July 1, 2011

From “Phantom Lands Across the River” by Jenny D. Falkner

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Jiméndez eventually tracked de Lóya’s party to a river that had been charted by Hernando de Soto a decade before the vanished expedition. The area was depopulated following a massive demographic collapse of the Mississippian culture caused by disease and the accompanying war and famine. Jiméndez located a group of survivors from de Lóya’s group in a small village along the river; they claimed that they had abandoned de Lóya, and spun a tale that Jiméndez chronicles faithfully in his diary, with his disbelieving and occasionally sarcastic comments confined to marginalia.

The survivors said that they had been warned against crossing the river by the natives, who claimed that when the moon and the sun were in the sky just so the land on the opposite bank became unfamiliar, a labyrinthine wilderness, and that to cross was to risk death. The villagers Jiméndez spoke with confirmed the legend but were unable to give particulars; the Mississippian collapse had led to the deaths of all their most learned elders, and they were on the verge of abandoning subsistence agriculture for a return to hunting and gathering. De Lóya had ridiculed the warnings and his party had crossed even though the elders insisted that to do so when the moon and stars were wrong was to invite death. He had reasoned that de Soto had encountered no such trouble, and a small scouting party sent out in advance had not either.

Trouble soon began. The scouting party could not recognize the lands they marched through, and deSoto’s maps and notes proved useless. They were unable to encounter the next river on the map despite marching for days in what must have been the right direction. Men who wandered away from the group failed to return. De Lóya insisted that the march continue, but one of his lieutenants had led a group in the opposite direction under cover of darkness. It had taken them five weeks–and their boots had been worn down to tatters, to say nothing of the seven men that starved–but they were able to emerge on the west bank of the river, they said, just as the last surviving elder proclaimed that the sun and moon were right again.

De Lóya has never been seen since.

 

June 15, 2011

From “Impermeable Army” by Mark Amiton

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The camp was completely abandoned, littered with the detritus that one might expect an army to leave behind: empty gasoline cans, bits of shredded paper, and discarded ration wrappers.

“What happened here?” said Davis.

“Do you really want to stop and find out?” Caroline snapped.

“I’m paying you, aren’t I?” Davis said. “And I want to see.”

“All right then,” Caroline growled. “But when you tell me you wish we’d just kept walking, remember that I told you so.”

More abandoned junk and deep tire tracks in the mud waited further ahead, but no sign of the massive army it would have taken to generate so much debris. In time, Davis came upon what looked like a reviewing stand with podium. A note was pinned to the lectern with a combat knife.

“We have set off to take that which is ours,” Davis read. “We will make a name for ourselves outside the Permeable Lands. History will long remember Coxley’s Division.” He adjusted the glasses on his head. “What’s that mean? I never heard of an army coming out of the Permeable Lands, certainly not one big enough to leave all this litter.”

“I guarantee you they never came out,” said Caroline. “You remember what I said about the rough triangle of Grant, Anhui, and Phesheya? The line’s not razor sharp, but cross it and anything permeable goes away. Every now and then one of these little armies springs up. Someone puts a lot of time and effort into making something that’s useless in the Permeable Lands. Then they convince themselves it’s real, it’s not permeable, and try to leave.”

“A-are you saying all these people died when they tried to leave, and that whoever created them is out there alone now, trying to make a new army?”

“I’m saying that whoever made this army was probably permeable themselves,” retorted Caroline. “They fooled themselves otherwise and fell to pieces with the rest of their permeable men.”

 

June 12, 2011

From “Marshall” by Nicholas P. Redding

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Turning, Nick walked out the door he’d come in and down the hall toward the stairs. He wanted to see where the other voice had come from.

His room.

The stairs weren’t long, and their soft, blue carpeting cushioned Nick’s footsteps. Upstairs, the hall was L-shaped, turning left at the room that had once been the guest bedroom before it became his father’s study, continuing past his sister Jessica’s room and the master bedroom. At the end…

His room.

The door swung open, and there he was. Nick saw himself at seven, with that dopey little haircut and the shirt with a cartoon character on it. He was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by a pile of toys, playing.

Nick looked around the room. The walls were still covered with brightly colored balloon wallpaper, the stuff that hadn’t come down until eighth grade when Nick became painfully aware of how childish it looked. His little bed, not to be replaced for years, still rested in the center of the room, covered by young Nick’s favorite Star Wars bedsheets.

Little Nick looked up “Who’re you?”

Nick blinked. The room was empty; its white walls were decorated only by a pattern of sunlight filtering through the windows. Dazed, Nick stumbled down the rickety wooden stairs, through the other barren rooms, and into the sunshine of the yard.

 

June 11, 2011

From “Posterity” by Elliot S. Gumnwald

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Furniture burned surprisingly well; the dining room chairs were enough for Elliot to keep the feeling in his fingers, but the snap of the blaze and the stink of burning varnish wasn’t enough to keep gloomy thoughts at bay.

“Village’s 20 miles away,” Elliot said. “Never make it in the snow. Dammit, it’s their fault for pushing me out here. How’s anyone supposed to get anything written with committees and classes and all that college everywhere?”

The fire crackled in response; Elliot took this as agreement. “It’s bad enough that the place is full of professional vultures,” he said. “Grading papers five days a week and writing criticism the other two. If someone thinks they can tell Baudrillard he isn’t Marxist enough, they won’t show any mercy to me. No, it’s just more paper to shred, more writing to pick into its component pieces like a fetal pig on a dissection table.”

Ashes glowed and cinders churned; sparks worked their way up the chimney. “They’re afraid,” Elliot said. “they can’t produce anymore; they gave it up. Who wants to write when you can’t help but see all the petty biases and assumption that color it all? As if the endless stuffy papers they churn out are any better. They’ve forgotten how to produce, and they’re scared of anyone who still can.”

He pounded his fist on the cold wooden floor. “I’ll show them. They think they can doom me to obscurity, driving me out into the snow to die. I’ll show those dusty old fossils in the department what a real writer can do.”

More chairs went onto the fire in the following hours, and then the table, broken into pieces with a hammer. The bedframe was next, then the bookshelves and cupboard doors. All the while, Elliot scribbled furiously on his pad, stopping only to tear sheets out.

Finally, Dr. Harline’s books went into the blaze. “Screw the feminist reading of Crime and Punishment,” Elliot said, hefting the volume onto the ashes. “Let’s hear the arsonist reading. The Nazi reading. The this-is-why-they-don’t-allow-smoking-in-the-building reading.” The paper burned bright and fast, but before long, the embers were dying.

Things became fuzzy after that. Elliot had a vague recollection of more items offered up to Vulcan for heat, endless spirals of cursive writing snaking across notebook pages, and hoarse shouting and recriminations. The very existence of the Osborn University English department, the publishing industry, and readers at large were questioned in front of a rapt audience of dying coals. Everyone who had kept Elliot’s brilliant prose from attracting the praise it deserved was tried in the cinder court, convicted of obstructionism, and sentenced to hang in the air as frozen breaths.

 

May 3, 2011

From “Writer’s Razor” by Anonymous

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Imagine a circus procession winding its way through town, set to jolly calliope music.

Hold on a second. What is a calliope? It’s always mentioned in connection with circuses (circusi?), but what exactly is it? It’s named after the muse of epic poetry in Greek mythology, but I can’t see a line of clowns belting out stanzas about Odysseus this and Achilles that, can you? All right, scratch the calliope.

Imagine a circus procession winding its way through town, set to jolly music.

Come to think of it, when’s the last time there was a circus procession in my town, or indeed in any town? Do they even proceed (process?) any more, or do they just drive the trucks to the fairgrounds and set up? I can remember a circus once, a long time ago, but since then, nothing. I think they might be a dying art form—how will people twenty years from now relate to this nonsense about the big top? All right, scratch the circus.

Imagine a procession winding its way through town, set to jolly music.

Now, “procession” to me means either a funeral or a wedding. In neither case is jolly music particularly appropriate, unless you’re in New Orleans (which we’re not). They call for a dirge or a march as appropriate. But since we’re unclear as to which it is, best to leave off the jollyness (jolility?). In fact, best to just get rid of the music entirely. The nature of the procession will determine it anyway. All right, scratch the jolly music.

Imagine a procession winding its way through town.

Do processions really wind in any of the towns I’m familiar with? No, the streets tend to be rather broad and straight. The whole “winding streets” thing is a European import anyway. And the word “way” is too esoteric anyhow. How does one find, or lose, a way in any real sense of the word? It’s too romantic a notion for today’s edgy youth audience. All right, scratch the way and the winding thereof.

Imagine a procession moving through town.

Back to that procession again. Would a funeral or wedding really go through town in this day and age? Unless it was a particularly small town (which this isn’t), they’d only move through a part of town, not the whole thing. And, really, the town is far more important than the procession of its various motions. The town sells itself, or should at any rate. All right, scratch the procession and the moving.

Imagine a town.

That’s cut down to the bone, right there. It’s all about the town, the locality. Though come to think of it, what exactly is a town in a cohesive sense? It’s just a collection of people, buildings, public utilities, and the like. It doesn’t really say anything other than, maybe, “Hey! I’m a collection of people, buildings, public utilities, and the like!” Nothing unique in that message, or anything interesting for that matter. All right, scratch the town.

Imagine.

Perfect!

 

April 25, 2011

From “Pearlsea In Pieces” by Carolyn Riley

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“We don’t expect you to understand, but it was necessary to perform the test under those conditions. Anything more controlled or closer to your experience would have invalidated the point.”

“So that’s it, then?” Rich snarled. “What would have happened if I wasn’t so lucky?”

“The experiment would have been a failure, and a different subject procured.”

“And Marie? What about her?” Rich demanded. His cheeks were burning and he found it hard to see the form of his accusers through welling tears.

“Ms. Cullen was a necessary incentive. You will find her in her apartment, asleep, though we must stress that she was never more than a template.”

Rich gritted his teeth, thinking of Marie at Pearlsea Fortress, at the Rift, and on that stack of hay in the Endlands. “Bait,” he sighed. “Cheese for the mouse in the maze.”

“An inelegant metaphor, but one not without some primitive merit. Are we done here, Mr. Richmond? Or must we persist in lowering ourselves to your base questions?”

“I just have one more,” Rich said. “Why me?”

The lights of his accusers modulated, with the answer in quizzical, almost mocking tones: “Why not?”

 

March 15, 2011

From “The Leaky Vessel Empties” by Anonymous

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You started feeling this way weeks ago, even though you can’t pinpoint exactly when or how. It’s like a dream, where the beginning fades away into tendrils of pale smoke the more you grasp at it. Even in the now the feeling ebbs and flows, all the keener in moments of stress or contemplation.

It’s more an absence of a feeling than a feeling, an utter emptiness right in the center of your being. Not heartbreak. You’re been there–we all have–but not heartbreak. Not love either. That’s a filling up, a welling, not an empty chasm.

Almost as if someone has reached in and removed something you never knew you had, never knew you could miss, the emptiness gnaws at you, begging to be filled. But how, and with what?

 

March 11, 2011

From “Called the Real” by Cevin Riddenbach

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“All that exists are a billion tangential experiences which are incorrectly called the real. People have struggled for years against the notion that nothing is objective and subjectivity poisons any hope of truth or reconciliation between beings, but it remains an inescapable fact.”

“That’s a rather dim outlook, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps. But it is and remains the only outlook.”

 

March 8, 2011

From “Everyday Coincidence” by Anonymous

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I parked between two black Jeeps of identical make, model and year today. Slotted right in between them. I have to wonder, when I see things like that, about the greater designs lurking behind such everyday coincidences.

Had they parked so near knowingly?

Lovers, maybe, with the cars representing a bond?

Rivals, each seeking to match the other blow for blow?

Or perhaps it was just a coincidence–two souls passing randomly over the asphalt, hewing to a familiar shape and color. But why the empty space?

Maybe they’d hoped for a third car to join them, to extend the coincidence into destiny.

Maybe a third car had already come and gone, leaving only the broken links of a chain behind it.

Or maybe, just maybe, they had hoped for a white Hyundai to sit between them, the ultimate contrast. Like ivory and ebony on a set of 88 keys.

 

February 28, 2011

From “Obstinate Similarity” by Alisa K. Feldnacht

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I began to look for something different. I didn’t have a sense of the possibilities innate in that wonderful word–different–only a vague clenched feeling deep in my chest, a tension that was boiling over at the regularity with which I’d been confronted so far.

My first implulse, like many before me, was to leave Deerton. That is often enough for someone I grew up with to declare victory, but I found the next largest town up the road to be more of the same. The same buildings, the same people, the same cars. Oh, there were superficial differences to be sure, but even the lightest nick or cut would reveal tired old archetypes in new skin, a town created from the same set of stencils as Deerton.

The regional center? Add taller buildings that looked much like the shorter ones when you wormed into them. Biggest city in the state? A beltway that’s nothing more than pieces of I-313 back home re-skinned and re-used. Even the really big places–even New York, Los Angeles–added simply another layer of ornamentation to the basic structure. What, after all, makes a meth addict on the street all that different from a heroin addict–other than the size of their wallet? What, after all, makes the corrupt boss of Deerton’s Republican machine all that different from the corrupt boss of New York’s Democratic one?

Everything I saw and experienced was obstinately similar to what had come before, and that knot in my stomach refused to fade away.

 

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