August 7, 2013

From “Suicide Monks” by Yamada Tarō

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“It’s not my fault if you don’t like what you find,” Sōgen wheezed from his chair. “I told you not to contact me in person.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” I snapped. “You’re the only person who has the data I need, and I’m being tracked online.”

“I let you in, didn’t I?” said Sōgen, throwing his pale and tubby arms wide. “You’re the first person who’s been in here aside from me in 15 years. Don’t abuse my hospitality.”

I glanced out the half-drawn shade at the vast empty streets and apartment buildings below, each with only a few dozen tenants thanks to Japan’s decades-old and increasing sub-replacement fertility. “How do you manage that?” I asked. “Surely you must have a job, and need to go out for food.”

“I have food delivered and trash collected,” replied Sōgen. “People practically beg for my business so they can keep their credit, since their companies were founded in the 1960s when the country hadn’t lost 50 million people to geezerhood without descendents.”

I looked at the massive bank of computer equipment that filled 90% of the apartment, and the disarrayed twin-size mattress parked under the window.

“Well, I can see that’s not enough for you,” Sōgen said. “You’re wondering how I pay for the electric bill and everything else despite no job and making a career out of giving away things online for free.”

“More or less.”

“If you’re sure you want to know, the answer is in the bedroom,” said Sōgen. “But if I hear one word of judgement or complaint from you, I’ll erase that data and make you watch before throwing you out on your ass.”

Another odd look from me.

“Information wants to be free. That’s the creed I live by, and I’m too fat and lazy to try and stop you. But freeing information means living with its consequences. I practice what I preach.”

There was no letting the thing go, not after a speech like that. I approached the bedroom door, its knob coated with dust, and opened it. Second later, I slammed it shut and stumbled backwards, retching. “What the hell?” I cried. “Are those…?”

“Yes, of course they are,” Sōgen said dismissively. “There are no jobs for someone like me in this country anymore, so I lived off my grandfather’s pension, and my parents’. When they fell ill…well, they had always talked about becoming Sokushinbutsu, suicide monks, practicing holy self-mummification. So I let them do it.”

“You mean you…you locked them up in there when they were dying?”

“I cared for them in their final illness like any dutiful son would,” snapped Sōgen. “And I have let their pension checks keep coming in to pay the bills. Don’t think I’m the only one who’s done this, either. The government can’t handle the record keeping of a nation of geezers, and they’re 50% of the electorate so tampering with benefits is a good way to exit the Diet in a hurry. Grandpa will be 123 this January, and nobody cares. My friend down the block has a 215-year-old still collection a pension.”

Struggling to avoid laying into the disgusting blob in front of me for his vile rationalizations, I instead found myself retching.

“Toilet’s down the hall,” Sōgen said drily, turning back toward his monitors. “We’ll talk after you’ve composed yourself.”

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August 6, 2013

From “Last Flight of the Dalien D-270” by Abram Sharan

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That’s what Ryder loved about the aircraft. They hadn’t made many Dalien D-270s, but that was just because the world wasn’t ready for something with that much maneuverability and cargo capacity (whilst sipping fuel) that could take off and land on a shaved dime.

“Get the tower on the horn,” Ryder said softly. “Tell them we just need to buy fuel for a mail run. Nobody knows which aircraft that took off from the Capital Aerodrome they’re looking for, and nobody knows where we came from. Let’s keep it that way.”

Orlov nodded as Ryder idled the twin engines and taxied the Dalien over toward the fuel trucks. He could see Revolutionary Guards stationed all over the compound, many of them wearing pieces of government uniforms they’d captured in their most recent lightning advance. There didn’t seem to be any antiaircraft guns or fighters–the royal air force hadn’t been an organized force for months before the capital fell.

“Attention unidentified aircraft,” the tower squawked through the radio. “Please state your origin, cargo, destination, and purpose for landing.”

“Returning empty after a milk run, headed for Southport,” Orlov said. “Just need to buy a little fuel.”

“Come on, come on,” Ryder whispered under his breath.

“Why didn’t you request permission to land?” It sounded like a kid on the other end, probably an ideologically reliable rebel rather than whoever had run it before.

“Have you seen what’s going on out there?” Orlov said. “We haven’t requested permission to land in months. And we’re willing to pay for fuel in gold.”

A pause. “Someone will be out to meet you with a fuel truck. Don’t try to take off before you pay, or the Guards will blast you out of the sky.”

Ryder patted Orlov on the back. “Good going,” he said.

And to the member of the royal family shivering in the cargo hold–the contents of the “package” they had been hired to deliver to Southport right before the capital city had fallen…Ryder put a hand to his lips.

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August 5, 2013

From “Xinyidali” by Mike P. Sove

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Xinyidali was the brainchild of Chinese resource developers at the beginning of the property boom that gripped the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Built in an inland area with good road and rail connections to major population centers, it was the site of several major heavy industry plants built astride major trunk lines during the crash industrialization program of the Great Leap Forward.

Like most industrial sites from that era, the old settlement–which had no official name, only a post office address–was rapidly being rustbelted out of existence in favor of much better-built facilities closer to the coast. Sensing an opportunity, developers from Shanghai entered into an agreement to purchase the land as the industrial plants wound down one by one and were dismantled. In exchange for the burden of tearing down the old structures and assuming liability, the investors got the land practically for free.

A grandiose plan emerged to develop the area into a mixed-use shopping area, theme park, and retirement village catering to Westerners and the wealthy. Renamed Xinyidali–roughly “New Italy” in Mandarin–the owners built a concrete half-scale replica of the Colosseum as a centerpiece and arts venue while surrounding it with blocks of flats with shops on the first floor in the Mediterranean style. Broad parks were laid out in between the blocks, radiating out like spokes, to be filled with light amusements and food stands.

The site was roughly 40% complete and some early tenants had already moved in when one of the industrial plants being demolished nearby suffered a major accident. A pesticide plant, it produced carbaryl for agriculture but had not been properly decommissioned before demolition started. Several large holding tanks that were assumed to be empty were instead full, and when breached released large quantities of phosgene and methylamine into the air and soil.

Phosgene had been used as a biological weapon in the First World War, while methylamine is a flammable toxin in its own right. The resulting explosions and leakage killed 27 people and forced a hasty abandonment of the site. Further testing confirmed dangerously high levels of chemical waste in the surrounding environment, even in places uncontaminated by the phosgene or methylamine. The investors, it seemed, had simply thrown a layer of topsoil over the industrial sites and hoped for the best–a hope buttressed by lavish bribes.

With the site contaminated, the investors bankrupt or in jail, and a government embarrassed by the negative attention the incident, the site was simply fenced off and abandoned. Xinyidali remains in a broken state even today, attracting a small trickle of photographers, urban explorers, and other thrill-seekers drawn by its stark decay despite the danger.

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August 4, 2013

From “Conflagration in the Wilderness” by Bea Shomperre

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“Fire, fire!” Seconds ago, it had been an order from the lieutenant, impatient with his men’s slow reloading of their muskets as the discipline of drill broke down under heavy Rebel fire.

Now it was a frenzied warning.

The snarls and brambles of the Wilderness of Spotsylvania had been bad enough when they were merely preventing maneuver, but sparks from Warren’s artillery battery had caught the underbrush on fire. As the Union men and the Rebels struggled hand to hand with rifle butt and bayonet, the surroundings had been transformed into a maelstrom of crackling sheets of flame. The cries of the wounded rose in pitch to frenzied shrieks as they were burned to death.

Amos Callahan had broken and run under the strain, as had many of his fellows in the 27th Michigan, and many of the Rebels. He morale had been utterly broken when he had witnessed a sergeant, bleeding from a gut shot and immobile on the dry spring grass, press his rifle to his throat and thumb the trigger rather than face a screaming death amid the flames. It had been close enough to fleck Amos with gore, and he snapped under the sensory assault. He had a wife, after all, and had only held their little Andrew once since his birth.

But he had stopped dead. Among the cries from the wounded men about to be engulfed, Amos heard a familiar voice: Nathan. Nathan of the homestead next door, Nathan of the desk behind his in the schoolhouse, Nathan of the fast carriage rides around town courting young ladies. They had enlisted together, bivouacked together, and now they were about to die separately.

There was only a moment to act, to make the decision to flee or stay rooted stock-still in mute horror…or to act. Amos chose to act.

“Take my gun, Nate!” Amos cried. The heavy rifled musket that he had been about to cast away instead became a lifeline; Nathan, wounded in the knee, was able to grasp and hold onto the proffered aid. As fire swirled around them in a holocaust, consuming Federal and Rebel alike and rent by the cracks of Minié balls and cannonades, Amos dragged his best friend to safety. There were embers all over them, and Amos felt his eyebrows singed off by the heat, but it didn’t matter.

“You could have left me there to die, Amos,” Nathan sobbed amidst the inferno. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“The fire was so hot,” Amos murmured. “I didn’t know what to do…I barely had time to think…”

“What’s he talking about?” said the nurse, who had come in to change Amos’s dressings. She switched on the electric light overhead and peered at the old man’s pallid features.

“Dad lost his best friend from school in the war,” said Andrew, sadly stroking his long grey beard. “At the Wilderness with Grant, he burned to death when the battlefield caught fire. Dad says he never really left that field; I think he…goes back there sometimes, when things are really bad.”

“I wonder why he would return to someplace so painful,” the nurse said with a concerned look.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Andrew. “But when a man is on his deathbed, I suppose he’s apt to go where he’ll go.

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August 3, 2013

From “Sulnahk’s Final Debate” by Vandon Helton

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But above all, the Emperor wished to be perceived by his subjects and enemies alike as an honorable man. Much as his predecessors had maintained the fiction of limited government and subservience to the Senate, the Emperor sought to build up the edifice of himself as a benevolent and reasonable monarch. This in spite of the fact that his grandfather, the great Emperor Kaysar Irum, had severed Imperial power from all oversight and reduced the Senate to a mere debating society.

In time, the Emperor heard of the philosopher Sulnahk, a popular and forceful advocate of a democratic society along the lines of the ancient Republic of Laconia that now made up one of the Empire’s central provinces. Rather than have this offense answered by death or exile, the Emperor sought to show his honor and mercy by debating Sulnahk before an audience in the Hall of Columns. Parts of their exchange have been preserved.

“I have been trained my whole life for the wise exercise of power and the administration of a great realm,” the Emperor said. “How can one not so trained hope to rule?”

“If ably supported by a bureaucracy and advisors, any man may rule, and a limited time in power will safeguard against choosing the wrong leader,” replied Sulnahk. “Many of your august predecessors came to the throne early upon the death of their fathers, as well. Were you to be replaced tomorrow, and the machinery of empire remain, few would know the difference.”

“Yet none can argue that I have ruled wisely and well, without war or strife, as did my father,” said the Emperor, who had thoroughly cleansed the official record of the assassinations and intrigue which had made him heir presumptive instead of his four older brothers. “Who would argue for the replacement of such strong rule with such weak?”

“There is no guarantee that the next prince of your line will share in your enlightened rule, with naught but your teachings and the weight of tradition or threat of rebellion to restrain him,” said Sulnahk. “Sooner or later, a tyrant will come to the throne, or a mediocrity, and the only recourse to save the empire will be rebellion and strife.”

“Would there not be rebellion and strife if an elected Emperor promoted the cause of his own people and gens ahead of others?” countered the Emperor. “It would be an invitation to a tyrannical demagogue exploiting a powerful minority to retain their control at the cost of ruin.”

“I cannot think of a smaller minority, nor a more powerful one, than the imperial family,” said Sulnahk.

That was too much; the Emperor angrily ordered Sulnahk to be taken away into “exile” for his brazenness; the philosopher was killed and cremated, and the records altered accordingly. In a final touch of irony, the Emperor died before his only surviving son came of age…giving Sulnahk’s final debate the ring of prophecy.

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August 2, 2013

From “Devilchilde” by Hamad Arauz

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This post is part of the August 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Child of the Devil.”

Maria Nguyan had been skeptical of the woman in the dark dress at first. She’d even manged to get the first two numbers of 911 dialed on her cell phone. The mumbled intimations of being a child of evil and the prophesied doom of the world hadn’t helped. Mom had always warned of strangers, after all, though that warning coming from someone who greeted door-to-door salesmen with homebaked cookies had never seemed particularly dire.

But that had been before Ms. Dark had shown Maria that she had mysterious and inexplicable powers. Local flies did her bidding, being pushed in front of a speeding semi had sent the truck driver to the hospital, and releasing the heartburn rather than keeping it in had led to a gout of flame breath powerful enough to reduce Mr. Feigenbaum’s hated geraniums to ashes.

“So do you see now?” said Mrs. Dark. “Do you see how I speak the truth? You are the child of evil, the spawn of the most profane and evil Devil of every faith on Earth.”

“I do, I see it now,” Maria said. “Mom always told me that Dad was a rotten, no-good, devil.” She remembered little of her father save an unpleasant smell, eternal arguments, and the motorcycle jacket emblazoned with e red imp that he wore the day he had left. Well, that and his immaculately groomed mustache and goatee. The mention of Maria’s father was the only thing that got demure Mrs. Nguyan into a full-throated rage.”I guess…I guess I should have known all along.”

“Oh, child, child,” Mrs. Dark said. “You have it all wrong, I’m afraid. It’s your mother who is the Devil.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
ishtar’sgate
BDavidHughes
areteus
Ralph Pines
articshark
pyrosama
Anarchic Q
meowzbark
MsLaylaCakes
grace elliot
milkweed

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August 1, 2013

From “The Only Apartment It Won’t Touch” by Adriana Schmeidler

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I hadn’t run the dishwasher in my apartment, so it was a little strange to wake up to it churning away. Especially since the door was open.

Rushing downstairs as fountains of hot water erupted from the open maw of the appliance, I dialed my landlord and got a promise to be there in moments. Not an exaggeration, considering that they owned half of the houses in my area of the student ghetto and occupied the only one that hadn’t been carved up into zombie houses full of apartments for the benefit of students.

Serious consideration had been given on my part to moving out. For one, I was the only tenant; the common hall accessed by my rear door was empty and dusty. I couldn’t understand why, in a city racked with housing shortages, such a thing could be. My kitchen appliances, which were on the wall that joined the rest of the house, had been failing at a remarkable rate as well. A ratty old man had just delivered a new fridge the week before after mine failed, spoiling a week’s worth of groceries.

Then again, if I’d been able to afford to live anyplace else close enough to the university to walk, I’d have moved there in the first place.

Instead of the handyman, who I think was an uncle or something, my landlord herself arrived at my door about five minutes later. I should say that her granddaughter arrived, rather; the deed was in the name of the old lady tottering on the sidewalk, who followed the fruit of the fruit of her loins everywhere babbling slightly. The girl, Laine, was a wiry little waif with an uneasy mop of blonde hair that looked more like chicken down than anything; if not for her tattoos and the double-barreled middle fingers on her shirt, she looked like a high school student.

Laine practically kicked open the door to the rest of the house to get at the spigot that would turn the water off; she motioned for me to follow, and I was a bit uneasy to see her grandmother shuffling behind the both of us. The remainder of the house was much older than the portion I was living in; it was wretched with dust and in varying stages of being broken up into apartments, but the furnishings spoke to an old and ornate past.

As Laine dove into the basement to find the right valve, I waited for her at the top of the steps, with a soot-stained window behind me letting in the morning light…and jumped when her grandmother seized the cuff of my shirt, having snuck up on me almost silently.

“You shouldn’t come in here,” she whispered in a voice as dry as tinder. “It leaves the new part alone, but it doesn’t like people in the old part.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t, ma’am,” I said uneasily. It was clear the woman was batty, and that only Laine’s inability or unwillingness to keep her restrained kept her showing up to tenant houses.

“The crawlers, the spiders and ants and mice and rats, they are your allies against it,” she continued. “They are the only living it will suffer for long.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, rolling my eyes at the insanity of what I’d just heard.

Then again, as a psychology student, perhaps there was something to be gained from her ramblings. When Laine reappeared, covered in dirt and cobwebs, I asked her about what her grandmother had said.

“Yeah, we should get going,” she said. “This part of the house is haunted as shit.”

It was then I decided that I couldn’t pass up such a powerful opportunity for study that had dumped itself in my lap; even as my anger about the dishwasher throbbed, I began making plans to return to the disused part of the house.

I dearly wish I hadn’t.

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July 31, 2013

From “La Gran Ahogó Catarata” by Luis de la Riva

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“They flooded the valley to fill the reservoir upstream…drowned the waterfall. It brought the water to the hotel’s front doorstep, but there was nothing anyone wanted to see anymore.”

“And the rebels, right? I heard they started attacking cars on the road.”

“Yes, but never this far up in the hills.”

“Why not?”

“When the rebellion was first finding its feet, back when it was about freedom and equality instead of protecting drug profits, the rebels sent a patrol to the hotel, which had been closed almost thirty years. They’d heard that some right-wingers were hiding there.”

“And?”

“And they were never seen again. The rebels are powerful here, but they’re not stupid. Spirits do not read Marx and Mao.”

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July 30, 2013

From “The Mystery of 2013” by Rihard Van Asch

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“See you tomorrow.” That’s what Perry had said to Marie when he left on the launch for the mainland. He might have given more thought to his words, if he’d known they were the very last he would ever say to his wife.

The Brandon Sea Fort was a few kilometers off a major estuary in eastern England, built during the Napoleonic Wars to forestall a French invasion. It had eventually been occupied by the French after all, but as hoteliers rather than conquerors. Converted into a low-capacity super-luxury hotel with just eight bedrooms, it had seemed like the perfect honeymoon getaway when Marie picked it out. The cost was steep, but the brokerage had a good year.

“See you tomorrow.” Perry had grimaced more in embarrassment than pain when the management had ordered him evacuated to the mainland. Cavorting poolside had exacted a heavy toll when he fell on a champagne glass, which caused a surprisingly deep gash and superficial but profuse bleeding.

The NHS nurse onshore had rolled her eyes at Perry’s poor attempts at humor as she had stitched him up. Seventeen stitches, five more than his personal record acquired during an abseiling expedition to Iceland not long after he and Marie had become an item. The doctor insisted on keeping Perry overnight after labwork for blood poisoning came back inconclusive; the pilot of the tiny boat which had brought him ashore agreed and refused to make the trip at night. Perry later learned that he had used the paid leave time ashore for a liaison with his mistress.

“See you tomorrow,” Perry whispered, a hand pressed against a pane of glass agains the roiling cauldron which the sky had become. A vicious early-season storm had swept in, lashing the estuary into a frenzy of whitecaps and hurling ferocious oily swells into the seawall. The Brandon Sea Fort Hotel was occasionally visible in the distance; it had been designed to endure, and had endured, worse storms over its 200-year existence.

There had been a total wireless signal disruption when a local tower fell in the storm, and the harbormaster expected that similar damage to the hotel kept them from responding. Once the weather had calmed after three days, Perry boarded the boat back over the still-angry waters. The hotel had a 14-day supply of food and water; there was no cause for concern.

“See you tomorrow.” Perry could only whisper the words as he stood inconsolable in the hotel’s central promenade. There had been seven couples staying there, supported by a hotel staff of twenty-five; the only living thing in the fort on his return was a goldfish. No signs of struggle or inundation; meals were laid out and hotel doors hung open and unlocked.

A five-day search by the local authorities and Royal Navy search and rescue turned up nothing; no bodies, no clues. The media was agitated into a froth by the mystery, hounding Perry and the boat pilot mercilessly. An inquest eventually concluded that a rogue wave had swept the fort early in the storm, and that the survivors had drowned trying to rescue those swept out to sea. As to why no such wave had been observed from shore, and why there had been no flooding of the lower machine spaces, the official record was silent.

“See you tomorrow.” Perry silently swirled his finger in the goldfish bowl and stared out to a sea as unwilling as ever to divulge its secrets.

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July 29, 2013

From “The Last Horn” by Arnold Ngô

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Grandmother had used to tell stories about the rhinoceros, about how he was wise but jealously guarded his wisdom, about how he was quick to anger but quick to forgive, about how the powder of his horn could bring youth and health to even the oldest and most impotent of men. Nguyễn had listened, rapt at her feet, even as the hills had echoed with the combat of two wars.

For a long time, everyone had assume that the rhinos had long since been hunted to oblivion. And in the hard times during the war and the lean times after its thundering conclusion, Nguyễn had never given it any mind other than to chuckle at the counterfeit horn powder peddled by the local Chinese pharmacy. But then the government had announced with great fanfare that a few rhinos still remained, and began building a wildlife preserve nearby to attempt to reap tourist dollars. Nguyễn saw the occasional Western tourist, often with long hair and clothing that made a pretense of being half as expensive as it was. They often wore clothing with the stylized rhinoceros logo of the Cát Tiên park.

Nguyễn had been unable to get a job working for the park, and his small farm produced failed crop after failed crop. Even the small store that his wife operated on the side of their ramshackle home facing the road, seldom did enough business to cover the purchase of the items for sale. After Đức in the village had led a group into the forest to kill a rhinoceros and returned weeks later flashing crisp fans of đồng, Nguyễn’s wife had asked him to venture into the forest to set a snare and kill a rhinoceros of his own.

“The girls are hungry,” she said, over and over. “A rhinoceros horn could provide for all of us for years, and the snares are easy to make.”

Each time, Nguyễn made the same answer: “I do not want to be the man to kill the last rhinoceros in these hills.”

“They are not the only ones left,” his wife sniffed. “There are more in Africa and Indian and Indonesia. And who are you to put a dumb animal before the life of your family?”

Still, with the specter of Grandmother foremost in his mind, Nguyễn had resisted his wife’s calls year after year. In the rainy season of 2010, though, a flood and a herd of cows who had escaped from their pen combined to annihilate the rice crop and caused five hundred thousand đồng of damage. The dam was owned by the government, and the cattle farmer was a wealthy man with Party connections; no aid was forthcoming from any other quarter, and Nguyễn’s extended family could offer little but sympathy.

Quietly, Nguyễn dug up the rifle that he had buried in 1975. He spent a day silently cleaning it behind the chicken coop, using motions which had once been second nature, and took a roll of barbed wire from the destroyed fence as well as what little food he could scrape together.

The Cát Tiên rangers patrolled regularly but stuck to wide roads and trails; by drawing on long-ago experiences, Nguyễn was able to penetrate deep into the hard of the forest to set his snares near where Đức and his fellows had caught their rhinoceros. A day passed, and then another, and then another. Nguyễn made camp near a small creek, checking each snare daily and living off his meager supplies as well as whatever small animals happened to wander into his traps.

On the fifth day, Nguyễn had come across a sprung snare with a writhing mound of smooth, dark flesh caught therein. He saw flashes of frightened eyes, flicking of terrified ears, and perceived a series of low moaning bellows which seemed to echo in the deepest part of his stomach. The creature was small, male, and rather pathetic looking, but there was still the opportunity to release the snare and let it fade back into the foliage of Cát Tiên.

Nguyễn regarded the rhinoceros for a time. He saw Grandmother by the fireside, his emaciated wife and family, the rich Westerners, and the villagers lucky enough to work for the reserve. If, as he suspected, he had snared the last of its kind, the action to follow would affect all of them in turn.

“Forgive me.” The bolt of Nguyễn’s rifle cycled smoothly as he shot the rhinoceros. The shot tore open the animal’s leg, cutting its femoral artery; its cried redoubled but became weaker and weaker as it bled out into the thick, damp soil of Cát Tiên. After a time, the rhinoceros breathed its last through a film of bloody foam, and Nguyễn cut off its horn with a borrowed hacksaw.

The park rangers found what was left of it months later; DNA testing confirmed that it was the very last of its kind. And, ever since, Nguyễn’s waking and slumbering hours have been troubled by the gentle sound of heavy inhuman breathing and foliage parting in the dark.

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