The Death of Romance

by Luc Reid

When Vera walked into the kitchen, she caught just a glimpse of a woman’s ghost tearing herself from Vera’s husband Tim’s embrace and vanishing into the wall. Tim’s face confirming what Vera would not otherwise have believed.

The Felix the Cat clock on the wall over the kitchen counter ticked placidly. From three rooms away came the familiar drumroll of a block tower being knocked down, paired with a shriek of laughter. Outside the window, over the meadow, a hawk circled.

Vera finally nodded, her expression blank, tired, accepting. She’d known Tim could speak to ghosts since before they’d started going out, back in college. He used compel the ghost of a young boy to drift along the floor at frat parties, and Tim would shout out the color or absence of underwear on any girl who had been dumb enough to wear a skirt. She should have known better than to fall for someone who would do that, but in private he had always been so charming, as though his public persona was just an embarrassing coping mechanism.

“Get out,” she said.

“That was just–”

“I don’t care. Get out.”

“But the girls need their–”

“Get. Out. Now.”

Tim grimaced, stood, walked to the refrigerator, extracted a Heinekin, popped it with the magnetized opener on the fridge, and threw the bottlecap on the counter. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think you’d better get out.”

Vera stared at him. She had gradually come to realize how little character he had, the man she’d married, but she’d had no idea he had balls, too.

The air by the ceiling wrinkled, and a moment later a warped adolescent girl’s face emerged from it, shimmering with a black-purple glow, the telltale sign of a poltergeist. It drifted down through the air, changing direction purposefully when Tim pointed at Vera, smirking. Smug bastard. He probably thought he was the only one with the ability to command ghosts.

He didn’t even notice when taloned, electric-red hands emerged from the floor at his feet, reaching for his ankles.

Austin Lights

by Daniel Braum

On January 8, 2008 unidentified lights raced across the Texas sky.

#

Arnie knew that everyone saw the lights over Austin. Police officers, military men, and hundreds of ordinary Joe’s. The footage played on CNN. On Larry King a noted UFO expert explained how the sightings of three witnesses and home footage corresponded with national weather service radar.

This was good. Whatever it was, it was still unidentified, but would go a long way towards people taking them seriously.

He set off to Gordon’s basement for the weekly meeting of their UFO and sky watcher group.

#

Gordon’s basement was stuffed full of all sorts of equipment and computers they had “borrowed” from their various jobs. Tonight it was set up and configured like a Rube Goldberg schematic come to life.

And an old man was there. The two men looked alike. Gordon’s grandpa or uncle maybe? So much for the no outsiders policy. Especially tonight with so much going on.

“Who’s this?” Arnie asked.

“I’ve figured it out,” Gordon said.

“What? The lights?”

The old man laughed, and said, “no.”

“I thought we agreed, no outsiders, Gordon,” Arine said. “You want to get us busted?”

“Doesn’t matter, we’re going to be famous. I’ve discovered slip holes through time.”

Gordon was a genius. But still, Arnie had never heard of slip holes.

“You mean worm holes?”he asked.

“No,” answered the old man. “I like to think of them as slip holes.”

“I was asking him,” Arnie said. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Gordon,” the old man said. “I figured out how to slip back in time. It took me forty years to make it back, to this day.”

“What? That’s crazy. Impossible.”

“No it isn’t,” the young Gordon said. “Look, here we are.”

“You’ve probably messed things up real good then,” Arnie said.

“No. The flow of time rights itself. Repairs itself.”

“But if what you said is true, isn’t it incredibly dangerous? Maybe you two shouldn’t stand so close.”

“No its perfectly safe, see,”

The young Gordon patted his elder self on the back.

Giant streaks of orange light raced across the Austin sky above them. The two men erupted into burning white light which consumed them, the room and within seconds, everything.

#

The lights over that particular Austin and in that particular everywhere, went out, forever.

– END –