Tonya R. Moore's Blog: Tonya R. Moore, page 27
July 10, 2017
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Does the avatar sit still,
upon the sand dunes lamenting
the scarred whales with their
beautiful, sad eyes?
Do you see
sea unicorns piercing starlight?
Do your ashes miss the desert?
Do they know who She is,
the breathing Thing beneath your breast?
Who dreams the fires
of so many creation gods dancing?
Do your bones miss the buried
eons where Gilgamesh guards
the mountain of God
for days,
for thousands of years?
“Oh, never mind me.
I’m merely waiting,”
he says;
“For the tides to roll back in.”
Individuality
I am not
One of you,
I am not
one of them;
I am
only me,
Inside
this body;
I walk
this path with
No one
beside me;
I do not
compromise
my sense
of self.
Bargaining
Beakman showed up at dawn.
He didn’t knock or call out for Else. He just stood there at her door, silently waiting for her to notice him staring at her through the glass.
He was an oddity. Else just wasn’t sure what kind.
The only form she’d ever seen him take was of a man’s body with a bird’s black beak and eyes. He reminded her of a heron, maybe a giant heron in a penguin suit. It wasn’t just his inhuman freakishness that unsettled her. The guy was an arrogant creep; from his beady little eyes right down to his sharp little toes.
He barged into her kitchen and took a seat at the table when she opened the door. He regarded Else expectantly, waiting while she grabbed the kettle and started filling it at the sink.
When she set the kettle down on the stove, Beakman leaned forward. “So, let me see it.”
Else sighed. She gripped the edges of her tee shirt, pulled it over her shoulders. She sat straddling one of the chairs at the table, so that Beakman could examine her back.
The pattern there looked like a tattoo, a very colorful glyph of a scarab spanning the breath of her torso. Its strangeness was apparent only because she knew what to look for. The pattern was slightly raised under the skin, giving the design a slightly three dimensional feel. It was hot to the touch. The veiny color patterns kept changing. Clearly, the thing was very much alive.
“So, you met a scarab,” Beakman mused. “When?”
“Yesterday morning, I think.” Else tried not to cringe when his icy fingers poked at the flesh there. “It was on the ground, upside down. All I did was help it along a little.”
She pulled the ends of her shirt back down when he drew away. He took the lemon grass tea she offered. His spindly fingers coiled around the glass. She watched him dip his beak in. A thin, pink tongue came down, lapping at the warm liquid.
“A scarab in this climate is ludicrous, you know?”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Else grumbled.
“Never met anyone who makes quite as many as you.” Beakman snorted. “There’s supposed to be something inside your brain that says: ‘one of these things is not like the others’ and you’re supposed to walk away.”
Whatever that certain thing inside the brain was, Else seemed to be in short supply. It was common sense, she knew that, dammit. At the same time, she wanted to grab her shady guest by the beak and snap it in half, for being obnoxious enough to keep pointing it out.
“What made you think something like that needed saving, anyhow?”
“It was belly up, Beakman.” She frowned over at him. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“I have a real name, you know?” He was staring at Else intently. It made her skin crawl. “Why don’t you use it?”
“Who the hell is that stupid? No thanks.” She shuddered. “Are you gonna help me get this bug off my back or not?”
“There’s a price.”
“Isn’t there always?” She countered.
She’d first met him when she was twelve years old. Beakman had noticed her and her penchant for attracting strange things, thereby needing to be rescued from them.
“What’ll it be this time?”
“I don’t know,” he smiled coldly. “Maybe an arm and a leg?”
“What?” Else set her cup down with a clatter. “Isn’t that more than your usual–”
“The price can only go up for the girl with the thick head.” Beakman pointed at her accusingly. “What have I told you about picking up strange things? At this rate you’ll probably go and become something else’s prey.”
She snorted and took another sip of tea. The fact was Beakman never denied being one of those strange things that were always out to get her, just for knowing they were there.
He’d apparently decided that she was more interesting to watch than whatever he could have planned for her, though. Presumably, he didn’t have any intention of collecting on this ridiculous debt anytime soon.
For the time being, at least, she could trust that Beakman would be content with just biding his time.
July 9, 2017
Do Your Thing
I spent a great deal of time tweeting yesterday and I was struck by the fact that there are so many incredible people out there, doing some pretty darn awesome things.
It sort of sent me into a momentary tailspin because–heck–I wanted to be doing something awesome too!
Then I had a sort of epiphany.
I’m only one person.
I can’t do EVERY awesome thing that’s being done out there. Each of those incredible people are simply doing his or her own thing. That’s what makes each person’s thing awesome.
I figured I should just focus on doing my own thing.
You don't have to do EVERY awesome Thing that's being done out there. Just do YOUR THING. That's more than enough.
— Tonya R. Moore (@tonya_writes) July 10, 2017
Maybe that’s how you become awesome, you know?
Well, that certainly helped me to put things into perspective very quickly. Hopefully, it will do the same for you.
As you go forth and take this week by the horns, just focus on doing your own thing.
Who knows?
You might be doing wonders.
Someone out there might be looking at you doing your thing, thinking:
“Damn! I wanna be awesome too!”
Character Profile: Niara
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Name: Niara
Role in Story: Protagonist
Occupation: Priest
Personality: Easy-going until her switch gets flipped. Then she’s a freaking machine.
Habits/Mannerisms: Niara smokes the sensi way too much. Always has her long, thin pipe twisting between her fingers.
Background:
Niara’s father died from a disease when she was young. When she was ten, her mother went on the hunt and never returned. Fellow hunters say she was eaten by a lion and the only thing recovered from the scene was her bloody armband and a finger bone. Since then, she’s been an apprentice and foster-daughter to Baba Gen, who at the beginning of the story, was already old and at the end of her life.
Internal Conflicts:
Niara was chosen for the priesthood as an adolescent. She doesn’t like the notion of having her destiny chosen for her so she’s a bit of a heretic. She does like the sensi though. Although she doesn’t feel any fundamental attachment to the priesthood, she loves her people and serves out of concern for their well-being.
External Conflicts:
Resources are dwindling and her people are barely eking out an existence within the walled zone. The Doan restrict humans to the walled zone but in order for her people to survive, Niara will need to defy the Doan and venture into non-human territory.
Vote for chapters of this story @ Jukepop!
July 8, 2017
Inspiration via Lois van Baarle
My scifi flashfic about an astronaut in hypersleep, Space Age Mermaid, was inspired by the achingly lovely artwork of Lois van Baarle, a dutch artist known for her dreamy illustrations.
The piece in particular that inspired this work of fiction is “Silence”. It is one of the most evocative pieces of digital art that I’ve ever come across.
I do suggest that you visit her website and look at her gallery. If you do, I think you will understand why I am so enamored with her artwork.
Website: loish.net
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Space Age Mermaid
Sulily sleeps suspended inside a transparent, cylindrical womb filled with luminous blue fluid. Her suit sticks to her body like a second skin and has knobby nodes that run up the length of her spine and end at the soft helmet’s base at the back of her neck. From the center of the helmet, wires fan outward and upward, gathering at the control center at the top of the container. Sulily’s mouth and nose are covered by a breathing apparatus with a serpentine root that coils and stretches down to the base of the cylinder.
From time to time, her eyelids flicker and her fingers and toes twitch. Otherwise, she simply floats in suspended animation, unaware of even the small, robotic jellyfish that swim around her, monitoring her vitals and the state of the life-preserving fluid. Her unconscious body has already been floating inside the cylinder for three years. She will sleep like this for two more years, awaken for three then sleep again for two more years. When she awakens for the second time, this space age mermaid and her companions will be orbiting a whole new world. At least, that’s the plan.
Sulily dreams in hypersleep.
She doesn’t dream of the friends and family she left behind on Ceres or of the vast distances between stars. The dauntless pioneer doesn’t dream of the new life she will begin on a new planet or of the many adventures and hardships to come. She doesn’t dream of the starship’s photon sails, fluttering on cosmic currents like the wings of a butterfly as it breaches the solar system’s heliopause. She doesn’t dream of Barnard’s Star or of their target planet’s seven mysterious sisters. She doesn’t dream of the unknown continents waiting to be discovered or the icy moon Gog, circling the planet Magog–an ominous pair of names to which Sulily had stridently objected but was outvoted. She doesn’t dream of the past, the future, or even the present.
Sulily dreams of water, Big Water, abundant enough to swallow their massive spaceship whole. It is with longing that she dreams of Earth’s mighty ocean, that vast liquid body thrashing and throwing its weight around with abandon. She dreams of the gentle shushing of froth against the shorelines, of rip-roaring, thunderous waves cresting on the high seas and crashing against jagged cliffs. She dreams of awkward sea cows, humpty-dumpty sunfish, snaky oarfish, and the sightless monstrosities living below the photic zone–she’d once seen them all at an exhibit at the virtual zoo on Ceres. She dreams of shoals of mackerel twisting and folding into dense bait balls and ruthless sharks culling the frenetic herds.
She dreams of dark, green forests of sargassum, the baby seahorses and leafy seadragons taking shelter within their hairy embrace. She dreams of the many-tentacled octopuses, caught up in their furtive mating rituals and jittery war dances deeper down. In her dream, Sulily hears the shrieks of hungry seabirds, the boisterous chatter of dolphins, and the sad, beautiful singing of whales. In her dream, the jellyfish swimming around her are puffy giants with long, curly tendrils trailing along the ocean floor. Surrounded by the bioluminescent denizens of the great Deep, she is Captain Nemo ensconced within her rusty submarine, delving deep down into the starlit trenches of an Earth to which Sulily has never been.
Sulily doesn’t dream of jolly Roger Hartman, slumped at the pilot controls, all skeletonized and bone white. She doesn’t dream of Lady Diana Bergman–Sulily has secretly nicknamed her Princess of Mars–inside her fractured shell, all desiccated and deathly dark. She doesn’t dream of Torey Brown, the taciturn medical technician who died, plunging face first into a plate of scrambled egg whites; beside him on the counter, a worn paperback copy of The Integral Trees, earmarked at page three hundred and eighty-six. Sulily doesn’t dream of Miko Takano, the mechanical engineer with a penchant for reciting poetry aloud, curled up in her bunk, in the throes of a nightmare from which she will never awaken. She doesn’t dream of Mike Tully in the hydroponics bay, done in alongside his crop, dirt still clinging to the tips of his fingernails.
Sulily doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know that one year ago, along had come a wayward piece of cosmic debris, punching a hole into the spaceship’s hull and ripping through the quarters where she and her crewmates sleep. She doesn’t know that three of the seven watery wombs have cracked open like eggs, fluid spewing out, leaving inside only the devastated bodies of their unfortunate occupants. Sulily doesn’t know that the pilot and the rest of the on-duty shift are dead. She sleeps, unaware of the flickering lights and shrill alarms going off all over the ship. She doesn’t hear the intermittent crackle of the radio or the repetitive pleas for a response to mission control. She doesn’t know that the program designed to awaken her at the appointed time or in the event of an emergency has become corrupt and ceased to function.
Lost in her endless dreaming, Sulily will keep sleeping for another seven years.
The phantasmal Nautilus will continue plumbing the depths of the watery abyss for wonders and riches untold. Sulily will continue to float, suspended inside her high tech tomb. Solar winds will continue to bluster against the bow of the great ship. Barnard’s star will continue to lie in wait, expelling fairy dust and fire. Gog will continue to circle Magog—fourteen hundred and thirty-two more times. The ship’s engines will keep humming. The alarms will keep blaring. The desperate voices on the radio will keep calling. The bodies that haven’t rotted down to bone will become eternally mummified. Sole survivor oblivious, the corpse-laden spaceship will sail unerringly to her destined cosmic shore.
At the end of Sulily’s ten-year journey, the hole in the hull will have widened into a gaping maw. The doomed ship will wobble, spin, and burn up as it is sucked into Magog’s magnetic embrace. As if to dream the inevitable away, Sulily will still be dreaming inside her watery grave.
Sulily will never have an inkling of her gruesome fate.
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 was well aware that 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. Finkley 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 sudden 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 in size until her clothes ripped 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.
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, blue, and his teeth are made for chomping metal and stone.
There’s no negotiating. There’s no pleading with this particular 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 a measly dollar and some foreign country’s fifty-cent coin in exchange for your precious white jewels.
Witch and 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 starship 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.
The 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? Shapeshifting 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.
Tonya R. Moore
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