Tag: Fiction

Testing Day

On By Shyla FIn Sci Fi, Shyla's StoriesLeave a comment

The room is white. The room is cold. The room promises anxiety. I scrape away at my cuticles (a disgusting habit I’ve always had under pressure) and try not to shift around on the table. The paper gown against the paper on which I sit makes a sound that reminds me of where I am. I wish there was a window, or at least that the doctor would hurry back. When I finally notice the blood smeared across most of my nails I lick it all away, ashamed, and focus my attention on the pamphlets taped to the walls.

Getting Tested is the First Day of Your New Life.

Stay Healthy, Stay Happy.

The World Needs You. Get Tested Today.

Finally, the door swings open. My heart seems to quiver and I sit up straight as if concerned that my poor posture will annoy the doctor and she’ll leave again. But she doesn’t even look at me. She stares at her clipboard and makes checks and exes here and there. I try not to make a sound, try not to disturb her concentration. Mostly I just want us both to forget I’m here; to simply disappear. She is short, with thick round glasses and straight smoky grey hair. When her head springs up her chubby cheeks swing back, loose with age.

“Fertile.”

That’s all she says. Then her head bows again as she sticks her pen back in her jacket pocket, clears her throat and walks out of the room. I will never see her again. Her only job is to test the fertility of every 18 year old boy and girl in the sector, and then she disappears forever.

I slowly reach for my clothes and become suddenly aware of how drab they are. Beige pants and a grey button down shirt with my identification number plastered to the left breast pocket. That number is more important than my name; authorities know me not as Gen, but as 504576. Today, though, I will become known to them only as fertile. I am hope.

Once a young woman is determined to be fertile a sigh of relief sweeps the nation like a cool, crisp, awakening breeze. They can match me with a fertile young man now, and assign us our national duties which will include jobs based on our levels of skills and intelligence, and on the nation’s needs. As a fertile couple, we will be given five years before we must clock in to work. These five years are to be allotted to childbearing and child rearing. We will be given a house, because we are the pride and joy of the nation. We are hope. Our sector will survive because of the few who are fertile. The many who are not will work harder and longer to provide for those of us who are. They are just as important to the new system. And who am I to shame the new system? After all, things used to be worse – but somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.

I dress, unsteadily, one foot at a time. The buttons take forever because my fingers fumble with them through the tremors. I feel a burning sensation rising from my chest and radiating into my sinuses. To fight this from exploding into tears I hold my breath. I do this for so long that by the time I walk into the bright daylight I am dizzy. I quickly glance to the left and then right, and when I’m sure my mother is not here yet I exhale so fast and hard I cannot even recognize the sound that comes out of me. How could this happen to me? What are the odds? I haven’t taken any precautions to ensure fertility. I even live in the most toxic end of the sector. Ironically, discovering that I have been virtually unaffected by these toxins is the first thing that makes me feel as though I am truly suffocating.

Just as I prepare to embrace my sadness a car pulls up and I see my mother’s stern yet forcibly bright face in the driver’s seat. At this, I immediately pull myself together. I stand up straight and sigh, taking on again my typical expression of impassivity. She jumps out of the car with such specious excitement the car itself might still be in motion. She runs around the back of it to reach me as quickly as she can. Arms wide, she yells “So?!”

“Fertile.”

I say it and that’s when I know it’s real and has to be accepted. My mother squeezes me tight, a rare show of affection. “It’s going to be fine, Genesis,” she whispers unconvincingly. “Everything’s going to be fine.” A bromide for people who are either too afraid, or too weak to tell the truth.

I nod and shrug. Maybe it will be fine.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

The Day the Reaper Came

On By Shyla FIn Horror, Shyla's Stories8 Comments

Discounting the mortal hiss in the air, it had been a rather ordinary Thursday. Jonah was tired, as usual, but forced himself to take his afternoon walk nevertheless. He fumbled with the buttons of his knee-length, thick polyester, coat for longer than he had the day before. He sighed at that realization, then pushed it to the back corner of his mind reserved for disappointments. He covered his balding head with a black bowl hat and reached clumsily for his cane.

Outside the air was crisp and refreshing. Autumn had always been Jonah’s favourite season. When he was a boy, he used to rake all the lawns on his street, and when no one was watching, he’d jump in the piles and pretend to be swimming on some opposite planet. His joints ached at the thought of doing that now, but he still quite enjoyed leaf-gazing. Actually, he had very few pleasures in life anymore, but Autumn walks were on the top of the list.

In the park he hesitantly watched the children play cops and robbers. They cackled and roared gleefully, and Jonah found the scene carnivalesque and difficult to watch. In his eighty-four years, and especially in the way he had chosen to live them, he had seen enough casual brutality. Children today; he had not been able to attain that level of desensitization until his sixth kill.

“That’s not true, Jonah. You always had a cavalier approach to right and wrong, didn’t you?”

Jonah looked beside him. The park bench he had been sitting on alone suddenly occupied a second body. The man seemed more a shadow, cloaked in a black hooded garb that left his face to the imagination.

“I suppose you’re right,” Jonah whispered, regrettably. He did not need to ask the shadow who it was, or what it wanted.

The man and the shadow watched the children play their grotesque game in silence for a little longer, while pigeons squawked uninvited at their feet.

“Are you afraid?” the shadow finally asked.

“No. Just tired.” Jonah reflected on his reply, and then spoke again, still not turning to face his visitor. “What’s on the other side for me?”

“That part, Jonah, is up to you.”

Now they faced each other, and Jonah saw what was hidden beneath the hood. Empty eye sockets, like an abyss with a magnetic draw. Worms wriggled about the holes, apparently unable to decide if they would rather be inside or outside. The skull was spotted with rotting flesh, but was more bone than skin. The sight of the bits of flesh dripping and dissolving did not disturb Jonah in the least. Mostly, he was contented by the cognizance that there was no associated foul scent. On the contrary, all he smelled was Autumn.

“I must confess, then?” Jonah asked with a hint of disinterest in his tone. He pulled his attention away from the rotting flesh and un-eyes, disgusted more by the idea of confession than anything else.

“No.” At this, Jonah turned to face him again, startled. “It is I who has a confession” he finished.

Jonah stared blankly until the voice resumed. It was low and steady; apathetic, much like that of Jonah’s own father’s had been.

“Jonah, it is not your time. But it can be.”

Jonah felt a numbness overtake him. His hands, though shaking on the ball of his cane, felt disconnected from himself; as did the rest of his limbs. It was his time – he could feel it in his bones, in his lungs, in his heart.

“Jonah, focus.” The voice was even softer now, and Jonah was wondering if he had altogether lost his grip on reality.

“You’ve taken many a life,” he continued. “Today, you will be asked to give one.”

The pigeons took flight in unison, the flap of their wings sending a chill straight through Jonah’s thinning body.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered, his voice quivering enough to give way to odd cracks.

“His name is Eric. He’s fourteen, the grandson of a Mr. Garret Lyon.”

Garret Lyon, he had been Jonah’s last kill.

“He’s been quite ill. Right about now, his fever is blistering. He’s home in bed, just across the street there.” The visiting man did not point, but Jonah instinctively knew where to look.

“He’s dying.”

“Not if you’re willing to make a trade.”

“I have a choice?” Jonah’s tone lightened.

“We always have a choice.”

Yes, choice. That was something Jonah had always believed to be true. But for the first time in his life, having to make a choice was not a burden, but a blessing. Jonah’s heart quickened and he began to perspire under his hat. Somewhere in the background, he heard the man say: “Give yourself to me, Jonah, and your soul’s debt will be paid.”

His heart continued to beat harder and harder against his chest and the sweat became profuse. Without so much as a word, he had made up his mind.

This was the end.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Chimera

On By Shyla FIn 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 FIn 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 ©

Out of the Fog

On By Shyla FIn Horror, Shyla's Stories4 Comments

I stared out at the empty space before me with consternation. It was the first cold day of the year; fall had been slow coming, allowing the remnants of summer to coddle us all. Dusk was still about an hour out, but the chill in the air was a clear indication that the sun had tucked itself in for the night. I stood shivering with my arms interlocked across my chest and the hood of my sweater pulled over my head. Lyle was about a foot ahead of me on the path, staring straight ahead and frozen in excitement.

“This is stupid. I don’t see anything.”

“Shh!” he warned irritably.

I rolled my eyes. This wasn’t the first time I had let him talk me into some ill-advised misadventure. When he got something in his head, it was easier to give in than to argue. Two summers ago we had spent a whole night in a trailer park two towns over looking for what Lyle swore was the dashboard of a crashed UFO he had read about online. I tried to tell him that the story had likely been masterminded by a fourteen year old boy with too much tech, but Lyle was sure. We never found anything. That’s how the story always went; he had the theories, and I had the research. Twins, and counterparts. It was lunacy.

“Are we ghost hunting right now? Because I’m pretty sure you can’t see a ghost in the fog. Or, you know, ever.”

Lyle swung around and cut his eyes at me.

“Sorry,” I whispered, sardonically, in that tone every girl inherits around the age of thirteen (and treasures forever after).

Lyle positioned himself around me so that I was in front, and cupped my shoulders to force my focus straight ahead.

“You can only see it in the fog. And no, it’s not a ghost.”

I sighed, but did not let my focus waver. The last time Lyle had dragged me to a graveyard we were only kids. He had ripped off a Ouija board from the local toy store and truly believed supernatural powers could be harnessed from a piece of plastic worth $11.99. Admittedly, it scared the shit out of me when it started to move, and I had nightmares for weeks thereafter. He swears he never moved it, but I don’t know how else to explain what happened that night. Either way, I’ve mostly crossed the street at the graveyard since then.

“I hate it here,” I whispered back.

“I know. Just wait.”

So we waited. And waited. And then came the peripeteia – it appeared.

At first, it was just a shadow in the fog. Then, slowly, it materialized into the form of a woman. Stunned and silent, I tried to refocus my eyes, convinced they were fabricating images due to the long, cold, interim – but there was no mistaking those eyes. Their white glow pierced through the fog and the darkening sky; my own eyes their target. Her emergence from the fog grew steadier, and her unsettling beauty became more apparent. Her long white hair wrapped itself about her formless body, draped in a white figureless garb. Overtop, a green cloak rested upon her shoulder-less shoulders. She seemed more an apparition than a person – her floating feet did not quite meet the cold ground.

Still processing what was taking shape before me, I let out an almost muted gasp. Lyle’s grip on me tightened reassuringly, and then he stepped out from behind me, and towards her. He moved gently, with the finesse of an apparition himself. But the movement, however slight, was still enough to make the woman evaporate. As she fused into the fog again, she released a sorrowful wail, loud enough to send an otherwise unnoticed flock of perched crows back into the evening sky. The wail echoed, creating a symphony with the flapping wings and distressed squawks of the murder.

Lyle turned back to me, gleeful with his discovery.

“It’s a Banshee. She must be visiting her family.” He nodded towards the tombstones to our left.

Still numb from what I had just experienced, I followed Lyle’s gaze, before correcting him.

“No. Only her family can see her, and hear her cries.” My voice was beginning to quiver with panic. “She warns them of an impending family death.”

Lyle stared at me quizzically.

“Lyle,” I whispered, “she was visiting us.”

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Speechless

On By Shyla FIn Sci Fi, Shyla's StoriesLeave a comment

Eve’s eyes spring open. She has had the dream again; the one in which she falls endlessly down a tunnel of bright lights, always expecting her back to hit hard against a ground it never reaches.

The heavy pull of gravity is almost more than she can take, so she opens her mouth to scream for help – and she does. In its own rebellion, her voice lifts out of her and shoots upright against the gravity that retains its grip on her body. But as she dispels the sound of her struggle, the fear fades away behind it. The sound is bigger than the gravity, and her ability to produce it magnifies her own power. It’s not just something she can hear; it’s something she can feel and something she can see.

The scream vibrates against her diaphragm, compressing the air inside of her. Her rib cage squeezes inwards, her chest tightens, her spine stiffens. The sound crawls through every nook of her bodily tissue, escaping from depths of her she had never before known to exist. The oxygen she relies upon expels through the gaping orifice she barely recognizes as her own mouth, and even though she knows she’ll run out soon, it feels good. The violence of the gravity she’s been fighting suddenly feels less like its pulling her, and more like its carrying her back to Earth; back home. Not that any of that matters anymore: she is now infatuated with the sensation of the scream exploding inside of her. And when it does, its incoherently beautiful.

The scream corrugates the air around her, and fills the tunnel. What was once a space of absence – white, cold, and infinite – becomes a storm of dancing colors. Reds wind themselves around yellows, which wind themselves around greens, until all the colors coexist. Even the white bodysuit that covers every inch of her own body absorbs the scream until its bursting with vibrancy. The falling suddenly becomes floating as the scream wraps itself around her, swaddling her like a mother’s hug. She reaches out an uncertain hand, hoping to steal a piece of the liveliness and keep it with her forever. But instead, for the first time, the insidious impact that she forgets to brace for comes.

Her lungs and heart thud against her chest expecting to break free and a final gush of air releases. This time, though, there is no sound because Eve is back in her sleep dome, wide-eyed. Ripped back to reality, the floating has returned – because in her reality, there is no gravity, no measurable oxygen, and no beautiful sound. Residual memories, she supposes.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Her Unburdening

On By Shyla FIn Dark Realism, Horror, Submitted Stories (Guest Posts)1 Comment
GUEST POST BY PENNY LONG

It arose from her. It uncoiled itself from her bowels, shrugged itself off from her heart. She sighed a long, world-weary sigh and breathed it out with the vapour of the wine she had drunk, exhaled all the disappointment that she had tucked away in her being, not to be seen by others. Her sins, her opinions, the unredeemed monologue of her suffering, all these loosened themselves from her, like the button of her jeans that she had undone before sitting down. Some sought company with her other secrets – the cravings crawling into empty bowls in the sink, frustrated longings creeping under the bed. Unkind thoughts formed themselves into a film on the window behind her, making the room just a little bit darker. And the howling, lamenting unforgiveness oozed across the floor and sat erect in the chair opposite her. All these unacceptable things once settled, the sad loneliness finally found itself a place next to her on the couch, the last and most deeply hidden, stowed away in the lining of her nervous system, hiding in the hooded lids of her eyes, peering out always from its hiding place, observing the lives of others. Relieved of the need to carry her secrets inside her, lighter now, she breathed in the air of her home, the lingering aromas of stew and sadness.

Sitting alone, yet not alone, she stared at the screen in front of her and pretended not to see all the things that slithered and scuttled around her. All the bits of lies, the sarcastic remarks she had uttered that evening, the unintended wounds she had received gradually found their way into the dust on the cushions, each showing itself in her peripheral vision on its way. Occasionally one distracted her from the story she was watching, forcing her to relive an uncomfortable moment before it wheeled its way to the ceiling to join the heavy canopy of regrets. She populated her solitude. She allowed her consciousness to fill the apartment. Her thoughts and ideas, repentance and lamentations found their usual homes in the empty chairs, on the unused side of the bed. When at last they had all been released, she looked around her. Ignoring the darting and glaring of that troupe of transgressions, she perused the familiar furnishings, her eyes sliding past the carpet stain and the regret, affirming her condition: Home. Alone.

Penny Long ©

pennylong62 (at) yahoo (dot) com

Antic

On By Shyla FIn Horror, Shyla's StoriesLeave a comment

He stood in front of the oblong mirror. It was just tall enough to reveal more of himself than he cared to see. That’s how the meticulous process always began.

With wet, eager hands, he pushed the few inches of hair he had off of his forehead. The curls recoiled at his stubby-fingered touch. His nicotine-stained nails scraped the strands, determined to keep them flat. Once he was pleased with their placement, he submerged his hands in green slime with which to suffocate the follicles atop his head. Gingerly, he stroked and stroked, until not a visible hair remained brown.

Then came his favourite part: the whiting. He splattered the powder over his face and neck, excitedly. Absence became him. Absence of light; absence of colour; absence of life. The blood that coursed beneath his cheeks on the hottest of summer days simply disappeared behind the mask.

Next he buried his fingers in the mud he would use to blacken his eyes. He smeared the substance over his eye lids, up to his brow and down to his cheekbones. The silt felt heavy; to shift his sight was now an effort that matched his usual galumph. As he blinked, his top eye lashes ripped apart from their bottom counterparts, revealing the slit that would expose his irises. The sound tore through his ears like the swift extraction of a triage stitch; the holding together of bits of damaged skin with glue.

He was shaking now. His chest heaved as his heavy breath rapidly filled and emptied the cavity. It was time to redden his lips. He plunged two fingers into the crimson mucilage and smudged the thickness of it across his lips and spread it every which way. It was thicker and brighter than the blood that had flowed from his nose earlier. His lips stuck together now; cemented. Just the way he liked them.

The transformation was complete.

He stood in front of the oblong mirror. It was just clean enough to expose more of himself than he cared to share. That’s how the meticulous process always began.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Rhapsody Lament

On By Shyla FIn Sci Fi, Shyla's Stories6 Comments

Boyd had never been a penitent person. Never impressionable. Never reserved. Never burdened by an arbitrary sense of right and wrong; white and black. He had always lingered between the dichotomies. Even now, as he scrambled to wash the dried blood from his hands, he felt no remorse and no thrill. The snowball between his hands crumbled, rather than melted. He squatted in the street, scrubbing away, until his hands were more numb than clean. Since the running water had stopped four months ago, this was the closest Boyd ever came to a bath. The scruff of his chin was concealed by a scarf tied tight around his neck. He wore two jackets, neither one sufficient on its own. He imagined his skin was quite dry by now, but removing his clothes to find out would be a waste of time and energy. The wind was just starting to pick up when Boyd rose. He was unsteady on his feet, the result of having traded food for companionship. Food and sex; they were the only currencies left. Boyd looked around. It was dark now and the streets were lit only by the colors people chose to wear. A crowd of women were headed straight towards him, not one bothering to side step. The collision was inevitable. In fact, Boyd kind of enjoyed slamming into the petite woman who had been too absorbed in her inconsequential small talk to look up – to see him. No one ever saw him. It was a blessing and a curse.

Gale felt an impact against her chest, and then her back. She swung upwards just in time to see the broad shouldered man shuffle through her crowd of friends and disappear. She rolled her eyes, wondering why she bothered to expect more from people these days. She had smacked hard against the wet ground. She let herself sit there for a moment as the frost snuck its way up her back and buried itself in her spine. The cement had torn right through her jacket, but that was of little consequence since the thin material it had been made of was never meant to hold up against the temperamental elements. Her friends gasped and cackled. Gale assured them she was fine. She didn’t even notice the blood that was now smeared across her back until the man who bought her for the evening demanded his bread back; as if it was the unidentified blood that was the most disgusting aspect of tonight’s scenario. Gale chomped down on the bread and ripped her chipped teeth through its stiffness. The man yelled inarticulately (everyone did, these days) and she threw the rest of the bun at him. She watched with pleasure as it bounced of his chest and landed in the snow. She had always enjoyed the sight of a man bending over, his pride tumbling before him.

Everett snatched up his fallen bun with virtue. He had worked hard for it all day and was disheartened by his own eagerness to give it up for a few minutes of potential amity. He shivered under the darkening sky and tucked the coveted bread into his sweater. The snow would make it soggy and Everett did not kill for soggy bread. He preferred the fruits of his labor to maintain a robustness in his own likeness. The insert in his forearm began buzzing just as he had come upon a shelter: a single dwelling tent. Inside it smelled of rot and old death. There was no body, but he would have spent the night even if there was. A good tent was difficult to come by, and his own house had been dismantled in the last explosion. In that instant, the streets became safer than his useless cowering. The attacks were usually targeted at houses; the price of being comfortable was an exhaustive threat against your life. All of the free states were like that. Everett had seen a few, but the differences between them were not worth mentioning. Tonight, he had his bread and a tent, and that was all a man could ask for out here. He chose to ignore the buzzing in his arm. There were plenty others in need of a job. Tonight, he had seen enough blood.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©

Creating Genesis

On By Shyla FIn Horror, Sci Fi, Shyla's StoriesLeave a comment

“The implantation process was simple. I’m just not sure it’s going to take. She’s heavily sedated.”

Lewis nodded to acknowledge his colleague’s concerns, then entered the adjoining room. The two-way mirror that now separated the two doctors served only to represent the dissolving border between theoretical science, and the monstrosity of creation.

“What’s Lewis doing in there?”

Sierra looked up at Charlie, who seemed to materialize from thin air. Since he had launched the Genesis project he had lost several pounds, become irritable and, at times, unresponsive. He was approaching his 50th year now, and the result of his stress was sunken cheeks and drooping eyes, which only served to age him quicker. Together, he and Sierra watched Lewis curiously lean over their test subject. She seemed not to notice he was there, even when he stroked her hair, and then her stomach. It was only starting to protrude. Sweat rolled down her forehead, and shoulders. Her chest heaved, and her limbs twitched. The doctors had resorted to sedation when they caught her trying to escape. Now, she was only a shell of a person – no will; no desire.

“He’s pleading with her, I suppose,” Sierra whispered.

Charlie grunted his approval. All three of them knew this was their last shot. No other test subject had ever carried to term, but Marcy had come the furthest. This fourth try might very well be all her body would take. The anticipation filled the lab like a thick fog of impending doom.

“Fourteen more weeks to go,” Charlie sighed. With that, he disappeared into the back room.

*****

“How are you feeling today, Marcy?”

Marcy heard the voice, but it seemed so distant she feared her reply would not reach it. She mumbled incoherently and tried to raise her arms. She could not.

“We had to tie you down, I’m afraid. You got a little out of control, but you’re going to be fine.”

The voice was calm, and although she identified it as male, there was something inherently feminine about it. Marcy pulled her head up as high as she could, hoping to catch a glimpse of her surroundings. All she saw was her own belly, high and mountainous. Her cries were muffled by her own lack of energy, but Lewis could see the fear in her eyes.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he speciously reassured her. “You’re going to have a daughter, Marcy. I really believe so. If you can just hold on a little longer.” He smiled, nodding frantically – his nerves having finally got the best of him. His eyes were beginning to flood. “She’ll be our little Genesis.”

Lewis stroked Marcy’s head paternally as she struggled to remove herself from his touch. The air smelled repugnant to her, and she associated it with the mysterious man who had strapped her down and put a person inside of her without her permission. Quickly, Marcy surveyed her memories to assess her whereabouts, and the date. Most of it came back in flashes:

There had been a raid in her sector.

All the women wearing numbers were identified as fertile and taken away.

She had kicked and screamed.

She saw men in riot gear beat her father when he tried to pull them off of her.

She had been so hot, secluded in a bare, metal, space.

There had been blood tests; they had taken blood. But they had also injected something… what was it?

A cage.

Women caged.

Women bleeding.

Women losing consciousness while having monsters ripped from their bodies.

Herself in pain. So much pain she could not think, swallow, or fight.

There had been so many needles.

The doctors all had fire in their eyes.

As the flashes converged, Marcy tried to process what had happened to her body. Her thoughts still lacked linearity, and the more she forced it, the weaker she became. Eventually, Lewis’ sobbing faded to black with the rest of it.

*****

“They’ve discontinued the research on cloning in Sector 8,” Sierra offered as small talk as she and Lewis prepped for surgery.

“I know,” he replied solemnly.

“It’s a good thing. It means there’s more funding for us. More faith.”

“Faith? We’re creating monsters, here.”

Sierra’s glare manifested a gravitational pull that kept Lewis’ eyes glued to hers. “We’re creating people. A population,” she exacted. “There are no monsters in science.”

Lewis frowned, not knowing what he believed anymore. It had been eleven years since he had agreed to Genesis, motivated by a sense of supremacy. It had been naïve to think three scientists could save the world. The world had been relinquished long ago. Still, he couldn’t let go of the feeling that something big was going to happen; that Marcy was the key. It would be foolish to give up just yet.

*****

Screeching; whimpering; gurgling.

The sounds were nearly incomprehensible.

They were certainly undecipherable.

Marcy coerced her eyes open, unsure that she even wanted to see anything. The room was in utter commotion. Everyone seemed to be in hysterics. Finally, Marcy saw what all the fuss was about: a baby lie sprawled on a metal table beside her own. It was swaddled only in wires and tubes; liquids pumped in and out of her tiny body. It was a grotesque and morbid picture. And yet, all Marcy could think was that she had somehow done it.

An easy wave of calm fell over her. Yes, she had done it. Tomorrow, she might awaken to a whole new world. That is, if she were to awaken at all.

Shyla Fairfax-Owen ©