December 7, 2010

From “Gertie Was” by Kindleman Harris

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The note continued in the same vein:

Gertie was sometimes called Gertrude. This was her name on certificates and papers but never her real name. Anyone who called Gertie by that name was no friend of hers.

Gertie was said to always be nervous, but this was a lie. Gertie would pretend to be nervous or even pretend to faint because it made people see Gertie and treat her with kindness.

Gertie was barren, they said, and could never have children. But Gertie knew this wasn’t true. Her husband insisted it was so, and tried to prove himself right with many others.

Gertie was weak, they said, but they’d never had to be Gertie.
Gertie was many things at many times to many people and in many eyes.

Gertie was none of those things afterwards.

Gertie was no longer Gertie.

 

November 11, 2010

From “Soulstorm” by Joe Kull

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“I don’t really have any word for it,” Tobias said. “Nobody does. Our language, your language…language itself fails the test of conveying such horror. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Verdun, about how units of men were fed into it like sausages into a meat grinder. Some say von Falkenhayn and Pétain conspired to bleed the other white; I don’t know. Maybe they conspired to unleash the horrors that we saw.”

“What sort of horrors?”

“You’ve seen some of it already.” Tobias replied. “In the frenzied combat around the Douaumont, the soldiers became violent, deranged. We began to lash out at each other, as did the French, until we were killing as many of our men over petty disputes as they were. Then the dead became restless and began to rise, fighting and re-fighting battles already won and lost. Units would complete an assault only to realize that half their number were corpses and specters, and tear themselves apart.”

“And then?”

“Every death was like coal on a blaze, intensifying the effect. It was like a maelstrom of death unleashed. Some of the men called it Seelesturm, or Soulstorm, and that’s as good a name as any I suppose. Once the news broke–the higher-ups believed it was hallucination and mutiny–that entire sector of the front was bombarded by artillery from both sides until everything had been churned into fetid muck. If this…if what we’re seeing here is an attempt to artificially create those same conditions…well, I can’t say I like our chances.”

 

October 31, 2010

From “Terror on the Atlantis Abyss” by Jason G. Shymann

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The room must once have been the rig’s cafeteria. And it might well be said to have become a cafeteria of a different sort: the small room was coated in dripping gore, viscera, and offal and thick with the buzzing of flies. Gina could barely hold back the bile rising in her throat at the sight, the stench. None of the horrific mess was remotely identifiable as human; even the few slivers of bone peeking through were splintered and shredded.

Gina was frozen, overwhelmed. What could have possessed someone to mutilate their friends and co-workers so? Not even the most dedicated genocide she’d covered had been able to so thoroughly wipe away the victims’ humanity.

Something moved in the distance…the same shadow that had been flitting about since the party arrived? Gina’s hand trembled, rattling the flaregun Johns had given her as a makeshift weapon. She pulled back the hammer, assuming what she imagined was a threatening stance. “W-who’s there? Come out where I can see you, o-or you’ll get a bullet between the eyes!”

More movement, barely perceptible in the flickering fluorescent miasma of the rig’s innards. And then, a hiss–something that might have been language or just Gina’s fear-addled mind reading meaning where only menace existed.

“We…ain’t got…eyes…“

 

October 22, 2010

From “The Secret of Nan Madol” by Ness Arbor

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Legend has it that the Saudeleur grew to resent the power of his nahnken, who wielded power absolute over their own weis but were bound to give tribute to their lord and master. And so it was that the idea of Nan Madol came to the Saudeleur in a dream: a great city of stone islands, where the nahnken and their saudeleur would reside. He could keep an eye on them by controlling the boats that plied the stone islands and even keep an escape tunnel ready under the coral to the edge of the reef should his overthrow be imminent.

Thus bound and determined, the Saudeleur had a problem. Though the isle of Ponape had stone and coral aplenty for quarrying, it lacked the manpower to move the stones once they had been hewn. It was to this end that the Saudeleur sought out the magician Isokelekel, who lived in seclusion on the north of the island. Isokelekel, said to be the son of a woman from the isle of Kusaie and the thunder god Daukatau, had sworn to hold himself and his powers separate from other men. But the Saudeleur prevailed upon him, and Isokelekel agreed to move the stones as the Saudeleur saw fit, breaking his vow.

Knowing that to do so would anger his father Daukatau, Isokelekel extracted from the Saudeleur three promises which would secure the magician’s future. First, Isokelekel asked for the Saudeleur’s totem of Nahnisohn Sahpw, the god of agriculture; his request was granted. Second, Isokelekel asked for the Saudeleur’s throne…in 1000 years. The Saudeleur readily agreed to this condition, thinking such a promise impossible to enforce. Third, Isokelekel asked for the isle of Ponape itself…in 2000 years. Again, the Saudeleur agreed to what he saw as a mere flight of fancy.

True to his word, Isokelekel used his powers to move rock and coral to build the magnificent canal city of Nan Madol. He then vanished with the Saudeleur’s totem, never to be seen again. One thousand years later, a man claiming the name Isokelekel led a band of 333 rebels to topple a corrupt and decadent descendant of the Saudeleur, founding a dynasty that lasted until the pale men in boats arrived 900 years later.

Of the last promise the Saudeleur made Isokelekel, nothing was heard…until now.

 

September 25, 2010

From “The Demise of the Santa Mayo Run” by Rebecca Isadore

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The best way to sooth restive passengers, Kayleigh had found, was with a little humor. A quick internet search was enough to turn up dozens of corny lines which she jotted down on notecards and trotted out whenever the occasion demanded.

The run to Santa Mayo was always rough due to the crosswinds that constantly buffeted the island’s airport and Trans-Pac’s refusal to bring in smaller planes. Santa Mayo was increasingly popular with tourists, so a smaller jet or turboprop wouldn’t have been economically feasible, or so they said. But it wasn’t Trans-Pac suits enduring the bone-crushing landing and braking on every hop, either.

That day the flight had been particularly vicious, with heavy turbulence caused by an incoming weather front buffeting the plane as it made the trip. Kayleigh had gone through almost her entire stash of notecard air travel jokes to calm alarmed mutters from the passengers, winding up with her very last card as the jet came in for a landing which rattled her to the teeth.

“Welcome to the Santa Mayo Regional Airport.” she said, fumbling with a card. “S-sorry about the bouncy landing; it’s not the captain’s fault. It’s not the co-pilot’s fault. It’s the asphalt.”

A few snickers, but the tension in the air was still high. Kayleigh pulled out another rough-landing card. “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”

 

September 19, 2010

From “The Swamp Terror” by Harris Pleneth

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The Company had set Davis up in a hovel, a house on the very edge of Kariton that had been for rent by the day, fully furnished. The town didn’t have a hotel, or even a motel–too small–but the suits weren’t willing to pay for a car and gas to get to Heysley, a half-hour away and the closest polity resembling a city.

From what Davis had been able to tell, Kariton functioned much as it had before becoming a Company test market. People came and went all day using the mass-transit teleporters just like a city bus, resorting to their personal cars only for larger loads. A few luddites refused to use them at all, and kids under 18 were forced to walk thanks to the Company’s legal department–big surprise. As an outsider, Davis found himself treated coolly. People were polite to his face but never seemed to go out of their way to be so when he wasn’t looking. Still, there were plenty who’d cross the street to avoid an encounter, and even a few who furtively followed him about.

But nothing really disconcerting happened until Tuesday morning, when a harsh knock at the door brought Davis running. No one was there, but something had been laid on the welcome mat, wrapped in paper. It was a comic book he remembered from his youth, The Adventures of the Swamp Terror about a horrifying plant-man and a ragtag group of hunters who battled him.

A message was scrawled across the cover: “You are dead, and the Swamp Terror lives.”

 

September 17, 2010

From “The Harrowing of Bernwald” by James P. Graham

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Maybe it was the way people walked, or the way their carts worked over the deeply rutted main street. Maybe it was the furtive glances from the children, or the long contemplative stared from the elderly. The general brownness of the place, perhaps, everything caked by dust and debris that would normally be brushed away in the course of daily life.

It could have been any one of those things, or even all of them; Reynald couldn’t be sure. But he felt one thing as clearly as if it were spelled out in stone on the local church.

Bernwald was a melancholy place.

Borne down by some weight, the heavy sadness was evident in every man, woman, and child Reynald could see.

 

September 14, 2010

From “The Dark Light of Day” by Emilio Sanchez-Smith

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“He’s through here, Comrade General.”

The adjutant led Santos through the Ministry of State Security annex toward the interrogation rooms. The demanding affairs of state precluded the general’s direct participation in most security affairs, of course, but he enjoyed keeping his hand in the game. After all, he’d made his bones working state security for the late President Barranca before transferring to a combat command, and during his tenure he’d maintained some of the best numbers of the MSS interrogators.

The gentleman–Santos refused to be told the prisoner’s name until it was voluntarily given up–was in Annex C, designated for the most severe offenders. Unlike his predecessor, who had favored mossy ex-monastic cells in the Punto de los Delfines, Santos insisted on a clean, almost clinical atmosphere; the air of civilization such a place projected helped undermine foreigners’ perception of the general’s beloved country as a place of savages.

“Let me tell you something,” Santos said, walking a slow circle around the prisoner, who was bound to a chair and visibly bruised. “Every man is the hero of his own story. Every man, when he is met with adversity, expects a fairytale ending as in the movies.”

The man made no reply, staring at the floor.

“But this is real life, my friend, and there is no last-minute reprieve. There is no cavalry. One way or another, your story ends here, with me. It is up to you to write this ending.”

Santos gestured to his adjutant, who handed the general his pistol–a Beretta he’d received upon commissioning, now loaded with blanks. “Will the ending relate that you were killed, unloved and unmourned, in Annex C of the Ministry for State Security? Or, perhaps, will it record that you aided a noble cause in your final moments?”

The general held the pistol a foot from the prisoner’s head–not close enough to kill, but enough to cause severe pain and burning from the force of the blank. “The time is now.”

 

September 8, 2010

From “The Crystalline Corridor” by S. Garrett Davis

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“Okay, I’ll tell you. But it’s probably going to sound crazy.”

Dr. Teller smiled. “I hear things that ‘sound crazy’ for a living,” he said. “Most of the time they’re nothing of the sort; I make it a point never to judge.”

“I’m…I’m walking down a long hallway. An infinite hallway. It’s made of beautiful, cold crystal, faceted like a diamond and colored by the blue sky above. I’ve been walking for hours–days–before I notice something.”

“And what’s that?” said Dr. Teller.

“The walls are made out of little cells, smooth and transparent and unfaceted. And suspended in each one…is me.”

Scratching on the notepad. “You?”

“Not me as I am now–I recognize that even in the dream–but me as I was. This hallway has every moment of my entire life preserved like a bug in amber. As I walk I see what I wear and my age and my position all change, one crystal cell at a time. Eventually, I get to cells filled with me as I am in the dream: confused, disheveled, and in my pajamas.”

“How does that make you feel?” Dr. Teller asked.

“I’m…well, I’m terrified. What happens if I keep walking? What will I see? And does the crystal corridor have an end? The idea scares me more than a hundred psychos in the back seat of my car. It…it chills me to my core, as if the hallway has become ice. But I keep walking. I can’t stop.”

 

August 31, 2010

From “The Dragons of Madness” by Thomas N. Kravinsky

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Preston’s writing grew more elaborate as the pages wore on, even as his handwriting declined in quality.

I have finally begun to approach this with the correct conceptual framework. Dragons are merely the visible part of a greater–one might say inconceivable–organism. Like an anglerfish’s lure, they represent the barest part of a whole, but the only one we can comprehend. As for the larger organism…words like ‘magic’ and ‘pandimensional’ scarcely do the concept justice. My head aches as I think about it.

A variety of diagrams followed with intersecting parabolas and terms I couldn’t pretend to understand–then again, it’s possible that Preston, in his madness, had made them up. He reverted to prose some pages later:

As projections they have no inherent form. They’re no more giant lizards than I am. But you can see how such a monstrous visage would have proven useful, give the revulsion that people greet reptiles with even today. Primitive man could easily be frightened by such, or coerced into obedience, but the rise of nations and creeds that could seek to shun or slay such ‘monsters’ explains why such forms are rarely encountered.

It also explains why they’ve never been found. If a diver could see only an anglerfish’s lure through a cloudy sea, they’d perceive only a worm and go mad trying to locate it on the ocean floor. But if the lure could be anything it wanted to be, unbound by the laws of physics…the implications stagger me.

 

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