Happily Never After

by Kirsten Duvall (ed)

  “Grandma, what are you doing on your hands and knees?” asked a girl from behind her.

  Juliet felt her heart racing as she pushed herself to her feet; clutching for a cap that lay on the floor to pull over her hair. “I dropped something,” she replied, keeping her back to the girl.

  “Oh my Grandma! How tall you have gotten since I last visited.”

  “Oh no dearest, you are standing outside and have not taken the step into the house,” Juliet replied, bending her knees and slouching her shoulders to appear smaller.

  She could hear the girl coming closer. “Oh my Grandma! How black your hair has become since last I visited.”

  Juliet raised a hand to the cap and tried to tuck her hair more under it. “Oh no dearest, the light is poor in here and I got soot in it from the fire.”

  “Oh my Grandma!” The girl said as she put a hand on Juliet’s shoulder and pulled at her so they faced each other. “How young you have become!”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “I haven’t time for this.” She forced herself to change back into a wolf and lunged for the girl who screamed and ran from the cottage, dropping the basket she had been carrying.

  She fought the urge to chase after the girl and sniffed at the basket. She nudged the blanket away from the contents and lifted a glowing egg in her jaws. The sky flashed yellow once more, startling, forcing her to bite down on the egg.

  Juliet gagged. Opening her eyes she was no longer in the program and she reached for her mouth and pulled the diet tube from her throat, choking in the process. The contents were dried and crusted around the edges and nothing came from the supplement bag. The sanitation pack reeked and she ripped it off before stepping out of the booth. On wobbling legs she moved out, leaning against the side of the booth until her strength returned

  The lights in the area were dimmed and several of the booths were knocked over, blocking the tunnel. She slid down to the ground and drew her knees to her chest, resting her head against them. The air was heavy and the normally bustling Fortress was silent.

  She forced herself to stand and make her way out of the tunnel. She had to climb over an imager and as she got closer she saw a body lying in tunnel mouth. Flies were thick around the body and Juliet brought her shirt collar up over her mouth and nose. She stepped over the corpse, trying not to look down, but the light had reflected on the arm stripes and Juliet knew it was Faith.

  A hand grabbed her shoulder causing her to scream until another hand covered her mouth and pulled her back into the tunnel.

  “Quiet,” she recognized Vilks’s voice. “They haven’t left.”

  She turned and faced the commander.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “They have been here three months.”

  Juliet’s eyes widened. “Three months? The diet stream lasts a week!”

  He nodded. “I’ve been watching it, but ran out. I hoped you would finish before then.”

  “What about Faith?”

  Vilks looked away from her. “Her hacks were drawing attention and I pulled her out. She was discovered and almost brought them back here. She had to be eliminated.”

  “You killed her?”

  He shook his head. “Someone else on our side did it. You and the others were our last hope and could not be risked. The body has been a deterrent.”

  “What of Burditt and Matiu?”

  Vilks shrugged. “There is no way to know. Your team was the last one still working. The others have long been eliminated within the system. Please tell me you had found something.”

  She shrugged. “We were close, but they need me. We found a weakness but its botanical.” She lied.

  “Your specialty,” he replied. “You can’t log in for very long. There’s no food.”

  “Doesn’t matter, it needs to be done.”

  Before she could pull the glasses back into place and plug in the commander grabbed her hand. “Faith’s last words were Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Does that make sense?”

  She nodded and keyed her ID in. The program had continued running and she found herself in the infinity lab. Matiu sat alone at a computer staring blankly at her.

  “You’re back?”

  She nodded.

  He let out a long sigh letting his shoulders sagged. “You and Burditt logged off within minutes of each other. I’ve been trying to work out a solution, but I don’t know this stuff.”

  “Fortress has fallen. I don’t know how much time I have.”

  Matiu ran his hands through his hair. “The last message from Delsin was that they were tearing the rock off Tower. We haven’t much time.”

  She sat down and started working out the proportions. “Do you know how long we’ve been here?” she asked as she worked.

  “A week tops. The diet stream sends warning if it’s any longer.”

  Juliet shook her head. “Three months. Vilks has been refilling mine and he yanked me because Fortress is out of supply. Faith was taken out because she was drawing too much attention.”

  Matiu’s eyes widened. “You saw Faith?”

  She nodded.

  “Good, I had worried they had sent a feedback loop on her. We thought the same for you. Burditt received a message from his De/Su officers and had to log. He said not to worry that he would find us.”

  Juliet decided against telling Matiu about Faith, and concentrated on her work. “Did the information I found in the egg transfer to you?”

  Matiu nodded. “It was exactly what we needed, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “What do you mean? It didn’t show the origin of the threat?”

  Matiu pressed a finger to his lips and tapped away at the console. A moment later the Unit 6 image was barricaded by a stream of code that encircled it. “I didn’t say that,” coughed Matiu. “It was like we figured before the safety net; the threat is not external as the good Commander wants us to believe.”

  “What?”

  “The Educators and De/Su are working together to bring down the Sanctuaries and I can’t figure out why.”

  Juliet shook her head. “Wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

  Matiu arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Faith wanted us to know about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If it is the De/Su in charge then Vilks has set it all up. We can’t give them what they want.”

  “We have no choice. We don’t know what will happen when this stuff is released, but if it doesn’t happen, the Sanctuaries will be torn apart from within.” He reached a hand out to her. “Have you finished?”

  She nodded and handed him the equation. “For better or worse.”

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple quivering. “For better or worse,” he said and pressed the key to transmit the formula to Delsin.

  The room flashed yellow and everything went black.

  Screams were the first thing to rouse Juliet from her sleep. She opened her eyes but all she saw was blackness around her. She could not move her arms and a thick strap bound her chest against a cushioned board. The faint piney scent of Thryptomene infiltrated her nose and lungs. There was another scent beneath it, something she could not identify. With each breath she felt more alive.

  A humming sound came from the darkness and the belts around her loosened. She slid her wrists out of their holders and tried to bring them up. She pressed her hands against a metal wall directly in front of her. Plastic tubes lay cold against her skin and she tried to pull them out, but they burned as the slid out of her veins.

  “Stop,” a familiar voice called from the other side of the metal.

  “Burditt?” she whimpered.

  “Yes, wait a moment, we’re working on opening the pod. Stay still!” he commanded.

  A sliver of light formed a ring around her from head to foot. A scraping sound followed as the metal wall was pulled away from her and Burditt stood before her in a grey coverall. He was thin, lacking all the muscle of a soldier. Beside him was Matiu, who was much shorter than his simulated self.
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  “How did you get to Fortress?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat.

  “This isn’t Fortress,” Matiu replied.

  Burditt stepped forward and began removing the bindings on her legs. He looked up at her. “This is reality.”

  Vliks stepped out of the shadows. “Correct. Thanks to you, the second program has been broken and we can now live outside the Program.”

  “The threat was a ruse, we weren’t ending an enemy we were waking ourselves,” whispered Burditt as he pulled off the last band that was around her neck, his lips brushing her ear. “It was all a lie.”

  “Now we will face reality the way we were intended! Not hooked up to machine living in a pixelated database!” preened Vilks. He turned away from them and started down the pod-lined corridor. “Come children! Let us finish waking the rest.” The commander began placing marks on the pods as he went along.

  “We found the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” muttered Matiu, who turned on his heel to follow Commander Vilks.

  Juliet leaned into Burditt, looking over his shoulder at the departing pair and the rows upon rows of black pods lining the hall. “We face reality now, for better or worse.”

  About Andrea L. Staum

  Andrea L. Staum is the author of Blood of the Sire Book 1 of the

  Dragonchild Lore series. She's a trained motorcycle technician with an Associates in Supervisory Management, is an amateur home renovator, and somehow manages to find time to write. She lives in south central Wisconsin with her husband, two demanding cats, and two ornery rabbits. Please visit her Facebook page at: facebook.com/pages/Andrea-L-Staum-Author/146878242143910

  Mr. Trueworthy

  by Carol Smallwood

  Once upon a time, an insurance services representative lived in a decaying stone mansion by a pond far from the road near Traverse City. His ad in the Yellow Pages read:

  Trueworthy’s Allstate Insurance Agency Has Been Meeting Traverse City Needs Since 1970

  Free, red custom-made, genuine alligator-like skin wallets with each new policy!

  Auto, Farm, Life, Homeowners. Affordable payment plans. Competitive Rates.

  Since his work mostly involved investment counseling with a lot of work on-line, he was seldom seen. Dogs nearing his high iron fence (kept in good repair) would slink away with lowered heads and hair raised on their backs. The raccoons did not even try to get near the frogs in the pond. There should have been many butterflies and moths attracted to the pond, but there were none and so there were no birds.

  Neighborhood children called him Yeller Hammer. After one boy who’d seen him hammering said, “He yelled a lot and took a shot at me,” kids stopped going there at Halloween.

  The rich man lived by himself because his wife disappeared after their children left home. He spent many hours each day thinking how to cheat even more people so he could get richer. When the moon was full he would take his gun to the pond, shoot frogs on lily pads and hammer them thin on the rocks to get the most skin. He used their skin to make the “free, custom-made, genuine alligator-like skin bags with each new policy” as seen in his ad.

  One year when the maples were turning to scarlet and gold, the man noticed all the frogs gathered at one end of the pond where the rocks were. The next few days he noticed the lily pads kept coming closer to the edge of the pond.

  The next night he began hearing noises from his cellar that sounded like “plop, plop” but he thought it was water dripping. The next night the frogs began croaking, greedycreep, greedycreep, greedycreep, in the cellar and soon the croaking lasted day and night.

  When the croaking got so loud he couldn’t hear stockbrokers on the telephone, he asked his closest neighbor half a mile away to come and asked: “Do you hear frogs croaking?”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing.” As the neighbor was entering the decaying stone mansion, he remembered the day the investor had cheated him on a policy.

  “Come and stand by this floor register so you can hear better.”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing.” He remembered the day the investor had spread lies about him.

  “Bend over the register so you can hear better.”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing. As he bent over he had remembered the day when he had stolen his mail.

  The next day the croaking became louder. Greedycreep, greedycreep, greedycreep

  He asked his neighbor’s son: “Do you hear frogs croaking?”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing.” As the neighbor’s son was entering the decaying stone mansion, he remembered the day the investor shot his dog and left it to die.

  “Come and stand by this floor register so you can hear better.”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing.” He remembered the day the investor refused to reimburse him when his motorcycle was stolen.

  “Bend over the register so you can hear better.”

  “No, Mr. Trueworthy, I hear nothing. As he bent over he had remembered the day when he’d gone back on his word to help sponsor his soccer team.

  The rich man stuffed rags in his ears to block out the croaking. He saved all his Seagram’s to drink at night so he could sleep and his voice became more cracked each night yelling (he didn’t want to spend money for pest control service) to scare the frogs away. The chorus of, greedycreep, greedycreep, greedycreep, became louder and louder each day.

  One day when Mr. Trueworthy was repairing his high iron fence dressed in a tattered tee-shirt displaying, “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned,” he heard the weeds rustling behind him. He whirled around with his hammer raised.

  A large frog hopped up to him quaking. “Please, sir, do not kill my wife.”

  “I do not kill.”

  A smaller frog hopped up to him shaking. “Please, sir, do not kill my daughter.”

  “I do not kill.”

  A tiny frog hopped up to him quaking and shaking. “Please, sir, do not kill my brother.”

  “I do not kill.”

  It was at the height of fall colors when ducks were flying south in “V” formation and brown cat tails were becoming fuzzy when a United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Planner called the authorities about Mr. Trueworthy. The planner had been checking on a tree disease Mr. Trueworthy refused to treat which was spreading in the neighborhood. He told the sheriff no one came to the front door three days in a row and thought the man might be ill.

  When the sheriff and deputy sheriff came, they couldn’t find any sign of the man inside the decaying stone mansion but noticed a narrow path of newly crushed weeds from the pond to the cellar door. The deputy sheriff saw some red lily pads and tufts of white but thought they were fall colors and milkweed puffs. The sheriff spotted yellow teeth near the cellar door but thought they were from a wild animal and that the yellow nails were dried weeds. The tattered tee-shirt (they could just make out the word “Penny”) was thought to be from some farmer’s scarecrow.

  The men stayed close to each other after finding Mr. Trueworthy’s bumper sticker, “Support Your Right to Bear Arms,” impaled on his high iron fence. There was an odd smell in the air and each noticed the other quaking and shaking. They kept looking over their shoulders and were glad to leave the decaying stone mansion as quickly as they could. The sheriff and his deputy were so eager to leave, they missed seeing the frogs hopping down the narrow path of newly crushed weeds. And the diving boards in the pond in the shape of human ribs.

  Before he got into his car the deputy sheriff asked, “Have you ever heard such a loud bunch of frogs?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “You could almost believe they were having some sort of a celebration, couldn’t you?”

  When they were having coffee at McDonald’s the sheriff remarked, “You know, I can’t get the sound of those croaking frogs out of my head.” After taking aspirin with a third cup of coffee, he said, “Let’s go and write up our report.”

  The deputy rose and hitched up his belt. He was sti
ll shaking and quaking. He picked up his “free, custom-made, genuine alligator-like skin wallet” from the table and remarked, “You know, I can still smell that odd smell.”

  The decaying stone mansion was soon said to be haunted because hammering could be heard again on moonlit nights. If anyone had the courage to investigate they’d have noticed the lily pads displaying fresh (pounded extra thin) pink skin formed a smiley face in the pond.

  About Carol Smallwood

  Carol Smallwood’s over four dozen books include Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and TeachingonPoets & Writers Magazinelist of Best Books for Writers;Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing(Key Publishing House, 2012); Lily’s Odyssey (All Things That Matter Press, 2010).

  You can find out more about her here: pw.org/content/carol_smallwood

  Iron Henry

  By Kasidy Manisco

  It wasn’t the first time Adam bled for his job. It wouldn’t be the last. Adam wiped his hands on a dirty handkerchief and stuck it back in his pocket, trying to concentrate for the last few minutes of his shift on a gear that wouldn’t stick right. He tried his hardest, but the gear wouldn’t go where it was supposed to, and the nuts wouldn’t line up right. He sighed, frustrated, and tried one more time, but it wouldn’t fit on the short rod sticking out of the bottom of the machine, and Adam scraped his already raw fingers on a sharp point and cut his finger. He automatically stuck the finger in his mouth, then quickly wiped the blood and spit away on his handkerchief before stowing it away again.

  Adam frowned. The stupid machine wouldn’t work if the gear wasn’t fixed, and if the gear wasn’t fixed, no product on this machine would be made, and then the workers wouldn’t be paid. It was something his boss liked to call a “shit problem”.