Friday Fiction for July 15, 2011

Friday Fiction is hosted this week by Karlene on her blog, Dancin’ In the Rain… splashin’ in His Love. Take a break from the summer weather (or the winter, if you’re on the other side of the Equator), and enjoy splashin’ in some refreshing reading.

I’ve been in kind of a Twilight Zone mode the last couple of weeks. This week’s story is along the lines of the short zinger fiction stories I’ve enjoyed in such anthologies as Asimov’s “Earth Is Room Enough,” and others. While I don’t claim to approach the skill of such a master of Science Fiction, I hope you enjoy this little tale in that kind of vein. Rod Serling not included…

The Fossil Dig

By Rick Higginson

The horrified screams echoed across the dig site. Such screams were not that unusual in the remote location. From time to time, a student up from the University would happen upon the object of their phobia, be it one of the large spiders that prowled the area, or perhaps any of the numerous species of snake indigenous to the region, and their panicked cries would offer a welcome break to the quiet monotony of the paleontology dig.

Such events were doubly looked forward to, as once the phobia was discovered, the other students would take great delight in trying to set off another reaction, or at the very least, teasing the sufferer of the phobia relentlessly until the novelty finally wore off.

What set this particular screaming event apart from any other in the memory of all the scientists on site, was that it was Dr. Guttormson who was issuing the outcry. The normally stoic doctor was known to barely take notice of a tarantula crawling across his hand, and to be cooler than the snakes he would fling out of the way with the end of his cane.

Everyone, therefore, ran without delay to the edge of the pit where Dr. Guttormson had been painstakingly picking away the sedimentary rock from one of the largest Allosaurus skeletons ever found.

The old Paleontologist was crouching in the corner of the pit, now whimpering and covering his head with his arms. Nothing else moved in the excavation, and the muttered question passed between onlookers as to what could possibly have such an effect on a man that – for all appearances – was afraid of nothing.

Several of the senior scientists and a few students made their way down the ladder into the pit, and approached the cowering man. “Myron,” one of his long-time associates said, touching him gently on the shoulder. “What is wrong?”

He continued to whimper, now visibly trembling.

One of the students knelt in front of him. “Dr. Guttormson, it’s okay. We’re here. What is it?”

He pulled his hands away and raised his face to hers. “Sk-sk-sk-skull,” he stammered.

“The allosaurus skull? What about it?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” he said. Gesturing towards the exposed ribs, he repeated, “Skull.”

As a group, they gathered around the fossilized cage and peered where the tools had been dropped. Mouths gaped to see the newly exposed fossil within the fossil. Scrapes were evident in the cracked bones, corresponding well to the teeth of the extinct predator, but the shape of the bone was not reptilian.

“That can’t be what I think it is,” Guttormson’s associate said.

“What else could it be?” one of the students replied. “It’s definitely human.”

The scientist leaned in for a closer look, moving aside a dropped brush, and suddenly, he, too, began to scream. Backpedaling away from the skeleton, he pointed and gestured.

All eyes turned to look. All eyes, that is, except the remarkably preserved glass eye that stared back from the fossil skull.

Friday Fiction for July 8, 2011

Friday Fiction is hosted this week by Lynn Squire, the gifted author of “Joab’s Fire” (an excellent story, by the way), at Faith, Fiction, Fun, and Fanciful. Be sure to visit and enjoy some great writing.

This week is a short, stand-alone story that has been circulating in my mind for a while. It’s a bit different than my normal fare, but I hope you enjoy.

Der Tod

(The Death)

By Rick Higginson

His family sat close by, waiting for the end that was imminent. He held no illusions of recovery; at his age, most people were amazed that he hadn’t died years ago. Though his body was rapidly failing, his mind was still fully aware, and he smiled inside. He had won. For all the years, no one had ever discovered his secret. Not his wife, nor his children, nor any of his neighbors or business associates. He would take the secret to his grave, and that would be the end of it.

A tube fed oxygen to his nose, helping his feeble lungs as he strained to keep breathing. His pulse was weak, and though he thought of it frequently, his arms lacked the strength to even pull the tube from his nose.

He felt pressure on one hand, and cut his eyes to that side. His eldest granddaughter was squeezing his hand and speaking, though without his hearing aid, he could only tell by the movement of her lips. She was just one of his progeny, queuing by his bed to express their love and to say farewell to their patriarch. Her face began to fade, as if the room was filling with mist, and he lost all sensation in his extremities. With an almost cold analysis, he recognized the moment of death, before all awareness left him.

***

It was cold, and voices were shouting all around him. Confused, he opened his eyes to dull, gray skies and patches of snow on the ground. He held his hands in front of his face, and saw pale skin hanging from gaunt arms. Hands lifted him from either side.

“Get up,” a voice hissed from his right. “You do not want them to shoot you right here, do you?”

He looked to his right. The man wore a dirty uniform over his emaciated frame, and his sunken eyes held a blank, hopeless expression.

“What?” he muttered. “Where are we?”

“You do not remember?” the man replied. “How do you forget being in hell?”

Hell? Was there truly a hell, after all? “I don’t understand,” he said.

“I do not blame you. If I could forget this place, I would.” They plodded along in the line of men. “I do not think Birkenau will be our home much longer, though. Those who walk this way, do not come back.”

Birkenau? Is this some trick of the dying mind? I cannot be back at Birkenau, and especially not as a prisoner.

“The faster you move along, the sooner you will escape from this cold,” a strong, confident voice called to the throng of men. He stared at the face of the young officer with a sick sense of recognition.

That cannot be – this must be some form of dying dream. It will end. It will have to end, when my brain finally dies.

“What are you staring at, pig?” the officer yelled at him, and then gestured to a nearby corporal. “Hurry him along. He thinks he has time for sight-seeing.”

The corporal responded by rushing over and slamming the butt of the Mauser into his back, nearly knocking him back to the ground.

How can the pain be real? I cannot feel my real back, so how can I feel a dream? Still, he could not take his eyes off the officer.

“Since he is so interested in me, bring him here,” the officer ordered.

The corporal grabbed him roughly by the arm, and dragged him out of the line. He was thrown to the ground at the officer’s feet, and stared up into the merciless eyes.

Did I really look like that, all those years ago? He already knew what was coming.

“Since you like the look of my face so much, pig,” his younger self said, drawing the Luger from his holster. “It can be the last sight you see.”

He stared up the barrel of the pistol, remembering how the Jewish man had not flinched away, even as he had pulled the trigger. He had wondered if the man had seen the flash of the shot, before the bullet punched through his brain, and it struck him as bizarre that he should remember that as the finger pulled the trigger.

***

He sat up with a start, still feeling that final moment of being shot in the head. He was in a dimly-lit room, with bare masonry walls. A tall figure stood in front of him, though it was as if he couldn’t see the person if he looked directly at him.

“That was one,” the figure said. “And this will be the only time I will visit you, lieutenant.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“You can call me whatever you wish – the Angel of Death, a Minister of Judgment, or the Devil himself. It does not matter. I am just a messenger, and now that you have experienced the judgment, you will believe me when I deliver the message. The courts of Earth could only have executed you once for the murders you committed, but the courts of Eternity are not so limited. You will relive the deaths you caused, as the victims, until you have completed them all. You will experience the suffering you inflicted, and when you have finally accomplished them all, you will find an eternity that will make you wish you could start over.”

“This cannot be happening,” he said.

“Tell yourself that all you wish,” the messenger said. “It will change nothing. I am finished here, and your next death will begin shortly.” The figure vanished, leaving him alone in the room.

He glanced down at the thread-bare shift covering him, and the slender, feminine legs extending from beneath it.

A door opened, and the officer stepped into the cell. “Yes, you are a pretty thing,” he said, leering down. “We shall have an enjoyable time, you and I.”

“Please, no,” he said, the voice that of a frightened girl. It was going to be a very long, and very horrible, night.

Friday Fiction for June 24, 2011

Welcome to Friday Fiction, hosted right here tonight at Pod Tales! Please feel free to add the link to your blog at the bottom of this post, and check out the other submissions for your first summer reading weekend.

I’ve been missing the last couple of weeks, but had to make sure I wrote something new for this week. This is basically just a short character sketch piece, featuring Bill Williams from the Pod series. I’d like to dedicate this short story to Kim, in honor of her husband Gary, who passed away this week. It’s always been a joy to know two people who love each other, and we’re saddened by his passing. May his memory be for a blessing.

First Choice

FBI Special Agent Marion “Bill” Williams straddled the stool at the coffee shop counter. His legs splayed wide to either side, and he leaned forward on both elbows with the steaming mug of coffee trapped between his hands. The morning news and variety show played on the television attached high on the wall, with the smiling hosts interviewing an attractive actress.

To Bill’s right, Agent Roberts licked his lips and let out a soft whistle. “Man, she could sure rock my world,” Roberts said.

Bill sipped his coffee and shook his head. “You’re married,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m not dead. My wife already knows if I ever got a chance to meet her, I’d take it.”

On Bill’s left, Agent Johannsen offered her take. “For me, it’s Bart Manley. My guy knows that I’d be single for Manley anytime.” She gave a lusty feline-style growl. “Those eyes, those shoulders, that behind – rar!”

Bill rolled his eyes and took another sip of coffee, lowering the cup for a refill when the waitress came by with the carafe.

“How about you, Williams?” Roberts asked. “Who’s your dream girl?”

“Angela,” Bill replied.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Now that you’ve given the reply that’ll keep your wife happy, give us the real answer.”

“Really, Williams,” Johannsen added. “Are you afraid I’ll rat you out to the wife?”

Bill stirred some cream into the refreshed coffee. “My answer is still the same. Angela has always been my dream girl.”

“Oh, come on,” Roberts scoffed. “Every guy has a fantasy girl. How about this? What if your wife gave you a ‘pass’ that, for one weekend, you weren’t married. You could go after any woman you wanted without penalty, free and clear. You can’t tell me you’d go after the same woman you’ve been waking up next to for years.”

“Yes, I can,” Bill said. He gestured at the television screen. “You think it’s okay to want her because she’s a beautiful celebrity, and you can rationalize that you’ll probably never even meet her, let alone have any chance that she would agree to anything else. The issue, though, isn’t whether you might ever cheat on your wife with her – the issue is that you’ve expressed your first choice, and that first choice isn’t your wife.” He sat up straight, and looked both left and right to meet their eyes. “Angela is my wife. When I proposed to her, I didn’t ask her to marry me because someone I liked more wasn’t available. She wasn’t my second choice, and I didn’t ‘settle’ for someone I could have instead of someone I couldn’t have.”

“So you’re telling us that if a magic genie told you that you could have any woman in the world, just for the wishing, you’d wish for Angela?” Johannsen asked.

“Why not? She’s my best friend. She’s the mother of our children. She already knows all about me, and loves me anyway. If I wished for anyone else, I would be throwing away the best thing that’s ever happened to me, for the uncertainty that I might find someone better.” He took another sip of coffee. “My vows didn’t include any provisions for someone on the side. There was no infidelity clause based on how beautiful another woman might be, or how famous, or rich, or whether I thought maybe I wasn’t getting enough at home, or anything else. My vow was to remain faithful to her for the rest of our lives, period.”

“But, what if she released you from the vow?”

Bill smiled. “She can’t. I made the vow with her, not to her. We made the vows to God, so we can’t release each other from them.”

“Now you’re getting religious on us.” Johannsen moaned.

“Say what you want, but however you want to couch it, the last thing I ever want to say or imply to Angela is that there is someone else in this world that I’d rather be with, regardless of how unlikely the scenario might be. She was my first choice when I proposed to her, she was still my first choice when we married, she’s still my first choice now, and if we’re so blessed, she’ll be my first choice on our fiftieth anniversary.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, if you two are done salivating over people you’ll never get to meet, we have a meeting to get to.”

Friday Fiction for June 3, 2011

Welcome! Friday Fiction is hosted right here this week! Please submit your link in the Linky tool at the end of this post, so we can all enjoy some great reading this week.

This week is the final part of Step Through. The story and the concept offer a lot of potential for expansion, but for now, I liked how this wrapped up the tale. I hope you enjoy, and maybe get a little something to dream about yourself.

Step Through

Part 5

The street to the building was just as deserted as before, and he stopped at the entrance alcove. Well, Ian, you’ve put this off as long as you could. It’s time. He pulled the key from his pocket as he stepped towards the door, and slipped it into the lock. He turned it until it clicked, and then swung the door open. Once inside, he relocked the door and then headed for the stairs.

Pausing at the bottom, he looked up towards the floor above. C’mon, Ian. It’s not like there’s any mystery to what’s waiting up there. You’ve climbed these stairs before, after all. He ascended slowly, taking one step at a time and hesitating between each one. Funny; it didn’t seem like such a long climb last time.

At the top of the stairs, he turned towards the center of the room. The Step-Through was active, offering the view of the room in two different time periods. He leaned against the wall and just stared at it, before Chronos noticed his presence and ran up to him, wiggling his tail-less backside enthusiastically. He pulled a biscuit from his coat pocket, and offered to the dog. “Here, boy. Did you miss me?”

“Ian?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I’m here. You can shut the machine off, Jeff.”

“I didn’t see you come back. When did you return?”

“Just now.”

“Huh. My mind must have phased out, or something.”

Ian stepped away from the wall, and adjusted his glasses. “I didn’t come back through the Step-Through, Jeff. I came back through the front door.”

“But, that means - ”

He took the hat off his graying, thin hair. “It means it’s been over 21 years for me, since I left here.” He chuckled. “I guess all those years, people were wrong when they told us that we can’t live in the past. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since I left here.”

“Why? You could have set things up back then, and returned here to a better life.”

“Who says I didn’t?” He reached down to scratch Chronos’ ear, when the dog kept pushing a wet nose into his hand. “When I first went back, I called my Dad, and went to the old theater and watched a movie. I decided I liked the world better back then, and when I left the theater, I went to a hotel and stayed the night.”

“You weren’t worried about keeping me waiting here?”

“Yeah, about that. I figured out the next morning that, if you didn’t come looking for me, then something must have told you there was no reason to be concerned. I spent another night, and you didn’t come looking for me, so the only conclusion I could reach was that you knew right away that I wasn’t coming back.”

Jeff began to laugh. “Now that I think about it, it makes sense. The same rules of continuity have to apply whether we’re looking backwards or forwards. Yeah, if you hadn’t come back in a reasonable time, I’d have come through looking for you. So, what have you been doing the last 21 years?”

“Living well, in a small town in the Midwest, where no one ever knew who I was, or had any reason to question why there might be a younger me in this town. You were right – knowing what investments will be lucrative makes it easy to amass a decent portfolio. I met someone, got married, and we’ve got three kids now. When I walked in here before, I didn’t have much life to worry about leaving. Now, I have a great life, and a reason to never need the Step-Through again.” He held the key out to Jeff. “Thank you, my friend, but I won’t be coming back again. Tomorrow morning, I’ll call my old job and tell them I quit, and then get back in my private plane and go home.”

“Does she know? Your wife, I mean. Does she know who you really are?”

He smiled, and nodded. “After a while, she wondered how I always managed to know what stocks to pick, what teams to bet on, and so on. I told her I was from the future, and she thought I was joking. She didn’t believe me until I told her when the big earthquake was going to happen. Then, I brought her here, and let her see my younger self. I think sometimes, she still doesn’t completely believe me. Sometimes, I think she would rather believe I’m psychic or a prophet, rather than believe I really stepped through from the future.” With a shrug, he added, “I don’t think it really matters, though. I don’t need the future knowledge anymore.”

“And your Dad?”

“Nothing changed. I didn’t try to warn him, though in talking with him, I learned he already knew all the warning signs he should watch out for. Even knowing all that, he still ignored the symptoms, with a phone within arm’s reach of his chair. I know now, though, that he died knowing his son loved him and appreciated him.”

Jeff took the key and shook his hand. “Will I see you again?”

“Yeah, you’ll see me again. I can’t say whether I’ll see you again, but we’ve gotten together several times in the last 21 years.” He winked. “You don’t really believe my memory is so good, that I remembered all those investments and sports results all by myself, do you? Just remember, when you step through to visit, bring some good information with you.”

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