Don't have time to read a longer story? Try this page and our other flash fiction sections- filled with tales that takes you everywhere from genetically perfect humans, to fantasy tales filled with sword welding female heroines, to furturistic game shows that hunt for their victims- err- contestants among unsuspecting beings.....and everything in between......so scroll down and enjoy our wide variety of stories from many different writers. Then visit our home page and pick out one of our longer stories that will make you shudder, cry or just plain have you making sure you lock your doors at night. Our flash fiction is divided into several sections this issue.
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Birth
Autumn Humphrey
“Honey, I think it’s time.” Zara squinted in pain, her round belly bulging beneath the thin metallic fabric of her maternity cloak.
Jerry rushed into the bedroom. “Its okay, don’t worry, the Aerocar is all charged up, we’ll be at the hospital in no time.” “Where’s Gen-Gen?”
“He’s doing the dishes. C’mon let’s go.”
“I want Gen-Gen to come with us.”
“Why on earth…?”
“In case something happens on the way to the hospital. He’s been programmed to assist with the birth.”
“Okay, honey. GEN-GEN!”
Gen-Gen rounded the corner drying his soft silver hands on a dish rag, a frilly apron tied over his uniform. “Yes, Jerry? Oh, I see. It must be time. Would you like me to assist?”
Jerry held Zara as they moved toward the door. “No – er – yes. Damn! Zara wants you to come along, just in case. We’re going to the hospital.”
Zara looked over at Gen-Gen, her eyes pleading.
“I’m here, Zara,” Gen-Gen said gently, the soft silver of his face reflecting the fluorescent lighting.
At the hospital Jerry held Zara’s hand as the last moments before the birth passed. “You are not in pain, are you, Zara?” Gen-Gen’s tender metallic voice sounded from the corner of the birthing room.
Zara strained her neck around to see him. “No, Gen-Gen, the drugs are working fine.”
The doctor and his assistant exchanged a look over their surgical masks. The doctor’s muffled voice addressed Jerry. “We don’t normally allow assist-bots in the delivery room, Sir.”
“I know.” Jerry looked back and forth between Zara on the birthing table and Gen-Gen in the corner. “She insisted. I didn’t want to upset her.”
“Here he comes!” The doctor reached down between Zara’s legs. “Jesus God!”
The doctor’s assistant fainted, bringing down a tray of instruments with a crash.
The doctor scrambled to grab the slippery baby with his gloved hands.
“What is it, doctor?” Jerry, frantic, released Zara's hand and moved around to see the baby.
Calmly, Zara looked back toward Gen-Gen and motioned for him to come closer.
Jerry and the doctor stood gaping at the baby, who flailed innocently in the doctor’s hands, perfectly normal except for the soft silver of his skin reflecting the fluorescent lights.
Birth by Autumn Humphrey
Pulling Strings by Tom Sheehan
Infected by James Lecky
Pulling Strings
Tom Sheehan
He had awakened with the itch on his face, from a lone and long hair floating across one eye and one lip, or was it a cob web, a remnant, a silver runner of aerial flight? It definitely was cob web thin, a filament, a gossamer streamer, light as thought, but not the thought of a spider like the one he had seen eye to eye above his camp bed as a kid. That one hung on such a silken, thin, lone strand that almost wasn’t there. He had always believed he had smashed that black-eyed spider into space with the magazine he had been reading earlier. This sheer line, though, hung on.
When he put his hand up to pull it free, something told him not to yank too hard. Rob Shackwell was ultimately sure had been someplace else overnight, during his sleep, bizarre and not to be readily believed. The strangeness lingered in parts of his mind, in parts of his body the way a bruise might hang on for a dozen days, under the skin, invisible, but caught up with memory.
Pain has no memory, they had always said, but he had better proof than they did. They? Who? The scenes, the odd pieces in his mind, were faded green, mild, the way a mist hangs above a kind meadow. He saw a Buck Rogers Saturday serial in his mind, the theater wild with noise as Buck raced to the rescue in a mild green airship racing through outer space green as pea soup. The dream had to be a real dream. Whatever that meant? he added, as if still lost, for lost is where he had been, in some kind of emptiness, a void, the nothingness that is space and room and … a place beyond.
The ready phrases that rushed at him … a place beyond, a place under, a place beside … had always bothered him, thinking they came out of some weird projection or abstract assimilation. Yet they must have some kind of roots in real being even as he assessed that this new dream had such power of displacement, or else it would not be a dream.
32 lurked in his skull. It was not an old jersey number, not a touchdown run, not friend or foe on the field. 32. 32. 32. It kept repeating. 32. Alone. No attachments, as though it too hung in space or in nothingness. It was not the age of a thing, or a place address or a content’s measurement. But it clawed at him for recognition, identity, and a force in itself. But he could not reach it. The taunting was on him. 32. 32. 32. And the reality check came in full force; he felt like a pathological mausoleum: the pain in his legs was still hanging around, the corrective pins harbored there still being known as metal; his knees beat up from football wars as a youngster; an ankle twice broken in the long jump; and his back aching, finding the bed too comfortable, seeking a trade-off; it would not ask permission.
The quad by-pass over a dozen years ago, past its corrective span many assumed, was now and then erratic, made itself known at any exertion, any effort of his limbs, of the heart itself.
Payback, his father had called it. “Every bruise you get now, at 15 or 16, any bang on the knee or the hips, or at the back of your head, is going to come back at you after 50 … mark my words.” He could have said, “And any insertion of a surgeon’s knife no matter how perfect.” Marked, Dad, he said, every one of them.
Age, with all its echoes, was on him.
Where had the dream gone? He searched his mind for it; found nothing. It would hang off there, in some piece of space, tempting him now and then, rearing its head, finally disappearing as always into mist, a bank of fog, sheer darkness.
Then a simple idea came to him, a rationale, a way out of one dilemma and into another most likely; he decided a haircut was needed, for that long hair was threaded through his eyelashes or eyebrows and tickled at the corners of his mouth, teasing him? A remnant of his dream? A hangover rope? Had he been in some craft like the Buck Rogers craft? He’d been in the void, he was positive.
Every once in a while, in a flicker at the back of his mind, like a small flashlight clicked on and off, he saw a piece of it.
Suddenly, in a flash, he saw “them.” They were babies for 32 days, and then, poof, they grew up overnight and were fully trained adults at a job in life that they were good at and most happy to do.
What happened in those 32 days? He believed he had seen it all, but it was not real. If 32 days were their youth, gestation must have been a mere second, a thought, a glance. Maybe none of that was necessary.
He sat upright. 32 came at him. It was back, at least the essence of the dream. It had not let go altogether. Hung on for him. And he had nabbed it back from the … space, the nothingness, beyond. Delicious fervor came on him, euphoria. He had found 32; it was real. It meant something. The dream was real, concrete, and had made a place for itself. It brought him back to a wide-awake realization that whatever he had known was not lost forever.
He had recouped his journey, his night travel, his visitation. 32. They had let him see the … beginning. They called the process the incorporation. There was the acceptance of the small creature, a bundle of sticks it seemed; the growth pattern as all training fell into place even as discovery of new things became youthful excitement; the assimilation and learning curve they called the guidance; the resolution as a full individual soon stood at an assignment desk, propelled there in an instant, ready to do its part.
Why had he seen 32? Who else had? He had no training in such matters, vaguely believed in the universe as it was talked about, had shunned it as a student. He had also seen the thread emanating from their forms. Had seen it pulled or unraveled, pulling odd parts, bad parts, parts that did not fit. It was their mode of medicine, he believed. He saw one strange hand unravel a thin line of string from one of the young forms, draw it from its place, bring parts with it, as if they weighed nothing, were made of nothing, but were visible; joints, sinews of a kind, nerves in tatters, greened veins displacing some form of liquid.
His discomforts, old and new, played upon his body. He ought to get out of the bed, start his day, get on with it, as his father had often said.
Rolling over, the numerals sat behind his eyeballs. 32. 32. 32.
The string, the thin hair, the fine filament, demanded attention.
He drew on it, slowly, oh so slowly.
It started then, in one foot where pain also had lingered. Up through the ankle it came, gathering other disturbances, aches, old memories that still bothered him, through his knees, through his chest as if a ball was rolling to free itself. It came through his throat, his mouth, his lips, the eyelids, the eyelashes, and the top of his head. Came free of him. All that old clutter of the years. The pains. The aches. The small infirmities he had never noticed. The long-hammered and dried-out cartilages. The rough skin. The bumps and bruises. An old loss he had forgotten. A sour memory. A touch gone bad.
He was pain free.
He was youthful.
He felt like he was 20 again.
The miracle was upon him as he kept to his bed. What could he do with this new medicine? How would he ply it? Who would believe him?
He looked to see where the miraculous thin filament of new life had gone. He could not find it. Did not know it had slipped under one fingernail and had disappeared.
Bio
Autumn Humphrey has flash fiction pieces published or upcoming in several magazines. In her spare time she reads, writes, and plays the horses.
Short bio:Tom Sheehan’s Brief Cases, Short Spans, a short story collection, was published November 2008 by Press 53, and From the Quickening, another collection, was published by Pocol Press February 2009. Epic Cures, short stories from Press 53 earned a 2006 IPPY Award. A Collection of Friends, memoirs, Pocol Press 2004, was nominated for the Albrend Memoir Award. He has nominations for ten Pushcart Prizes, three Million Writers nominations, and Noted Story nominations for 2007 and 2008, received the Georges Simenon Award for Fiction from New Works Review, a Silver Rose Award for Excellence in fiction from ART, and is included in the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology, 2009 and has been nominated for Best of the Web 2010.
Infected
By James Lecky
Seth could feel the darkness as it rushed in from the suburbs.
The night made itself felt on a molecular as well as psychological level: razor-blade sharp with an amphetamine aftershock – the real-time growl of a patrol car on the dim streets below and the quick-time whoosh of a hopper, far above where the smog thinned out and Those-Who-Could-Afford-It breathed untainted air. In a few hours it would be Walpurgis Night and the darkness would be filled with wholly different sounds.
His eyes traced the glow of street lamps – red, blue and orange – that barely penetrated the gloom, searching for the blurred figure he hoped would be… There. The girl rose out of the shadows, a white spectre, vague and indistinct. She looked up and for a moment their gazes locked.
At first he though it was Lilith returning to him. But the face was different, too different, even through the layers of Adjustment. Then, with a small gesture, she unfolded her delicate wings and launched herself into an updraught, lost to sight in seconds, spiralling into the smog-thick sky.
He wanted to follow her, to soar into the gathering darkness as she had. But desire was not enough. He was still trapped, here in his spartan apartment and in the pale, Unadjusted, cage of his own flesh.
In the distance, centred on Martyr’s square, Seth could hear music – a jungle roar amplified and distorted as it drifted through the canyons between buildings. The celebrations were beginning.
Night had swept over the city and in a few short hours hundred, perhaps even thousands, of lives would be changed forever. This time, he wanted to be part of it.
The apartment was cold, moisture forming on the windows, and he idly traced a heart on the glass with his index finger. Then, almost without thinking, he added two names: Seth and Lilith. It had been exactly a year since he had last seen Lilith but her memory was still strong, stronger now than ever before.
He wondered where she was – drifting on the industrial currents above the smog or somewhere below, prowling through the streets with her Grounded kin. He pulled on his coat and smog mask and went down the six flights into the street.
Lilith had said: “I’ll come back for you. If you change your mind.”
Seth shook his head. “We could leave the city. I’ve heard that the rural districts are still safe. If we could make it there you wouldn’t need Adjustment.”
“They’re just rumours. There are no rural districts anymore. The city is all we have. Adjustment is the only way.”
“How did it come to this?”
“Because we allowed it,” she said. “And now, if we don’t change, we’ll die.”
He felt hot tears prick his eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”
The streets were filled with rasputitsa – black slime composed of discarded waste; industrial, human and otherwise – that sucked at his boots and made walking difficult. The air was smog-thick and the colour of week-old piss. He could feel it searing into his lungs even through the charcoal and chemical intercession of the mask.
The city had degenerated even further in the past year, like a dying animal that refused to accept its own demise and instead bit at its wounds. The buildings were crumbling at their lower levels, covered with rasputitsa and obscene graffiti. It took him over an hour to reach Martyr’s Square. Here, the music was deafening but no better defined. A hundred styles and rhythms – sambas, tangos, death-metal and hip-hop – that blended together into a tortured symphony. The video walls around the square flickered with mismatched images, blipvert quick, that barely had time to register on his retina before they were replaced. And so many people, pushing and singing or wailing in near religious ecstasy. It was as if the entire Unadjusted population of the metropolis had converged here, all of them hoping that tonight would be the night, eager to strip off their humanity.
He saw a troop of Night-Gliders – their wings unfurled – darting across the top of the crowd with easy grace. Some of them called down, promising a bite or a kiss, while others were content merely to display themselves in all their twisted glory. They were mottled like moths, with membrane thin wings. But their faces were human. He waited with the others, half fearful, half expectant, for Lilith to come.
A year ago it had been different. A year ago he had been too proud of his humanity and too afraid to let it go. But now he had changed. The city had changed, sliding further and further down into the morass of its own decadence, crumbling spiritually as well as physically. As Those-Who-Could built their towers higher and higher to escape the smog they had deserted the lower levels.
The air was unbreathable, the streets cluttered and violent, coated with rasputitsa and despair. Adjustment was the only option. The thought of infection still terrified Seth – that combination of viral and nano strains that would change him into a creature fit for the world he was forced to inhabit – but what other choice was there now?
“I’ll return for you on Walpurgis Night,” Lilith had said.
“There has to be another way.”
“You’ll see,” she said. “Remember I love you.”
And then she had left him, afraid and alone, with the city chipping away at his soul.
They called it Walpurgis Night after the old pagan festival of the dead and, in many ways, the name was fitting. The death of the old and the rebirth of the new. A celebration of renewal in the face of decay.
On Walpurgis Night the Adjusted roamed freely through the city – too many of them for the Corps Cops to halt – infecting those who wished to be infected, while Those-Who-Could huddled in their towers, safe behind ultra-tech defences.
On Walpurgis Night the dispossessed and the forgotten took back the city.
Seth moved through the crowd, looking for Lilith. Like a latter-day Orpheus searching for his Eurydice: except this time she would lead him out of hell It was almost midnight and the air hummed with music and laughter. He saw a young girl locked in a passionate embrace with one of the Gliders, her head thrown back to expose the flesh of her neck and his pointed tongue rasping against a shallow cut – transferring his infection to her.
“Seth?” A whispered question in the darkness that cut through the turmoil both in and around him.
He turned and saw her emerging from the crowd, oblivious to anything and anyone but him. “Lilith.”
She was no longer human. The Adjustment – the infection – had seen to that: her wings, as colourful as a butterfly’s, were folded around her slim, light body: translucent skin stretched tight as a glove over hollow bones: her fingers and toes were elongated, terminating in small, sharp, black nails. The only human part of her were her eyes – cobalt blue and brimming with hesitant tears. She was beautiful.
“Are you ready, Seth?” she asked.
“Take me with you,” he said, and reached out his arms to his lover.
Her kiss infected him. He could all but feel the tiny nano machines and viral helixes marching across his tongue and down into his body to begin the exquisite corruption of his DNA.
When they parted at last Lilith smiled, revealing tiny white fangs set into coal-black gums. “Follow me when you’re ready,” she said. Then she unfurled her wings and launched herself into the night.
Seth watched her go. But this time there was no fear, no sense of loss or abandonment. By morning he would have changed – Adjusted – and when the night came he would take to the skies and find her.
They would never be parted again.
Bio: James Lecky is a writer based in Derry, N. Ireland. His short fiction has appeared in – or is forthcoming in – a number of publications both online and in print including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Sorcerous Signals, Aphelion, Jupiter SF and the anthologies The Phantom Queen Awakes, Mystic Signals 2 and Emerald Eye – The Best Irish Imaginative Fiction
COLD SHOULDER
By Manda Benson
Every face turned as Hannah entered the crowded bar. Chin held high, she surveyed them, the desire apparent on the faces of the men, the envy on the women’s. This had always been the way of things. Hannah was born to be beautiful. Her parents had pulled out all the stops to make it so.
Yet one man had not looked up. He sat at the bar, his handsome, strong-featured face drawn into a brooding frown directed at the half-empty glass on the beermat before him. Lloyd. Lloyd was the only man in her year Hannah hadn’t had. Every time she’d tried to strike up a conversation with him, something had intervened: a call on his mobile, an appointment with a tutor, a passing friend. Well, tonight, Lloyd’s number was up. Hannah wasn’t prepared to entertain the one that got away any more.
Hannah checked her appearance in the mirror outside the lavatories. She took off her jacket to reveal the low-cut top that clung to her every curve, and measured the room in confident strides.
“Hi, I’m Hannah,” she introduced herself.
Lloyd had still not looked at her, and he gave her a brief glance as she took the stool beside him. “I know.” He didn’t offer to buy Hannah a drink, but picked up his own glass and downed what remained of his beer in one draught.
“Can I get you another?” Hannah offered quickly as he stood up.
“No thanks,” said Lloyd. “I really ought to be getting home now.” He smiled politely.
What was this? Every man Hannah had ever wanted had been unable to resist her. Why shouldn’t she have Lloyd? Perhaps Lloyd was just shy. Hannah stood and moved her face closer to his.
Lloyd drew his head back and looked away. He pushed past Hannah towards the door. People in the room stared at her, and she sensed a subtle change in them. Their faces bore expressions of derision; amusement. Hannah felt blood rushing to her face.
Suddenly she felt like some revolting harridan who stalked men. How dare he do this to her, in front of everyone? She supposed he thought he was playing some sort of ludicrous joke. Possessed by a fierce anger, she ran out onto the dark street.
Lloyd hurried several yards ahead of her, pulling on his jacket as he walked. “What are you? Gay?” The sound of Hannah’s high heels rang through the empty street in accompaniment to her voice. Curtains twitched from behind the windows. Hannah didn’t care; it was Lloyd who was at fault, not her. “Asexual? Religious?” She grabbed his sleeve roughly, and he turned to face her. For a horrible moment, Hannah thought he was going to hit her.
“Perhaps you do deserve an explanation,” he said. “What you don’t deserve is an apology.” Beside where they had stopped stood a short wall with a gate, leading to a small park with a children’s playground. Hannah walked ahead of Lloyd towards the swings, a sudden sense of apprehension filling her. What exactly was he going to tell her?
She sat down on one of the swings facing him. “I’m supposed to be a beautiful woman. I was genetically engineered for it. My looks, my mannerisms, my pheromones.”
Lloyd sat down on the swing next to hers. “I’m genetically engineered, too.”
Hannah stared at him in the dim light coming from the street. That wasn’t hard to believe, with that face. “I don’t understand.”
Lloyd swung back and forth idly. “I hate telling people this. Most people who are born genetically engineered, like you, are made from fertilised eggs donated by their parents. I don’t have any parents. The person who commissioned me was a rich and powerful woman, and my genetics were based upon those of three other men whom she’d decided weren’t satisfactory.”
“You were genetically engineered as a toyboy?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“But you live in the university’s accommodation. Where’s this woman now?”
Lloyd shrugged. He cast an ironic glance at Hannah. “She got bored with me and went off.”
“Well, then, what’s the problem?”
“The woman who had me engineered specified some additional genes. One of them was the fidelity gene. It’s not human in origin; in fact it comes from a bird. It means you can only fall in love with one person. If that person dies or abandons you, that’s just tough.”
Hannah stared at him for a moment. “That’s unethical. You should complain to the human rights board!”
“Hannah,” Lloyd said gently, “you can’t miss what you don’t want.” He stood up and straightened his jacket.
“That’s it?” Hannah exclaimed.
“I will give you one piece of advice,” said Lloyd. “You and I do have one thing in common. We were both created for niche markets. My niche was rather small, and yours is much larger, but the outcome will be the same in the end. Beauty doesn’t last forever. Some day you’re going to wake up and find that your niche has disappeared. And then, unless you’ve spent some time carving out another niche for yourself, there’ll be nothing left.” Lloyd raised one eyebrow before turning away and heading back for the gate. “Don’t let what you were born to be become the person you are.”
Bio:
Susan J. Boulton, like the song by The Police says, was Born in the 50’s, and has the unusual distinction of arriving into this world 200 yards from where, 37 years before, Tolkien spent time thinking about hobbits.
She has lived all her life in rural Staffordshire and has a passion for the countryside, its history, myths and legends, all of which influence her work. Married with two grown daughters, Susan now puts her over-active imagination (once the bane of both her parents and teachers) to good use in her writing. When not creating new worlds she currently works as a Technical Support Officer in the Waste Management Department of her local county council, dealing with recycling and the environment.
Susan has had short stories published in Flashspec, volumes one and two published by EQ books, and Touched by Wonder, published by Meadowhawk Press. Her short story 'The Dance', has been recently sold to Ruthless People.
Website link; http://www.susanjboulton.com/
Softly the Pipes Play
by Susan J. Boulton
“Softly the pipes play. Lo to the Master, lo to the Lord, lo to he that commands all. Like the Serpent, the Master of the Seas, we are his to order. His desires are our law, his needs our creed. We are but tools in his hands, to use as he wishes.”
The chant filled the vaulted corridors and chambers of the sliver-blue ship that carried us beneath the waves. Our home, our master’s kingdom; he that commanded the Serpent, the Master of the Seas, to depart in peace.
But, my lips did not repeat the chant, nor did my heart bend to his wishes. My mouth sealed; my heart stone. One he must rip open, the other he must shatter, for I will not bow to his vain glory.
Ride he did on the back of a winged beast of the deep to face the Serpent. Clothed and sealed against the waters, by the magic of our forefathers. Brave, yes, but he went not alone. Others stood with him; they that felt the venom of the Master of the Seas. They gave their all; sang so he could proclaim his glory.
Again the chant began.
“Softly the pipes play. Lo to my Master, lo to my Lord, lo to he that commands all. Like the Serpent, the Master of the Seas, we are his to order. His desires are our law, his needs our creed. We are but tools in his hands to use as he wishes.”
I spat on the floor. My offence note and whispered about. “Send for the Master, send for the Lord, let him come and face me, as he did the Serpent. Let him have the courage to face a marked crone alone.” I clasped my dark weeds of mourning around me, hiding my form. I pulled my veil from my face, letting all see. Dark blue the stains, the remains of Master of the Sea’s venom.
The chant beat the air a third time, cupped now by the tramp of feet.
“Softly the pipes play. Lo to my Master, lo to my Lord, lo to he that commands all. Like the Serpent, Master of the Seas, we are his to order. His desires are our law, his needs our creed. We are but tools in his hands to use as he wishes.”
He came then, tall and handsome, unmarked by the Serpent, untainted by the task. His dark eyes looked into mine, and he smiled softly.
I spat at his feet. “For my sister wives; for they; their life taken by the Serpent, so you can walk unmarked away from the Master of the Sea. Sing they did, as did I; our courage strong and sure. The Master of the Sea did depart in peace, but stung we were. They to their core; flesh and soul rotted. I, marked but alive, heavy with the burden of misplaced desire, misplaced belief.” I pulled back my garment of mourning, exposing my figure heavy with his child.
The Lord went to his knees before me, and took up the chant;
“Softly the pipes play. Lo to my Mistress, lo to my Lady, lo to she that commands all. Like the Serpent, Master of the Seas, we are hers to order. Her desires are our law, her needs our creed. We are but tools in her hands to use as she wishes.”
Cold Shoulder by Manda Benson
Softly the Pipes Play by Susan Boulton
Manda Benson has published short fiction and articles in magazines and anthologies, and has a science-fiction-romance novel, Dark Tempest, forthcoming from New York-based publisher Lyrical Press in February 2010. More information about Manda's writing is available at http://tangentrine.com
