KZINE MAGAZINE
Issue 22
Edited by Graeme Hurry
Kzine Issue 22 © September 2018 by Kimota Publishing
cover © Dave Windett, 2018
The Restoration © Ryan Fitzpatrick, 2018
Twins © Mark Bilsborough, 2018
Dead Ringer © Peter DeChellis, 2018
Danger Men At Work © Ken McGrath, 2018
The Floating Of THe Dead © Louis Palmerino, 2018
Manipulation © E.V. Morozov, 2018
Never Take The Closing Shift © Ana Gardner, 2018
Note: An editorial decision has been taken to retain the spelling and vocabulary from the author’s country. This may reduce consistency but it is felt it helps to maintain authenticity and integrity of the story.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the individual author, for artwork it is the artist.
CONTENTS
THE RESTORATION by Ryan Fitzpatrick (10)
TWINS by Mark Bilsborough (14)
DEAD RINGER by Peter DiChellis (3)
DANGER MEN AT WORK by Ken McGrath (15)
THE FLOATING OF THE DEAD by Louis Palmerino (17)
MANIPULATION by E.V. Morozov (12)
NEVER TAKE THE CLOSING SHIFT by Ana Gardner (12)
Contributor Notes
The number in brackets indicates the approximate printed page length of the story.
THE RESTORATION
by Ryan Fitzpatrick
George Durnam had spent the last fifteen minutes building towers from the Zener cards, but each time he had got close to the top, the glossy coating had caused the cards to slip across each other, the sudden rupture sending the delicately placed tiers above into momentary freefall before they landed on the desk with a whump of air.
He looked up a moment before the knocking started.
“Come in,” he said, opening his arms wide and scooping the cards into a pile. If he really wanted to, if he really wanted to, he could have made the tower stand. It was just that his heart was not in it.
The door to his office creaked open a few inches, and a blonde ringlet of greasy hair swung into the room. It was followed by the slightly sweaty face of a young girl.
“Hi,” the face said, the strip lighting casting harsh shadows across her pimples. “I’m here for-“
“Miss Bellamy is it?” he asked, looking down at the sheet of paper to his left and then back up at the girl. The paper was blank, but gave him an air of credibility. The young woman nodded.
“Excellent. If you’d like to come in and take a seat?”
The girl nodded again and entered the room, closing the door softly behind her.
“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Durman,” she said, addressing one of the murky green tiles beneath her feet. “The campus bus didn’t-“
“That’s fine,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “You can hang your stuff up over there, if you’d like.”
She looked up to see where he was pointing and fumbled her shabby looking coat from her shoulders, the snow that lay there not yet melted into the fabric.
The woman looked to be around twenty, but carried herself as if she were much younger, keeping her head pointed down at the floor as she made her way to the desk, her arms remaining tight across her midriff in a self-conscious act of concealment. She sat down awkwardly opposite him, checking the chair first, as if it might reach up and take a chunk out of her ass.
George resisted the urge to shake his head in disappointment. Her lack of confidence, combined with the fact that she had not used her claimed abilities to foresee whatever mishap with the bus had caused her to be late, did not fill him with optimism.
“Good morning, Miss Bellamy,” he said, managing to manipulate his lips into what he hoped was a reassuring smile. It was always better when the subjects were relaxed, and this girl seemed to be on edge.
She did not smile back, and flashed her eyes up at his own efforts in that department for less than a second.
“Thank-you for coming today,” he said, merging the pile of cards into one and beginning to shuffle them. “I believe you’re here for the gift card?”
“No,” she said after a pause, squirming in her seat slightly. “I’m here for the money.”
“Ah,” he said, leaning back in his chair and smiling. “I admire your confidence.”
The girl nodded, but continued to look at the floor, the same place she had addressed her previous response.
“I must warn you though, Miss Bellamy,” he said, leaning forwards again. “I have given out a lot of gift cards in the last two months.”
It was supposed to be light-hearted, but the girl looked up at him again with dour eyes, lingering a little longer this time.
“I’m here for the money.” she repeated.
“In that case,” he said, her quiet determination intriguing him and throwing him off balance. “Am I to assume you believe you possess the power of clairvoyance?”
She shrugged.
“Well, that’s fine,” He picked up the pile of cards. “Because that’s exactly what we are here to test. Do you know what these are?”
She nodded, again without looking up. “I know.”
“Good,” he said, beginning to shuffle them again. “Please bear with me whilst I explain anyway. It’s important to be clear on the parameters of the experiment.”
“Yes, sir.”
George smiled, a real one this time, the formality of the title still tickling him, even after all these years. It was something he never got used to, no matter how many of these tiny country bumpkin colleges he found himself teaching at. Ormill itself was the kind of small, mid-western whistle-stop in which a man could fart and it would make the Sunday papers. He didn’t like it much here, but it was home. For now.
His other job, his real job, was finding people with psychic or extrasensory ability, and it was a job he took very seriously, despite the lack of results. Most schools, desperate as they were for staff, did not mind him conducting his experiments on the side, as long as he showed up on time and didn’t rock the boat. So far, however, and somewhat predictably, Ormill had been a complete bust.
“There’s no need to call me ‘sir’ in here,” he said. “I may be a tutor at this college, but this is not a test and you will not be graded. In fact, I believe you mentioned something on your application form?”
The girl looked squeamish again, and her thumbs seemed to be locked in battle for top spot. The skin around the nails was frayed with teeth marks.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, forgetting or ignoring what he had just said. “I’d like my results to be treated confidentially.”
“Of course,” he said. The girl looked up, the smoky charcoal of her eyes meeting his own for their longest period yet.
“No matter the outcome. Please.” Her voice was firm for the first time. He held her gaze for a moment. “It’s just, the other girls… they think I’m a…”
“Freak?” he finished. She did not recoil at the word as he thought she might, but slowly nodded instead. “It’s understandable, really.” She looked up quickly, her eyes wounded beyond their usual melancholy. He shrugged. “People fear what they don’t understand. But I can assure you that your answers and identity will remain anonymous, no matter the outcome of the test. Now, let’s begin.”
“Ok.” she said. George nodded.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, there are five images in a deck of Zener Cards. Some psychics attribute a sort of magical significance to the symbols, but I personally do not believe tha
t. Do you, Miss Bellamy?”
“No.” she said.
“Good,” he said, fanning out the cards and selecting five of them, removing them from the deck and laying them face up on the table. “In order then; the hollow circle, the Greek cross, the three waves, the square and the five pointed star.” He tapped each one as he gave it a name. “There are twenty five cards in each deck, of which I have two. I will be testing you on the full fifty. Only after the test has been completed will you receive your compensation – a five dollar gift card for participation, or a cash prize of one thousand dollars for a display of psychic or clairvoyant ability.”
She nodded, letting more of her limp hair fall into her eyes. She looked more focused now.
“I will slide each card from the deck, leaving it face down on the table. You will make your guess, and only after you have predicted the image will I lift the card and record whether it was a hit or a miss. Your results will not be revealed to you until the end of the test. Is that all ok?”
The girl nodded again but remained silent. He hoped her psychic ability was a little more developed than her oration skills.
“Did you know, Miss Bellamy,” he said, placing the cards in a pile in the middle of the table and taking a pen and paper from his drawer to record her results. “That when these tests were first conducted, the high rate of clairvoyance was attributed to the subject being able to see the reflection of the image in the test administrator’s cornea? That is why I will ask you to wear this.”
He removed the blindfold from the drawer and passed it to her. She turned it over in her hand for a moment, running a battered thumb over one of the eyes and seeming to deliberate. After a moment, she gave a small shrug and slipped it over her head.
“When you’re ready, I’ll remove the first card.”
“I’m ready,” she said, almost a whisper.
A sudden thrill of excitement washed over him. He tried to moderate it—he had been wrong before. Lots of times.
“Then let’s begin.”
Taking the top card from the deck, he placed it face down on the table. The girl seemed to sense he had done so, and turned her head in the direction of it. The left side of her face seemed to droop slightly, just for a moment, and then return to its usual position.
“Star,” she said calmly. “It’s a star.”
George lifted the card to reveal a black star on a white background. He remained emotionless and drew a line in the hit column. Placing the pen back on the table, he pulled out the next card.
“Square,” she said.
George flipped the card and calmly made another note in the hit column. Again, he tried to temper his excitement—it was no sign of anything yet; the average rate for guessing alone was twenty five percent. He slid another card from the deck.
“Cross.”
He made another note.
The test continued in this way for the next fifteen cards, and his excitement grew with each reveal. At twenty cards, George stopped making notes - it was conclusive. Sarah Bellamy, a shy, awkward, and frankly rather ugly undergraduate at Ormill Community College, was psychic.
He slid the next card off the top of the deck and allowed the room to darken around them, feeling the warm glow of her abilities as he did what he had come to Ormill to do.
For the first time since the test had started, the young woman looked agitated, as if reading a joke about her mother in which she did not understand the punchline. It was the longest gap between drawing the card and her answer since the test began, and she readjusted herself in her chair and leaned forward, as if proximity to the card would reveal the image.
He hadn’t been sure at first, but now it was definite; each time the girl made her guess, her left side of her face would droop like a stroke victim, and it had now reached a new lowest point. No wonder the other kids thought she was a freak.
She sat back in the chair and lifted the blindfold, looking down at her thumbs.
“I can’t… I can’t see the cards.” she said quietly. George smiled. “I understand that Miss Bellamy, that’s the nature of the test, I’m afraid.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. I… I can normally see them. Like, through them. The shapes appear in my mind.”
“I see,” he said. “And whilst that is fascinating Miss Bellamy, I would very much appreciate it if you would continue the test.” He tapped the back of the card that lay face down between them.
“What?” she said, her eyebrows lowering and her voice full of wonder. “What do you mean? I’ve got every one of those cards right so far.”
“I’m afraid I can’t comment on that.”
She looked up at him again. He shrugged.
“As I said, I can’t reveal the results of the test until all of the predictions have been made. We are currently on card twenty one,” He once again tapped on the back of the card. “Please continue the test Miss Bellamy.”
The girl sat up straight in the chair and slipped the mask back over her eyes. The left side of her face slid a few inches down from the right again, the furthest yet, and George decided she looked like she was going to drop a dump right here on the library floor.
He felt another wave of her abilities, and absorbed it gratefully. The energy came again, and he took that too. She threw the blindfold from her head suddenly and stood up, breaking the connection.
“It’s you,” she said, her eyes on him now. “You’re… doing something.”
George laughed, long and deep, and the girl seemed to shrivel under the weight of it.
“So you think I, a Community College Lecturer, am doing something to… what? Block your psychic energy? That’s a rather farfetched claim, even for a medium.”
“It wasn’t like blocking…” she said, seemingly to herself. “It was… more like…” “More like what?” he asked, genuinely interested in her response. He had never been on the receiving end.
“I don’t know!” she said, her voice grinding with frustration. “But those cards were right!”
“Then why don’t you read my mind and prove it?”
“What?” she said.
“You heard me,” he said, leaning back in his chair and smiling. “If you’re so sure that I’m lying, why don’t you prove it by reading my mind? You can do that, can’t you?”
Sarah Bellamy remained standing, but he could tell she had already made her decision.
“You won’t need the blindfold for this, but do please take a seat. You’re making me nervous.”
She sat back down, less reluctantly than before, and closed her eyes. George did the same, but even through the opacity of his eyelids, sensed her lean forward towards him, all shyness and nervous energy gone. She looked like a stag about to battle, staring at him from the top of her eyes with her forehead pointed down. Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath.
The left side of her face started to sag and George felt a sudden surge of power, a sheet of pure energy rushing towards him in a last, desperate rush.
She was strong; stronger than he had expected, but he absorbed each wave in turn, locking her in and letting the energy dissipate inside himself, exploding and imploding across his body, filling him with her abilities. The feeling far surpassed orgasm, and his body throbbed with it, illuminating even the darkest of internal recesses. He began to tap his heel as he absorbed her, his own nervous psychic tick.
Time stopped but Restoration continued.
George was almost finished when the door to the lab opened suddenly and violently.
He turned to see the intruder, breaking the connection with the girl in the process. She slumped forward on the table and he faltered from the sudden release of energy.
“What the-“
Before he could say any more, the tall, gangly looking boy in the doorway closed his eyes, lowered his head in the same way as the girl, and began to send out his own waves of ability, each one hitting him with tenfold the strength. He tried to absorb them as they came, but ha
d been thrown off his game by the sudden intrusion. By the fifth wave he had rocked back on his chair and was fighting to resist.
The man didn’t need to say anything to explain himself; the droop on the left side of his face told George everything he needed to know. Even more than that, the man’s relationship to the girl were hard coded into the waves he was sending, like strands of DNA in blood. He had been waiting outside for her, sticking around in case things got weird when the family secret was outed.
George tried to rid himself of the man’s presence, but was already beginning to feel his own abilities being ripped from him, the internal recesses once again growing dark as the light rushed elsewhere. He tried to break the connection but they were locked in.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, he thought between the waves.
Tough shit, came the reply.
George opened his eyes to see that the young man had taken a few steps towards him. He was smiling, and had every right to be confident in his ability. Hell, he’d even managed to close the door behind him whilst they had been locked in battle. A blossom of resentful admiration manifested itself as a clenching of his jaw.
Just give us the money, came the next thought from the gawky man. George felt an image attached to the next wave. He didn’t think it was intentional, but he understood it immediately - a woman, infirmed and alone, too weak to lift a log to the burner even as the snow crept up the window pane.
This can stop if you give us what we’re owed. No-one else needs to know.
Fuck you, he sent back. You’re getting weaker.
And it was true. The man was powerful, but had used himself up like a short distance runner, the first few pounding waves a total summation of his energy. George smiled. He always was a marathon sort of guy.
He increased the flow and felt the tables turn.
No, the man thought. Please, we just need the money.
Fuck you, George sent back again. If he was a poet, he would have thought of something more profound, but it would have to do.
Closing his eyes again, he drew deep from the well, summoning the forces of all his previous conquests - the little blind girl in Ecuador who could still somehow see faces; the mom of six up in Montauk who just always knew when the weather would turn; the twins in Kansas who had their own unique and unspoken language, for a while; the numerous babies at the hospitals that would grow up never knowing that they once held something special. He had even taken it from a dog once, but quality of the energy was weak and impure.
Kzine Issue 22 Page 1