Writers of the Future: 29

by L. Ron Hubbard

  But Charlene didn’t know the older girl’s name or the likelihood she would ever see her again. Could she ask her fathers after tonight? Would her fathers even remember that meeting, one of so many they attended? For that matter, would there no longer be a point in meeting that girl, after tonight? After Charlene destroyed her own monster once and for all?

  Charlene had to work with what she had. Her vocal cords might be trapped beneath the monster, but at least she would still get to keep them. On her present course, as a whistler, her normality was obsolete, as useless as the human tailbone or the wings of a flightless bird. It was trapped there to tease her with what she wouldn’t have. At best her vocal cords would stay that way, dormant, and the most she could hope for was to become a part of that whistling world instead of the world of her fathers, unless she did something about it.

  She did it.

  She switched on the laser.

  “You mind? I’m reading.”

  “You can’t read in bed?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute, Babe.”

  “Will you check on that thing we created first?”

  “The…You’re right. I shouldn’t have said those things. I was tired. God, I just shouldn’t have.”

  “Don’t cry, babe. It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you for saying so. Will you?”

  “Yes. Jesus.”

  Charlene seared the monster near its base. Lucky. Lucky so far. She kept it flexed, in the path of the laser beam, almost colorless and blinding, it was so white and bright. It illuminated her throat in ways the fiber optics and OLED never could and, to add to the confusion, created dozens of new shadows to further tax her focus.

  She could feel her internal temperature rise, either from the heat or the nervousness. She could feel her body wanting, struggling to move. The sizzle inside of her began to drown out most other sound except for the laser’s whir. So close to her head and with nothing else to mitigate it, the toaster laser had never seemed so loud. She was sensitive to the growing dryness in her throat, even as the area around the incision dampened with blood where the laser’s heat failed to seal the wound. Where Charlene failed to seal the wound.

  The incisions stung, but the pain was more bearable than she’d expected. To Charlene, this was further evidence that the monster was not a part of her, and didn’t belong inside her. It smelled like cooking meat, and, after everything, that’s all it was and ever would be.

  “Chum?”

  “I said I’m going.”

  Charlene heard her father’s footsteps and then the door open. She tried to remain still. Just a few more seconds (minutes? hours?) and she would completely sever the monster. And then she’d need a few additional to finish heating and closing the wound. And then? Infection—and how right or wrong she was about everything in the world—would be all she had left to worry about.

  She became aware at how long she’d been staring at the backlit OLED. She tried to glance away and blink the strain out of her eyes. Then she had to blink again when she saw the nursery light spilling through the cracks in the switchboard.

  Charlene imagined what she must look like, lying on her stomach and legs stuck out of her fort. Would Daddy Gary think she was dead? She didn’t dare move with the laser firing down her throat.

  “Char?”

  She remained motionless. The monster bled. Her throat bled. The pain was real now. The monster dangled from less and less flesh. Stinging sweat replaced the strain in her eyes.

  “Char, are you okay?”

  She risked jerking her foot—luckily, successfully—very slightly to tell him, yes, she was okay. She hoped it would be enough. Nothing she could get her body to do was ever enough.

  “Answer me, Charlene.”

  Her given name. It didn’t always mean anger with her as it did between her fathers. But it wasn’t helping.

  Less than a millimeter of tissue now held the monster to her. She was sure of it. It dangled from the roof of her throat. The bleeding obscured her view, but she was so close that she should have just been able to reach in and yank it off, had she smaller hands and any semblance of control over them.

  The floorboards bent beneath her belly, beneath the carpet, as her father was surely stepping toward the fort.

  “You stuck in there? Come on out, buddy.”

  And then the monster fell. It fell loose in her throat. She felt herself convulse in a choke as it pressed against the side of her windpipe.

  She was almost free, but the monster wasn’t finished with her. It wanted to strangle her or drown her in her own blood. Before anything else, she needed to refocus the laser to cauterize the incision. But she had no monster left to flex, nothing to reposition in front of the laser. She tried to tilt her neck, but her movements were too big and unpredictable. She couldn’t even find the beam on the OLED. The laser was missing the mirror entirely.

  Two hands grabbed her feet. Daddy Gary yanked her out of the fort, gently but quickly.

  “Charlene?”

  Charlene grasped at the laser, bumping it onto its side, as her father dragged her backwards. He flipped her over. The monster sank deeper into her windpipe.

  When her face cleared the fort’s entrance, Charlene met her father’s wide eyes.

  “The hell is that in your mouth?! Oliver, get in here!”

  She coughed and gagged up blood as her father retracted the mirror-stick and endoscope from her throat. She felt a slight cut on the roof of her mouth. Then she couldn’t cough anymore. The monster was stuck somewhere deep, and it wasn’t going to let her go.

  “Oh Jesus. Is that blood? Ollie! Ambulance! Call an ambulance! I think she swallowed something sharp!”

  In a swift move, he stood Charlene upright and squatted behind her. He reached around her abdomen. With the heel of his palm he pressed inward and upward. Then he repeated the thrust, less gently.

  “C’Mon! C’Mon!”

  It wasn’t working. The monster had won. Charlene managed to crudely shake her head, but her father was unlikely to recognize it as anything but one of her random spasms.

  Her father picked her up again. She no longer knew where the monster was inside her body (inside a lung?), but she burned with the realization that she’d lost. She’d never be free. The monster would rather they both die than let her go.

  Daddy Gary sat, his legs out ahead of him, and then he lay her face down over his knee. He gave her a gentle whack on the back. Then a harder one.

  Charlene stared at the floor, at her bent and broken instruments. The sliver of mirror was no longer attached to the steel pencil. Had that adhesive failed inside her throat, she wouldn’t even have made it this far.

  At her father’s third whack, the monster came up into Charlene’s mouth. It caught between her teeth and tongue. She could feel her mouth working, wanting to re-swallow it on instinct. She forced a cough instead, then a successful spit, and with a wet sound the monster collapsed to the carpet, smothering the Sign Language for Toddlers OLED book cover of his tablet, which Daddy Gary must have brought into the room with him. If only she could touch and swipe the pages and point at the words that would tell him how sorry she felt. How thankful. How loved.

  Outside her throat, bloody and naked and piled on the floor, the monster looked like the throwaway stuff her fathers would trim off their chicken before the marinade. It wasn’t her. It didn’t even look like it was from her. It wasn’t a part of this family, and it never belonged inside of her.

  ILLUSTRATION BY JACKIE ALBANO

  Charlene’s father ex
haled forcefully, as though he, too, hadn’t been able to breathe for the last few seconds. He tried to nudge her, to turn her around on his lap, presumably to get a look at her face. She resisted.

  She held fast—successfully held!—to her father’s leg, not wanting to let go just yet. She tasted the blood collecting in her mouth, and decided that bitterness was preferable to letting it drain into her lungs. Maybe the blood and the monster made the incision look worse than it was. Maybe, if she held on until the ambulance arrived, she would live long enough to speak to her fathers. She did feel safe now. Safe from the monster and safe from other whistlers who might be out there, who would have preferred she speak their language instead of the language of her fathers.

  “Ambulance is on the way,” Daddy Oliver said behind them. And then, just as urgently: “Do I smell something burning?”

  Charlene looked up, back at her fort. The laser. She’d forgotten. One of the pieces of switchboard had the words “fire resistant” printed in small letters somewhere. She was pretty sure it meant something not as good as “fireproof,” but that was one of those things she couldn’t figure out entirely on her own. She didn’t want to let go, but she had to.

  She scrambled off her father’s lap. She missed the entrance. She crushed the fort with her body. The collapsing switchboard made it impossible for her to reach in and shut off the laser, but her attempt was enough to get Daddy Oliver to see the light.

  “What the hell?”

  He reached in, found the component and switched off the laser.

  “This some kind of sick toy?”

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Think it’s that thing my sister got her.”

  “Yeah? Well, I told you it was inappropriate.”

  Charlene coughed up another spurt of blood. She scrambled back into Daddy Gary’s lap. Less than twenty seconds, but only because both fathers helped.

  She knew her throat would take days to heal. Everything would still take days, at least. Even then, if she could avoid infection and if she hadn’t cut too much out of her throat, there was still no guarantee she’d ever be able to move or speak like a normal person. But she gave the latter a try anyway. She knew exactly what to do. She’d studied and planned for this moment longer than for any other.

  Tentatively pushing air out through her tender and scarred vocal folds, Charlene tried vibrating them until it sounded less like wind and more like a human groan. She pushed more forcefully and eventually got a sound like an “Ah.”

  “Buddy?”

  As her fathers waited for the ambulance, they stared, one leaning over the other’s shoulder, both half crying and half gaping at their daughter’s ability to make a nonwhistling sound. Daddy Oliver wrapped a blanket around Charlene, and she welcomed the extra touch, though she was sweating and unsure of whether she was hot or cold. Both, maybe. The uncertainty about herself and her future was exhilarating.

  Charlene next tried blocking the airflow through her mouth. She waited until her fidgeting tongue rested momentarily against her front upper teeth. Then, eventually, she managed to force the tongue to snap down as she made the “ah” sound again. Twelve seconds, maybe? The result, she hoped, would sound like “DA.”

  “Jesus. Did you hear her?”

  “Yeah, she was totally talking to me.”

  “You wish.”

  Charlene wanted to smile. Maybe that would be her next project. Right now she would have to start over, to say “DA” a second time for her second father. But they were worth the challenge, and generating human speech wasn’t nearly as complex as she’d worried it would be.

  As Charlene waited for her tongue to find its position again, she wondered whether she would miss her whistling ability, the one thing she was actually good at. And if she was right about other whistlers being out there? How would she speak to them?

  Her tongue rested again against her upper teeth. She prepared to snap it down. If there were indeed other whistlers, and they were indeed smarter than her fathers and other “regular” people, why should Charlene be the one to have to figure out how to communicate with them?

  She could do anything she wanted now. She wasn’t her fathers’ monster anymore. She could even stop crying, if she wanted to.

  Holy Days

  written by

  Kodiak Julian

  illustrated by

  ALDO KATAYANAGI

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kodiak Astrid Julian spent her childhood in museums, forests and libraries. With her siblings and friends, she created stories about numerous imaginary worlds. Many of these stemmed from “what if” questions: What if people could turn into animals? What if back rooms of buildings went on forever? What if a card game could make wishes come true? Her curiosity led her to study in Japan and at Reed College, where she earned a degree in English.

  Kodiak now lives in rural Washington State with her husband and young son. She works as an instructional coach, helping public school teachers implement educational research in their classrooms. Her writing often explores the relationship between the mundane and the cosmic. She is currently working on a novel, reimagining Arthurian legends as a contemporary apocalyptic Western. “Holy Days” is her first published fiction.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Born to two creative professionals, Aldo Katayanagi was encouraged from a young age to study medicine. At age five he watched an anime called Akira, and it affected him greatly. Aldo didn’t consider the possibility of a career in art until he stumbled across various online art forums near the end of high school. He then rediscovered his love for sci-fi and comics and moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts, where he graduated. Aldo is at peace with his decision to study art instead of medicine.

  Though Aldo is primarily a digital artist, his time spent oil painting in college was an invaluable experience and still influences the techniques he uses today.

  Aldo currently lives in Chicago, where his art often combines lighthearted and disconcerting elements that play off and redefine one another. His work has been exhibited at the Society of Illustrators.

  You can visit his website at aldo-art.com.

  Holy Days

  1. Break Day

  Even though I had been looking forward to Break Day, I woke to panic. The pregnancy books had told me it was normal. I knew that the baby would return at midnight and that no one ever went into labor before the baby came back. But I was almost nine months along. Stuffed as I was, with her elbowing me in my lungs and heart, I’d grown accustomed to only one state of life, and that was with her squirming inside me.

  I put on the shorts that I had been saving for Break Day and went into the kitchen where James was cooking. “Morning, Evie,” he said, slipping an egg into hot water. “Look at you!” He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me in for a hug. “You’re so little!” he said. “I forgot you were so little.”

  I traced the space between the cool kitchen tiles with my toes. The giddy July light sliced between the leaves of our oak tree and through the window, making bright knives on the floor. “I’m lonely,” I said.

  James squeezed again. He had the salt and blood smell of sleep, and his hair was the oily mess it becomes after a few hours without a shower. I knew that he had awakened early and gone straight to the kitchen for my sake. “Real coffee this morning,” he said. “And eggs Benedict. Little bit of raw, runny eggs before you go back to being careful.”

  “Maybe you should put a shot of whiskey in the hollandaise.”

  “Mmm,” said James. “Or a slab of sushi. Some kind with extra mercury.” He scooped th
e egg from the pot and slid it onto an English muffin half.

  I stood behind him and put my arms around his waist, locking my legs around his. He tried to cross the kitchen but floundered.

  “Hey, Ball-’n’-Chain,” he said. “I’m trying to make breakfast. You okay?”

  “No.”

  James turned around. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m lonely,” I said again.

  “Damn,” he said. He kissed me, and then he kissed me again. “Me, too.”

  After breakfast, I wrestled with the garden weeds. It wasn’t my first choice of how to spend the day, but they weren’t going to uproot themselves. If I was going to squeeze a baby into the sunlight, then I’d better have real garden tomatoes as my reward. Over the last few weeks, when my belly got in the way of gardening, the tangle of green had thickened and curled. The largest of the tomatoes had just begun to change color. A few dangled near the ground as though exhausted. One had already grown so full that its seams split. I rebalanced the fruits within their wire cages, hoping that they would be safe from slugs and rot for another month.

  In midmorning, my sister, Rosie, and her husband, Scott, rode their bikes to our house. It was startling to see her, just as it had been on the other Break Days over the last two years. She had what Mom called the angel glow, a look that I never managed to cultivate even in pregnancy. I hoped it was from sex, but it might have been from the bike ride. Perhaps she had always been radiant, and I simply didn’t notice in the days when it was normal for her. Chemotherapy had taken most of her eyebrows, and she had taken to drawing them on with liquid eyeliner, angry arches that she called her bitch eyebrows. “Angry patients live longer,” she told me. “If I forget to be angry, my eyebrows might do it for me.” Just for today, her hair was back, and she looked softer, more round and whole and gentle.

  ILLUSTRATION BY ALDO KATAYANAGI