“I don’t know.”
Though the situation felt familiar to Keith, as if the scene had played itself out before, he couldn’t avoid feeling fear and uncertainty as the vibrations grew stronger and the windows shook uncontrollably.
“Daddy!” Michael shouted.
Michael began to cry and shiver, but Keith held his son tightly and tried to offer reassurance.
“Shh, don’t be afraid. Daddy’s here and he won’t let anything hurt you.”
His attention was focused on the vibrating windows across the room, so Keith was caught by surprise when the wall burst out behind him, the rubble striking him on the back and knocking him to the floor.
When he dusted himself off and rose to his feet, he saw the shadow creature looming over Michael. The young boy froze in midair, looking on the verge of tears but too afraid to cry.
“No!” Keith shouted. “Please, no! Not this! Leave me this. I take back everything I said. Just please, don’t take my son!”
The plea fell upon deaf ears. Claws sprung forth, and a jaw lined with fangs took shape in the otherwise formless creature. It scooped Michael up and devoured him. Keith’s only child screamed in agony as he was eaten alive.
“Nooooo!” Keith shouted in vain. He reached his hand out to try and save his son, but he stumbled upon the rubble and fell upon the open atlas.
*
Keith awoke with a start, his eyes shooting open and his hand reaching into empty space. Daylight broke through the windows, illuminating white letters in the hallway that spelled out University of California Medical Center.
Keith’s reflection stared back at him from the bedside mirror. Two blue eyes framed by chestnut brown hair. The face showed signs of aging, like wrinkles and a receding hairline. Despite all that, Keith felt that he looked good for a middle-aged man.
“So you’re awake?”
Not until it asked this question did Keith realize his reflection was actually a person seated in the chair beside his bed. Keith unleashed a howling scream, both confused by his disorientation and frightened by the sudden appearance of a stranger.
“Jesus Christ!”
The man beside the bed yelled as he jumped out of his seat, and a book that had been in his lap fell onto the floor. After taking a moment to recover from the scare of Keith’s screaming, the man reached down to recover the book he’d dropped, smoothing out the wrinkled pages that contained faded color maps. It had a red leather cover with the title World Atlas etched in gold lettering.
Keith began crying uncontrollably, the tears clouding his vision. He had to wipe them away with his withered hands.
“Why are you crying?” the man asked.
Keith stopped to think about this for a moment, and then began crying even harder when he realized that he had no answer.
“I don’t know!” he said.
The man sighed and sat back down beside the bed, cradling the atlas in both arms as if it were a delicate vase that might shatter were he to drop it again.
“I guess it was stupid to think you might actually be shedding some tears for me after all these years. You probably don’t even recognize who I am. Mom told me I should be prepared for that.”
Keith studied the man’s face again, trying to remember where they might have met. He had a thought of strange familiarity, but couldn’t recall whether or not it had already been discussed.
“Are you my reflection?” Keith asked.
The man let out a brief chuckle, then let his head collapse into his hands. The posture stirred a vague recollection of an instinctual reaction Keith would often have in moments of stress and anxiety. In fact, he also very much felt like putting his head into his hands at the moment.
“I suppose you could say that. I did try to make a living as a musician after you left. Never used your last name though, because I wanted to make it on my own, but I guess I never had enough talent. Must’ve gotten mom’s genes when it came to music.”
He opened up the atlas and flipped through its pages.
“You know, I’ve kept this with me through all the years. My last memory of us together is you staring at this atlas while I watched TV. I’ve stayed up long nights looking at it, studying the maps, trying to figure out what it was you saw here that made you leave us.”
He chuckled as he showed Keith a page that had an enormous red-colored landmass.
“Soviet Union,” he said. “Funny how history moves on with no regard for any of us.”
He turned the page to another landmass colored in gold.
“California,” he said. “That’s the one that must’ve called out to you the most, because that’s where you went, and here you are.”
The man stood, placing the atlas down upon his seat, and walked over to the open window. He pointed at something outside.
“Do you see them?” the man asked.
Keith shook his head. The man stomped over to the bed and grabbed hold of the bed rails, pulling and pushing the bed until it wheeled across the room and slammed against the window. Then he grabbed Keith under the arms and hoisted him up.
“Look!” he commanded.
Keith stared out the window, and saw a group of people below keeping vigil with signs, some of album covers and others containing well-wishes. Media vans were parked on the other side of the street with cameramen and news anchors beside them. One of them saw Keith at the window and pointed towards him, and then the whole crowd of people turned in unison to scream and wave.
“Wave at them!” the man said. “Wave!”
Keith did as he was told and waved back, then the man violently tossed Keith back onto the mattress and rolled the bed back across the room.
“You always cared about them more than us, didn’t you? All your bullshit talk about peace and love through music, and the famous drummer couldn’t even show that to his own wife and son.”
Keith inched backwards against the bed frame, trying to avoid the man’s wrath, when several figures appeared in the doorway. A mousy man with wire-rim glasses and a gray suit led two hulking men into the room. He pointed with his thumb towards the exit.
“Michael, we’re going to have to ask you to leave now.”
Michael, the man who Keith had mistaken for his reflection, stood his ground.
“I thought my dad made it clear that his last wish was to see me.”
“He did,” said the mousy man in the gray suit, “but he also made it clear that he didn’t want to be seen by the public in this condition. Not only did you violate that wish, but from what we just saw you’re also a threat to him and causing unnecessary controversy in his last hours. So as his lawyer charged with carrying out his last wishes, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. And I won’t ask again.”
The two large men accompanying the lawyer crossed their arms and flexed their muscles. But through all the heated rhetoric and thinly veiled threats, only one specific word stood out in Keith’s mind.
“Dad?” Keith asked.
Michael turned to face Keith, and they held one another’s gazes for a prolonged moment. Maybe he was waiting for some sort of confirmation that Michael couldn’t give to him, because he only felt further confusion.
“Sorry Keith,” Michael said. “It probably wasn’t right of me to call you that after all these years.”
He walked over to the brain scan pinned upon the wall.
“You know what I see here? A map that’s trying to reconstruct the past. And it’s not doing you any good, is it? I might have failed at music, but my future is still unwritten. I’ve been married fifteen years and have two young daughters. Meanwhile you’ve got people all around the world who will mourn the loss of your music, and yet you’re still worried about dying alone.”
“That’s enough, Michael!” said the lawyer. “Time to go. Now!”
The two hulking men walked over and flanked Michael, each taking him by the arm and forcing him towards the exit. The lawyer walked off ahead of them. A sudden desperate realization da
wned upon Keith as he realized they were all leaving.
“Wait!” he begged, reaching out. “Don’t leave! If no one is here with me then I’ll fall asleep, and that’s when the monster comes.”
The men stopped in sudden surprise and stared at the scrawny figure desperately lunging at them from the bed.
“Monster?” Michael asked.
“Your dad is losing his mind, you know that,” said the lawyer.
“No, it’s true!” Keith pleaded. “It comes in my dreams and then it kills my memories. When I wake up in the morning, I forget. There’s always something else that I forget. Please, don’t leave me!”
Michael gently pulled away from the grip of the hulking bodyguards and approached the bed. They moved to restrain him again but the lawyer raised a hand to hold them off. Michael gently opened the atlas on the seat beside the bed to the map of California.
“You can keep this as a memento,” he said. “I don’t need it anymore. I’m glad I came here, even if just because I needed closure for myself.”
Keith’s scrawny fingers reached out and wrapped around Michael’s wrists.
“Please!” he begged. “Don’t leave me alone!”
Michael suppressed a laugh, and then a profound sadness seemed to come across his face. But he did not cry. He gently removed the fingers wrapped around his wrists, and then leaned over and placed a gentle kiss upon Keith’s forehead.
“I forgive you, dad,” he said. “But I can’t stay with you. I’m sorry.”
He gave Keith’s hand a soft squeeze, and then they all exited the room without so much as another word, leaving Keith entirely alone.
From the open pages of the atlas, a cloud began forming over the map of California. It amassed like a rainstorm spreading all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Then it began to rise from the pages, blocking out the sun coming in through the windows and casting the room into darkness. All Keith could see were the blood red eyes and the shiny white teeth and claws of the shadow creature.
Keith whimpered and pulled the sheets up towards his head, but they didn’t reach far enough to cover his eyes. He had no choice but to watch as the monster inched closer, its mouth opened wide and preparing to sink its teeth into his skull.
* * *
Joseph A. Lopez
Joseph A. Lopez is a practicing attorney in Los Angeles, California. He fell in love with speculative fiction at a young age and has been an avid reader and writer in the genre ever since. His short story "The Memory Monster" included in this anthology is his first published work. Joseph is an active member of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society ("GLAWS").
REMNANTS
Lindsay Buroker
The cockpit smelled of urine.
Lieutenant Mica Coppervein wrinkled her nose and turned a suspicious squint on the ground-crew sergeant standing on the hangar deck beside the ladder. The middle-aged veteran gazed up at her, a challenging expression on his face. Was this a joke? Some attempt to foist an unpleasant task off on a green officer who didn’t know better?
“There’s a short circuit somewhere,” the sergeant said.
“Because the pilot wet himself?”
“It was the gunner. Tense battle, I heard. And a crazy pilot. As if there’s any other kind.”
Three suns, was that vomit down on the floor under the gunner’s seat? This task was getting more unpleasant by the minute.
“Look, Sergeant,” Mica said. “I’m an engineer, not an electrician. I—”
“Electrician said he didn’t know what the problem was and to get an engineer.”
More likely, the electrician took a sniff and decided it would be fun to foist this unpleasant repair duty off on an officer. The new officer who had only been here a week and kept wondering what insanity had prompted her to join the Alliance army. Just because she wanted to see the empire sucked into a black hole didn’t mean that anything she did could make that happen.
The sergeant waved at the scorched hull of the fleet runner, a converted imperial fighter that had been old long before the war started. “My crew can handle the rest of the repairs, but we don’t know what’s going on inside the cockpit.”
“Besides unauthorized excretions?” Mica eyed what might have been a puddle on the gunner’s seat. It was hard to tell in the poor lighting of the hangar. With the entire base hidden in an asteroid and operating on minimal power, the lighting was poor everywhere. Maybe it was for the best. This wasn’t the first suspicious stain she had come across since being transferred from her hastily completed officer’s training course. It was, however, the first one that was so… fresh.
Sparks and a surprised shout came from a craft near the big doors at the other end of the hangar. Mica sighed wistfully. The rest of her team was examining a mystery ship that had been salvaged earlier in the day. Made from a strange crystal-like material, the two-seater craft had been found floating near the asteroid and pulled into the hangar. She’d heard speculation that it was a centuries-old Starseer ship, but there had been an imperial pilot in it, a freshly dead imperial pilot. Mica would much rather be investigating it with the other engineers.
“You too good to get your hands dirty, Lieutenant?” the sergeant asked, still frowning at her.
Mica lifted her chin. “I grew up on XR-318, one of the ugliest and grimiest mining asteroids in the system. We started digging out tunnels when we were six, as soon as we were old enough to toddle out of the crèche and be of some use. I’ve had dirt wedged so far up under my fingernails for so long that it bought throw rugs and set up furniture.” She had, however, avoided sticking her hands in pee puddles.
“Then this shouldn’t be a problem.” The sergeant waved at the cockpit and turned his back on her.
He grabbed his toolbox and yelled for two privates to come help him with the hull repairs. The younger men nudged each other, glanced at Mica, and snickered as they headed toward the tail of the craft. Once again, she suspected she had been set up.
Grumbling, Mica went off to search for a cleaning robot, though, given the Alliance’s limited resources, she would be lucky to find a mop and bucket. It occurred to her to order a private to wipe down—and thoroughly disinfect—the cockpit for her, but everyone in the hangar was busy working on the other battered ships. “Tense battle” was an understatement. From what those who’d fought to defend the asteroid had said, their armada had been decimated before driving off the imperial attack. Further, the empire now knew where the Alliance base was. An evacuation order would likely come within a day or two.
“How’re the repairs going, L.T.?” one of the privates asked a few minutes later as Mica crouched in the two-seater, finishing cleaning. He could barely hold in his snickers.
“There are bodily fluids everywhere except the pilot’s seat,” Mica said. “How do you think they’re going?”
“Stinkily?”
Stinkily? It was amazing these kids could read. Maybe they couldn’t. She didn’t recall that the Alliance recruiting fliers had listed a lot of requirements.
“Here, Private. Find a laundry basket for this.” Mica tossed a damp towel at him, resulting in a disgusted grunt as the kid reflexively caught it.
He dropped the towel and fled. With luck, he wouldn’t bother her again.
Finally ready to start work—that supposed short circuit had better be real—Mica leaned out of the cockpit to grab her toolbox off the top of the ladder. She paused. A woman was jogging in her direction. She wore a flight suit and a blue-and-gray jacket with a patch that identified her as a combat pilot. Mica curled her lip, wondering if this was the “crazy” person responsible for the damaged craft—and the mess.
Also wearing lieutenant’s tabs, the woman was not deterred by the lip curl. She kept coming and even grinned and waved to Mica.
“Amazing how often I get such looks from the ground crew,” she said, climbing the ladder.
“I’m an engineer.”
“Oh, I get even dirtier looks from them.” Th
e grin grew broader.
Her name tag read MARCHENKO. An attractive woman of about thirty, she wore her reddish-brown hair pulled back in a braided bun and had a curvy figure that plenty of men would like to get their hands on. Some women, too, surely. Not that Mica wanted anything to do with a pilot who couldn’t be bothered to clean out her own cockpit. Besides, she preferred her women—and her men—on the fine-boned and elegant side.
“Don’t mind me,” Marchenko said, leaning into the cockpit. “I lost something.”
“Your bladder control?” Mica didn’t bother to scoot out of the way. The sooner she finished with this, the sooner she could join her team in examining the strange derelict.
“No, that was Sergeant Heathrow.” Marchenko frowned at the control panel, then lowered her head to look under the seat.
“He the one who puked too?”
“Yes,” Marchenko said, her voice muffled. “He promised me he had an iron stomach. Such a lie. He’s the third gunner I’ve gone through in two weeks. It’s amazing how many big, burly men get airsick at the least provocation.”
“I bet.”
“I would have cleaned up, or had him do it, but we got called for a debriefing right away and—oomph, is that it?”
Before Mica could ask what Marchenko was looking for, someone called, “Officer on deck,” from the back of the hangar. The cavernous space fell impressively silent.
Everyone was supposed to stop what they were doing and come to a perfect attention stance, but Marchenko kept rooting around under the seat.
Admiral Banerjee, the base commander, strode into view with his aide. He headed to the front of the hangar, toward the team inspecting the mystery ship. Mica thought about returning to work, but Banerjee only exchanged a few words with the engineering team leader, Captain Brandt, before moving on. Reminiscent of a tank, the stocky, barrel-chested admiral rolled past the shuttles and larger troop transports toward Mica’s corner of the hangar. Wonderful.
While Marchenko muttered to herself, her head still stuffed under the pilot’s seat, Mica climbed out the other side of the cockpit, ignoring the lack of a ladder. She landed and hustled around to the front of the battered craft where the sergeant and privates already stood at attention.
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