Search Results for “always on my mind” – Page 4

Fiction Science Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

Almost Human

By Amelia Dee Mueller on Tuesday, April 25, 2023

I was built as a birthday present for my best friend. But we didn’t start out that way. She was just the girl my programmer was dating, and he was trying to keep an eye on her. He built me and put her into me—her likes and dislikes, her favorite colors and foods, the TV shows she binged and the movies she hated. I would be her friend and he would make sure she didn’t stray out of his reach.

The first day with her was like any first day with a stranger—awkward. We were the last at her party, sitting at an abandoned table in an empty restaurant near downtown San Jose. Dan, my programmer, had left in the first hour, and I’d stood numbly in the corner watching her.

She stared at me across her half-eaten birthday cake, the tip of her finger tracing the edge of a glass.

“So, you’re a robot,” she said.

“I’m a 3D-printed assemblage with a digital processor.” I paused, remembering her conversations I’d witnessed that day. I’d studied her reactions, when she frowned, when she laughed. I had a good idea of her sense of humor, so I tested the waters.

“Duh.”

She snorted into her drink.

“Do you have a name?” she said.

I shrugged. “Not yet.”

She set her glass down. “How about Beth? Simple. Easy to remember.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’m Liv.”

“Duh,” we both said.

Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

Quantum Meat

By Ron Kaiser on Sunday, April 2, 2023

Hank had no idea that the steak he was grilling had become quantumly entangled. Hank didn’t even know that quantum entanglement was a thing. He had bigger problems, such as his depression, which had become so deep that he had given up on his own happiness altogether. He was living vicariously through his one-eyed tomcat Boots, whom he was unknowingly about to poison.

Hank stood squinting on the sunny patio, chilly and naked except for sandals, grilling a filet mignon to perfection-—for Boots. His beloved cat perched with its black and gray tail lifted on the patio railing, sniffing at his dinner. Hank stroked Boots’ black and gray fur and then turned the steak over with a spatula. He sprinkled more catnip over it. He worked it into the meat with his palm.

Thanks to Animal Planet, Hank knew that cat hierarchy revolved around the amount of meat each cat has eaten. They can tell by smelling their respective urine. Boots could use the help. After all, a fisher attack had left him blind in one eye, and he had a bad habit of licking patches of fur right off of himself. Boots was not pretty to look at. But he would have the best smelling urine in town, if Hank had anything to do with it.

In the cat world, it’s not how you look. It’s how much your urine smells like meat.

Boots ate half of his chopped-up filet mignon, and then trotted up the street to find neighborhood felines, no doubt. In the three months that Hank had been feeding Boots top quality meats he’d not once seen another cat. He’d expected to hear female cats in heat caterwauling at all hours, clinging to the window screens and scaling the siding to get in. Instead, Boots was gone for hours at a time. For all Hank knew Boots was squandering the best years of his life. Following Boots would be no good—-Hank just didn’t have the endurance to be trailing a cat all over.

Hank had packed on 30 pounds in the year since his wife and baby had died in labor. A former high school English teacher, Hank’s four days of bereavement leave had blurred into a year. He had blown through all 90 sick days he’d accumulated and not even the almighty teachers’ union could save his job after that.

Sometimes he awoke late at night, the words “clot buster” on his lips.

The surgeon had remarked to Hank afterward, “You know, if we’d been able to reach you, and administered the clot buster in time, we might have actually saved her.” But they hadn’t administered it, because deploying a clot buster is risky, and Hank was not there to authorize it. Kathleen, six months pregnant, had suffered a massive stroke while shopping. Hank’s goddamned phone hadn’t had service. He’d missed the call from the nurse. By the time he reached the hospital she was a vegetable, the left hemisphere of her lovely brain wiped out by an ischemic stroke-—a blood clot that had dislodged from her precious, malformed heart and blocked her brain’s blood supply. That night, when the emergency C-section was performed, she hemorrhaged and died, and so did the baby.

She had been Hank’s favorite paradox, and he loved paradoxes. That was one of the reasons he became a teacher. Take Macbeth. “Fair is foul, foul is fair.” What? How could it be both? Well, let’s talk about it. He taught Macbeth every year, and relished it. He had relished the paradox that was his lovely Irish wife. Fair-skinned and delicate looking, she would sometimes stop the car just to get a look at a puppy, but she’d once knocked a drunk man clean out after he had slapped his girlfriend in a bar. She was fair, yet foul-mouthed. Her temperament and strength were his personal proof that Vikings had indeed invaded and settled in Ireland.

It took a strong woman to love a man like him despite his morbid fantasies and dark desires. He’d ended more than one marriage before he tied the knot himself, screwing married women. But Kat, she put up with none of it-—she had saved him from himself.

Now his only remaining paradox was Kat’s cat, Boots. That cat had to be an absolute stud based on his meat ingestion-—yet there was no evidence of virility. Why? Hank thought and thought, and finally came to a solution. His tiny digital camera. It was a portable, tiny little thing he’d bought to strap around the neck of his newborn’s stuffed animal, so even if he was at work, he’d be able to turn on his iPad and see his little one.

Now all I can do is use the iPad to spy on my cat’s sex life. Talk about pathetic.

The following morning Boots came back. This time, Hank clipped the compact camera to Boots’ collar. After eating half of a rare, catnip-infused, imported Kobe sirloin, Boots trotted off as always, up the street. Hank hurried inside, fetched an ice-cold bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and placed it on the only space available on the coffee table. The rest was cluttered with cellophane donut wrappers and empty Yoo-hoo bottles. He turned on his iPad and opened the Wireless Camera app. On the screen was a cat’s-eye, or rather cat’s-neck, live stream of his road. A close-up of a green bush filled the screen—-he must be sniffing. He wound around the bush, and a black and brown robin stood pecking on the grass.

“Don’t get distracted, Boots,” muttered Hank.

The camera rushed toward the bird, but the robin sprang into the air and chirped angrily as it flew toward the pines. After a few more minutes of sniffing, Boots continued across the lawn and up the street. There was the Nickersons’ basketball hoop. Boots was almost to the top of the hill. But the camera turned left, down the driveway of the perpetually abandoned house at the top of the hill. Hank actually liked the house-—it was bigger, with a spacious backyard. He had tried to convince Kat to buy that one rather than his current house. She had been right of course. It was about ready to collapse judging by the sagging roof.

Boots seemed to have a definite destination. He reached the back corner of the house, turned right—-and the screen went black. Then the picture came back, and suddenly there was another cat standing before an open cellar window. Finally! Hank leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. The cat was black with gray legs, like Boots. And its right eye socket was pink, where its eye should have been. It looked exactly like boots, down to the pink and blue-studded collar. Was it a mirror? No—-ice froze Hank’s gut. Boots was looking at a replica of himself. The other cat’s gray front legs filled the screen, and then the other cat turned and jumped through the open basement window.

The screen shook as Boots also jumped down into a dimly lit room with a dirt floor. There were clothes on the floor, as well as a person.

A young woman: silver duct tape over her mouth, lying on her side on a thin mattress, arms bound behind her.

Hank leapt up and sent the iPad clattering to the floor. Oh God. He knew her from her face. For the first time in a year Hank felt urgency. His mind catapulted into a frenzy of rapid thought, like a starved dog that was suddenly tossed meat. As he squeezed into a pair of too-tight jean shorts, his mind cast out a line and hooked on a reason. A reason his wife and son had been taken from him. Maybe, just maybe, there was a purpose.

Maybe he was meant to save this girl.

Hank dialed 911, reported the girl’s location, and hung up on the still-talking operator. There might be a captor with the girl and Hank needed a weapon. He opened his closet and grabbed a hammer from the tool bag. He did not bother with shoes or a shirt. It was April after all. He jumped into his Corolla, backed out and rocketed up the hill. In ten seconds he turned into the driveway of the vacant house.

Hammer in hand, Hank ran down the driveway, sweating and breathless. At the back of the house was the cellar window, but it was closed. Did they know he was coming? Someone must have seen the camera on Boots’ neck. Hank knelt in the dirt and shattered the cellar window with the hammer, and then cleared the jagged glass away by running the hammer around the edges. He laid on his stomach and looked in. The sunlight streaming in showed only a dirt floor. No mattress, no girl. No cat.

The ipad’s screen had turned black a moment—-he must have missed something. The girl was deeper inside. Hank turned and crawled backward through the window, ignoring the burning pain from the broken glass cutting his chest and substantial belly. He let himself down onto the cool, damp dirt floor and then turned, hammer brandished. More filthy cellar windows emitted just enough sunlight to see by. Heart hiccupping, Hank advanced, and turned the corner to find another bare dirt floor.

The air rippled, and Boots stepped out of nothing.

Hank shook his head, and then leaned on the wall for support. Was something wrong with him? But wait-—if Boots was here, the girl had to be too. Hank moved to the bottom of the stairs, and then ascended, stepping on the sides of each stair to decrease creaking. It was no use. In the silent house each creak might as well have been a gunshot.

At the top of the stairs he turned the metal knob and shouldered the door open upon an empty kitchen. A dated yellow stove with its ancient refrigerator counterpart were the only inhabitants. A siren wailed in the distance and grew louder as Hank moved through the first floor of the empty house. Shit. They had to have brought her upstairs. Hank hesitated at the first stair—-the police would be here any moment. But they wouldn’t rob him of his chance to show his quality, to garner some jewel from the rubble of his life.

Perhaps they had her upstairs. Maybe they even had guns. But Hank’s advantage was at once great and terrible. He didn’t care if he died. Death was the only place where he had (an admittedly slim) chance of seeing his wife and unborn child. This, then, would be his legacy.

Hank charged barefoot up the wood-plank stairs, crossed the hall and slammed the first door open. He ran screaming into the room, and then the second, and by the third, his scream had dwindled to a wheeze, abruptly dying out. Nothing. Nothing, but pounding on the door downstairs, and a man’s voice shouting to open up.

Hank plodded down the stairs, half-naked and bloody, hammer in hand, and opened the door. A police officer stood there, hand on his holstered gun.

“Get on the floor!” he commanded.

“I thought—-” began Hank, gesticulating with the hammer, but he suddenly changed his mind about explaining what he thought.

A few minutes later Hank lay prostrate, arms cuffed behind him. He told what he knew, between gasps, to a different officer who was not listening. The other officer’s footsteps echoed as the man ran downstairs, then upstairs, all while Hank lay staring at his mighty weapon, the rusted hammer, which had taken on a devious look now. A hammer is the weapon of a desperate man, he admitted to himself. But how had she not been here? He had been sure. Where was Boots? When did these shorts get so tight?

“Would you let me know if you see my cat?” He yelled to the officer.

Later, as a friendly young EMT blotted the minor cuts on Hank’s stomach, Hank took stock of the situation. There clearly had been no one in this house. No one but him. He had no evidence of seeing the girl, had not recorded the live stream from Boots. The police found him bloody, wielding a hammer, practically naked and alone. Things did not appear promising.

In the subsequent police station interview, it became immediately clear that officers already knew him. In this small town the tragedy of his wife and child had become well-known, and as this was his third run-in with the police this year, a consensus hung like an albatross about him: grief had driven him over the edge.

The first two run-ins were the natural result, he conceded, of a man who had ceased caring. In January, a police officer found him nude in the street, staring up into a sky of falling snow. He had only wanted to watch the flakes swirling down. His nudity was just a coincidence. He was always naked, well, almost, he told the grimacing detective who was interviewing him. And then of course he’d been spotted retrieving his mail from the end of his driveway while naked. The children in the house across the street had seen him doing so many times, and so he was warned that indecent exposure charges could be brought.

The problem was that it sometimes took Hank hours just to work up the ambition to get a Yoo-hoo from the fridge. He did not possess the fortitude required to dress anymore. He had to manage his dwindling ambition carefully. He could not be bothered with meaningless facades such as clothing.

Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

The Reproductive Systems of Off-World Colonies

By Tim Yu on Sunday, March 19, 2023

Jin was typing away in his dimly-lit room, deep into the smog-filled Shanghai night, when the little bot bumped into his leg, interrupting the writing of his dissertation. It let out a disappointed whistle, then rotated ninety degrees and continued on its way.

Jin watched as the tiny thing skittered into the darkened corners of his apartment, barely enough mobility to make the most rudimentary directional adjustments on impact against solid objects. He glanced at the timer glued to its chrome black surface as it went past. Counting down the hours and days in bright red lettering until the next upgrade. He thought a lot about what he’d say to it upon completion, but had not been able to come up with anything good.

Less than twelve hours left.

They kidnapped him a few hundred kilometers south of Kraken Mare. He had been in contact with prospective interviewees during the data-gathering phase of his dissertation and had meant to meet one in the mining settlement by the methane sea. However, an EMP fizzled his automated vehicle near the destination and he was soon staring out the window at a group of Formicidae closing in. Their abdomens swished with the liquid methane they were harvesting.

One of them crawled up and leaned in so close that Jin could see the darkened lens of their camera eyes rotating, scanning the inside of his vehicle.

“Put your suit on and get out.”

Their voice, despite semi-muteness through the glass, carried a quality like an old celebrity his grandfather had doted on. Jin would have chuckled under a different context.

A Formicidae requested that he get on their back. Politely, of course, there was no need for intimidation in a situation like this. They carried him all the way to the other side of Kraken Mare to a place he hadn’t seen on any maps of the area. A small community of ramshackle homes made with pieces of scrap metal. They took him inside one and gave him a tube which pumped him full of Terran atmosphere. It was bitingly cold despite his insulated suit.

The little bot was in the corner of the mostly empty room, next to a pile of scrap electronic parts. It was too early to even call it a bot. It was a round, metal shell that whistled, really. The hollow space where the cameras would go spooked Jin the most. It wasn’t the emptiness, but the promise of something there that wasn’t. A timer ticked down on the wall directly above the bot – around one hundred and sixty-six hours left.

Another Formicidae pointed him to a computer.

“Fifty million,” they said in the voice of a sonorous woman he didn’t recognize. It must have been a much older celebrity, perhaps famous before he was even born. “Do you or your family have that?”

Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

The Devil’s Shame

By Charles Lane on Sunday, March 5, 2023

– 1 Poppyshine

If I had any common sense I would have worn something flame retardant.

“Don’t worry,” Dunn pushed the Halloween mask higher on his face. “Ethanol doesn’t burn. It explodes.”

I IDed everything in Ensign Dunn’s stateroom-turned-laboratory that could kill us. Steel bulkheads trapped the vapors. Glass beakers like shrapnel. Drug scales, hotplates, and some sort of electrochemical synthesis device that Dunn still hadn’t explained to me, but it had two metal prods connected by wires to a battery—all of which looked like one giant ignition source.

“Remind me again how you got the car battery aboard?”

“The same way I got the poppy aboard.” Dunn stared through my head. “By not asking too many questions.”

He was a sweetie, though, and probably had a crush on me—likely the only reason he let me record this. Underneath the Halloween mask he wore to hide his face from my camera, he was a pale, corn-fed kid from Oklahoma who knew way too much about chemistry and moonshine to make himself anything but the most popular geek aboard the USS Gerald Ford.

For a workbench he had pried wood planks from a shipping pallet and spanned them from his rack to the junior officer’s rack across from his. On the hot plate sat a pressure cooker filled with his homemade poppy tea. Copper tubing ran out the top of the cooker and coiled down into a bucket of ice. The tubing poked out the bottom of the bucket and dripped out what everyone from deck apes to O-gangers on the Ford called poppyshine, a mildly hallucinogenic concoction that melted away the at-sea blues.

“Watch where you point that thing.”

Dunn would only allow me to post the video to my underground ship-zine if I agreed to disguise his face and voice.

With the launch catapults on the other side of the ship and four decks up, his stateroom almost had a cabin-in-the-woods coziness to it. The drone of the engine compartment below focused the known universe to just the space around the soft, breathy gurgle from the pressure cooker.

A sharp rap.

Dunn froze.

We both looked at the hatch. We had been expecting this, just not so soon.

“If I go down, you go down,” he whispered. “Roger that?”

That was our deal. He pointed me toward the top rack. I set my camera on the middle rack, partially hidden under the pillow, climbed three bunks up, and drew the curtain shut.

“Who is it?”

The voice on the other side of the steel hatch came back metallic. “Poppy’s poppy.”

Code, I guessed.

Lark entered. Six-foot-plus, huge shoulders, master-at-arms, keys-to-the-brig Lark. He was also a damn Tether.

The Navy tried pressuring me into being a Tether just because of what dad did and the fact I got booted from school. Hell no, though. Only the village-idiot offspring of siblings volunteered to be a Tether.

“It’s just your people on watch tonight?” Dunn tried to hide his nervousness.

Lark didn’t say anything. I swore the cerebral augmentations made them dumber. The glowing cable running from his temple pulsed in slow waves, communicating with someone that wasn’t Dunn.

“Okay. Just the poppyshine then.”

How could Dunn sell to a Tether? Didn’t he understand the shitgale it’d cause if Lark caught me? Linked to the ship’s computer, he could scan the ship’s manifest and figure out I wasn’t in my rack. He could have telepathed with a Tether who saw me enter Dunn’s cabin. No one knew their exact capabilities. Could Lark see my body heat through the curtain? This was insanity.

“16 ounces?” Dunn asked.

I heard the slosh of poppyshine changing hands, the exchange of money.

Lark’s shaved, bluish head was inches below me. The fish stink from his blood disorder rose through the crack in the curtain. The fact that Tethers traded incentive pay for plastic poisoning was more proof of their numbskullry.

“Stay safe,” Dunn said.

Lark grunted. The hatch opened. Closed.

Dunn let go of his breath. “All clear.”

I peeked from the curtain. “A Tether?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“An asswit Tether. I shouldn’t have to.”

I grabbed my camera from the bed and poked my head into the passageway. The Ford’s oily air stung my eyes. Lark went toward the stern. A rat scurried out of his way.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Dunn said. “He found me out.”

I glanced back to see the off-center pull of his lips. I hated to see him so wounded. I had one foot over the hatch when Dunn pulled me back.

“Be careful.”

“You’re sweet.” I patted his cheek and slipped into the passageway after Lark.

The rumor—and the reason I sweet-talked Dunn into letting me record everything—was that some of the Gerald Ford’s highest-ranking officers bootlegged Dunn’s poppyshine in order to get young sailors drunk and pliable. My plan was to follow the poppyshine to see how high up the chain of command this operation went.

Lark prowled aft like a marionette of logs. Normally, Tethers had this eerie way of walking, chin down with their eye pointed at the deck three feet in front of them. They didn’t need to see in order to move. With other Tethers nearby, they could navigate by their collective sight. But alone, Lark was more cautious, stopping and peering around each hatch he went through.

So long as there weren’t other Tethers around, I could follow him from a close distance without fear of—

Lark stopped and spun. His blue face and black monocle aimed dead at me.

The open cabin to my right. An enlisted rec room. I hadn’t noticed it.

Inside, was a compartment full of Tethers. They stood near a cornhole board looking at me and my camera. While the rest of the ship’s passageways smoldered in the crimson light of midwatch, these Tethers had two white fluorescents hung over their hillbilly game. Their bluish faces were raked with heavy shadows, and I imagined each of them cataloging everything about me and broadcasting it through their network: my rack was two decks below, my morning shift started in three hours, my posture was furtive behind Lark.

My mouth ran dry. Fuckall and be cocky about it, as Dad used to say.

I kept walking as if nothing had changed, as if I weren’t walking toward a chief petty officer holding a jar of contraband in the middle of the night. I fought to keep my legs from turning to run. I faked a real good game. The problem, of course—

“Shipmate, why are you filming me?”

While following Lark, I had been holding the camera casually at my side recording the mason jar of poppyshine swinging by his legs. Maybe he saw the blinking light. Maybe the Tethers playing cornhole noticed it. Either way, my only option was to play dumb.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” My hand began twirling my ponytail. I yanked it away. No way I was letting this box of rocks know he had me anxious.

He pinched his forehead just above his implants like they pained him. His naked eye winced at my name tag and rating badge. “MC Nozick, you think being mass communication makes you smarter than me?”

Lock it. Don’t laugh. Not a peep.

He moved his hand from his head toward my camera. His metHb fish stink was worse than other Tethers. The veins down his forearm were so dark they were almost black. “Surrender your camera.”

Ballsy. Lark outranked me, but I was a Navy broadcaster. My official duty on the Gerald Ford was literally to record things. If this escalated, he’d be questioned as much as me. And he was the one holding a jar of poppyshine.

I hadn’t edited the footage yet though. If Lark got the video, he’d know Dunn allowed me to hide in the rack. Dunn would get brought to mast while Lark—and whoever Lark was bootlegging for—would get off.

Judging from his pained migraine squint, Lark was calculating his options too. Except he had the benefit of the ship’s Justwork computer. It was straining him, though. He hadn’t yet noticed the black blood collecting on the rim of his nostril.

The three Tethers stepped into the passageway behind me like schoolyard bullies. The computer decided. Lark reached.

I dropped to the deck. As Lark swiped for me, I rolled past him and popped to my feet.

Tethers were truck stop crackheads patched together with plastic, but they could think fast. Linked through the Justwork, they could swarm you in an instant. They could even tell the ship to lock hatches, turn off lights, and sound alarms. Still, they were reliant on the same, fragile human body.

I kicked him in the groin before he could turn around. I bolted aft. Left at the first intersection, left again, right.

Cabin doors flew open. Tethers up and down the passageway poked their heads out. Feet pounded toward me.

It was hopeless, where was I going to go? The ocean?

At the next ladder, I climbed toward the hangar deck. I heard the hydraulics of the hatchway closing. The green light bathing the hangar bay was getting smaller. The clangs below me were getting closer. I dove into the hangar.

The hatch behind me sealed with a crisp puff of air. A handful of non-Tether aircraft handlers working overnight stared at me. A few seconds passed and they returned to their work, loading an aircraft on the lift.

My heart settled chestward. The ship’s engines droned. An empty trash bag swirled in the corner. I caught a whiff of the sea under the heavy jet fumes of the hangar. Beyond the lift was the night’s vast sky. Dawn was not that far away and lent a tranquility that you don’t often find on a carrier, like the moment before you unwrap a care package from home. So long as I didn’t expose Dunn, everything would work itself out.

The hatch behind me released its hydraulics. The next sound was the aircraft lift kicking on. It went up toward the flight deck loaded with an F35.

I removed the memory card and left my camera on the deck for Lark to find. Maybe it would buy me some time. I put the card in my mouth and ran for the lift.

Three feet high. Four feet. It was rising faster than I anticipated. Below the lift, the howling dark of the sea appeared. If I missed this…

I jumped. My hands clamped the edge. My fingers dug into the asphalt as the wind gusted through my dangling legs.

A grating metal screech came from the lift followed by pings of snapping metal rods. The lift stopped.

Dammit, nothing on this ship worked right. The Navy used to pride itself on being shipshape. Now, if it wasn’t a computer-brain hybrid, no one cared.

“MC Nozick, get down here.”

Below, my ankles dangled beside Lark’s ice blue head. I let go and thumped back on the hangar deck.

Just on the other side of a safety chain and twenty feet down, was the Pacific Ocean. Four more Tether MAs circled behind Lark. The whole hangar stopped to watch.

I spat the memory card into the ocean.

“Good morning, Lark,” I said. “Can I help you?”

Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

The Last Limerick Out Of Dirt Rut

By Laura DeHaan on Sunday, February 26, 2023

The first poem ever written in the hardscrabble town of Dirt Rut was by Madison (age six), and it was about their friend Sally who had died in a stampede. Madison had seen death before—old age and a drowning—but unlike those deaths, nobody talked about Sally’s. So, six years old and full of feelings that no one saw fit to acknowledge, Madison wrote a poem:

Sally was barely a pup
But already her time was up.
She got kicked by a cow,
Fell over, said, “Ow,”
Now Sally won’t ever get up.

…which was lousy all around, especially for Sally’s family when Madison recited it at her funeral. When they were picked up by their ma halfway through the third line and hollering the rest as they were carried out of the church, that was when Madison had their first inkling that words might be worth a damn.

Since the poem about Sally had made people feel things (and since nobody seemed to appreciate those feelings), Madison (still age six) decided that crops and cows could be made to feel things too, but maybe it was better if they felt good things, like growing tall and getting fat. By age twelve, Madison had made considerable strides as a poet. Not particularly in form, but in putting an influence on goods, such as their ode to their ma’s garden:

Fiction TCL #40 - Summer 2021

No One Dies in the Ambulance

By Chris Daruns on Sunday, February 19, 2023

The truck hit him at exactly forty-nine miles per hour.

One moment, Blake Owens was stepping off the sidewalk, crossing the street and the next he was on his back and did not know where he was.

The impact itself was never understood by him as his concussed brain failed to record the event. A flash of headlights was the only clear image he could conjure. Blake first thought, when he could again think, was that he’d tripped and maybe twisted his ankle. But his chest hurt. And his head. That didn’t make sense.

When he opened his eyes again, he was looking at a metal bar attached to the ceiling. A bag of water hung from it, swaying like in an ocean current. A dangling plastic tube ran from it to him, hitting him in the face.

“Sorry, about that,” a woman said, sliding the bag further down the bar, moving the plastic tubing from his face. She was a flurry of activity, moving around him and opening doors and cabinets he couldn’t see. Her unruly blonde hair was tied back and she wore no make-up and to Blake she looked like an angel.

Another woman, with long fingers and hazel eyes, sat next to him on his other side, scrunched in the small seat between the cabinets. She was holding his hand.

“What . . .” He wanted to ask ‘what happened’ but it felt like his mouth and throat were coated in sand. “Water?” he managed.

“Sorry, no.” the angel said. She was wearing a uniform, a white button down shirt with a silver badge on it and black cargo pants. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Blake. Owens.”

“Do you know what day it is, Blake?” She shined a penlight in his eyes.

“Of course, it’s . . . ” He thought it was Saturday but that didn’t seem right.

“How about what month?”

“It’s September.”

“If I were to give you six quarters how much is that?”

Blake thought for a moment, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head. “Buck fifty.”

“Can you feel this?”

“What?”

“How about this?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing.” He tried moving but he was strapped down to the bed.

“Okay.” She nodded looking disappointed. He did not understand why. “Blake, do you know what happened to you?”

He didn’t.

“Blake? Hey, stay with me. You were hit by a truck. It seems to have been going fast. We think it ran over you. You’re in an ambulance. We’re taking you to a trauma center. C’mon, open your eyes.”

“Am I going to die?”

“No one dies in the ambulance,” she smiled down at him and for a moment Blake believed her. She put two fingers to his neck and sighed deeply.

Fiction TCL #39 - Spring 2021

Like Shattered Glass

By F. Francis Amanti on Sunday, February 5, 2023

The first time they killed Jim Steele, they fed him a cocktail, light on the gin, heavy on the bleach. Now, I’m not sentimental, don’t misunderstand. Jim had it coming. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend, but I knew who he was well enough. Big sonofabitch. Mean. Still, it’s a lousy way to go. What I heard, he got on the wrong side of one too many people. That’s never good if you’re trying to stay on the upside of the grass. Me? I wasn’t there. I was what you would say, otherwise indisposed. But my brother, he was there. He told me later how it all went down:

“It- it was aw-w-wful. Real aw-awful.” Jackie smiled; his grin full of half-chewed hamburger. He always stuttered. If I think back, I don’t think I have a memory of him where he didn’t. Wasn’t his fault. Some cats are cool. Others are born with their tail caught in a doorjamb. Jackie just happened to be one of those. He caught a world of grief for it. When we lived in Southie, our pops would pop him in the mouth every time he did it, which was a lot. “Do it again, Jack. How many times I gotta tell you? You never learn does you? If your mother was still alive, she’d’ve reconsidered having you. Dumb bastahd.” They did that sort of thing for years. Both of them. Until the day my pops swung for him one more time, only instead of him connecting with my brother, I reached out and caught my father’s fist in mine.

“Whaddaya gonna do Bobby? Hha? Ya gonna hurt me?”

I love my brother. He’s all I have.

“You should have seen it. Bobby, you should have. N-n-ever seen nothin’ like it. His lips were like,” Jackie squeezed his face with his hands, contorted his mouth into a caricature of a fish, “you know? Like this. I didn’t- I didn’ think he needed a full gallon, but he did. I swear. A full gallon. Put up one H-h-ell of a fight too. I held him d-d-d-d-own, you know?”

“You what?”

“Wasn’t no big deal. J-ust his han—”

“Just his hands? Jackie. How many times I gotta tell you?”

My brother shoved a handful of fries into his mouth. How he didn’t choke was beyond me.

“They asked, okay? I’m n-n-no kid. What was I su-p-p- to do? Stand around?”

The Hell he wasn’t a kid. What was he? Twenty-one? He may as well have been twelve. It was bad enough that he was even there. A thousand times I told him: You tell them to talk to Bobby, you understand? Talk to Bobby. I’ll take care of it. Talk to Bobby.

I tossed him a napkin. “Wipe.” I watched as he did so.

“So, what happened to him?”

“To who?”

“What do you mean, to who? To Steele, Jackie. What, you forget already?”

Jackie smiled at me, the way he used to when it was Halloween and he had somehow ended up with the biggest haul of candy. “He foamed. Foamed like a kitchen s-sp-sp-sp—”

“Like a sponge?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like one of those. It was awful.”

It wasn’t but two days after my little brother spent an hour vacuuming up lunch on my dime that he called me at home.

“B-b-b-b-bbby?”

Last time I heard him this upset, our father had died.

“I-t-tt-ts m-mee-J-J—”

“What’s wrong?”

“H-he’s a-a-a-a-a-a-a—.”

“What?”

“H-he’s al-al-al-a—ive.”

“Who’s alive?”

“Stee-e-e-ele.”

“Say that again?”

Fiction TCL #39 - Spring 2021

The Change

By Julian D C Richardson on Sunday, January 15, 2023

I lie beside you, in the pre-dawn light, listening to your breath, listening for the change which I know is coming. We’ve argued, the last few months, past the autumn festival at the town hall, into the first frosty nights. Yesterday, you told me you’d decided, held my gaze as you slipped the hypodermic under your skin and injected the alien serum. How will you change? Become taller, stronger, with scales on your skin and goat-like eyes, yes, but will you still be ‘you?’

At first the aliens—the Ekru—kept their distance. We allowed them to build a base on the moon; in return, they employed their technology to our benefit. There were sceptics, but over the years, the Ekru earned our trust. What we saw of their behavior was calm, pacifist, just. A decade after their first arrival, they announced that anyone who wished it could become an Ekru and leave this world forever. Years of exploitation, unemployment, pollution meant that there was no shortage of volunteers, injecting themselves with the alien serum which would transform them.

In the morning, you don’t mention the injection, and neither do I. I scrutinize your breakfast choices: peaches, yoghurt, and a little slice of toast with ham. For a long time, you were vegetarian, and I realize now that I don’t know whether the Ekru eat meat.

You put the dog on a leash and head out to the forest to work on another oil painting. You have an exhibition coming up in a month. I wonder if it will go ahead.

Fiction TCL #39 - Spring 2021

HONOR

By Alice Loweecey on Sunday, January 8, 2023

Will I turn into someone different when I put on the hooded robe of a Collector?

I shivered under my blanket, tired of staying awake, tired of my mind running in endless circles like a water wheel, tired of being cold.

The hall clock bonged six times. Finally. I dropped the blanket. My fingertips were dead-blue despite covering them with the thin wool all night. I reached for my shoes, and just like everything else at this hour, their broken-in leather was frozen. A minute under my arm-pits softened them while the ice in my brain cracked, too. Of course I wouldn’t turn into any-body different. No Collector in history had changed one iota, I was sure. Ihs saw to that.

I opened my bedroom door just wide enough to squeeze through. The bottom hinge liked to screech on cold mornings and I couldn’t get caught—not today. The rowdiest apprentices in ten years had a reputation to maintain. Besides, every Collector from Big Water to Kirkwood was packed into Refuge for Homecoming. Ihs had enough voices fortifying Him this morning. He’d make it through this year’s Redemption without power from three apprentices.

I tiptoed to the next narrow door along the hallway and tapped once. Joel slid out with-out a sound.

“I’m impressed,” I whispered.

“Think I’d sleep in today?” Joel grinned, his flawless white teeth barely visible in the dim hall. “It’s the perfect day to break a rule.”

We crept to the end of the hall. Low voices trickled out every door we passed. At last I saw Clare’s blonde head poke around the corner.

“They’re all chanting on our side,” she whispered.

“Ours too.”

She melted into that goofy smile. “Good morning.” Her deep, sweet voice washed over me.

I knew my own smile was just as silly. “Good morning.” I kissed her. That first kiss of the day was like water after a penance fast.

Joel sighed. “Rein it in, you two. Let’s go.”

I led them downstairs, a model head apprentice. “These stones are so cold my feet ache.”

“My left sock has a hole in it,” Joel said.

“Because you’re too lazy to keep ’em mended,” Clare said.

“Just because you fix Amos’s for him…”

“Shh.” I stopped them at the third floor as a babel of voices hit us from another long hallway of closed bedroom doors. “Everyone’s chanting here too. Perfect.”

When we passed the door to the second-floor arena gallery, Clare reached for the door.. “I want to peek.”

“Clare—”

Wham. The noise reverberated in the complete silence. We all jumped. Clare leapt backwards into my arms.

“What was that?” No footsteps came toward the door from the gallery. Maybe we were still safe.

“I don’t know.” Clare squeezed my hands and stood up.

We ran on tiptoes down the rest of the hall and into the stairwell. When I put my ear against the main arena doors on the first floor, I heard footsteps and another thump. “Let’s go.”

We careened around the corner onto the basement stairs and took them two at a time. Nobody followed. No more thumps.

“I’ll get the lights,” Joel said from the black, windowless basement. A scritch and a whiff of sulfur, and one lamp beside the doorway glowed, then another. A third, and the desk, bookshelves, floor, and stone ceiling appeared.

I plopped into a chair and wiped sweat from my forehead. “Your fearless leader expects thanks for getting us down here. Unless you’d rather sneak back to your rooms and lose your mind in chants with the rest of them.”

“Amos, we bow before you.” Joel tossed the matches onto the desk. “You are our private Matthew. You, not that old, freaky-eyed blond, are the greatest Collector since the Last War.” He went down on one knee at my feet.

“Shh,” Clare said. “Close the door, idiot.” She did it herself, pushed Joel aside, and sprang onto my lap. “We’re free! No more beautiful summer days wasted down here learning pre-War history.”

“No more lectures from boring old Collectors on the reasons for the fixed monetary sys-tem,” I said.

“No more slaving over long division.” Joel attempted a backflip and landed flat on his back. “Ow.”

I nudged Clare off my lap and jumped up. We danced around the classroom between the rows of tables. “Real life begins today!” I twirled her in the center aisle.

The door opened. Joel leapt to his feet. We stopped in mid-twirl.

“Uh…Good morning, Patrick.”

Our teacher set a pile of folded brown robes on the desk. “You seem to have finished your chants in record time.”

“We… got up extra early.” I watched the color of Patrick’s mostly bald head. If it turned red, I’d have to do some fast talking.

“I see. Since you’re so eager to start today’s instruction, solve this problem: All three of you are sixteen at last and it’s Tuesday, November twenty-eighth. What does that mean?”

Patrick’s scalp stayed pale and I breathed again. “It means you truly are a wise teacher, Patrick, because you remembered it’s initiation day.” I bowed so low my hair swept the stone floor.

Our tableau thawed. Joel whooped and drummed his feet on the large flagstone in front of the door. Clare fanned herself with a sheet of paper.

“Obnoxious brats,” Patrick said. “It means I’m free of you. If this weren’t Homecoming, I’d pitch all your homework into the breakfast fires and run through the halls cheering.”

He tossed the box of matches at Joel and sat on the edge of the desk. “Joel, make your-self useful and light the rest of the lamps, please. It doesn’t require deep thought.”

“C’mon, Patrick,” I said. “We may not have been the best at math or history or neat handwriting—”

Patrick groaned and buried his head in his hands.

“But you haven’t had a boring day since we turned thirteen,” Joel said.

“Boring,” Patrick said. He placed one hand over his heart and raised his eyes to the ceil-ing. “May lightning strike me if I ever complain about quiet, studious, obedient apprentices again.”

“I’m going to paint you like that, Patrick,” Clare said. “It’ll be an—” she snickered— “in-spiration to your next group.”

“They might be innocent enough to believe it,” I said, “until we tell them about the morn-ing we dumped snow in your bed and you squealed like a girl hitting a high G.”

We collapsed into chairs, laughing, even though the joke wasn’t that funny. Initiation jit-ters, maybe. Patrick shook his head and circled the room, aligning textbooks on the built-in shelves and straightening stray pieces of blank paper.

I grabbed the moment to kiss Clare again. Joel moaned.

“It will be a relief to all of us when you two get married,” Patrick said.

Clare blushed to the roots of her hair and I stopped laughing to watch her. I loved it when her ears turned pink and their curves peeked through her golden waves. “Only six more months to Carnival and our wedding.”

“Enough time for you to plant a garden for me,” Clare said.

“It’ll be your present.”

“You’re my sweetie.”

Joel rolled his eyes. “Will you please keep the sappy stuff for when you’re alone?”

“Yes,” Patrick said. “Cut the comedy and the romance, you three, and get up. It’s time for your last lesson.”

I rubbed the tip of my nose—stupid nervous habit. Clare caught my eye and wrinkled her own nose at me.

We moved to our usual places in front of the lecture stand. I expected Patrick to open The Collection of Matthew like every other morning. Instead, he stood in front of us and smoothed his brown robe, pulled the hood over his head, and tucked his hands in his sleeves.

For a second I could’ve sworn the lamps dimmed, but that was stupid. Get a grip, dummy. It was stupid of me, but sometimes when a Collector wore the robe the proper way, I got the creeps. Maybe it was because the hood concealed their faces, or the way their walk changed: They became strangers. If I admitted it to myself, those were the only times I didn’t think being a Collector was the greatest way of life ever, hands-down.

Will I still be me when I put on that innocent-looking folded robe?

After a long minute, Patrick said, “Who am I?”

“Uh… you’re Patrick.” Joel said.

“No!”

Clare gasped as his mellow voice lashed at us. Joel hung his head, but I knew what Pat-rick meant. I ignored the shiver in my spine.

“You are a Collector.” Right, I was just being stupid. There was nothing sinister about Collectors. I’d wanted it more than anything ever since I turned twelve and we got a hint of what Collectors did for the world. I’d spent night after night pacing my room, pounding the stone walls and begging Ihs to make time go faster. I’d lost count of how many nights I spent like that. But no more. After today, all the mysteries would be open to me—to us.

“Yes,” Patrick said. “What have I done?”

“You saved the world.” Joel raised his head and sat straighter.

“When?”

“After the Last War, um…” Clare closed her eyes. “I know this…2196 minus 2022…one hundred seventy-four years ago. Matthew and the other Collectors left their refuge in the Rocky Mountains and found the ruins of Colorado Springs.”

“What did they do?”

“They gathered the survivors,” I said. “People back then didn’t know how to plant or harvest, or how to rebuild either, because they had things called machines to provide everything. The Collectors taught them, and they begged the Collectors to rule them.”

“Correct. We have guided them since that day and there is peace and plenty in every town. The people honor us every year on that date with Carnival.” His voice smiled. “Which is the perfect day for your wedding.” The smile vanished. He stepped forward and faced his hood toward each of us in turn.

Goosebumps prickled my neck. I wished I could see Patrick’s familiar, washed-out blue eyes. Why was he staring at us like that?

“Now you will learn the rest.” Patrick walked to the back of the room and opened the double doors. His footsteps echoed through the next two rooms.

Clare whispered, “Any idea what he’s talking about?”

“Not a clue.”

“Shh. Here he comes,” Joel said.

Patrick laid a tall, thin book on the lecture stand.

“He’s got Matthew’s Book.” Joel’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his shaggy bangs.

“Come here,” Patrick said.

We looked at each other.

“We’re not allowed.” Clare’s voice was breathless.

“Come here, all of you. Now.”

We stood on either side of Patrick and gaped. Clare reached out to touch the gold letter-ing on the cover, but snatched her hand away.

“Let us see it, Patrick.” My voice trembled, but I didn’t care. “Please.”

Patrick’s familiar, wide fingers opened the book and the room seemed brighter. That was still our favorite teacher inside the dark hood, no matter how strange he looked or acted.

“Listen,” Patrick said. “Matthew dictated to his first followers: ‘I was alone in a cave high on the mountain when the war started. I saw a vision of Ihs just as a bomb exploded. The light enveloped Ihs, even Ihs, the god who created all, and impenetrable night covered the world.’”

None of us moved.

“‘My companions did not find me for two days. I feared all were dead from the war. In that interval, I heard the voice of Ihs cry out to me. Ihs, the creator of all things, cried out to me, his servant, for redemption.’” Patrick turned the fragile page, keeping his fingers away from the crumbling edges. “‘When at last the others came to my cave, Ihs had entrusted me with the secret and only way to Collect him from the darkness.’”

“How?” I leaned forward, careful not to breathe on the ancient paper.

“‘I sent them into the city at the foot of the mountain. They braved fire and madness for the sake of Ihs, returning with three of the many evil people responsible for the war.’” Patrick looked up, with his ‘answer my question’ expression.

“Military,” Joel said.

“Show off,” Clare whispered.

Patrick nodded. “‘I instructed my companions to build three spoked wheels, ten times the size of the ones on a wheelbarrow. If we did not Collect Ihs before three days passed, Ihs would be imprisoned in darkness forever.’”

Clare said, “I don’t believe it.”

Patrick gave her a small smile. “So we all said the first time we heard this story.”

Clare shook her head. “It’s impossible. We’re talking about Ihs here. Matthew can’t have meant that.”

Patrick continued to read: “‘At sunrise on the third day, we bound the three evil ones to the wheels and performed all Ihs required of us. When Redemption was complete, as Ihs had promised me, the darkness lifted and the sun shone upon us again.’”

He closed the book, making the Sign of Ihs over it.

“Now, you three who think you are the cleverest apprentices in ten years, explain that.”

I glanced at Clare. Joel glanced at me. Clare stared at her feet, the most perfect blush on her cheeks. Patrick laughed and put a hand on Joel’s and my shoulder, then on Clare’s.

“Don’t look so embarrassed. Every single one of us had the same reaction. This is why we wait till now to open the truth to you. When you are assigned a town to inhabit, one of your du-ties will be to search out the world-destroyers.”

“Now?” Clare’s voice squeaked. “They can’t be alive now.”

Joel poked her. “He means anybody who still thinks like that. Right?”

“Yes. Matthew Collected Ihs, and through Ihs, the world. But evil is stronger than stone and more tenacious than weeds. Those who think like the world-destroyers still exist even after one hundred seventy-four years of Matthew’s Peace. You will find them.” He picked up the folded robes from his desk. “Kneel.”

This time I didn’t notice the temperature of the floor.

“Amos, Clare, Joel, this is more than your initiation day. You have learned the truth and grown in wisdom and power. You have earned the privilege of being called one of Matthew’s descendants—Collectors. Hold out your hands.”

Patrick stood in front of me first. “Ihs brought light from darkness.”

I continued the ritual. “Yet darkness consumed Ihs.”

Patrick placed the robe in my arms and I bowed my head. “Today you Collect Ihs from eternal darkness.”

I ran my hands over the wool. It was softer than any of my other clothes and its deep brown was warm and welcoming in the lamplight. I shook it out, slipped my arms into the sleeves, and wiggled it over my trousers. Next to me, Clare finished reciting and unfolded her robe. Her hair glowed against it. On her other side, Joel—for the first time I could remember—looked humble.

Patrick traced the Sign with his thumb on my forehead, lips, and heart. “You are sealed with the mark of Ihs.”

When he had done the same to Clare and Joel, we all put the hoods over our heads. For a second my heart froze like the iced-over window in my room. Was I still me? Had I changed? But nothing felt any different. In fact, I felt just like I was in bed under the covers, protected against the cold.

Patrick said, “You’re used to Homecoming as a family reunion because that’s the only part you’ve been allowed to join. Today you enter into its true purpose.”

“In the arena,” Clare said.

“Yes. Ihs instructed Matthew to reenact the Redemption every year on that day.” He picked up Matthew’s Book. “This year I’ll watch with you from the second-floor gallery. That way if you have questions afterward, we won’t disturb anyone. I’ll be right back.”

Patrick returned the Book to the far room and I touched my hood to Clare’s. “You’re beautiful.”

Patrick returned too soon for me because I wanted to see her familiar face inside that hood. When he extended his hands over our heads we all knelt again.

“Ihs has done great things for me,” Patrick began and we joined in. “His power extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.”

My gut flip-flopped. Fear? No. I was being stupid again. It was just a reverent way of talking.

“And now my head shall be raised above the evil ones who surround me.” Good. My voice didn’t shake. I finished: “And I shall Collect Ihs and his people with joy.”

Patrick pushed his own hood back just enough for us to see the huge grin on his face. “Welcome to the family, my obnoxious brats.”

Fiction TCL #39 - Spring 2021

A Strange History with Cats

By Tim Boiteau on Sunday, December 25, 2022

October 2012

The first cat was crushed, guts splashed across the driveway, mouth a frozen hiss. Its milky eyes seemed to track Ling as she hefted herself out of the car and waddled over.

Inauspicious.

That was the word that came to her. In Chinese, a word of raindrop suddenness, a reflex.

“What is it, honey?” Raymond said, rounding from the trunk and surveying the mess. “Oh man. You go on inside. I’ll take care of it.”

In the kitchen, Ling prepared a glass of raspberry leaf tea. By the time it was steeped and aromatic, she heard Raymond entering through the garage, taking the back stairs up to the guest shower.

Lovely, discrete man.

She gazed out the kitchen window into the rolling, wooded yard of their home in Maryland. Deep autumn fire, a sparkling brook—

A kick.

Ling gasped with relief. Sophie had lain still ever since the cat incident.

She blew on her tea, sipped it, supporting her considerable weight against the counter. Sophie turned and kicked again. Ling held her belly, feeling her child’s movements.

I can’t wait to meet you.

Soon she heard the shower, felt a slight tremble from the pipes, and remembered that there had been another cat—with the realization came a wave of panic, and Sophie grew still once more.

Search Results for: always on my mind