by Hugh Howey
“For what?” he asked.
“For rubbing my feet, you idiot!”
Henry rubbed her feet until his thumbs were sore. About fifteen minutes into it, Tori was snoring.
Yes! I hope this works as well the next time I try it.
He glanced at Tori’s zombie arm. It was dark and a little pasty and corded in skin-tight muscle. When one of the WHS ‘interviewers’ had pushed her too hard, she had grabbed the man by the neck with that zombie arm and slung him over the table. It was the scariest and sexiest thing Henry had ever seen. He patted her thigh.
I sure know how to pick them.
He dozed off.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Henry’s head popped off his chest and his glasses clattered on the floor. He blinked and rubbed his blurry eyes.
Did I just hear that?
Reaching down, he grabbed his glasses and checked on Tori. She was curled up in a ball. He walked over and covered her with the blanket from the foot of the bed. Wiping the drool from his mouth, he headed for the door, checking his watch. 10:31 pm. Who’d be here this late?
He pressed his eye to the peep hole.
It was the last person he wanted to see.
Damn!
“Alice,” Henry whispered, wedging his mouth into the crack between the door and the jamb, “what do you want?”
Her arms were folded over her lab coat and her high-heeled foot tapped the floor. She was pretty with a dark ponytail. Round glasses. Arrogant.
“What’s the matter? Did I interrupt you and your little hussy?” she said with a smirk. Loudly at that.
“Ssshh,” Henry said, slipping outside and closing the door behind him. “She’s asleep and if she heard you say that, she’d tear you in half.”
Alice laughed.
“Whatever, Henry.”
There were three security men in the old dormitory hallway. They wore flak vests and carried M-16 assault rifles. Their helmets had shaded face shields. Two must have escorted Alice and the third was always stationed in the hall near their door. There were cameras in the halls too.
Henry folded his arms over his chest and stepped right up to Alice.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to personally let you know that the interviews are over.”
“What’s going on out here?” Tori said, getting in Alice’s face.
Tori was still in her black top, pink panties and nothing else. The guards shifted and craned their necks. One’s mouth fell open.
“Nice hair,” Alice said.
Slap!
Tori knocked Alice’s glasses off her face.
Alice’s eyes turned into daggers of ice.
“You bitch!”
She drew back her fist. Tori jumped on her.
“Tori! Stop!” Henry said, stretching his arms out.
Both women rolled on the floor. They punched, bit, cursed and clawed at each other.
The guards looked at Henry, then back at the women.
“Want me to get a water hose?” one guard said.
“Good idea,” said another.
“Shoot her!” Alice said, trying to grab the guard’s rifle. He turned Alice around and shoved her down the hallway. Another guard picked up her glasses, grinned and said, “Thanks.”
“You’ll never see her again, Henry!” Alice yelled back down the hallway. “Never!”
Tori sat on the bed, shaking and sobbing.
He sat down beside her and rubbed her back.
“Don’t,” she said, getting up, snatching some tissues and blowing her nose. She sat down in the desk chair. “What did she want anyway?”
“She came to tell me the interviews are over,” Henry said, heading to the bathroom.
Tears started rolling down Tori’s cheeks.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” she said.
He squeezed toothpaste onto his toothbrush.
Craig Halloran
is an Amazon Best Seller in Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Horror, Coming of Age stories, and Apocalyptic Fiction. His works are awesome. You should read them. Find out more at his website or Amazon Page.
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Literary Fiction
My Master Got a Raw Deal
Cherise Kelley
Just a sec, my neck really itches. I know you humans think it’s rude for me to scratch it with my hind claws, but that’s really the only way to stop the itch I get under my collar. Ah! Much better.
Anyway, you asked how a man with a PhD in physics ended up here.
We used to live with his mate and his three offspring, in a den that he owned. He got tired of fixing things though, so he looked for a place to rent, where the landlord would have to deal with all that.
His mate’s anger odor came out whenever the subject of renting a place to live came up, but he didn’t notice.
“I won’t live in some rental dump!”
“But honey—”
“Don’t honey me! This family is better than those people who live in dumpy old rental houses!”
“I’ll find you a nice rental house that you can be proud to live in. You’ll see.”
He took us all to see rental house after rental house. I really liked this one place where three lovely female Golden Retrievers lived next door… Anyway, he was mystified when his mate found something wrong with each and every rental house. One was too small. The next was too run down. Yet another was the wrong color.
My master and his mate yipped at each other almost every night. Well, she yipped. He tried to reason with her.
“Why are you trying so hard to humiliate me?”
“I would never try to do that. What gives you that idea?”
“Your horrible insistence that we sell our home!”
“It’s just a house. My home is wherever you are, darling.”
He still didn’t notice her anger odor. I nudged his nose toward her whenever he put his face close to mine, but he didn’t catch a clue.
And then he took us to the mansion.
Acres of freshly mowed lawns. A curved double staircase in the entryway. Paned windows made of beveled glass. Hardwood floors and Persian rugs. Seven marble fireplaces.
My master stood in the corner, busy playing with his tablet. I stayed by his side, and every now and then he petted my head. I kept my ears folded back to encourage that.
His mate and offspring would have been wagging their tails, if they had tails. All of their teeth were exposed, with their lips pulled up at the outsides, and they ran from room to room, exclaiming.
“Look at this claw-footed bathtub!”
“The kitchen cupboards have windows in them!”
“Wow! There are shelves built into the walls!”
“Five bedrooms, and they all have fireplaces!”
I heard the landlord talking on the phone outside in his car, so I knew it was a trap. I barked loudly, running back and forth between my master and the front door, but he just told me to hush. I pawed his legs and whined, but he got angry and swatted me.
None of you humans ever listen to my warnings.
My master signed the rental agreement without reading it, and that’s how he ended up single and obligated to be the groundskeeper, butler, and maid of this huge house. I’m the only member of the family who hasn’t deserted him.
Cherise Kelley
writes the Dog Aliens novels. She also has a guide for women who want their boyfriends to propose marriage.
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Literary Fiction
Hudson and Hailey
George Berger
Three and a half kilometres above the most important city in the world, more or less, aqueous vapours coalesced and condensed in the sky like heartbroken sighs on the azure windowpanes of the soul. Amidst and through this tumult passed an upwardly-m
obile young woman of rare breeding whose heart was cold as ice. She came from a great distance to fulfill the dream of her fleeting, transient lifetime—to see for herself that fabled city and the astounding things that lived there.
She rose like cream through her society, her body growing larger and rounder as she aged. She ignored the circumambient rumblings, the tremors of gossip that flashed through her world, as she focused with chilly resolve on her dream.
As her star, metaphorically, reached its ascension, she paused to survey the world around her in a rare moment of introspection. As she did so she caught the attention, quite by chance, of a passing young man. He was a worthless, youthful malingerer, still wet behind the ears, and was already on his way down in the world as they passed.
They saw each other for the briefest of fleeting moments, there above the most important city in the world, more or less; in a single blink of an eye, one beat of a frantic heart they entered each other’s lives and left them.
He cried out, wordlessly, feeling as though his entire being was being crushed by some powerful force beyond his comprehension, but she was gone.
Blue with despair he sped on his way, running late but with plenty of time for his upcoming appointment with destiny. It may be better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but not, arguably, if you are young and damp and have little left for which to live.
And then, a miracle! As he passed through the darkest point of his life, suddenly, she appeared beside him, and they emerged, together, into the hazy light.
“Who are you?” she demanded as he stared shamelessly upon her pale skin.
“I am Hudson,” he stammered. “And, and, and I love you.”
She blushed, or perhaps it was just his imagination, and tumbled about to face away from him. “You flatter me,” she murmured just loud enough to be heard, “but yours is an impossible fantasy.”
“Why?” he demanded as her words pierced his sodden heart. “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because I am not a Hudson,” she told him plainly, “yet you are. Our destinies, as you must know, lie in very different directions.”
“Sod destiny!” Hudson ejaculated heatedly. “We travel together to the most important city in the world. Our fates are entwined. Surely here, at this time, anything is possible?”
“You are quite charming, in your way,” she said, “and you speak with a plainness and passion that I find pleasing. But yet—”
“But yet?!”
“But yet you are still a Hudson,” she explained, “and that is no good.”
“But I love you!” Hudson cried, quivering with emotion. “And what is a name, anyway? Merely a name, and nothing more. Would my love be less tragic had I any other name?”
“Perhaps,” she said cautiously.
“Then I shall renounce my name! Cast aside my destiny!”
“Whom are you then, that would forge his destiny anew?”
Hudson looked down for a moment, then refocused his gaze upon her rotund form. “I think… I could be a Spiro,” he mumbled, blushing.
“You would be a sparrow?” she said, mishearing him. “For me?”
“For you,” Sparrow professed, “I would be anything.”
“That is the sweetest thing anything has ever said to me, dear Sparrow.”
A gust of wind whipped through the damp air just then, and when it had subsided Sparrow and his love were separated by a growing gulf. “No!” he cried, impassioned. “I love you! I want to be with you forever! What of our destiny?”
A difficult-to-measure distance away, Hailey—for such was her name—tumbled and bounced through the crush of people bearing down on the city. Every now and then, out of the corner of her eye, she would fancy she caught a fleeting glimpse of Sparrow, or at least someone who looked rather a lot like him. The city was closer now, close enough that she could smell it, and she retched slightly and lost sight of maybe-Sparrow.
Far away, just on the edge of her vision, a reflection of light glimmered on a young man’s face and she knew, instinctively, in her heart of hearts, that he was her Sparrow. She stared at him, transfixed by his beauty and the overbearing love that swelled inside her, as he crashed violently onto the roof of a tenement and was destroyed.
“O, my sweet Sparrow,” she murmured, heartbroken. “we barely knew each other, yet your loss fills me with such sweet sorrow.” As pain and despair flooded through her, she cast her attention around beneath her until finding, at last, that which she sought. It was a car, large and black and expensive-looking, and was stopped at a light. “Farewell, my love!” she cried towards what she thought was Sparrow’s final resting place. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, but I pray we shall be together again one day.” Resolutely she embraced her tragic, wasteful fate and hurtled towards the car. “Is that…?” she wondered aloud. “Could it be…?” “It is!” she exclaimed, spotting the badge on the bonnet of the car. “O happy day, a Jaguar!”
Moments later she and the windscreen shattered into thousands of pieces, as were their fates. Her broken remains scattered to the macadam, where they melted and ran into the gutter, eventually draining to the Hudson River where they were reunited with Sparrow, who had, like everyone else in the world, been completely unable to avoid his apportioned destiny, and so the hailstone and the raindrop lived, in a sense, happily ever after.
George Berger
writes intriguingly different books about whatever strikes his fancy, be it life, love, or goats. He lives somewhere and is owned by a cat. Find out more at his blog.
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Young Adult
Masked Attraction
Jamie Campbell
I was raging mad. Not just a little bit terse or grumpy, I was boot-stomping, cape-tearing angry. So occasionally I dressed up as my favorite superhero and went to the geek conventions. So I enjoyed it. So what? It did not give Madden the right to judge me.
Hence the cape-tearing angriness that was me. Instead of wringing my blue cape, I should be wringing his neck. All morning when I was sliding into my Lycra bodysuit, adjusting my eye mask, and strapping on my intergalactic boots, he had been teasing me.
“You’re a freak, Jess,” Madden had stated, like it should have been blatantly obvious.
“No,” I started as I swung around to face him sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m not afraid of what others think and proud to do something I enjoy. Even when people call me a freak.”
He had stormed out of the bedroom, ending our argument. Until I got home again, anyway. I was seriously wondering whether I wanted to be with someone who thought I was a freak and said it to my face.
The countdown started in the queue at Comic World Unite and the air crackled with anticipation. I firmly shoved all thoughts of Madden out of my head and took a few breaths. Today was the day I had been waiting for all year; he was not going to ruin it for me.
After all, I was dressed like Galactica Girl and she wouldn’t let her boyfriend get the better of her. She would have turned around and kicked him somewhere it would really hurt – for days.
Three… two… one. A buzzer sounded and the doors opened. What was once an orderly line to get in was now a fight for survival amongst hundreds of brightly colored heroes and villains. And I was in the middle of it all.
I raced toward the door, eager to get to the front of any line I could find. Waiting was your enemy at the convention. There were only so many hours in the day where you could see everything you wanted to.
My first stop was getting autographs from all my favorite comic book artists. Their lines were normally the longest. I waited there for half a day as I made my way through them all.
Afterwards, I elbowed my way through some Superman wannabes, and – strangely – a prawn, and headed for the shining light at the end of the rows – Galactica Spectacular. I only needed comic number thirteen and I would have the entire set. I had be
en searching for it forever.
Unfortunately, about a hundred other heroes had the same thought. We jostled for space at the stand, rifling through the boxes to find what we were looking for. Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen repeated in my head. I had to find it.
And there it was. Right in front of my eyes, Galactica Girl Number Thirteen. I reached for it, feeling like I had laid my eyes upon the Holy Grail itself.
But I wasn’t quick enough. Some guy grabbed it right out from under my nose and took off with it. “Not so easy, buddy,” I muttered as I grabbed the edge of his cape. He wriggled around, trying to free himself. “I saw that comic first.”
He managed to tug free and stood in front of me. He was dressed as Magna Man, Galactica’s one true love. And man, did he do it justice. The rippling abs were not part of the costume. And those muscles on his biceps were not padding. I was momentarily stunned.
“Sorry, it’s for my friend,” he replied.
I almost – almost – let him get away with it. “But I need it. And I had it first.”
“I’ll tell you what, have a coffee with me and I’ll let you have it.”
Hmmm. The comic to complete my collection and hang out with Mr. Hot Pants? Or go home empty-handed? Still reeling from my argument with Madden, I decided to chance it. “Deal.”
He paid for the comic – a small fortune by any standards. Then we found a corner and sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups. “So, come here often?”
“Every year. You?”
Magna Man shrugged. “My first time.”
“And you dressed up for the occasion. I’m impressed.” And I was too. There was something about the guy that was so charming and nice, I probably could have spent all afternoon with him and been happy.
“My girlfriend kind of gave me the idea,” he replied. Dammit. He was taken. Why did that disappoint me so much? Especially when I had someone waiting for me at home? Well, probably not waiting. More like sulking.