Lucid Waking

        “What are you smiling about?” Libby asked. She stared at the strange woman more harshly than she meant and longer than was polite, but there was something about her guest that rubbed her the wrong way. She couldn’t figure it out—in fact refused herself to think about it for very long. Her body would ache and her hands would tremble if she let herself contemplate too long about this woman who just showed up at her house one day.
        She didn’t speak; Libby didn’t know her name. She had never seen her before. The girl was beautiful, but her clothes were close to rags. She wore everything gracefully and her days were spent perched on the couch as a statue of temptation. Libby wanted to take a hammer and knock of the girl’s head. Her sons would often watch TV with her when they should have been doing their chores. But no one thought this strange girl was a big deal. The police didn’t see anything wrong with it and no one was reported missing. So the girl stayed. She didn’t eat or take up space. The only hassle she presented was the space she took up on the couch. Libby’s friends had since given up with asking about the girl, though they often didn’t stay as long as they used to at her house for various reasons.
        The girl had always had a straight-faced stare. Libby used to think the girl was watching her about the house, but after weeks of waking up to see the girl still staring at the sleeping television, she since gave up that thought. But no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get the girl to move beyond the first steps she took into the house and onto the couch. She had toyed with the idea that the girl was a robot, but refused to have anyone search her for a switch. "It’s a cruel trick,” she had said to her husband. “And I just hope she leaves soon.”
        But the girl didn’t leave. She sat collecting dust. Libby turned of the television that had somehow been turned on and as she moved to the dining room past the girl, she noticed something different.
        “What are you smiling about?” Libby snapped. The girl didn’t move. Libby walked over to the dining room and glanced behind her shoulder instinctively. The girl was staring at the blank TV.
        “I really don’t see anything funny,” Libby said turning back to the dusty table she had come to clean. She felt a hand at her shoulder. Her heart leapt and she spun around. The girl smiled and slapped Libby across the face. Then she went to the kitchen and turned on the burners of the stove as high as they could go. She opened the oven door and turned it on. She threw something into the microwave and turned it on. The kitchen sizzled as things heated up.
        “What are you doing?!”
        The girl turned to Libby and laughed. It was the first sound she had made since her arrival. She dove into the refrigerator and started to eat. Libby could hear the girl’s jaws smacking against each other. Libby flipped the door of the oven closed and shut it off. The girl reached for a knife in the knife rack, but a little too slow. Libby had reached her hand in two strides and pushed the smiling girl against the table.
        “Next time, ask.” Libby took the rag in her hand and tied up the girl’s hands. She struggled with her to the door and then pushed her out with the rag, leaning all her weight on the door and shutting it with a slam.
        The house was silent except for the whisper of gas from the stove. The smoke detector went off and Libby ran to the kitchen to shut off the stove while whatever was in her microwave spit out black smoke. She glanced towards the kitchen window then decided against it and went up to the second floor and opened the windows there. She wet a rag with water and turned on all the fans in the house. Then she opened the microwave door.
        She couldn’t see right away if there was fire as the black smoke billowed out. Libby shot to the floor and breathed through the rag as all of the air was circulated and dispersed through the window up the stairs. Then she checked to see if there was a fire in the microwave and perhaps recognize what it was the girl had thrown in there. The only thing left was a small copper frame from a cheaply framed picture that had said: home sweet home. It was located in the entryway and had been there most of the day. Libby didn’t know how it got in the kitchen, but she tried not to think about it long. She ran up the stairs to the upstairs window hoping to close it and stop up any vulnerability that her house had to the strange visitor. But as soon as she had bounded up the stairs and into the room, there was the girl. She was sitting on the bed, but she wasn’t smiling. She didn’t move when Libby came in.
        “What do you want?” Libby asked, close to tears.
        The girl turned to her; the first sign of recognition of a voice since she had arrived. She pointed to pillow on the bed and lie down.
        “Go ahead and sleep, then,” Libby said. “I’ll wake you in a couple hours.”
        The girl stared at Libby until she left. What a strange girl, Libby said taking a shaking breath and continuing down to the kitchen to clean up the mess. But as she reached the microwave to grab the burned picture frame, she noticed it was clean. The picture frame wasn’t there, either. She glanced around the kitchen and noticed that the haphazard mess that had been there before the girl’s arrival was cleaned up. Libby went to the dining room and noticed her rag sitting on the table next to the can of dusting solution. Not know what else to do, Libby continued dusting.
        Hours went by and there was no movement from the bedroom. Libby cautiously climbed the stairs, broom in hand, pretending to have taken a break from sweeping. But Libby was more afraid of what the girl might do to her than any interest in house cleaning. As soon as the door was open, the girl woke up and sat on the bed with a refreshed smile.
        “What now?” Libby asked. The girl pointed at Libby and when Libby didn’t move, got up and pushed past Libby to the bathroom across the hall without a word.
        “Well come on down when you’re finished,” Libby said, shakily. She went back to the kitchen to replace the broom and then started gathering things for dinner. The girl was on the couch in no time and Libby could hear the television going in the other room. She kept her eyes on the knife in her hand as she chopped vegetables. Her hands were shaking, but when she glanced up, the girl hadn’t moved. Finally the television shut off and Libby looked up just in time to see the girl standing in the kitchen doorway.
        “Hungry? Dinner is at six thirty,” Libby said smiling, then remembering the fiasco added, “but if you’re hungry I can pull up a small snack. What would you like?”
        The girl pointed to the pantry.
        “Do you want to get it yourself?”
        The girl shrugged and got a box of cereal. Libby got a bowl down from the shelf and handed it to her with the milk and a spoon. The girl smiled and poured herself a bowl of cereal. Libby listened to the clink of stainless steel and china as the girl ate, keeping a close eye on the knives. Finally, the bowl clinked down into the sink. Libby turned to the girl once more, but she had gone.
        Libby put the vegetables she was chopping in the frying pan and tried to search the house with one eye on the vegetables. But the girl wasn’t anywhere to be found. Shrugging, Libby went back to cooking dinner just as the door opened and shut and her husband called out to her.
        “Hello,” he said, kissing her on her head. “How was your day?”
        “Strange,” she said.
        “I see our visitor is gone,” he noted as he walked past the couch with dishes to set the table.
        “I don’t know about that,” she said. “One moment she was a holy terror and the next she’s gone.”
        “Well, good riddance,” he said. “I can finally watch my television in peace.”
        “I suppose,” she said, thoughtfully. Then struck with an idea, added, “Why don’t we invite Ellen over for dinner? I can add more ingredients so we’ll have enough.”
        “Why?”
        “I don’t know,” she said smiling, “I just feels good to be hospitable.”

Filed under: Fantasy, Horror by Bri
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        It was Halloween, Hillary remembered, and quite cold for October. Sean was sitting on the edge of the peer because he had to show her something. She remembered being skeptical, especially since it was cold. She hated the cold. She couldn’t remember how he managed to convince her to go down to the peer, but somehow she was there.
         The next few moments she remembered clearly. He turned around and smiled at her pointing down into the water. Coral, he had said. It glows. As soon as she took a step forward, that’s when she saw the black hand coming out of the water and grabbing Sean’s ankles. Before she could react, he was pulled into the water with hardly a splash. She reacted before thinking and looked over the side of the peer to where he had gone, hoping for a trace…
         The water glowed green in a special spot. Coral, she thought and then turned and ran down the peer.
         “Damn it,” she said. It was years after the event and the weather was warmer. She had her stomach to the peer and she was staring at the dark water, hoping, like every year, for a glow of green.

Filed under: Horror by Bri
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(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.

Filed under: Apocalypse, Fantasy, Horror by Bri
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This is my attempt at horror, so I should warn everyone that this is not intended for all audiences. This is gory, but I don’t think it’s worse than some of my other stories. Just use your best judgment.

            “Everybody stand back!” Orders were yelled over the crowd as they pushed back the people farther into the center of the City. Yellow police tape was ripped from rolls and clumsily taped over the entrance of the fifteenth subway. Police radios crackled in the chaos and people yelled over them in protest. A few police officers were waving their guns to the particularly passionate people trying to break the line of people. Sirens rang on the street and buses pulled up to the curb in a steady pulse.
            “Damn it,” she said over the police network to the cops in the center. “Did you have to make such a seen?”
            “Sorry Miss Jane,” a young officer messaged back. “We had to do what we had to do.”
            She heard in the background a gruff apology from the lieutenant and a scolding to the officer as she pulled up to the curb.
            “Police detective coming through!” she yelled pushing her way through the crowd. “What happened?” she asked when she got to the center beyond the ring of cops. She smoothed down her skirt annoyed, but kept eye contact with the lieutenant of the police. He rubbed his neck nervously.
            “We don’t really know,” he said, “there’s a couple dead bodies down there and we think something has got to be down there eating people.”
            “How long have you had this quarantine up?”
            “A couple hours. We just got a call from the late night train conductor that he had a train full of dead bodies when he reached his last stop. The ones in the back were half eaten.”
            “All right,” she grabbed a gun from a nearby cop and checked that it was loaded. “Get me two officers to follow and make sure I’ve got backup at all the entrances around the city.” She clicked off the safety and ducked under the police tape into the dark subway.
            She listened down the railway and could just faintly hear a soft panting like a dog from somewhere down the tunnel. The train was pulled to the platform and all the doors were open on the receiving side of the station. She could see some blood smeared on the windows from something, but she didn’t give it much thought. The click of the safety being turned off brought her back to attention.
            “Officers Megan and John at your service,” a familiar voice said. John stepped up beside her and smiled showing her the extra guns he had made sure to carry. Megan stepped naturally on her other side, but showed no motion of recognition and strained her senses to get a clue on this new menace.
            “What did They tell you?” John asked nonchalantly as if he had no idea.
            “Murder,” Jane said calmly. She stepped forward to the train and stepped on the last car. It was dirty like every other public train car could be, but the people still sat in their seats, eyes facing forward or looking up, without any expression.
            Megan took a sharp intake of air and approached one of the figures. “All dead,” she said. “I don’t know about you,” she said strangely calm, “but They told us these people were mostly eaten and they were littered about the car.”
            “In fact,” John said, “they only showed us pictures of what looks like two cars down.”
            Jane put her gun in her belt and leaned down to feel a pulse on a woman holding a child’s hand. “These people look like they were never real.” She pulled a gun out and shot the woman’s left arm. There was a pause and all three of them peered into the bullet hole.
            “It’s just plastic,” Megan said disgusted. “You were right; these people were never real.”
            John frowned, but remained silent. “Let’s go to the other car,” he said and walked out of the train. Both women followed him, holding their guns out to the side towards the train, fingers on the triggers patiently.
            The thirteenth car was just as unusual as the last car, but all noted with disdain that it did not look like the report they had received earlier. The mannequins were all standing up and looking at one person laying on the floor drowning in her own pools of blood. She looked human and still clutched her throat where presumably the bullet was lodged. One man in the seat in front of her was sitting calmly looking down at her. Jane and John shrank back at this sight, but Megan held up her gun to the man in the chair’s forehead.
            “What the hell happened here?” she demanded, yelling at his stone face.
            There was silence where no one moved and finally the head moved just slightly to tilt his head and look at her out of the corners of his eyes. He didn’t speak.
            Jane pulled her gun on the people standing up, which she assumed were plastic, but was now cautious of everything. Her heart beat faster as she hallucinated the slightest twitch in every one of them. John and Megan kept their eyes fixed on the man in the chair.
            “I didn’t do anything,” the man said in a hollow mechanical voice. “It was the Animal.”
            “What are you talking about?” Megan said, walking closer to the man to close down her gun range. John snapped his gun out of its holster and clicked off the safety keeping it poised at the open door.
            The man stood up, but then sat down again as Megan’s gun followed his actions. “I did not kill her, He killed her. With the Animal.”
            Megan shook her head. “You’re not-“
            “Shhh!” the man quieted her loudly and sat in his original position perfectly still. All eyes followed the creaking to the door.
            “Well, well, well, what have we here?” a second man asked. His head just barely cleared the top of the train and shocks of his blond hair fell just above his eyes. He looked like a classical statue completely, from handsome appearance to stiff movements. He had a large rapier attached to his back, the hilt barely showing over his shoulder and a gun conspicuously placed on his hip. A dog pulled up next to him, snarling and he patted it on the head without even bending his knees.
            Jane motioned for John to defend her back and moved forward boldly to confront the new stranger. The dog started forward, but the man kept it back by his side.
            “You must he Him,” she said.
            The man smiled perfectly, but didn’t make another move of recognition.
            “Why did you do this?”
            The man frowned. “Do what?”
            Jane pointed at the girl on the floor beyond Megan, but didn’t say a word.
            “Oh,” the man said laughing, “that.”
            They waited for him to continue, but he just stood in the doorway smiling. The dog at his side calmed down a bit, but growled any time one of them would move.
            “What did she do to you?” Megan asked calmly.
            The man turned to her. “She was human. There are no humans on the fifteenth train to the fifteenth station. It’s a robot train. They think it’s to separate the filth of robots from precious humans, but it’s because there needs to be a separation between the filth humans from precious robots.”
            “She must have been with PETR,” John said quietly. “Only people pushing for the equality between humans and robots would have gotten on a clearly marked robot train.”
            The man cocked his head and stared at John, who ignored him nervously.
            “Who are you?” Jane said, trying hard to move the conversation from his stare.
            “I’m part of the extermination crew. We keep this train sacred.”
            “With mannequins?” Megan said scornfully. The man’s eyes flashed red.
            “Those are dysfunctional robots! They are not mannequins!”
            The dog barked and lunged towards Megan.
            “We’re sorry,” Jane yelled over the dog. “We’re sorry. We’ll leave. We didn’t know. We’ll go and tell them never to get on this train again and we’ll leave you alone.”
            “Oh, but then I wouldn’t have a job,” the man said taking a step towards them. “This train was full of dysfunctional robots and that’s how it will stay. It will go to the fixing station and fix you, you, you, and her right back up to the way you’re supposed to be.”
            He moved his gun to focus in the middle of Jane’s neck, but decided against it and dropped his gun. As he backed out of the train, he patted the dog above the tail. “Go get them.”
            The doors closed as the dog lunged forward. Three different guns shot out at it, but only revealed the complex wires underneath. Jane grabbed Megan’s arm and ran behind the row of mannequins staring at the human woman, letting them fall like dominoes to create a fort. John pulled back to join them by the door of the car.
            “Now what?” Jane asked out of breath, taking another shot for the dog, just to calm down her nerves. The dog was climbing the robots, though as it put weight on one it would fall uneasily, so it was mostly leveling out the mountain of plastic bodies. All three humans in the car still felt uneasy shock and fear as another mannequin would fall from the stack. The man in the chair stood up slowly and snuck up behind the dog. Megan took a shot.
            “We have to distract it,” she whispered, “because if I’m right then that robot will help us. And you know I’m always right.”
            “If cynical and egotistical,” John said.
            Both dismissed his comment as a case of nerves as his hands were starting to shake as they stood watching the mountain diminish. Finally the second robot reached the dog and grabbing a nearby arm from a broken robot, bashed the dog on the head. A few seconds of bloody combat followed, guns firing expertly into crucial mechanical parts in the dog. Finally the dog stopped working and the second man got back on the train.
            “I thought you were dead,” he said, though to whom it was unclear. Jane breathed a sigh of relief and shot him in the head. He fell backwards from the impact onto the pavement and smashed the memory box in the nape of his neck with a sickening shatter.
            She climbed out of the train and annoyed, smoothed out her hair and skirt. “Thank you,” she said turning to John and Megan, “for a job well done.”
            John smiled and Megan rolled her eyes laughing half-heartedly. Stepping gently out of the subway station, she tossed the gun to the lieutenant and walked back into the crowd to her car.

Filed under: Horror, Science Fiction by Bri
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            She stared at the blood on the carpet with a faint haze of ecstasy. She dropped the knife in her haze and walked away from the scene. She jumped as police sirens wailed in the distance replacing her buzz with panic. She started to run blindly past door after white door.
            Patient number 46, Shani Seften had been admitted to Fulcrum’s Asylum for her addiction. No one talked about it and she always was alone, but she figured out a way to pick the locks and she was set free again. The buzz felt so good. She pouted, disappointed that it had gone. She pulled out a hairpin and picked the lock on door number 76.
            Patient 76 was rocking back and forth in a chair in the middle of the room and staring at the floor. He didn’t look up when she came in. She easily slipped up behind him and clamped down on his throat. He kept rocking until finally he slipped off the chair. She cautiously felt around to the other side of the chair to check his pulse. She felt a strong rush of emotion as she felt nothing stirring inside him. She laughed faintly and skipped out of the room.
            “Oh, there you are!” the nurse said grabbing No. 46’s hands and leading her back to her room. “How did you manage to get out this time?”
            The nurse pushed her gently into the room and quickly shut the door. She pulled out a ring of keys and locked to door. Glancing from left to right, she chained the door shut and wrote on the chart clipped to a clipboard under her arm: Patient not ready for release. Relapse into murder addiction and needs to be chained in. No more progress.

Filed under: Horror, Realistic Fiction, Science Fiction by Bri
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