by Forbes West
“I’m going to my father’s house out near Sargasso-3, on the north side, for a little vacation,” she says.
“Sweet, sweet...” You blow out some rich smoke. “That’s a thing to be done, vacations... I thought your…wait, I thought your parents were out in Osaka? You said that somewhere...”
“No, we used to live in Osaka,” Saki says. “So sorry.”
“Can I come with? I’d like to meet your family.”
Saki looks at you funny. “Sure. But right now, well, no, that’s…that’s something to think about for the future, you coming by.”
“I’m actually thinking about doing a trip to Quadling,” you bring up, thinking of something you and Guy had talked about at the gym a while ago.
“How are you going to get down there?”
“Mono-train. You want to use the Ghia?” you ask her, anticipating her.
“Yes, could I?”
You lean forward, rubbing your hands together. “Me and Guy just fixed it. It runs like a charm. How much?”
“How much what?”
“Never mind,” you say. “Forget it, just take it.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“How do you not get effed up on this stuff?”
“Japanese strength.”
“Can I keep your cool war flags and Bob Marley stuff? It really ties the room together,” you ask.
Saki frowns. “No, because I’m coming back. Me and Guy will be in Quadling soon.”
“You have no idea how much that helps me, Saki-san.” You take your flute of wine and walk out. “I’ll be at the Benbow, drinking Maker’s Mark, cranberry vodka, Maker’s Mark, cranberry vodka. What, what...” you sing.
You get to the Benbow despite the elevator having a few problems; first it keeps stopping at the wrong floors, then when it gets to the lobby, the doors only open part way. The security forces are entertaining themselves by roasting an animal or something inside the lobby, filling the large vaulted space with the rich, fragrant smoke of whatever is being spit-roasted.
“Oh, that’s nice.” You also see that your computer and Saki’s have gone missing. You laugh at this and head for the Benbow. Guy is there, laughing at your inebriation. You pop another Adderall. “Shouldn’t you stop?”
“Aren’t you asleep upstairs?” you ask the Guy hallucination, who disappears into thin air.
You laugh and walk outside, watching the beginning of a regular, old-fashioned thunderstorm play out in the west.
* * *
You wake up on the patio of the Benbow, apparently having passed out the night before, with a blanket on top of you. Saki is starting up the Ghia.
“You leaving?” you slur.
“Yes,” Saki says. “I’ll see you.”
You roll your eyes. “Well, bye,” you say, finding a half-emptied beer to drink out of. “Loved your sushi.” You wink at her. “That’s, that sounds sort of weird to say. To a girl.”
Saki frowns and drives off, leaving a trail of dust behind her.
“Goodbye and good luck.” You give the retreating car the finger. “Can I have your boyfriend to myself, now? Got to get going, myself. Bottoms up.” You pop another pill and then another one. Your heart starts to beat faster and faster and then skips a beat or two. You collapse into the dirt.
You feel yourself floating in space, loose and lost in the middle of nothing. It’s a scary feeling; it’s something you’ve never felt before. You sail away towards something— a bright light, you think, or maybe a tunnel.
Sarah’s Dream of an
Off-World Ranch at Midnight
Four shapes emerge out of the dark, prepared to murder under an alien sky. Their movements are careful and slow as the four look upon the long white ranch house far off in the distance and the woods to the side of it. The location is a twenty minute drive from Sargasso-3.
A cold wind blows on that night, carrying a trail of dead leaves off the solitary oak tree under which the figures stand, and chilling them despite their heavy black coats and sweaters. Gingerly, the four cross into the woods as a distinct monorail whistle echoes from somewhere far off. The white forms of seven moons peek down from high above in the star-filled sky.
A couple of them stop, turn their heads, and listen as they go through the woods. In either direction there is nothing but the solitary road cutting through the countryside and the ranch house itself, a few gas lamplights glittering from it in the night air. The road itself is strange, a blacker than black pavement covered in large yellow Xs that stretch from shoulder to shoulder.
The four walk through the woods carefully, as quietly as they can. One turns his head, thinking for a moment that he heard a metallic click just as the monorail whistle blew. He dismisses the thought and keeps walking.
The ringleader looks down at his digital Casio watch. It is 11:59 am. Then it shorts out, going completely off. “Hold up one minute, the storm’s just hit. We have to…” the man begins, his voice barely heard over the wind.
There is a slight rumble of thunder, perhaps the beginning of a storm coming out of the Sargasso Breaks, perhaps something else. Dry lightning plays out against the western skies, illuminating at times a flock of luminescent manta ray-like creatures, their tendrils drifting behind them in the wind as they make their way back to the Super Sargasso coast for the winter.
Away from the woods, an old Japanese man, a teenage Japanese boy, and a Japanese man with an age in-between the two, sit on the white ranch house’s porch, watching the display in the sky from the comfort of a rocking bench and a patio chair. A single gas lamp on the patio is emitting a weak, ghostly light, illuminating the three.
The old man sits next to an extinguished gas lamp; a two-headed dragonfly suddenly lands on it. The dragonfly is the size of a small bird. The teenager turns his head and watches it fly away into the night, passing the blue pickup truck parked outside the large home.
“That was a ridiculously large bug, Dad,” the teenager says in Japanese, shaking his head. He zips his denim jacket up a little bit tighter.
The dad shakes his head. “Not as big as the one your mother married.” He starts scratching the receding hairline under his white cowboy hat.
The grandfather croaks out a laugh and shakes his head, becoming very serious. “No need to talk about that, Katsuo. You know that.”
Katsuo smiles to himself and turns the radio up a notch. The wind picks up. The teenager asks, “So this is, uh, safe, right? Where we are?”
Katsuo nods. “Safe as safe can be. It’s all light and noise here, with some wind. Inside the city though, psht, you just disappear. Just vanish like a puff of smoke when it happens. Storms come out of ol’ malfunctioning reactors in the city centers.”
Coming from the radio is a Led Zeppelin song:
If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s goin’ to break If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay. Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan...
A bald-headed white man, tall and muscular and with reflective aviator shades on, opens up the front door of the house and stomps down its wooden steps, almost walking into the radio. A ring of keys jingles in his large hand.
He has on a large backpack with one shoulder strap around his arm. “That Led Zeppelin playing again, Katsuo-san? Radio Oberon finally allowing ‘onest rock ’n’ roll to play all the time now?” the bald-headed man says with a working-class English accent. He walks past the truck and circles around the house towards the back.
“You going somewhere, Sunglasses-san?” the old man asks in English, gently taking out his pipe again for a light.
The man with the sunglasses on nods his head quickly. “Left some stuff behind in storage. Be back in fifteen.”
Katsuo Sr., the middle-aged man, raises his eyebrow. “Don’t want to hang back here for a second? It is going to be happening any minute now.”
The man with the sunglasses shakes his head. “Oh, it’s nothi
ng too exciting. A light show for a few minutes and then it’s back to listening to the frogs mate.”
The old man chortles. “You can listen to this for a while, Billy-san.” The old man farts.
The man with the sunglasses snorts. “Working with you is always a privilege, sir. I’ll be back. Jeremy should be here in a few.” With a few extra steps he disappears into the dark beyond the house.
Katsuo Sr. and Katsuo Jr. laugh for a good minute, tears streaming from Katsuo Jr.’s eyes. The middle-aged Katsuo Sr. picks up the glass of whiskey on the armrest of his chair and takes a sip. “Oh, Grandpa,” he says in English, wiping his eyes.
Sure that he is clear of the ranch house, the man in the sunglasses puts both straps of the backpack onto his shoulders and takes off at a full sprint towards the road with the reflective yellow Xs on it. In that still moment, he can almost hear the approaching sounds of a horse at full gallop, somewhere off in the distance. If he had stayed, he could have seen the man with a goatee charging along on his black horse.
The Led Zeppelin song is interrupted as the radio cuts out into an eerie emergency band drone.
The announcer, a woman with a crisp English accent, comes on. “We interrupt this radio broadcast to update you on the special flash storm warning for the Super Sargasso region. Any and all persons within five kilometers of the center of the Sargasso-3 Antediluvian city must take immediate shelter. We repeat, this is a flash storm warning for the Super Sargasso region. Any persons within five kilometers of the center of Sargasso-3 must take immediate shelter...”
The storm starts. The black sky filled with several moons, begins to be covered in a fast movement of clouds. The wind gathers strength and there is a terrible droning and echoing sound throughout the countryside. The ground begins to shake so much that it rattles the glass of Scotch off the armrest and knocks it to the deck floor, shattering it. No one can actually hear the glass break over the now ringing and discordant warning sirens going off and the roar of the sky itself. The sky then lights up, red, then blue, then red again, and then turns into an almost fiery orange.
The teenage son stands up and walks out into the yard, watching the fantastic display. A ring of white circles spreads over the horizon and swirls in and out of the clouds. A chain of circles forms and shoots downwards and upwards from the sky and back to the ground.
The teenage son loses his footing for a moment due to the wind, stumbling to the side. Green lightning shoots out in all directions now and again. For moments at a time the entire world seems to light up in white flashes as bright as millions of flashbulbs popping at the same time.
As the son turns back to his father and grandfather, he yells out, “Wow! This is... wow!” However, he sees then that his father and grandfather are now standing up with a look of concern on their faces.
The four figures come out of the nearby woods as the storm continues to play out, ski masks over their faces. The sky turns a deep bluish-green and becomes incredibly thick with clouds. The white circles begin to join together, split apart, and join together again. The circles become blue. A sound like a thousand groaning screams comes forth from the sky.
Jake Alexandros comes forward and yells to be heard over the flash storm that is still ripping across the sky.
“Where is Billy Knochen?” Alexandros shouts out. Katsuo Jr. runs back to Katsuo Sr., who turns off the radio that is just issuing static. Katsuo Sr. looks to his own father, who speaks first. “Billy Knochen? I do not know anyone by that name!”
Alexandros looks to his friends for a moment. “Last chance, friend! Billy Knochen. Bald head, wearing sunglasses, Englishman. Been working with you for the last two months!”
Katsuo Sr. speaks up. “Don’t know anyone by that name. Now, please, let us-”
Katsuo Sr. is immediately lifted off his feet by some unknown force. Alexandros has simply stretched out his ori-baton and pointed it at Katsuo Sr., then makes a motion as if yanking the baton back.
Katsuo Sr. is thrust forward violently, his body crashing through a beam holding up the roof of the ranch house over the deck floor. He is then thrown through the windshield of the pickup truck parked outside, shattering it, and is reduced to a ragged and bloody clump.
“You want this to happen to you or the boy, old man? We want Billy Knochen.”
A man with a goatee appears from the side, a rifle in hand. It’s the ranch hand, Jeremy. He fires off the first shot which strikes one of the masked people in the chest, knocking him back. The man’s black horse bolts off, frightened by the storm and the shot, galloping away as fast as it can.
Jeremy pulls the bolt back and fires again, grazing the right side of Alexandros’s head, making him instinctively slap his hand against his head and fall down awkwardly. As Alexandros falls, his left forearm bashes against a sharply edged rock and a puff of green smoke comes from his sleeve. He pulls out his own small semi-automatic and returns fire erratically, spent shells spitting out the side of the gun.
Certain clouds above begin to dip downwards as if ready to emit a giant funnel. The clouds become purple again. The wind is at its strongest now, rattling the windows in the ranch house, and the flashes of white become more and more frequent. They are lasting longer.
The grandfather and Katsuo Jr. rush inside the house as fast as they can. The teenager cries, “Jeremy! Get away from here! Run!”
One of the masked people changes from a human assassin with a ski mask to a strange, five foot tall giant mantis that’s flashing bright white with large, jagged jaws and serrated legs. He changes seamlessly, as if the original human being is winked out of existence. The insect jumps forward, knocking Jeremy backwards and fatally stabbing him in the chest with both of its long front legs. It then chops him in half with its jaws, tossing his torso down the road. The man reappears in one white snap of noise, takes off his ski mask and reveals himself to be Botha, his arms and face bloody.
Alexandros rips off his ski mask; a thin line of blood trickles down the side of his head. He rushes forward, enraged, Botha behind him. Alexandros kicks open the ranch house’s front door, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Knochen! Give him up!”
They rush up the stairs to find the boy and his grandfather.
Outside, Dee has her ski mask off. She grabs the right arm of the now prone and very dead Dr. Wellington Cartwright. A green light begins to glow around both their bodies; flecks of green come from Dee’s arm and into Wellington’s body. His ski mask-covered head starts to change a little and becomes distorted. After a still moment, Cartwright’s dead eyes flash white, once, twice, and then three times, and he begins to cough horribly. Cartwright then leans forward and takes off the ski mask, inhaling deeply.
At the top of the stairs is the old Japanese man with a double-barreled shotgun he has just loaded. Alexandros makes a fist and both shells in the shotgun explode, killing the grandfather in a burst of flame and shrapnel. The wall behind the grandfather, proudly displaying pictures of the family’s home here and in Osaka, is covered in blood and the striped wallpaper is scorched. The house begins to shake more than ever, with a rattle that hurts the ears of the assassins and the boy they are after.
Botha spots the boy going out a bathroom window. He stretches out his ori-baton and a single green lightning bolt shoots from it, making a thunderous sound, burning through the walls and shattering the glass in the mirror, but ultimately missing the boy, who manages to climb down a drainpipe outside the window and run off into the countryside as fast as he possibly can.
Before leaving the homestead, Katsuo Jr. runs up next to a long pole with a blue police light at the top of it. There is a small red button under a plastic cover that is marked Emergency Only—Will Call Ephors/MS/Security Forces.
The boy presses the button and the blue police light begins to flash. Two seconds afterwards, a series of flares shoot up from different locations around the entire farm— blue, green, and red ones— lighting up the entire area.
The boy manages to
get a small distance away but Cartwright is watching. After a long pause, Cartwright decides to act. Slamming the ground with his own ori-baton, there is a harsh and sudden crack far away. Dee and Cartwright can see only in shadow that the boy is now impaled on a sharp, thin stalagmite that has erupted from the ground.
Dee looks away. “Oh, man.”
Alexandros and Botha meet the other two outside. Alexandros calls out to them. “Did you see Knochen? Where is that bas-”
Botha, who sees the silent blue flashing light, makes a throat slashing gesture. “We gotta go! An Ephor could be here any moment! We gotta go and we gotta go now!”
Alexandros looks terrified. “We can’t end this. We have to find-”
The storm stops. There is now utter stillness. The clouds begin to disperse. Stars once hidden begin to shine again. A dog barks in the distance and a crow caws back.
The four begin to run away from the house. Alexandros can speak now without yelling but does so anyway. “You three take off. I’ll take another moment! If he’s here, he’s by himself, and I’ll take ‘im!”
Botha and the other two nod and without another second passing, disappear completely into the night, only leaving behind them the dull sound of some very far-off thunder and an overwhelming smell of ozone. Where they were once standing they leave only their footprints in the dirt.
Alexandros, by himself now, looks around the outside of the ranch house, searching for any sign of life or activity. He moves as far away as he can from the home.
“Knochen!” he screams. “Knochen! Show yourself! Show yourself now! You’ve got ten seconds! Ten damn seconds before I obliterate the house!”
After a frustrated wait that seems to take much longer than ten seconds, Alexandros makes a slicing gesture with the ori-baton. The truck that he threw Katsuo Sr. into lifts up into the air and crashes into the roof. Then it drops through the home’s first and second floors. Alexandros then makes a pull down gesture with both hands on the baton and the truck explodes, setting the home ablaze.