Tonya R. Moore's Blog: Tonya R. Moore, page 24

Kam “Mars” Heyward: Long Exposure

Kam “Mars” Heyward

[image error]Website: smokeplanet.weebly.com

Twitter: @sm0keplanet

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I’m a digital artist specializing in comic-making, character design, storyboarding, and animation. I’m currently working full-time on my comic book, Long Exposure, and living in Portland, OR.

Long Exposure

Long Exposure is an ongoing webcomic about a nerd and a bully who are forced to work on a class project together. The story revolves around them developing super powers after an incident at a strange research center, and finding themselves followed by a mysterious car, overcoming personal challenges, and (most importantly) discovering how gay they are for each other.

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#of Chapters Available: 4 (chapter 5 coming soon!)

Status: Ongoing

Read “Long Exposure” Online

Support Kam via Patreon

 

Descent

You know it, that sinking feeling.

See, there’s this deep pit filled with sludge. The sludge possesses a malicious sort of magnetism. It’ll reach slimy fingers out and drag you into the muck by your toenails. It’ll suck you down into the mire. You’ll sink so deep that you’ll forget that the sensation clawing away at your insides is fear.

You’ll forget that the delicious pain in your head, that deep and jerky strumming and the red roar in your head is just you—slowly, steadily suffocating. You’ll forget. You’ll get sucked deeper and deeper down into the crushing dark. You’ll flail and grab uselessly at bits of straw, dead leaves, pieces of corpses… anything.

It’s hell, you know.

It’s hell but soon enough, you won’t be able to see, hear or feel enough to care. You start thinking that getting swallowed up by rot and wet dirt isn’t so scary. That awful abyss isn’t where you’ve descended. You’re actually floating out there somewhere, lost in the deep dark of the universe.

You’re an orphan planetoid, a burdensome chunk of flesh that was cast away by some haggard star. You drift in the empty spaces between the stars with no anchor, no light. There’s no lucky current to sweep you onto some strange and distant shore, therefore no winding road beyond waiting to lead you to some secret sanctuary you can call home.

Of course there isn’t.

Wishing for such a thing never made any real sense. The place you’ve been trying to find doesn’t even exist.

It never existed at all.

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Free Photos

Halfway House

The afternoon sun was warm on my face. Even hours later, I would remember this moment. I stood staring up at the sky, shielding my eyes against the brilliance. I would remember because I could hear birds singing all around me, idly basking in their dust-laden tranquility.

I would remember my heart lifting a little, as it always seemed to do these days. My gaze swept across the outer walls of the old house that had been bequeathed to me by some distant relative whose face I barely even remembered. It was starting to feel like, finally, there was a place in this world where even I might belong.

I took my time making my way up the paved pathway to the front door. I was making lists in my head of things that needed to be done. The roof was in desperate need of repairs. Better get it done now before the rainy season arrived. The ivy that crept up the latticed walls needed to be trimmed somehow. It was suffocating the walls, and I was sure that a lovely window or two had been covered up by the relentless greenery.

I would remember uneasiness suddenly sliding into my bones. My hand froze in mid-air as I reached for the knob to the front door. Oh yes, I shuddered. There was That. The reason my first night in this rambling old house was spent with my back to the wall and baseball bat poised for a fight. The reason why as soon as I mentioned where it was I was staying; the friendly people of this quaint little town promptly replaced their smiles with stony glares and made a wide berth around me, should any of them happen to cross paths with me on the street.

Screw that, I scoffed silently and shrugged. Being some backwater outcast didn’t really have a profound effect on me. How was that any different from anywhere I’d ever been?

The thing was though (I reached for the knob again tentatively); I never knew quite what to expect. I think that was the most daunting quality of this strange aspect to my new home. I actually had to summon the nerve to push the door open and cross the threshold. It took a bit longer to open my eyes, which had been squeezed shut-bracing myself against another disaster like the night before. The place had been wrecked, completely and utterly wrecked. My heart ached a little just thinking about it. It had taken me the early hours of morning though late morning to set the house back to right, after my previous “guest” had departed.

My nose crinkled. The air was thick with the scent of incense. That was what made me open my eyes, and I smiled in surprise. Everything was in order but fundamentally different, nonetheless.

It was dark inside, so shadowy that I forgot how brilliant it had been outside, only moments earlier. The ivy that clogged the walls kept the daylight out too. I ventured farther inside and turned the corner into the living room. My eyes widened. There was a row of tea lights along one wall, flames dancing jerkily although there was no breeze. Along the opposite wall the job was half done. A woman garbed in a deep red sari, was lining up more candles and lighting them one by one. She turned when I entered the room, bowed her head in polite greeting briefly before returning to her task.

“Hello,” I murmured lamely. What else was I supposed to say?

She lit another candle and turned towards me. Her veil fell away, and I got my first clear look at her face. She was beautiful. Not young. Her face had a weathered sort of serenity that reminded me of knobby trees that had fallen in the forest. The aged thickness carpeted by crackled bark that always hummed with a primal sort of energy, begging to be touched. She stared at me intently-not critically or with hostility. She had a sharp and interested gaze. My heart sank when her smile tilted curiously. She seemed so bewildered. So lost.

I was reaching deep inside my mind for some inkling of what to do, some way that I could be useful. My great-aunt that I never even knew had left me this house but no instructions on how to deal with the things that happened here. The only clue she had left behind had been a hesitantly scrawled note.

“Don’t desert them. Just use your heart.”

What the hell was that even supposed to mean?

Well, here I was, and something told me that any sensible person would have run away from that house screaming, never to return after that first one appeared in the dead of night. Yet, this place felt like home. My home. Even momentary bouts of panic and terror couldn’t usurp that feeling of belonging. I didn’t know what they wanted, and they seemed to always be gone by morning. This one though, was different. Lost though she may be, she didn’t seem as disoriented or demented as the rest.

“I can’t seem to remember how I got here.”

That last word ended on an expectant lilt. She was waiting, I realized, my spirits plummeting. I cursed lightly under my breath. “Well, do you know why you’re here?” It was a stupid question I know. I was stalling, OK?

“I do not,” she answered softly.

Not what I wanted to hear. Oh god, I thought. She doesn’t know. I’m going to have to tell her. This was the part I hated most. So far, it almost never ended well. She moved suddenly, surging upright, and I quailed inwardly with shame as I scrambled backwards a few steps. Inspiration struck.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Sarasvati.” When she said it, joy split across her face, as if she had reclaimed something precious that had been lost.

“Are you here to teach me something?”

Her eyes widened. “You?” Her hand went to her throat, exposing an intricate and achingly beautiful mehndi.

So much for that. I cleared my throat. “Or maybe, do you need something from me?”

She edged closer. So close that I could feel her breathing and smell the perfume on her skin, which was odd considering the present circumstances.

“I…” her voice fell to a helpless whisper.

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for my ignorance or for what I was about to tell her.

She surprised me by smiling. “Not all who come to you will be ignorant.”

“Then you know?”

She nodded benignly, drawing closer. “It’s fairly obvious.” She looked around curiously, her eyes lingering on the weathered moldings and filigreed details of the hall mirror. “This place?”

I shrugged. “A transition point of some sort?”

She chuckled. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

It rankled. I scowled. “I just moved into this crazy house a week ago! And I never cared much for metaphysics anyway.”

My grumbled retort sounded lame and nonsensical even to my own ears. She turned away to face her handiwork. The soft glow of the candles she set out licked at the walls. There was something poignant about that simple gesture, lights set out in the darkness by the dead. She remained silent for a while. Just when I thought she must have forgotten I was even there she looked up.

“Souls are just travelers,” she murmured. “Yes?”

I smiled. “I’d like to think so.” Suddenly I knew exactly what I was supposed to say. I gestured toward the candles she had put out. “Tell me about the candles, Sarasvati. Tell me what you remember about your life.”

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Nawal Abbas

Lightning Bug

When Bug was six, she got kicked in the head by a horse. By all accounts, that’s how she should have died. That she lived was a tiny miracle but it’s an old story, the one about how she went blind. When she was twelve, she got her brand new cybernetic eyes. You could even call it a brand new lease on life.

Bug could see again. She could run. She could hop and skip and do all of the reckless things that other twelve year olds did and got to take for granted. More than that, Bug’s sense sharpened. She could hear, smell, taste and see things that other twelve year olds couldn’t. Bug could even talk to lightning.

Her name was Sadie but by the time she turned twenty six, nobody called her that anymore. Everybody who knew her just called her the Bug, short for the Lightning Bug. That was, everyone from the mailman to the scrawny kid who mowed the lawn for twenty bucks a pop. Bug wasn’t exactly crazy, people would say. Just a little weird. That was okay, most would say. Every small town’s got their own little slice of weird.

Though she wasn’t exactly an outcast, Bug had fallen into the habit of living like a hermit. She worked at home as a freelance writer, paid her bills online and had groceries delivered to her doorstep twice a week.

Come a rainy night, Bug would go streaking across the open field behind her house, pink galoshes and open raincoat barely offering any protection. The rain would come down in buckets. Lightning would crack like a whip along the ground and the thunder would come crashing down. Bug would look more alive than anyone could ever imagine. She would listen to the messages hidden within the chaos and she would nod, smile and yell her answers back.

Dr. Phyllis Carter arrived at Bug’s front door at 2:55 pm on a Tuesday afternoon for their weekly session. The counselor’s knuckle was poised to knock when the door opened. She was ushered inside and offered tea. Dr. Carter followed the young woman inside.

Bug was a plump, round-faced sort. Today, she wore her hair in a chignon bun and a vintage cream and black polka dot dress that complemented her lovely ebony skin. To be honest, seated on Bug’s soft leather couch, Dr. Carter felt nothing but drab by comparison in her ordinary slacks and button-up shirt. To say that Dr. Carter envied Bug’s fashion sense would be an understatement.

“Thank you,” she smiled, accepting the dainty tea cup that Bug offered.

Today’s tea was Darjeeling with a hint of raspberry. “Excellent selection, as always.”

Bug merely gave a slight nod and a smile. She sat in one of the chairs across from Dr. Carter.

“Last week, you mentioned the voices,” Dr. Carter began. “You said they tell you things?”

“Hmmm,” a nod and Bug took a sip of her tea.

“What kinds of things?”

“They tell me all kinds of things,” Bug answered with a shrug. “Random things like rising sea levels and atmospheric readings. Bird migration pattern changes. This one time, there was that pod of whales that beached themselves on Cape Horn. It was after the fact, so hardly anything of consequence really.”

“I wouldn’t say of no consequence,” Dr. Carter objected. “You were right about the earthquake off the coast of Japan, and the hurricane that hit Aruba.”

Bug chuckled. “So what are you saying, Doc? I’m psychic?”

“You know I’m not saying that.” Dr. Carter replied patiently. “I’m not saying that at all. What I mean to say is that there is probably some scientific explanation for your er… condition.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Your optical implants for one thing. The technology was experimental and this all only started after you got them, right?”

“Can’t say for sure.” Bug shrugged. “To tell you the truth, it’s crossed my mind but that’s only half the equation, right?”

Late that night, it rained again. Bug donned her raincoat and galoshes. She ran. She laughed. She danced around and she sang in the rain. The air around her crackled. Lightning struck so close by that it made the hair on the back of her neck stand at attention. The sky rumbled, lit up with a blue glow. The nanobots in Bug’s eyes throbbed and hopped to the beats of the rogue nanobots crowding the sky.

“Of course not!” Bug yelled back up at the hovering clouds. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

The rain petered out. The lightning and thunder rolled away with the clouds. Bug’s gaze followed them into the distance.

“You guys don’t have to worry,” she murmured. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Free Photos

Dragons

In the old stories, people dreamed of falling down to earth from the heavens. Mother says that this is because there are memories within a people that can never be erased.

In the old stories, there was once a human who gave birth to a dragon.

Mother says only humans give rise to dragons.

Mother says that as humans, we cannot remember what were truly are. Only if we become strong enough and fierce enough, would we become something immense and terrifying. Our memories return. We become something that came to this world from some strange and distant place and we begin to dream of falling from the sky.

As a child, I dreamed of climbing to the top of a mountain. My toes clung to the tip of a narrow spire to which puffy clouds clung anf coiled. In my dream, I could the vastness of plains laid out before me. The sun at my back, my own shadow had become a monstrous thing cast across the snowy slope. The wind was furious and threatened to knock me from my perch.

In my dream, I became terrified.

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Adina Voicu

Big Voice

Terry could hear the clickety-click 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.

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Anja

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. Well,” there was a hollow laugh. “… you know.” 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. Nor what lay beyond. Nor 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 actually 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 fucking sick of it all. Why had she killed that guy again? It’s not like… not like she could 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 fucking 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 toymakers 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.” Yeesh.

“That’s Lieutenant Dollface to you, rookie.” The wrecked beauty glared down at the now infamous, Blonde 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 face 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. On my mark…”

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Pete Linforth

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 to and fro. 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.”

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: Stefan Keller

Going Dark

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

“Wheela! What in the stars 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?”

“Dran…”

There must have been something manic in his voice that gave him away. He suffered a few moments of her astonished silence. Only to be expected, he supposed. He’d never…

They’d already plummeted, worlds apart before he’d even started falling for her.

How could he have told her? What would have 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 cognizant 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 actually 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

.

She sobered. “Listen Dran, remember this. They’re predatory and they seem to really like the smell of human blood. They’re clever and they hunt their prey en-mass, in groups comprised of several flocks. 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 a savage sound, full of triumph and anticipation.

“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 Elsa? If I ever make it back home, that is.”

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.

“Ah, the heroic stuff.” 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.”

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

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

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

“Nothing to tell, really. 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 preposterous? I’m a little insulted, actually.”

Dran’s agonized gaze drifted to the massive moon. Dread pooled into his gut. He heard another round of gunfire as the orb in his palm lost its shimmer. He flung it aside, biting back a sudden and unreasonable surge of ire.

Fawn don’t cry for humans and she was such an evil witch for making him feel this way. Twilight ended. Wheela’s hemisphere twisted too far away for radio transmission to be possible until it rolled back around again. That was a full planetary rotation away. When the moon went dark, so did Wheela.

This time, he knew–for good.

The Light Offering

Tiamaht stands at the water’s edge in the deepest, darkest part of the valley and she waits. Moon wanes and thickest fog slides slowly down from the top of the mountain. The blind oracle waits there patiently for hours, sheltered in the arms of the forest with only the sounds of the wind moving through the wood, her own stuttering breath and the worms twisting under the skin of the earth to keep her company.

She stands there waiting with the hem of her dress trailing in the muddy water with her fingers curled tightly around the handle of her empty basket. She hears the odd sound that rises up and rises up from the deep, dark wet. Fearful, she trembles but Tiamaht hold her stance and she doesn’t falter.

One dreadful beast surges upward, its scaly head breaching the mirror-like surface. It drifts closer to the shore. It stills. Something soft and slippery licks at the tips of Tiamaht’s bare toes. Her throat constricts. A tiny whimper squeaks out. Frightened tears swell up into her sightless eyes, down her cheeks and onto her bosom.

She can feel the weight of the body that rises up out of the river. She senses that it stands on two feet and has the shape of a man. Tiamaht’s arms reach outward, basket raised in supplication.

Wordless breath and light spills from his mouth. His unearthly offering fills her proffered vessel until it overflows. He steps away. He sinks back down into the river. Tiamaht raises the basket to her lips and drinks the nectar, swallows it down until it spills over and washes the tears staining her cheeks away. The incandescent liquid slides down into her belly. It floods her body. It fills her bones.

The light enters her eyes and alters her mind.

 

FEATURED IMG CREDIT: StockSnap