9 Tales From Elsewhere 13

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  The DVD moved slowly along, and there were parts of it where it was evident I was with someone. In a few scenes there was a kind of shadow beside me that might have been from a person, but there were no actual images of that person on film. There were other scenes where I was in a club fashioned as a cave, with artificial rocks and fake candle lighting.

  ‘Why the fascination with the décor? Looks pretty second rate.’ Tom was glancing at his watch now and making signals to Pete.

  ‘She’s there, those were, these are, pictures of her.’

  ‘Nope, it looks more like a wall and a few tables to me, Ron.’ Pete was amused. I knew what he was thinking. The saddo does it again.

  ‘I didn’t make her up, guys. She was real. That’s the club she took me to, I took film of her.’

  ‘Right. Listen, Tom, I’m going to move on over to Julio’s. Join me?’

  They both stood and my sense of panic at being left alone, with the empty pictures and film was out of all proportion.

  But by then I already knew that I wouldn’t be alone, even after they left.

  In desperation I lifted my shirt. ‘Okay if she didn’t exist who did these?’

  Tom grimaced and Pete looked away at the bloodied tatters that adorned my chest. She had shown me a piece of rough history that was for sure.

  As they opened the front door and stepped out into the night Tom said, ‘Next time you pay a hooker try to get one who wears slightly less pointed stilettos before she steps on you.’ And they were gone.

  Gibraltar in March is pleasant enough, with the breeze constant but fairly warm. We strolled along the street, hand in hand now, and it felt so normal and I so casual about it that my brain began to tell me things my body was already realising. When we stopped for some food her leg played with mine under the table, her foot rising into my crotch as the waiter brought the bill.

  Her hotel was nearer than mine so we went there. I was nervous her fiancé might still be there but in my heightened mood that was all part of the ritual I clearly had to endure. Her room was empty of him and his things. Her pale skin drifted in and out of the shadows created in the room by the ceiling fan and the half drawn shutters at the window. As she danced before me, stripping away her clothes, her shift from centre vision to half hidden in the corners of the room was enticing. If only I could still feel that way about her now.

  She was athletic but allowed me the pretence of leading in our movements. Her cries, her caresses were taken up and carried away by the seagulls that were on constant guard on the balcony all through our performance. I had never felt so fulfilled, and not just physically, where to be truthful I was an onlooker part of the time. My spirit was lifted, my heart entrapped, and the fissures that ran through my body reached far deeper than the layers of skin. She pulled, tore, ripped and laid bare the skin, blood acting as an additional lubricant to her desires.

  By the time darkness descended and I walked the mile or so back to my own hotel I was exhausted but no one would have thought so from my energetic steps. We had agreed to meet in a small club in the central square in town.

  The flight back, when my holiday was over, was long, dull and pitted with memories. I couldn’t say I felt used, that would have been immature. I didn’t even think I had been had because she’d paid her way, she hadn’t asked anything of me. I assumed the fiancé had returned and she had received a better offer.

  My cottage was musty, and the open windows invited in the country sounds that had been absent for the few days away. An owl screeched, the stream at the end of the lane was full and rushing, a low wind ruffled the trees.

  She made her presence known almost immediately. The bathroom door opened and closed. I was so tired from the flight that it was a second or so before I realised there had been a sound, and a movement independent of me. Mentally I blamed a draught or something and closed the window; glad to shut out the commotions outside. Then, just as I pulled the latch across, I had the awful feeling that it was the familiar noises from out in the real world that I should be embracing, and not the previously safe environment I was now trapped within.

  The club was well known in the town, it being the only nightspot with any spark of life to it. You could see it from the elevated main street where most of the shops were. It was down some steps, in a small square. There weren’t queues at the door but enough people milling around to make me glad I was meeting someone, and wouldn’t be on my own with so many others.

  Then I noticed the people were standing around outside but no one was actually entering the club. In fact it was evident as I got nearer to the entrance that the club was closed. A policeman was standing nearby, and he told me in perfect English although his ancestry was clearly Spanish, that the club had been closed for a few months. No, he hadn’t seen a pretty blonde lady, and his look told me what he thought my enquiry actually indicated.

  My work suffers constantly, and the promotion I was due was passed to someone else; Tom as it happens. Mother doesn’t pester me any more about finding someone nice to settle down with. The last time she visited, just before Easter, she found female underwear in the bedroom and assumed I was living with a girl but didn’t want her to meet my mother. ‘Too ashamed of the old girl, is that it?’ I don’t hear from her much these days.

  It began with movement, subtle, almost ephemeral, simply playing in the shadows, like a feather caught in a soft wind. Then the bath would be wet, before I ran the water. There would be a lingering scent in the room, earthy yet light. Wounds would mark my body in the night, though I couldn’t remember how.

  I saw her once, after a couple of months. I was in the front garden, getting some weeds out of the lawn, and she walked out into the lane. I fumbled with the trowel I was using, dropped the waste sack I was using to collect garden rubbish, and by the time I got out onto the lane she was nowhere to be seen, but it was her.

  The skirt was still a little too short, and the hair, longer, but just as blonde, white almost as if she was very old. She wasn’t though, or at least she hadn’t been to me. Not in that hotel room, with the gulls carrying away our passion, while the solitary walls I had built were dismantled brick by exquisite brick.

  The privacy I craved after the labours of my parents failed seems a world away now. The attention is constant, so much more than with a mere wife or partner. I feel invaded each minute of each day. The dreams of sharing my life with someone special must have had a different meaning.

  In fact I can see her tonight, or a reflection of her. Cooking pasta, I can catch her occasionally out of the corner of my eye, sitting on the window ledge, watching me at work in the kitchen. The room is in darkness, save for some candles on the dining table; sometimes I try to maintain a semblance of normality.

  As I sit I watch her walking towards the table. She does seem older than I remember. The skin isn’t as smooth as I recall, the lips less red, the eyes not as blue. Her smile isn’t as inviting, although she does seem to want me to join her. She seems to beckon to me, but her anger looks so violent that I remain seated.

  She is standing behind me now, and I have to admit to a feeling of anxiety. Her body presses into me as she leans across me, over the table, and blows out the candles.

  THE END

  6.

  FOGGINESS

  By Reggie Jacobs

  I’ve always enjoyed driving into the fog. The thick white blanket just barely moving forward to etch the landscapes I once knew. I had to wonder would the fog draw it differently this time?

  It always felt like something changed after a foggy morning. I just never could really tell. But it felt like it had. I felt that very sensation as if today of all days it had changed the world in my favor.

  The traffic on my morning commute seemed peaceful and by the time I reached my office the sun had pushed through and only a haze of the fog remained.

  The change was complete.

  And there in the parking lot was this porcelain woman, with light brown hair staring off at the
sun. As I drew closer I noticed her dress was more than just a white gown, but a intricately detailed dress, with frills and folds that looked like no fashion I saw in the Sunday Ads. It looked pretty. She looked pretty.

  I had locked my sights on her so long that when she turned I couldn’t immediately cut my gaze and so our eyes met.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice had a tinge of an accent although from where I was not certain but it was as if I had heard it before. Not just the accent but the actual voice.

  “That’s alright.” I smiled politely.

  She forced a smile back as I walked right passed her and into the office. The moment the doors closed behind me I wished I’d asked her name. I turned and like any beautiful woman you don’t stop to talk the first second you see her, she was gone.

  If my morning hadn’t felt different before seeing that woman, it certainly did now. I tried to keep her image burned in my mind. But everyone at the office was saying ‘good morning’ or asking me for my take on the presidential election.

  When I apologized I said something that I thought truly fit for why I wasn’t jumping right into their conversations, “I just feel a bit foggy this morning.”

  “Get some coffee.” They said.

  I did.

  It didn’t help. It was only that much easier to remember the details of her dress and I found myself making the patterns of the folds in the margins of a purchase order.

  I dared to draw her lips but stopped in case any of my co-workers would notice what I was drawing.

  How strange was it that I saw a beautiful woman today?

  Even stranger was how unearthly she seemed, how dreamlike she appeared as the fog dissipated in the parking lot. I had to have had dreamt it.

  Suddenly my boss’ hand swirled around my shoulder.

  “Good morning.”

  There was no sense covering up my doodles. I could feel him breathing down my neck as he interpreted my chicken scratch.

  “Oh.” He said, “It’s going to be a busy day. Why don’t we meet in my office in five minutes before things get crazy.”

  I hadn’t expected a busy day. Perhaps that’s what the fog had altered. I hate when a foggy morning ends. It is like the death of something relaxing. I’m certain fishermen and the great sea captains of the world never found fog relaxing, but I do. And now that it was over a wretched and humid sun would come out and burn my eyes.

  I did nothing for five minutes and then went into my boss’ office. It was clean except for his desk, which had a systematic messiness to it. One side was like a giant inbox and the other side was a giant reference collection of products and state laws. He always looked buried in his work and was always there early and left late.

  “So you saw her today?”

  “I’m sorry?” His question caught me off guard. But he didn’t play coy with me he elaborated immediately.

  “The lady of the fog. You saw her, didn’t you? I saw you drawing the patterns of her dress.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “I saw her once. It was a day like today. And that’s when everything changed for me. She was still beautiful wasn’t she?”

  I’d never seen my boss act this way, it was almost like he was reminiscing about a lost flame from his youth which was a long time ago. He was one of the many baby boomers who hadn’t planned for retirement and now expected to work until he was near eighty.

  “Who is she?”

  “She is the lady of the fog, she changes the way things are. She’s said to appear to those as a warning that her changes are going to affect them. If you saw her you’re life is about to change. Big-Time.”

  I raised an eyebrow of disbelief but perhaps the change was that all this bullshit really existed. Make believe, magic, God, Hell, Hobbits.

  “I lost everything that day. Every cent I had gone. Everything I’d done that day felt weird and finally on my way home I struck I school bus.”

  I didn’t make him continue his story. He sat in silence as he considered his past and how much more he wanted to divulge.

  “She’ll come to you again. And when she does things will get better again. At least you know you’re not going to lose your job right?”

  I laughed politely.

  “I’ll keep in mind that you saw her, others might not understand but it will be our little secret. If anything goes wacko in your day, I’m here and I’ll understand.” Then he looked at me and said, “We’re not supposed to say these things these days, but I’ll pray for you.” He sounded like he meant it.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t let it bug or worry you, get back to work.”

  I thanked him again and wondered how he expected me to get back to work when my future had the possibility of running into a bus full of school children?

  One thing did make sense, a beautiful woman as an omen of destruction.

  I spent my lunch hour listing all the aspects of my life and how each one could go wrong. I even had to have a beer to calm myself a little.

  I was walking back from my car when my ankle gave out. Somehow I stepped wrong and it twisted so hard I fell to the ground in pain. I suddenly imagined myself in a car driving over a speed bump. But I tasted rubber, I was the speed bump. Nothing hurt after that. And nothing on my body moved.

  I felt like I was in a fog. I could hear and sense the things around me but I couldn’t see them and I couldn’t touch them.

  My Boss came to visit me. Even though the doctors told him I might not be able to hear him, he told me legally he could only keep me employed for a year before he’d have to let me go. That I had no case and corporate was not excepting responsibility because I had been drinking at the time of the accident.

  He reminded me the he warned me it would be bad.

  I hope something changes. I hope the fog comes in soon.

  I need to see her again.

  END.

  7.

  TAKING A STAND ON THE SAND:

  FIRST ENGAGEMENT

  By Marilyn K. Martin

  It was a cool morning, a breeze off the vast, smoldering ocean that glinted dully beneath the golden sky. Soft, heavy waves of polluted black water lapped sluggishly at the sandy shoreline, occasionally depositing black globs that steamed and melted from the omnipresent sunlight of the triple suns overhead.

  Thud! A soldier nervously shook out his folded Mod-Rif. The other Spec Ops soldiers quickly glanced over at that soldier, scarred hybrid faces alert and expectant. Was this young soldier just channeling his nervous energy into playing with his weapon? Or did he just see something on the watery horizon they didn't?

  The seven soldiers were dressed in brown/gray mesh uniforms that repelled scans, with hidden sensors alert to any incoming weaponry beams - even if invisible - while also monitoring their vital signs. Receivers were clipped to one ear, tiny microphones embedded in their collars. Mesh utility belts carried secondary, mini-comm units and other devices. Instead of helmets, they all had thick, mesh headbands that deflected incoming head shots, prevented any telepathic leakage and recorded everything they saw.

  The young soldier blushed, a tiny dot on his headband signaling his increased heart rate, as the more seasoned soldiers stared at him disapprovingly. But they said nothing, quickly turning back to face the glugging, polluted ocean before them, their own Mod-Rifs still folded and tucked in their right arms. Click! Chug! The young soldier quickly refolded his Mod-Rif, tiny fluttering lights on his headband still signaling his momentarily increased heart and pulse rates.

  "Your new recruit needs to retake that course on Turning Frustration into Focus," murmured Tex, the First Officer, to the unit's leader, General Minlog, beside him. Their insignia were woven into the side of their headbands, visible only up close or by using a small, special "reader" all the Spec Ops carried on their mesh belts. Needing to camouflage their officers, Arm-Nav Spec Ops had their own rank designations: interlocking triangles for the General, and triangle in a circle for the First
Officer.

  "He needs more experience, not more classes," General Minlog answered with his clipped and gritty pronunciation. He was a tall and muscular hybrid with bluish skin and large, multi-faceted eyes. "They're raised on vid-games, so they subconsciously expect something monumental to happen every few minutes. Reality is never that entertaining. Or predictable."

  Minlog quickly looked left and right, at the Spec Ops soldiers arrayed around him in an arc. There was only one soldier to his right, Tex and then four more soldiers to his left. They were all arrayed like a stretched-out "C", curved away from the brackish ocean. Each soldier had to watch his slice of the sea, horizon and air before him. It was important to spot the enemy the second they appeared.

  Then the General glanced behind him. He could just make out the huge tanks in a line, a half mile inland, should things escalate to a battle. And overhead in the far back-distance, hovering media-bots were live-streaming to the world how this First Engagement with an invasive alien species was shaping up.

  Tex sniffed and made a face. "When the scientists rendered this pollution inert and non-flammable, they should have done something about the stench too. Skunks smell better than what's coming off our Pacific Ocean these days."

  Minlog smiled and nodded, his own long white/blue spidery fingers holding his Mod-Rif loosely, also cradled in his right arm. It was a compact rectangle, the barrel folded underneath. Three tiny lights on top of the rectangle near the forward end held steady, with two bright orange, and one fading into yellow. The weapons' sensors were reading the environmental energies, both natural and unnatural, aiming at a hypothetical target thirty meters away. The readings would change when he had an actual target in his holo-sight, in terms of which of the three in-chamber weapons would function best and strongest firing at a real target.