning and, hopefully, to a more exciting end.” - L. Vera

  A Gift

  ~ B.R. Stateham

  “Smitty, I . . . I need your help.”

  The voice was barely a whisper. Coming from a man lying in a bed with sheets soaked in sweat and stained with blood. The man, a muscular, dark complexioned hood with gray staining his curly black hair around the temples, had a band of blood soaked bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. Lying on the bed by his right hand was a 9 mm Heckler & Kock automatic and his iPhone. Leaning against the wall was a sawed off pump action shotgun. On the small lamp table beside the bed were two empty bottles of scotch, a cheap first-aid kit, and a roll of fresh bandages.

  He was laying propped up in the bed thanks to five or six pillows. And he was in pain. Lots of pain.

  “Had someone look at that wound?” the dark eyed, neatly dressed figure standing beside the bed whispered softly.

  “Naw, naw . . . Can’t take the chance. I took a hell of a chance calling you. If they tapped into my phone, or tapped into yours, they’ll be showing up in a couple of minutes to finish the job. And maybe that’d be a good thing. I dunno.”

  “Let me get you someone to look at the wound. I know someone you can trust.”

  “No. No. Listen, Smitty. I called you over hear not to save my ass! I know I’m a goner. I screwed up. I know I shouldn’t have challenged Bruno. Shouldn’t have demanded he step down as capo and have me replace him. I’ll take what’s just due to me. But . . . but . . . but . . .”

  Downstairs in the cheap flop house for a hotel the dark eyed man thought he heard the sound of someone trying to creep up the stairs. Glancing at the door quickly and then back at the man lying in the bed he lifted a finger to his lips. The wounded man blinked a couple of times, looked at the hotel door fearfully, and grabbed the heavy looking 9 mm off the bed.

  Smitty shook his head no and silently motioned the man to stay quiet. Slipping to the door he placed an ear up close to listen intently. Apparently satisfied he could move he opened it and slipped out into the hallway. Like a ghost the dark eyed man moved across the third floor hall of the flop house and slipped against the edge of a wall. A wide stairwell broke the wall space and disappeared down to the second floor of the building. It was from down there he heard the stealthy approach of someone trying to make no sound.

  A thin snarl played across the cruelly handsome face of the dark eyed man. From a side pocket he removed a long barrel-shaped object with one hand. With the other he reached inside his sport coat and pulled out 9 mm model 92FS Beretta. Screwing t
he barrel-shaped suppressor onto the end of the weapon he leaned against the wall and waited.

  Two men. Dressed in cheap suits and wearing dark shades. One held in his hands a shotgun. The other had a big Dan Wesson .357 caliber revolver. They came up the stairs like they knew where they were going. Didn’t pause at the top of the stairs to look either right or left. Just turned to their left and started toward the room they knew the wounded man occupied. It was their mistake. Their last mistake.

  “Looking for someone?” the black orbed man whispered softly.

  “Pffft! Pffft!

  It didn’t take long to depose of the bodies. Down at the end of the hall was a utility closet. Stuffing both bodies into the cramped space he stepped back unscrewed the fire suppressor from the Beretta and dropped it in a pocket before holstering the weapon underneath his right armpit. Moving back to the hotel room he knocked once and whispered his name and then opened the door and stepped in quickly.

  The wounded man was as pale as the sheets he was lying on. The bandage around his chest had a fresh gleam of blood seeping through it. Sweat covered the man’s brow. He was in bad shape and he didn’t see proper medical treatment soon it wouldn’t matter. Bruno wouldn’t have to send out another team to finish the job.

  “Come on, we’re leaving this place. I’ll put you away somewhere where Bruno can’t find you. We’ll get a doc to look at the wound.”

  “Smitty! Smitty! Don’t worry about me . . . I need you to do something for me! Something that means everything to me!”

  “I know what you want, Tony. I’ll take of it. After I get you to a safe place.”

  There was no arguing. Smitty lifted the wounded me out of the bed, threw an arm of his shoulders, and then half carried the man down the three flats of stairs and exiting the building through the rear door of the flop house without anyone seeing them. Two hours later he watched as an acquaintance of his, an old man who had retired from the practice of medicine, yet was as keen as ever in the profession, calmly working re-bandaging in the wound and telling the man he would live.