by Inc. HDWP
Theme-Thology: Invasion
Stories by
Lisa A. Kramer • Michael G. Williams • Michelle Mogil
Micha Fire • Aaron Crocco • Charles Barouch
Mike Reeves-McMillan • Jeremy Lichtman • Jefferson Smith
LJ Cohen • Timothy Hurley • Jeremiah Lewis
R. A. Desilets • Bill Ries-Knight • CM Stewart
Art by
Aaron Wood • Juan Ochoa
Edited by
Charles Barouch • Sydney Elise
Support/Marketing Team
Mz Maau • Andrij Harasewych
Special Thanks to
Google+ • John Ward • Traci Loudin • Tim O’Reilly
Published by
HDWPbooks
A division of HDWP, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-62604-001-4
First eBook: Edition
09/28/2013
The HDWPbooks logo is a trademark of HDWP, Inc.
To find out more about us: http://HDWPbooks.com
Theme-Thology: Invasion © 2013 HDWP, Inc.
The Woods, The Cellar, Cover art © 2013 Aaron Wood
All other interior art © 2013 Juan Ochoa
Voices © 2013 Lisa A. Kramer
I Was a Teenage Alien © 2013 Lisa Janice Cohen
Singularity © 2013 Jeremiah Lewis
Not Like Us © 2013 Mike Reeves-McMillan
That Kind © 2013 Charles Barouch
Yellow © 2013 Bill Ries-Knight
An Invasion of Ideas © 2013 Jeremy Lichtman
Famine, with Fries © 2013 Jefferson Smith
The Several Monsters of Sainte-Sara-la-Noire
© 2013 Michael Williams
Going Viral © 2013 Rachel Desilets
Dead Planet Scrolls © 2013 Timothy Hurley
Red Vapor © 2013 Michaela Susanne
The Worms Crawl In © 2013 Michelle Mogil
Chrono Virus: Fall of the Horizon © 2013 Aaron Crocco
Nano Nation © 2013 CM Stewart
Voices
Lisa A. Kramer
Helena pulled her grandmother’s thick, hand-knit sweater around her to keep off the early morning chill as she took cautious steps down the path toward the lake. Just ahead, through the trees, she caught glimpses of the sunrise glinting off the water. She made it to the lakeside just as a beam of golden light broke through the mist that still shrouded the distant mountains, making the lake sparkle with the footprints of invisible dancing fairies carried on the morning breeze.
She took several deep breaths. She wished she could hold the memories carried on the scent of the crisp morning air inside her body to help her through the challenges ahead. She wrapped herself even tighter in the brown sweater, and searched for fading remnants of her grandmother’s lilac perfume. As a child, she’d only ever felt safe when she visited her grandmother in this mountain hideaway, away from her parents and teachers and all the people who told her she’d never succeed—that she wasn’t good enough, smart enough, or courageous enough to achieve her dreams.
“You’ll show them all,” Grandma used to say. “Nothing will stop you.”
Nothing but my own mind, Helena thought. She wiped a tear off her cheek.
Movement in the sky caught her eye. An eagle circled above the lake in search of prey. Helena sighed. I wish I could be that bird, she thought, with the wind under my wings and the open sky my domain, alone but free. The eagle plunged, and Helena saw a flash of silver caught in its talons.
“You are the fish,” a Voice said. Helena felt sharp points pierce her sides while the pain of her last gasps for liquid air threatened to crush her entire body—a waking nightmare.
“No!” Helena found herself crouched down, grasping her sides and gasping for air. She shook the image off. “You can’t be here. You’re not allowed. I came here to escape you. Why are you doing this to me?”
She had come to the mountains in the hopes that visiting her grandmother’s cabin would help her escape the recent horror that chased her to this unexpected retreat. Her husband hadn’t even had time to make arrangements to come with her. When he got home from work a few days before, he’d found her throwing random items in a bag without her usual care and precision.
“Are you leaving me?” Mark asked with an uncomfortable laugh before he leaned in to give her a kiss.
Helena turned so the kiss landed on her cheek. She gave Mark a quick glance before focusing on her task. “I need to get away to find peace. I’m going to Grandma’s cabin.”
“I thought it was someone else’s month at the cabin. Your sister’s? Your parents’?”
“I checked. Nobody is using it. Nobody ever uses it but us; or maybe our kids, when they want to escape school for a bit. My family just doesn’t want to sign it over to me. I made a few promises so that I could stay there for a while.”
“What kind of promises?” Mark asked as he loosened his tie.
“Don’t make any vacation plans with your family this year.”
“Ugh, really? Do you think this will help? Is it worth committing to spending time with them? How about I book us a weekend at that B&B we loved so much—”
“I need to get away now, Mark.” She looked straight into his deep brown eyes. “They’re back.” She pulled her glance away as his eyes filled with concern. She focused on packing.
“What do you mean? A few weeks ago you told me they were gone. I thought you didn’t hear them any—”
“I told you that so you wouldn’t look at me like you are right now. I didn’t want you to hover or worry. But they’re back and it’s worse. I sometimes think I actually hear them, with my ears. ” Helena collapsed onto the bed, unable to stop the tears she felt building. “I’m frightened, Mark. What if I’m losing my mind? I’ll lose everything.”
He sat by her on the bed and put his arms around her. She melted into his familiar comfort.
“You’re not going to lose anything,” Mark said. “I’ll be here no matter what. I want you to beat this. Everyone wants you to beat this. You are too important to me and to the world . . . but don’t think about the world right now. Life would be empty without you in it, and I’m not going to lose you to something like this. There’s an explanation, I’m sure. We’ll figure this out together. Can’t you wait at least until I can go up with you?”
“I know what you have planned for this week. Your meetings are important for both of us. I have to go now, Mark. I’ve canceled everything for the week saying that I need a break before the final push. I told everyone I’d be working on the convention speech. I need this time away. Maybe if I’m alone I can get control of my dreams, figure this out, and stop the Voices.”
Mark nodded and began folding clothes and repacking the haphazard mess in her bag. “Be careful driving, and text me when you get there.”
“You know cell phone coverage is spotty. I’ll text you when I stop in town for supplies. Then you’ll just have to trust that I’m okay.”
“I wish your parents would have kept the land line connected to the cabin.”
“They visit it so rarely, they don’t see the need. They figure I can take care of myself when it comes to the phone. They think I have access to technology where cell phone towers don’t matter. Besides, this is best, nobody will be able to track me down and call with questions.”
“I hate not being able to reach you, especially when you’re going through this. I’ll come up as soon as I can. Are you sure you’ll be okay alone?”
“If I only knew I’d really be alone . . .”
“It’s going to be fine.” He moved in to hold her in a tight hug.
It wasn’t fine, though. Helena’s entire body hurt from the tension of the past few months, as well as the sensatio
n of drowning in air she had just experienced. Her nights, for what seemed like almost a year or more, had been haunted by vivid dreams—dreams that went beyond nightmare and blended into reality until she couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. The exhaustion caused by these endless nightmares created bags under her eyes that seemed filled with wet cement. People had begun to focus on her haggard appearance rather than her message. She needed to find a way to sleep more soundly, and had hoped that this trip would provide her with some of the rest she so desperately required.
Even the past few nights sleeping in the comfort of a bed that usually blessed her with the most peaceful and deep sleeps, hadn’t prevented a plague of horrifying images. She entered rooms covered in blood and feces. Children with open sores and skin hanging over starving skeletal bodies came to see her; their eyes bore into her with silent screams of “This is your fault!” Her own teeth disintegrated into a puff of dust as she made a speech, while the audience of thousands laughed. Unseen creatures chased her toward a group of people in smoke-gray uniforms with a bright red logo; their faces remained hidden under cowls so all she saw was glowing eyes and cords like tentacles stretching from their heads into the distance.
The walk back to the cabin took Helena longer than usual because she still imagined the ripping sensation of talons puncturing her sides. She tried to shake it off and focused on her feet so she wouldn't trip on roots along the familiar path.
When she got into the safety of the cabin, she prepared her regular morning chai with shaking hands. She brought her mug to a cushioned chair by the window where she had a clear view of the many bird feeders hanging in the garden and on the edge of the woods. One of the few purchases she made on the way up was food for the birds. She’d worried more about them than herself. Now she was able to lose herself and her concerns for brief moments as she watched the colorful and noisy display of the bird community. Sometimes she felt close to understanding their joyous calls and little spats. Their lives seemed so much simpler, and their struggles so much clearer. She took a few sips of chai and watched the birds, wishing that she could find the sense of peace the birds usually provided.
She couldn’t. The warm spicy flavor of the tea, seasoned with a hint of cinnamon, didn’t have its usual calming effect. Nothing seemed to calm her these days; except, occasionally, the birds.
Helena reached for the journal she’d used to record her dreams—both the sleeping and the waking. She hoped that by writing about them she would come to understand why and when her relationship with dreams had changed. If she didn’t find an answer, her whole life would be destroyed. If she couldn’t escape the Voices, she’d never be able to help those who depended on her—her husband, her children, and so many others.
As she started writing, her shaking hand made her script almost illegible. She took a few deep breaths to control the shaking, and began to write again in her usual precise and elegant style:
The images in my dreams are horrifying, especially when my dreams bleed into my waking hours. I just felt the dying breaths of a fish plucked from the lake, when I wanted to feel the freedom of the eagle. One of the Voices brought the dream. I heard it! It wasn’t just in my head. Something spoke and plunged me into this living nightmare. I have to find a way to escape the Voices. Where are they from? Why are they plaguing me? Are they simply a manifestation of myself? Why can I hear them? Why doesn’t anyone else? What am I going to do?
She put down the pen and picked up her chai, reflecting on the Voices that had started in her dreams, but somehow followed her into waking life. About two months earlier, they’d started to echo from around her whenever she was alone. Nobody else heard them as voices. It started one day when Mark was in the kitchen preparing dinner while she worked on a speech at her desk. Jazz music played in the background, and Helena felt happy and content when she heard Mark humming along. The calm shattered in an instant. The music and Mark’s humming disappeared behind what sounded to her like a chorus of agonized voices filling the room. She immediately recognized them as the Voices from her dreams.
“This speech is ridiculous. Everything you write is wrong! Nothing you say makes sense. You’re an imposter. You are nothing!”
She let out a wordless call of despair.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Mark asked from the kitchen. “Are you okay?”
He walked in wiping his hands on a towel, indication that he had cleaned up his cooking mess.
“You didn’t hear that?” She asked.
“Well . . . I heard something that sounded like the wind. And then you screamed. What was I supposed to hear? What did you hear?”
“It was the Voices, Mark. You know . . . the ones from my dreams. They called me an imposter and said my speech was ridiculous.” She scratched a big X over the speech she had been editing. “You really didn’t hear that?”
“No, Helena, I didn’t hear words. The only sound I heard before your scream was a loud gust of wind.
“It’s not windy out, Mark.”
Mark glanced out the window with an unsure look. He took the pen and speech from her. “I believe you heard something, but I think it’s just you being too hard on yourself. Let me look this over. I’m sure it’s as wonderful, powerful, and honest as ever.” He gave her a kiss and moved over to his chair to begin reading.
He only made a few edits, and Helena gave the speech the next day to a responsive and supportive crowd. From that moment on, however, the Voices made their presence known at unexpected times when she was alone. Mark never admitted to hearing anything ever again, not even the wind.
Helena flipped through the private journal that followed the progress of her nightmares and the Voices. Although she had shared the basics with Mark, she never told him all the details. She reserved those for writing in this journal, which contained pages and pages of disturbing images, doubts, and concerns. She’d always believed that her connection with her dreams helped her achieve her goals as a writer, speaker, visionary, and public servant. Early on she’d learned to recognize when she was dreaming and how to interpret much of her dream imagery. She could usually figure out the relationship between what was happening in her life and the dreams themselves. She could then take those messages and learn from them to help her confront injustice in the world and make it a place where nightmares had no power.
Even her constituents knew that she believed in dream symbolism. She’d never tried to hide it, and it had helped her achieve many impossible goals.
Some of Helena’s earliest and fondest memories came from writing in dream journals as a child, and sharing those dreams with her Grandmother who helped her interpret them. I wonder if those journals are still around, Helena thought. She went over to an old wooden hope chest and carefully moved the collection of items that decorated the top. She dug through layers of blankets and memorabilia to reach the pile of journals written in her own childish hand. She brought one back to her chair and settled in to read. She smiled as she looked at the small drawings and scratched out words of her younger self:
I dreamed my gold bicycle turned into a horse. We rode together as fast as we could go, and I left my family far behind. Grandma says it means I want to feel free. Oh, and that I want a horse.
I had that dream again where there was a big street party. Then the sky opened up like it had a giant movie screen. The movie told some kind of important message. After the movie was over, a UFO came down and I welcomed it. Grandma says I should pay attention to the movie, but that’s always the part I forget. She also says I shouldn’t watch science fiction movies before I go to bed.
Last night I had a dream that I was riding on a snowflake, and went to see all kinds of different lands. Grandma says that the snowflake means I am unique and special and that someday I am going to travel far distances. I hope she’s right.
Helena traced the childish handwriting with her finger. I wish I could go back to those simple dreams, she thought. I wish I could understand my dreams now. Why are these Vo
ices plaguing me now, when I’ve come so far and there’s so much at stake?
At times of great stress, like the past year of her life, Helena’s dreams had always became more intense, vivid, and complex, but they rarely affected her ability to function or even to sleep well.
Until the Voices started.
In the beginning, she heard only one or two disembodied speakers in her dreams, instilling doubt in her mind whenever she had to make an important decision or any kind of presentation.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” said a deep voice that sounded like her cruelest graduate school professor.
“If you say that, they will destroy you,” said a baritone that could have been her father.
“The speech you wrote for tomorrow sounds like it was written by a ten-year-old,” said someone that sounded a lot like herself.
At first she’d attributed the voices in her dreams to her own inner doubts and fears—voices that she thought she’d buried long ago so they could no longer hurt her. There was the cruel critic inside who tried to make her question how she’d ever come this far; or the voice of her inner perfectionist who forced her to exhaustively revise and rewrite everything she ever did. The one she hated the most was the personality who told her she was a fake, a phony, an imposter. She’d fought for a long time against those voices of doubt, and thought she’d won her battle until they began to invade her dreams.
The new voices in her dreams were more menacing. Individual voices soon became a crowd of unidentifiable Voices, each building on her doubts and concerns in a never ending chorus. The cacophony became so loud she dreaded sleeping, and tried anything legal she could think of to achieve a dreamless sleep.
Nothing worked.
The progression from things spoken in her dream to Voices heard while awake was terrifying. Her life imploded when she started having bizarre waking nightmares. A chorus of sound would surround her for a moment, saying things she hardly understood. Their malevolent messages then thrust her into horrifying visions: elevators plunging into the depths; a single shooter mowing down people who gathered to hear her speak; walking in on her husband having sex with another woman in their bed; and today’s vision of becoming a fish in its last moments of life.