Distant Worlds Volume 1

by Benjamin Sperduto

  “You’re wrong about me, Ulziach.”

  “Oh?” Finally the bureaucrat had injected something of himself into his words. Ulziach folded his broad hands before him and leaned over the table. “Do enlighten me.”

  “You can’t possibly know how I feel about you. You couldn’t hope to understand how much I hate what you are…what you’ve spent your despicable life doing.”

  “Ah ha!” Ulziach spread his arms wide and his broad grin threatened to fill the space between them. “At last, we’re getting somewhere! More wine, Tirius?”

  His thick fingers seized the bottle and thrust it toward to fill his guest’s glass, which was held out in acceptance of the offer.

  “Do you know why I came to work with the NIZ Agency, Ulziach?”

  “A fierce dedication to the Commonwealth’s misguided idealism?”

  “No, I wish that were so. The truth is I did it for vengeance.”

  “Vengeance?”

  “My family was quite wealthy when I was young. But by the time I was grown we were ruined. My father wasted my inheritance aboard this very ship. He was obsessed with Earth; thought that every day he woke up it would have incinerated itself during the night. When he saw that it hadn’t, he swore that it wouldn’t last another day and hurried to put money down on it. You might even remember him. His name was…”

  “Ithalian,” Ulziach said. “That was his name, wasn’t it?”

  Tirius nodded, his beady eyes swimming in memories.

  “I remember him,” Ulziach said. “Not a wit of sense when it came to this planet, but couldn’t be talked out of anything. I’ve seen fortunes won and lost in a moment aboard this ship, but I never saw anyone so reckless with his money.

  “Everyone had their favorite lines. Some liked to guess how many Earthlings would die in a day or how many bullets they would fire in an hour, but he was obsessed with the big one. We called it the Armageddon Line. A simple line really; we set a date and then took bets on whether Earth would be vaporized before or after the date.

  “Something about the stakes brought out the worst in a gambler. It sounds like a stupid thing to bet on; odds were that the world wasn’t going to end no matter how bad things got. But back in those days the fighting was so bad that every day looked like it could be the last. The majority always bet on the over, but there were a few like your father that would put down millions of credits every day on the under, hoping to strike it rich when the planet finally blew.”

  “Your family built its fortune by destroying families like mine, Ulziach.”

  “Are you suggesting that I stole your family fortune?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. When he finally spent all we had he disappeared. Whether it was out of fear or shame, I don’t know. I never saw him again. This damned place stole him from me.”

  “And you’ve spent all the years since then plotting against me?”

  Tirius downed the rest of his wine and leveled a hateful glare at Ulziach.

  “I became what I am to stop parasites like you from feeding on the weak. In all that time I never thought I’d get a chance to come after you, especially when the situation on Earth put you out of business. But when Senator Colmis told me about what his agents had discovered here, I couldn’t wait to get here and begin the investigation that will ruin you just like you ruined my father.”

  “Senator Colmis, you say,” Ulziach said, his brows furrowed. “Don’t believe I’m familiar with that name. Must be some of that new blood I’ve been hearing so much about.”

  Tirius seemed to realize his mistake and went back to stabbing impotently at his meal with his fork. Ulziach rose from his chair.

  “I appreciate your candor, Tirius,” he said, walking to the end of the table and taking up one of the unopened bottles of wine resting there.

  “It isn’t often that someone shares the intimate details of their lives with me.” He pried the cork out of the bottle and made his way around the table to Tirius.

  “More wine, Tirius?”

  Tirius looked up from his plate. Ulziach’s grin was broader than it had been all evening.

  “No,” the bureaucrat said, turning back to his food. “Thank you, I think I’ve had enough for one night.”

  “Please, I insist,” Ulziach said.

  “No, really, I…”

  Tirius did not look up quickly enough to see that Ulziach had adjusted his grip on the bottle. He did not see it swinging down at him and was flung from his chair when the bottle shattered upon his skull. His face slammed onto the hard wood of the table as he fell, snapping most of the fragile bones in his face.

  Ulziach seized him by the neck before he came to rest on the ground and hoisted his wine sodden body into the air.

  “Did you think you could intimidate me so easily, you worm? Did your master expect me to roll over like a dying animal and let you walk all over me with your credentials and your regulations?”

  He smashed Tirius’ face onto the table again. Splintered bones punctured his bloody skin.

  “Strangely fitting, isn’t it? The same hands that strangled your worthless father will be the instrument of your own death. Reunited at last, it would seem.”

  Ulziach laughed as Tirius struggled for a gasp of air. The thick fingers tightened around his neck and his spine snapped loudly. Tirius’ body went limp and Ulziach let it drop to the floor. He took a moment to straighten his clothing, then walked around the blood covered table and sat down in his soft chair to resume dinner. The food already tasted better.

  He pressed a button on the arm of his chair.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I am afraid our guest will not be enjoying our hospitality after all.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Download his ship’s records into our databanks and then dispose of it. And send someone down to clean up this mess he made of himself over dinner.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, there is something else for you to tend to.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Prepare the captured Earthlings for deployment. Their revolution will have to begin slightly ahead of schedule.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Ulziach leaned back in his chair and looked at the blue and green sphere outside the dining room window. His mood brightened at the thought of the chaos his pet humans would unleash upon that peaceful planet. It was inevitable that the Earthling peace would falter, that he knew better than anyone, but for all he knew it could take centuries. It would be much better for everyone involved to speed the process along. He was already beginning to imagine what the lines would soon look like, all the money laid down to predict civilian casualties, property damage, tons of explosives deployed, and so much more.

  “And one more thing,” Ulziach said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Bring me another bottle of wine; one from my finest stock.”

  The call to Yelthooon about the meddling Senator Colmis could wait. For the time being, Ulziach felt he was entitled to his own private celebration. He smiled and wished his father could see his magnificent triumph.

  The Big, Fat Lie

  Originally published in parABnormal Digest #3 (Sams Dot Publishing, 2012)

  Sometimes a story grows from a single idea, even if it’s a silly one. In the case of “The Big, Fat Lie,” that idea was a single sentence. As a writing exercise, I wrote out several opening lines and tried to develop an entire story around them. Only one of them really got off the ground, and the resulting story became “The Big, Fat Lie.” Humor generally doesn’t play much of a role in my writing, but I still find this story quite funny in a macabre sort of way.

  When his grandfather told him that his lies would eventually come back to bite him on the ass, Doug didn’t realize he’d meant it literally.

  Cursing profusely, he pushed the heavy dresser against the closet door and went to clean up what was left of his dog in the living room. He’d always told visitors that the fat
lab could move fast enough when he had to, but that statement had proved to be just another lie.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Doug rushed back to the bedroom and was relieved to find the dresser still in place. He went into the kitchen to get a trash bag then headed back to the living room. It took him a few minutes, but he managed to get what was left of the dog’s hindquarters into the bag without getting any blood on his clothes.

  Luckily he didn’t bump into any of his neighbors on his way downstairs to the dumpster. He tossed the bag inside and closed the cover, hoping that the smell wouldn’t get too bad before the garbage was picked up on Friday. When he got back up to his apartment, he was struck by the total silence. He closed the door, but his hand remained wrapped around the doorknob.

  “Are you still there, you bastard? I’m not afraid of you!”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Doug looked at the bloodstains on his white carpet and wished he had gotten a place with tile floors. There was no easy way to explain how the stains had gotten there. The carpet would have to be ripped up and replaced. Then again, he’d always had a thing for Persian rugs.

  Doug jumped at the sound of his cell phone ringer. He picked it up and saw that it was his wife calling. She probably thought he was having lunch about then so he didn’t have a good excuse for not answering.

  “Hey, honey,” he said after flipping the phone open.

  She asked him something about the conference she’d been told he was attending this week.

  “Oh, yeah, it’s going great. Not as boring as you’d think, really.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Tell you the truth I’m just pulling up to the convention center now. I’ll give you a call when I get back to the hotel, okay?”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Love you too, honey, bye now.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Doug closed the phone and peered through the bedroom door. The dresser was still where he had left it. He went back to the living room and looked through his wallet. There was more than enough cash inside to buy a cheap area rug. There were a few carpet stores within a mile of the apartment complex, he recalled, so he went back into the bedroom to get dressed and go buy one.

  Then he remembered that all his clothes were still in the closet. The boxer shorts and tank top he wore were sufficient for a jaunt down to the dumpster, but that was about the extent of their social acceptance.

  Cursing again, he thought about the problem for a moment, then picked up his bedroom phone and dialed a number from memory. The ringer on the other end of the line sounded four times before Krissy’s answering machine picked up. He waited for the tone.

  “Hey, baby, it’s me. Listen, I’ve got a bit of a problem here. My air conditioning went out while I was out of town and my clothes have gotten all mildewy.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “I don’t really have anything to wear so can you run over the clothes I left at your place last time I was over? Love you, thanks.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Will you just shut up?” he said after hanging up the phone. There was no response.

  Doug grabbed an armload of towels from the bathroom and tried to soak up the larger puddles of blood. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped, leaving him with a floor that was only slightly less messy and producing a pile of crimson stained white towels.

  Knock! Knock!

  “Enough!” Doug heaved one of the bloody towels in the direction of the bedroom as he shouted.

  “Mr. Colworth?”

  The sound, he realized, had come from the front door, not the barricaded closet.

  “Yeah,” he said, hoping he sounded calm and composed. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Frank. Have you got a minute?”

  Doug wondered what could be so important as to lure his landlord out of the comfort of his air-conditioned office. Then he remembered that his rent was due two weeks ago.

  “Uh, actually this isn’t really a good time, Frank.”

  “You’ve pretty much run out of time, Mr. Colworth. I’ve been trying to reach you for a week, but you’re a hard man to get ahold of. I even tried calling you at work, but nobody there seemed to know you. Strange, don’t you think?”

  Doug cursed silently. When he listed his employment information on his lease last year, he hadn’t expected that his landlord would ever actually use it to contact him.

  “Yeah, well, they wouldn’t. I left that job a few weeks after I moved in and with their turnover I doubt there’s anyone who was there when I was.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “What was that?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing. Just my dog. She’s a little wound up.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Well, we need to talk about the rent, Mr. Colworth. You’re two weeks past due.”

  “I know. It’s just that…”

  “No more excuses, this is the third time you’ve been late. I need that money right now or I’m leaving this eviction notice on your door.”

  Doug knew he didn’t have enough cash to pay the rent and he didn’t have his checkbook handy.

  “Alright, alright!” he said, thinking of a way to buy time. “Let me find my checkbook.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Doug’s eyes turned towards the bedroom and then back to the blood stained carpet.

  “Just give me a minute,” he said.

  He ran into the bedroom and tore the sheets from his bed, then brought them back to the living room to spread them over the floor to hide the conspicuous stain and the bloody towels. After depositing the sheets, he went back into the bedroom and carefully pushed the cabinet away from the closet door. No sound came from within.

  “Mr. Colworth?”

  “Coming!”

  Doug went back to the front door, turned the deadbolt, and opened it.

  “Sorry about this, Frank, why don’t you come in?”

  “Might as well,” the landlord said.

  Doug closed the door behind him.

  “What are these sheets doing out here?”

  “Oh, I’m just getting ready to take them down to the laundry.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Is that the dog?”

  “Yeah, I had to put him in the closet so he didn’t break anything.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “You locked your dog in the closet? My wife belongs to the Humane Society, you know. I’d hate to have her report you.”

  “Well,” Doug said, leading his landlord into the bedroom, “you’re welcome to try your hand at calming him down while I hunt for my checkbook.”

  “You know, animals can be traumatized just as easily as people, Mr. Colworth,” Frank said as he pulled the closet door open. “A few years back I had a renter that…”

  He didn’t scream when he saw what was behind the closet door. The color melted away from his face and his mouth hung agape.

  Doug shoved him inside and slammed the closet door shut. No cries emerged from within as he pushed the dresser back into place, only the sounds of a brief struggle and a muffled slurp. Then there was only silence.

  Doug felt sick to his stomach and managed to stumble into the bathroom before he puked. When he was finished he lied down on the cold tile and tried to stop shaking.

  “I’m sorry, Frank.”

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  “Shut up, damn you!” Doug covered his ears as he shouted. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  After lying on the floor for several minutes, he sat up, eyes wide.

  “Why am I still here?” he asked aloud. He went to the living room, snatched his keys from the coffee table, and walked out of the apartment.

  When he got downstairs to the lot where his car was parked, he noticed something out of place. A black car was parked just a few spaces from his, its engine still running. Inside the car was a pale, well-built man reading a magazine. Doug didn’t have to glance back
at his building to know that the man could see into his bedroom window from where his car sat.

  He also didn’t have to look to remember that the curtains were wide open. Surely the man couldn’t see far enough inside his apartment to see the closet.

  Then the man smiled at him and waved mockingly. There was a sense of familiarity to his gestures, as if he were greeting an old acquaintance. Doug turned and ran back to his apartment. Slamming the door behind him, he rushed into the bedroom to gauge just how much of the room was visible to the man in the car. Fortunately, the closet appeared to be just out of sight.

  The fact did not bring him much comfort, since his thoughts were still absorbed by the stranger outside. Was there a connection between him and the thing barricaded in the closet? His mind turned once again to the scolding of his grandfather.

  ‘Thou shall not bear false witness, Doug. It says so right here in the book,’ he used to say, waving around that frayed Bible of his like a sword. Then came the stories, the gruesome tales of a Hell Doug never heard about in Sunday school; a Hell where a special place was reserved in its deepest pits for all manner of falsifiers. There they would writhe together in filth and pain for all eternity. Doug never quite took his grandfather’s warnings to heart, but the gruesome images he recounted certainly lingered in his young imagination.

  Perhaps the man in the car was a demon come to drag him down to Hell before his appointed time, he thought. Or maybe he was some weird hoodoo witch doctor victimized by one of Doug’s phone scams coming back for revenge. Or maybe…

  Doug fell back onto his bed as his head swam through a murky pool of possibilities. His head hurt.

  “I’m losing it.”

  Knock! Knock!

  Doug shot to his feet and peeked out the window to see if the strange man was still sitting in his car. When he saw that he was, Doug sighed and made his way to the front door.

  “Yeah? Who is it?”

  A woman’s voice answered.

  “I’ll give you three guesses, but you’d better only need one.”

  He did and opened the door.

  “Gina, what are you doing here?”