June 2014 – The Colored Lens

Fiction TCL #11 - Spring 2014

The Broken Chair

By Steve Toase on Monday, June 23, 2014

With lengths of dried rosemary Helena tied the pieces of broken chair together into a frame. Splintered legs pointed out to sea. Crouching upon the water the storm dragged its fingers through the currents.

In the harbour fishing fleet boats were tied slack against the tide. Back and forth they echoed the breath of the salt. From her basket Helena took out nine jam jars. Their glass was scoured to opaque with handfuls of powdered bone. Each smelled of funeral bouquets, not that Helena noticed. All her senses had faded to worn paper lanterns long ago.

Pausing, she reached in her pocket for her dad’s photo. The young, proud, man bore as much resemblance to the old man, breathing his last in the now broken chair, as an acorn did to an oak. His sepia hands were clasped in front of him, unmarked. When they placed him in the ground his one remaining hand was scarred by fish bones and the crush of wet rope.

The storm came closer. A smoke-coloured wall spat at the reluctant sea. Into each jar Helena placed a single piece of fabric cut from her birthsheet. Taking a pin from her hat she pricked her left thumb and let a single drop fall into each jar. She watched the slow blood soak into frayed yellow cotton and nodded at the sky.

Through the wind Helena battled back to Bill’s cottage. Inside she placed the photo on a hearth cold for too many years. None of the fleet owned up to what happened to the insurance money. Closed as scales, and the law had no knife sharp enough to pry them apart. Instead an old man died mutilated, cold and broke, with no spirit left to pass over. Helena pulled another blanket around her shoulders and watched through thick glass. Driving rain reached the cliffs and shuddered them loose.

Helena woke early the next morning. Cup of tea in hand she walked to the broken wood frame. At the bottom of each jar sat a single knotted piece of fabric. In the distance the fleet set out from the embrace of the harbour. Engines tore across the dawn. She watched the boats make their way out to the fishing grounds. She waited while they set their nets. Recovering the first knot she whispered ‘Dad’ under her breath and undid the twist of fabric. As she reached into the next jar for the next knot the clouds above the fleet began to fatten and fill with the undead storm.

Fiction General Futuristic TCL #11 - Spring 2014

The Opening

By Peter J. Enyeart on Monday, June 16, 2014

Vala glided over to the ganglion she was to be operating that day. It was always oppressively cold in the extremities of their Gracious Host, but she knew she would soon be warm, or at least oblivious, in her neural nest.

She was unpleasantly surprised to find that the Consecrated Pilot she was replacing was the survivor they had picked up, Drexel. The one who had an Opening when the Worm he had been piloting fell in battle.

She knew it was pointless to begrudge him his success, so she took a deep breath and then tapped his helmet to let him know she had arrived. His eyes opened slowly. His pupils were great black disks and seemed not to see her. What had those eyes seen? He nodded to indicate that he was sending a request for temporary CNS control of the ganglion during the shift change. He continued to stare at nothing for several moments, until his pupils contracted back into awareness, and his body shivered into life.

She carefully withdrew the terminal spike from his helmet and placed it in the sheath, formally severing his Communion with the nervous system of the Gracious Host. Then she grasped his forearms, planted her feet in the mound of neural flesh, and pulled him out of the morass. The zero-g inertia carried him to the opposite wall. He flipped around to plant his feet on it, and pushed off with just enough force to come lightly to a stop, floating just in front of her.

“Anything interesting during your shift?” Vala asked.

“Nope,” she heard his reply broadcast into her earpiece. “Smooth sailing.” Drexel clasped Vala’s forearm, and Vala reciprocated, inwardly cringing. He helped her up into the fleshy mound, and she soon found herself up to her chest in tissue.

Drexel removed the terminal spike from its sheath. Just as he was about to plunge it through the hole in Vala’s helmet and into her skull, she said, “Wait. What was it like?”

“What was what like?” he asked.

“The Opening!” she responded.

He smiled. “Like the brushing of cloth against your skin, or the scent of the meditation hall.”

“No, really, what was it like?”

He laughed, and his almond eyes seemed to glow. “Come talk to me in the mess after the ceremony. But for now, CNS is waiting on you.” Then he thrust the terminal spike into her brain.

She gasped, as she always did, as her normal sensory space was submerged in that of their Gracious Host, Mzee. Mzee was a massive space-faring creature dubbed a “Turtle” after the terrestrial organism it resembled. If a diamond-hard, jet-black photosynthetic sphere with a mouth stalk and eight limbs for grasping food and firing pellets to attack and maneuver could be said to resemble a turtle.

Once fully connected, the bland taste of empty space-time filled Vala’s mouth, but she could also detect the dim bitterness of the sun, vague pinpricks of flavor from the stars, and the mild sweetness of a distant asteroid. This was her brain’s synaesthetic interpretation of Mzee’s acute sense for space-time curvature. As for the Turtle’s electromagnetic sense, she soon heard her own voice chiming as Mzee emitted a radiolocation wave, and her body then warmed when the wave returned to tell her how far away they were from their quarry.

Sage Bindeen was personally directing the CNS today, and her voice sounded in Vala’s mind. We’re still pursuing the enemy Worm that killed ours. We’ve identified it as Tovian, but we don’t expect to catch up to it for quite a few shifts. It seems to be headed for the closest asteroid, which was recently ceded to us by the Nation of Tove. We’ve requested reinforcements, but we remain the only unit in the area and have been ordered to intercept. Hold the course.

Since today there were no changes in momentum to be made by firing pellets, Vala’s task, as on most days, was to focus on keeping her assigned extremity absolutely still and prevent any rebellion- “disharmony” was the preferred term- on the part of the Gracious Host, and in so doing hone her own mind through the exertions of Communion. Mzee didn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight today, but any lapse in vigilance might give the Turtle a chance to act up and embarrass her. She was determined not to let that happen again.

The shift was mostly uneventful, until at one point she had the eerie sensation that she was not in control of her body. It passed quickly, however, and by the end of the shift it was the continued failure of her ego to dissolve that still bothered her most.

Fiction TCL #10 - Winter 2014 Urban Fantasy

She Leaves Things Behind

By Sarena Ulibarri on Monday, June 2, 2014

The smell didn’t come from Kim’s dirty carpets, or from the stacks of moldy magazines, or even from the ashtrays full of Salem butts scattered around the house. Those were smells of neglect. This was a fouler, more active smell, and I realized when Kim’s aunt Eleanor pushed past me with an armful of clean clothes that it came from her. I could almost feel the particles of rotten air getting lodged in my nasal passages, scraping the back of my throat. I could taste it.

On the kitchen floor, Kim used a butter knife to scrape caked food from between the tiles. I poured some extra Pine-Sol on her coffee table to try to mask the smell. It was something like burned hair, something like crushed insects.

Kim looked up at me as she dumped the crumbs into the trash. Her hair was slipping out of her ponytail. Without her makeup, the lines around her eyes betrayed that she wasn’t much younger than me.

“Thanks for helping me clean, Leah,” she said. “I already feel better.”

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” I told her.

Even with the three of us, it would take at least the whole day to even put a dent in Kim’s perpetual mess.

“I know,” she said, “But I’m ready for a change. I’m not going to slide back this time.”

I finished wiping the coffee table and picked up a stack of mail from the floor. One of the postmark dates was three years old.

Eleanor emerged from the bedroom, the smell with her.

“Where you keep your socks?” she asked.

Kim looked confused, as though the question had never occurred to her before.

“Just find an empty drawer,” Kim said.

Wherever Eleanor was, I tried to be in the opposite part of the house. By the end of the day I found myself shut in the bathroom, scraping dried toothpaste from the sink.

Seeing Kim out in the small town bars you wouldn’t guess her house looked like this. She always had a new sequin shirt or dress with flowing sleeves from the downtown tourist shops, and she usually smelled of cigarettes and dollar store perfume. I met Kim at Karaoke six months ago. She sang sad country songs with a voice that put everyone else in the karaoke queue to shame. She was the only real friend I’d made since I moved to the mountains. My mom had just died. The move was a desperate attempt to not have to take care of anyone for awhile.

Kim knocked on the bathroom door.

“Aunt Eleanor’s leaving.”

I frowned at the streaked mirror. Did she expect me to come out and give the old woman a hug goodbye? I gulped a breath of relatively fresh air, then opened the bathroom door and took one step out. I glimpsed her at the front door.

“Nice to meet you, Eleanor,” I said.

She lifted a hand but didn’t turn to me. I stepped back into the bathroom and discovered something sticky on my shoe. My sole was covered in purple goo. I sat on the edge of the bathtub. It wasn’t gum. Jelly, maybe? I sniffed it and recoiled when I found it had the same smell as Eleanor. I ran the shoe under the tub faucet, scrubbed it with shampoo. I wedged it in the towel rack to dry.

In the corner by the bathroom door, I noticed a small purple ball, the same color as what had smeared on my shoe. I picked it up with a square of toilet paper. It reminded me of a fish egg, but the size of a marble. I took it out to Kim.

“Do you know what this is?”

She pulled her head out from under the bed, dust bunnies stuck to her hair.

“Some kind of mold?” she said.

That, it certainly was not. Whatever it was, I took it back to the bathroom and flushed it.

Month: June 2014

The Broken Chair

The Opening

She Leaves Things Behind