Every so often, we happen upon an image that screams flash fiction challenge. We then post it in our authors Facebook group and get out of the way. The following is one such image and the flash fiction it inspired our amazing authors to write.
PUNCH LINE BY ALYSON GRAUER
Spud wiped the condensation from his visor and grinned.
“So the bartender says,” Marnie continued, her voice crackling in his headset, “‘I don’t care whose dog it is, but Rip Van Winkle!'”
Spud guffawed. “Marnie, that’s TERRIBLE!”
“I know,” Marnie chuckled on the other end of the line, and Spud could hear the smugness in her voice even through the interference.
“Where do you even get all of these jokes? I don’t even think I’ve heard you repeat one yet.”
“I gotta have something to keep you going out there,” she replied, cheerfully. “You need to keep up your morale while on patrol, and laughing helps you stay sane.”
“Sane?” Spud shook his head as he stepped over a number of broken crates, the rusty vessel docked alongside the pier motionless and silent in the fog.”It’s been a long time since any of us were sane, Marnie. You should know better.”
“I know,” Marnie said again, but her voice softened. She paused. “Listen, Spud, I… I know it’s awful out there. But it’s been ages since anyone actually saw anything.”
Spud slowed to a halt, standing on the eerie, silent dock. He studied the scene, the remnants of a busy day in the cargo business torn to pieces all around him. “Yeah?” he prompted her. “Go on.”
“Well… I just. Do you never wonder why?”
“Why? Why what?” Spud squinted up at the top of a signal tower which still gleamed faintly red in the daylight. “We destroyed ’em all ages ago, that’s why.”
Marnie was quiet, and for a moment Spud only heard the faint crackle of her breathing, and the faint shifting of rusted metal in the breeze. Then there was a clang from somewhere within the cargo ship, as though something had fallen from a great height and clattered to the ground. Spud whirled, weapon raised, heart suddenly pounding. It’s nothing, he told himself. Nothing left. Nothing’s left. It’s just the wind. It’s just my mind, and Marnie talking about the past.
“Spud?” Marnie’s voice was small.
“Yeah, Marnie?”
“I think . . . some of them are still out there.”
“Marnie, stop this talk. It’s not worth scaring yourself.”
“Oh Spud, I wish . . . I wish it weren’t so. But I think they’re still out there. And I think they’re coming back.”
“Marnie, I think I heard something,” Spud heard himself saying before he could help it. He was moving slowly towards the cargo ship, squinting through his visor, his heart pounding.
“Spud, I’m sorry I brought it up.” Marnie whispered. “Do you want to hear another joke?”
There was a much bigger noise from inside the rusted ship, and Spud stopped in his tracks. “Sure.”
“Okay . . . What’s big and gray and doesn’t like humans?”
Without warning, the ship split apart as easily as a banana being peeled from the inside out.
Spud dropped his weapon with a clatter, his insides releasing with numb terror. He stared at the thing as it unfolded, rising up before him and stretching its many limbs, jaws straining as though in a yawn.
“Spud?”
The thing looked at him. Spud stared back, in blank disbelief.
“Spud, copy. What’s big and gray and—”
The thing made a terrible noise, and Spud said, “Marnie!”
“Spud?! Do you read me? What was that sound?”
The line went dead. Marnie sat very still, her heart thundering in her chest, and her hands white knuckled around the radio transmitter, unable to let go.
•••
Grauer’s short story, “Lavenza, or The Modern Galatea,” appeared in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology. Her first full length novel, On the Isle of Sound and Wonder, will be released the spring of 2014.
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PEST CONTROL BY S. P. MOUNT
Eerie. To think this is where it all began, the rudimentary shipyard that will see the creation of a fleet of sophisticated Starships in less than half a millennium; computerised monsters that will evolve to become sentient predators to supersede the brilliance of the minds that created them. To bite not only the hands, but also humanity itself, spraying it as an infestation with vitrifying beams, no more than an army of glass statues where it stood against them.
Yes, so primitive, such humble beginnings, yet a beauty in this ugliness; the sky turbulent; a veritable canvas of oil; the earth, soiled, all in the monochromatic influence of the Homo sapiens; not a weed to colour their dingy world even without the annihilation of all things organic. And hard to believe, once upon a time, that people could breathe this atmosphere without a bionic respiratory system.
But what of those Starships now; what of the future? Will the destruction of this place and others like it be enough to save humanity from eradication; such as it’d evolved with its mechanical encouragement? Or will those celestial marauders simply be constructed in other times, places; man intent on self-obliteration in any event?
How will what we’ve done here today change what I have known history to be? Will there even be an Earth when I return? Restored? But how can it be? For here begins a different path. What will I find there? Will I have a wife, children? Or will I simply disintegrate, never having been born at all? Will those attentive beasts still glide the skies intent on destroying anything even slightly organic that dares to waver in the breeze?
But more to the point, will those b**stards still inject my visor with shaving foam? Yeah, happy frikkin’ birthday Azeurus! Hilarious.
•••
New to The X, Mount’s first short story, “Black Ice”, will appear in our winter Back to the Future anthology, slated for release January 2014.
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BOUGHT AIR BY DAVID W. WILKIN
The world goes to pot, and I get stuck with this. Twenty paces, turn left. Twenty paces, turn left. And again, and again. Walk the effin square.
Herbert talked to himself. What else did you do when you walked post. There was a time when he didn’t do this, but then there was a time, when running water was clean and you could drink it. When air was free and everyone breathed it. Well, maybe it wasn’t so clean here in the motor city. And a place which made its money on gas polluting clunkers…
Fools he thought again. If the world had paid more attention to pollution and less to global warming… Both had contributed to the way things were. Plagues that took nine out of ten people in the industrialized nations. Less in the others, but an imbalance and a destruction of the infrastructure.
The Northern USCAN Coalition Government, stepping in to preserve what little there was, as those wanting to breath sucked on canned air. And with not enough people to work the steel mills, stripping ships and skyscrapers for their metal was a way to making yourself a millionaire. Herbert was paid 7.75 an hour to make sure that no one here in Detroit thought they could become a millionaire at the Nuscan Coal’s expense.
Far too much had gone the way of the Dodo bird. Reminded him of his friend Scott…
•••
David W. Wilkin’s short story, “Micawber and Copperfield,” appeared in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology. Wilkin has several published works and a project under development with The X.
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THE CLIENT BY BENJAMIN IRELAND
They never told us who the clients were, and we never asked. I got my gold and that’s all I really cared about. But that one day I saw a client, I wish I hadn’t.
I walked around the warehouse for the eighteenth time that day, ignoring the ache in my heels. Twelve years on the job and I could still feel the skin coming off my feet after a day of perimeter duty. One circuit of the facility took about thirty minutes.
I looked to my left. My HUD recognized the gesture and pulled up the time and weather information.Seven minutes until the end of my shift. I smiled despite myself, flexing my fingers around the heavy blaster rifle in my hands. Five kilos of Lair batteries and graphine got hard to hold after nine hours.
They didn’t tell us who the sail barge was for, and I didn’t even think to ask. But I was just about to put in for the night when the client arrived, their galactic cruiser’s landing lights lit up my visor like Coruscant.
I stepped to the side as the prettier guards in their shiny white armor approached. The guys that looked good, but really didn’t count as soldiers. The door of the ship hissed open and lowered to the deck with a thud. Then the weirdest looking alien I’d ever seen slithered out. That’s when I knew I’d had my fill being a guard for Ubrikkian Industries.
•••
Ireland’s short story, “Kissed a Snake,” appeared in Dash of Madness: a Thriller Anthology. He will also have a short story in our upcoming Back to the Future anthology. His first full novel, Kingdom City, is slated for release January 2014.
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RETIREMENT PLAN BY J. M. SALYARDS
“Halt the tank.”
The sixty ton beast shuddered to a stop and began its rough idle, the turret rocking once under the weight of the massive main gun before the vertical stabilizer did its work.
Fellings, the driver, sighed over the helmet comm-link. “What’s up, Sergeant? We’ve got a deadline. Battalion is supposed to assemble in forty mikes, and we’re still fifteen clicks out.”
“I know,” Sgt. Reine replied. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?” Gunner Haley asked. He and loader Bullman, sharing the turret with their commanding NCO, glanced over at Reine, who crouched down from the cupola to look at them.
“It’s just rumors, but if they’re calling the whole division in, there must be some truth to ‘em. Look, fellas, it’s been a long-ass war. We’ve been through a lot together. But I ain’t goin’ in for no “special re-education” or whatever it is. Nobody’s putting a pill in me.”
“Come on, Chuck. That’s just for the prisoner regiments,” Haley said. “The war’s over. We won.”
“Yeah? You taken a look around, lately? Is this what winning looks like? Naw, man. Something else is going on, here. I tried to keep us clean of all the messiest stuff. Like what went down in Harrisburg, and Dover. You guys can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed more and more of those ‘penal’ regiments, and less and less of our guys—regular line guys. I’m through watching those guys in black murderin’ kids, shooting dogs for fun, and burnin’ up women.”
Cpl. Bullman snorted. “We had nothing to do with that sh**.”
“But we didn’t stop it, neither. And what if we’d tried? They’d have turned on us,” he snapped his gloved fingers, “like that. We need to face facts here, gents. We’ve always been expendable. Now, we’re obsolete. So the way I figure it, we either get an ‘upgrade’, or we end up in the trash.”
“So what, Sarge?” Fellings asked. “If we don’t show up at Battalion, it’s not like they’re just gonna shrug and say ‘What’s one missing tank?’ They’ll come looking for us.”
“They can have the tank. My enlistment was up two months ago. They ain’t getting no more of me.” Reine unbuckled from his commander’s seat. “Hand me the rifle.”
Bullman did as the Sergeant asked. “Where you going, Chuck?”
“I’m hoofin’ it. West. To the mountains. Y’all can come, if you want, but I’m not giving, or countermanding any orders. You gotta decide.” He threw the latch of the cupola and opened the commander’s hatch to the overcast sky. “I ain’t for sentimental goodbyes. Take care, boys. See you in hell.”
He climbed out of the hatch and slung the rifle at the low ready, before hopping down to the abused pavement. A great weight grew wings and lifted off his shoulders, and it was that exact moment that he realized he’d been carrying it for years.
Orienting himself, he began to walk.
He’d not gone twenty meters before he heard the background rumble of the tank cease, as the engine cut out.
Sgt. Reine smiled for the first time in the longest time. He stopped to let his crew catch up.
•••
Salyard’s first full-length novel, Shadow of the Last Men, was released in August 2013 to excellent reviews. The second installment of The Next Man Chronicles is already well-underway and is slated for release in August 2014.
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