We Knew Your Ma, But That Was In the Old Days

by Luc Reid

We knew your Ma, but that was in the old days. These days we couldn’t help you, no idea where she goes. She rose up past us, your Ma–least if you ask her, she did. Saved up to get rejuvenated when she was ninety or so, real class job: permanent tan, Tyler lips, Barbie platinum autogrow, the works. Me an’ Paolo’d been making do with worn-out whores for some time, so we figured for old time’s sake she might–but you don’t want to hear that, do ya? It’s yer Ma. Never mind. But she had a fine quality ass on that rejuve job, I’ll tell you that. Didn’t mind showing it, either.

What, not even stuff like that? You’re too easy to squick, I tell ya. Not like yer Ma.

Anyway, she got hired out a lot more after that rejuve: young-looking, classy, the kind of thing that makes us veteran shooters look shabby and cheap. We fell on hard times, me and Paolo, while she was pulling down the big jobs. You’d think she’d cut us in– subcontract, like, some of the time–but not yer Ma. No, she took one of those hovering apartments just outside the city limits, moved around all the time, started pretending like she didn’t know us, what gave her her start. One day her name came up, though, some guy whose boss she’d done for, and me an’ Paolo got the contract.

We went out there to the hovering apartments and tried to track her down, but by the time we found her spot, she’d already gotten wind of us. Did for Paolo with a grenade pellet to the throat, took two of my left legs off with a booby trap, so’s now I can barely hobble around. She oughta killed me, but she said “You shoulda stayed on the planet you came from” and just walked away. Left the apartment, all her stuff. Never seen her since.

Another thou note? That’s awfully generous of you. Now that you mention it, all of sudden a little more does come back to me. See, she had this tatooist she liked, always went to the same guy, and she was kind of a collector, your Ma. I’d bet you kilos to crap he knows where she is–she’s probably been in for new art.

No, none of my business what you want her for. ‘Cept I already heard rumor of it, so I guess I know even if it’s not any of my business.

Shoot her once for me too, will ya?

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.