"Well I'm not dying. And I'm not banging my head." I look up at him. "What other explanation is there?" My voice breaks with the weight of every dead night-time dream.
"Well, sometimes they, ah—" He purses his lips. "Sometimes they can be caused by a genetic anomaly in the brain. Random firing of neurons."
Genetic. I pull my hands away. I know what that means. I know what he is trying to say. "You think I'm inbred, like the rest of the people here."
"That's not what I said, Gemma."
"Well if that's so, then why can't anyone else here see them?" I'm standing over him now, my head only just above his. "If it was breeding, then everyone here would be able to see them. But they can't. Only me. I'm not like them. My mother wasn't born here."
"Well, maybe it came down from your mother's side. But Gemma, your phos- your visions can't be caused by the Van Allen Belt radiation. It's just not possible."
His voice is kind, but with it goes my hope of escape. I have failed to convince him. I can feel the tears running down my cheeks.
"Gemma—"
There is a booming crash and the shutters along one side all bang at once, sending jagged lightning strikes across my vision. The wind has come, and it howls around the house. Now I can hear the roar of the ocean, stirred to a frenzy.
Luca jumps up and opens the door, then shuts it just as quickly as salt spray is blown in by the wind. I think of my father's bike, and wonder if it will be there in the morning.
Luca leans against the door. "It's all water out there, Gemma. You'd better stay here until it goes down."
I nod. I know this. I had planned this, to be trapped in here with Luca, to have all night to convince him, to talk about our journey off the island, our plans for the future. In my plans, he believed me.
#
I sit on the bench, my gaze on the floor. Luca is busy lifting things up onto tables in case the water comes in under the door. He is talking to me, a constant stream of words, sometimes about his work, sometimes about me and my future here, now that school is done.
He doesn't understand that I don't want a future here. I don't want to marry one of these islanders and raise sheep and only know three hundred people my entire life. He doesn't understand that when he leaves, he will take my future with him. That he was my future.
The starbursts are constant now, tumbling over one another to get my attention. I can't bring myself to call them phosphenes. Luca thinks there is something wrong in my head. But there isn't. My mother didn't come from here. I'm not broken. How do I make him see this?
When I blink, the starbursts are frantic static across my eyelids. I will not look. I don't want to see what they have to say.
But the lights go out. Luca is swearing. I cannot help but see them now, in the dark, filling my vision with fireworks. With each gust outside they scatter and dance like leaves, as if the wind is blowing them through my head.
"Gemma, Gemma there's a torch near you somewhere, on the bench—" There is a crash and swearing. Curling spirals. Blooming flowers. Sharp lightning from the shutters.
My searching fingers find the torch. "I have it." My voice is rusty in the dark.
"Good. Bring it over here, I think I've knocked one of the receivers over."
I put the torch down on the bench. My school dress pulls easily over my head. I kick off my shoes and slip across the floor to Luca, following the lines that crackle and spin from his words. I am afraid and electrified, all at once.
My hands meet the fabric of his shirt. His hands grab my shoulders, then let go instantly when he touches my flesh.
I stand on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. It is as warm and firm as I imagined. His hands come back down, to rest on my hips. His soft palms feel wonderful on my skin.
He pulls away. "Gemma, stop.” His hands fumble for mine in the darkness. “You don’t want to do this.” His voice is gentle, but in his words I hear that he does not want me. I am nothing to him, just a crazy, inbred girl who sees visions. Someone to be nice to. Nobody important.
I run to the door, stubbing my toe on a box, my skin hot with shame. I fling the door open and splash out into the night. The ocean washes my feet, driven up onto the shingle by the howling wind. The cold spray stings my naked skin.
Luca is at the door. “Gemma! Come inside!” He hesitates, clearly worried about the swirling water. I turn my back on him.
My mother abandoned me here, on this lonely rock, under a hole in the sky. This can’t be all there is. This can’t be all the meaning in my life.
I lift my hands up to the shining stars, begging them to take me away. The wind roars across the land. A wave, higher than me, crashes over the edge of the island and shoots along the shingle. I am up to my knees in icy, foaming water.
This is dangerous. Many people have lost their footing, been drawn down and swept away by the waves, when the wind blows on Tristan da Cunha.
I hear splashing. Luca forges through the water toward me. I can feel shell and stone shifting beneath my feet. Here is a way off the island. A permanent way.
Then Luca grabs my shoulders, his smooth hands warm on my skin. Flowers bloom, new constellations under the bright veil above. I feel that I will never know what they are saying to me.
The tug of the water is stronger now. The shingle roars away. Luca is heavier than I, and the water draws him down. He is not used to the sea, and suddenly fear blooms for him in my chest, and for me too, should the sea pull him away. It is my fault he is out here. I grab his hand as his head goes under and lean against the pull of the tide. He splutters and gasps as he fights the pull of the ocean.
The water drains away but there is another wave building, a grey wall driven by the howling wind. I yank at Luca’s arm, urging him to hurry, pulling with all my strength back to the hut. I am strong. I know this island and the sea that traps us here.
Luca gets his feet under him and then it is easier. Arms around each, other we splash back to the hut.
Luca slams the door, plunging us into darkness. I am standing ankle deep in water. In the darkness, my vision flickers and dances with tantalising shapes.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I shout at them.
“Gemma,” says Luca, but I hiss at him and he falls silent. It’s not his words I am waiting for.
But there is nothing in the dark. The stars burst, helices dancing their serpentine dance in my sight. Only mine. Frustration is a knife inside me.
Luca is silent now, though I can hear his breathing. I find my way to the small bedroom by touch and collapse onto the bed, tired and empty. He can join me or not, as he chooses.
#
This morning the wind is still. My visions are quiet, too. Luca is sleeping on a bench, awkwardly balanced. I admire the curve of his jaw, the shadow of stubble, the strong hands. My dreams of kissing seem so childish now. Like my dreams of escape. Something that I read in a book, once, perhaps. Not real.
My dress is a sodden mess on the floor. I pull it on anyway.
Dad’s bike is gone from the wall. The shingle is spotted with seaweed, washed up by a furious sea. The sunlight makes diamonds on the waves. Behind the house the mountain rises stark and sharp against the sky. A lone flower blooms from the tip, spreading to cover the vastness of the sky in a pattern of shadow and light.
I am not leaving here with Luca. Maybe I will never leave. My mother came and went, and I never knew who she was.
But this is a special place. The universe is closer here, closer than anywhere else in the world. There is a reason I am here. There must be. I am meant to be here, listening to the universe. Maybe one day I will understand what it is telling me.
I am Gemma Glass. This is me, standing under the hole in the sky. This is me, stretching my arms up to the stars. I am strong. I can wait.
###
Meryl Stenhouse lives in subtropical Queensland with her family, a weed-infested garden and far too many characters. She has been
a research scientist, call-centre operator, auditor and environmental officer but now writes fiction for a living. Her stories have appeared in Shimmer, Shock Totem, Extreme Planets Anthology, Space and Time Magazine and A capella Zoo.
Waterman High Speed Axials
William R. D. Wood
Parson had a clear view of the parking lot thirty feet below. The façade at the peak of the metal roof provided excellent cover and he'd managed to work a cinder block free, giving him the perfect hole to get a bead on any newcomers.
Weeds, brown and scraggly, had pretty much claimed the lot. They were tall and grew fast despite the scarcity of water. His dad would have known what kind they were. Probably even the scientific name. A few cars peeked out above the weeds, like crouching lions on a flat, dry savannah. Someday they'd be reduced to mounds of rust and sun-bleached plastic, but those days were a long time out. The boogers didn't care about metals and plastic.
Just the water.
Parson's head hurt. He rubbed the silver chain around his neck between a thumb and forefinger. His skin was rough, and even the gentle motion generated pinpricks where the skin had recently cracked. He couldn’t feel the grit bunching up and rolling between his fingers and the chain, but he could hear it. Like sandpaper.
The boogers were everywhere, drying everything out. They were too small to see individually—microscopic, his dad had said. And pretty evenly distributed across the globe, though they clumped into a fog that hugged the ground and drifted on the breeze. When a cloud of them blew by, all you could do was hunker down deep in a building and hope none of them wandered in. Eventually all of them would settle to the ground. Then all you'd have to do is find a nice place with no wind and avoid stirring them up. Dad had said they couldn't wait since the cars would probably rust out before those days came.
How long had the boogers been at it anyway? Everything in his head was such a jumble. Days or months, hours or years, he wasn't sure anymore.
His dad would have known. He had been good at keeping track of time. “Mister Schedule,” his mom had called him. Planning family time, game nights, visits to the doctor. Always updating calendars and making sure Parson and his mom had whatever they needed, whether it was honey ham for sandwiches, a new baseball glove, or a prescription from the pharmacy.
He really missed his dad, but not his mom so much. She should have stayed.
Think with your head, his dad had told her. She'd just stood there shaking her head as he begged her not to go. Over and over. Parson rubbed at the chain around his neck and then his temples trying to force the headache away. It didn't work. His mom had given him that chain when he was little. He should have thrown it away.
A clatter rose nearby. Tendrils of grit hung in the already heavy afternoon, oozing a few feet above the ground, making it hard to see the whole lot clearly. Probably nothing. A marquee had fallen over down the road yesterday, or last year, and made a similar noise. Everything falls eventually.
Of course, maybe the sound had been an accident and someone was hiding in the weeds.
Parson tightened his grip on his rifle and licked his lips, immediately regretting it. The air sucked the moisture away and the chapped sections of skin pinched the tender spots in between. He scanned the road, quartering off sections the way his dad had taught him. From the edge of the lot, across the King Highway, to the bank of the dusty Kalamazoo riverbed on the other side, all clear.
No one. Not yet, anyway.
If someone were lying low, they’d come. The factory beneath him was too big to pass up. The name of the place probably played a role in drawing folks in. Waterman High Speed Axials. The word Waterman was six feet tall, emblazoned in red on the side of the building with the rest of the name below in much smaller letters.
Waterman. A cruel joke if there ever was one. Why else would everyone who happened along this way try to get in, if not because they thought they'd find water at Waterman's? People were desperate and the few who remained getting more so every day. The end of the world hadn’t been quick and merciful after all. Folks had had lots of time to suffer. To pillage this and ransack that. Mostly for survival. Sometimes just out of meanness.
Fortunately for Parson, dozens of palletized tanks filled with distilled water were staged deep inside the building near the centrifuges. Process water, his dad had called it. Not enough to last forever but enough to last a very long time, especially if he could add more to them. Anyone who came now never got close to the centrifuges. They didn't find water. Or supplies. Or hope.
What they did find, without fail, was Parson.
Think with your head. Parson heard is dad's voice in the back of his skull, behind the ache. He wiped grit from the corner of his eyes, feeling the chain brush the back of his hand, and tucked it back in his shirt. The air was cool and still, tinged with ozone, like the first few minutes after a storm. That was cruel in the way only natural, unfeeling things could be.
He remembered the sweet tang from when he was just a boy. As soon as a good rain would pass by, his old man would yell down to him and he’d grab the gloves and ball. They'd run and stumble out onto the field, grass up to Parson’s waist, and they’d toss that piece of old leather around until the sun went down or his mom yelled for them out the kitchen door. Sometimes he and his dad would ignore her, laughing like idiots as they tried to catch the ball in the dark. His dad sure did love that smell. That electric smell that followed a good thunderboomer. Parson did too.
The world smelled that way all the time now. Storms were few and getting fewer, though. The boogers were responsible for that. The charge they carried bound up any free water they came into contact with. Didn’t much matter how they did it. They just sure as shit did.
His dad had explained it. Someone had created a biochemical that clamped around water molecules like a glove around a baseball. Locked them up tight in a tiny piece of sand. Dad had known a lot of stuff.
Parson had always hated science.
He still did.
Dead trees stirred along the edge of the road. Now he was in business. Settling the butt of his rifle into his shoulder, he sighted in on the newcomers. Two of them. A woman and a man. They looked haggard and filthy and he immediately wondered what they were carrying in their packs. The woman carried a walking stick. Glints of light betrayed her position. A chromed knife, assorted metal buckles and buttons, he was sure.
Other than that indiscretion, they were pretty good. Survival of the fittest had weeded out the dumb ones. They moved cautiously into the lot, keeping low, stopping behind one of the cars. They looked around, talked mostly with hand signals, but occasionally spoke in hushed angry tones.
He felt sorry for them. You couldn't let yourself get emotional. You couldn't lower your guard. You had to think with your head. Plan for the future.
They continued to argue. Didn't they know the way sound carried? Not using your head was the fastest way to wind up dead. The keys to survival were remaining cool, collected, and, above all, quiet.
Their loss. His gain.
He could probably drop them both right where they were. Shoot through the windshield. The glass might knock the bullet off. He’d seen it happen. If he missed, they’d bolt out of range and he couldn’t let himself be drawn out into a chase. Maybe they'd seen him and that was their plan. They wanted to take him down, take the water for themselves and share his roost at the peak of the roof. They were down there right now getting a bead on him.
No. He needed to use his head. That didn’t make sense. They wouldn’t have come in arguing loud enough to be heard if they'd known about him. Too much to lose.
His finger tightened on the trigger. The skin tugged at a crack on the tip, exposing another millimeter of flesh beneath to the air. The tiny wound stung like ants were trying to bite and burrow into his flesh.
If he only dropped one of the intruders, the other might be skilled enough to figure out where the shot came from. They could make cover and wait
for him to expose himself when he had to go inside. His jaw muscles tightened. They were trying to even the odds. That might have been okay before the boogers had taken everything away. His head ached something fierce. Parson didn't want a fair fight.
He'd let them cower behind the car until they felt cozy enough to move. He’d taken a nice long swig before coming up. He could wait.
When they moved, they were his.
Parson settled more deeply into his prone firing position, careful not to stir up any telltale wisps. The roof was warm against his skin and the barrel of his rifle virtually invisible in the hole left by the missing brick, taken purposefully from the gap at the top of the e in Waterman.
Waterman High Speed Axials.
His old man had worked in this place for twenty plus years come rain or shine. He hadn’t been the plant manager but he’d sure acted like it often enough. He and Parson's mom had argued about that a lot, and other things, too. The night before she left, Parson overheard them. His mom called his dad an emotionless monster, but Parson didn’t think his dad was like that at all. She said she was scared to death of him, like he hadn’t been standing right there with her. That was crazy. If she believed his dad was dangerous, why would she tell him? And when she left, why didn't she take Parson with her, to protect her little boy?
Instead she just left, abandoning them both.
His dad had been a rock, all schedules and plans, as always. Even when the boogers had worked their way halfway to the Atlantic seafloor, his dad had still gone to work. Doing whatever needed to be done to keep the place going. Supporting the scientific community even as the whole world fell to pieces. He'd been that way long before the boogers had probably even been dreamed of. Whenever someone had called in sick, his dad had been there to fill in, any day, any time. You do what you’ve gotta do, he’d always said. Think with your head, and for God's sake, plan ahead.
Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 Page 3