Tonya R. Moore's Blog: Tonya R. Moore, page 18

Tribute

Rastaman gone somewhat astray, the
devout artist had adopted flesh for his canvas. Everything about him was dark,
the curl of his brows, his countenance when he eased back and stood, studying
his handiwork.

The silent woman in the claw-toed
tub sat leaning forward. The thick braid of her hair was twisted into a
samurai’s knot. Like his hand, the bathwater was muddy with her blood and neat
little slivers of her skin. The pattern three quarter ways carved into her back
was Yggdrasil with gnarly roots coiling deep down into the core of the earth,
knotty canopy cradling nine heavenly blossoms.

“What you crave,” he hummed along
with the radio absently. “What makes a body move…?”

He twirled the scalpel between his
sticky fingers. The floor boards creaked as he slowly left the center of the
studio. He went to the far end. Something thin and metal clattered around
inside a stainless steel sink. The tap spluttered and began to flow. He spent
nearly a full minute there, carefully washing his hands. From the counter by
the sink he selected a shinier, sharper new blade.

“… electric marionette.”

He turned the volume all the way
down. He went back to his subject, sank down onto his haunches before her.
“Miss Ingrid.” He studied her odd posture intently for a while before asking.
“Feel any closer to your ancestors yet?”

The woman’s face turned upward. She
frowned over at him, irises darkening to a sugary shade of brown. Cocoa, he
thought. Hot and rich. No milk. Her voice was thick and scratchy from the
effort of not crying. Her eyes were salty-rimmed, whites bloodshot from failing
as well as the sting of incense and ganja smoke clouding the air. “Didn’t your
mama teach you not to mock your elders, Tobias?”

He shrugged, made a non-committal
sound in the back of his throat. The spliff hanging from his lips tilted.
“Hurts, yeah?”

“Like a mother–”

Tobias smiled, revealing a pearly
row of teeth. “This is the part where I’m supposed to ask if you’re sure you
want me to continue.”

She fidgeted restlessly, reached up
to fuss with the silver widow’s peak stemming from the whites of her roots. A
nervous habit, now a refuge for limbs that didn’t quite know what to do with
themselves, when every inch of her was smarting from the wounds weeping in
those tricky spots they couldn’t reach. She could feel it on her back, the
slowly clotting warmth that trickled out of her and slid down into the water.

“Yeah.” The bold glitter in her
eyes wavered just a little but she nodded. “Absolutely. Finish it.”

He went back to work. Just as the
blade was about to connect with her flesh again she twisted, craning her neck
uselessly trying to see. “Wait. Can I see how it looks first?”

“Miss Ingrid!” He barely managed to
draw the blade away in time to avoid sinking in at an odd angle. He let out a
sharp breath. “This is turning into my best work yet. If you make me spoil it,
I’ll stab you. Seriously.”

Though unintimidated by the not-so-subtle threat, Ingrid faced forward. “Oh, so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” she sighed. “Getting a little antsy now, you know?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled grudgingly then
amended, “no, you can’t see it until I’m done. You’ll freak out. Probably never
let me finish.”

“How long is it going to take to
heal?”

Tobias looked up sharply. “Isn’t
that something you should have asked before I started cutting into you?”

Ingrid shrugged. “Then you’d have
asked why I didn’t read the pamphlet.”

“Yeah,” he agreed darkly. “Why
didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t
really need to. Ingrid stretched one arm backward, twitchy fingers silently
demanding. The dark one leaned forward obediently let her filch the spliff from
between his lips. Hell, who was he to quibble if this was what it would take to
make her settle down? She took a long drag. He dipped his gaze and went back to
cutting.

She broke the silence again a while
later. “You know, Tobias. I never imagined that the introverted kid I remember
from my sixth grade Literature class would turn out like this. Growing dreads
and… all this.”

The blade wobbled, slid in quite a
bit deeper than he intended. “Sorry,” he muttered when she sucked in a pained
breath. “You can scream if you want to.”

His cheeky grin fell at her sharp look.
It was that look, the disapproving glare that still struck terror in the hearts
of even the most stalwart of thirteen year-olds.

“Sorry,” he mumbled again.

She casually flicked ash away from
the tip of the joint before putting it out in the water. She let the soggy butt
fall to the ground beside them.

“It will be beautiful, won’t it?”

“Yes ma’am.” Tobias assured meekly,
hiding his tiny grin.

“Very good,” she sighed. “Carry on,
then.”

She tilted forward and waited for
him to begin cutting again.

The post Tribute appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Big Voice

Terry could hear the clickety-clack of the prosthetic leggings on Number 876’s spacesuit as she ambled down the ship’s corridor. The octopi didn’t really care about names. Terry called Number 876 Klara because it made her feel better to call her partner something other than a number. The nickname scrawled on Klara’s helmet in radical ink had been her own choice though.

“Water
Baby,” it read, though in Japanese.

Dinner was a strange affair. Half
of the mess hall was a dedicated habitat for their aquatic nakama.
Before taking her place on the human side, Terry watched Klara shed her suit
and slip beneath the surface of the limpid pool. There was a succession of
splashes as other members of the octopi crew dove in to feed and frolic. Though
they chatted more with the humans than each other, in the habitat they
furtively engaged in their ancient war dances and timeless courtship rituals.

Terry joined Brewster from
Logistics and Devan from Maintenance at the last open table. Terry didn’t like
Devan. The blue-haired washout was always talking trash about the octopi and
this time was no different.

“Time was, we’d put them in glass
mazes and wait to see if the little buggers could even work their way out.”

“That was way back in the days
before Lockheed invented the Interface. Now we can communicate with them. It’s
different now,” objected Brewster, who was clearly uncomfortable with the direction
this conversation had taken.

“It’s different now, alright.”
Devan grunted and took another big bit of his sandwich. “Now we’ve got them
navigating and piloting our ships. Next thing you know, we’ll be the ones
taking orders from them. I ask you, what’s wrong with humanity plotting our own
way to the stars?”

Terry set her fork down. She’d been
trying hard not to take his bait but couldn’t resist snapping back. “Because as
sapient beings, they have as much right to go to Enceladus as we do. Besides–”

One by one, octopi started leaping
up out of their aquatic habitat and hurrying back into their suits. Terry
dropped her sandwich and rushed over to poolside to find out what was wrong.
They were all talking at once and chattering so fast in some other language. It
took Terry nearly a minute to realize it was Japanese.

“English please, Klara! English.”

“Voice!” Klara gushed. “There’s a
voice! Oh, you can’t hear it. Can you?” She skedaddled past Terry and made a
beeline for the control room.

“Can’t hear what?” Terry ran after
Klara. “What kind of voice?”

“Big voice!” Klara squealed. “This
is big!”

“Klara!” Terry stopped. “What’s the
hell is going on? Explain it to me!”

Klara scuttled back to where Terry
stood. “Not like human. Like nakama but… big. Big voice.”

Terry tried to piece the little
tidbits together as they neared the control room. “You guys hear a loud voice?
A voice like one of your kind?”

“Hmmm!” Klara answered with a dip
of the head.

The door opened and Klara headed
straight for the display screen. One armored appendage clicked at the grey orb.
That grey orb was this mission’s target, Enceladus. Pieces started falling into
place. The nakama were hearing a voice, a voice on Enceladus. Something
loud enough to reach a ship two months away had to be massive. There was life
on Enceladus and it was huge.

A smile split across Terry’s face.

“This is big!” she crowed but then
her smile fled.

This was big but in a bad way. Something massive was alive on Enceladus under all that ice. Whatever it was that spoke to the octopi had to be aware of their approach.

Was that voice a warning? If so, they were in trouble. The ship was two months out and way past the point of no return.

The post Big Voice appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Mermaid

Say the only dream you ever had was
blue, a cool brilliance that engulfs everything in the universe.

All you know of your place in the monochromatic Everything is webbed feet, jewel fingers and a certain unnameable longing. You reach upward and out, straining to grasp the hazy glow of a distant light in your palms.

You begin to swim faster and farther from the deep and dark. It’s warm near the surface but you don’t know what warmth is. There had never been anyone to teach you that word. It’s a different kind of feeling. It tickles your skin. It makes your blood blaze and your
heart leap.

You soar, soar, and soar toward the
brilliance above and beyond until one night; the ghostly light looms directly
overhead. You’re amazed because before, you had only your heart to see with but
now you have eyes, ears and everything everywhere is amplified.

Suddenly, you’re no longer floating
in that vast and lonely silence. The world you know has been set on its ear. It
tilts over like a clumsy crab, unsettling you. You breathe in the air but you
don’t know what air is. It whips around you and it roars.

It makes your bones sing, sing,
sing.

The light you were chasing is still
way up above and out of reach. The darkness overhead is blanketed by jittery
dots of light.

You remember, with stark clarity
that you’ve seen it all before; that you once stood on two feet on this shore
and lamented over the alien yet strangely familiar jewels that you could
neither grasp with your own two hands, nor wish upon fast enough when they fell
from the heavens like tears.

You remember being human, what the
poet said about death and the narwhal’s horn. You look to the stars. You look
to the sea.

You remember why you once cast the
earth and the heavens away.

Is this the first time it occurs to
you, that the glitter-spotted darkness you’d left behind in the wet was the
same as the seething mass in that place where you cannot fly?

Your body bends. You sink back down
into the sea. Burying your heart and your longing once again, you dive all the
way back down into the dark, into the deep.

The post Mermaid appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Cat Skin

“Say, Doc,” Chloe asked lowly. “You
know why I’m in here?”

The doctor was a young one, fresh
out of university. She wore round glasses and her hair in a serious bun. It was
nearly the end of their session, six going on seven in the evening. She eyed
Chloe sagely.

“You know why you’re here, Chloe.”
Dr. Finley said softly. “This is a safe place, where we can talk about the
things on your mind.”

Despite her cajoling words, the
doctor understood the girl sitting on the loveseat across from her wasn’t
talking about this room, all Zen-like and bursting at the seams with soft
colors and warmth. Beyond the soft love-seats and fluffy cushions was a sterile
hallway, leading to rows and rows of titanium-reinforced, padded cells.

“Beckley Place is a facility for
the criminally insane,” Chloe said, nodding.

“Yes,” Dr. Finley nodded. “Yes, it
is.”

Chloe’s hazel eyes darted from side
to side as if to make sure no one else was listening. She leaned forward and
whispered. “But I ain’t neither criminal nor insane.”

“You’ve killed sixteen people.”

Chloe continued as if Dr. Finley
hadn’t spoken. “I’m cursed,” She said, leaning back in the loveseat. “Doc, it
ain’t my fault that I’m cursed.”

Chloe was twenty-seven, rail thin
and petite. With her over large eyes and knotty mass of hair, she looked more
like a frail, urban waif than a vicious killer. Killed she had, though, torn
bodies to shreds in violent ways that Dr. Finley had never even imagined
possible.

“Why do you think you’re cursed,
Chloe?” Dr. Finley probed.

“Oh, come on!” Chloe answered
harshly.

Dr. Finley flinched.

“You think I don’t know what’s up?”
Chloe demanded, eyes over-bright and limpid. “I know what’s up.”

Dr. Finley’s pen hovered over her
notepad. “What do you mean?”

“Things happen to me at night.”
Chloe’s voice trembled. “Awful, awful things, Doc.”

Dr. Finley set her notepad and pen aside. She leaned forward, emphatic. “Chloe, if there’s something happening to you in this place, you need to tell me about—”

There was a rapping on the door.

“Dr. Finley,” said a male voice.
“It’s time.”

Dr. Finley’s eyes swung back to her
patient. “Chloe, tell me.”

The chains on Chloe’s shackles
rattled as she gripped the doctor’s hands in her own. “It comes at night!” She
hissed, trembling violently. “Please! Please don’t let them take me back to
that room.”

The door opened. A pair of burly
male guards barged in.

“It’s time, Doctor,” the one who’d
spoken before said. “We have to take her. Now.”

Chloe backed away, cowered in the
corner of the room.

“Please, Doc!” She cried.

The guards crossed the room,
dragged Chloe to her feet.

“Wait!” Dr. Finley protested. “I’m
treating this patient right now. You have no right to interfere here.”

The guard who hadn’t spoken yet
turned his head to look at Dr. Finley. He was the taller of the two, dark and
attractive but the frosty look in his eyes made Dr. Finley shiver. “You’re new
so you don’t understand how things work around here. I’ll give you that. Don’t
push it, Doc. This is for your sake too.”

Concerned, Dr. Finley hurried after
them.

They dragged Chloe out of the room.
She was crying, clawing, and making sounds Dr. Finely didn’t even recognize as
human.

“Shit! Is that a fang?” Dr. Finley
heard one of the guards say. “She’s changing now. Use the tranquilizer!”

The dark one reached into his pouch
and produced an injection cartridge with a big needle and jammed it into
Chloe’s arm. The effect was immediate. She stopped fighting the other guard.
The two guards backed away as she fell to her knees. They pulled their guns
from their holsters and aimed at Chloe. The shorter guard got on his radio,
asking for a facility lock-down.

“Dr. Finley, go back to your office
and lock the door,” said the taller guard. His words barely registered. Dr.
Finely couldn’t take her eyes off Chloe.

Chloe crouched low, growling like an animal. She was down on all fours, back flexing and undulating. She shuddered. Her muscles rippled. Dr. Finley looked on in speechless horror as the skin on Chloe’s fingers and toes broke apart and sharp claws appeared. There was blood, so much blood.

Hairs popped up on Chloe’s skin. She grew until her clothes burst apart at the seams and fell to the ground in tattered bits. Her shackles broke apart. Right before Dr. Finley’s eyes, she transformed into a massive jaguar, a hirsute killing machine. The two guards backed up a few more paces, guns still trained on the feline beast that Chloe had become.

The beast pawed at the ground, shook its head from side to side. Its glazed eyes fixed on the spot where Dr. Finley stood. It took a step forward. Dr. Finley heard a gun trigger cock. Dr. Finley’s breath caught in her throat. Fear, bitter and raw, filled her mouth. She wanted to run but she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the spot.

The beast lumbered forward, swaying from side to side. It stumbled and crumpled to the ground, the tranquilizer finally taking effect. One of the guards stepped in closer. He kicked at the jaguar with a booted foot. It didn’t budge.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get her
back in her cell.”

Dr. Finley sank to the ground.

“Cursed!” She mouthed shakily, watching in stunned silence as the two guards dragged the bloody jaguar down the corridor.

The post Cat Skin appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Becoming

“The geese love her, that girl.”
Tei, Sarrah’s most recent patient, paused the video projected on the opposite
wall.

In his hospital patient whites, he
seemed childlike and earnest, despite the gray hair curled over his ears.

“Ah, yes. I suppose you could say
they do.” Sarrah closed the door firmly behind her. “That’s one of the earliest
recorded sightings, over twenty-five years after the original colonists first
settled on Cobalt. Before that, humans weren’t even aware that something like
the Doan existed.”

She stood there, watching the
filmed drama unfold.

A young woman with skin as dark as the richest earth stood amidst a flock of black-necked geese. She wore an overcoat of ivory. Her scarf was blue, her countenance sad. In on one hand, she carried a blushing, berry-laden branch.

Tei pressed “Play” to continue.

Sarrah had already watched the
recording countless times and knew what would happen next.

The girl’s lovely scarf was stolen by a gust of wind. She cried out. The startled geese took flight en masse. The wistful one whirled. Her body began to lengthen and twist, her limbs becoming wings. Together, the avians departed, the new anatidae’s berry branch and blue scarf forgotten among the rushes.

“It always happens quickly,” Sarrah
explained. “You’d only notice if you were watching closely.

Tei said nothing.

“I wonder if it hurt, transforming
like that.” Sarrah ventured again. “It must hurt, don’t you think? I wonder if
the Doan feel pain.”

“I’m sure it did.” Tei declared.

Sarrah’s interest was piqued. She
tried not to let it show. “How do you know?”

“Well look,” Tei backtracked then
zoomed in on the image at moment before the flock had taken flight and
vanished. “She’s crying. See?”

Sarrah nodded wordlessly. An odd
lump swelled up in her throat. She’d watched this sequence so many times and
had never noticed such a thing. “I wonder what makes them change, Tei. What
kind of sorrow made her no longer wish to be human?”

“The records say that Doan who
transform into people don’t remember being anything but human. Either you or I,
or both of us could be Doan. We’d never know it.” Tei said. “Isn’t that a
frightening thought?”

Sarrah laughed lightly, despite the
sharp pang in her chest. “Maybe one day I’ll become entranced by something
beautiful or become so saddened that I’ll no longer wish to be human. I’ll shed
my skin and fly away.”

“No, Sarrah” Tei caught her fingers
tightly in his own. “I wouldn’t want that!” He whispered harshly. “I wouldn’t
want you to fly away and leave me behind.”

Sarrah’s heart ached. Why had this one become Tei? There were so many more questions, so many questions that she wanted to ask, but it was no use.

He couldn’t remember being anything but human.

The post Becoming appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Fisher’s Killer

Delores couldn’t hear the worst of the rain from the brig, but she could smell it in the air. The wind was boisterous. The ship’s iron bough rocked and rolled with the turbulent waves. Beneath all that, the subtle thunder created by the weight of water stole in and squatted in her bones.

A single light bulb had been strung from the ceiling. It swung madly from side to side. It was hypnotic, wreaked havoc with her logic circuit. Her vision kept wavering in and out.

A gynoid had killed a human.

The witch hunt was already in full
swing. D20s were being transported overseas to be decommissioned. It wasn’t
necessary to verify guilt but SOPs demanded that each model be subjected to the
standard interrogation. It didn’t much matter either way. Once the ship had
left harbor, there hadn’t been any turning back.

The guy questioning her, Inspector
Jericho, claimed the badge on his shirt, was getting frustrated. She could tell
he wasn’t used to traveling by sea. Green at the gills and frayed at the edges,
he was steadily losing patience and maybe a bit of that precious human sanity
to boot. She was designed to be compassionate, so she made a token effort to be
a little more cooperative.

She shrugged, answered his
question. “Of course, I wanted to kill Fisher. A lot of people wanted to kill
him, Jerry. He was that kind of guy.”

His only response to the arbitrary
nicknaming was a raised brow. “What do you mean?”

“What I said.” Delores watched him
scribble something unintelligible on his notepad. “Weren’t you listening?”

“So,” he grimaced at length. “Did
you?”

“Did I kill him?”

“Right.” He reached into his pocket
and fished out a bunch of old school pics. “Did you kill him?”

The hazy image of a bloody,
dark-haired android leaving a certain building didn’t move Delores. So, Fisher
had really been done in by a fellow gynoid. With the video stills, all the
local PD had needed to do was cast a net and pull in every D20 model within a twenty-mile
radius of where the crime occurred. Not very clever as far as police work goes
but who cares about inconveniencing a bunch of droids for the sake of closing a
case?

“One of you surely did. Was it you?”

“Well,” She chewed on the corner of
her lower lip for a few seconds before apparently dismissing the question.
“So,” she leaned forward slightly. “How’d she do it? Did she do it with the
sword?”

“What sword?”

“The samurai sword on display on
his mantle. I think it was the real deal.” Her fingernail tap-tapped
impatiently on the metal table. “Who could pass that up?”

“No,” Jerry frowned. “He wasn’t
killed with a sword.”

“Garroted?”

“Nope. Fisher was shot, Delores.
With a gun.”

“Got shot, huh?” She went pouty.
“Kind of a boring way to go isn’t it?” She leaned forward. “I feel a little
sorry for him, actually.”

Jerry hemmed and hawed and stared
her down some more before gathering up his strewn papers. His chair made a loud
scraping noise as he stood. He left her there without another word.

Delores eased back in her seat and
waited. She heard a low murmur.

“So?” Another voice demanded.

“Not her.” Jerry declared tightly.

“All right then,” said the Voice.
“On to the next.”

The post Fisher’s Killer appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Perish the Thought

“If this boat hits one more swell,
I swear I’ll hurl that slop they called breakfast back up on the deck.”

Venus AKA Captain Eyepatch’s
gravelly complaint dragged Terra back to the here and now.

“Huh?

“This,” Venus waggled her pinky, shaking ash loose from the tip of her cigar. “Dun’ it make you sick to the stomach? Never-ending rocking side to side. Shit. Makes me wanna kill something.”

Terra hated the acrid smell of that
red-eyed thing. She knew her fearless leader damned well knew it, just didn’t
care. Terra shrugged. Motion sickness was the least of her problems right now
anyway. Three dozen sweaty soldiers crowded the deck of a boat trundling
through a channel where the water had gone milky and sour. It stank of rotting
flesh and metal.

She could feel a weird heaviness in
the air. Even though this was her first tour, she didn’t need to be told what
it meant. They were nearing their destination. There was only grimness ahead.
She heard the plaintive cry of a lost bird battling its way through the fog.
She smirked a little, thinking it well and truly deserved the misfortune that
was waiting.

“Dumb bird.”

That’s what it got for venturing so
far out. Nothing living could survive out here, not for long. The irony of that
uncharitable thought wasn’t lost on her.

She went back to her silent fuming.
Insignificant snippets of the events that had landed her in this hellish
predicament kept re-playing in her head, again and again. If she had to pick,
it was probably the newspaper headlines that had pissed her off most.

The gem among gems had been: Blonde
Bordello Babe Falls From Grace.

Some cocky reporter was probably
still patting himself on the back for cleverly ramming that turgid alliteration
into his headline. Had to have been a guy. How else would such infantile need
for phallic posturing make sense?

Bless their hearts for trying to squeeze
the sleaze into every little thing, though. With nothing but War! War! War!
on the tubes, people welcomed the distraction, however mind-numbing.

Frankly, she figured the story of
what made her stick her stiletto into some random customer’s gut would’ve have
made a juicier story. Still, there was no denying that felony sentencing made
for better news these days. Something like that was probably even a sliver of
hope for population gripped by fear of the Almighty Draft. After all, one more
criminal getting shipped off to “die for her country” meant one less law-abiding
citizen drafted into compulsory service.

Who knew? An alien invasion had
turned out to be the key to a crime-free society. There’s a massive plus for
you. People tend to think twice about bad behavior when the consequence could
easily be a grisly death in a human vs. hulk-sized monster crapshoot. She’d
known where she’d end up the second she made a conscious choice to kill. Hell,
that was probably her number one reason for getting stabby. At least, maybe the
first cut… or the first dozen. It had taken twenty to take that beastly jerk
down.

No surprise there. They say people
didn’t die as easily as they used to. Everyone starts popping body enhancers as
soon as they hit puberty. The first thing you figure when stagger out of that
introductory “Engaging the Enemy 101” class in the sixth grade is that you
never know when you might be conscripted. May as well be prepared.

Opportunistic “explorers” had
drilled a hole into the belly of Texas, all the way through to the heart of the
Indian Ocean. They probably figured humans were to stupid to catch them in the
act or complain. They weren’t too far off the mark, Terra had to admit. For the
first century or so afterward, scientists spent lifetimes and billions of
dollars trying to ascertain why all the water in the seas didn’t simply drain
out into space–what with there being a gaping peep-hole in the planet and all.
Seriously. By the time they realized that it was a freaking intergalactic super
highway, the statute of limitations had run out and Earth’s claim to rights of
ownership was sold off to the Tourog AKA The Enemy.

The intercom crackled to life. A
jaded feminine voice flooded the air.

“Convergence in five hundred and fifty-two
seconds. You know the drill people. Miss your cue, you die.” there was a hollow
laugh. After a few awkward seconds, the intercom crackled and went silent.

A dark shape protruded out of the
wet, dead ahead. As they ship neared land, Terra fingered the slippy trigger on
her hand-me-down rifle. What was it, second hand? Third hand? A hundred and
thirteenth… hell. Who even gave a damn?

Frothy breakers pounded against the
distant cliff making discord and tripping up the rhythm of her heart.

She was not afraid of those
wild, cresting waves. Or what lay beyond. Or the destiny of the dumb bird.

“Again,” She muttered, quietly.
“I’d do it all again.”

They say that there used to be a
time when the world wasn’t such a small-feeling place. The continents were divided
into individual nations. An incredible, distant dream. The war had begun over
eight decades earlier. Humans were still petty and cruel to each other. Stupid.
They never got smarter or kinder. Just more scared.

That old rage welled up inside
Terra all over again. You just get tired, you know? You get so sick of it all.
Why had she killed that guy again? She couldn’t even remember. God. What was
his name? Her mind wheeled back to the moment of judgement.

“Let her serve her country. It’s
the only use left for a rotten soul.”

Of course, Terra had gone and
proved the prosecution’s point, thereby sealing her own fate when she leapt
across the table and strangled the self-righteous bitch half to death. A full
body tattoo of bruises plus a week in the infirmary and she could finally take
a piss unassisted again. A week later the one-eyed, Captain Red-Head here had
been the one to welcome Terra to the Human Armed Forces. Banshee Brigade. That
last bit tickled the crap out of her.

Someone nearby was humming off-key.
“Na-na-naa-nah na-na-naa-nah he-ey goodbye.”

“Dollface!” Venus growled. “I
swear, if you don’t shut your trap–”

A dark-bodied amazon Terra had
never met before, turned to face them. “What Captain? You’ll shut it for me?”

Her voice was coming from a box strapped to her scarred throat. She had no lips, just flesh torn the right way to give her a horrific, permanent grin. Half her mouth had been blown away by god-knows-what. Splintered bone and ragged flesh had been haphazardly patched with something resembling that industrial plastic the old toy-makers loved so much. Her eyes were a dreamy hazel–long lashes too. She must have been pretty once.

“Oh, god.” Terra grimaced. “I totally get the Dollface thing now.”

“That’s Lieutenant Dollface
to you, rookie.” The wrecked beauty glared down at the now infamous, Bordello
Babe.

A boom shook the ship, had them all
whirling landward. A giant cloud of flame and black smoke mushroomed up from
the ground, reaching for the sky like a living, angry thing. Distant screams
and weapons fire could be heard beneath the din.

“Oh swell,” Dollface drawled. “It’s
the welcoming committee!”

Captain Eyepatch tossed her cigar
before pushing her way through the crush of bodies to the gangway. She faced
the crowd. The attentive silence that ensued was knee-jerk. The swift mental
gear-shift boded well for this batch’s odds of surviving what would come next.

“Grab your gear people!” She
bellowed. “Banshee Brigade assault number one-nine-two begins in seventy-five
seconds.”

Terra took a deep breath. She shoved
her intrusive thoughts aside and focused on steadying the rhythm of her
hammering heart.

“This is it,” she murmured. “Hell on Earth, here I come.”

The post Perish the Thought appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Reckoning

Tirol’s skin is white, porcelain
white or maybe more like those milky treasures that mysteriously vanished from
under your pillow while you slept when you were six. Yes, you still remember
because you’re still holding onto that grudge with the relentless tenacity of a
rabid dog in search of his favorite bone. Of course, by now you know that
there’s really no such thing as the tooth fairy but what can you do about that
figment of your imagination for which your resentment still festers like
pus-filled sore?

Now, Tirol, he’s problematic. This
monster at your door is very real and he’s come here just for you. Unlike some
thieving deity from your childhood long past, Tirol doesn’t care who knows he’s
coming. He’s big, bigger than you could ever grow. He fills the doorway, all
fifteen feet, four hundred and seventy-five pounds of him. His spiky head is
bowed low but still scrapes at your ceiling. He’s hairy, eyes blue, and his
teeth are made for chomping metal and stone.

There’s no negotiating. There’s no
pleading with this creature to delay punishment for your crime. Your eyes dart
about in search of another exit, an escape route you already know isn’t there.
Dead ahead was the only exit, yet every cell in your body is still screaming at
you to flee.

The massive brute’s angry breaths
fill the room. All you can hear are the ragged huffs and wheezes from something
just as mighty and merciless as a bear. Your eyes lock. Tirol’s eyes burn with
unmitigated rage. Adrenaline pools in your gut. You are paralyzed, filled to
the brim with fright. You start feeling sick. Bile fills you up. It bubbles up
into the back of your throat. Next, you hear a low rumble. It grates on your
nerve endings and makes the ground shudder. Tirol’s ground-shaking growls
balloon into a bellow. A lame little whimper creaks out of your throat.

Next, you remember, for some ungodly reason, the last thing you remember is that night-crawling thief who’d once left you one measly dollar and fifty-cents in exchange for your precious white jewels.

The post Reckoning appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Going Dark

Dran’s sphere flickered then
steadily glowed. Finally, the signal was strong enough for live-talk again.
Frantic, he fumbled with it, fingers shaky.

“Wheela! What happened? Answer
already!”

“Well, hello to you too, Dran.” Her
voice was hoarse, irritated and it was obvious that talking took monumental
effort but she was stubborn. He was banking on that because the thought of her
going quiet on him again was maddening.

“You have any idea how worried I’ve
been?” There must have been something manic in his voice that gave him away.

“Dran…”

He suffered a few moments of her
astonished silence. Only to be expected, he supposed. He’d never said any of the
things she needed to be told. They’d already plummeted, worlds apart before
he’d even started falling for her. How could he have told her? What would’ve
been the point?

“What the hell,” she muttered,
recovering somewhat. “Go ahead and yell all you want. It’s been a really shitty
couple of days and I’m just glad to hear another human voice.”

His bushy brows arced but before he
could say anything, she laughed weakly and corrected herself. “You’ll do, at
any rate.”

The help that the Expeditionary
Council had earnestly promised them was, apparently, still on the way. The way
things were going, what good would that do? The medicinal brew sliding down
Dran’s throat was bitter. The stinging at his eyes had little to do with the
viscous liquor lining the bottom of his cup. The fawn’s eyes were wet now and
the voice on the radio was tinny, both the signal and the human losing
strength. Who knew drunken sunsets could be so gut-wrenching?

He was sitting by a feeble fire on
a dangerously frigid evening, gazing out into the dusty horizon. The sheer
beauty of the panorama stretched out before him was staggering. Where the earth
met the sky, there loomed the ghostly shadow of a massive moon. E455B was the
ominous, big sister of the rock on which he’d made landfall when his and
Wheela’s escape pods got separated two years before.

Their ship had been blown to bits
by the primitive, yet cleverly hostile denizens of the planet closest to the
sun. It seemed so close like he could just reach out and touch it. The illusion
only served to make him so much more aware of his utter uselessness. She was
over there somewhere, his partner, on the ground, drenched in her own curdling
blood and there was nothing he could do about it.

“What exactly happened?” It was
selfish, he knew it, wanting to keep her talking for as long as possible, no
matter how much more painful it made her passing. She must have realized that
but she didn’t complain.

“Tangled with a winged dyvik,” she
muttered. “Can you believe it? They still exist! This one,” she drew in a long
breath as her words became slower and more deliberate. “This lumbering,
twin-tailed beast’s head came all the way up to my chest. Had coiled horns like…
a fawn with really bad fashion sense.”

“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”

She giggled, uncharacteristically.
The sound was smoky and girlish. It made his gut tingly.

“Listen Dran. Remember this. This lot
is different. They’re predatory and they seem to really like the smell of human
blood. They’re clever and they hunt their prey organized groups. Their teeth
are huge too. And sharp. They cut into flesh and bone like fraggin’ lasers.”

A high-pitched wail pierced the
air. It was such a savage sound that Dran, on the other end of the radio, cringed.

“Wheela? What was that? It sounded
really close.”

“It’s nothing.” She was lying. He
knew it in his gut. “In any case, I got some really awesome footage.”

“You weren’t supposed to–”

“This moon is an ecological
treasure trove. Did you really expect me just sit around twiddling my thumbs
until that insanely overdue rescue ship arrives? Is that what you’ve been doing
over there, all this time?”

“No, but–”

“Let me guess; it’s perfectly fine
for you, oh massive and mighty specimen of a fawn and I’m just a dainty
little–”

“Desert fairy,” he supplied with a
grin.

“So, help me, if you put that on my
tombstone, I will aggressively haunt you for all eternity.”

Dran heard the pop of yet another
pod of anesthetic gum. He cringed. That much and the compound was going to
deaden her tongue for good. Well, not that it mattered now. He leaned back in
his rickety make-shift chair. His fist tightened around the orb.

“Hey, survivalist.”

“What the hell did you call me?”
She squawked.

“Is it a bad word?”

She only grunted. He heard the
staccato burst of weapons fire. If he asked about it, she was only going to lie
to him again.

“What should I tell Elisa?”

Consideration was due–he supposed
grudgingly, to Wheela’s bonded spouse of nearly two decades. He released a
shuddering sigh. His conscience had just won a long, silent battle.

“That’s easy,” Wheela sniffled.
“Tell her what I always tell her before I leave for a long mission. Be
happy. Don’t forget me.”

A tiny smiled tugged at the corner
of his mouth. “I might be able to pull that off. Not quite as neatly as you,
though.”

When she spoke again, a strangled
sob had crawled into her throat and squatted there. “Dran, thanks for worrying
about me.”

“We’re research partners. Of
course, I’d worry.”

“You know what I mean.”

His eyes squeezed shut. Don’t. He
pleaded silently. Please don’t apologize.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “For not
realizing sooner.”

“Say,” he leaned forward, firmly
changing the subject. “Tell me more about the sky you see.”

“Nothing to tell. Same old stars,
doing the same old thing. But you know, it’s as clear as crystal. Quiet. Not
even a cloud in sight. Isn’t that just rude? I’m a little insulted, actually.”

Dran’s agonized gaze drifted to the massive moon. He heard another round of gunfire as the orb in his palm lost its shimmer. Dread pooled into his gut. He flung it aside, biting back a sudden and unreasonable surge of ire. Fawn don’t cry for humans and she was so evil for making him feel this way.

Twilight ended. Wheela’s hemisphere twisted too far away for radio transmission to be possible for another whole day. When the moon went dark, so did Wheela. This time, he knew, for good.

The post Going Dark appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.

Witch & Spider

Whips of lightning cracked the dreary night’s fragile shell.

The sea was a harridan, driving away what little warmth was left in the wind. The beastly sky rumbled. The earth trembled. The explosive boom of a star ship taking off ripped a hole into the distant horizon.

The earth had long become another backwater industrial throwaway. Most ships only stopped here long enough to fill up on fuel and necessities on the way to someplace else. Even the meanest weather couldn’t convince a pilot to delay departure.

Vivian’s front door flew open. The intruder was tall, silhouetted by the curtain of tumultuous elements at his back. Wet was dripping from his head to his eyes. His locks were knotty and littered with leaves. There was a smirk and then a feral show of sharp, sharp teeth. Vivian’s ire bubbled forth.

“You’re letting the rain in,” she muttered darkly and went back to watching rivulets of rain snake down her window.

Honestly, the world must be in dire straits. She mused. Still, all was not lost. Misfortune for a reality so washed out and tattered equaled a boon for purveyors of certain magical crafts. The Unseen World had gradually become the proverbial Cup That Runneth Over.

Lately, all manner of spectral manifestations had been running amok. They popped up like the unexpected dandelion poking its head out of sheet rock or the gutter-flowers that graced the deep end of rot-laden alleyways.

Stars only knew why this one seemed to have latched on to her person like a tick–a spider to be more precise, she silently amended.

“As I was saying,” he began in earnest. “Until you die, people will still come to you. Strangers pick you out of a crowd. They pour their hearts out to you, don’t they? They tell you their dreams?”

“I don’t ask them to. Don’t want them to.”

She’d carved out her place under a sheltering rock, far enough from the maddening booms of ramjets. Not quite far enough, though, to escape that ever present and the increasingly acrid stench from the massive Leoline generator or the endless progression of locomotives–decades upon decades past their decommission dates.

Practical magicians made a meager living but as long as she squeaked by and had her quiet time by the sea, Vivian was content. What use did a wobbly world on its last legs have for a prophet anyway?

Shape shifting liar, here he was–the grand-daddy of all tricksters–come in earnest to sell her the mother of all cons.

When he said nothing, she eyed him archly, peering up from her spectacles. “Ah, you didn’t really want that answer. Is that it?”

“It wasn’t simply superstition that drove Balan to bury her baby’s navel-string with a naseberry seed.” He finally quoted, stopping just short of stomping his foot in childish indignation. “That tree grew up strong, healthy and so did that boy!”

Vivian finished with the lesser known ending of the proverb. “And when they chopped the naseberry down, though, what do you suppose became of that man?”

“This isn’t your riddle!”

“It’s not a riddle, though, is it?” She eyed him askance. “It’s a warning. Earthbound deities bring nothing but trouble. You aren’t a lot that can be trusted.”

He laughed lowly. His eyes glowed copper in the firelight. The smoke rising from the pipe caught between his slender fingers was beginning to sting her eyes. He wasn’t exactly bad to look at, that man… that thing.

Behind him, the rain poured down from the boiling clouds and moon-dogs worshiped the ghostly disc in the tilted sky.

“Humans are a forgetful sort, is all.” He shrugged.

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

He eyed her speculatively, amber flecks glowing. “All the time, you pray. Your little mortal heart cries out to your god like some spoiled kid throwing a tantrum–“

“I don’t pray to any god!” She snapped.

“The universe then.” He pressed with irritating tenacity.

She sighed. Just as well. With a live subject on hand, she’d had ample opportunity to fine tune her word-magic. She’d whittled the inflection and intent behind his treatment down to a single word. No better time than the present to test her theory.

She opened her mouth to speak. “Ana–“

“Wretched human!” He was the kind who caught on quickly. “I forbid you to utter that word!”

“Forbid?” She skipped a beat, eying him as one might, a mite.

“Anansi!” She invoked spitefully.

“Uncalled for,” He complained, with an affronted snort. His mournful shake of the head suggested her incantation had been a dart, aimed quite well enough. “I’ll have you know it hurts a little more every time.”

There was a pop and then a flash, like the explosive death of a gaslight. Her gaze swooped down to the floor. The black-bodied, eight-legged thing scurried across the threshold and back out into the wet, wild dark.

Vivian rose up from her cot and firmly shut the door. She re-secured the latches and frowned down at the water seeping into her floorboards. That had been the specter’s fourth visitation tonight.

“The least he could have done was close the blasted door behind him,” she muttered, hurrying to the washroom in search of a mop.

The post Witch & Spider appeared first on Tonya R. Moore.