FICTION
Hochelaga and Sons by Claude Lalumière
I slide open the door to my parents’ closet. I gather the clothes that hang there and move them to the bed, laying them down gently, making sure not to wrinkle them, just like my mother would have done. From the top shelf, I take down the boxes of old photographs, forgotten gifts, and useless knick-knacks and pile them on the floor at the far end of the bedroom. I empty the closet of belts, old shoes, ratty sweaters, and rarely worn neckties. Once I’m done clearing everything out, I grab the sledgehammer and start tearing the wall down.
Because I can’t become intangible and walk through it. Because I can’t teleport at will. Because I can’t even punch holes in it with my bare fists.
Because my father is dead. Because Bernard won’t do what needs to be done.
The application form is seventy-two pages long, and they require nine copies. These people want to know everything. They also want to make sure you aren’t doing this as a joke.
The first few pages are fairly routine. Name, date of birth, Social Security number or local equivalent—yes, you have to give them that. They promise not to use it to invade your privacy, and you trust them, because really, if they wanted to get into your bank account they could, and why would they steal your identity? Then education, medical history, criminal record if any—it won’t necessarily disqualify you—not just for yourself, but for your family, too, and your close friends. (You list more distant family and friends on page seven; they’ll check into those people themselves, if they decide your application is worth considering.)
When great uncle Peter came to live with our family in the house by the sea I asked my mother why it was he never spoke. My mother explained that great uncle Peter had always been silent, that when he was born he came out without even a scream. Great uncle Peter could have only been young when the family; his mother and father and his sister Ranyevskya—my great grandmother, came over the sea from the old country. And in the smoky streets of London they learnt the tongue of their new home to speak in the world, and kept the language of the old country for home. But great uncle Peter spoke not a word of either. And years passed and then decades and my grandmother was born and my mother and then me and as far as anyone knew great uncle Peter still never said a word. When I was older and had children of my own I realised that for all my mother had told me of great uncles Peters silence, she had never been able to tell me why. She never could have because neither she or anybody else knew.
Sand in her hair, sand in her eyes, sand in her crotch . . . goddammit!! Two boys, eleven or twelve years old, playing racquetball, noisy as hell as the ball thuds against one wooden bat, then the other, and all the time they’re yelling, goading and baiting each other, then as if that wasn’t enough one of them dives when the ball goes wide and he lands not four feet from where Alice is lying on her beach mat, hiding behind ultra-dark wraparound shades, one hand holding the book up to screen her face from the sun as she reads, the other just raising a cigarette to take a drag, so that when the kid piles into the ground and throws yet more sand in the air her mouth is half open and now she’s got sand in her fucking mouth as well, but before she can pull herself up, find a stick or a rock from somewhere and smash the kid’s head in with it he’s up again, shrieking and running off to join his mate who has retreated further down the beach.
Until the Wind Changes by Jennifer Rachel Baumer
“Sold! To the young man with the wandering hands!” the owner said, clapping Billy on the back and startling the breath out of him.
No. He hadn’t meant, to, really, he was just looking. Except sometimes his hands did his looking for him, his mother always said.
But there was no way she could afford this, no way. They’d had pasta six times last week, every time with some kind of explanation. He’d seen that look on her face every time the email popped up and she waited to see if it was his father or another creditor. She had that same look again now.
Weren’t things bad enough? The whole day at school Daav had been at him, never anything Billy could actually turn him in for, just Daav being mean, and then he’d flunked another math test and he just had to pull out the next one because Fleet wouldn’t take someone who couldn’t handle maths . . . .
Obituary for a Living Man by Corey Brown
There was a place in the foothills of Tennessee more heavily guarded than Fort Knox, but it contained no gold. The place was more famous than the Pyramids of Egypt, but few had ever seen it. It consumed more of the federal government’s annual budget than the space program, but nothing it produced ever traveled to distant worlds, orbited the Earth or even flew at all. The place was a source of comfort to many people, even those who maintained a faith in religion, and so to be employed there meant to accept a great trust, an obligation to carry out one’s duty in the most conscientious manner possible. All but the most highly skilled applicants were turned away, and one of the proudest boasts a parent could make was that their child worked for the Vault.
Brian Augmon’s father, had he still been alive, could have made that boast. As it was, Brian’s mother was left alone to tell those behind her in the checkout line on Long Island how her son had been sent to a rattlesnake-infested corner of eastern Tennessee, into a region bounded by razor wire and armed men, and watch the mouths of her listeners compress into jealous little lines.
Brian had worked for the Vault for three years when the Director instructed him to erase a chip.
How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth by Rachel Swirsky
Part One—The Apocalypse of Trees
During the first million years of its existence, mankind survived five apocalypses without succumbing to extinction. It endured the Apocalypse of Steel, the Apocalypse of Hydrogen, the Apocalypse of Serotonin, and both Apocalypses of Water, the second of which occurred despite certain contracts to the contrary. Mankind also survived the Apocalypse of Grease, which wasn’t a true apocalypse, although it wiped out nearly half of humanity by clogging the gears that ran the densely-packed underwater cities of Lor, but that’s a tale for another time.
Humans laid the foundation for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again embarked on their species’ long term goal to wreak as much havoc as possible on the environment through carelessness and boredom. This time, the trees protested. They devoured buildings, whipped wind into hurricanes between their branches, tangled men into their roots and devoured them as mulch. In retaliation, men chopped down trees, fire-bombed jungles, and released genetically engineered insects to devour tender shoots.
The Dogrog Phenomenon by Richard Howard
Perhaps the most interesting development in popular music in the past ten years has been the rise of Dogrog. For those of you who have been living in a monastery for the last decade I’m referring to loud, fast, abrasive rock music played by domestic dogs. The continuing credibility of a form that has its roots in novelty records aimed at children is shocking to say the least.
Animal music probably started in earnest in 2009 with the forming of a group called the Menagerie. The cutesy cartoon cover of their self-titled CD shows a monkey on keyboards, an elephant on drums, a wolf on bass and a crocodile on guitar. On the inside of the CD cover we see the animals in the studio although its not certain how much playing was done by the Menagerie themselves. Industry insiders assure me that the actual animal input was minimal and that the recording was chiefly made with session musicians and samplers.