Beneath Ceaseless Skies #64
Page 5
Morrow sighed. “Professor Jefferys will no doubt write up his theory and it will become accepted as fact, if he has any luck. If not, he will risk his career to no avail, and make a fool of himself.
“Nobody witnessed this but the six of us. And it remains uncertain precisely what these strange events truly mean. It may have well been nothing more than a grand illusion brought on by the toxins we ingested as we digested the squid, and they have not returned to their base on the moon but are now part of our very own bodies, in the way that all the food we eat becomes part of us. In any case, the government will wish to believe, and the people will believe, the Kraken are those stuffed Pigmen in the museum. They were the enemy we defeated once and for all.”
The Major seemed about to say something but became lost for words. He smiled warmly like the affable old gentleman he was and closed the door. Morrow knew he was thinking he was a silly young fool.
Miss Twickenham said as they walked down to the wharf: “They were the defeated enemy. Prisoners of war. She told me, my squid. We helped them go home, didn’t we?”
Morrow took her hand. “I believe we did. Imagine being intelligent creatures and trapped in those tanks for your whole life, swimming up and down, up and down all the time, the males segregated from the females.”
“I would go mad,” Miss Twickenham said.
“And at the Danse Macabre you shall have your chance to be as mad as you wish.”
Morrow twirled her around on the garden path and they danced gaily through the jacaranda blossoms towards the wharf. For a split second only, Morrow thought of his El Coco head sitting on his dressing table at home, and decided for once that he was more than happy to simply be himself.
Copyright © 2011 Geoffrey Maloney
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Geoffrey Maloney lives in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife and three daughters. He has had over one hundred short stories published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA, Australia, and Ireland. Tales from the Crypto-System, published by Prime books in 2003, collects the best of his stories from the 1990s. His most recent stories, “Insecta in Camera,” “Through a Scanner Darkly,” and “Things that Dead People Do” have appeared in Aurealis, Australia’s longest running F/SF magazine. His next story, “The Dunce’s Castle,” will appear in issue 40 of Albedo One.
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COVER ART
“Into the Unknown,” by Kerem Beyit
Kerem Beyit is a freelance artist born in Ankara, Turkey. He started drawing in his early childhood with the influence of comic books, and he trained himself from great fantasy artists like Frank Frazetta and Gerald Brom. He has won Master and Excellence Awards from Exposé 7, and his artwork has been used for covers of European editions of fantasy novels by Tad Williams and George R.R. Martin. Visit his website and gallery at www.theartofkerembeyit.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2011 Firkin Press
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