Tag Archives: Fiction

Bulldozer

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Belle fixed her hair in the mirror, carefully tucking away any stray strands of wiry gray that had escaped her hair clips and pins. She had had such beautiful hair once, but the years had been far from kind. Still, what girl wouldn’t have a few gray hairs after a lifetime of deathtraps, alien invasions, mad scientists, would be global dictators, time travellers, and other assorted supervillians? No, the years had not been kind, but they had been magnificent.

The wheelchair, of course, was an inconvenience from time to time, but she refused to let anyone do anything about it. She’d lost her legs the day she’d lost Him, and by comparison the wound barely even registered. She had been the secret wife of the world’s greatest superhero, its first superhero, and she felt his death as keenly today as the day that she had cradled his shattered body in her arms and lulled him softly into the endless sleep.

Belle sniffed, and held back a tear from her good eye. She wouldn’t cry. Not today.

A breeze passed across the roof, and Belle heard the familiar sound of heavy booted feet landing on her balcony. She remembered how her heart had skipped a beat the first time she had heard that sound, the first time that he had visited her in the dead of night. There was no death that night, no tragedy, no battle to fight. There was a just a man, a glorious and impossible man, and the woman who had captured his alien heart.

“Mom?”

Belle turned and smiled. “Hello, Able. It’s good to see you.”

Able was almost identical in appearance to his father, a quirk of his father’s alien DNA she suspected. Belle wished that there had been something more of her in the boy, but he was undoubtedly his father’s son, at least in appearance.

“Come on in,” she scolded, “You’ll catch your death out there.”

Able stepped gingerly into his mother’s cramped apartment, closing the balcony door behind him.

“Mom, I’ve been to Pluto …”

“So have I,” Belle replied, “And it’s got nothing on a New York winter. Now, sit down there, and I’ll get the tea things. Everything’s ready for you.”

Able squeezed himself into an armchair, his massive frame straining the wood and fabric. His cape bunched up around the small of his back. “Don’t know how Dad ever sat down in this …” he muttered. “This whole place is too small”

Belle shook her head and headed out to her small kitchen, her wheelchair creaking noisily. “I saw you on the news yesterday,” she called back.

“Oh,” said Able. On the wall nearest to him were hung row after row framed photographs of his parents, others of his father with various superheroes, world leaders, and celebrities. Interspersed amongst them were newspaper clippings, recording Able’s father’s greatest exploits, and his mother’s most famous headlines. Despite having eyes that could have read a newspaper across the solar system, he scanned the wall from top to bottom five times before resigning himself to the fact that there wasn’t a single photo or newspaper clipping about him. His, of course, was a different kind of super-heroing. It lent itself less to headlines that a mother would want to pin up on her wall.

Belle put the tea tray down on the coffee table. Able recognised the pale blue china and green glass combinations, a wedding gift to his parents from the King of Atlantis. His mother loved the set, but to Able it made everything taste of the sea. Slices of Battenberg sat on plates shaped like seashells that no doubt made everything taste of fish.

Belle poured two cups of tea. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

“No,” Able replied, looking down at his boots.

Belle slid a cup of tea across the table to her son. “Well, I do, Able. I need to talk about it. I need you to tell me what the hell you think you’re playing at.” Her good eye was fixed on Able in a way he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. A full grown man now, he understood why world leaders had trembled more at him mother’s name than at his father’s. Once a journalist, always a journalist, that’s what she said. She had a nose that was only every comfortable where it wasn’t wanted.

“What do you mean?” replied Able, defensively. He picked up his cup and slurped tea. As he had expected, all he could taste was brine and salt.

Belle clinked her cup down noisily. “You know exactly what I’m talking about Able. I’m talking about you bulldozing shanty towns and refugee settlements. I’m talking about you walking ahead of tanks instead of standing between them and innocent people. I’m talking about you taking sides, and the wrong sides at that. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Sides?” said Able angrily. “Come on, Mom. All Dad ever did was pick sides. You can’t have truth, justice, and the American way without America, and these people are America’s enemies.”

“Who says?” Belle spat back. “Who says that their our enemy?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Able sarcastically, “How about the President?”

“The President? Oh please, Able, I thought I raised you better than that. You’re the Government’s whipping boy now?”

“Mom, Dad worked for the President all the time. It’s up on the wall, right there!”

Able stabbed a finger at the wall, sending a tiny wave of pressure out that rattled the pictures on their hooks. Belle frowned. Able had never had the control over his powers that his father had had. There was something reckless about him, like a child playing with a gun without understanding what it is and what it could do, without realising that real guns kill people for real, and nobody gets back up to carry on playing. Perhaps that was the problem; Able’s father had died and come back to life so many times when Able was growing up, all of their friends had at least once too … Belle wondered if Able had a real understanding of what death was even now. Growing up around superheroes, perhaps it was natural to think that death was something that only happened to other people.

“It was a different time,” said Belle, lowering her tone. “We’d just come out of a war, things were … simpler.”

“We’re at war now, Mom,” replied Able. “There might not be bombs falling on Pearl Harbour, but we are at war.”

“And those people, in that village?” asked Belle, “Were those people at war too?”

Able stood up and unclipped his cape. A patch of damp sweat had stained it dark red around his neck and between his shoulder blades.

“Is it hot in here?” he asked, catching his breath.

“Heating’s on full,” Belle replied. “New York winter, can’t afford a chill at my age.”

Able slumped back down into his chair, the wood cracking under his weight. He ran a hand through his dark hair and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Don’t change the subject,” pressed Belle. “I want to understand what you thought you were doing, why you did it Able? The whole world saw you. The whole world. It’s been on every news station, every channel, for days.”

Able looked up, his eyes rimmed red. “Is that what this is about? Your precious pride? Your reputation?”

“Of course not,” replied Belle. “It’s about you, and what you did.”

“Crap!” spat Able. “This is about you, and about him, just like everything else in my life. You don’t mind people knowing your my Mom when I’m pulling cats out of trees and stopping bank robberies, but the minute I try to do something that’s going to make a real difference, the minute I try to do something that might actually change things …”

“It’s not your job to change things. It’s not your job to decide who wins a war, who runs a country.”

“But I can decide who doesn’t? How many would be dictators have I stopped? How many people with plans for world domination? Who says that one of them, just one of them, might not have actually made things better? Maybe one of them might have made the world work. I have to make decisions every day on who to save, who to stop. Who wins, who loses, it all comes down to me.”

“Your father could always tell right from wrong. He always knew the right thing to do.”

“And so do I!” Able shouted, rattling the windows of the apartment. “But you know what? You’re right. Why should I help a President win a war, when I could win it for myself. Maybe that’s the mistake that Dad made, for all those years. Instead of spending all his time stopping one supervillian or another from taking over the world, maybe he should have just taken it all from himself! You think that this was the first time that I had to do something like that? You think that I haven’t done that before? How the hell do you think those cameras were there in the first place? I can hear atoms rubbing together, you think I can’t here someone switch on a camera? We’ve been doing it for years, Mom. We just decided that it was time people saw what they’re really up against when they mess with America. Me, Mom. They’re up against me!”

Able slumped in his chair, as if his rant had sucked all the air out lungs that could hold enough air to carry him across space. His hands were trembling.

Belle shook her head sadly. “Oh, Able. I wish you hadn’t said all that. I’m so, so sorry.”

Able’s head drooped forward for a moment. “Sorry?” he said, the word slurring as his lips suddenly started to puff up. He raised a hand weakly to his throat, trying to pull his close fitting uniform away from his neck.

“Yes, baby, I’m sorry,” said Belle. “I’m sorry for whatever it was I did, or didn’t do, that let you grow up this way. I’m sorry that you can’t see that what you did was wrong, so very wrong. I’m sorry that you’re already so far down this path, that I don’t think you can come back. I’m sorry that I have to stop you.”

Able tried to stand, his legs trembling and weak. Collapsing forward, he smashed through the coffee table, sending Atlantean crockery flying up into the air. Belle wheeled herself gingerly backwards, until her eye met his.

“Those people weren’t supervillians, son. They weren’t even criminals. They were just people. Men, women, children. People who were looking for somewhere to live, people who believed that the land they were standing on was theirs. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but is it really for someone a thousand miles away to decide where their borders are? Is it your right to kill them, just because of where they were standing?”

“What did you … do?” croaked Able. His eyes had all but closed up, and he relied on his flickering and quickly fading X-Ray vision to see his mother. Her skeleton looked down at him from her wheelchair. He’d never realised that she had so many broken bones, so many injuries.

“I poisoned you,” Belle replied. “An obscure radioactive isotope from your father’s home-world. We cleaned up the last of it on Earth years ago, before you were even born. Your father gave me some, for emergencies. In case he ever …”

“Flattened a village?” quipped Able. With the last of his dying vision, he thought he saw the skeleton smile.

“You have your father’s sense of humour,” Belle said. “I’ll miss that.”

Belle rolled herself closer, until her wheelchair was butting up against Able’s powerful frame. Carefully, she lowered herself down onto the floor, and positioned herself next to him. She stroked his hair gently.

“It will be alright, son,” she whispered softly. “It won’t hurt, your father promised. He said that I had to watch you, just in case. He said that you might grow up with a little too much human in you, that the power might be more than you could understand.”

Able groped with a quivering hand until his fingers found his mother’s hand.

“I’m frightened, Mom,” he croaked. “I’ve never died before.”

“Me neither sweetheart.”

Blind and paralysed, Able lay on the floor and listened with the last of his super-hearing to his mother’s heart stop.

Paul was an only child

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Haven’t written a flash fiction in a while, thought it might be good to get my hand back in!

Paul was an only child. He was also small for age, a little sickly, and blond. None of this, however, was important. What was important was that the was an only child, a lonely only child, but that it had not always been this way.

Because Paul could remember a time when he had had brothers, and a sister. He could remember a time when he had had cousins who came to visit for the summer, and a best friend who lived two doors down. Paul remembered when there had been a school, instead of a quiet, empty building which was called whatever you called a school without children in it. The adults didn’t seem to notice, and if they did then none of them would talk about it. It was as if every other child Paul had ever met was some elaborate imaginary friend, a complex delusion that seemed more real to him than the possibility that there were no other children in the village, and that there never had been.

What convinced Paul more than anything else though, was the forest. Just as all the other the children had disappeared from the village, so the forest seemed to have crept undoubtedly closer. Vast, dark, and teeming with un-quiet and malevolent life, Paul was sure that the forest had somehow swallowed up the intervening fields that had once sat between it and the village, that it had crept somehow closer while no-one was looking. He would go it, sometimes, when the adults were busy doing whatever they did that preoccupied them enough that they could ignore the fact that their children were vanishing. He would creep along its outer edge, where the grass in the fields turned dry and brown and papery, where the gnarled roots of the ancient trees twisted up around each other like snakes grasping for Paul’s ankles. He wondered how trees so impossibly old could have moved, or sprouted here where once there had been only open, grassy fields. He would listen to the strange noises that emanated from within; the popping of branches, the crunch of leaves, the rasping whispers of wind squeezing between the densely backed trunks. He would listen in the hope that there might be an answer in there somewhere, that somewhere in the deep dark bowels of the forest that he dared not penetrate, might be the reason that the children and vanished and that he was so utterly alone.

It was a nondescript day in August when the forest finally answered.

The sun was high overhead, and it was one of the days when Paul found moments in which he could enjoy his isolation and forget for a moment that he was the only child in the village, the only child in his whole world. He was laying on his back in the long grass, a light breeze running low across the ground and turning the tiny patch of field that remained between the forest and the village into a bright green sea. He dreamt of being a pirate on the high seas, but had long since forgotten the faces of the other children that would have crewed his mighty pirate ship. They were nothing but blurs now, thick limbed creatures of his imagination with faces made of formless pink sponge.

He was boarding a French trading ship when he became of the eyes in the forest, the eyes that were watching him. He caught a glimpse of them from the corner of his eye at first, freezing him where he lay. His pirate ship, and his sponge-faced crew, vanished in an instance. Captain Paul the Terrible was once again Paul the boy, and he was at the edge of the forest that took children.

And it was looking at him.

Painfully slowly, Paul stood up. He didn’t turn his back on the forest for a moment, keeping his eyes on the patch of tangled roots a few feet below where the eyes were. The eyes did not waver, and did not blink. They just stared, two silver almond shaped eyes, staring out of the woods. Eventually, Paul lifted his gaze and looked directly into those strange eyes, those eyes that were right there and yet so very far away. Eyes from inside, looking outside, eyes from wherever it was the wood came from. Eyes that were fixed on Paul and did not move.

Paul swallowed, mustering his courage. “Well,” he said, his voice never more that of a lonely, little boy than in that moment, “Are you going to take me too?”

Without an answer, the eyes blinked, and were gone. No arms encircled Paul, no trees moved to grasp at him with their rough, wooden boughs. The earth did not open up, there were no thorny vines whipping out from the darkness to take him. There was nothing at all.

Just a boy, and a forest. A forest that didn’t like sickly, lonely boys. A forest that liked a challenge.

Friday Flash: Chance 4321

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Derek’s environment suit creaked and hissed as he clambered awkwardly down the moss covered slope. Vines coiled around his boots with each step, snagging his ankles, constantly threatening to trip him and send him toppling head first towards the valley floor. A fall was the thing that all of the explorers feared the most. The environment suits were sturdy, but something about the atmosphere of this new planet made their joints brittle. They wheezed and groaned more than they should, and sometimes stiffened unexpectedly. Worst of all, the face-plates had become prone to cracking at the slightest impact. The soft crinkling of the plastic, the sudden whistle as the pressurised air escaped, these were the sounds that death made on this planet on the far side of everything.

They had planned to use the suits only for the first few weeks, whilst they bodies adjusted to a new gravity and they convinced themselves that there were no dangerous toxins or virii lurking in what should have been fresh, clean, compatible air. A few weeks. That’s what it should have been.

Six months into the mission, however, and the planet still had surprises for them.

As the resident xeno-biologist, it was supposed to be Derek’s job to catalogue the flora and fauna, in particular the vegetation. He had predicted viable food sources, even possible bio-fuels. So far, he had held only a single piece of native vegetation with an ungloved hand, and had spent three days in the infirmary as a result. As best he could now guess, the entire planet was completely toxic to human life.

A thriving eco-system, full of seemingly boundless life and variety, and all of it poison.

Derek suspected that was the reason they had just started calling it “the planet”. “New Earth” somehow stuck in the throat now. It was also the reason that all of them, with the exception of the Captain, had stopped sending messages home. What could make you send a message across the cosmos if all it was going to say was “We failed, you’re all doomed.”

For all Derek knew, Earth was dead by now anyway. Either that, or Earth had abandoned its explorers and gone on to “Plan B”, whatever that might have been. In either case, the seven of them were the last humans that Derek was ever likely to see and, to him, that made them the last seven humans in the entire universe.

The environment suit pinged, and a green dot floated across Derek’s heads-up display.

“Finally,” he muttered. He had been searching for the ship’s engineer, Peter “Heavy” Hudson, for two hours; ever since Hudson’s location beacon had vanished from the ships radar, along with his vital signs.

The ankle joints of the suit cracked and gasped as Derek dropped the last few inches off the mossy slope to the valley floor. Beneath his feet, the crushed vegetation let out a tiny cloud of mustard yellow spores. Derek knew the spores well. It was the spores that had put him in the infirmary, it was the spores that caked every seam and joint of his environment suit. It was the spores that had fried the insides of the ships main drive, making escape from the planet impossible.

What Derek couldn’t work out was why every plant, every flower and creeper and vine and fungus on this whole planet released the same yellow spores. Yellow spores, everywhere he looked. Yellow spores, slowly encrusting everything.

Except, it wasn’t everything, Derek knew that.

It was just them. Just the humans

Derek headed towards the green dot, carefully stepping over the gnarled roots and twisted vines. The yellow spores, seemingly caught his wake, drifted along behind him, landing one by one onto the environment suit.

Crack, hiss, pop.

Crack, hiss, pop.

Derek might have found the sounds of his suit comforting, like listening to summer rain on a rooftop, if he hadn’t been so terrified.

Peter “Heavy” Hudson had been sixteen pounds over flight weight on the day of the launch. They had all known about his weight issues, and his appalling impulse control. They were indulgences the mission team would never had allowed, had it not been for the fact that half the technology in the ship was Hudson’s design. They all knew that if they had a chance of getting from one side of the universe to another, any chance at all, it was only with Hudson on board.

Two days before the launch, he’d given the mission a four thousand three hundred and twenty one to one against chance of success. Derek had made a note of it, it was the lowest odds that Hudson had ever given and he gave odds on everything.

Derek tried not to guess what the odds were that Hudson was still alive.

Rounding the corner, he got his answer. Hudson was sitting in a small clearing of four inch high, dew kissed grass, strew with mustard yellow topped mushrooms. Sitting cross legged, letting a thin mist of yellow spores settle gently on him. Sitting with his helmet on the floor next to him.

“Hudson!”

Derek’s voice rattled the intercom as he reflexively called out his team mate’s name. Without his helmet on, Derek couldn’t be sure if Hudson had heard him or not.

Derek raced awkwardly across the small clearing. The right knee joint of his environment suit let out a loud crack and refused to bend, leaving him dragging one stiff leg behind him. He couldn’t hear any air leaving the suit, but over the sound of his own ragged breathing in his ears it was hard to tell. The suits amplified everything that you didn’t want to hear.

“Hudson!”

The engineer slowed turned, cocking his head as if the sounds of Derek crashing across the clearing were coming from somewhere much further away. His eyes finally focussed on Derek, a broad smile creasing his wide face. His eyes were glazed over, a mist turning them entirely white. Juice from the yellow capped mushrooms ran from his lips and dripped from his chin.

Derek came to a juddering halt.

“What are you doing, Hudson? Get your helmet back on!”

Hudson raised his hand, and offered Derek a palm full of half chewed mushrooms.

“Mush … room?” he slurred.

Derek jabbed the radio controls on the forearm of his suit. Static filled him helmet, as if every joint and seal of his suit had burst at once. Whatever had blocked Hudson’s locator was blocking Derek’s radio as well.

“Damn, damn,” Derek muttered, switching off the radio. He grabbed Hudson by the hand, scattering the half eaten mushrooms. Something squealed in his shoulder joint as he tried to haul the corpulent engineer to his feet. “Come on Heavy, help me out,” Derek gasped.

“Mush … room?” Heavy asked again, groping with his free hand in the grass for more of the mysterious fungi. “Mush … room?”

Derek lost his grip on Heavy and stumbled backwards. His boots slithered underneath him on the wet grass, refusing to grip and, for a moment, the suit didn’t make a sound at all. Derek held his breath as he felt his centre of gravity shift, and he knew that he was falling.

With a thud, Derek landed flat on this back. He didn’t breath out, didn’t dare, concentrating instead on listening intently for any sound of air escaping his suit, any hint that the fragile plastic face plate might have cracked.

He didn’t hear Hudson plodding closer, and he didn’t see Hudson pick up the twisted branch from the ground. He didn’t hear the strange, alien sounds that came from the engineer as he crept closer to him. He didn’t see the cloud of spores that burst from the mushrooms that littered the floor rush into Hudson’s nose and mouth.

All he heard, was a crinkling of plastic crumpling under pressure.

All he heard, was a thin hiss as the safe, clean air of his environment rushed out.

All he could see was a thin silver spiderweb, growing across his field of vision as his faceplate cracked.

When Hudson’s shadow fell over Derek, it was almost a relief.

He held out a handful of mushrooms again, and cocked his head to one side. When he spoke, it wasn’t with his voice, but none of his normal inflection or personality. It was as if someone else was speaking, someone else who had slipped on a suit made out of Hudson and was slowing getting used to the way that it moved, to the way that Hudson’s bones and muscles and skin popped, and wheezed, and groaned.

“It tastes … it tastes … tastes … a little like … grilled cheese …”

The mushrooms fell through the air, a rain of partly masticated fungus, as the thing in the Hudson suit raised the tree branch over its head.

Inside the suit, Derek closed his eyes and listened as the gentle rain of pops and cracks became a thunderstorm.

spaceskull