Contributor: Martin Goulding

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Google Drone View promised to end all earth bound mysteries. It was way passed Google Street View; this technology mapped and recorded every point it passed. The drones with Nano-cameras and nanotechnology quickly covered every square inch of the planet. There were a few restricted areas such as The White House and the Queen of England’s bathroom but other than that it was open slather.

Initially strong privacy concerns were raised, then the voices of science and progress at any price, saw the great opportunity presented and championed Google Drone View, worldwide.

Already underwater mysteries have been debunked with the tiny Google Drone-Marines—no Atlantis, no Lemuria, as expected; just rocky formations that only at first glance seemed to support the possibility of man’s hand.
On land, all forests, caves and deserts went onto Google Drone Maps for all to see. A viewer could go to the deepest recess of the Amazon in nanoseconds.

The Silicon Valley Google whiz kids came up with more ideas for the drones while getting their daily massages and shoulder rubs. Every inch of the sky was quickly mapped and guess what? No UFOs, not one was ever detected. The only silver cigar shaped objects in the sky were other drones.

A metaphysical and philosophical arm of Google was created called Google God Reach. The Google faux-hipsters in their creative time debated how if they could just get the right team, specifically a blend of quantum physicists and metaphysical minds, they may be able to send astral drones into other dimensions. The funny guys at Google even began wearing T-shirts with God we’re after YOU with a small white bearded guy cowering underneath.

Sexual Privacy issues were addressed by stripping all “bedroom scenes” from the feed. However, a group called Julian Assange for President hacked the live feed and posted thousands and thousands of juicy bedroom scenes on YouTube creating quite a stir.

Another bunch of hackers put up a website called The World’s Funniest, Fattest, Most Retarded and Ugliest People and they released compiled video footage taken from Google Drone View; it reported 38 billion hits on their first day of broadcasting, these and many other spin offs led to it being widely accepted.

Not everyone was happy or compliant about Google Drones; I belong to a world wide body of neo-Luddites called “No Google Drone View”. We wear T-shirts with Google we’re after YOU. below which is the image of cigar shaped drone being blown away with a shotgun.

We have seek and destroy missions, one of our members built a drone detector from 1950 Ham Radio parts and this technology, which incredibly, still uses valves, has spread like wildfire. If you saw the 80s Alien series of movies, you may remember that neat little Alien detector. It started with one “beep”, and then progressed to increasingly frequent beeps when enemy were detected. Same with this one, it’s a little clunkier and heavier, it does take our strongest neo-Luddite to carry it. But accurate it is.

The drones are 23 centimeters long and 3.78 centimeters in circumference. After many successful search and destroy missions Google started making armor plated models and began using neo-Luddite detectors. They have all known members in a data base and used iris scanning software. As if that was not the easiest strategy to overcome! We wear air-ace style goggles still available from army disposal stores. Hop Harrrigan, one of our leading neo-Luddites, pioneered the two pronged attack: First, after detection we netted the drone, then held it down, diamond drill bit penetration, and filled it with water. End of drone.

The future is not so bright, our members are being persecuted, remember Google’s universal message they vowed never to break—Do No Harm. Well that is all well in the past. It’s getting closer to all out warfare, Google started it and our neo-Luddite brethren will finish it.


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Martin Goulding is an Australian writer who enjoys creating odd, strange and unexpected stories.

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Author: Martin Goulding

Contributor: Marc A. Donis

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Og moved slowly along his morning commute. He was lost in thought.

"Good morning, Og!" cried Ug, who had spotted him coming along the path.

"Morning," muttered Og as they joined paths.

"Sleep OK? You seem tired."

"Nah, I was up all night. Couldn't get a wink."

"I know a guy who's got this root. It might help you. You should really see him."

"You mean Oog? That guy's a quack. No, thanks."

"Have it your way," shrugged Ug. The two walked together quietly for a few minutes.

"You know, I was just thinking..." started Og.

"Not again!" sighed Ug.

"Just listen. You know how you need a woman and a man to make a baby?"

"Yeah... I heard some of the guys talking about that the other day. It's like they can't do it without our help."

"Right! Well, I was just thinking... maybe it's the same for the beasts."

"Really? OK, so what?"

"Well, I was just thinking, maybe, if you got a man beast and a woman beast, and put them together for a while, then you could have a lot of baby beasts."

"That's a fine idea," said Ug, "but finding them isn't really the hard part. It's all the chasing."

"Right... Well, what if we had a sort of... thing... to keep them in a smaller area, so we don't have to chase them so much?"

"OK, I'll bite. What sort of 'thing' did you have in mind."

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before. It would be like a lot of trees lined up in a row, but in a big circle. Let's call it a fence."

Ug furrowed his brow. "That's a funny word for it."

"Anyway, so we put the beasts inside the fence and let them make baby beasts. Then, we eat them!"

"Huh. This all sounds like a lot of work." Ug was somewhat skeptical of this idea.

"You're right. We would need help." The conversation fell silent for a few minutes while the two considered the problem.

"I've got it!" cried Og. "We share the meat!"

"With the others who help make your... funce thing! Interesting..." Ug was starting to see the point.

"It's called a fence, and yes! Oh but wait... there is no meat. There are just baby beasts, and also the man beast and the woman beast, but we can't eat them. We need them to make the baby beasts."

"OK, so we share the promise of future meat with the ones who help build the fence," thought Ug.

Og knew that Ug was on to something. He started to become agitated. "Yes! The promise of future meat! We will give them small rocks instead, and call it... money!"

"That's a weird word. I don't like it," scowled Ug.

"Too bad. It's my word."

"But... what happens if some people get more of the nummy than others? Won't they be jealous and make trouble?"

"It's pronounced money, and yes, I suppose you're right. OK, so we'll need a safe place for people to keep it. I'll call it a bank."

Ug rolled his eyes and sat down. He knew that, once Og was on a roll, there was no point in trying to stop him. He settled in for a long ride.

"Banks can let other people borrow the money so that they can make their own fences and beasts and maybe even other things. For this service, banks can charge... interest! This interest will need to be computed. Maybe somebody can invent a machine that will do that. And lots of other machines, to do all sorts of things, too!"

"A what?!" interrupted Ug.

"I don't know, I just made it up. Work with me, here."

"Fine..." sighed Ug.

"People will want to own a piece of the beast farm. Maybe they could use their money to buy little pieces of it. I'll call that equity. Of course, there will be risk involved. So we'll need something else... I'll call this a derivative. And we'll need all sorts of things like binary options, exchange-traded derivative contracts, credit default swaps, and mortgage backed securities to make it all go."

"This is all getting quite complicated. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?"

"Sure... It's fine. It's just math. People will love this. You'll see."

"Well, I admit, I like it a lot better than your last idea about the tiny invisible bugs that make us sick."

"... and naked shorts, and synthetic collateralized debt obligations, and -- who the hell are you?!"

Og stopped in amazement as he beheld the small man before him who was wearing a white garment made of some sort of leather.

"Look, I couldn't help overhearing your conversation," said the little man. "I think you two are getting a bit ahead of yourselves."

He raised a smallish object which he pointed in their direction.

"Hey! I saw a thing like that in my dream last night. I called it a gu --"

But before Og could finish his sentence, he had forgotten what he was going to say. In fact, he had forgotten almost everything.

"Me... Og," said Og.

"Me Ug," said Ug.

"Good day, gentlemen," said the man. Og and Ug watched as he walked into a very strange sort of flying cave, and was gone.


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Marc is a Franco-Floridian IT contractor who has been living and working in Luxembourg for much too long. He enjoys writing things like short fiction, lines of code for banking software, and even the occasional email. He often wonders from which planet his two perfect children came, who clearly don't belong to this very imperfect one.

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Author: Marc A. Donis

Contributor: Amaranta DeBrefny

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I have seen unspeakable things in my life. Darkness, depravity, injustice—the list goes on. But not today; today is about the light, about fulfilling a dream, and maybe about getting some of my own back. Well, not so much the last part. The straw of my Mai Tai is a tiny thing, and I push it aside as I toss the little umbrella onto the table. Pulling my sunglasses down and leaning back in my sun chair, I’m committed to simply living today.

            At least that was the plan. A shadow blocks out the heat of the tropical island sun, and knowing that a certain six-foot, bronzed someone is about to quash my plans, I sigh and slowly open my eyes.

            “And here I was thinking you, Melanie Justice, never went on vacation. You know, crime never sleeps and all that.”

            Even if I hadn’t opened my eyes, his voice would have given him away. Andy Lí stands before me larger than life. His tousled hair holds little grains of sand, and, as he gives me a once-over, drips water down his face as if he’s just been for a dip in the ocean. Sunkissed and carefree, he looks good.

“Nice to see you too.” If he’s going to ruin my plans and mysteriously show up on the island, I feel a little sarcasm is the least I can offer.

            “Aw, don’t be like that, Mel. Just think, we can spend every day together.” Andy winks conspiratorially.

            Sitting up, I wrap my towel around myself. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I was after...oh, let’s see...a vacation? As in time away from the likes of...”

            “Me?” The hurt is evident in his dark eyes.

            I always put my foot in it around Andy. He’s been a PI as long as I have and we’ve managed to run in the same crowds for years—a few cops here, some journalists there. Neither one of us is much of a social player or has a family to go to. Come to think of it, he’s about as socially pathetic as I am. I think that’s why I’ve always liked him.

            “No. Just work. I don’t want to think about work. And why are you here, anyway?” My voice is snarkier than I’d intended, but it’s too late to backtrack.

            “Same as you. I just needed some time away from it all.” Andy offers a small smile. He runs his hands through his hair and turns his face away. “So I guess I’ll see you around.” He’s off before I can call him back to apologize. Not that I would. My work’s taught me never to make myself vulnerable. Sorry isn’t really in my vocabulary. I watch him walk away and wonder when we’re going to end this non-thing between us.

***

A little after nine I close the file I’ve been going through and remind myself I’m here to have fun. All work and no play makes Melanie a cranky woman. At least according to Andy. He mentioned this resort to me months ago, so I shouldn’t be surprised he’s turned up here. Especially after what we’d been through last month. Henderson, my client, was the misogynistic type who couldn’t fully trust a woman. He’d hired Andy for the same case, and when it went bad—and I mean really bad—Andy had paid dearly, just as I had. Time, I was learning, was the only healer.

            A sudden rap at my door raises my hackles. Laughing it off, I rise from the bed. “Andy, can’t you take a hint?”

            The cool silver of the doorhandle is smooth, distracting, against my palm, and as I open the door, the smile falls from my face.

            “Told you you’d see me again.”

            Henderson’s gloved hands form a sinister backdrop for the glinting metal peeking out of a concealed holster. Rattling off a silent remonstrance of I knew I shouldn’t have come here, I search around for anything to ward off my impending doom. Nothing. The room, with its cheerful floral accents and vases of exotic tropical flowers, provides nothing. I know I could jump for the phone. But he’d be too quick. Our eyes meet.

            “You don’t have to do this.” To my ears my voice sounds little more than a whimper. Something inside me snaps—I am not vulnerable, I think. I’m Melanie Justice. I am strong. I will go down fighting.

And then, taking a breath, I lunge at Henderson.

            The beat of canned island music pours through the hotel windows. The corridor is empty except for Henderson and me as we struggle. I could call for help, but I know everyone is out watching the last vestiges of the orange-hued sunset. They’ll lie back with a cool drink in hand, maybe sway to the beat of the music. And I’ll be here. Someone will find me, alone in the corridor. It’ll be a pro job. No one will ever know what happened...except for Andy. Wrenching Henderson’s grip from me, I shake my head sadly. I don’t want Andy to be the one to find me this way.

            “Playing hard to get, Justice?” Henderson’s rank breath washes over my face. He laughs, and sensing a split second of vulnerability, I take my shot. Monopolising a few choice self-defence moves, he weakens and stumbles back. He’s on his back, and before he can rise, I reach forward and grab the stun gun from his holster.

            It’s now or never.

            Six hundred thousand volts, and Henderson’s down. He convulses violently and then, finally, splays out on the carpeted floor.

            “Nice work.”

The voice is from behind me. I turn. “Andy! You could’ve helped me, you know!”

            He takes the stun gun from my shaking hands. “You, Mel, can take care of yourself. I always knew it. Now you’ve proved it.”

            “I guess I can.”

            Andy smirks. “Just not too often, I hope.”

            “Never again,” I reply. “As of tonight, I quit!”


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Author: Amaranta DeBrefny

Contributor: Eric Suhem

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Alma sat in the kitchen at the rickety Formica table, wearing a faded pink bathrobe, flicking ashes from her cigarette into a cracked cup of cold coffee, the crack running through a scenic mountain panorama on the cup. The clock said 5:38 a.m. and the crossword was half done as she stared at the tattered curtains. In a couple of hours, she and Mel would go to the coffee shop, as they did every morning. The coffee shop had a large lit cup of coffee situated above its roof, though cracked and fading bulbs gave it an odd, decaying appearance. In the torn plastic booths, she and Mel would make their breakfast orders: a poached egg, coffee, and toast for Alma; pancakes, bacon and coffee for Mel.

Alma and Mel lived in an apartment on the 2nd floor of the Palm Vista Village on a slightly seedy, wilted-palm tree street in Los Angeles. Alma griped about the neighborhood, but Mel would just smile, saying “One day we’ll go on that vacation you want!” before heading off to work at one of the El Segundo aircraft factories. Only four more years to retirement.

On a hot, sweltering Tuesday morning, Mel had a hunch. He entered the bank as soon as it opened, requesting a withdrawal of his life’s savings. After a considerable delay of paperwork, Mel left the bank with the money. He arrived at their apartment, where Alma was vacuuming the worn, faded carpeting while watching television. “C’mon honey, we’re going to the track!” yelled Mel, changing into his lucky Hawaiian shirt. Alma looked up from her vacuum, annoyed. “I got a hunch,” said Mel, giving her that light wink of the eye that she loved. He showed her the travel pamphlet he’d been reading.

They got into their battered Toyota Camry and drove out to Hollywood Park. Alma looked askance at the burlap bag Mel clutched as they walked to the ticket window. “Number 7 to win in the 5th race,” said Mel, pouring all of their money out of the burlap bag onto the scratched steel counter. The man at the window squinted briefly and gave Mel his ticket.

A creaking, rusting hulk built in the late 1950’s. The last either of them remembered was lounging on the main deck, each drinking a ‘yellow canary’, the specialty of the ship’s bar. The horse they had bet on days ago, Number 7 in the 5th race, had won, and they’d collected the winnings quickly. They’d celebrated with a couple of chili dogs at a food stand, Mel staining his Hawaiian shirt. Mel and Alma had followed the directions on the vacation pamphlet, and boarded the majestic boat in San Pedro, ready for the “vacation of a lifetime”.

Mel thought he remembered a couple of dark figures approaching him on the deck and holding a chloroform-soaked cloth to his face, but he wasn’t sure. He and Alma both awoke on the ice floe, the ship nowhere in sight. As the large chunk of ice approached land, Alma and Mel saw dozens of television screens, some affixed to the sides of buildings, some lodged in hillsides, some floating in the water near the shore. All of the television screens displayed large eyeballs staring back at Mel and Alma. The ice floe drifted to the shore. A man in a dark sweater and goggles was digging in the sand when he saw the ice approaching, he threw up his hands and yelled “Hallelujah!” He ran toward Mel and Alma as the floe slid onto the sand. “Our leaders have arrived!”

“Where are we?” asked Alma, dazed and staring at an eyeball on the television screen at the end of the beach. As Mel and Alma looked further at the hills beyond the beach, they saw numerous television screens lodged into the dirt, each screen displaying an eyeball. Mel bit his lip, thinking about the vacation they could have had, described in that other pamphlet. Alma stared into the eyeball, entranced.


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Eric Suhem lives in California and has spent a lot of time in El Segundo.

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: Brent Rankin

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This was hell. The crumpled rejection slips he held were hell. How many times he’d submitted the same story to this ungrateful magazine? Twenty? Thirty times? “Your story doesn’t fit our motif…” “Too risqué…” “Too short…” Too long…” Every conceivable reason for turning down his story. All this humiliation for four cent a word.

But they would publish it. He’d change a word here, a phase there. He’d mail it off, again. They had to publish it!

“Please quit sending us this drivel. We’ve rejected it numerous times for numerous reasons…”

Another change here. Delete a sentence there. He sent it off again.

“Sir, enough is enough. We will publish this trash when hell freezes over!” Curt, to the point, abrupt, but wrong. He knew they were wrong.

So, sitting at his keyboard, he wrote. And wrote. He wrote some more. Changed a noun here, a verb there. Same story, same theme. When his landlady knocked at his door, asking if he had his rent, he growled. “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” He clattered at the keyboard.

“When Hell Freezes Over. This is our final reply!”

He was so livid that he hadn’t noticed summer becoming fall. He ate rarely, drank only when thirsty, and it was rum on the rocks when he did.

That one word, one sentence. He’d find it, write it, and be published. He sent it off again.

Fall had become a brutal winter when the Editor scanned his latest manuscript. He oh-hummed…

Wait. He read it again. He hadn’t noticed that one tickling phase that tied everything together. Why, this story was amazing! The characters were maudlin and the plot trite, but there was that something that worked. The story was…beautiful! Why, of course, he’d publish it. And so, he dashed off a letter of acceptance to the writer, with an enclosed check for four cents a word.

It was a very brutal winter. When the landlady found the writer’s frozen carcass sitting at the keyboard, she grimaced at the icy grin the writer had, his frozen fist gripping the letter of acceptance and the check for four cents a word.


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"It's what writers do."

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Author: Brent Rankin

Contributor: Martin Goulding

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Claus got a text message from a botany associate that something had been eating the wild orchids on Mount Hedlow. He kept a close eye on anything to do with this area, so even this got his attention and impelled him to a quick climb to see what was going on.

A bit of background: Claus had been studying The Epic of Gilgamesh since the 1970s and after many years of research, felt he had located where the events depicted in the mythological tale had occurred. He’d recently published a paper on it, and as expected, it was rejected by almost all his peers. Claus was generally seen as a nutter and a holocaust denier.

The Epic of Gilgamesh has two themes: The fact that all mortals die and a universal and ancient flood. Most people would have no problem with either of these possibilities. Claus disputation was where the events depicted, occurred. All scholars posit the area associated with the fable to be Middle East; whereas Claus is emphatic it was on Mt Hedlow, in Upper stony. Upper Stony is exactly 1000 miles from Anywhere, the nearest town.

Claus moved quickly up the rutted path toward the summit of Mt Hedlow and easily found the culprit; it was Happy Hammond, the only steer to ever escape from the Hard Knocks Slaughterhouse. Claus did not know the steer was a cult hero, a creature of great intelligence and courage. He just saw him as an environmental vandal, eating wild orchids on Mt Hedlow.

Before either of them could enter into dialogue, a massive roar began in the distance, it grew immensely loud and both Happy and Claus looked to the horizon. A Tsunami wave had hit the coast and was moving inland. At that moment Claus’s phone played his text message alert. It said:

[Warning]Tsunami wave up to 800 meters seek high ground urgently]

Claus did the math and checked his altimeter phone application. It indicated an altitude of 750 meters, 50 meters short and he didn’t like getting wet.

He estimated from the speed of the wave, Happy and he had around 60 seconds to gain 50 meters in height, presently they were just below the mountain ridge.

Claus decided on immediate an drastic action, he pulled the #3 small dog taser from his black army disposal shoulder bag and instantly thrust himself into the air and onto Happy’s bony back, hitting his rump with the charged taser. The startled steer bucked and flew up the mountain path at remarkable speed. Claus clung to his neck and hairy back and rode it out.

The Tsunami was nearly upon them and deafening, they had gained over 100 meters in altitude by the power of Happy Hammond’s speed and dexterity. From the safety of Happy’s back he watched the massive wave approach, incredibly two surfers were visible riding the wave, he grabbed his binoculars and zoomed in; both of them had black T-shirts on with “Wipe Out IS Death” written, with a white skull and crossbones underneath.

Claus instantly recognized these guys; they were the post-modern and true heroes of Gilgamesh. They were god like figures with courage and power as great as the original and ancient ones. They were hooting and screaming with awesome bravado, just audible above the roar. 

Claus wept at the sight of them; he had seen true mythic figures with his own eyes. In an instant they were gone, the wave passed and the great flood followed and remained for two weeks. Claus was forced to eat wild orchids with Happy Hammond. He recorded the events by chiseling them into stone tablets, leaving them on the summit for posterity to find.

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Martin Goulding is Australian writer who enjoys creating the unusual to the bizarre (but always entertaining).He is in the process of writing enough material for a collection in the next 12 months. That's the plan.

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Author: Martin Goulding

Contributor: Saul Jennings

- -
The thin tin melody of the van rang around the village sending a musical invite into all the people's houses. In those very houses the grown-ups faces shone in joy; they looked wide eyed at each other and then imploringly at the children “Can we, can we?”.

"Go on then", sighed all the children, with eyes raised to the heavens in mock despair. The little rounded van stopped on the street corner, slid open its window at the side of the van and the grown-ups all queued up.

From inside a large happy man appeared, dressed in white with a big bushy beard and a crisp, clean hat at an unusual angle.

"What can I get you", he boomed at the woman at the front of the queue, whose long grey hair was scraped tight in a bun.

"I'd like the first ice cream of summer", she said coyly and the man passed her an ice cream. She took hold of the ice cream and

the sun was so warm but the grass was cool under her toes which were wet from the paddling pool and the ice cream was melting as fast as she could lick it but she didn't mind as it was funny not sad and she was laughing and the grown ups were laughing too and her sides ached at the fun of it all

"And how about you", said the bearded man to the next in line, a man in an aging suit, long, long out of fashion.

"I'd like my birthday party", said the tired looking suit and he was passed a balloon. He took hold of the balloon and

there had been games and cake and now running in the garden and all his friends were all here all at once and he had been the special boy and there was the new spaceship he’d got this morning and he had not even played with yet and he ran around shouting at the top of his voice at the joy of it all

"And you then", said the voice from the van and the next in line looked around then at his feet, started to speak and stopped. Then he said quietly "I'd like a nice sunny day".

"Really", said the man in the van warmly, "or did you want something else?"

The nervous man leaned in to the van and hissed quietly "I want the spider" and so he was given a jar. He took hold of the jar and

the spider had been caught quickly like he was a great hunter and he saw one leg was gone already so he pulled another off and looked to make sure no-one was watching because it was bad and the spider probably hurt but he pulled off more and more legs and his heart pounded at the horror of it all

The queue was long but so was the day and everyone patiently waited their turn. So all the grown-ups got a special memory and everyone had a most wonderful afternoon.


- - -
My name is mostly Saul Jennings. I live in Greece and work throughout Europe and write Weird Fiction.

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Author: Saul Jennings

Contributor: Marc A. Donis

- -
They started coming one summer night, after dinner.

I was taking out the trash when I saw something move in the dark, out of the corner of my eye. It was a blender I'd put on the curb a week ago. I knew the garbage had been by to pick it up, but there it was. I went back inside.

"I just saw something odd --" I started to say to my wife, but there was a knock at the door.

It was our quarrelsome neighbor, Mr. Hink.

"I wish you people could keep your junk off my property. I just found this toaster in the middle of my driveway!" huffed Hink.

"Yeah... sorry about that." I was puzzled. I presented a vague apology, and shut the door.

The next day at work, my wife called, wanting to know what color socks to buy.

"By the way, I thought you threw out that broken blender?"

I had, of course. But there was my wife, claiming I had left it in an awkward spot on the kitchen floor.

When I got home, the blender had been joined by the broken toaster, looking a bit worse for Mr. Hink's abuse. My wife was exasperated.

"They've been here all afternoon. I don't know how to get rid of them. Every time I move one, the the other comes back again! The best I've done is to get them to sit quietly in that corner," she lamented.

There was a knock at the door.

It was a vacuum cleaner, but it was never ours. There must be some mistake, I thought to myself. Then I saw Mr. Hink's silhouette shaking a crowbar in our direction.

"Go back where you belong, you piece of trash!" I could barely hear him yelling, but the vacuum didn't want to be on the curb, I gathered. So here it was, looking pathetic and dejected. I had no choice but to let the poor thing in.

Work the next day was even worse. All day long, we were interrupted by carts full of plastic bottles and Styrofoam cups being unloaded from the elevators. Apparently, they just rolled in through the front doors and went into the elevators. Instinct, I suppose.

I came home to a real circus. A television set I'd thrown away when I was in college was on my lawn, along with our old dresser, and my old stereo system. All of these were adorned with a colorful assortment of plastic bits of trash.

My wife was in a frantic state. "The garbage people have been working all day," she sighed. "They just can't keep up. They'll be working round-the-clock shifts soon." She was kidding, of course.

As the days went by, and the trash kept coming, the Department of Sanitation was forced to recruit the police and fire departments to help keep the streets clear of trash. Soon, that wasn't enough, and the government was forced to send in the military. The president declared a War on Trash.

It quickly became apparent, however, that the trash was impossible to stop. Any attempt to destroy it would simply result in many, smaller pieces of trash, and a bigger problem. That winter, the president declared the War to be over, and introduced us to his doctrine of peaceful coexistence.

Since then, the flow of trash has mostly stabilized. Most of the trash is in people's homes and offices, or on their lawns, waiting to come inside. Our fridge stopped working last week, but we can't buy a new one, since the broken one refuses to leave. Fortunately, a neighbor's fridge wandered into our house by mistake, and it works perfectly. It seems happy to have found a home. Seems its former owners had thrown it away to buy a bigger fridge.


- - -
Marc is a Franco-Floridian IT contractor who has been living and working in Luxembourg for much too long. He enjoys writing things like short fiction, lines of code for banking software, and even the occasional email. He often wonders from which planet his two perfect children came, who clearly don't belong to this very imperfect one.

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Author: Marc A. Donis

Contributor: Huxley Innis

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PANIC.


I suddenly realized...I had consumed too much.

But it was too late. What’s done was done.


But it was just too funny--far too goddamn funny for me to comfortably conduct myself properly in this very public, very volatile, and increasingly ugly situation I recently found myself in, and one from which I sought immediate extrication.

It was some kind of rally or protest or something. It’s always something.

There were dozens of people, yelling, chanting, some screaming; many were mad; most were men. It was an alarming scene. LOUD! Intimidating; a multilingual mélange of faces and boiling up from underneath, an angry mob mentality held back by nothing and no one.


I inconspicuously made it to my office after eluding the crazed crowd by cutting quickly through a small stand of trees and down a narrow back alley behind Saint Somebody Catholic church--the only other potential place of refuge, besides my office, but the doors were locked and the lights were off. Saint Somebody wasn’t home.

I saw Martin from security sitting at the front desk when I entered. He’s always sitting there when I come to the office. Sometimes he sees me and sometimes he doesn’t. Tonight he did.

Sometime later I could hear loud voices. Intensifying, getting closer.

The door to my office was of heavy steel with a protective steel-mesh-infused window on the upper half. I peered out and saw Martin running down the hall towards me. He stopped at my office door. I looked at him through the window. He looked at me. His eyes were watery and red and his face was swollen on one side. He was fucking hysterical, banging on the window with a hammer-fist.

“They want you!” he yelled at me through the window.

Me? What for?

“They don’t know I’m here,” I said wryly. “Nobody knows I’m here, just you Martin.”

“They asked if you were here tonight,” he said, his voice starting to crack. “They’ve been asking everyone if you’re here, threatening to beat as close to death as is possible, anyone who dares offer an untruth as to your whereabouts.”

“What did you tell them?”

Martin looked to his right down the hall, beyond another security door equipped with a wire-mesh-infused window, to where all the activity was occurring. What were they on about again? A protest? A provocation? A petition perhaps...? Should I sign their petition if there is one to sign and especially if it’s concerning the advancement of a particular brand of idealism I just happen to agree with? And would my signature honestly have any effect on the eventual outcome of the situation?

“What do they want with me?” I asked him.

“They wouldn’t say. Just that it was of a serious nature.”

I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It informed me the time was 5:45pm--almost suppertime...maybe my last. My stomach rumbled and snarled or was it the vicious, howling, threatening mob down the hall? I remembered then that Anita the secretary who was from western Siberia, (‘I AM ANITA MUSSKARIYA FROM WESTERN SIBERIA!’ she would announce loud and proud when meeting anyone for the first time and this was how she introduced herself to me the first time we met) had brought me a big red apple she had picked from a tree in her orchard and deposited in the top drawer of my desk. A maternal response I suppose. She always tells me to eat apples. She picks them and I eat them. I plucked the apple from inside my desk drawer and took a liberal bite: Crunch, crunch, crunch...

I yelled at Martin through the window—the protective mesh-infused-window that muffled our voices making conversations difficult and awkward. “If they make it into the hallway Martin,” I yelled. “I will shut off all the lights and pretend I’m not here.”

“I haven’t told them you’re here. Only I know you’re here. But they are looking for you.”

Out in the lobby the mob was beating anything that moved with a plethora of menacing weaponry: wooden clubs, baseball bats, steel bars, bottles, rakes, shovels, golf clubs, a prosthetic leg, pitchforks, lead pipes, canes, crutches—whatever people brought with them from home or happened to have handy. Eventually they would make it into the hallway that leads to my office. I hoped Martin would keep quiet, but I didn’t really know him well enough to trust him. But they might torture him. If it comes right down to Martin or me, he might crack and give me away to save himself. The door to the office was the only way in or out, and it was securely locked. It would take them time to get through the wire-mesh-infused security window, but with a concerted effort, inevitability would probably prevail.

Only Martin saw me. Only Martin knows I’m here. I hadn’t finished eating my apple...maybe I won’t get the chance.


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Author: Huxley Innis

Contributor: Samantha Seto

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Downstairs, in the bottomless emptiness, Scarlet sat in the far right corner of the room in lotus position sketching in her notebook. She was trapped in a basement, way at the bottom of the earth, never trying to figure out a way to get back to reality. There was a plain straw-backed chair, a few pieces of old-fashioned furniture, and some cardboard boxes lying ridged and going every which way on the floor of the room. She imagined herself in a far away place, away from everyone else.

A few pieces of fabric from a brownish quilt that had once been colorful draped like a curtain from a one-legged table toward the center of the room. The dust burned her eyes as moths buzzed in and out of the quilt, burrowing new pathways. The silence bothered her, so she steadily eyed an ancient record player nearby. Not quite sure how it worked, she figured that she’d place a giant record on top and lower the panel. Dust lined the edges, torn and empty in some parts as if acid had burned it, around since the ‘70s. The walls were so thin she could hear everything that happened in the house. There was no air conditioning. She sat there for a couple of seconds in deep thought, waiting.

Moments later she heard a creak on the hardwood floor right above her head. There was an unexpected loud boom as he dropped something heavy. Only a small amount of sunlight filtered into the room so she grabbed a flashlight, directing her way through the darkness. Scarlet immediately turned off the music player, a choir of nightingales. Classical notes of melody drowned her into the calmness of the quiet room. Scarlet felt her body sway gently to the lullaby before she got up, moving towards the door of basement.

As time passed, she climbed the stairs in order to reach the door that connected the basement to the rest of the house. Unsure of where the noise came from, she didn’t want to open the door and fear which direction to take. She needed more clues to cue her closer to the noise.

The hard white stone steps she waited on seemed stiff on the soles of her shoes. She pressed her ear to the door and listened to a muffled voice along with tiny footsteps in the distance. I must’ve left the front door open, she thought.

She heard a creak against the floor coming from the kitchen before it immediately moved itself to the upstairs bathroom. It took all of her courage to put her hand on the doorknob and turn it. She didn’t want to pull it open but she had to figure out who this mysterious man was and what he was doing in her house.

Scarlet opened the door a crack and peeked around, surveyed the room in a clockwise motion. Now she could be sure he wasn’t anywhere nearby. She quietly watched her steps as she tiptoed to the living room.

Then, she went upstairs holding the bat firmly in her hands. It made her feel more secure. She noticed dark muddy footprints at the top of the stairs leading into her bedroom. She covered her mouth with one hand, startled.

With each coming step she got closer, tiptoeing down the hallway. Four closed doors were lined on one side and two doors on the other side. Passing the bathroom, she discovered that her things had been ransacked. She gasped. Her mascara had rolled under the counter and her eye shadow was crumbled in tiny clumps all over the floor. Scarlet walked through pieces of glass and colorful arrays of cosmetics that covered the ground.

It smudged her feet with imprints of make-up. She stepped on a piece of glass and her foot began to bleed. She stared at her own reflection. Her eyes swelled a dark pink as a result of pain. She carefully pulled the glass out of her foot.

She continued down the narrow hallway, following the footprints, the baseball bat to her side. She was only a few steps away. I can do it.


She opened the door to her bedroom. The bed was covered with black markings and there were papers shuffled everywhere around her desk. A tall man wearing a dark jacket and jeans emerged from where he stood in the room. Scarlet noticed the mask he wore over his eyes.

Carefully, she backed away not wanting to stir any sudden movement. He scared the hell out of her. She began dialing 911 but it was already too late.

He pulled out a bloody knife and moved towards her, raising his hand. He made a small cut on her arm and she screamed so loudly that she was sure the whole world could hear her.

Scarlet’s vision was closing, growing narrow, blackening into a dark hole. She felt tired, almost weary, as she plummeted to the ground.

The next thing she knew, she had fainted, lying unconscious on the floor.


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Samantha Seto is a freelance writer that has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, Soul Fountain, and Black Magnolias Journal.

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Author: Samantha Seto