Tag: Fantasy

The Visitors

On By Shyla FairfaxIn Fantasy, Halloween, Horror, Shyla's Stories2 Comments

As the minute hand crept its way closer to the top of the clock, Jaime sighed. It was time to begin the ritual. Like every year, she began with her ablutions; she washed her hands, feet, and face with warm water and soap made of goat’s milk. As the water eased its way into her pores she relaxed, her muscles easing. After filling the bucket up she retreated to the living room where she emptied it onto the fire. Embers swirled around her, ashes floated to the floor, and smoke filled her lungs. The room fell dark, a heavy smoke fog obscuring any view she might have had of the clock.

Guessing she probably had a few minutes left to spare, Jaime made her way over to the big window and drew open the curtains. An orange tinted light spilled in from the blood moon, glazing the room with a speciously warm coloring. Everything was still, save for the smoke and moonlight which danced an eerie duet. The ominous BONG began in the distance; the town clock had struck twelve. With a deep breath, Jaime flung the shutters open, letting a gush of cold night air in.

From across the field she could see the corn stalks rustling. They were coming. As they did every year, on this night, at this hour. Crossing worlds could only be done on Halloween, after all.

From the fields, shadows emerged stretching over twenty feet of her lawn. They approached slowly, and steadily. Jaime knew she should hide, but there was still some time for that. She liked to watch the shadows come upon her for a while. This had been the case since she was little. Fear mingled with curiosity in a way that only made sense to her. Over the years, she had tried to explain it to people once or twice, but it was always a feckless endeavor. Nowadays, she mostly kept to herself year-round. She tended to her crops, sold her herbs, and waited in eager hunger for this night – the night when they would come.

She would hide, and they would seek. She knew as well as they did that only someone with a gift as powerful as her own would be a worthy opponent; a worthy prize. Knowing her own strength that way was nothing short of exhilarating. Admittedly, Jaime liked the chase, liked being hunted, liked outwitting the hunters. Then the clock would strike six, and a new day would dawn, casting them away for another year.

Maybe one night she’d surrender. Let them take her. See what all the fuss was about her there on the other side. But not tonight.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Follow

On By Shyla FairfaxIn Fantasy, Micro Fiction, Shyla's Stories3 Comments

She cursed her own credulity, and followed him into the woods. She hadn’t always been so curious, so gullible – at least, she didn’t think so. He had changed her; opened her mind up to a new adventure. Besides, seeing is believing; and she had recently seen a thing or two she dare not repeat to strangers. What was one more for the list? Worst case scenario, she had fallen into an eternal sleep, and was dreaming herself up a new life… one where she could be anything; see anything; and know all.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

A micro-fiction challenge for Seshata Literary Arts Society

The Waiting Room

On By Shyla FairfaxIn Fantasy, Horror, Shyla's Stories5 Comments

Warren stared down at his form, blankly. He had no idea how to answer questions like, “what is your ideal career?”, or “do you prefer warmer or cooler climates?” Nor did he want to. The truth is, he didn’t much mind being dead, and Limbo suited him well. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to move on, let alone sure he knew where he wanted to go.

But those were the rules. If you were chosen to be a Watcher, you had to go back to somewhere and be someone (covertly).

“Excuse me,” Warren hailed the receptionist but she made an obvious effort to ignore him, again.

He released a sigh of defeat and lowered his eyes back to the form. His number, 057, was fast approaching; once it was called he would have to have some real answers and make some real decisions. The pressure was unbearable. Warren had always had a proclivity towards procrastination and indecisiveness. How had the elders decided he would be a good Watcher? It didn’t seem like his thing.

He had had a comfortable life before the accident. He had managed a meat factory – okay, that wasn’t entirely true. He was the second assistant, but often enough he’d be left in charge. He didn’t have to do much though; in fact, it was an accepted truth that he was only given the promotion to acknowledge his sixteen years of loyal meat-packing service. It was fitting that he had fallen into the meat-grinder and died six months later. The job had consumed his life.

But Limbo was very nice. It was quiet, and polite. Warren liked it.

He looked up. The screen read 038.

Okay, first question: What is your favorite pastime? Button Collecting Bird watching.

‘More outdoorsy.’ Warren smiled, satisfied with his creative response. ‘I always wished I was a bit more outdoorsy.’

What is your favourite season? Summer.

That was a lie. Warren liked Late Fall best because the chill in the air was a good excuse to spend his nights inside. But summer was more suitable for bird watching.

What is your favourite movie?

Warren thought long and hard, rapping his pen against his temple. What was the last movie he had seen? He thought his favourite movie of all time might be something with Indiana Jones, but he couldn’t recall which ones he had seen and which ones he hadn’t. Warren straightened his glasses, an excuse to raise his hand to his brow and discreetly wipe away the sweat.

044.

His heart rate increased as he scribbled down his answer: Indiana Jones. ‘Vague yet direct. All of them, or the most famous one. They’ll get it…’

Warren continued to forge his way through the questionnaire and was nearly done when a new woman entered the waiting room and took a seat next to him. She was beautiful, even though her right arm was severed clean off.

“Lawnmower” she sang out to Warren when she caught him gawking. She didn’t seem offended, at all.

“O-Oh, Oh I’m sorry.” He looked away, blushing.

“You?” She asked through a wide smile.

“Meat Grinder,” he replied, pointing to his bad side. His left arm was mostly gone, the left side of his torso ripped apart, and his left thigh looked as though it had been chomped into.

“I would have guessed shark,” she chuckled flirtatiously.

Warren laughed along nervously. The sweat was streaming now.

“So, where are you off to?” he asked.

“Hawaii, I think. It should suit my free-spirit.”

“Oh? Do you surf?”

“Well, no. I was something of a recluse in my past life. But I’m planning to rebuild my image.”

Warren smiled, and jotted down his final answer. Hawaii, it would be.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Chimera

On By Shyla FairfaxIn Horror, Sci Fi, Shyla's Stories4 Comments

“Do you know where you are?”

The voice was distant, yet penetrative. At the sound, Troy winced, afraid the cadence might haul him away, or burrow itself inside of his brain. It was always like that; attempting to separate one reality from another was like trying to tear himself in two. The act itself seemed violently meddlesome – profane, even. Most of the time, Troy accepted that he was in two places at once, and that both were equally verifiable (as long as he didn’t force himself to verify them).

No.

Troy was compelled to reply to the voice, but could only form the words in his head. He thought he remembered writing at one time or another to keep track of where he was and who he was interacting with. But one day, he reviewed his journal and found it to be evidence only of his own delirium. It was a book of amphigory; smug in its ability to mock its author’s complex mind. The problem, he decided, was that he was in two places at once. That was always the problem. The solution was unclear, the problem was not.

“Can you tell us what happened to Peter? Can you tell us what you remember?”

The voice sounded more agitated now. Closer, too. It echoed a buzz from Troy’s right ear to his left. He tilted his head towards the direction he thought it was coming from. He only saw chaos: blackness, orbs of light, shadows of faces he knew from one reality or another. He squeezed his lids shut.

No.

Peter was dead. A version of Troy was sure of that. A throbbing penitence in his chest threatened to crack him open and stick needles in his mind’s eye; poking the most sensitive spots. Some of the other gamers he had met had called that ghost pain, but Troy knew better. It was pain being bestowed upon him in one place, but not in the other. Their insatiable thirst for truth turned them into monsters. But Troy couldn’t give them truth because it didn’t exist – not in the isolated way they expected it to. In fact, there were a couple truths. Just as there were a couple Troys. One Troy, he was beginning to think, had done something very, very bad.

“Why did you hurt Peter, Troy? Was it part of the game?”

Yes.

But it was just a game. It was just one version of Troy, in one version of reality. Two places. Two truths. Hadn’t that been the point of the game? To live out fantasies and scenarios in one reality that might not be acceptable in another? The developers, the marketers, the goddamned ads; they all said that.

Unleash Your Darkest Fantasies.

That’s what the ads said. One reality was for fools, but trying to balance two at once – that was shredding Troy up from the inside.

“Troy? Troy, you have to stay with us.”

No.

He could feel himself being pulled away. He needed to get himself, his whole self, out of the two places and into just one. Not this one. This one was full of contradiction and amercement. This one told Troy to indulge, and whipped him when he did so. This one was cruel.

Troy’s heartbeat amplified, his temperature rose, and his brain continued to pulsate against his skull. He hissed, and cried, and tried to scream.

Two realities, and to neither could his contentment belong.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Perception

On By Shyla FairfaxIn Fantasy, Sci Fi, Shyla's Stories3 Comments

“My planet doesn’t actually look like yours. The human mind is quite limited; usually it can only perceive the familiar, so when something is not familiar, it makes it so.”

“I’m not sure I’d describe what I’m seeing as familiar.”

Sybil looked up and let herself be taken aback by the mountainous trees, adorned with branches that seemed to touch the clouds. She wished Ongue would give her a moment to let the mesmerizing view settle, but in the little amount of time she had known it, she had learned that was not its style. It immediately spoke again.

“Yes, well, it’s difficult to know what a human will see exactly. But it should most definitely be something your memories of Earth can relate to.” It gestured for her to pick up her pace, “Come, now. This way.”

Ongue was a tiny being. It stood only three feet or so off the ground (or whatever it was that Sybil understood as “ground”), and had slender limbs and fingers. Its webbed feet were the size of Sybil’s palms and, if a comparison had to be made, its faintly grey skin was akin to that of a sickly elephant’s. It spoke in a hearty tone, that seemed to boom from its tiny body. The voice sounded definitively male to Sybil, but it had been explained to her that Ongue was genderless, and that it was only her restrictive mind making that connection. Back on Earth, Sybil had had a few friends in the trans community, so she knew it was important to be respectful of Ongue’s neutrality. Still, it did make her uncomfortable to refer to an intelligent being as an “it.”

Sybil herself was quite feminine in appearance. She had long dark hair, full eyelashes, a slender jawline, and heart-shaped lips. Her olive skin tone seemed fluid, darkening in the summer months, but paling completely in the winter ones. It had always made her feel like a chameleon.

“You’re the last to arrive. The others are just in here,” Ongue informed Sybil as it held a heavy steel door open to her.

The door was attached to a very small hut, so that Sybil had to bend herself to fit through the opening. Once she entered, though, she was standing in the lavish entryway of a grandiose manor with ceilings nearly thirty feet high. Others who looked just like Ongue were busying about this way and that, not even noticing her presence.

“This way, this way,” Ongue insisted, scurrying off down the hall.

Once Sybil had been seated in the amphitheater with the hundreds of other men and women, the formal address began.

Ongue took the podium and welcomed the group to its planet. It thanked each and every one of the brave souls for summoning within themselves the courage to venture outside of their world, and into this new one. Although, as Ongue explained, this world was not new, but millions of years Earth’s senior.

“The Intergalactic Treaty that has brought us all together has been a dream of ours for millennia. Earth, although still in its infancy, has become worn and tired. The humans who refuse to acknowledge this undeniable truth will have to live through witnessing its fall, but you are all here because you have chosen to move forward. We thank you for your open-mindedness. You are wise and beautiful beings of vast natural differences. This world will be an opportunity to embrace such difference, and change.”

Ongue paused momentarily, satisfied by our nervous smiles, then continued, “time, of course, moves differently here, as well. Over the next few hundred years, you will learn to see our world as we see it. The process will be slow, but eventually, this will become your home. As you adjust, the Earthly landscape you see before you will morph into something all together new, as will your understanding of it. Rest assured, the concept of home itself will become less dichotomous, and more malleable.”

Another, shorter, pause.

“Earth, however, will always be where you came from.” Ongue stepped out from behind the podium and spoke to the audience more directly. “It was an empire,” it said, “and we are all sad to see it go. Let us take a moment of silence, as is the custom for many of you in times of grief, and say goodbye.”

Mimicking the crowd (and without hesitance), Sybil bowed her head. She had been raised by devout theists and Nationalists; false solemnness was a practice she had always been familiar with.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©