Ha!Ha!Ha!

by Steve Beaulieu

  By the time the sun rose, Seren had reached her first human city. She took a moment to witness the wonder of a world of life awakening, pondering the quickest way to gain control of them all.

  Her aural form might serve her better, at least at first. Humans tended to guard their world leaders well. Dissipating her new human form, she lifted into the light of Earth’s dawn and sought out the nearest technological communication device. Anything would do for now: a TV, a computer, a tablet, or cell phone. Within minutes, she found a teenager turning on a computer and using a search program to find music videos. The language displayed on the screen was English. Not, in itself, especially helpful since that was the most common of Earth’s languages. She pulled away from his consciousness and sought another. In an apartment nearby, she found a woman dressing a toddler while watching the news on TV.

  A popular national news service was reporting on local wildfires in California.

  Having discerned she was definitely in the US, and knowing this world leader’s location, Seren lifted herself high into the sky and quickly made her way across the country to Washington.

  She carefully descended into the White House, searching for this nation’s leader. Rounding a corner, she passed straight through a man absorbed in the reading of a report. Aside from a brief shudder, he gave no indication he’d sensed anything amiss. Apparently, she was invisible to humans in her aural form. That could come in handy if she needed to make a hasty retreat.

  Following one hallway after another, she scanned each well-appointed room then moved on until she found her target. Seren backtracked to a bathroom, as it seemed the most reasonable place to “dress.”

  In a new human form, one with the appropriate ratio of curves to lean muscle and long blonde hair, she left the bathroom and went straight to the president.

  “Mr. President,” she addressed him using what she thought was proper protocol, but when he looked up at her, he seemed alarmed.

  “How did you get in here? Who are you?”

  “Please be calm. You’ll have your chance to formulate a response after I’ve spoken.”

  “Security!”

  She raised both hands in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. “You must at least give me a chance to speak.”

  The room filled with people faster than she could imagine. People with guns.

  They couldn’t kill her, but they could certainly damage her physical form. Then again, if those bullets penetrated while she was still inside that form…

  She wasn’t sure what would happen, but she needed to either flee immediately or attempt to talk them out of shooting her.

  “Mr. President, please listen to me. I—”

  A pair of rough hands seized one of her arms, wrenching it behind her and pulling up at a painfully awkward angle.

  They wouldn’t listen to her. Worse, she had no idea what they were going to do. Violence, the sozarians believed, was never a reasonable solution. But Seren had never truly accepted that. In this instance, violence was the only answer.

  She lifted her aural form out of the human body, which dissipated as she rose. Releasing her hold on her aura, she watched as the familiar glow spread throughout the room and touched the energy of every living thing therein.

  Seren exercised no control whatsoever, allowing her aura to absorb energy at will. Within minutes, the only energy in the room was her own. She gathered her aura close again.

  Radios crackled with static, announcing the impending arrival of even more guards. She was safe because they couldn’t see her, but she couldn’t rule them that way, either. She had to find a way to be present but remain safe from their weapons.

  Guards marched into the room, looking around with dismay. Some touched two fingers to the necks of fallen allies. Seren couldn’t remember if that was some sort of death ritual or if perhaps humans had means of absorbing energy as well. She highly doubted the latter, but had to at least consider it. If that was possible, then the humans represented a greater threat to her than she’d imagined.

  She watched as the group tried to make sense of what had happened. A woman peered into the room from the open doorway.

  “Is it safe to enter?”

  “Stay back!” one of the men cried out, holding out his arm to ward her off.

  Unsuccessfully, Seren noted. As soon as the woman saw the president slumped over his desk, she wailed and ran toward him. It took three of the men to restrain her. She fought for a few moments, then sagged in their arms and wept openly.

  Seren couldn’t imagine an emotion that would cause such a reaction, but the men holding her back seemed to be the biggest issue. At least to her mind they were.

  She sought out the energy of the weapons, but could feel nothing from them but cold emptiness. The weapons were somehow dead. Only useful at the expense of a human’s energy. That was helpful to know, but they still represented a threat. If they didn’t have energy she could manipulate or absorb—rendering them useless—then she could do nothing about those weapons.

  The chatter of the humans briefly distracted her. If she couldn’t disable the weapons, then she had to disable that which powered them: the humans themselves.

  Carefully avoiding the woman, Seren deliberately reached out with her aura and drained the strength away from those guards nearest the ones holding the woman captive. They fell to the floor, dropping their weapons as they went, but retained a portion of their energy sufficient to keep them alive and breathing. Seren, satisfied with the results, touched the guards holding the woman.

  When they joined their comrades at her feet, the woman hesitated for a moment.

  Seren watched with mild curiosity.

  The woman shook her head, then looked around the room. The few remaining guards still standing quickly fled. Her gaze landed on the man slumped over the desk. As the woman ran to him, Seren reflected on what his death meant for her.

  Whatever he was to this woman mattered little to her. His death represented a first step in the right direction; the first of the world leaders Seren had conquered in her quest to rule Earth.

  Still, if she was to rule, she had to be known.

  Once again, Seren would manifest a physical form. For the first time, however, she doubted the wisdom of her previous approach.

  She needed a form bullets couldn’t harm. One humans would recognize and fear. One that symbolized infinite power, or as close to it as humans could comprehend.

  Seren left the oval office, rising up through tile and wood, into a clear, bright day. On the ground, chaos reigned. Humans arrived in machines on the ground and in the sky. Reaching out to touch the machines left her with the same impression as the guns. They were dead things. She couldn’t absorb their energy to destroy them because they didn’t have any to begin with. But somehow, the humans managed to possess these machines and control them. Something like Nephise, but not. Nephise had a life of her own, energy and sentience. Though ships like Nephise allowed her kind to board them for travel—especially since they were created by the sozarians in the first place—the sozarians didn’t necessarily control those ships.

  But the humans did board the machines in a similar way. What was the difference? The machines weren’t sentient, so the humans didn’t need permission to board. They just did as they pleased, directing the machines to do their bidding.

  That was the key. She needed to manifest a machine that could withstand the assault of the humans’ weapons while damaging their machines. Seren had never manifested a physical form without life, a dead form. Could she do it?

  She reached out and allowed her aura to touch one of the flying machines. Though the blades circling above its bulbous body looked dangerous, they couldn’t harm her aural form. With a focused push of her aura, steel bent upwards at odd angles, sending the flying thing into a spin from which it couldn’t recover. The dead beast crashed to the ground below, taking its occupants with it and crushing those too unfortunate to have escaped its path.

  With a
burst of renewed excitement, Seren sought the energy of Nephise. Once she found her and dug her up, she manifested a small physical form once more and dove inside. “Recall K’Gaon Manifest, earliest known iteration.”

  Nephise’s pleasant voice replied, “Visual recall. K’Gaon Exploration Manifest. Parallel Iteration 493-12.” The screen rolled out of her forward wall and on it, an image played. A young male K’Gaon wreaked havoc on an unsuspecting population of early humans. According to the manifest, it hadn’t been his intention to start a war. But as soon as the humans saw him, they attacked.

  To be fair, he did strike an intimidating figure. Though small for one of his kind, this K’Gaon towered over mankind. That his legs more closely resembled that of a beast didn’t help. Nor did the massive, curved horns atop his head.

  “Recall K’Gaon Exploration Manifest, Parallel Iteration 494-12.”

  The display skipped ahead to Earth’s next incarnation. This time, the K’Gaon was a female, which made the best sense because they lacked the horns of their male counterparts. She obscured her lower half in fog. She also approached men when they were alone and offered them three wishes to gain their trust.

  That excursion went much better. The humans had even given the K’Gaon’s their own name: djinn.

  That was what Seren had been searching for.

  • • •

  Seren exited Nephise and shed her most recent form. She rose high into the sky and aimed for a large, heavily populated city surrounded by as much dead material as she could think of. Soon, she found herself hovering above a city square surrounded by tall buildings. The shape was wrong for what would fill it, but the size was perfect and that was all that mattered.

  People filled the streets and sidewalks, all of them oblivious to their impending doom. Soon enough, the peril they were in became obvious.

  Rather than trying to manifest the solid, dead material from nothing, Seren used what was already there: from handheld devices to cars and the technology that directed life on this planet; and the buildings surrounding the square. She reshaped all of it until it stood as tall as the buildings once had: a male K’Gaon form, made entirely from metal and whatever scraps of mankind had gotten caught therein. The tips of his great horns reached high into the sky, piercing the clouds above. Far below, asphalt cracked and crumbled under his weight.

  Reaching out with her aura, she acted as a conduit from the living beings who survived the metamorphosis to the giant metal being she’d created.

  His breath of life was born in a flare of new aura, purest white, that darkened and flashed through a full spectrum of colors before settling on lime green.

  “Welcome into being, Djinn 2.0. I am your creator, Madame Seren.”

  The reply came in a lovely male tenor. “It is my sincerest wish that you take pride in the life you’ve given me, Madame Seren. You have given me a physical form that I might experience and influence the world around me. You have given me aura of my own so that I might enjoy free will. And you have given me purpose in this world that I might find joy and pride of my own. What are your wishes, Seren, that I might fulfill them?”

  “I wish to occasionally merge auras, Djinn 2.0. We must bring this planet under a single, peaceful rule. With your help, I can do that.”

  “Your wish, Madame Seren, is my command.”

  A small hatch in Djinn 2.0’s chest opened, revealing a special place she had created for herself within his heart. Her throne, in all its bloody and metallic magnificence, awaited.

  Together, Seren and Djinn 2.0 left a path of destruction from New York to Washington. They trampled anyone and anything in their path. Armies approached by land and air and sea. Djinn 2.0, infused with Seren’s abilities, destroyed every man and machine who dared attack. Short of destroying the entire country to end the threat, the humans—the American ones, anyway—had no choice but try communication. Violence, it seemed, would not help them. Seren briefly reflected on the irony her species would undoubtedly appreciate.

  Using their own technology to contact a news office, Seren made her demands. The world leaders refused to negotiate.

  Rising from the body of her first creation, Seren assumed her aural form and flew toward the furthest point from Washington DC she could think of. Somewhere in Asia, she created another djinn and repeated her demands. If the humans didn’t bend to her rule soon, there would be none left by the time she finished.

  A representative of the humans raced to meet her on the sixteenth floor of the tallest hotel in the city. As it turned out, that brought him almost eye-level with her—sitting inside Djinn 2.1’s chest—only he remained a few feet below her, which suited her perfectly.

  “Madame Seren,” he addressed her as she’d instructed. She’d made it clear she would not tolerate disobedience. “Communications Officer Isaac Boone, reporting as ordered.”

  “Are all of the so-called world leaders in agreement?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Once it became apparent you could easily do the same in any country that you’ve done here and in America, everyone quickly agreed to your terms.”

  Seren popped the hatch on Djinn 2.0 and rose from her throne within. “Now that we’ve established a singular rule, it’s time to bring the world into peaceful coexistence. Begin with the heavy artillery, then work your way down.”

  The young officer, keen to do her bidding but uncertain as to exactly what she was proposing, hesitated. “Ma’am?”

  “Destroy all weapons and machines on Earth, with the exception of my djinn, of course.”

  He gave a sharp salute, then spoke into a device attached to his vest. “Your orders are to destroy all of Earth’s weapons—”

  Outbursts of indignation interrupted his delivery.

  Seren sat in her throne, completely at ease, and shut the hatch to Djinn 2.0 with a genuinely happy smile on her face. With three of the massive machine’s long strides, she crushed several tanks—humans within and all—into indiscernible plates of mashed metal.

  Either the humans destroyed their own weapons or she would do it for them. The method made little difference to her; the end result was all that mattered. One way or another, humanity would live peacefully amongst themselves, as equals under her supreme rule, whether they liked it or not.

  A Word From Jessica West

  You’ve probably never heard of me, and that’s totally cool. I prefer to work in the background. Considering the type of work I do, it’s probably best done behind closed doors. Some people say I’m ruthless. Brutal. Relentless. That I enjoy their suffering too much—that I’m too good at making them suffer—to be anything but evil. In my defense, they’re authors and I’m an editor. Hey, love hurts.

  Speaking of love, would you believe I have a husband and three kids? I know, right? Me either. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was a banshee or vampire or some sort of soul-sucking demon; that I don’t even exist, really; that I’m a manifestation of every author’s worst fear. But no, I’m about as ‘normal’ as normal gets.

  Well, that’s not quite true. Everyone who has ever encountered me knows there’s something off. The doctors have yet to figure it out, but I’m leaning toward borderline personality disorder. The voices and I are still discussing it. We’ll let you know if we figure it out. In any event, we’re very happy with our typical life. I have a cool husband, three beautiful daughters, and a dog who goes by various names. First, she was Bug. Then Josie Bug. Sometimes I call her Silly Bug or Goofy Bug. Don’t judge me, she doesn’t know any better and I already told you I was evil.

  When I’m not torturing authors as an editrix, or wifing and momming, I write. Sometimes, I swear, it’s lovely. Other times, I’m exorcising a demon. I can’t believe I still have some wandering around in here. I could swear I’d gotten rid of them all.

  There are a few in Daniel Arthur Smith’s Tales from the Canyons of the Damned series, one in The Faces of the Crying Girl, and another one in an upcoming anthology (B-Movie) from Samuel Peralta and Artie Cabre
ra. Lots more demons where those came from. They just keep coming.

  If your heart and sanity can take it and you’d like more (you poor, strange soul), follow me at Bookbub or Amazon to get a notification every time I possess their servers. Or you could just sign up for my newsletter but I suck at those so I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m pretty damn good at Facebook and Twitter, though, if I may say so myself. You can always just cyberstalk me there. I’m not afraid of stalkers. Even if a maniac managed to corner me IRL… let’s just say it didn’t end well. I mean wouldn’t. It wouldn’t end well. Most of my personalities are totally harmless. So, yeah. Stalk me but keep a safe distance just in case.

  P.S. If you want to google me and find out where else I might be (I’m everywhere), search for West1Jess. Do not, for the love of all that is sacred in this world and the next, google Jess West. You’ve been warned.

  HACKSAW’S FORMULATION

  BY A.J. McWAIN

  HACKSAW’S FORMULATION

  BY A.J. McWAIN

  I KNEW HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS, but I still whispered to him, “Hey, you okay, mister?”

  No response.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Nothing. Maybe he’s dead.

  At first, I really wanted to leave him there and pretend I never saw him.

  Serves him right.

  This part of the dark, uneven woods was near my regular shortcut route, a section off Cove Street where a thick chunk of the Piscataquog twists to the east before it links into the Merrimack River. Hidden under leaves and dirt, a set of metal jaws mistook a frumpy forgotten man for a black bear.

  When I shook his shoulder, I felt a slight zip of static electricity. I could see he was alive, barely. He was lucky I came by. No telling how long he was out there.

  Some idiot left a forty-pound cast iron bear trap with its anchor chain spiked into the ground out here. I shook my head and glanced around the back edge of the woods.