Lucid Waking

Archive for the ‘Apocalypse’ Category

Casualty

        Whenever I looked over the landscape, I did not like what I saw. We weren’t living on just a desert, but on a wasteland. This wasn’t just a product of greed, but one of paranoia. It only took one smart survivor to see the potential in what was left after the nuclear war. He decided to create a new Utopia. It took no time for his army to grow restless and tired of what it had. But his grasp was strong and no one escaped.
        It was at times like these when I watched the missiles, bombs, and running people through the smoke below my balcony that my mind continued to go back to the last conversation I had with the one friend I really cared about.
        The world was raining bullets, debris, and bombs. We found shelter under half a fallen tank when he turned to me and said:
        “The problem with fascism is that eventually, someone gets the guts to stand up and say how unjust it is. Inevitably, it will end.”
        “This is a funny conversation be having in the middle of a battle between rebel forces aiming for your dictator-loving heart.”
        “Come on, Cathy. I’m saying we should just wait here until the shooting stops. Either way we’ll get through this. If they find us, we can reform and turn ourselves in and if they lose, no hard feelings on our side.”
        I searched his face for some sort of weakness, but his resolve was stronger than his grip on my arm.
        “But who’s to say the rebels will take us in?” I asked.
        He smiled. “Well then, if they kill us, what would we have lost if we died fighting out here?”
        There was something logical missing in his argument, but in war, nothing is logical. I sat back and stayed silent. He took that as an answer and pulled back between the fort made of fallen concrete and tank parts.
        It seemed anti-climactic that we should have been found out by our own party and that he was killed by stray bullets. There was no purpose to any of it, but we had to run through the thickest fire to retreat and inevitably one of us would get hit. It just had to been him: a dreamer.
        And what of me?
        “Colonel Mathis, come inside. You are needed in the war room,” a lesser pion called from inside the tower.
        I had a duty to survive. Whatever that meant.

Author’s comments on post 364: Definately inspired by this: http://www.youtube.com/show/nowandthenhereandthere. I’ve been flying through the episodes that they have online. That’s about it, really. More tomorrow

Tries to Forget

        It’s really sort of an unfortunate story. But hey, I’m a journalist I work with sad stories every day of the week. It’s getting to the point where I’ll just cry myself to sleep over all the horrible things going on. No one seems to give a damn any more. It’s depressing.
        Anyway, I was on assignment to interview a veteran. Only twenty-six years old. Depressing. Well, he was nice at first, making me tea and stuff. I had to get into the interview, but every time I tried he would stall. He played piano beautifully. He had quite an impressive video and record collection. His wife had a gorgeous garden. And they had quite a talented little dog. Yeah, he tried everything to distract me. It was kinda nice because I felt like I was with this old friend of mine and we had a lot of catching up to do. But I had a job and as much as I liked getting paid for drinking tea with an adorable twenty-eight year old, my boss wanted a story and I had to deliver. So I brought it down hard and asked him the first question.
        He sort of froze up after that. All he could say was that he had nightmares of all the mistakes he made and all the friends he lost in the war. He told me he tried to commit suicide and he started mixing chemicals in the basement in the hopes one of them would kill him. Even though he married his childhood sweetheart, she just didn’t seem attractive and lovely to him anymore. That made me even more depressed because I saw a picture of her and she was beautiful. He said he tried to find things he liked doing but every piano piece he played sounded like falling shells and his dog barking sounded like gunshots. He would wake up in the middle of the night afraid something was going to come down and smash him to pieces. He hated opening up jelly jars because he thought they would explode in his face. He never ate popcorn for the same reason. Therapy wasn’t helping because he didn’t think he could leave his wife to go to California (which they couldn’t afford anyway) in order to stay in therapy full time. He didn’t have any kids and he didn’t want any, which apparently killed his wife. She wanted them pretty badly and they’d often have fights about it, but he insisted he couldn’t handle it. He told her he’d kill them if he wasn’t careful. She told him to be careful and he said he wouldn’t even try.
        He said she worked as a stockbroker to sell stocks of companies that helped prolong the war. I said she didn’t mean to and he said, “all the same…”
        Anyway, we were depressed at the end. I tried to get him to play again or show me some more stuff that he had, but he said he didn’t feel like it. Last I heard he was in the hospital again for attempted suicide. Depressing isn’t it?
        That’s why I quite my job. That man was so happy before I had to screw up his day. So I decided to become a fiction writer instead. It’s much easier than addressing the actual pain. When someone wants to face it, they can pick up a newspaper. That’s their choice. I just don’t want to be the one to open up old wounds. It stings for everybody.

Getaway

        She looked into the dark room, her jaw clenched. The floor was damp and the smell of rotting wood mixed with the hot sticky air. Mold grew in gray spots on the white plaster ceiling with a creaky fan in the middle of the room. Underneath the fan, a lonely chair sat in the middle of the room. A figure was tied to the back of the chair, gagged, and blindfolded. There was a small window by the floor, but it allowed only enough light to dimly suggest the figure was tied to the chair.
            She stepped onto the failing floorboards gently and crept towards the figure. At the sound of noise it tried to look for the source of the sound, but was restricted.
            “We’re here to help,” she said cutting the ropes quickly.
            The figure was still. She pulled it upward and tried to get it to stand up, but it was having trouble. She motioned for one of the people with her to take its arm.
            “Do you have the money?” it whispered.
            “Never mind about that.”
            “How are we going to get out?”
            “I’m trying to figure that out, now.”
            She peeked outside the room into the sterile hall. The eeriness came from the silence and them being alone. The walls were blinding and they melded into the floor and ceiling. Except for the scuffmarks from where they’d come, she’d believe that the whole thing had been turned on its head for someone’s enjoyment. She stepped out and led the troop of three down the hall where her captain was still talking to the head of this operation.
            She lost no time in waving her partners to the exit and put the person they had saved in the car. She could see now, it was another girl. Her hair was cut short and ragged, and she was covered in cuts and scrapes. On the way, she had collapsed and it was easy for them to gently fold her up in the trunk for a fast getaway.
            “I hope she’s ok,” one of her partners said.
            “She’ll be fine, if Isaac would hurry up.”
        Finally, their captain came out of the building and moved fairly quickly towards the car. Everyone fell into line, one person taking the driver’s seat, one in the passengers with his gun loaded and cocked, and she was in the back waiting for her boss. He slipped neatly into the back seat and locked the door.
        “Step on it, Shannon,” he said. Without further instructions, Shannon pressed the accelerator and at fourty miles per hour, shot out of the parking lot and towards the highway.
        “Where to, captain?” she asked.
        “The Purple Hotel,” he said. “Try to get there by seven o’clock.”
        “So what happened?” she asked Isaac. He sighed.
        “Nothing much. I managed to give them a small down payment, but they’re not willing to give up the girl. By the way, where is she?”
        “In the trunk.”
        “You never cease to amaze me with your hospitality, Teagan.”
        “It seemed the easiest place if we get stopped on the road. The girl passed out anyway.”
        “I’m just going to take your word on it that she’s actually there.”
        “She is,” the gunman in the front seat said, “we dragged her out.”
        “Once she’s in the hotel, Shannon you’re going to stay. Teagan, Darryl, you’re going with me back to headquarters. But give Shannon the gun because they’re not going to be happy when they find out the check is fake.”
        “What’s this all about anyway?” Teagan asked. “We haven’t got a lot of answers.”
        “Someone made a backroom deal at one point that never went through. It was probably a bet off the Boston Red Socks, but I don’t remember anymore.”
        “You don’t know any more than we do, do you Isaac?”
He laughed. “Not really. I used to be in the know, but now I just order people around and pass of illegal checks to places in power. I’m getting too old to do the dirty work, anyway.”
        “This route’s been pretty quite,” Shannon said. “Nothing out there?”
        “Just cars,” Teagan said. “And good riddance. Could you imagine if they hit the trunk?”
The car pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a large hotel. Shannon got out first, and then Darryl. Teagan got out and switched places with Shannon, who opened the trunk with the keys before tossing them in the open window to the new driver. Darryl put his arm gently around the girl and walked her to the lobby of the hotel.
        “Jeeze, she looks awful.”
        “Don’t manhandle her next time,” Isaac said from the back seat. “And look sharp, there’s someone in that black car that looks very out of place.”
        Teagan looked in the rearview mirror. “They look normal to me.”
        Just then, Darryl came out of the hotel and walked past the couple. The man glanced at Darryl and moved towards his inside coat pocket. Teagan reared the engine a bit in warning and Darryl walked faster towards the car. But the other man hadn’t done anything by the time Darryl had reached the car and got in the back seat. Teagan pulled away as quickly as she dared.
        “To headquarters,” Isaac called to her from the backseat. “And don’t push the speed, I don’t want to get stopped by cops.”
        “Gee, Isaac. Trust me for once.”
        “I will. Just please drive the speed limit.”

Flowers

        “We have at least three hours left,” Jackie said gathering up the flowers and throwing them in her basket.
         “But we’re four hours away from home,” Sam whined. He started crying and it was obvious there was nothing she could do to stop him.
         “All right, come on.”
         The field was an expanse of hay bales and yellow grass eaten down by cows. There were a few wildflowers growing next to the irrigation river that ran through the field. The sky was a velvet purple and growing dusty. The moon glowed gold while the apricot sun sank below the gray horizon.
         Jackie held her brother’s hand in her left and the basket of flowers rested on her right. She knew if she had started earlier with gathering flowers, she would not have been in such a rush, but as it was, eight hours was a long time to leave her mother on their own. Only twelve with the possibility of being orphaned shadowing her footsteps, Jackie had seen too much in her life to remain innocent. Her face was slightly wrinkled and her blue eyes grew dull with the light. She let go of her brother’s arm and tugged the ribbons out of her hair so it would warm up her neck.
         Sam whimpered.
         “Jackie, I’m scared.”
         “Why don’t you carry the basket?”
         He took it from her and held it stiffly in his hand. Sam was nine years old and only knew his one parent. His black hair reflected the yellow off the light creating a halo above his head. His blue-brown eyes nervously shifted from shadow to shadow with every click and rustle along the way.
         The small house came up suddenly as a light went on in the front window as they walked. Someone glanced through the window and then quickly opened the door to run and greet the two children.
         “Oh thank goodness,” a dark haired woman cried. “I didn’t know where you were!”
         Sam started crying as well, but Jackie just returned the embrace.
         “Don’t do that again!” she said and then got caught up in a fit of coughing. She gasped for breath between loud rasps until something red splattered the ground in front of her. She stopped and panted loudly.
        “Come on,” she said quietly, “let’s go into the house.”
        “We got you flowers,” Sam said tear glossing his eyes.
        The woman smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She put her arm around Jackie and held Sam’s hand as they went into the warm house, the basket of flowers still firmly clutched in Sam’s hand.

The Ghost of the London Girl’s Orphanage

(Caution please apply…this is horror. And have a happy Halloween!)

        The moonlight streamed through the slats of my window and cut a line of light on my coarse wool blanket. All the other girls were sleeping soundly, their shoulders or stomachs rising and falling with the rhythm of their breaths. I was the only one wide-awake.
         The girl was next to my bed again. She would sit and stare at me for hours on end but would only appear at random times during the night. At these times I would wake up for no reason at all and find the girl there, her gray eyes burning in the darkness. She was dressed in a silver nightgown and her skin was pale. The only bit of color she had was the sots of dark scarlet caked on her wrists.
         Usually, I would wait until the moon no longer lit up the girl before lying down and going to sleep. She always seemed much less real when she could no longer light up the room. But tonight, time seemed to stand still, and the girl would not go away. The moon shone brighter on my blanket as it moved in an arc across the sky. As if her spotlight had finally arrived she beckoned for me to follow her out of the room and started walking.
         I felt as if I was possessed, though I had never been before. My legs would not stay put and my arms would not hold onto the bedposts along the way. M hands brushed the splintered posts of bed and kicked blankets that draped on the floor, but not disturbing any of the inhabitants of the beds. My mouth would not open and my throat would not scream. The only things I could do was follow the girl.
         The door of the room led to the hall that was only well lit because of the bathroom farther down the hall. The lights flickered one by one as the girl with the bloody wrists continued. She was the only source of light in the darkened hall as each light bulb flickered off with a pop that because of the silence, echoed like a gunshot. My body continued for me in the dark as I walked past doors with people who could help. If they could only hear my footsteps, they would know I was out of bed and would come running…
         I felt the dark end of the hall open up and the girl disappeared. There was a single light from a hooded lamp over a table. The table’s surface was scratched with words, some cusses, some proclamations of love, others just names. It reminded me of the benches at the train station when we went downtown. But what really intrigued me was the black object in the middle of the table. I reached out to touch it and when nothing happened, picked it up. I was holding what looked like a pepper grinder, but with a movable arm to the side that was holding a cone shaped piece attached to string, which attached it to the pepper grinder. There was a ring of a telephone, like the rotary in the matron’s office, but it didn’t come from the black object. I put it down on the table. Something rang again.
         My hand reached out and put the cone piece to my ear. There was nothing there. But my hand kept it to my ear, and the silent ringing went through my head. I traced the names of people I didn’t know. I was calmer now that the girl was one, but at that thought, I instinctively looked around. She was nowhere to be found .The telephone crackled like the radio did and just like the radio, I head static and then noise.
         “We’re asking you to take her. Giving you custody,” a woman’s voice said on the other end.
         “I can’t just take a child. She’s not an orphan,” the matron said. I recognized her voice at once.
         “Don’t you understand?” the woman yelled. “We don’t want her anymore. She’ll be on your step at dawn and if you don’t want her, leave her.”
         “Please, Elaine, she’s nine years old. Nine years she’s lived with her parents. I can’t take her and you can’t leave her. I’ll call the police.”
         “The police won’t find us,” the woman laughed a short and hideous shot of noise. “At dawn, Mariana”
         The conversation stopped. I put down the end I had listened into and started for the door. The girl was there again in my path, her gray eyes worked into frenzy and her bloodied wrists inches away from my neck. She squeezed my neck hard, pain shooting towards my eyes. Darkness dissolved my vision and I screamed as she twisted and wrung my neck. Such was the price for finding the orphanage on your own when you were lost. And I went they way of so many other girls who came here looking for food and shelter when there was nowhere else to go.

The Boy

            Nobody liked Jacob Manilow. His mother was a shady character who was supposedly highly involved in witchcraft, although by this time, there was no such thing as witches. His father was a supposed drug dealer, but again, those were just rumors. Jacob himself was a little bit odd. Nobody in the world had bluer eyes; anyone looking at them had to squint to see his irises at all. He rarely ever blinked and he was at least a head shorter than everyone else in his class. During recess he would sit on the bench and stare at nothing in particular. In class, he just about never talked and he would stare at the blackboard taking no notes and making no sign of understanding or recognition. The only time he would move would be taking tests, which he always got one hundred percent correct. His homework was also superbly done and except for his uninvolved parents, his teacher always considered that he had help on it.
            It was never the kids his age that teased him. It was always the older ones who claimed they were not afraid of anything. They would ridicule him worse than they intended and the next day, they would disappear from school because of a sickness. But no one else spotted the pattern and the beatings continued. It wasn’t until that day in December when he finally cracked, as was bound to do, that the world realized what this child was.
            Mrs. Shorter and Miss Tall were watching over the kids in the schoolyard during recess. As was routine, a group of older students walked up to the blond boy on the bench. Miss Tall glanced at Mrs. Shorter, who happened to be looking the other way, and sighing, walked over to the bench.
            “Stop this right now,” she yelled as soon as she was close.
            The older kids jumped and blushed as they turned to her. She moved in closer to reprimand and give them a punishment when behind them, the little boy stood up. He blinked twice and then stood on the bench.
            “How many times do I have to tell you…” she started her voice losing power as she watched the small blond boy with the bright blue eyes grow taller behind them.
            “Thank you, Miss Tall,” he said finally; now that he was the height of a small tree, “I can take it from here.”
            “Oh no you don’t,” she said finding her voice. “You’re not going to do anything of the sort. These children need discipline and you’re above fighting them.”
            The boy smiled looking oddly much older than his actual age. “You’re right I will be fighting from above.”
            He leapt off the bench and kicked madly into the air. One of the older boys collapsed, his face cleaved in two, while the others ran as fast as they could. By now, Mrs. Shorter was blowing her whistle madly. Miss Tall took off her jacket and threw it at the boy, who was now flying towards his running classmates to weigh him down, but it just burst into flame and blew away in ashes.
            “I know you’re mother,” Miss Tall yelled after the boy as he kicked another one of the bullies in the face. “And she never liked punishment. Just because they were mean, gives you no premise to kill them.”
            The boy stopped, the word “mother” plainly on his lips. He turned to Miss Tall; his blue eyes now a hauntingly beautiful cranberry red.
            “She’s a wonderful person,” Miss Tall said. “And I know you’re human.”
            The boy’s eyes were pink, now as he drifted farther down to the ground. As soon as his feet touched the earth, he collapsed, crying. Miss Tall pushed away the other kids who had completely stopped their activities to watch, and pulled up the crying boy. She brought him to the school and blew her whistle again. Playground life resumed and after leaving the boy in the principal’s office and explaining that his actions were punishable, though provoked, she went back outside and with a wave of her hand, got rid of the dead bodies.
            Their parents were distraught, naturally, but they were too afraid to mention some sort of punishment on the boy who did it. After all, he did it once, who’s to say that he wouldn’t do it again? Miss Tall was incredibly silent on the matter, but she was told to watch the boy ever after to insure that nothing happened while he was at school. Beyond that, nothing changed. He would still stare out into space gathering information through osmosis and performing well on his tests. He graduated with the rest of his class, but his parents were absent from the occasion, and he moved on to bigger, but certainly not better, things.

“I would like to make an exchange.”

Originally published on April 02, 2006

            He sat down on the pew facing forward with his clasped hands resting on the back of the pew in front of him. The sun streamed through the stain-glass windows projecting multi-colored images of bible stories in the room. The lights inside were off, so the room was filled with vibrant ghostly colors of red, blue and green.
            “Excuse, me, God,” he said looking up, “I’d like to make an exchange. Hey now, the damage isn’t entirely my fault. It’s just that the harder I try to fix it, someone else will come and make it worse than before. I think we need a new one, something that won’t be so hard to mess up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the design and all the colors, but it’s everything else about it. I don’t see why you had to include humans at all. Yes, that would mean I’d be gone, too. But I don’t really care. I’ve seen the kind of details that have been coming and I know what will happen to this if you do fix it. You’ll throw it away and give us a new one, destroy it just like that. But see, I don’t think you should. I think you should start another master race of humans who love the environment and put them on another earth. I never said it wouldn’t be work; I just think you should make more of these, you know, back up. Oh, and while your at it, it might be a good idea to come up with something to get rid of all this damage. The clichéd dues ex machina. I don’t know, might be more work than it seems.” He paused for a minute and looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry you won’t accept it now, but think about it, ok? Just because it’s damaged, doesn’t mean you can’t fix it and sell it to someone else. But, thanks for hearing me out.”
            He got up from the pews and walked out to the parking lot. Thunder rumbled, and he looked up just as it started to hail.

we had ten years left on earth

    “It seems as though I’m glimpsing things through a bubble of time and no one can stop the ride to let me off. Life is passing me by, but I can’t seem to stop long enough to notice that we’re in a bubble in space and the only things we had left, we took for granted. ‘We have ten years left on this earth. Are you ready to face the consequences?’”
    He glanced at her in the fading light. Her blond hair was reflecting back the orange light in a copper glow and her skin shimmered in an otherworldly way. She was standing in the sand looking out at the ocean, now filled with mountains of garbage islands. A dark cloud of pollution reflected the color of the sunset as a ceiling above the earth.
    “Eventually we’ll have to evacuate. We can’t possibly stay here.”
    She wrapped her thin arms around her body and took a deep breath, immediately hacking up the particles in her lungs. The breath of his oxygen mask hummed as he rhythmically breathed in and out. The machine buzzed and he turned to empty out the carbon that accumulated in the tank. She fell over in the sand and gasped for air, pulling up handfuls of sand in her fight for oxygen. He bent down beside her and in one fluid motion pulled the mask over her mouth and nose. She screwed up her face in sorrow, but he could hear her gasp for air as the oxygen quickly whooshed into her mouth.
     “We have to get out of here,” he echoed, his voice far away, yet resonant. He waved his arm over the landscape to present his point. “We’ll stowaway.”
    Earth was left to the people too poor to pay for a ticket to the space colony on Mars, the closest colony to Earth. Most of the people left had managed to swipe gas converters and now lived in anarchy under all of the trash, burrowing away from humanity and accepting this hell.
   “Thank goodness there are still flights left.”
    “Only to take species that have still survived up with them. I hear there’s a zoo on Alpha-Apollo.”
    She nodded and pulled at the straps of her mask. “I can’t live like this. We tried, but no one would listen and now all they do is run away from the problem instead of fixing it. Damn it!”
    She coughed again, but pushed him away when he tried to replace her mask. “I don’t care if I die.”
    All he was left to do was watch as she hacked up blood doubled over on the sand, her gas mask around her neck and still pumping out oxygen.

Meeting for the Flood

Originally published on September 24, 2005

            The town was generally a quiet place, bland and not unique. The only interesting place was a large bar called Jake’s Place. There wasn’t a single person, child, or adult who hadn’t gone in there at least twice. It was the place to go to hang out, meet old friends, or negotiate treaties.
            It was at one of these meetings that Chris broke the news. He had arranged to meet with his old friends who lived in the town on what he mentioned as pressing matters. His best friend, Jack sat across the table from him with drink in hand. His mysterious traveling partner, Robin sat between the two, cloak covering her entire face.
            “Alright, Chris. What’d you want us for?”Jack said smiling as he took a swig from his full glass.
            Chris sighed and traced the wet top of his glass with one finger. “The flood’s coming.”
            Jackie swallowed his drink hard and coughed. “What are you talking about?” he said as soon as he recovered. “There hasn’t been a flood in sixty years.”
            “Seriously, though. The flood is coming.”
            “Stop teasing Chris. There can’t-"
            Robin cut him off with the raise of her gloved hand.
            “Fine, so the flood is coming,” Jack said annoyed as he turned back to face Chris. “What can we do about it.”
            “That’s the thing,” Chris said sadly. “The town isn’t prepared for this. The last time this happened, people knew about it in time for the entire town to be raised and fortified. It lasted the entire fourteen weeks in order for the water level to lower down. Now, there isn’t enough time and not enough people to believe me if I do tell them.”
            “Time was our biggest option,” Jack admitted.
            “Yes, and we’re sadly out of options except evacuation.”
            Robin pulled out her dagger and fingered the blade silently. Jack shook his head. “We don’t have the same influence we had before. People would believe us almost less than you. And even so, no one will want to leave.”
            “It’s not about wanting at this point,” Chris said. “It’s about survival.”
            “How many people do you know will face the need to leave generations worth of belongings, food, home, and a town they’ve known for their entire lives for survival?”
            Chris shook his head. “They don’t have a choice.”
            “Chris, really. No one will- leave choice, or no.”
            “So we’re going to leave them to die?”
            Jack frowned. He leaned back in his chair and motioned the waitress over.
            “Yeah, what can I get ya?” she said over cheerfully, grinning.
            “Another two.”
            “Alright,”she said and bounced off.
            Robin placed her dagger inside her cloak and leaned forward. Jack and Chris followed her lead.
            “Perhaps,” she whispered. “We need to talk to Jim. I’m sure he’ll have the force to change the minds of every person in this town.