I scrambled up. Beyond the awning there was only a wall of rain.
"But…" I said. "The girls…"
"I'm sure the shoe store is still there," said Kevin.
"We can't just leave them," I said.
"They probably didn't even notice," he said. "We'll wait here. Boat's not going to leave without us. Maybe we can go inside someplace…"
"But…" I shook water out of my hair, wiped my eyes. The rain, if anything, got stronger. I backed away from the spray off the awning, as if it could have got me any wetter.
"Hey, check this out!" said Kevin, pointing behind me. "It's a video store! Let's go look!"
I followed Kevin through the glass door. It closed behind us, muffling the rain to a whisper. An ancient air conditioner wheezed and rattled overhead; flyspecked lights flickered from murk to gloom and back again. We dripped on the doormat.
"Let's just stay here," I said. "I don't want to leave the place a mudbath."
"Come on in," said a muffled voice from farther inside. Kevin raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged.
We advanced a step. Kevin flicked the last of the rain from his eyes, stared at the stack in front of him. Several rows of very pretty couples stared back.
"Would you get a load of that?" said Kevin. "Chick flicks. A wall of chick flicks. Not one movie I ever heard of. Or wanted to. I tell you, everything is for chicks these days. Chick flicks, chick shops, chick clubs. I bet a chick runs this…"
A tall bearded man, aged anything from thirty to sixty, came out from behind the stack. He walked with a stork's high-stepping gait; in his tilted face owl's eyes blinked, magnified by thick round glasses.
"Can I help you with anything?" He said, in a voice that would have been Bela Lugosi's if Bela Lugosi had been a Texan.
Kevin and I traded a look again.
"You are welcome to sit out the rain," he added, blinking.
Kevin blinked back at him. "Sci-fi," he said. "My friend here likes sci-fi."
I cringed.
"SF is in the corner," said the proprietor, sounding like an English butler played by a Texan Bela Lugosi. "Here, let me show you."
"Whassamatta with you, George?" Kevin hissed. "Can't you see? He's busting your chops. Yanking your chain. Jerking you—"
"I get your point," I said.
"So let's call him on it," Kevin whispered. "Give him the fifty bucks and tell him to put on the show, right here, right now. I betcha he'll say the player is busted." He pointed at a TV-DVD combo behind the counter. "I swear I'll punch him out if he does that."
I looked at the shelf. The boxes were still there. Nice shiny shrink-wrapped boxes, about the right size for DVDs, with genuine-looking iridescent lettering: STAR TREK: SEASONS 1-5, STARFLEET JAG, STAR TREK: VULCAN ACADEMY, STAR TREK: MIDSHIPMEN. Some of the credits brought tears to my eyes, others made my mouth water; each sang to me its sweet siren song. " Script by Philip K. Dick." "Directed by John Carpenter." "Guest stars: Marlon Brando, Bette Davis." I looked at the proprietor. He looked back, blinking. I looked out the window.
The wind picked that particular moment to fling a sheet or ten of rain at the plate-glass window, turning the street outside into a mess of funhouse mirrors. Such a small decision: Kevin and I walked down one side of the street, Kate and Janie on the other, men ducking left, women right. Mirror, Mirror…
Kevin was probably right. It was a hoax, had to be. There are no gateways between universes. Not even in Bermuda.
"Well?" Kevin asked.
"It would be," murmured a silent inner voice, raising one eyebrow, " a highly illogical assumption. The odds against it are astronomical."
A minuscule, tiny, infinitesimal risk.
"Bermuda Triangle? It's a myth! A tale to frighten children!" another voice snapped. "Dammit, I'm a doctor, not a folklorist!"
"George?" said Kevin. "Hello?"
"No," I said firmly.
"'No I don't want to make a fool out of this jerk,' or 'No I don't want to see the final episode of Star Trek by'—who did you say it was?"
"Frank Herbert," I answered automatically. "Or so he says." I nodded at the salesman. The salesman grinned, tilting his head even more.
"So which is it?" Kevin demanded. He shook stray raindrops from his nose with a sideways jerk. He would have looked like a rooster if roosters looked like fireplugs.
"No, I don't want to take a chance of losing Janie," I said slowly.
Kevin threw up his hands. "Can you believe this guy?" he asked of no one in particular.
The proprietor fielded the question himself. "I haven't believed either of you guys since you opened your mouths," he said. "You are either senile or Canadian, is what I think. Best TV show of all time, canceled after three seasons?" he continued. "President Heinlein would have flown us Marines out of Hanoi to take over the studio if they tried that. I wish he'd done that, I was gettin' bored babysitting Giap."
I ran for the door, Kevin a breath behind me.
Rain squalls don't last long in Bermuda, which is just as well. You will hardly ever be late for anything if you wait one out. I did not wait. I ran into and through the curtain of warm water, slipping on bumps and splashing through puddles, until I felt a solid wall against my hands.
I wiped my eyes. By sheer dumb luck, I stood against the window of the shoe store I'd seen Janie go into. I saw Kate right away, turning a slipper this way and that inches in front of her face. It took the longest second of my life to find Janie, talking with a salesgirl in the dark interior of the shop.
"Any other day," Kevin growled behind me, "I'd'a said you've been out in the sun too long." He pushed open the door and shoved me into the shoe store.
"Give me a break," I said.
"I can do that, George," Kevin said, more Brooklyn than usual in his voice. "You want a break to your face or a break to your kneecap?"
"And that's why we are standing here making puddles of ourselves," Kevin concluded.
"Wow," said Kate. "This is so romantic. Kevin, would you ever do something like that for me?"
"I'm standing here dripping, don't I?" He said. "Braved the elements, and all that."
"It's not the same," said Kate.
"How is it not the same?" Kevin roared. "We ran the same, we got wet the same—"
"George had a more romantic reason," Kate declared. "Even if I don't understand it."
"Schroedinger's cat?" Janie asked.
I nodded. "Exactly."
"What?" Kevin said.
"One possible explanation for the Bermuda Triangle," I said, "is the Many Worlds hypothesis, itself a corollary of Schroedinger's thought experiment—"
"Please, George. English," Kevin said.
"Short version?" I said. "If this is true, then, I thought, watching the videos from an alternate reality would collapse the wave function in that reality. We'd have to stay there."
"And what would be wrong with that?" Kevin demanded. "Five seasons of Star Trek. Winning the Vietnam War. Or do you think that would have been bad, winning the war?"
"Screw the war," I said. "Janie and I wouldn't be together."
"Why not?" Kate broke in. "I always thought you two were destined for each other. A perfect couple. Why can't we be like them, Kevin?"
Kevin took a breath to answer. Janie beat him to it.
"We would have had no reason," she said, "to meet that day."
"Two years, two days ago," I said. "If that weren't Cancellation Day, neither of us would have gone to ConTrek. No cancellation, no party."
"Ooh, goosebumps!" said Kate. "Hey! Rain's gone. Let's go over there again."
"Sure," said Kevin. "Maybe we'll collapse into a reality where I never forgot anything. Or where you learned to keep your mouth shut."
"You're a such a pig, Kevin," said Kate. "If you made your own universe, all the women in it would be barefoot and pregnant."
"Not really. They'd be bare-butt and—" Kevin began.
"Bare-butt and pliable?" I suggested.
"
Bare-bust and programmable," Janie said.
"Season Five?" The proprietor took off his glasses. "What planet are you guys from?"
"Told ya he was yanking your chain," Kevin said. "Let's go, Kate. Back to the ship, it's sailing in an hour."
"Everybody knows there wasn't but one season of Trek," the salesman continued, in the same Texan Bela Lugosi voice.
Janie started to walk toward the door. Kevin and I followed.
"A short one, too, only twelve episodes," the salesman continued. "I guess America wasn't ready for a woman Number One."
I stumbled, caught myself. Janie took my hand. We walked on, toward the open door.
"Some say, though," he said, "it was the show that helped get President Bush elected."
"Bush?" said Kate. She walked just behind Kevin, holding his hand. "What's he got to do with it?"
The salesman laughed. "He? What are you guys, Canadian? Everybody knows there's but one brain in that family, and that's Barbara."
Janie froze in the doorway. I tried to stop but slipped in my own puddle. Newton's Laws seemed to work the same in this universe as anywhere else; the hundred pounds or so I have on Janie swept us both out the door. I grabbed at an awning support to keep from falling. My momentum spun me to face the door as I clung on.
Kevin's face was only visible for a second; I saw what had to be Kate's hand on his shoulder, fingers dug deep into the folds of his shirt. After his face receded into the dark interior of the store, slipping from sight like a drowning man's, a lightning flashed, and seared on my retina his very last look.
When we came back into the store, we found no one there but the same proprietor: stork-gaited, owl-eyed. And on the shelves, the three familiar seasons of STAR TREK TOS, plus the expected TNG, Voyager, and movies. No surprises in the credits: Ted Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Ricardo Montalban. I looked at Janie; she looked at me and took my hand. We left without a word, and walked together to the pier, touching more and talking less than ever before.
Someone else had Kate's and Kevin's cabin on the cruise ship; the strangers had been there since sailing from New York. Another couple had their places at the late dinner seating. Even the memories are fading, though Kate's glass-on-Styrofoam voice might haunt me for a while. The last I'll probably remember of Kevin, like a Cheshire cat's smile, might be that desperate last look.
The "come-hither" look.
The "come hither and save me" look.
© 2012 by Anatoly Belilovsky
First published in FlagShip from Flying Island Press, edited by Zachary Ricks, February 2012.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
* * *
Anatoly Belilovsky is a Russian-American author and translator of speculative fiction. His work appeared in the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology, Ideomancer, Nature Futures, Stupefying Stories, Immersion Book of Steampunk, Daily SF, Kasma, Kazka, and has been podcast by Cast of Wonders, Tales of Old, and Toasted Cake. He has neither cats nor dogs, but was admitted into SFWA in spite of this deficiency.
The Contents of the Box with the Ribbon
David Neilsen
Death arrived in London in a plain, brown, cardboard box topped with a ribbon.
Martha Bazelton found the box on her stoop early on a chilly Tuesday morning. Expecting to see little but the week's milk when she opened her door, Mrs. Bazelton instead took her first steps toward her own gruesome and painful death by cocking her head to the side with curiosity. Then she leaned down and picked up the object of mass doom. It seemed an ordinary box, perhaps eighteen inches to a side, and she found it slightly heavier than she might have expected, as if someone had shipped a twelve or thirteen pound bowling ball to her front stoop.
She went inside and closed the door. The week's milk remained behind.
Mrs. Bazelton brought the innocent-looking box into the kitchen and sat it down on the table in front of her husband, Gordon Bazelton. Mr. Bazelton was an important man, with a good job in the financial sector of the city, and Mrs. Bazelton assumed any package sent to their door must be meant for him.
"What's this?" he asked, a spoonful of cottage cheese halfway to his mouth.
"A package," answered his wife, quickly busying herself with making her husband's lunch.
"I can bloody well see that," snarled Mr. Bazelton. "Who's it from?"
"Don't know, didn't see a return post," was her answer.
Mr. Bazelton frowned energetically at his incredibly lazy wife, then peered down at the box. He looked at the top of the box. He looked at the sides of the box. He picked it up (grunting slightly at the unexpected weight of the thing) and looked at the bottom of the box. Mrs. Bazelton was right, there was no address anywhere on the box. In fact, there were no markings, nor was there anything on the box to indicate that it was meant for Mr. Bazelton.
"Where did you say you found this?" he asked Mrs. Bazelton.
"It was on the stoop with the milk," she answered, before throwing her hands up. "Oy! The milk!"
And she shuffled back to the stoop to retrieve the forgotten milk.
Mr. Bazelton sat back down in his chair and gazed at his box. Yes, he had decided that markings or no, it was his box. It had been found by his wife on his stoop so that made it his box.
He wondered what could be inside his box. Money? Jewels? The latest mechanical wonder, straight from the workshops of Crankshaft & Groove? (Mr. Bazelton had always wanted to be the first in the office to own something new from C & G, if only to rub it in Barnaby Snaller's pudgy little nose.) Of course, there was no way Mr. Bazelton could ever have guessed what actually awaited him within the confines of that simple, cardboard box which sat looking as harmless as the sugar bowl on his kitchen table. He had no way of knowing of the days, weeks, months, and years of agony and terror he would suffer because of the contents therein, nor how his name would grow to become synonymous with the end of the world, nor indeed how he had been specifically selected as one most likely to open the anonymous box and help bring about that which history would eventually term The Spreading.
He had no way of knowing that within the box, sitting just inches from his face, was a Lovecraftian horror the likes of which mankind had never known and would never have the chance to know again.
In truth, Mr. Gordon Bazelton had simply no idea what could possibly be in the box. But he assumed it was valuable.
Why else ship it in a box?
So Gordon Bazelton pushed his chair away from the table, stood, and crossed to the counter where his wife was just finishing up his pickle and cheese sandwich.
"Hand me the scissors, will you Luv?" he asked.
Mrs. Bazelton tut-tutted her husband as she folded the slice of bread over on itself, completing the main course of the last lunch Mr. Bazelton would ever eat (and that only because he would eat it long before arriving at his office). She quickly and automatically licked remnants of pickle from her fingertips before wiping them on the hand towel tucked at her waist, then opened the utility drawer to fetch Mr. Bazelton the scissors.
"Here you are then," she said.
Mr. Bazelton snatched the scissors from his wife's plump hands and returned his attention to the mesmerizing cardboard box. Though bereft of markings, the box was professionally sealed with sturdy packing tape. Oddly enough, the taping had been so thorough that not a single edge or seam remained unsealed.
This could have been, if not the first, then certainly one of the earlier warnings regarding the inherent danger of the contents waiting to be revealed, but of course Gordon Bazelton paid it no mind.
As the one who had sent the box had known he would not.
"Right. I'm opening the bloody thing," said Mr. Bazelton. Not exactly inspiring final words, but then, of course, he wasn't aware they were to be his final words.
With a steady-handed jab, Mr. Bazelton broke the hermetically-sealed (if a seal created by industrial-strength packing tape could be considered hermetic) box, exposing the enclosed surprise to the atmosphere for th
e first time in exactly 26 days, which happened to be the creature's gestation period.
Mr. Bazelton withdrew his scissors from the box, opened them wide, slipped the lower blade into the cardboard wound he'd just created, and proceeded to calmly cut through the tape until he was able to bend back the flaps and peer inside. He was, for all intents and purposes, already dead, a fact that would dawn on him a few hours later as he was dragged kicking and screaming into his own private Hell.
"Hmmm," mumbled the soon-to-wish-he-was-dead man.
"What is it, dear?" asked Mrs. Bazelton, who after no small manner of investigation would come to be labeled Patient 0001.
Mr. Bazelton reached inside the box with both hands and pulled forth three small, pulsating bulbs resting within a single standard-sized clay pot. That it was some sort of plant life was obvious. Exactly what sort of plant life it might be was anything but obvious.
"Good Lord, Gordon! What on Earth have you got there?" asked Mrs. Bazelton.
The bulbs had an almost fleshy look to them, and the only hint that they were plants was the stubby, greenish stems ploughing themselves into the dirt. The surfaces of the three bulbs rippled, much like the belly of a pregnant woman ripples when the baby within kicks and turns. Mr. Bazelton leaned forward, equally fascinated and disgusted, and gently poked one of the bulbs with his finger. The skin gave slightly, then sprung back into shape when he pulled his hand away. It was unlike anything Mr. Bazelton had ever seen—not surprising since he was, in fact, the first human to ever lay eyes on this particular species (the only other human to have ever come into contact with it had been extremely careful never to let it fully germinate).
Mr. Bazelton was about to tell his wife that he'd never seen anything like this before in his life (thereby updating what was to be his final words) when one of the bulbs exploded in his face.
"Gordon!" shrieked Mrs. Bazelton, as her husband gasped a desperate 'Ack!' and tipped his chair backwards, arms flailing in front of his face. A sticky, sickly-brown sap covered every inch of his face, clogging his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and in the half-an-instant after the bulb burst, Mr. Bazelton crashed to the floor, banging his head hard against the wall in the process and causing his eyes to momentarily roll backwards into his head.
Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #3 Page 9