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November 7, 2014

From “The Stranger Post-Mortem of Candon Verbridge” by Trent Hadsage

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“I was thinking Chinese for dinner tonight. Wife says I need to lay off, but then she eats just as much as I do when I bring it home.”

“Are you even listening to yourselves?” I said. “Talking about moo goo gai pan when a man is dead and murdered in his own home?”

The officer shrugged. “It’s no worse than one of his movies. You ever see any of them?”

“Yes,” I said, my insides heaving at the splatters of blood and the outline on the floor which depicted the unrecognizable heap in which director Candon Verbridge had been found. “I wasn’t a fan. Too gory.”

“Too gory?” the officer said. “That was the best thing about them. Best splatterpunk director to come out of America during the last fifty years.”

“And you don’t find it at all odd that he was, himself, splattered and cored?” I asked. A police officer with a fondness for splattercore seemed a much better preparation for the scene of a violent homicide than a lifetime of reviewing films.

“Huh. I suppose it is,” said the officer. “Maybe it was a copycat. Some nutty fan. The scene looks a lot like The Scattered Stains, doesn’t it?”

It didn’t just look like that nauseatingly, horrifyingly gory movie, I thought. It was nigh identical, at least from what I could remember seeing through my fingers at the screening. I was about to say something in reply, to confirm the officer’s theory, when a thought struck me:

The Scattered Stains had been about an incorporeal entity that had murdered anyone who refused it.

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November 6, 2014

From “The Last Testament of T. Braven” by Juan Stollar

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T. BRAVEN LAST SURVIVOR
15 MEN FROM [unreadable] GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
TRAPPED IN CAVERNS [unreadable] DAYS
DETAILS BURIED AT [unreadable]
SAVE YOURSELVES

The name rang no bells, but they had clearly done their best to make their mark, even if it was in a weak and unsteady hand on the cavern’s sculpted limestone walls. It looked like whoever had left the message had meant to continue it, as a partially carved list of what appeared to be peoples’ names, dates of birth and death, and location of their buried bodies within the cave system followed.

The body of the author, partially decomposed and partially mummified, lay nearby.

Another observer might have felt a surge of pity or respect at the end of a man who, up to the very last, had apparently tried to do right by his fellows. But the being that read it was one intricately linked with the caverns in which Traven had found himself lost and confused amidst geological impossibilities.

With no emotion whatsoever other than that of duty, the silent watcher began to chip away at the surface, smoothing over the rock so that it would appear as if no human eyes had ever beheld the area before.

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November 5, 2014

From “Announceritis 2: Electric Boogaloo” by Austin Corinne

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“So, Sean,” said the day shift manager at Hopewell Tri-County Airport. “I understand that you have been making our airport announcements for third shift for some time now?”

“That’s right,” Sean said.

“And are you aware of any…complaints…regarding the content or tone of your announcements during that time?”

“Not a one,” said Sean.

“Uh-huh.” The day shift manager said. “I’d like to read some feedback that I have gotten, if I may. ‘I was greatly confused when your airport announcer said that Flight 1066 to Brussels was departing from the vegan restaurant on Concourse A.’ ‘I heard that all cars parked in the structure after midnight would be subject to towing by a pair of angels armed with grappling hooks, but I did not find this to be the case.’ Shall I go on?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sean said. “People get a little loopy after midnight, don’t they?”

“Ah, I see.” The day shift manager did his best to keep a poker face but a vein could be seen quietly throbbing on the side of his large and domed forehead. “I have in my inbox, in addition to those complaints, a recording of an announcement made last month someone took on their cellular telephone. If you don’t mind, I’d like to play it for you to see if it jars anything loose, memory-wise.”

“Please do,” said Sean.

“Attention passengers for Edinburgh,” said what was unmistakably Sean’s voice, wavering as if besotted and filtered through a cell phone’s tinny speaker. “I regret to inform you that, due to black magic, your pilots have timed out and turned into lemurs. Columbia Airlines apologizes for the inconvenience but will be unable to provide lodgings during the estimated 97-hour wait before we can take off.”

“I don’t know who that is, or where it was recorded, but they clearly need to lay off the sauce,” said Sean earnestly.

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November 4, 2014

From “Faithful or Truthful” by Alf Huittfruth

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“I can give you a faithful answer, or I can give you a true answer,” said the luminous figure. “Only one, not the other. And I can guarantee you that, whichever you choose, you will be wracked with regret until you cease to be.”

“I’ll take the true answer,” I said.

“Ask your question again, then.”

“Who are you, and why am I here?” I said. I suppose it might have counted as two questions, but the being of blinding light accepted it nonetheless.

“I am a manifestation of your need to believe in an all-knowing and higher power,” came the reply, “a comforting voice to tell you what you already believe and, in your heart of hearts, know. And what you know is this: the injury was fatal, and you are experiencing the slow death of neurons that will lead you and all you have ever been down into darkness. All that can be said has been said, all that can be done has been done, and there is nothing left but the throes of a mind turning on itself left to you.”

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November 3, 2014

From “I Hate Her, and I Hate that She is Here” by Annie Negrete

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Human-spec android Z001/19, better known to the crew of the cruise ship Kerguelen as James, stepped over the bodies of its security team. Though they wore body armor and carried police-grade weapons, the team had trained to repel boarders in the form of heavily armed but lightly armored pirates.

They were no match for a human-spec android, who despite his prosaic work in the reactor core was just short of military grade.

Her stateroom was unguarded now, save for alarms and a lock. James dealt with the latter easily, applying 4000 meters per square inch of pressure to the emergency release. A form was huddled, shivering, under the blankets in the master bed.

Without breaking stride, and without saying a word, James throttled the form where it lay. Only when he’d squeezed every ounce of life from the prostrate form did he cast back the covers to reveal…a woman in the livery of a Kerguelen housekeeping staff.

On hearing a scuffling noise, James tore open the ornate doors to a nearby closet. Through a forest of expensive garments, he saw the pried-off cover of a panic chute disguised as ductwork.

“I hate her,” James said again, leaning over the opening that was too small for him to fit though, “and I hate that she is here.”

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November 2, 2014

From “The Xenophiles Club” by Pollux Eichbens

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At first the raid appeared to have uncovered a brothel like any other, but it soon became apparent from the subsequent investigation by the London Metropolitan Police that the establishment, known underground as “The Xenophiles Club,” catered exclusively to extraterrestrial tastes. The initial confusion stemmed from the apprehension of six Betelgeusian shapeshifters, who attempted to pass themselves off as call girls before running out of stamina and reverting to their natural gelatinous forms in custody.

In total, the raid uncovered 12 Centaurians, 8 Barnardians, 2 Wolf 359ians, 17 Sirians, and 29 Greys (a nomadic race who our devoted readers will remember has no known homeworld) in addition to the aforementioned Betelgeusians. Xenophilia of this nature is of course punishable by law under several acts of Parliament, including the Formic Statute 1533 (better known as the Bugger Act), the Offenses against the Planet Act 1861, and the Interstellar Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

The names and affiliations of those arrested in connection with what is already being called the “Jupiter Street Scandal” have not yet been released, but sources within the London Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they include at least five members of the House of Lords, six life peers, and several of London’s most prominent mercantile heads.

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November 1, 2014

From “The Muse’s Prediction” by Altos Wexan

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“I’ve got you now.” The personification of my creative muse, wearing give-up-on-life pants and what might once have been a t-shirt, is lounging on my couch while ignoring the cigar ash and drops of cheap beer accumulating on what passed for his clothing.

“I wasn’t under the impression that ‘getting’ me was your goal,” I say. “Aren’t you, as ever, an appropriation of a concept used by Stephen King (without permission) to give form to my creative angst during National Novel Writing Month?”

“No.” My muse takes a deep drag and a deep sip before continuing. “I’m also a personification of your fear of creative failure and occasional reminder that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. And I’ve got you this year.”

“How’s that?” I say defensively. “This year I’m writing a fantasy novel, going for something that’s not at least quasi-realistic for the first time. That’s practically my normal mode, my comfort zone.”

“Yes, but you’re also signed up as a municipal liaison. Officially this time, with real responsibilities and stuff, and not the half-assed kind of quasi-ML you were before. You think there’s enough time in the day for a full-time job, finishing what promises to be another 100,000-word novel, and supervising a bunch of other writers and events? Especially considering you’ll be arriving back from a trip to France one day before November starts?” My muse laughs a bitter laugh.

“We’ll see,” I say in return. “Being an ML could energize me.”

“Or it could leave you a dried-out husk, as dead on the inside as on the outside, so dessicated that Egyptian mummies will look at you askance and say ‘what the Helios happened to that guy?'”

“We shall see, my friend,” I say. “We shall see.”

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October 31, 2014

From “The Dread God Ksul” by Luke S. Goddard III

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“I am old, and the repose of a country gentleman suited me. It would more surely have suited my son.” Lusk staggered backward, clutching his wound. “But you have denied me the only woman who was capable of bearing the son that I need, and for that, I must cast the facade aside.”

Lusk’s estate blurred, liquified, vanished; for it had never been an estate, but an illusion, an extension of its master’s form and will. The neat lines of trees and manicured lawns dried up like water in the desert, revealing cracked and bone-dry earth; for the grounds were their master’s skin and the trees his sinews. The twisted remains of the earth gyrated in a movement that was not quite tremor, not quite spasm.

“Cunning and guile serve me well, a mailed fist in a velvet glove,” Lusk continued. The voice didn’t seem to issue from his mouth, but rather from the ground itself, and the register varied wildly, from conversational and high to a low and menacing growl like a grindstone of volcanic glass. “But even for an old trickster like me, cunning must sometimes give way to brute force.”

Lusk’s own form was melting away, running like hot tallow into the blighted ground. Like everything else, it had been an affectation in the service of guile. The dread spirit of the land was rising up, a cloak of shadows about a towering, impossible, and utterly horrifying form.

“You will regret the day that you interfered with the will of the dread god Ksul,” the horror cried in a voice that was wolves howling against the fierce midnight winds. “Pay for your foolishness with your lives, and the lives of every living creature in the valley!”

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October 30, 2014

From “Z001/19’s Rage” by Annie Negrete

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Human-spec android Z001/19, better known to the crew of the cruise ship Kerguelen as James, was regularly employed as an assistant to the crew tending the nuclear reactor keeping the ship afloat, since his synthetic skin was CBRN resistant and could be easily swapped out.

While assisting a hazmet crew in routine maintenance of a coolant tube inside the “warm zone” of the reactor, James paused and looked up. Instead of saying “the outflow level on valve three is below nominal” like he had meant, he said what he had been fearing.

“I hate her, and I hate that she is here.”

Without a further word, James left the hazmat enclosure for the hallways of the cruise ship. There were no survivors from the first security team to confront him.

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October 29, 2014

From “The Dominion of the New Order” by Moses Sweere Gephardt

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The Crimson Empire had espoused no particular state religion at its outset, preferring a secular veneration of the Emperor as a unifying and civilizing force which drew various competing religious traditions under its protective wing; in this way it was unique among the ancient empires, which tended to make their emperors also the high priest of a state religion.

Around 1000 years after its foundation, the Crimson Empire began to move toward an official recognition of the Universal Sepulcher as a quasi-state religion, largely in belated recognition of its spread among the populace and the conversion of Emperors during the Anarchy Crisis. Over time, the Universal Sepulcher became the established religion of the empire and its godhead (whose holy name it was forbidden to speak) became paramount to the extent that other faiths were ruthlessly suppressed.

The New Order began as a small movement in the Imperial periphery, where a self-proclaimed prophet-warrior named Taayan began to preach that the godhead of the Universal Sepulcher was actually but one half of a dualistic cosmos, existing as a figure of universal and omnipotent good in opposition to an equal force of universal and omnipotent destruction. Only by venerating them both in equal measure, Taayan taught, could true enlightenment, salvation, and afterlife be attained. Furthermore, he broke the most solemn taboo of the Universal Sepulcher by naming the godhead as Argna the Protector. Set against Atneps the Destructor, the arrangement was known as the Duality and the movement that advanced it became known as the New Order, with Taayan as its Hierophant.

Arising in a time of crisis for the Crimson Empire and its other imperial foes, the New Order was able to carve out a vast empire in a shockingly short amount of time, and by the time of Taayan’s death (reportedly at the age of 101) the New Order rivaled the Crimson Empire in size. Only after a long period of consolidation and nearly constant warfare was the New Order able to defeat and subjugate the Empire, killing the last Emperor. Once it found itself in possession of virtually the entirety of the known world, worshippers of the Duality reorganized the lands into the Dominion of the New Order, adopting many of the institutions of the old Empire into a new, fiercely fundamentalist, and fiercely expansionist entity.

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