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Love Lost
by Jonathan Wood
Jake had been here before. He had held Susan's hand just like this, right here. More than deja vu--certainty. They crossed the marble floor to examine the cherubim statue, each foot falling in the anticipated place. He knew what Susan was going to say.
“I think we should see other people.”
Wait. That wasn't right.
He turned to look at her, but she was gone.
Jake had been here before. He and Susan had shared margaritas on this roof deck before. He was talking about minimalism, about what shit it was, and then he realized--they weren't seeing each other any more. But she was holding his hand...
A man was looking at them. Jake couldn't make out his face. Shadowed. He walked up to them, took Susan's hand.
“I think you should see other people,” he said.
Jake had been here before. But Susan had been right there, right next to him, suggesting a gondola ride. Her absence was palpable, as if a bubble had just popped.
He pressed a hand to his temples. A migraine was building. He looked up and, there, looking at him: a man--face shadowed. He was unfamiliar here but Jake recognized him. He pushed into the crowds but the man was gone.
Jake stood in his apartment. Here, familiarity made sense. Except there had been photos of Susan, hadn't there? He went to her closet. Her clothes were gone. In the kitchen half the fridge was empty. Half its contents erased.
A sound from the living room. He got there in time to see a man's familiar figure slipping out of the door. He is not quick enough in his pursuit.
Jake stood in a shopping mall. He did not recognize this place. Why would he be in a shopping mall? Why would he have roses in his hand? He had no memory of buying them.
The migraine was intense now, rising like a tidal wave. Blackness rising behind his eyes.
Jake came round on the psi-surgeon's couch. There was a sharp pain behind his brows.
“The headache should fade in ten minutes or so,” the surgeon said, removing steel apparatus. “It's perfectly normal.” He sat back from Jake, out of the light, his face lost in shadow.
And despite the pain, Jake smiled. A success. Susan, the relationship, everything, it was already fading. Already it was just a dream.
The Ballad of Octavia and Mr Head
by Jonathan Wood
It’s a beautiful thing.
Some people have a hole in themselves. Mr Head had a hole in himself. It was in his face. People found it off-putting. Women found it off-putting. They could not stare lovingly into his eyes. He had no eyes. He had a hole. They could not stare lovingly into a hole. Rather they tended to scream and run away.
This made Mr Head lonely. Loneliness made him cruel. He was especially cruel to cats. Cats tended to try and crawl up his leg and go to sleep in his hole.
Octavia had a hole in herself. It was in her soul. She had no soul. She had a vacant parking lot where her soul should be. She was cruel to many things. Cats included.
One day Mr Head met Octavia.
Octavia did not scream. She did not run away. Instead she reached out a hand and plucked the cat that was sleeping peacefully in the hole in Mr Head. She opened her mouth and vast tentacles reached out from between lipstick-stained teeth and wrapped around the cat. The tentacles were purple. With a screech the cat was sucked inside.
Suddenly Mr Head felt full. Tentatively, heart quivering, he reached out his hand. Octavia reached out with hers. Barely daring to believe, Mr Head took Octavia’s hand.
Then she ate him.
And she felt full.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Greenpunk
by Jonathan Wood
It was day four of the siege at the McSalination plant, and the Greenpunks were still slinging biodegradeable flash drives over the walls and shouting slogans.
Greaves grabbed Terry. “We need to break this siege,” he said. “We're running out of water.”
“This is a desalination plant.”
Greaves shook his head. “No power for the process. PepsiCo stopped manufacturing the rechargeable batteries to up the profit margin and we're running low. So now we only got salt water.” He shook his head. “We're hitting them tonight. When their solar's weak. According to the marketeers specs we've got enough juice to power the rifles for one big push.”
Terry would have objected but he'd reread his contract at the beginning of the siege. He'd known this would happen.
It turned out opensource battreyware was more reliable than the marketeers had made out.
Terry looked down the barrel of the modded pulse rifle, sweating.
“Look,” said the 'punk, “this is stupid.” He lowered the gun. Terry stood frozen waiting for the trap to spring.
“We don't want any proprietary data,” said the 'punk. “That's the whole point of opensource. We've got better tech than the corps, just worse propaganda. This siege isn't to take the plant--that place is just compost waiting to happen.
“This is a recruitment drive.”
He swept his arm around the camp. One tent was one fire, but that had been the extent of the damage Greave's crew had caused. The Greenpunks had put out the worst of it and were roasting marshmallows over what was left. “Hemp,” the 'punk explained. “Plastic would just give off fumes so we couldn't use it. See, things are better here.”
He pressed a flash drive into Terry's hand. “Upload,” he said.
Terry was watching when the McSoldiers showed up. He watched them scratch their heads.
It was amazing how much he and the others had been able to salvage. Greaves had been against it of course, but there wasn't much he could do once they read the data on the drive. They'd stripped the place in under forty-eight hours, set up a new camp down the road. He'd only come back to scavenge aluminum casing for the chlorophyll batteries.
So Terry stood and he watched as the McSoldiers loaded Greaves up onto the chopper and left the pile of metal sheets that had once been a desalination plant behind.
A Fantasy of Hope
by Jonathan Wood
“Do you believe in magic?” The old crone cocks her heads on one side.
The princess shakes her head, reaches out, and pricks her finger on the needle defiantly.
Narcotics, she thinks as she slumps to the floor, do not a spell make.
“Do you believe in magic?” the bird asks her. It is blue, a puffball of feathers--bright orange beak, wide yellow eyes.
This it is just an effect of the isolation, of the drugged food. It is just the fraying of her reason. It is getting hard for her to keep track of things up here, up in this tower. She counts the days in the millimeters her hair grows. It is down to the back of her knees now, but already the ends are frayed, split, strands snap each time she tries to drag her fingers through the knots. No-one could climb up these strands.
She shakes her head until the bird is gone. Whether it flies from the window or from her mind she cannot quite tell.
“Do you believe in magic?” the prince calls up. “Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe that tonight you will be riding by my side, answering the sunsets beckoning call?”
She looks at him and tries to imagine how he sees her. The tower is very tall. She must be little more than a pink speck to him. He cannot see the truth, only the story, the legend. He does not see her.
But if magic will get him up here, she will believe.
He falls less than half way up the tower. His neck snaps like an autumn twig--dry and brittle.
“Do you believe in magic?” the princess asks herself. She crouches upon the window sill, the wind pulls at her, at her bare feet, her nails grown to brown talon. Her dress billows, ragged as feathers.
“Do you believe?” She whispers the words aloud. She thinks she has been saying them for a long time. Her lips are dry and chapped, her tongue a rough wood block jammed into her mouth.
“Do you believe?”
“Do you believe?”
She jumps and waits to see if gravity believes in her.
Working it out of his system
by Jonathan Wood
Marty was aware that sleeping with Mrs Korlowski was unethical. For one she was a client. For another he was her marriage counselor. He should be punished, he knew. Should lose his business, his marriage, should be shunned publicly for this. Yes, he told Mrs Korlowski, he had been a very bad boy and deserved to be punished. Still, for all his contrition, he completely failed to appreciate the irony of discovering that Mr Korlowski had been speaking literally when he complained that his wife was a soul-sucking monster.
Perspective
by Jonathan Wood
Four centuries after Colnel Braithwaite discovered Shangri-La, the bottom fell out of the Yeti market. Their furs were so prevalent and the creatures themselves so rare that anything new was too expensive to afford, and anything old was worthless.
This disaster was the final breaking point for the community that had grown up in the beautiful valley hidden among the Himalayan peaks. At first, of course, all had been well. There had been the celebrations at the valley's discovery, then the joys of immortality brought about by the fountain at it's heart, then the marriages, and children, and endless bounty.
But then had come the Sherpa uprising, and the quarrel between Braithwaite and Elkin, his old corporal, and Elkin's settlement to the north, and then there had been the fracturing loyalties of Braithwaite's sons, until he found he could barely walk more than a stone's throw from his tent door before coming to someone else's territory.
And so then had come the treatises and the chopping down of trees to form jagged barriers, and the carefully negotiated neutral grounds, for trade and hunting. And then the damn Yetis had gone and died out on him. Couldn't even trust the wildlife of this thrice-damned valley to copulate properly.
War was the only option.
With the fountain's waters there were few deaths. At least one inhabitant did, however, consider it--Braithwaite's great grandson, Charles. He looked out over the valley and saw none of the green he had been told of, none of the trees. Only the criss-crossing of stockade and trench.
It seemed too much like cowardice to simply die though--a soldier's mentality still persisted in the Colonel's descendants. Instead Charles tactically retreated into the steep mountain slopes that defined the periphery of his world.
After three months of gnawing the bones of mountain goats, he stumbled over a cave that became a tunnel, that led deep through the rock until he gazed upon a new landscape. Charles saw snow--white and glistening; saw clouds below, stretching out, and saw through them a land he could never have dreamed of. He saw a land of silver and green, bright and beautiful. A land lush with life, and yet, when he strained his ears, all he heard at this height was a few birds, the crunch of snow beneath his feet. And it looked for all the world, like paradise.
A Night on the Town
by Jonathan Wood
Let us walk among the menagerie. Let us peruse its delights. See this one here, the way the flesh peels back, the exposed musculature, the sinew flexing, the streaks of fat glistening. Have you ever seen such a thing? Have you ever beheld such a thing?
And this other, this female. Such colors, such beautiful staining beneath the skin. All the colors of decay - green and black and purple and white. Like a rainbow of death she is, amongst them all. They approach her, they back away, they are uncertain. They fear her purple teeth.
And the song of this one, growing louder with each sip he takes. What fluid can cause such a display, all colors and sound? See how its mouth flays the flesh even as it sings, each increasing exertion on its part causing ever more damage. Yet it carries on oblivious as its blood pools around its feet, warning the others away.
Let us walk among the menagerie. Let us lick them, taste their salt and their heat. Look how they arch at the touch. They love it, you know. For just a little while. But our fluids will scar them, will etch them. We are like sculptors, and they like clay.
See this one, the small one. It is deadly. Like a viper, like a cuckoo. Do not let it touch your eggs with its oh-so-white hands. It looks like porcelain but its heart is dullest stone.
And this one, it has edges. Oh, how they bite at you. Posions so bitter you they will bottle your blood when you are gone.
They are dangerous, yes, these creatures, though we have such power of them. You laugh, I see you behind your mask. Oh yes I see you. And they see you too. For in observing we too are observed. Even as we seek a dish to serve, so too do they. Do not forget the rules of the menagerie. Always remember that beneath our clay, our silk, our layers of wax and pus, we are animals too. And one must always feed the animals, lest the animal feed on you.
The Beak-Faced Girl
by Jonathan Wood
It was a dare, a bet, an act of bravado, a moment to become a legend to haunt the locker rooms--for immortality he kissed the beak-faced girl.
It was a dare, a bet, another way to embarrass her, to expose her as an outsider, and yet it was all she could expect, the best she could expect, and for that the beak-faced girl let him kiss her.
His soft lips met the hard contours of her yellow mouth, his wide red tongue flickered against her thin black one. And in that moment of close-pressed teenage years she spread her wings and they lifted from the ground and he saw her for the first time true, in her own space, her own place, her own setting, and amongst the clouds she was beautiful.
The hard contours of her beak met his soft pink mouth. She spread her wings at the contact. She hoisted him aloft, she felt full, she felt beautiful. And she opened her eyes, and she saw him, small frail sack of meat thing. And in her horror at his sight she let go and he fell down, down to earth.
Running on Aether
by Jonathan Wood
Once it was fun to courier packages through Orphir’s confluxes of alien architecture. This was a city of shadows and politics. But things are changing—now the knives emerge from the shadows, and tonight they point at me.
The assassins emerge from an Aethergate. A hole in reality opens and they dash forward from another where, another plane. The slash at me, my package. I see a keyhole tattooed on one palm. The Order of the Silver Key. A few hours ago I would have called them the most enlightened of the cabals skulking around the back halls of power. But things are changing in Orphir.
I make for the roofs, climbing something that may be a drain pipe or a feeding tube for a piece of sentient stonework. My feet pound over slate and silica.
My lead narrows and I descend to the streets, crashing down fire escape stairs. One assassin has flanked me. He slashes with his knife as I dance backwards. His blade catches the package, unseals it.
It goes without saying that I do not know what I carry. You do not open the package. That is the rule. But now the package is opened, and a blue-bladed aether knife falls free, spilling from its scabbard. It spits and crackles in the night.
I catch it before it hits the floor, slash the assassin’s knees. He screams and falls.
I run, they pursue and corner me in Flex Plaza. Five aethergates--one on each side of the space. I eye them, expecting fresh assailants. The assassins close. I lash out, and my blade severs theirs. Steel hits the floor. I slash again, hands join the blades. Three drop. One—holding back—remains. He run for a gate and vanishes. I smile.
Then the gate behind me opens and the assassin steps through. He has navigated the space between realities in a blinking. He is Aetherblessed, and I am screwed.
I run, but he’s always before me, stepping out of one gate, then another, outstripping all the speed of my feet. Eventually I am exhausted, cannot run from his approach, only wheeze.
The blow doesn’t come.
“This is not death,” he says. “This is rebirth. This is recruitment.” He holds out a hand, a silver keyhole tattooed there.
I pause then accept the hand. It feels right. Feels smart. After all, things are changing in Oriphir.
The Old Switcheroo
by Jonathan Wood
According to the pulps, when you want to raid a wizard's tower you just strap on a broadsword and a loincloth and go at it. Truth is you need a permit with fifteen signatures. Still the government spooks give me enough talismans I make Mr T look restrained. Hopefully they'll get me further than the permit, which only buys me a stunned doorman and a ride in the penthouse elevator.
Now a tower wouldn't be complete without a damsel in distress--April Wilcox, heiress of the Wilcox sock empire. Vesu Telquist made all six feet five of her disappear at his show tonight and has yet to make her reappear.
Mundane security's at the door. So I drop them with rubber bullets. The permit might have worked but this feels more satisfying. There's so many talisman's round my neck I don't which one defeats locks, so in the end I just kick in the door.
I clear the living room and the kitchen, then I open the bedroom door and almost gag--blood and shit spread over the room. The body's in the bed. What's left of it. Head's gone. Belly's open and the guts lie in circles on crimson sheets. Sick bastard.
I'm right on top of it when I realize it's too short. April Wilcox is an Amazon with a brunette dye job. This is a shrimp with excessive leg hair.
She comes out of the wardrobe with a knife and goes for the talisman's at my throat. Apparently her scrying let her know what was being sent to get her back. Vesu didn't see it coming. Neither did I. We tustle and break. Just in case I'm still thinking of rescuing her, she opens her mouth a breathes fire at me. Some joke about a hot date occurs to me and I'm so ashamed I almost let her roast me. As it is my jacket's on fire before I find the right talisman. We go at it then, she flinging elemental forces at me, me getting pummeled and my hands caught in ancient chains.
Eventually she and I both get sick of it. She tries fire again and I take the hit. That gives me time to line up the shot, and her blood mixes with Vesu's. I have the talisman ready in my pocket from the first attack but most of my clothes are ash by the time I summon the water to douse me.
I leave the mess for the spooks to clean up and ride down the elevator pulling off the remains of my shirt. I look at what's left in the mirrored walls. And on top of it all it turns out a loin cloth isn't a good look for me anyway.
Fish Food
by Jonathan Wood
Quite frankly, I'm getting sick of this Lovecraft shit.
It started with these marine biologists and their new species of octopus. Two weeks later all the staff at London zoo look like over-sized scampi and are sacrificing the tourists to elder gods.
My government-sanctioned holy bullets do bugger all. Apparently shrimp-scientists are secular. So I leg it and take refuge in a cleaning closet near the chimp enclosure, which I admit isn't very James Bond of me. Still, I come across an aerosol can in there, and two seconds later I'm out of there with my lighter flambé-ing a couple of the bastards. Zookeepers dissolve into masses of thrashing tentacles. Enough to put me off shrimp cocktails for the rest of my life.
Lighter in hand I manage to torch a path to the aquarium, but when I get a look at the bugger residing there, I don't think Pledge and a Zippo are going to cut it. It's about the size of a double decker, all jelly-like flesh and claws reaching for me. The glass of the aquarium shatters and I'm swept out with the water.
When I catch my breath it's tottering massively towards me through the ruins of the building. Gas tanks blow. Everything in the aviary squawking at once.
I leg it again.
See the trouble with Lovecraft is he only really gives you running gibbering into the night as an option, and I've got plans this Friday...
I smack into the wall of the polar bear enclosure and that's when, along with the concrete, the idea hits me. The thing behind me is getting close as I blow the lock of the enclosure. We're talking meters. I'm through the door and then it's smashing down the wall. I'm roll clear and come up staring into eight white faces. Not happy either. You wake up polar bears, you better do it nicely.
After that I let nature take its course. The elder god is a big bugger, but its still just an overgrown fish to these guys. Some mundanes can take care of themselves. Still sushi's gonna be off the menu for a while now too.
A Time of War
by Jonathan Wood
Detective Shale sifted through the fragments of the alchemist's shattered glass heart. “A rare thing,” he said.
“We all have them.” Collomb tapped flesh knuckles against a bronze chest. “Seems this man should have taken better care of his.”
“You think an accident was all this was, Sergeant?”
“Glass heart, sir? This was waiting to happen.”
Shale suddenly winced. A bead of his own blood stood sharp on his thumb. He examined the wound. Then he stood, dropped the glass shard and it split in two. “You're right Collomb. War is no time for fragility. Even if this was a fight. An accident. A lover's quarrel-”
Shale paused abruptly, placed his thumb in his mouth and sucked at the injury. For a moment Collomb thought he saw a tear in the man's eye. Then Shale blinked and it was gone.
“Ask if anyone saw anything,” Shale said, and left
Collomb stood at the market stall surrounded by hands of steel, eyes of malleable clay, jeweled intestines strung like cloth's lines, rows of hearts: gold, silver, jade, basalt, and bronze.
“Glass hearts,” Collomb asked the old man tending the stall.
“Only one.” The old man nodded, obsequious. “A recent acquisition. A rare thing.”
Curiosity rose in Collomb.
“Acquired from whom?”
“A sad man. Traded it below its value. Bought himself a heart of flint. A man looking for strength. Or hardness. Sometimes so difficult to tell the two apart. Especially in times of war.”
“What sort of heart do you have, sir?”
Shale looked at Collomb. Collomb was patient.
“Stone,” Shale said. “Why'd you think no woman would marry me?” He mounted a smile
“Strong heart,” Collomb said.
Shale shrugged. “Hard,” he said.
“Not easy to shatter. Not like glass.”
Shale paused, bowed his head. “No, not like glass.” He looked away, but kept on talking. “Did you know, Collomb, that glass is a liquid? It flows over time. Warps. Becomes something new. Not stone. There is no beauty in the permanence of stone. No fragility.”
“Easy for accidents to happen. Easily broken. A lover's wrong word. Better perhaps to protect yourself.”
Shale looked long and hard at Collomb. “For now, yes, perhaps. While the war lasts.”
Collomb weighed the words.
“Until then, then, sir.”
“Until then.” Again, there was a tear in Shale's eye.
Collomb nodded, turned, and for a while left the man standing alone.
Lulu at the Blue Note
by Jonathan Wood
The same guy comes to see Lulu sing every night. She never looks at him. He never looks at anyone else.
She’s been singing here a month when I get stupid. She’d walked in one Wednesday, sung one song and been hired. I'd been playing horn twenty years and I’d never heard anyone sing like that before. Sang like she was scared to stop.
After a week, I asked her, “What are you doing here? I know I've missed my break, but you...?”
She didn't speak. Never did. Only sang. But the next night she looked at me as she crooned, “Some dreams are nightmares, some dreams are for fools. We're never careful what we wish for, and sometimes dreams come true.”
Never speaks a word to me, but I still I get stupid. Normally I only get stupid over blonds. But that voice and that guy. So I hire a PI and a month later I've got an envelope full of photos—Lulu at different bars. And every time the audience is in a photo, I see that guy.
Next night, I catch him at the back door and we go at it, shouting back and forth 'til Lulu appears.
“What's he got you scared for?” I say. I've got my hand on the guy's throat.
She looks at me, and then she starts singing, and it's more beautiful that I've ever heard her sing before, and my heart breaks at the sound.
“Some dreams are nightmares, some dreams are for fools. We're never careful what we wish for, and sometimes dreams come true.”
And suddenly, I don't know why, but part of me gets scared. I'm scared I've got the devil himself by the neck, and I'm scared right down to my soul. The man stares at me, then at Lulu, and I'm trembling like a child.
Then she speaks to me for the first time. “No Steve-o, it's not that,” she says “You got it backwards. All backwards. He's keeping me...” she pauses, “away from temptation.”
The guy shakes me off, puts an arm around Lulu and they walk off. And for a moment, just an instant, I could swear he has wings.
Lulu doesn't come back to the Blue Note after that. But I keep on playing, and my break keeps on not coming. And part of me is glad.
On The Nature of War
by Jonathan Wood
When the Elephantmen came they brought war on their heels. Their tusks tore through men. They wielded cannons like toys, fired shot that ripped through Kevlar like tissue. They understood guerrilla tactics, their skin color natural camouflage in the urban jungle man had made for himself.
But the Elephantmen were few, and men were many. Through sheer weight of numbers mankind forced a stalemate. Both sides were diminished, bloody, tattered. And so went forth the leaders of each force, the man O'Connell and the Elephantman Atok. They were battle-scarred and proud, walking into no-man's land in the cold white sun of the day.
Hard-liners on both sides did not want the deal to pass. Hard-liners on both sides sent squads to dispatch the leaders. But the O'Connell and Atok had not attained their positions without merit. Together they fought back, the two acting as one. O'Connell's machine gun rattling, Atok's great arm cannon destroying the cover their attackers hid behind. In the blood of their enemies, O'Connell and Atok found what they might otherwise have never located, brotherhood, understanding.
At the ceasefire declaration, Atok told mankind, “You will see that though we can never forget, we can forgive.”
And the Elephantmen did forgive, and they opened their borders, and gave beleagured mankind all the aid they could muster. They turned their great strength from destruction to building.
However, Atok saw that his people's largess was not met in kind. So he went to O'Connell and said, “I believe we are friends, but now it seems our friendship is one-sided. My people will not be exploited once more.” And O'Connell assured him all was well, but time proved his promises empty and once more Atok returned. But where O'Connell may have expected anger he found only sadness, for Atok had forgiven man. And O'Connell knew he held back his hand, and the sadness in Atok's stance only angered him.
O'Connell sent trucks into the Elephantmen camps. They promised aid, but held only men with guns, only death. And the men burst from the trucks, and they caught their ally unaware, and they killed, and they slaughtered, and they butchered. And man stood victorious in a war one side had not known it still fought. For O'Connell had not forgiven, and instead had lived in fear of the day he might forget to hate.
The Demonologist's Love Song
by Jonathan Wood
The blood spills across the floor. Butcher-bought, it smells of the slaughterhouse, the pheromones of animal fear. I sketch the pentagram, light the candles. In the center I place the small vellum package. Stitched shut with the veins of things long gone. I whisper the words. And she comes.
She uncoils from blood. She--the color of porcelain and teeth gone sour on the taste of worship staled. Blood long dried and flaking. She uncoils, spreading herself, unfolding bones intestine strung. Flesh for blind eyes.
She was loved once. She was worshiped. They sacrificed to her. Young things. Loved things. Needed things. Such was their love for her it overcame familial ties, overcame the essentials of life. She was essential, her favor, her desire, her love. Oh how they contorted for her.
She uncoils me, undoes me. My soul is a blood-sodden homage to her formless stench of brothels and bloodbaths.
And then, like every lover, she was one day jilted. A new love came and she was cast aside. No longer was she brought gifts, signs of tenderness, twitching warm things. No longer was the dance blood-stained and wild for her pleasure. And she grew angry, and her former lovers grew afraid, and she was locked away,
She uncoils and stitches burst, things sewn to be sealed evermore, undone in this moment of sacrilege and sanctity
Slither, my love. Become. Undo yourself, and reknit fever dreams and sex stains into your multiplying skins--tattooed and beautiful.
Rising, rising,
coming
up
to me out of
pentagrams and-
She uncoils herself, bidden hither from nether. I give to her. Blood, and body, and soul. I give her love, and it wracks my body like a quake. Bone shattering, blood-spilling. And in this moment of broken-finger beckoning she emerges, unfolds, uncoils and gratefully she worships me.
Careful…
by Jonathan Wood
DISCLAIMER: The story below uses the names of real celebrities. If you think any of the events portrayed even vaguely resemble real events, please contact me—I have a magic lamp to sell you.
Eventually they found me. The media. I figured they would sooner or later, what with everything that had been going on. So I explained to them about the lamp, and about the genie and the three wishes. And I explained about how my first impulse had been to wish for the general selfish things that everyone thinks of, but then how I'd thought about it a bit and done what I think most people would really do if they'd been in that situation.
First I wished for lasting world peace.
Second, I wished for the eradication of all diseases and ailments.
"What about the third wish?" asked Dan Rather, who seemed to be the ringleader.
"I haven't decided what to do with it yet," I said. Which was true.
Things got rather ugly after that.
Matt Lauer started smashing my stuff with a baseball bat he'd brought. Crash. Crash. Crash.
"You better wish it back, you bastard!" Keith Olberman shouted.
Bill O'Reilly was sobbing into his hands, just repeating "I'm doing pet detective segments," over and over.
"Wish it back!" They took up the chant, started advancing on me. "Wish it back!"
"You have any idea what you've done to my ratings?" Larry King had a knife.
In retrospect, of course, I should have turned them all into chickens or something, made them feel inner peace. I don't know exactly, something. But I panicked. Katie Couric had a very vicious looking cleaver and kept letting out short yelps. And, yeah, I panicked. And I put it all back.
So that's how that all went down, and how things all got messed up so bad again. Of course, nobody in the news is letting me get my story out, which is why I'm putting it here. I guess I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I guess I wanted someone to know.
The Gun Overheats
by Jonathan Wood
It's Friday, and something's gone awry again, preventing you from seeing the cool story Mr. Lundberg has prepared for you. Please bear with us while we attempt to exorcise whatever computerological demons are afflicting us on a weekly basis.
Day 1724
The Gun overheats in the sun. Not fired once and still it overheats.
Beyond the city, the salt plains shimmer.
Maintenance comes and re-wires the coolant systems. Bart pisses himself when the plasma system creaks and they all run screaming. It's been doing that since the third summer of the siege.
Day 1745
“They're not coming,” Bart says.
We do this about once a month. “If They weren't coming, we wouldn't be here,” I say. I go through the motions. There's piss all else to do.
Day 1756
Battery 87 explodes today. I think this is it; it's on at last. I jump into the seat, start the engines. Then we get the stand down order. Just a malfunction. Coolant failure.
Day 1764
Water rations cut again. Bart's pissed. He says we're the military. We should get concessions. I pray They come today, that They end this siege.
But They don't come.
Day 1787
Officer inspection today. Bart gets it for the state of his uniform. I've been warning him for two weeks. Water rations aren't treating him well. It's tough for those with kids in the city. I get that. But we've still got to show we're better than Them.
Day 1796
“They're not coming.”
“If They weren't coming, we wouldn't be here.”
“You're not listening to me!” Bart is close enough for me to smell his breath, sour and thick. “I mean, have you ever even seen Them? All I ever see through this scope is dust, and dirt, and salt. All I ever see is the barrel of this gun pointing at empty ground. I never even targeted a bird. Because They ain't coming!”
Day 1797
Bart's not here today.
Day 1798
I hear in the barracks--Bart's been caught trying to cut the cooling systems. Bart's working for Them, officer's say. Bart's to be shot at noon.
I sit by the Gun and strain my ears. I think I hear the first shots I've heard this whole war.
Day 1799
Bart was right. They're not coming.
It's hot today. I'm overheating. I unbutton my shirt. I look through the scopes. I see the dirt, see the dust, see the salt. And then I see a bird, its wing broken, scuffing on the floor.
I keep the sights on that bird, lying there, waiting to die. I open fire.
A Reliable Man
by Jonathan Wood
I look at the dead man and try to make up my mind. Callie's still at the entrance to the alleyway telling me to get back there, that it's too cold a night to play boy scout, that I'm gonna get myself mugged. She stamps her feet and the echoes play down the walls.
I didn't drink anything tonight. Callie's pregnant. It's getting uncomfortable for her to drive and I'm doing the gentlemanly thing. So I'm sober. My eyes aren't playing tricks.
But the man has... I mean... The man has wings. He's lying face down, his bloody shirt ripped away from the body. I see where the flesh and muscle bind in his back. I reach down and touch them. Those are real feathers. Those are real wings. Real goddamn wings.
People don't have wings.
I mean, Jesus, that's something you can rely on, right? That people don't have wings. That is a fundamental truth. There's not much you can say, I am certain of this, one hundred percent, but that's one: people don't have wings.
Except this guy.
What if I call Callie to come see? What if I call the press? Even if people see this, even if this is real, they won't believe me. Because people don't have wings. Only the crazies, only the guys rejecting their meds and reality will believe me. I'll be crazy.
I stare at the body and try to make up my mind. Callie is shouting at me. Callie's pregnant. We're going to have a little girl.
I keep on staring at the body, ignoring Callie for just a little while. I keep on staring until I can believe the truth again. People don't have wings. And then I walk away.
The Changing of the Times
by Jonathan Wood
It used to be all about magical swords. Blessed steel wreathed in flame, all that. Truth be told, I have, in the past, opined of the increasingly mundane nature of the magical armament. So there is at least a small part of me that stands up and cheers when the tattooed bastard reaches to his scabbard and pulls out a shimmering blue blade that crackles with fire.
On the other hand, the larger part of me is tied to a chair and couldn't stand up to cheer even if it wanted to. Which it doesn't.
I'd been tracking the trail of bodies for about two weeks. He'd been picking of virgins as he goes-which can't have been as easy as it was when he first walked the earth. I followed him from London to Paris, across Alps, then into Germany, which is where I'm pretty sure he became aware of me because right now I'm in the back room of a strip club in Berlin, with my hands bound by stockings, which is not half as pleasant as several magazines have led me to believe.
However, despite appearances I do have a few things going in my favor. For starters, apparently stockings were not a prevalent item in twelfth century Egypt, so my tattooed friend, Mahut As-Ghul, is not entirely familiar with their unsuitability as bindings.
I kick back in the chair at about the same time the nylon rips. Mahut lunges. I tuck my body in and roll, but not in time to stop the blade passing through my ankle. The flesh doesn't break but the pain is agonizing. Mahut's blade glows brighter. Bastard just chopped off part of my soul.
Which brings me to my other and much more significant advantage. You see the operative word in my opening salvo here was that it used to be all about magical swords.
Ignoring my ankle, I draw my Glock and fire. Nothing unusual about the Glock. Standard issue for my department. But the bullets, ah yes, there's the rub Mahut, old buddy.
A portal to several rather unpleasant dimensions is abruptly punched into Mahut's skull. He starts to fold in on it, which really doesn't look pleasant. Still, I can't quite resist picking up the sword and finishing off the job the old fashioned way.
Kid Things
by Jonathan Wood
Jonny's a space pilot. He's got an airship made from an old tire swing. Lucy-Jane's his girl. She's wearing tin foil over her dress. I'm an alien lurking on a distant moon, waiting to shoot Jonny down, to pick over his bones. I'm going to go easy on Lucy-Jane, though. Things are rough with her mom and dad shouting all the time right now.
Jonny steers his ship down onto my planet. I clamber over the moon rocks and the slide. His cockpit opens with a hiss and he swings up high into the air and leaps out. Lucy-Jane follows more daintily, her foil outfit glinting in the light of the twin suns.
As Jonny surveys the barren landscape and Lucy-Jane asks what he sees, I crawl close. My tentacles drip ooze. My fangs drip blood. And then I leap. But Jonny, space hero that he is, feels the motion in the air. He spins, his laser pistol already unholstered.
But I leap too wild, and he draws too fast, and his fist catches me in the jaw, and I spill to earth, biting my tongue, the taste of my blood hot and sudden in my mouth.
And then whoever I am is lost back on earth, and now I am the alien, and I'm on Jonny, space idiot, and I am spitting my blood at him as I hit him. And I'm crying, and I think he's crying. He better be crying. I am an alien. I feed on his tears.
Lucy-Jane ends it. She pushes me off him. I sprawl on the grass. On the moon rock. We both lie there panting, sniffing.
"Why is it always fighting? Why is it always aliens and fighting?" She shouts it. And suddenly she is crying, suddenly there are tears. They stand out, bright as jewels on her tin foil outfit, shining in the light of the twin suns. "Why doesn't anyone ever come in peace?"
And she turns and she runs, off across the moonscape and out of the park and away into the distance of outer space, out into the great unexplored stars that Jonny and I have no idea about, won't even realize exist until the slow time travel of our lives has left the park and our spaceships far far behind.
What Might Have Been
by Jonathan Wood
Being the Story of a Man Who, Only by the Narrowest of Margins, Avoided A Terrifying And Most Ghastly Death at the Hands of the Beyond Men Who Sleep in the Margins of Reality, Preying Upon the Unsuspecting, Unworthy, Illegitimate, and Forlorn, After Also Narrowly Avoiding the Many Pitfalls of the Nine-Jaded Path That Leads the Lost and Bitter Away From Their Dreams of Redemption and/or Revenge Towards An Untimely End at the Hands of the Aforementioned Beyond Men and Which Lurks, Disguised as Nothing More Than an Ordinary Path The Likes of Which You Yourself Have Likely Seen Many Times Before, Upon The Paths We Ourselves Most Often Tread But Which Selects Its Prey Based Primarily On The Color of Their Underwear (Green Being the Color that Most Appeals to its Predilections) Onto Which This Man was Almost Led by Chriandrix, Agent of the Beyond Men, Harlot of the Nineteen Space Oceans, Mistress to the Lord of the Pits, and All Round Femme Fatale, Whom After A Spat with Her Lover, The Lord, Was Taking A Sojourn Upon One of the Lesser Known Realities and Easing Her Aching Hangover (Brought On, No Doubt, by the Consumption of An Over-Abundance of Soul Devouring and Blood Bathing) Through the Imbibing of Red Bull, Itself One of the Weakest Potions of Hellacious Redemption, Yet Which Was Less Likely to be Being Bought By Someone Who Knew Either Chriandrix or The Lord of the Pits and Which was Available at the Bodega Around the Corner from the Apartment of the Man About Whom This Story Revolves Like an Orbiting Moon of Potential Doom, Verily a Dark Moon Whose Gravitational Pull He But Narrowly Avoids Due to the Fickle Forces of Fate Alone
Waking up, after a night of heavy drinking, Dave squinted at the clock and decided that, screw it, there was no way he was getting out of bed today.
Devotional
by Jonathan Wood
Another new writer debuts today here at the cabal. Mr. Jonathan Wood, farragonist and exile of Albion, presents a story that's finely balanced on the edge of darkness...
The girl, all grief and acne, slit her palm with the piece of flint. Blood like petals fell onto the grave stone of her love. She swore never to speak again. A year later, her therapists richer but bewildered, her mother asked, what do think you’re achieving? The girl was struck by the futility of her actions. She once more spoke, requesting books on occultism, spirituality. Her overjoyed mother complied unquestioning. The girl knew what she wanted to achieve. Him. Him back.
The girl turned woman pressed the flint to flesh once more. This time it was a lamb beneath her blade. It’s was warm on her cold, aching limbs. Her fingers hurt from grubbing herbs. She was older, but none the wiser. Her love was still gone.
From time to time she took lovers. One would not leave, even when she turned him from her bed. She did not understand his devotion. She had nothing to give him. Yet he was helpful, useful, he propped up her hope when it sagged with her skin, recessed into her wrinkles.
As years passed she remembered her mother, long gone back to the earth. She remembered waiting until her mother was asleep, until the pebbles struck her windows. She remembered the taste of her love's lips... And had his lips tasted of strawberries? No. That was another, some gypsy boy she'd once had.
Finally she found the final spell fragment she needed. She and her disciple went to the hills, to the high sacred places. But her bones were old and she struggled. Her apprentice too now knew the touch of the years, but he used spells he'd learned, and his strength flowed into her. They came to the reflecting pool at the hilltop and he lay down, closed his eyes, said he would rest a while.
She stripped, stood and saw her body's reflection in the moonlight. Was that hers, truly? It was some old worn-up thing. And what would some teenage boy do with a body like that? What boy would not flinch back? She looked at her disciple at her feet, his breath fled from his body, the last of his strength ebbed away, and she cast her spell.
When he sat up, she leant him her strength, and he stood. Slowly they made their way back down the hill, leaning upon each other for support.