Take Me To Your Reader: An Otherworld Anthology

by Amy A. Bartol

  Mattie's hand reaches for mine; he brings it to his lips and kisses it tenderly. Tears brighten my eyes instantly. He pulls something from his pocket, and before I know what it is, he's slipping it onto my finger. "I found this on the floor beside your purse back at my house. It must've fallen out."

  I lift my hand to see the round-cut diamond engagement ring he'd given me. It sparkles with blue fire when I hold it up to the light.

  Mattie pushes up from the mattress. He hovers over me as his legs rest on either side of mine. Looking down at me, his eyes smolder as he says, "Promise me you'll never take it off again."

  A tear spills from my eye. His thumb reaches down to gently wipe it away. My hand moves to cup his cheek, and then it slides into the black, silky strands of his hair. I pull gently, bringing his face closer to mine. When he's a hair's breadth away, I whisper, "I promise."

  With a soft, sexy groan, Mattie kisses me again and says against my lips, "I love you, Violet."

  In that moment, I have no trouble believing he's real; we're reunited. I'm whole again.

  Monsters of Earth

  By Tammy Blackwell

  For information on other titles

  Visit the author's website: http://www.misstammywrites.com/

  Monsters of Earth

  "Earth?" Helem looked at the assignment etched on his com-sleeve. "This is a joke, right? Because it's my first solo trip, you're messing with me."

  Commander Sotiri didn't even look up from the massive console where he tracked reports from the Raimondas who were in the field. "This is the Raimann. We don't joke, Helem."

  "But it's Earth. What the hell am I supposed to do there?"

  This time the commander did look up. The stony glare made Helem's pulse jump erratically in his throat, but he didn't let it show. Raimondas never showed fear, and Helem was a Raimonda. Had been for all of three hours now.

  "What you're supposed to do is your mission. Unless you don't think you can handle it." The commander tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow, a look Helem knew well. He'd been on the receiving end of it since the day he was born. "Maybe I made a mistake in graduating you too soon. You're young to take on a mission of your own, but I thought you were ready. Perhaps your mother was right and you should train for another year before going out solo."

  "Dad—"

  "Commander Sotiri."

  "Commander Sotiri," Helem said between clenched teeth. "You know I'm ready to take assignments. I scored higher on my exit exams than anyone else."

  "Then you should be perfectly capable of handling this assignment."

  Of course he was capable of handling this assignment. It was Earth, for the stars' sake. There was a reason they sent students there on their first training mission. Earth was safe. There are no monsters on Earth.

  And Helem's job was to fight monsters.

  "You don't trust me," he said to his father, breaking all sorts of protocols and not caring. This was bullshit. If he'd been any other newly uniformed officer, he would be going off to Yabets to fight giants or Phobos to slay dragons. The only reason he was being sent on a cakewalk mission to Earth was because he had been unfortunate enough to be the son of the Raimann's commanding officer.

  Golden brown eyes, the exact shade as his own, narrowed on him as if looking into his mind and measuring his worth. It was useless, of course. His father always found him lacking.

  "I do trust you, Helem. Otherwise, I wouldn't send you on this mission."

  "To see to a fern? You trust me with a plant? That speaks volumes, Dad. I feel deeply respected."

  A muscle in his dad's jaw twitched, and he knew he'd gone too far. But instead of ripping into him like normal, his dad squared his shoulders and dropped back into Commander-mode.

  "You will complete this mission. If you're successful and willing, you will receive others. If you do not choose to complete this mission, you can return your uniform to Penelope in Human Resources."

  Helem considered it, but only for a second. Being a Raimondas was all he'd ever wanted. If it meant wasting his time with a mission on Earth, then so be it. What was the worse that could happen? Becoming bored to death?

  Without another word to his father, Helem strode to the mission deck and keyed his identification number into the console.

  "Helem Sotiri reporting for duty."

  "Destination?"

  "Earth."

  A high-pitched noise threatened to split his eardrums apart, and then a flash of white light blazed across his eyeballs as he felt his body being thrust across the universe.

  Helem double-checked his location with the coordinates on his com-sleeve.

  Yep. This was it. He looked around, searching for his charge. There were a few flowers sitting in vases, but no ferns to be found. He opened a plain, wooden door, but only found a bathroom on the other side.

  "Where are you hiding?" he muttered, looking around the small, austere room. There weren't exactly many places for a plant to hide. The flowers sat in a windowsill along with balloons, pictures, and various toys, mostly of the stuffed creature variety. There was a small area with a sink and a rolling table of sorts, but they were both bare. Other than some machines, the only thing in the room was a bed and the girl laying on it.

  "I don't suppose you know where a fern is?" he asked the girl who watched him as he paced around the room.

  The girl pushed up on her elbows, although she didn't make it far off the pillow. Helem noticed her skin was puffy and an odd shade of gray-white.

  "Ungh agh ewww."

  "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that," Helem said, double-checking his translator to make sure it was working. "Try again?"

  The girl licked her lips and closed her eyes as if talking took all of her concentration. "Who. Are. You?"

  "I am Helem of the Planet Iskander. I have come on a sacred mission." A lame mission, but all Raimann missions were sacred, so it wasn't exactly a lie. "Perhaps you can help me?"

  He waited for a response, but the girl was back on her pillow again. She seemed to be breathing a bit harder than entirely necessary, and she somehow managed to look even paler than she had just moments before.

  Understanding dawned slowly.

  "You're sick?"

  The girl didn't answer. She probably thought the answer was obvious. It might have been to another human, but not Helem. There was no such thing as illness on Iskander. He'd never seen a sick person before, although he'd read about them in his studies of other planets and their cultures.

  "I'm not sure this will work," he said, digging in his pack as he walked over to the bed, "but it's worth a try." He pressed three small metal discs onto her right temple before slipping the receiver in his ear. "Okay, think something at me."

  "Think something at you?"

  Her mouth hadn't moved, but he heard her as if she'd spoken aloud.

  "Excellent. The neuro-translator works on humans. Now we can have a proper conversation."

  The girl's eyebrows crinkled together. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

  "I'm Helem." Didn't he already cover this? Was forgetting things part of her illness? Or maybe she had trouble with comprehension. He spoke slowly, just in case. "I come from the Planet Iskander on a sacred mission to guard the fern. Have you seen a fern?"

  There was a strange noise on the neuro-translator, which Helem thought might have been the device's attempt at interpreting a laugh.

  "Only when I look in the mirror," she said.

  "In the mirror…? But you are not a plant."

  "No, just a human girl with a plant-like name." Her eyes followed him around the room as he studied her from a different angle, trying to figure out what kind of mission his father had sent him on. "You know," she said, "you would think when my brain finally fried and hallucinated a teenage alien boy it would have had the courtesy to at least make him hot."

  Helem froze mid-step. "Hot as in temperature?"

  "Hot as in attractive. You know, six-pack abs, dreamy eyes, wicke
d smile… Hot."

  He was afraid that was what she meant.

  "I'll have you know I'm considered quite good-looking on Iskander."

  "And good grief. The cancer must being eating away my creativity. I mean, you look like a human. Not alien-like at all. No funny-shaped head. No antenna. Very boring."

  Helem felt his face growing warm. How dare this girl, charge or not, call him unattractive and boring?

  "Everyone looks like this, across all the galaxies. Everyone except the monsters."

  "Monsters?"

  "Monsters: Werewolves. Unicorns. Fairies. The universe is filled with all sorts of horrible creatures." He'd studied them all, and had even seen a few on training missions. One of these days, he would kill them to protect the innocent. It was his job. It was what he'd trained for. What he was doing here…

  What was he doing here? Surely there was something he was supposed to be doing with this girl called Fern, but he couldn't figure out what it might be.

  "Unicorns and fairies aren't monsters," she said, interrupting his thoughts.

  "Tell that to the inhabitants of Planet Fraizar where young girls live in constant fear of being stabbed and devoured by evil horned beasts or the citizens of Planet Bachai where a family of unchecked pixies left an entire country without a single bite of food to eat."

  "Evil unicorns and fairies, huh? How come I've never seen one?"

  "Because this is Earth. There are no monsters on Earth."

  "Are you sure? Because I'm pretty certain the guy on the second floor with a gunshot wound is a werewolf."

  Helem snorted. "On Earth even your Shifters are lame and half-human. I wouldn't worry about it."

  With so little else to look at in the room, Helem wandered back over to her collection of flowers, toys, and pictures. Someone had decorated a poster with snapshots and hung it next to the window. It took him a long time to find which person was Fern. The smiling girl with wiry reddish-brown hair hardly resembled the Fern who watched him through heavy-lidded, slightly unfocused eyes.

  "What is wrong with you?" he asked. "What kind of sickness do you have?"

  "I'm in a juvenile cancer ward. What kind of sickness do you think I have?"

  Helem's study of diseases had been intense, but with so many illnesses on so many worlds, he wasn't familiar with everything that could affect Earth's humans. He pulled out his com-sleeve and did a quick search. It only took a few minutes of reading to understand the seriousness of Fern's condition. He checked what he could observe against the information on the com-sleeve, and finally understood his mission.

  Helem was to watch Fern die.

  It wasn't an unheard of mission for a Raimonda, but an unusual one. People died alone every minute of every day across the galaxy. It was impossible for the Raimann to help all of them make the transition from the land of the living to the afterlife. No one was quite sure why a handful landed on the Raimann's list of charges, but it did happen on occasion. The Raimonda who took such an assignment always considered it one of the deepest honors of his or her career. Protecting life was their job, but honoring life was their duty.

  "Where are your parents?" he asked, noticing the man and woman who appeared in many of the pictures scattered around the room.

  "I'm going to die tonight, so I sent them away."

  Helem's forehead wrinkled in confusion. "What? Why would you do that?"

  "Because I don't want to watch them cry. It's hardly comforting to know I'm breaking their hearts."

  "Don't you think that is a little selfish?" Surely the woman whose smile was a carbon copy of Fern's would want to participate in her child's final moments.

  "I'm sixteen and dying. I think I have a right to be selfish."

  Helem couldn't argue against her logic, so he said nothing, focusing on the items in the windowsill instead. Through them he was able to piece together a picture of the person Fern was before the illness ravaged her body.

  Dancer. Scientist. Frog lover. Friend. Daughter.

  All of them would be lost forever when she finally succumbed to the disease.

  "Do kids die from cancer on Iskander?"

  Helem nearly dropped the music box in his hand. He'd been so absorbed in his thoughts he'd somehow forgotten she was still in the room and connected to the neuro-translator.

  "We don't have cancer on Iskander," he said.

  "I wish I would have been born there."

  "Me, too." And he did. He wanted to get to know this girl who smiled back at him from the photos around the room. He thought that given the chance, they might have been friends.

  "I don't want to die."

  Even through the neuro-translator he could hear her fear and grief. The sound of it got caught in his chest, growing and mutating until it became his own. Tears stung his eyes, and he had to remind himself Fern didn't need his anger. She'd shut out her parents because she didn't want to be burdened with anyone else's emotions. She wouldn't want to deal with his either.

  On Iskander, those who didn't die in the line of duty as a Raimondas died of old age. Somewhere in their tenth or eleventh decade their body would simply cease to function. For some it's a quick process. They live their lives as normal one minute and are gone the next. For others, it takes a few days. They feel themselves getting weaker and weaker until they finally fade out.

  Helem's great-grandfather had been a fader. When he realized his life was slowly bleeding away he called in his family to be by his side. Helem's mother, who had always been her grandfather's favorite, stood at the edge of his bed, tears streaming down her cheeks as her hands danced over and around one other, unsure where they should be or what they should do.

  "What do you need, Grandfather?" she'd asked. "What can I do to help you?"

  His great-grandfather smiled, which Helem found odd. He was dying. What did he have to smile about? His life was over. Soon he would cease to exist. If ever there were a time to not smile, that would be it.

  "Just hold my hand," his great-grandfather said. "Hang onto me so I know I'm not alone."

  And so Helem's family had taken turns sitting by his great-grandfather's bed, holding on as the last hours of his life slipped away. The smile never left the old man's face the entire time.

  Helem had always considered his great-grandfather odd and different, but perhaps on this point he was right. Maybe what someone needed most at the time of death was to know someone was hanging on, trying to ground them to this life.

  He pulled a chair over to Fern's bed and took her hand in his own. It was cool to the touch; cool enough he watched closely to make sure her chest still rose and fell. After a few seconds, her fingers wound their way around his.

  "It's not fair," she said. "I shouldn't have to die. I'm only a kid. There is so much I still want to do. There is so much left I can give the world."

  "Tell me about them," Helem said. "Tell me about the things you would do if you have another eighty years. Tell me what Earth is losing by letting you go too soon."

  It took her a minute to gather her thoughts, but then she was telling him about how she would go to college and become a doctor. How she would devote her life to finding a cure for cancer. She told him about the husband who would look like the member of a British boy band and think she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even if her face was swollen from the medication she had to take and her hair was all gone. She imagined the children she would have and how happy and healthy they would be their whole lives. She talked about all the social injustices she would work to right, of how she would eradicate the world of prejudice and hate.

  Eventually her words came only sporadically and ceased to make sense. Still, Helem left the neuro-translator attached. Even if they were garbled nonsense, he wanted to hear whatever she had to say.

  People in scrubs and lab jackets came in more and more frequently as the night wore on. Some of them questioned who he was and why he was there, but none of them made him leave.

  At 2:32 am Central Stand
ard Time on Earth, Fern died.

  The woman who turned off the machines had twin streams trailing from her eyes, although she did not make a sound.

  "Her parents?" Helem asked in a gravelly voice.

  "On their way." She paused in her activities, her sad eyes finding his. "It's over now. You can go."

  Helem looked at the shell, which was only moments before filled with love, hopes, and dreams. He thought about how cancer had taken it all away, and for the first time he truly understood the definition of evil.

  "No," he said, pulling up a list of the planet's best medical schools on his com-sleeve. "I can't. I have a monster to slay."

  The House on Maple Street

  By Amanda Havard

  For information on other titles

  Visit the author's website: http://amandahavard.com/

  The House on Maple Street

  You can still hear the screams.

  Cliché? Sure. But clichés start somewhere, don't they? And here, they start at the Fentress County line, where you can still hear the screams.

  I suppose I can hear them louder in my head than you'd hear them in yours because I was there. Traumatic memory is funny that way.

  It started six months ago. My buddy Dana was hanging around while I closed up shop at the Dairy Queen one night. Dana loves ice cream, and DQ wasn't exactly hopping around closing time in January. She'd come keep me company and eat the large Heath Blizzard slowly — to savor it. Like it was the last one she was ever going to eat. But we both knew there'd be another Blizzard the next night. And the next night. She'd eat a damn Blizzard every night of her life.

  Anyway, it was about five minutes till close and an 18-wheel moving truck pulls up in front. The door swings open, and the first thing I see is six-inch heels and a boot that goes up to someone's skinny ass thigh. Next thing you know, a Blonde Bombshell walks in the front door of my DQ.