Short Story- Snap and Crackle

Bog Oak's Occult Chambers by Erick Shoemaker

Snap and Crackle. 

By Ami L Hart (Jess Colvin)

Published in The Future Is Short; Science Fiction In A Flash (2014)

Speak after the tone (Beep).

I came to this place wanting solace, desiring to escape the horror carved upon my corneas. Correction- I didn’t come here. The local Human settlers found me; pulled me from the frosty, gut strewn mess that was my old life and deposited me here, the dusty dung heap of a town that’s apparently to be my new life.

As fortune has it, there are no Snowy Bugbears resident this low down; giant, ugly, death-dealing things. I still see them, snacking on Larry’s unfortunately disgusting entrails, slopped across my vision each time I close my eyes. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, especially that frontier doctor -busy on my body like he owns it -that I don’t make a habit of closing my eyes.

Sleep is over-rated anyway. It’s been 3 days since my last trip down the bloody, nightmarish rabbit hole to Slumberland; (Gasp) what if he listens to this! I hadn’t thought of that…that busy body, with those rough pinchy fingers, like pinchers.

I know, I’ll hide you, dear friend.

 They expect me to attend some sort of rustic bonfire hoedown tonight, a feast. I can imagine it now, they will watch me eat, concern radiating from those simple eyes. I hate people watching me eat. How much I put inside my churning guts is my own business. Just the thought of it makes me want to…excuse me.

***

(Beep)

It was horrible; I had to smile, switch it on like a lamp, but being broken I just spark, fizzle…and sweat. What’s worse, Doc Pinchy Fingers, insisted on sitting beside me. I suppose he considers us intellectual equals. I’m not sure where he got his medical degree from…a dark alley behind a roach motel?

His office is bug infested. It makes my skin crawl thinking about it and I kept wondering if the terrible little things had caught a ride with him, inside that puffy brown leather jacket. There’s a lot of space in there; he’s not a large man.

Tonight made me realize how much I miss my fellow colleagues Larry and Jeff, even though their tech fascination bored me. Still, discussions’ involving the latest spectral surveying gear is preferable to the Humanities.

Oh the Humanity!

At least I still have you, automated recipient of my thoughts. Goodnight, I hope you sleep well; I won’t… so I won’t sleep.

***

(Beep)

It crawled on me, those pinchy little legs stomping my hot skin. I searched the dark shadowy corners of my room, while brandishing a shoe. I still feel it, as if it’s invisible. Do invisible bugs exist on this planet? I can’t remember… can’t think.

 (Pause)

I looked out the window and saw a passable sunrise through the dust this morning. Not comparable to the way it used to rise over the pleasantly jutting glaciers, cut like diamonds. Location, location.

Diamonds… they have bugs here that are translucent, their bodies cut like gems, casting rainbows as they walk. I remember that much, deceptive little things.

I used to like diamonds.

***

(Beep)

He came to my door; said he was checking on me. I politely told him that I wished to catch up on sleep after a bad night. He offered me pills; I opened the door a crack wider and took them. No! I didn’t imagine it, I saw it… crawling up and under his sleeve. I screamed, internally. He can’t know, that I know, that he’s one of them. Those Bugbears always did have unusually complex nervous systems. Maybe they control these people remotely? Perhaps they wish to experiment on me, the Entomologist! The pills are a trick. I will light a fire and burn them.

***

(Beep)

They forgave me for burning down half their village. They told me I was sick… Me! They keep me locked in the small room adjoining the bug-infested doctor’s office, said it’s for my own safety. That infernal doctor puts me to sleep every night with that awful needle, but at least I don’t dream anymore and I still have you. They let me keep you…something about… good therapy, although you disappear sometimes. Have you been talking to the doctor? I’ll break you if you have.

Short Story: For Shits and Battles

‘In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which’. This line seemed unnecessarily blurred as I looked down into the valley at the apparently peaceful Loris settlement. The only thing the Loris had apparently done wrong was entertain the other side of this conflict – The Auto-Fae—in some trade concerns, but it wasn’t my job to think and yes, life wasn’t fair, else I wouldn’t be here.

The reason for my continued existence stomped up (Come on, resist that urge to prostrate yourself at his feet) I allowed myself an insubordinate smirk.

There was a squelch as the Saurian Commander Syf Taylon stopped at my side and I lazily glanced down at the mess he had landed his hoof in.

“It’s a fine day for a battle, Earth-meat, is it not?”

“It would be if the place didn’t stink worse than a Largon’s asshole. By the way You are standing in a shite, you fecalescent twat.” The commander was as well versed in modern Earth basic as he was in battle tactics, meaning he was largely ignorant of …everything, especially insults. I often passed my indentured time having fun at his expense.

He looked at me in that lopsided way of his, one green eye rolling independent of the other towards me. His leathery grey cheek twitched, and the spines jutting from his head quivered in puzzlement. “Your words make tiny sense slave, speak plain or speak never!”

I pointed and my master, this porcupine, rhinoceros from hell, looked down. He quivered, this time in rage, his grey hide taking on that telling green tinge that always accompanied inevitable and idiotically rash action.

He bent his leg up, strings of green mucus stretched between ground and hoof. “I will not stand this! This crime must be paid.”

“You mean punished?”

“That’s what I said, are your ears gone? Analyse those leavings, now!”

“I’m pretty sure it’s of Loris origin.” I said, looking nonchalantly at the bovinesque looking pat, not bothering to take out the scanner.

“What are these Loris? Heathen peoples?”

“Would you rather attack only civilized races who use plumbing, sir? If that’s the case we can always pack up and go home.”

“What! And leave unsatisfied, fool! We attack, now!”

“But what about strategy? Loris may have more stomachs than brains, but after trading with Auto-Fae, it is possible they may have some nice hardware behind those quaint castle walls. Perhaps some Blaster Cannons tied to their primitive hooved mits?” smirking as I glance at my commander’s own physiology. "Or worse still, Plasma mortars."

“Even the best Strategy cannot hold back the trickle that is our Saurian battalion,” He announced proudly.

I cringed as he pulled his two ballistic sabres from their ceremonial sheaves, the blades hummed as he raised them over his head. (They were pretty, glowing like twin meteors, giving off a sweet but deadly heat).

I drew my standard (boring) pistol and looked down at it, giving it a resigned and apologetic shrug.

Syf Taylon bellowed, the rest of the Saurian’s lined up until they created a mortar-enticing grey wall. The Loris would have to have their heads up their pat-planting derrieres not to see us coming. If this went badly (which was highly likely at this point) I would have to somehow keep this slug-for-brains commander alive, it was my job after all-- on pain of death -- and I was uncomfortable with both pain and death.

A memory rose up ‘Jeffrey shade, for your crimes or promoting independence, you shall be indentured to the Saurian battalion as bodyguard to Commander Syf Taylon for a time of no less than 15 cycles.’ I pushed it back down. I wasn’t a fan of our great and mighty Galactic Dominion, but even less fond of the enemy Auto-Fae. Both sides desired the galaxy to consist of automatons, the only difference was being whether they were still technically organic or not. At least the Galactic Dominion would allow me to keep my squishy important parts.

The Saurian charge began, I joined the Saurian stampede toward the stone walls and wondered what would happen once we got there. Saurian’s may be hard-headed, but that rock looked harder and slightly denser- which was really saying something.

Hell rained down, as I expected. Auto-Fae Plasma Mortars melted through our Saurian lines

My bodyguard reflexes kicked in. My life was important to me, which unfortunately meant Syf's was too. I reached for him, He shouldered me back, advancing until (thank god) he sprained his fetlock in a varmint burrow.

I half-carried him back struggling through the sea of fleeing and wounded Saurian’s, humming an old Whitney Houston tune, grateful for one thing- that I couldn’t possibly get blamed for this particular shit storm. Could I?

In The Shadow Of The Storm

I  happened to rediscover this wonderfully odd story idea today. Typically I ended up working on it instead of my other novel, because ooh I love shiny, interesting things! Figured I would share a little bit of what I have so far on here. 

The Stranger

Something happened…

But none of them remember it. As I stand here and look in, a stranger on their isolated shores. I can almost see that blot at the back of their minds from my home at the broken lighthouse. Black, impenetrable, but invisible. Even though no one can really see it, it is most certainly there — that non-reminder. It teases their memories with faint anxieties, taunting them that they should know… something … but they don’t... they can’t. The reality is just beyond their reach and their desperate thoughts grasp on nothing. They are the forgotten, just like they have also forgotten.

It is in this blot of forgetting which Vivian lives. I remember that first day when little Vivian realized something was very wrong with her world. It was the day she met me-- long ago when we were children. Although she may have had inklings before then, I cannot tell. All I can tell is that she’s not like the others. From her point of view I was someone she had never met before and that alone was strange, unheard of, as everyone knew everyone on this forgotten island. The auspicious day of our meeting had not been accompanied by any portent of doom, or anything so obvious. Yet I experience such a dread now when I think back on it. They have no idea their forgetfulness is undoing it all. The horror within swells and roars now, back then it was just a haunting whisper, a what if…

What if everything just stopped someday and nothing happened, ever, ever again.

Mortal souls would scream at such oblivion-affirming thoughts, or even the notion that such emptiness can exist.

But back then they were just feelings, and the truth is feelings lie to us just as readily as people lie. They lie for good reason sometimes… to save our minds, or us… even though it hurts when the light finally comes, lashing the darkness with an unforgiving rage. 
  It hurts me to lie to her face everyday, I should leave but it hurts even more when I am away... and the world outside continues to die.   
So I continue to lie in love, hoping somehow to mend memory itself.
                          (Journal entry - Anonymous)