Re: Complaints and customer service

To What Natural Forces It May Concern,

I have been a firm supporter of your institution all my life, but lately I have been very unhappy with certain options in your program. For example, to restrict menstruation, the only options your program gives me are pregnancy or old age. For a novice like myself, these are rather difficult to implement! There are several third party applications and plug-ins to expand our options, but it is a disappointment that we have to resort to other sources. We should have these options natively. Please consider this for the next version release.

I would also like to call to your attention the problems that occur when running the menstruation application. For example, it causes cramps of various degrees that take up too much processing power. This lags the whole system, or even crashes it. This has been listed under your known bugs for centuries, yet nothing has been done to fix it. Not only that, there are other such bugs that you have refused to address.

In conclusion, I am very disappointed in your customer service. Not only have you failed to address our concerns, you have found it unnecessary to continue upkeep and management of your program. Your monopoly over these services does not give you the right to ignore the well-being of your user base. I hope that in the future, more care will be taken to improve your quality of service.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

June Owatari

-

© Some rights reserved. “Re: Complaints and customer service” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

June Owatari is a 22-year-old trying to get by. She likes to organize zines and knit.

I used to be a teacher. Not a bad job, but something kept tugging at me, pulling me away. It’s a good thing I heeded the call before I’d allowed myself to be paired up and married off by my old-fashioned but well-meaning parents. They were shocked, my mother almost to tears, when I told them their youngest daughter wanted to be a detective. “A detective!” I can still hear my father say. “You know what those are? They’re alcoholic ex-cops who’ve been kicked off the force because they’re lazy and incompetent, not pretty young schoolmarms! Have you lost your mind?”

“Sure have,” I mumble to myself, reaching for the Scotch I have hidden under my desk.

Truth be told, I’m jealous. I’m jealous of men and all this freedom they have, freedom to do what they want with their lives without having to wonder whether or not they have the right approval to continue. They can date whom and when they want, work rough jobs, drink all hours of the day, and while it might not all be appropriate behavior at least they don’t have the housewives hanging at the corner springing into gossipy action the moment they step outside wearing white after Labor Day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that being a woman is hard. I’m saying it’s annoying. Annoying and more than a little bit boring.

And so, I’m going to do what they get to do, parents and neighbors be damned.

I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. I barely make enough to cover the cost of my apartment and this tiny office, but my time belongs to me and nobody else. I love it, but I don’t know anymore. A small part of me keeps nagging to go back.

It’s grey as hell outside, and the rain doesn’t seem to want to slow down at all. It’s been assaulting my roof in vicious, icy sheets all morning and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping. “No clients again,” I mutter and pick up the newspaper. Maybe I could pass the time with some crossword puzzles, who knows.

A half hour goes by and I’m stuck on fourteen across. Suddenly, I hear footsteps on the walkway outside. Most of the businesses here are gone, surrounding my tiny office like an urban ghost town. The footsteps are sharp, quick and sound like the pattering of high heels. A prostitute or bar girl, perhaps, but there’s no business to drum up for them, either. I chuckle. She can starve along with me, I guess.

There’s a knock at the door and I get up suspiciously. I’m not letting a damn hooker in here.

It’s not a hooker. It’s a well-dressed woman in her mid thirties, with a dour look on her face. She’s holding one of the advertisements I run in the newspaper. She must have been considering this for a long while, as I haven’t used that particular ad style in months. She looks up at me in the doorway, surprised. “J. Abramson?”

“That’s me.” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my smile. “The J’s for Janet. I don’t suppose I’d get much business if I put my full name on the adverts.”

She nodded. “I suppose not.”

“Well, was there anything I can do for you? Here,” I motion inside, “come on in, it’s wet and freezing out there.”

I usher her in and she sits down on the love seat across from my desk. “So…” She looks around. “I’m not sure where to begin, actually. My husband, he works a lot.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Most of them do.”

“No, no, not like that. I mean… He goes to meetings a lot, but not during the business day. Who comes home from work and leaves again after dinner to meet clients? It just seems so odd.”

“That’s not suspicious much by itself, though it’s still odd. Is there anything else to it?” Different people, different problems. It could be anything from a gambling addiction to alcoholism to a mistress holed up somewhere. “Does he come home drunk, suspicious stains on his shirts, anything like that?”

She looks down at her hands, twisting and clenching together in her lap like two nervous snakes. “No, not really. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling that I have. I can’t prove it, and he’s such a methodical person naturally. I know he’s just covering up.”

“Well, I can always take a look around, it can’t really hurt. Where does he work?” She gives me an address down in the financial district and opens her purse. She pulls out a photo and hands it to me. “His name is Donald Williams. I’m Lois, by the way.”

He’s a good-looking guy, that’s for sure, and a professional. His clothes are expensive and he’s smiling like someone whose confidence has gotten them to the top of the food chain. I can understand why she’s so paranoid without any proof. I’d be terrified of losing him too, if he were my husband.

We go over my consultation fee and I tell her I’ll let her know if I find anything out. I give her a cup of coffee and let her wait out the rain a bit on the love seat, and then she leaves.

I resume my crossword for a while, until it’s time to head home for the night. I take some of my paperwork with me, flip the lights off and lock up. My boyfriend picks me up at the corner by my office and drives me home. He’s got a nice car, a brand new Chrysler Imperial. I like it a lot.

We run, giggling, up the steps to my building and sprint for the elevator. Once inside, our hands are all over each other. We take turns playing with each other’s hair and kissing each other’s neck, and we’re so busy goofing off that we don’t notice other people getting on with us.

I open my apartment door and toss my coat and keys on the counter, kicking off my shoes and shedding my clothes like snakeskin. We make our way to the shower, and after that my bedroom. I’m sure the neighbors can hear our commotion through the thin, shabby walls. My building is nice but it’s certainly not high-class, and you can tell the contractors didn’t exactly go to great lengths to provide luxury when they built it.

I know he isn’t going to stay. He never does. It’s always one excuse or another, and he acts so innocent. But I know, and I can’t believe he doesn’t know that I know. Or maybe he does, and he’s just playing a role.

As he gets up to get dressed I reach into my purse and pull out the photo Lois Williams gave me. It really is a good picture of him, with his hair slicked back and his fancy suit and all. I think I’ll keep it as a memento. I chuckle slightly and he turns around. When he sees what I have in my hand his eyes go wide. “Where in the hell did you get that?”

I grin. “Your wife.”

“M-My wife?”

“She hired me this morning, before you came over. She thinks you’re having an affair.”

-

© Some rights reserved. “In My Office” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives license.

Jessica Brown is a writer of horror and dark fantasy whose work has been featured in Shadow Feast, The Nocturnal Lyric, Bloodfetish, Horrotica and The Harrow. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and can be found writing at http://jessicarbrown.blogspot.com.

Sitting down at one of the multiple chess tables set up on the grass, I awaited my competitor to join me. I took in the scenery for a moment before kicking off my sandals. The grass felt as amazing as it looked: cool and sharp and tickling the soles of my feet. Everything about this place was perfect and it made my heart truly swell to be here. I indulged in the serenity for a few moments longer before shade washed over my body. I opened my eyes and found my competitor standing above me.

My competitor was good looking in a 1950’s way, classic but with a false shine to it. This was ironic though, since his clothes harkened more to the 1990’s grunge era rather than the 1950’s swing. His jeans were loose and faded, holed at the knees and the cuffs. His shirt was black and frayed a bit, and he had flannel overshirt tied around his waist. His Chuck Taylor All-S tars were soiled and filled with holes and he didn’t appear to be wearing socks. His hair was shoulder length and clean, but lacked any basic grooming. He was a good amount over six feet but hardly approaching seven. He took the seat opposite me and opened his messenger bag, pulling out his chess pieces.

“You understand how clichéd this is right?” he asked me as he took out the pieces one by one, moving the white figures towards me while keeping the black ones for himself.

“I know, but come on, how often are you asked to do this anymore?” I asked in retort, sitting up just a little bit and sliding my feet back into my sandals. My friend rolled his eyes and continued to divvy up the pieces. “How’s business?”

“Don’t call it that,” he snapped, tossing the now empty box to the cool bed of grass below and started setting up his pieces. He took a minute to visibly try and calm himself before shaking his head slowly. “It’s hard. There’s a lot of people I don’t want to deal with right now…” he sounded like he was going to say more and decided against it. He probably realized that there wasn’t a need to say much more. I understood. We both did.

“Kids again?” I asked as I set my pawns on the front line. Tiny soldiers in a row.

“It’s always kids,” he said immediately. “If it’s not the kids getting killed over in Iraq it’s the kids in Africa. If it’s not the kids in Africa it’s the thousands of kids all over the world who have to go from domestic abuse or rape or God knows what else.”

“You can’t see the world like that,” I sighed and moved my pawn up two spaces. The match had begun.

“You’re wrong Nate,” he started, moving his own pawn. “That’s how I have to see the world…”

“All work and no play…” I smiled at him, trying to ease the mood.

“It’s NOT WORK!” Even I was surprised when he yelled. The serenity around us broke as many looked to face my friend. He sighed and lowered his head. “It’s your move,” he grumbled as he worked to hide his head behind his locks. I could see the red flush to his face.

“Sorry D, I just meant to yank you a little bit,” I moved my knight, capturing one of his pawns.

“Well I’ve told you a thousand time I don’t like you joking about that shit. It’s not a job. A job implies that you can turn it off whenever you want. A job means you can walk away from it whenever you want and that’s just not me, Nate.”

“Have you ever tried?” I asked, looking to my friend sincerely.

D set down the pawn he had picked up and turned in the stone chair. He licked his lips slightly and turned back to me for a second, making sure I was following his glance.

“You see him?” he asked and pointed to one little boy running around. The young one had red hair, lots of freckles and a smile that was missing teeth. He was roughly six years old and had the subsequent happiness that accompanied that age. “What do you see when you look at him?” D asked.

“I…” I started, trying to figure out if this was a trick question. “I see a happy little boy who had a visit from the tooth fairly recently?” I seemed to ask more than answer.

“You know what I see?” D asked. “I see that he’ll die when he’s 87 of a severe stroke, but luckily it’ll happen when he’s asleep and he’ll go peacefully. Do you wanna know what will happen to the pretty little sixteen-year-old on the swing set cause that story is a lot meaner.”

“Okay, I get it,” I sighed, looking at the young girl on the swing holding her boyfriend’s hand. I didn’t want to think about how this girl would leave this world.

“No, you don’t get it Nathan! I can’t say ‘Okay, that’s enough, I get it’. This is my life. I don’t get to turn if off. I see how you’re going to die, I see how she’s going to die, I see how everyone’s going to die and I just have to deal.”

“D, I know.” I sighed, looking down to the chessboard. He tapped his pawn repeatedly before moving it up, capturing one of mine. “Isn’t that kind of what you signed up for though?” I asked, my eyes still fixed on the pieces so I didn’t have to see the daggers D was now shooting me.

“No, it wasn’t! I signed up to try and help people, to try and ease what they were going through and make the transition a natural progression for them, but that wasn’t what I got. See, the girl before me was a bitch and never bothered to explain to me what you had to see around you twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t know I was going to be walking around and seeing when little children were going to die, how they were going to die. I don’t want to see that a beautiful little girl is going to be raped and butchered in ten years. I don’t want to know that a sweet little boy is going to be brutally beaten by his father until he takes his own life. I didn’t know that this was part of the deal!” D’s voice got more and more intense as he moved through his speech. This wasn’t exactly news to me but at the same time, I had never quite heard it like this. D had always had a screw loose but he was always still somewhat put together: I was seeing none of that right now. D was far worse now than he was back when we met.

It was three years ago when my grandmother died. D came around just when Gram was at her worst. But when Gram passed, D stuck around and spent more time together. He and I got pretty close pretty quick, even though he was a little sad for my taste. D was a good guy and though he could be depressing some days he was usually a pretty laid back, funny dude.

When he started disappearing for periods of time and flaking out on situations, I asked him what was going on.

He told me that he was Death.

Yes, the Death with the hourglass and hood and stuff, and that he was always off collecting the recently dead.

I immediately thought he was insane and tried to call the cops. He basically had to kill my houseplants and goldfish to convince me that he wasn’t crazy.

I naturally started asking questions (how can you not when you realize that you have a semi-mythical creature as a best friend?) and I found out that D had only been Death for about a hundred years or so. Deaths cycled all the time so that no one went off the deep end. When a Death was cycled out they went up to Heaven (no Death went to hell) and basically got to continue in the afterlife as any other person would. He told me that he had taken the job from a friend of his as she had done before him and so on all the way back to the beginning.

He also told me that he was trying to find someone to replace him as Death; that one hundred years was entirely too long to be in the position.

“D come on man, settle down,” I quieted my friend, putting a hand over his. D nodded, his head still looking down as he tried to compose himself again. This was the worst I had seen him in a long time. Kids got to him. Kinda explained why he never left the house unless he was on a job or I dragged him out the door.

“I know, I know,” he sniffled lightly, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Sorry man I just… I’m not hanging on so well you know?” he asked, chuckling at himself lightly. “I really got to get out of this gig…” he sniffled again and picked up a castle, moving it into a position that seemed random to me.

“I know…” I trailed off, looking down at the board. I was winning. I was beating Death in a chess match…but then again, I always did.

“We still have our deal right?” D asked a bit desperately, looking from me to the board as his hands ran through his hair. I could see his fists tighten on his locks.

“Yeah man, of course. That deal will always stand…” I nodded, forcing my gaze away from my friend.

D had asked me to take over for him about two years ago, only three or four months after he told me he was Death. I told him no, of course, I didn’t want that kind of responsibility and pressure and fucking heartache that went with the job. D kept trying to find people to fill the job for him and continuously had terrible luck with it. He didn’t want to “trick” people as he thought his predecessor had with him so he always laid everything out on the table to any prospective deaths: yes, there was the ability to ease people and make their transition better but there was this other, terrible side to it that was just as dark as the other was light. And naturally, that terrified people and they ran off as quickly as possible.

One night I promised D that if he could ever beat me in a chess game, I would take over his place. D had never played chess before and I was a state champion…I figured it was a fairly safe bet. I didn’t figure it would make me feel as guilty as it did.

“You’ve been practicing?” I asked my friend as I moved my knight again. He nodded, looking at the pieces with an intense focus.

“That’s all I’ve been doing since last week when you beat me…” D had really taken the challenge to heart, thinking that there was no way he was going to get anyone to take over for him. I had seen several books on chess and chess strategy in his apartment when I would come to visit him. Once he did nothing but read those books, cover to cover, and than insist that we have our weekly match then and now, even though it was two days before we usually did. I still beat him.

“No…” D looked down to the board, seeing his king standing a lone. He looked around, examining every move he could make. “I can’t win can I? There’s no way that I could win this match could I?” he asked me, looking up and down from the board to me. I couldn’t bring myself to nod or say anything; he didn’t need me to.

“Please, no…” he yelled. D’s eye frantically started scanning at the board, desperate to find something he had missed before. “God no…” he whispered.

D slammed his head down to the marble table. I immediately jumped up, wanting to run in and check for blood but reminding myself that he was essentially invincible at this point. He let out a wail and I noticed for the first time that tears were literally streaming down his face.

“You don’t understand Nathan,” he cried, looking up to me, though I’m sure the tears blocked his vision. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go around seeing kids as broken corpses. I can’t do it anymore, not even for another week. Nathan this is killing me. I don’t even feel human anymore; I don’t even remember what humanity feels like. I just go through the days and feel nothing but their loss and their sorrow! I can’t live like this anymore Nathan, I can’t.” D whimpered like a beaten dog as he released everything. I looked down to my friend, watching his mental breakdown.

“Actually,” I sighed as I sat back down in my seat, looking across to him. He lifted his gaze in confusion and watched me flick my king on his side. “There’s one way you can win…” I said sadly.

D’s confused eyes swam as he watched my king fall over. His mouth fell open slightly as he wiped at his nose again with the back of his hand. His wide gaze focused away from the fallen plastic figure and locked on me.

“Yeah… I know what I’m doing. It’s something I should have done before I let you get this far gone D…” I trailed off, smiling slightly at him.

“But-but do you understand what you’re going to have to deal with?” he asked, suddenly overwhelmed by guilt.

“Yeah, I’ve been listening to you bitch about it for fucking two years,” I chuckled, reaching over and pushing D slightly. “I know what I’m doing and I’m ready. Do whatever you need to do to make this happen…”

I watched as my friend started to change in front of my eyes. D reached up and wiped at his eyes, clarity washing over him as he realized that I wasn’t kidding. He hung his head again as he wiped at his eyes over and over again.

For a moment I was afraid; maybe he was too far gone for this moment to bring the man back to sanity. Maybe D had just seen too much death, too much hurt for the man to continue with he mind intact.

I reached my hand over to touch D’s shoulder and, as I gripped him there, his face lifted. His face looked like it had lost twenty years as he seemed to be at ease for the first time since I had met him. No part of me was reserved about what the future held, no part felt afraid. Seeing the peace that I had given to a friend who so desperately deserved it overshadowed everything else. I was happy to do this for my friend…for a man who deserved the next part of his existence. I smiled down at D.

And, for the first time since I had met him, Death smiled back.

—

© Some rights reserved. “A Game of Chess” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Christina Mason is an English major with aspirations of becoming an author, particularly in the sci-fi and horror genres. She can be contacted at christinapmason@gmail.com. [Website.]

“I told you. Across all the parallel worlds I study, across all these separate realities with their vastly different peoples and histories, your gene sequence (give or take a few hundred allelic differences) is found more often than any other individual’s. Across a wide spectrum of possibilities, you are a constant. You are the most common man in the multiverse.”

“But why? What is so important about me?”

“That is what I am here to figure out.”

Nathan cautiously put down the unreal photograph he had been handed and regarded the tall, slim man smiling across the circle of table separating them. His relaxed smile, black rimmed oval glasses and white coat reminded Nathan of a young lab assistant taking a well deserved break in a university lounge.

“My selves have a theory, and we are conducting interviews for confirmation.”

“There’s more of your kind here?” Nathan’s eyes darted around the small sun lit café around them.

“Pronoun use and verb tense need a little… revision in these interviews. I should explain that this is one of several million discussions spanning across a slim and random sampling of the Many Worlds.” The white lab coat seemed illuminated by the light poring through the window behind them.

Nathan’s eyes went wide as he slid down into his low-backed chair. He picked up the black and white photograph again. “You must have a busy day ahead of you.”

“Actually the interviews have already occurred, or are occurring from your viewpoint. My fellow selves in the other realities have returned home and have begun analyzing the data. I will inform you if a conclusion is made.”

When it became apparent that Nathan was not as thrilled at the possibility of the answer compared to further staring at the sheet in his hands, the scientist continued.

“I will begin. What do you know of parallel universes?”

Nathan removed his gaze from the photo, thinking. He decided to answer the man’s questions. “Um… I know more about the fiction of it than anything else. Alternate timelines. Evil doppelgangers, you know, with paste-on goatees and all that. Hitler being assassinated by Einstein. For the real science, I read a book once by Hawking that I think said quantum physics proved there are alternate dimensions.”

The scientist’s smile widened. “Close enough to start from.”

“Is that where you come from, an alternate reality?” Nathan inquired.

“Yes. I am visiting from an alternate reality. Coincidently, it has a probability of occurrence close to your own.”

Nathan pondered asking about the probability of a reality occurring but decided against it, opting not to be confronted with math on top of the already dizzying information presented to him.

“Our two worlds reside in a cluster of realities we refer to as the ‘Many Worlds.’ This cluster contains Earths, or Terras, or Edens as they’re called elsewhere, that exist where Homo sapiens have developed. It’s in this cluster where every permutation of possible human history resides.” The scientist paused here, knowing the questions that would follow.

“And that’s the multiverse right? The one I keep showing up in?”

“It is merely a small fraction of the probable multiverse. In a much greater portion of probabilities, life never arises on Earth or is struck down before humans could evolve. The current speculation is that an even larger portion of the multiverse includes realities that fall within four dimensional spacetime, yet have properties of physics different from our own. We cannot even design probes that could physically exist in these probabilities. Realities where, say, the weak nuclear force is different from our own, and atomic nuclei never form beyond that of hydrogen, resulting in a reality of endless, lifeless vapor. Realities where time flows back into itself, continuously beginning and ending before time itself could even be said to exist. Actually those realities are the most useful and studied of the multiverse, excluding the Many Worlds of course.”

“Why would a broken reality be of any use to you? You’re sitting here interrupting my coffee break, not playing with a stopwatch at the beginning the time.”

“You are correct. It is not my area of expertise. I prefer to study the roles of individuals across many timelines in shaping society. Time-inverted realities are of use to physicists and to engineers. They are the ones who make the machines that allow my studies to take place. They divert the chaotic and eternal tides of energy to power devices such as mine here.” The scientist turned his hand palm up, revealing the intricately etched surface of a matte black metal disk. The flowing wave form appeared to Nathan as the darkened silhouette of a hieroglyphic eye.

“Every time I use this device, whether to enter your world or merge back into my own, or when I bring in a physical object like the photo in your hand, one of those ‘broken’ realities dims ever so slightly.”

Nathan traced the face of the figure on the photo. “So is this the original, or did you create it out of a dead reality?” The woman in the photo continued to look up into the eyes of the photographer, her face tilted, obscured by the growing shadow around her.

The scientist paused. “It is easier to… ‘scan’ -for lack of a better word- an object and recreate it here using the device than to physically move an object across the boundaries of two realities. I assure you that photograph is a perfect duplicate to just above a quantum level. By any reasonable measurement, that is the photo you lost.”

By his own reasonable measurement, Nathan agreed. The photo sent him flowing back within himself, down into the memories of that day. The silence of the empty church, abruptly broken every so often by the sound of a closing shutter echoing off the high walls. The beam of white afternoon light wandering in from the entrance doors, illuminating the floor of the processional isle without disturbing the dark solitude of the rafters. He snapped the shot without much thought, pointing the camera away from the stained glass windows he came to see and instead down towards her as she looked up. It was that slightly surprised and so shy smile that Nathan later found going through the negatives. Shining up among so many underexposed frames of glass and iron was a single moment of truth and beauty captured with all the effort and time of taking a breath.

After all her things were arranged in sagging brown cardboard boxes in a locked closet and she herself was arranged in a lacquered Cyprus casket in the soil, it was the one photo he never found despite the long days spent tearing apart their home drawer by drawer and shelf by shelf.

“How did you know handing me this photo would get me to sit and talk?”

“We found early on that interviews with your other selves proceeded briskly after presenting you with credentials of our travel. For this reality and a similar few, it was a lost keepsake. For others, it was a matter of materializing a gold bar in our hand. In quite a few we performed a display of divine intervention to convince your selves of our importance.” The scientist made an almost imperceptible grimace at this.

Nathan broke from his mild reverie. “You performed a goddamn miracle at Starbucks to get me to talk?”

The scientist responded immediately, “The probability of your selves being responsive to religious imagery was quite high.”

The scientist noted hopefully, “my selves did eventually apologize for the momentary deception after the interviews were concluded.”

Nathan’s disgust remained apparent in the slope of his eyebrows. He took a less accusatory tone. “Let’s just get this over with. Where were we before the stories of playing God?”

The scientist resumed his smile and continued. “As you now understand where I come from and are now informed of your unique position in the Many Worlds, my role is to record your response to the information.”

The scientist somehow managed to sit up even straighter, anticipating the data to come.

Nathan only blinked.

“You travel all this way,” Nathan spat, “and put in this much effort just to ask me what I feel about something that doesn’t even make sense? Why not ask about how I feel about being shown irrefutable evidence the Tooth Fairy exists?”

He looked out through the window beside them, hiding his mouth behind a shaking hand. “Why not ask about my life or what I think of the world I can see?” Almost whispering now, “Hell, I’m not sure what I would say about my life as it is, let alone about lives I’ve never imagined.”

The scientist nodded. “We are already well informed about the circumstances of your life. Many of the other interviews concentrate on your history in realities nearly identical to your own. Your biography has been recorded across more worlds than the number of seconds you will ever personally live.”

Extending his hand across the table, the matte black metal eyepiece in his hand regarding the ceiling, the scientist uttered a single small laugh. “Nathan, you are one of a mere handful of your fellow selves who will ever know his place in the greater makeup of all creation. The other interview subjects are never completely informed. You are given this incredible knowledge so we may record your response to what we have collected to complete the study.”

Outside, cars passed along a boulevard filled with people busily living their lives. Men and women going about their days with the belief, realized or not, of their own importance in the world. They all dreamt and imagined and lamented other lives and other worlds. Unknown to them, somewhere out in the vastness of infinity and the quirks of probability, it all existed. Everything existed.

“No one should know this. Not with this life. Not with any.”

Sunlight reflected and played within the tears collecting across Nathan’s hand. He saw them sparkle with all the colors of the world in the window’s reflection.

The scientist nodded for a moment and stood up. He took a step towards Nathan and offered a hand. “Do you want to know what our hypothesis was?”

Nathan looked up at the white lab coat. He could just make out black oval rims as he took the hand offered. Reality seemed to flow and sway around him.

“Yes.”

“In my people’s line of work, we are presented with more information than is fruitful to truth. We can organize and manipulate our data to an endless degree. It is rather easy to analyze the effect a butterfly’s flap on a world’s history when you can send the data to another reality to be analyzed by computers that run for millions of years. All that calculating and analyzing is nothing when the machines can send results back to our own timeline in what seems a fraction of a second later.”

The two came to the door separating the café from the open world around them.

“Sometimes we are presented with statistical anomalies. Meaningless correlations arise. As an example, in a previous study of the Many Worlds I found that the occurrence of a single act of fratricide in an early hunter-gatherer tribe common on many timelines sharply correlated with later societal violence over the following millennia. Was there any reason for the connection to exist? No. Did either brother know the consequences their quarrel would create? Of course not.”

Now out in the fresh air, Nathan raised his face to the sky.

“We hypothesized the same was the case for your existence. You exist across so many different dimensions not because history demanded it; you exist merely because statistics dictated one single man must be so. There would be no difference if it were you or I or any of a trillion other people.”

High above, an airliner passed. A passenger inside looked down at the mass of humanity below with disinterest.

“We thank you for your cooperation.”

Nathan felt a faint breeze towards the spot the scientist had been. Alone, holding the photograph now with both hands, he continued peering into the sky.
Somewhere far away, a universe dimmed.

—

© Some rights reserved. “The Most Common Man of the Multiverse” is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives license.

Daniel Travis has a BS in human biology and no right to be writing fiction. He once received money for writing an award winning editorial. The author would be surprised if contacted at danieldtravis@gmail.com.

The day was beautiful, warm and dry. Mason saw it as a perfect opportunity to go running, especially since his family was away for the week. He got into his running clothes and took off down the dirt trail near his house. Fall colors dominated his vision, denying the almost summer warmth of the day.

A smile broke across the young man’s face as he got farther from civilization, enjoying the feel of his body moving at a steady pace, reveling in the fluidity of motion. Only the forest sounds accompanied him on his journey. Distance melted away as Mason flowed down the trail, loving the feel of running. Thoughts wandered as he let his body work, figuring out the rest of his day.

A few miles later, the runner came to a clearing. Stopping, he looked around, not remembering this open area, which surprised him as it was so pretty. The whole thing felt domestic yet somehow wild and free.

Stepping off the trail, he wandered about. “Definitely have to come back here again, I like this spot,” Mason muttered as he continued to roam through it, eyes darting about, trying to take everything in.

Next thing Mason knew the sun had moved significantly, telling him that he had spent more time than intended checking out this pleasant surprise. Only then did the young man realize how tired he was, so he decided to just catch a quick catnap before heading back home.

When Mason awoke, he lifted his head and noticed that there were others in the clearing. A number of people filled the area. Well, perhaps people was the wrong word. They looked different. More lithe, almost ethereal. Nothing like the young man had ever seen.

A giggle caused him to snap his head around, coming face to face with one of them, hunched down so their eyes were level. Colorless eyes greeted him, penetrating and deep. Ageless, even. She continued to giggle as their eyes met, ignoring the look Mason was giving her.

“Well met, stranger,” she said, a odd lilt to her voice which Mason had never heard before. She offered him a hand, which he took after a moment’s hesitation. With a surprising amount of strength, she helped him to his feet, then stepped back as Mason brushed himself off.

Finally he met her gaze again and replied, “I’m sorry, did I stumble into a party I didn’t know about?” He tried to keep his voice calm, still more than a bit nervous about all the strangers. “I just saw this empty clearing and decided to take a break.”

She simply shrugged and waved a hand about. “This? It is a party of sorts, rather impromptu.” Her arm settled by her side again, and a dazzling smile broke out from her face. “I’m Shae.”

“I’m Mason,” he replied, trying to match her smile through his insecurity. He told himself that he did a decent job since she seemed to brighten a bit more before turning away to yell something to some of the others in some strange tongue. After they called out a reply, she nodded once then turned back to the young man. “Come with me,” she said as she took his shoulder and guided him along with her, over to a roaring fire.

A slight push and Mason found himself sitting on a log in front of the blaze, so hot his eyes watered. Then he felt something pressed into his hand. Looking down, Mason found a wooden cup filled with a dark liquid. A sip told him it was both alcoholic and tasty. He looked up to find Shae smiling down at him.

“You are my guest, so drink and enjoy.” Her smile fully in place, she waved him back to the cup, then with a nod, headed off to take care of whatever else she had to deal with.

Eyes still watering but not wanting to insult Shae by moving, Mason continued to drink from the cup. A buzz slowly filled him as he enjoyed the cup’s contents, leaving pleasant warmth flowing through his body. “Never had anything this good,” he muttered between sips, eyes drooping slightly. He saw another of Shae’s people walk by, so he tried to call out to them, hoping to get over his nervousness about the group. However all they did was smile and wave before heading off to dance again.

Somehow his cup never seemed to empty, and the heat of the fire became less bothersome the longer he sat there. The party continued unabated, with no one paying any attention to him. The young man considered trying to work his way into the party again, but something felt wrong about that idea. He discarded the thought, wondering when Shae would come talk to him again.

Finally she appeared, blocking the flame with her body. “Mm, yes I think you’re ready,” she muttered, taking his empty hand and lifting him to his feet. Mason felt like those words should have sent a shiver down his spine, but the rest of him pushed that thought aside as silly. How could Shae mean him any harm, after treating him so well?

The night rushed by after that point, dance and song and wonderment blowing past so fast the intoxicated man simply could not keep up. Then, after a sweet kiss from Shae, she asked him a question, an expectant look on her face. What the question was, Mason could not remember, so he simply nodded his head in reply.

“Is that a yes?” the words somehow got past the fuzziness that filled him, breaking through the sensory overload.

He nodded again, wishing to please her. “Yes,” he choked out the word. A bigger smile broke out across her face, and she stepped into him, lips pressing hard against his. And the sensations flooded through him again, washing away all thought, all senses, leaving him drowning.

The rest of the night was a blur, filled with Shae’s beauty, her soft touch, and the sounds she made. Mason doubted any other night of his life would match the wonderment he felt as he stared up at the stars with Shae by his side, hand entangled with hers. Contentment leached through him and weighed the young man’s eyes down until they finally closed.

A raging headache greeted Mason when he awoke with the dawn. He scrambled to his feet as best as his aching head would allow. Had last night been real, the young man wondered, or had he slammed his head into something while sleeping? No rocks were near, yet that night was so strange, so unreal, and there were no signs left of any massive fire, of the party, or of Shae.

Finally getting his wits back, Mason slowly walked home, glad his parents were out of town so he would not have to explain why had vanished for however long, or why he looked like he had taken a tumble in the dryer.

Once home he checked a computer. Only one day had passed since he’d gone out for the run. So whatever else had happened, not much time had gone by.

He turned off the monitor and began to turn away, but something about the reflection he saw made him stop. His face looked strange, wrong somehow, but the monitor was a poor mirror. Scared now, he rushed to the bathroom, wanting a better look at himself.

Crossing the doorway, a shock filled him when eyes met the mirror. Swirling marks covered his face, an array of colors and symbols. Amazing symmetry, beautiful forms, but nothing like he’d ever seen.

“What the hell,” he blurted out, confusion ruling now. Last night must have been real, but at no point did he remember being beaten about the face, or being tattooed. His back pressed against the wall as he tried to back away from the image of his own face reflected back at him.

“I see you’ve discovered your new gift,” a familiar voice came from outside the bathroom.

“Shae,” he shrieked, terrified now of his nightmare-made-real showing herself. “What did you do to me?”

“Only what you agreed to, dear boy,” she replied, voice silky smooth. “You had to agree before I could mark you as my own.” She stepped into the bathroom, which caused Mason to curl into a ball on the floor.

“My face! what did you d-” he began before being cut off.

“You are marked as mine, a servant,” she snapped. “Scion in the mortal worlds, here to fulfill my needs where I cannot go as easily.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked, finding himself too scared to move.

“Stand up,” she snapped, a strange tone ringing through her voice. At those words, Mason found himself beginning to stand. No matter what he tried, he could not resist her. “You are mine, Mason. My commands are to be followed whether you like it or not. But you have also been blessed with the power to see them through, Sidhe magick.” Those last words came out with a slight purr. Then she cupped his face with her right hand and smiled.

“Now I must teach you what it takes to serve me in the mortal realm.” She looked him in the eyes, then chuckled. “I feel you wondering how you can do anything for me marked as a freak. Fear not, doing that would be silly. Only those with the eyes of a Mystic can see my mark. Even from them you can hide the mark for brief periods.”

The rest of the day was spent with Mason being granted knowledge, not through words but with thoughts and ideas poured into him as though he were simply a vessel to be filled. Finally she nodded her head, turned, and began to leave. At the door Shae paused and looked back over her shoulder, meeting Mason’s eyes. “Remember, you are mine, now and forever.” That smile he had found so amazing just a day ago seared him.

That night Mason lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was basically a puppet now, an extension of Shae’s will. Worse, he did not even know what she would require of him.

Amazing how one little word held so much power. Just that one ‘yes’ had bound him to a life of an unspeakable obligation.

—

© Some rights reserved. “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives license.

Patrick Sullivan is a Software Developer in Denver, Colorado.  He’s passionate about creative ventures, both writing and technical in nature.  When not writing in his preferred genre of fantasy, he’s studying programming ideas and languages as well as usability issues.

Feet firmly planted in the snow held up shaking but determined legs as he took a look at his surroundings. He’d lain eyes on them before, known them well. But it seemed to me that he was for the first time seeing what was around him. Everything that he’d taken for granted, not giving a second notice to. He was the type that usually didn’t notice the details of things, of life. He lived very much for the moment, almost in a child-like way, and I envied that to no end. I was always concerned with every aspect of something, sometimes to the point where I’d lose track alltogether of the larger picture. Not him. Only emotions led his actions.

I can only imagine what that moment was like. He was, as far as I know, ignorant to the situation. I hadn’t told him and tried my hardest not to show anything except positive emotion in my voice, though it was clear were you to look me in the eye. I’ve tried my hardest to put myself where he was standing, taking it all in but I can’t.

Another gust, not as bad as before. Not great, either, but greeted the same way as before. Beautiful. The things that I was thinking, that he, even in this moment of clarity, was not. Warm air meets cold. The intricate ice crystals that form mid-air, carried by the wind as they’re born and deposited somewhere impossible to compute. The snow on the trees, glistening in the sun that wasn’t hindered by a single cloud all morning.

Inhale.

The smells, I can only imagine how he perceived those. They seemed to almost be more important than the sights and sounds surrounding him, us. Alone on only a half-acre of land, covered in a half-foot of snow and ice, painted in beauty that no language holds the words to describe.

Exhale. The only clouds that day escaped his nose and were carried off again. The sun shone brightly. I tried not to breathe, I felt I had already taken too much that day.

I let the silence of the moment speak for itself to anyone willing to listen. To that time, it was the lowest moment of my life. I cannot speak for him.

An icy blast assailed us both at once. It helped in the cooling of a tear coursing its way down my face, but he was unaffected. Like stone, face slightly to the sky, looking and seeing, breathing and smelling, hearing, feeling; living. He moved not an inch, feet firm and stance proud.

Another inhale. Out. In. Out.

Time seemed to drag on forever but for him that couldn’t have been long enough. I wanted so badly to speak but the words weren’t there when I opened my mouth, just clouds escaped. I closed it. How do you tell this to someone? How do you explain your actions and the events to come with the vocabulary that we posses? Words can bring a man to tears, depending on the selection of them but emotions.. there’s no surefire way to convey those.

It had only been five minutes, but for me, I relived over a decade in my mind. I can only imagine he did as well. The sounds of tree branches in the arctic breeze, the sun shining as bright as can be, birds, cars, the sound of my heart trying to break free of its confines. It all faded as I accepted it, condensed down to an barely audible stream of nothing. Nothing we are before we’re given all of this and it’s almost impossible for me to believe that its nothing that we return to when we’re finished.

It’s incomprehensible how exactly to decide just when it’s finished.

Another wind, I paid it no mind and to no surprise, neither did he. He knew. It hit me so hard it was as if the wind grew tenfold. No one told him, but he knew.

I blame the gods, who and whatever they may be. They’re no where on his level of thought but I think it was them that told him. He should know, anyways. At least I didn’t have to explain it; it would take me more than another ten years to figure out how.

Exhale. The sun had visibly moved in the sky, our shadows shifted and he looked at me. I smiled weakly, as best I could, thankful that the cold had taken care of the tears. My face was shaking, to say nothing of the rest of my body.

I dropped to my knees, partially because they could barely support my weight any longer. The snow was cold and wet, instantly soaking through my jeans. I didn’t care.

I was eye-level with him now as he looked back out to the horizon. I patted him on the shoulder. He knew.

“You ready to go, buddy?” Even my voice shook.

He looked at me, gave a little wag of his tail and we headed to the car together.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to know.

–

© Some rights reserved. “What It’s Like To Know” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Lance Wilkinson is a telecommunications technician with a soft spot for, dare we say it: love.

I stood up from where I had lain on the floor of the warehouse. No windows or open doors were within my line of sight, yet I knew it was nighttime. I wish I could say how I knew, because my gut told me it was important, but right now I simply wanted to know why I wasn’t a corpse.

“Finally awake, I see,” came a familiar voice from the shadows. “I was wondering if I had gotten to you in time or not. Looks like I was lucky.” No one stepped forward after those words faded away, leaving me still without a face to go with the idea of my benefactor.

“Where are we?” was about all I could manage, still confused and disoriented. I tried to get my bearings but it simply was not working. In the back of my mind something bugged me, but every time I tried to chase it down, it just skittered away out of reach.

“Why, we’re where I found you,” came the reply from the shadows. “I wasn’t willing to risk moving you after what had happened, so I simply made sure you would not die before the day was out, and let things go naturally from there.”

I simply raised an eyebrow at that. Why would a single day matter so much without medical attention, if I was that bad off?

The other obviously read the look on my face. “Ah,” a smirk carried by that single syllable. “You haven’t figured out yet. I see.” A long pause filled the time before finally the man spoke again.

“I can’t have someone serving me so ignorant,” he began, each word feeling as though it had been carefully weighed before reaching his lips. “it would likely get myself killed along with you. I, and now you, are vampires.”

The word struck like a semi going over 100 miles per hour. I was a night stalking blood sucker? I felt myself begin to shake, likely because shock was setting in. Vampire…

“Not taking it so well,” the other said, suddenly stepping out into the light. He was a tall man, of slight build. Nothing looked out of the ordinary about him. I never would have guessed he was a supernatural being.

I tried to reply, but only sputtered. My brain and lips didn’t want to cooperate right now, not that I could blame them.

The man came up to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll get used to the idea soon enough, I promise.”

Something inside me snapped. Even months later I will never be able to describe what happened inside me next, other than I became an animal.

My arm lashed out, catching the man by the throat. He tried to gasp out a word, but before he could get it out I had slammed him into a nearby pillar. I could feel insane strength flowing through me, power unlike any I had ever felt before. Again my benefactor tried to speak, but I slammed my forehead into his nose with all the new found strength I could muster.

Bones snapped under the force of the blow, and my face felt wet with his blood. The very smell drove my insane rage to new heights. More strikes, more attempted resistance by the Vampire, but I did not let him break free.

At that point I found myself completely lost in the moment, unable to register anything. When I finally came back to my senses, I found the man on the ground, unmoving.

Then I noticed them. Puncture marks on his neck. Dry, deep puncture marks. Had I… I must have. I’d killed the man who saved me, drank his blood.

“Some cop,” I muttered, trying to get my bearings. But then I felt the tickling at the back of my mind. Moment by moment it grew stronger, more insistent. Finally it broke over me, like a wave.

Memories. Hundreds of years worth of memories and knowledge. His. Jonathan’s. Everything about him. Everything he’d done, mine now. The killing, the learning, the feeding. Everything. Even the bitter fact that, deep inside he had wanted to die, but never found the courage to kill himself. Too many years the predator, too much time fighting to survive even among his own kind.

The idea that vampires were despicable creatures was not a new one, not that I had believed they were real. But the memories inside me told tales that made even my worst imaginings seem like a fairy tale. And now, now I was one of them.

My family. Images of them sprang to mind, and at once I flinched. I did not dare see them again, now. They would have to think I was dead, after a long missing person’s period, their hope withering and dying as no sign of me showed up. The very idea made me shudder, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Give them up, for their own good. I was no longer the man they knew and loved, just another monster.

“No, not just another monster,” I whispered, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. “I will not be a monster as Jonathan was for most of his existence, like the creatures his memories tell me about. I must be more, for my own sake. For my family’s sake. For everyone not able to defend themselves from this horrible things.”

Deep down, I knew what I had to do. The only right thing to do was take this new found knowledge, this new found power, and use it as I had been trained in all my years as a cop. Unfortunately, that meant giving up everything I’d worked for in my old life. I would have to push the thoughts of family and friends out of my mind, forever. My career would also have to disappear. Fortunately Jonathan had been a wealthy man, and all the information to get at that money was inside my head now, giving me what I would need to get by.

I had a new goal in life, a new reason to be. Kill the predators of the night, use their own power against them, and protect who and what I could. And find a way to avoid attacking anyone who was not a Vampire the way I had attacked Jonathan. No one but the undead should feel the terror I now brought with me.

Luckily, Jonathan had brought a change of clothing for his new protege, so I was able to change into something not so covered in blood before heading out.

“Time to start this new life,” I muttered under my breath as I exited the building, leaving behind everything I had ever been. Everything except a desire to help those in need.

—

© Some rights reserved. “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Patrick Sullivan is a Software Developer in Denver, Colorado.  He’s passionate about creative ventures, both writing and technical in nature.  When not writing in his preferred genre of fantasy, he’s studying programming ideas and languages as well as usability issues.

As I woke, I immediately felt the intense heat of the sun on my already sweating forehead. The first motion I made, before opening my eyes or taking a deep breath, was wiping the back of my hand across my brow and attempting to mop up some of the perspiration dripping down my face. It did little to help, but I didn’t think there was much that would help in this heat.

I sat up slowly; keeping my eyes closed in early defense against what I was sure was a blinding sun. I lifted my right hand to shield my eyes and braced myself as I peered through my digits cautiously. When I wasn’t blinded immediately I decided to keep my pace slow. I cleared my throat and readied myself to stand up.

“Hey there, he’s awake!” I heard a thick drawl call out, breaking me from my reverie. The man’s voice was velveteen like, thick and slightly uncomfortable to listen to. His voice was considerably deeper than mine and you could hear a lifetimes worth of tobacco on it. Ironically, the man was quite young, late twenties I figured, and he had those sorts of classic looks that girls always seemed to be drawn to. I immediately didn’t want to like this man. So, of course, he had to be the first to come over and greet me. He walked over and hoisted me up, lifting me as if I was his traveling bag. So much for going slow. “Howdy there,” he said as friendly as the cliché would allow him to. “Name’s Tom. You feelin’ alright friend?” he asked, genuine concern on the man’s face.

Tom was one of those fellows who took the “country music” lifestyle far too seriously for his own good. His clothes looked like something out of a John Wayne movie, except his hat was gray rather than black or white. His face was grizzly with an iron like jaw, his eyes cerulean blue. He was about 5’10” but walked like a man with considerable height to him. The only thing that betrayed Tom’s “tough guy” exterior was his kind smile and the laugh lines around his eyes.

“Yeah, just a little dizzy I think,” I answered, touching my temple lightly as if to illustrate my point. It was really to mop up more sweat.

“Good, good; we was startin’ to worry about ya,” he smiled, clapping his hand against the meat of my shoulder. “Not that it makes much sense to worry bout ya in this particular arrangement,” he laughed at himself. I didn’t get the joke. Tom seemed to pick up on this one. “You’ve been out for a little while now,” he explained.

“Yeah…I don’t even know how I got here…” I trailed off, looking around. Nothing about this place seemed familiar at all. This wasn’t home. This wasn’t where I was stationed. Could I have been hit so hard I ended up this far away from home? “You um…you in charge here?” I asked Tom. He laughed at me.

“I don’t reckon anyone’s in charge round here friend. Least not anyone we can see,” he amended quickly, looking over to the men back towards the hole.

“Well, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Friend, you just aren’t asking any questions I can give ya a decent answer to. I ain’t sure what it is we’re doing here…” he answered. I was physically incapable of stopping my eyes from rolling as Tom continued to avoid my questions.

“What do you gents do here?” I asked sternly, looking at the countless number of men all digging a very deep, wide hole. The hole seemed about nine feet wide, though that was a rough estimate. As for the depth, I couldn’t accurately even guess considering that there were men of many different sizes in the hole. It was most likely about four or five feet deep. Tom leaned on his shovel.

“Well,” he started. “We wake up and we dig then we go to sleep. Sometimes we’ll take breaks and talk or what have you but mostly we just wake up and dig and then go to sleep. Course, sleep doesn’t really do much for us, but we do it anyway. I reckon it’s somethin of a habit.”

“Why are you digging?” I asked, looking at the hole. “What are you digging?”

“Can’t answer that one either,” Tom shrugged, looking over the hole. “It don’t seem to get bigger or deeper or change in any way really. We just seem to dig it and it just seems to stay put.” Tom looked at me and I must have given him a questioning look because he simply shrugged his massive shoulders again.

“That doesn’t make any sense though,” I stated in a kind of outrage that lacked anger. That hole simply had to get bigger.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Tom laughed good-naturedly. “Come on friend, we’ll take a walk. You’ll feel better after you get your blood flowin where it needs to be again.”

Tom put an arm across my shoulders and half-led-half-pulled me along side him. The terrain was dirt: that was really all that was there. It was dirt, some patches of dried plants and a few little ledges of chalky-rock but mostly it was dirt. It was dirt and heat and sky. This place was purely nothing. Looking out onto the horizon, there continued to be nothing. Just blue sky and flat, protruding rocks sticking out into the atmosphere. It would have been serene had it not been so infuriating.

It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty either. I was hot, but that was it. I wasn’t fatigued or exhausted or anything but hot. That didn’t make sense either. If it was this hot than I should have found myself thirsty. It would have been hard for me to walk. Nothing about this place made sense. There was a giant hole that never got any bigger no matter how much anyone dug. There was a man who had no answers and yet seemed to know the most here. There was no hunger, no thirst, just epic heat. This place was eternal, the atmosphere was indifferent and, quite simply, nothing seemed to be anything. How or why this realization led me to understand I’m not sure, but the proverbial light bulb flashed over my head and instantly, the illogical world I was now living in made perfect sense.

“I’m dead aren’t I?” I asked, the epiphany washing over me like cold water, only considerably less refreshing. Tom smiled.

“Course ya are friend.”

“Are you dead?”

“Well one ought to reckon,” Tom chuckled, looking back to his comrades with the shovels. “We all are.”

“Where…” I started, clearing my throat lightly as I tried to gather up the courage to ask the question. “Where are we?” I asked.

“Now see friend, that is a good question,” Tom sat down on a slab of chalky rock. He licked him lips in thought, his handsome face twisting slightly. “We all got our guesses, we all got our feelin’s, but there’s only one thing that we can say with certainty,” Tom nodded, lifting his hat slightly. He squinted against the sun and locked eyes with me. “This sure ain’t where we were hopin’ to end up.”

“You think this is Hell?” I asked, sitting down next to Tom so he wouldn’t have to strain his eyes. He shrugged dismissively.

“I don’t think so. Jake over there does. And Max over at the far end thinks this is a kinda, atonement area: where you can make up for your sins and alike…” Tom trailed off.

“What do you think then?”

“Well,” Tom coughed rather suddenly, moving his entire body in the opposite direction from where I was sitting. His large frame quaked as he shook from the spasms. As quickly as his spell had come over him it was gone and he was looking back to me. “Pardon. Anyways, I’m not even sure how to reckon a guess on where this is. I think Max is probably on to something because people are always comin’ and a-goin’ here. There was a fella named Jack who just up and disappeared a few days ago and there’s been a load of em before Jack. There will be a load of em after Jack too I reckon. So I guess callin’ this place, oh what’s the word, Purgatory ain’t that bad of an idea…”

The silence that we sat in wasn’t comfortable, nor was it made any more awkward due to the other’s company. The silence was difficult purely for the information we were both thinking over. There was nothing that could be said to calm neither the situation nor our nerves about the uncertainty of it all. This was simply one of those times that the awkward silence was something to be dealt with.

“How long have you been here Tom?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know bout that,” he answered, furrowing his brow slightly as he looked off to the sun disappearing over the horizon. “See, the sun ain’t real; it don’t come up. We’ve taken shifts and it goes from dusk to dawn. We’ve tried just takin’ off a few hours and seein’ if that lines it up and it don’t: it’s like we ain’t supposed to know what time it is…” Tom trailed off, his face twisting into sorrow for the first time in the conversation. “I wish I could tell ya.”

“When did you die?”

“1848 if I remember. I was minin’ out in California and…” Tom struggled with the memory. “In all honesty I don’t remember much from then no more. Was that long ago?” Tom turned to me, his face filled with hope. I wasn’t sure what answer he was hoping for: neither seemed like they would make this better.

“It was almost a century ago Tom,” I answered. Tom nodded, looking back out to the horizon.

“And how did you die friend?” he asked me, his eyes still fixed on the orange orb in front of us.

“I was fighting in a war. A World War. We have these things called air planes, which are things that fly through the sky that carry people…” I started.

“Yeah, Jake talks about ‘em. He was what they called a pilot.” Tom smiled, seeming proud of his knowledge. I smiled too.

“Yeah, so was I. I was shooting at our enemy and, well, it would appear someone was faster than I was,” I sighed, looking down to my hands. The sky seemed to be taunting me, mocking me for falling from it. The blue angered me in a way I wasn’t used to.

“Hey, we’ve all been beat here,” Tom smiled, hitting me on the back again. “Come on now, stand up. S’bout time for us to start headin’ into the tents and gettin’ some sleep.”

“Tents? What tents?” I asked. Tom pointed off behind him casually. I looked over and, sure enough, there were tents set up for each of the many diggers working on the hole. They had not been there before.

“I know, don’t worry. You’ll get used to it, just like you’ll get used to putting your head down and immediately wakin’ up,” Tom smiled. He swung his arm around my shoulders and started moving, leading me back towards the hole as we walked in silence again.

“Tom?” I started, looking to the taller man. “Do you think I’m going to be here for a long time?” The sound of fear and desperation in my voice was something that I was completely unfamiliar with. In all my life, when confronted with terrifying situations I had always managed to keep my cool. I suppose this was hardly a situation that I had ever been in before.

“That I can’t answer friend,” he sighed, his lips pressed into a tight grimace. “I reckon you’ll be here as long as you need be.”

—

© Some rights reserved. “As I Woke” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

Christina Mason is an English major with aspirations of becoming an author, particularly in the sci-fi and horror genres. She can be contacted at christinapmason@gmail.com. [Website.]

As she worked on her latest hobby, conversations from the past few months swirled in her head, one particular line popping up over and over. “Does this mean you won’t ever consider getting back together?” he had asked, out of the blue after a year and a half of not speaking with her, but it had been the start of a barrage of phone calls and instant messages from her ex-boyfriend.

The third time she tried and failed to stab the wire into the breadboard, she gave up and threw it down. The wire joined others on the table, which looked like an explosion of electronics parts had occurred there.

Maybe I’m just trying too hard to be upset about Kevin, she thought. She didn’t feel particularly angry or upset, but her hands were shaky, and she could feel her eyes stinging as she stared at the wires.

Her gaze moved to the drawing of the circuit that she was trying to build. The drawing was a copy from a book that had come in the electronics sensor kit that she had bought last week, a beginner-level kit – for 12 year olds! – her roommate had joked. She had stuck out her tongue at him in reply. At the time, she had thought a new hobby would help occupy her mind from the depressing job market and the Kevin-troubles.

Suddenly, her brow furrowed, and she leaned in to examine the drawing, and then the breadboard. She realized that for the past 10 minutes, she had been trying to place the wire into the wrong spot. She groaned quietly and rubbed her eyes. She had a feeling that as she continued with her new hobby, she would continue to have these moments of clarity where she would feel utterly foolish.

But that’s the great thing about hobbies like these, she thought. Think long enough about any problem, chances are good that a solution would become clear soon enough. Not like real life. If only life problems had a help support staff or FAQ page, things would be a lot easier. She wouldn’t have to constantly wonder if she was doing the right thing.

—

“I don’t know what to do,” she had sniffled into the phone, the last day as Kevin’s girlfriend.

Kevin didn’t respond for a few seconds. Finally he had said, “That’s childish. It’s your life. You need to take responsibility for the choices that you make.”

“What?” she had said.

“You chose to go to school away from here, before we met,” he had explained. “Of course we can’t see each other as much. You said you don’t know what to do. That’s bullshit. You already decided what you’re gonna do two years ago.”

“What?” she had repeated. His words were not processing correctly in her head.

“We broke up two years ago when you got accepted into college. We just didn’t know it yet,” he had said.

The week following the breakup, she had somehow made it through her classes. She held back tears when Professor Dean went over sound change; she almost started sobbing when the cute TA with glasses passed out the graded papers; and she finally cried while her literature teacher went on a quick smoke break.

And a couple of weeks later, she had caved. She had called Kevin and asked her reluctant ex-boyfriend, “Please, at least consider getting back together.”

“I’m moving to Washington,” he had replied.

—

She remembered the feeling of desperation well. It was hard to forget. But she certainly wasn’t feeling it now. Her apprehension about the constant calls, she decided, was just her mind trying to create problems that didn’t exist.

Night-time calls now were nothing in comparison to the rambling conversations they had had years ago. Now, at 2am, it was mostly he who rambled, his speech drunken and slurred, his intonation low and steady, a sleepy stream of commentary about the bars he had visited that night. She could hear the murmur of music and people talking in the background.

His drawl was lulling her to sleep. Suddenly, she realized he had stopped talking.

“Hello?” she said. She lowered the phone to look at it. The call had ended without her realizing it, just as quickly as it had taken their relationship to end.

The circuit she was working on earlier was disassembled now and she had organized the different parts in little piles. She closed her phone and placed it on the table. She started clearing the kitchen table, where she had been working, packing everything into baggies before placing them in the box that the kit had come in.

Her brow furrowed again, just as it had done before when she had finally realized her mistake on the breadboard. She realized that, just as she had earlier tried to place a wire where it did not belong, Kevin was doing the same. He was so set in getting back with her that he didn’t realize there was a completely different path he could take.

His words during their breakup, from years ago, echoed in her mind, and now she knew what to say the next time he called: “We broke up two years ago, only you didn’t seem to know it.”

—

© Some rights reserved. “And Afterwards, Washington” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

June Owatari is a recent college graduate, floundering in the poor economy. She likes drinking beer, listening to music, and making things.