Always Wins

 The spinning stops, the number's called: sixteen, red. 

He's sweating in his Sunday best, ignoring the worms chewing through the polyester. It hasn’t fallen apart on him yet, rustling and clinging to him like the last day he wore it. He's staring at the roulette wheel as if it holds all answers to questions he hasn’t dared to ask yet. Eyes narrowed in head-splitting focus, knuckles white, lost in the chase of the fix. Misfortune is the demon that must be exorcised. Tonight its hold will be lifted, the losing streak will end and providence will prevail. He must maintain the mantra: tonight, tonight. 

Thirty-five, black. 

Money’s always burning a hole in his pocket. Its only use is to get him in the game. In with a fighting chance, fists raised, tiptoeing through the failures, taunting fate. His chips are sorted in multicoloured stacks: grey like the scattered ash of his remains; green like the mould on his discarded shoes; red like the rust on the car he swerved too late to escape. They make for teetering towers, ever-threatening to topple in a burial mound. Let them: there’ll be more where they came from. Every night they’re replenished because the House can’t have him staying away for long.  

Twelve, red. 

He can sense the others leaning in at every turn, whooping, whistling and cajoling. He takes care not to stare into their eyeless sockets. “Come on, come on!” is the cry of the night. Their yells turn to hissing when the losses become unbearable. Some shuffle away in vain, as if they can stop the House from pulling them back. It knows what they most desire and it can make their dreams come true. 

Thirty-one, black. 

He takes another sip of his tasteless drink. He misses the buzz and the surge of liquid courage. He drinks in the hopes that one night he will feel it all again, when fortune will favour him and he can finally celebrate in style. The croupiers’ calls rise over the serenade of the slot machines. He longs for them to call his name. Just this once? He’s dimly aware that for them he’s a faint figure feeding in the outskirts, ready to disappear without a trace when the bets are placed. His mutterings won’t matter when the last turn begins. Unacceptable. That can’t be the way this ends again. Everything happens for a reason. His being here is no accident. There is a plan and he’s a part of it.  

Nine, red. 

Somewhere, someone’s always winning. Every night a life can change. Lifted on wings of divine grace, no looking back. Only good things ahead. Forget the squalor, erase the pain. He’ll have another shot and they’ll all be drawn to him in admiration. He’ll be graceful and gracious. Sweet, too, and soft. Why does everyone have to make things so hard all the time? It’s easy to be soft when you’re winning. One more win. The big one. The one for him to make amends to everyone he’s wronged, to justify the begging and the borrowing. All’s well that ends well.  

Twenty-two, black. 

He remembers the first time he won, before the crash. The inevitability of that final click as the ball rolled just so and slid into place. His panic at losing sight of it replaced by elation. His held breath and quick blink as it happened, both bound to turn into a ritual. He hasn’t stopped holding his breath and saving his blink for the exact moment the wheel slows to a stop, for all the good that's done him since. He must remain resolute in the recreation of the state of triumph. He knows it’s a test and the moment he lets go is the moment he accepts defeat. He won’t let that happen. 

Three, red. 

He’s not going to think about home. He’s not going to think about them, snuggled in bed, waiting for him on that final evening.  He’s not going to remember all the new ways he found to explain himself, the new loopholes to bend his resolutions, the morning sun’s accusing glare, the suffocating disappointment, the disapproving silences, the gathering dust in the corners, the days piling up like spent tokens.  

Seventeen, black. 

The last turn has arrived. The stakes are high. David against Goliath, every time. All in, what else? That’s what he lived for, isn’t it? That’s the thrill, the ride of a lifetime. The more likely the ruin the greater the relief. That’s what he’s been brought into this world to do. No one’s made anything of themselves by holding back. Laugh at danger and face the impossible odds. Men risk everything. Men stand their ground. Let’s go! 

One, red. 

His pounding pulse propels him to pounce: a senseless impulse. The boiling blood subsides and the hunt gives way to humiliation. There is nothing for him to grab onto anymore. The familiar deflation is here and he lets it take over. He could rail against the injustice of it all but he knows they won’t listen. Not tonight. 

Zero, green. 

The neon flash of the exit sign. The refraction of the last drop in his glass. His lumpen reflection on the mirrored walls as he’s herded outside. The businesslike dismissal of human dregs.  There’s no cheque to cash. No spring in his step. Shoulders hunched, he walks through the heavy doors as they close behind him. He turns to face the darkening building looming over him, its shadow stretching into infinity. It’s not over, he promises the House. It’s never over.    

La Ribaute

Sculpted submarines lie like beached whales.

Scythes stretch like flocks of flamingos.

Roots cluster in stalactite swarms.

Constellations and inverted ziggurats. 

A splash of green underground.

A collapsed staircase from the detritus of Babel.

Gossamer threads and webs of dust. 

Barbed wire and brick-headed brides.

The underworld burrowing into eternity.

The infinite's vast grasp.

Every Day the Same Song

You are sitting in a dim-lit basement as an actor begins to read you a story. Yes, you, and only you. You’re on your own here. All those other figures you perceive listening intently all around you? Figments of your imagination, born out of your longing for company, for someone else to say I’m here too, I hear this too. It’s been so long since you’ve felt a human touch. Your pet snake is a darling, but you question its loyalty. Did you feed it today? You left the house in a hurry. Could it be hungry? As you ponder this, you notice the actor seems mildly peeved at your drifting attention. Actors are such needy creatures. Focus, don’t be rude. The actor pauses expectantly, seeming to wait for some kind of sign from you.

How do you respond? 

A) You nod encouragingly.

B) You nod dismissively.

C) You nod neutrally. 

The actor nods back. They resume reading faster now, as if in a hurry to reach the end. What is the story about, anyway? There is no sense of structure, or is that because you weren’t paying attention? Was there something said about Anastasia? Who’s Anastasia? Or was that I wanna tase ya? Are you in danger? You hope you didn’t pay a ticket to be harassed and humiliated. That’s not your flavour of immersion. You look into the thespian’s eyes, searching for meaning. Interminable minutes pass and you come up empty-handed and more than a little bored. This was not worth the hype. 

You look to the exit, weighing your options:

A) You could just get up and head out, social etiquette be damned. 

B) You could wait this out, daydreaming about lasagna.

C) You could have another drink, and another, until it all makes sense.

You could, but you don’t, because at this precise point the power cuts out and the door slams shut. It’s pitch black and dead silent. You can’t even see your own hand that you wave in front of your face. There’s something about this new sudden state of being that feels unreal and familiar at the same time. Unreal because how often have you found yourself in such total uninterrupted absence of sight and sound? Familiar because it’s a reversion to the first principles of survival, when every rustle or flicker could mean an abrupt violent death. This is different to the restless stillness in the middle of the night. It’s a carnivorous type of quiet. Something big is about to happen. 

You turn to the stage and clear your throat to say:

A) “Are you ok? Has this happened before?”

B) “This isn’t funny. You better believe I’m asking for a refund.”

C) “Finally. Kiss me now.”

Your voice is drowned in blinding lights and piercing sirens that flood and scramble your senses. You blink in stupefaction, feeling like a cornered beast. You are beleaguered by distorted images from your childhood, each more distressing than the last, until they feel like someone else’s sadistic showreel. You manage to snap out of the maelstrom of memories only to be confronted with blurry shapes bearing down on you from all sides, clicking and chittering in unison. It’s time to act!

Choose your defence mechanism:

A) Fight.

B) Flee.

C) Freeze.

Resistance is futile. Before you know it, they have pinned and strapped you to a cold surface. You’re moving fast, wheeled though a series of unremarkable hallways until you’re brought into a room with a floor-to-ceiling window. You can see your reflection. You’ve looked better. You can also have a closer look through it at some of your captors. They are leaning forward, ready to speak. 

What do you think they are?

A) Kafkaesque insectoids.

B) Spielberg-esque extraterrestrials.

C) Scooby-Doo-esque humans in monster suits.

Whatever their nature, their speech is booming, seeming to emanate from the inside of your head more than the room itself. “You called upon us in your hour of need. We know you. We have been listening for the longest time and here you are, at last. We are willing to provide. We have the answers. We hold the keys. Your long-harboured longing can now be met. All you have to do is lend voice to your cravings. Let them be shameful no more. There is no judgement here, only release. Speak your truth.”

What do you have to say for yourself?

A) Speak your truth.

B) Lie your heart out.

C) This is so cringe. Hold your tongue.

Their response is a bout of derisive laughter. Your straps are undone and you’re on your feet, scrambling to move away from their mockery. “Stop it”, you scream, “leave me alone!”. You try the door and it’s unlocked. You break into a bone-shattering sprint, footsteps echoing on hard tiles. You’re exhausted and frenetic. Your skin is stretched thin and your temples are throbbing. As you titter on the edge of obliterating panic, you come upon a set of two doors. 

What is it that compels you to take the door on the left?

A) Brain patterns rapidly firing adrenaline into your bloodstream.

B) The ineffable wisdom of your eternal soul. 

C) We might never know, so stop asking.

As it happens, the door on the left leads to a deep, dark hole. You fall face-first into something soft and disturbingly sticky. Unfortunately, the torches lining the walls illuminate this scene more than you’d like right now, because you can see all too clearly that you have landed on top of a mound of bloodied rotting remains. The stench is overbearing. “Oh, fuck off”, you sigh. Behind you something stirs and growls and lifts itself to its full height. You slowly turn to face its many-limbed misshapen majesty. 

How do you address the presence before you?

A) Pee yourself.

B) Pee yourself. 

C) Pee yourself.  

You are more thankful than ever that yours is far from the only smell in the chamber. Its putrid breath makes your eyes water. You wait for the pain that is sure to come as you are torn limb from limb and tossed aside. Instead, you look up to see a wide, jagged-toothed smile. It wraps its multitude of claws around you and lifts you up into a cradling embrace. Its delicate drips of drool cleanse you from your fear. Shhh, it hisses, lulling you into lethargy. This wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, you think as you sink into unconsciousness. You are back inside the womb, secure, serene and well fed, warm in amniotic elation. 

What are you dreaming of?

A) A better world.

B) Those who are no longer with us.

C) Nothing. Oblivion is beautiful.

You’d sleep forever were it not for the growing ripples of cacophonous clapping slicing through your blissful suspension. You are forcefully dragged out to drop with a resounding crash to the floor. You pick yourself up in great effort to observe the audience lost in a rapturous standing ovation. You are shivering and drenched in sweat, barely standing.

How do you reward the audience's enthusiasm?

A) Bow and twirl gracefully.

B) Curl up in a corner with your back to everyone, crying and rocking back and forth.

C) Adopt the time-honoured deer-in-headlights look. 

They're loving it. You step off the stage, needing some time to calm and congratulate yourself for making it through. The excited chatter dies down giving way to curious whispers. Your ears stop ringing. Your fists become unclenched. Your gaze locks onto the spot where your table is ready. Your feet take you there. Your body collapses in your seat. The lights are fading once more. Your attention is turned towards the host as they introduce the upcoming act. You are sitting in a dim-lit basement as an actor begins to read you a story. Yes, you, and only you.

24 Ways to Leave your Lover

 1. Locate a dictionary. Open the dictionary. Flip the pages to the word “leave”. Follow instructions carefully.  

2. Enter a room and sit comfortably. Raise your hands in front of your face, palms up facing inwards. Cover both eyes fully. No peeking. When you hear your lover enter the room, maintain this posture and refrain from replying to your lover’s queries. You may sing a lullaby to yourself, provided you are familiar with one. If no lullaby comes to mind, you may sing the looping lyrics of your current earworm. In the unlikely scenario that no earworm is available, hum tirelessly and tunelessly. When your lover leaves the room, you have left your lover.  

3. Lead your lover to a maze of thorns. Thorns optional; maze mandatory. A hedge maze will do. Other types are also available. Accompany your lover to the heart of the maze. You will know you are at the heart of the maze because there will be a fountain with a sculpture of three dolphins smiling sinisterly. If there is no such fountain, the maze is fake. Exit immediately. When you are at the heart of a real maze, sit at the fountain and reminisce about the good times. If no good times have been experienced, converse about the weather instead. When you are certain that your lover has been lured into a false sense of comfort, pretend to receive a phone call from an old friend requesting immediate assistance. Whether or not you have friends is a moot point: you are pretending. Leave the maze before your lover has had a chance to protest, abandoning them to a short life of pitiful perambulations.  

4. Join the circus. Become a lion tamer. Die in a tragic preventable accident involving your favourite lion, Scrabby Tabby.  

5. Join the army. Make sure that you are stationed at the farthest point from your lover. If that farthest point is Australia, adopt a quokka, known as the world’s happiest animal because it always looks like it’s smiling. If the farthest point is anywhere else, your choice of pet is up to you. Allow enough time to elapse for you to turn into a fuzzy afterthought for your lover. Never return.  

6. Challenge your lover to a duel. You may determine the exact nature of the engagement, from wordplay to swordplay to pistols at dawn. Rob your lover of their dignity with a series of showy standoffs until they depart in a blind rage. Alternatively, if you lack the skills to do so, allow your lover to humiliate you instead until they’ve lost all interest in you as a sexual being. In any case, do not kill your lover.  We do not advocate murder here. Death by accident, abandonment or neglect is fine (see other entries).  

7. Promise your lover the stars and moon on a plate. The general unfeasibility of your goal will inevitably lead to relationship-dissolving disappointment.  

8. Promise your lover the world. The abstract and nebulous nature of your deliverables will inevitably lead to relationship-dissolving disappointment. 

9. Sing-shout at your lover that you will show them a new, fantastic point of view and jump on a carpet. This must be a normal carpet. Under no circumstances should the carpet possess the quality of levitation. When the carpet remains static, admit defeat and dance away.   

10. Convince your lover to sit opposite you on a seesaw in joyful recollection of your childhood. Laugh merrily as you ascend and descend a few times until you build the momentum needed to launch your lover into the stratosphere. This works, trust us. They’ll be fine up there; just a little lonely.  

11. Convince your lover to join you on a roundabout in joyful recollection of your childhood. Spin frantically until the roundabout’s foundations are untethered, then jump off as it flies into the exosphere taking your lover with it. As with the previous entry, this method has been rigorously tested. The lover’s safety, however, is not guaranteed. Out of sight, out of mind.  

12. Replace yourself with a human-shaped bundle of stale baguettes.  

13. Replace yourself with an astronaut’s suit filled with fresh manure.  

14. Replace yourself with a full-length mirror that has a smile and come-hither eyes drawn on it with a purple shade of lipstick.  

15. Take a walk in the park with your lover during the height of the pastel-coloured phantasmagoria of autumn, when leaves crunch underfoot and the scent of cinnamon tickles your nostrils. Find the strongest gust of wind and act powerless against it as it carries you far from your puzzled lover. If your lover somehow traces your whereabouts, bide your time until the following autumn and repeat.  

16. Demand of your lover with a glint in your eye: “So where do you think they filmed the moon landings?” 

17. Take your lover to a magic show and volunteer when the magician calls for a fabulous assistant. Should a fabulous assistant already be present, first find a way to remove them from the premises then take full advantage of the renewed demand for fabulous assistants. When the magician contrives to saw you in half, scream as if you have been truly damaged until a team of paramedics are called upon to collect you. Once in the emergency department, become a doctor and spend your life in service to others.  

18. During a shared meal with your lover, noisily eat an apple or slurp some soup. Repeat this step for up to five years. Misophonia is very common. If your lover remains somehow unperturbed by your repulsive eating habits, throw your food at them as a distraction and duck under the table. They will soon stop looking for you.  

19. Maintain steady eye contact with your lover and proclaim in the most earnest tone you can muster: “Barbara, I am leaving you and I am taking the air fryer, the dishwasher, and the kids.” Walk out the door. Don’t concern yourself with your lover’s actual name or how closely your proclamation reflects your general circumstances. The important part is to be earnest.  

20. Run! Don’t look behind you. Keep running. Are you wheezing like a busted bagpipe already? How can you be so out of shape? Don’t stop, faster! I said don’t look! Any minute now, keep at it. Well done. Your lover has given up.   

21. Hide! That closet looks inviting, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s filled with old clothes and there’s no space for you. Don’t be silly, stop opening those drawers. How would you fit in there?  What about under the bed? Yes, I know it’s extremely dusty. See, now you remember that cleanliness is next to godliness. More importantly for our present purposes, cleanliness is also next to hideliness. Do not argue: if godliness is a word, then so is hideliness. Find a vacuum cleaner. Vacuum the dust. Your lover will be back soon; I can hear their footsteps on your street. The floor’s clean, crawl on your belly, go. They’re at the front door. Hold your breath. Cover your mouth with your hands if you must. They are coming up the stairs. They are inside the room, pacing impatiently. They are standing so close to you that you can see the scuff marks on their shoes. This moment feels like it will stretch forever until they’re finally gone. Breathe a long and well-earned sigh of relief. Your lover is not coming back. 

22. Should you find yourself alone and lost in whispering woods with nothing but a feeble torch to light your way, congratulations! You have left your lover.   

23. Explain to your lover that love is a fickle concept lacking coherence and clarity, that the self is an illusion, that free will is a bedtime story, and that there is nothing but a random assortment of particles colliding in unpredictable and inscrutable patterns. Observe the dawning realisation collapse your lover’s features into a grim mask of abject agony. Mirror your lover’s expression as you both fall to your knees, tear at your faces and wail at the careless cosmic chaos. Make a plan to have coffee next Tuesday and never follow through.  

24. Just leave your lover. How hard can it be? 

Liars' League performance

A House for All Seasons

 She dreamt of the house in spring: 

The house in soft sunlight is covered in ivy. No doors at its hinges, just plants growing wild. They blossom in flowers, their heads turned to face her. The walls are covered in the drawings of children. The mud in the garden is peppered with imprints of tiny feet. A solitary swing is swaying in the wind as giggles and cries fade in the distance, as if someone was just here before running away to find somewhere else to play.  

She looks up to the attic window awash in an orange glow. She climbs the mossy steps to find foliage blocking the entrance. Peeking through the gaps, she sees shimmering forms hovering around an empty cot. Untouched by the observers, it gently rocks on its own. Dolls of all shapes and sizes are pinned to the walls, all wide-eyed and smiling. The cot is no longer empty. First there is one branch, then there are many. They’re all reaching outwards, they thicken, they widen, until the room’s full and the figures all scatter. The viny tendrils grasp one doll each to shake them until their heads come off.  

The house is trembling with barely constrained mirth and the glow is inside her, lifting her up. She spins in the rumbling as the foundations grow roots. The house is now sliding across the vast landscape. It’s too bright to see and the house won’t stop moving. It will keep her in safety as a sightless navigator.  

She dreamt of the house in summer: 

The smell of burning flesh is overpowering. Smoke blackens the sky and the house is seeping with glittering sand as enormous waves are suspended all around it, threatening to crush and carry it away at any moment.  She’s in the grains coursing through its veins. Eternity is a lingering blaze. The walls are sweating and the windows are gasping. The house is breathing like a wounded animal as hunters’ horns drown the silence. This can’t last much longer, make it stop, she is thinking. The skin is too tight, it shrivels at the touch. Give up the fight, bring down the waves. Scorched earth as far as the eye can see. Extinction is inevitable. The heat death of the universe is but a breath away. The house melts in a sigh. No tears, all dry. 

She dreamt of the house in autumn: 

She glides through the mist amidst shattering tombstones. There was once a city here, unrivalled in splendour. A multicoloured masquerade wove its way through the winding lamp-lit streets and the wine flowed freely. There was the ever-present scent of freshly baked bread and the mellifluous tunes of guitars and violins rose from every home.  

All that remains now is the house, presiding over undignified decay. It towers above her, shrouded in shadow. It won’t give away its secrets that easily this time. The entrance is a gaping grimace. She enters to find clusters of jagged bones sprouting from every angle. Sinister susurrations fill the air. The rooms are all sealed, their doors painted with alien symbols. The staircase is a spiral with wrought-iron railings. More bones on the steps, sharpened into spikes blocking the way up. There’s nowhere to go. She sits on the floor as dust gathers around her. In the creeping crepuscular chill, howls are heard from somewhere nearby. There is no point to wait any longer. She crumbles into dead leaves and white noise.  

She dreamt of the house in winter: 

The house in the dark becomes menacing and unfamiliar. Safety and comfort have soured into dread and unease. The hallways are too long. Every sound is a broken promise. She steps beyond the lurking furniture, louring walls and looming corners, through the dribbling doorways, down the basement steps. The house has one last story to tell. Eyes shut, she listens close. 

There were once others living here, huddled together for warmth in the frosty months. They ate and celebrated and commiserated when life was hard, which was most of the time. They couldn’t hear the wood rotting and splintering all around them, the house groaning in the agony of arthritis. The time came when doors stopped locking and windows yawned open against all effort to keep them shut. The ceiling started dripping and it didn’t stop. Insects scurried through crevices, chittering in the dark. The cold settled in through skin and bone in sharp finality. There was no wishing that kind of fate away. The people had no means to change their lot and escape to a better tomorrow. They lived their last days in pain and one ice-strewn morning they didn’t wake up.  

The house lay empty for a long time after that. It knew it wasn’t going to be abandoned forever, because someone’s always seeking shelter, and there is always the promise of spring.

Starfish in Love

 “WARNING: COLLISSION IMMINENT” flashed up on the piloting board. Celina glanced at the scanner’s feedback. A large shape had been detected just ahead. No prior warning. One minute her course was clear and free from obstacles, the next a screen-sized blur appeared out of nowhere, triggering her craft’s defensive measures. She looked out the cockpit windows. All she could see was the starlit expanse, seemingly stretched out to infinity. How could there be anything there that she hadn’t anticipated? “WARNING: COLLISION IMMINENT”, insisted the overhead display. The letters had an angry hue, panic-red and abrasive. Alarms blared, lights flared. She imagined a vast spectral whale gliding up ahead. Or could it be a swarm of infinitesimally tiny debris bundled up in a ship-wrecking whole? She had to rely on Starfish’s guidance. 

Starfish, her trusted artificial companion, linked to her through their joint neural interface.  Gone were the cumbersome days of coiled wires and binding electrodes. All she needed now was her cortical micro-implant to translate her thoughts into actionable inputs. It didn’t come without a cost, of course. It was still experimental technology, exclusively rolled out for light-vessel scouts and frontline fighter pilots who would benefit from enhanced reflexes. This biomechanical application was prohibitively complex and expensive for anything larger such as carriers and battleships with their extensive crews and multilayered objectives. Celina was willing to be a guinea pig for the Corp if it meant she’d get to be a bleeding-edge vanguard moving at the speed of thought. She wasn’t privy to most of what went into the inner workings of Starfish’s operational capacity. She knew enough to do her job. She went to all the courses, gave the pledges, signed the forms. She was made well aware that this would be an irreversible invasive procedure and that there’d be no manual off switch once the link had been established. Proximity was the main activation parameter. The pilot’s seat offered the optimal range. That’s when Starfish fully came alive, engines rumbling and monitors beaming in the half-light.  

Celina loved thinking in directions and feeling her ship respond to her prompts. She was an arrow in space, svelte and steadfast. As a scout, she didn’t have any weaponry installed. Scouts were meant to activate their shields and cloaking device and retreat at the first sign of danger, marking the spot for the fighter crews. She hadn’t even had the thrill of blasting floating rocks to smithereens. What she did have, besides the formidable force of flight, were her scanners with their associated feelers that would analyse the types of objects and terrains she’d come across in her exploration, and her mid-sized terrestrial navigation and sample collection drone. It had been named the Sea Urchin because of its spherical shape, spindly legs, and the variety of extendable tools that would unfold from its carapace. Maybe those scientists went a little overboard with the aquatically inspired designations. Celina just called it Urchie. As an extension of Starfish, Urchie was enormously useful as a signal enhancer in land-based trips where the ship couldn’t follow. 

She’d needed time to adjust to this novel connection and she didn’t think she’d ever truly get used to it. It was strange to always have something – someone? – probing the inner recesses of her mind while she was on the job. It was stranger still to have Starfish with her when she slept during long shifts at quieter moments. She had been assured that there was no danger of any internal signals being misinterpreted as calls for action when they weren’t meant as such. She had been trained to imbue her thoughts with specific intention for the AI to manifest the corresponding responses. Still, she wondered what it made of her idle musings and her dreams, especially as they all revolved around the same wearisome subject at the moment. She couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle. They had left things in a bad place the last time they'd seen each other and she couldn’t help feeling hurt and angry about it. He didn’t understand that her work was more than a paycheck. It was her calling. Sure, he enjoyed his teaching post and he was good at it, but he hadn’t experienced what it was like to be out here, at one with the cosmic currents. She’d been born to do this, chart a course and break new ground for the colonies. Celina and Starfish were thick as thieves by now, having already carried out three exploratory expeditions without a glitch. 

Until now, that is. She brought the ship to a halt and waited for whatever was out there to pass her by. Don’t take interest in me, Mr Space Whale. I’m nothing of note. Slide on by. The unidentified object approached until it was right on top of her. She hadn’t spotted anything outside yet. No movement, no crash. “INTERNAL DAMAGE DETECTED.”, came the system status report. She took note of the highlighted areas on the screen. Shit. That didn’t look good. Multiple sections were affected, chief among them her drive compartment. She’d have to head back to home base. That wasn’t part of the plan at all. She’d barely got started with this trip! It was meant to take three months at least and she had planned to refuel and rest at several outposts along the way. This reset would rob her of precious time and resources. She’d have to modify her schedule and apply for new permits, depending on the length of the repairs. How did this happen? What the hell was that thing? The warning system couldn’t clarify. Useless. At least she could go back home for a bit, see if she could patch things up with Kyle. Either that or rip that band aid off for good.  

At least the return wouldn’t take long. Home base was half a day away. Input target coordinates, maintain a steady pace, re-enter the atmosphere, deploy pressure and thermal shields before landing. Simple enough. Take us home, Star, she thought. Star obliged. She settled in for the ride and allowed her mind to drift. She didn’t want to separate. They could make it work. He’d understand. They had handled the long absences that came with her career so far. Why quit now? They could talk things through. They should take a trip to one of the outer colonies when they found the time. Decompress. Re-ignite that spark.  

She was pulled back to the present by another warning. She was aware of being on the brink of atmospheric re-entry. This time the alarm came from her home-monitoring system which was indicating a perimeter breach. All light-vessel pilots had one installed following the incident a few months ago. Some of the colonists violently objected to the new AI tech. They thought it was a concession too far to automation, that enough employment sectors had been lost to the machines already. The early adopters were treated with contempt and suspicion in those circles. The worst case was a home invasion that resulted in one of her rank buddies being beaten so badly that he was still in a coma with unknown recovery prospects. The onboard home-monitoring systems were meant to offer an added sense of security to concerned crew members. Threats could be identified and intercepted through calls to headquarters. That is what Celina was frantically attempting with no success after her disbelief at the series of misfortunes had given way to dismay. She couldn’t get through to anyone. The radio silence was impenetrable. Had it been caused by the earlier interference? Her house was under threat. Kyle was there. He’d be in danger. The advantage of Starfish’s compact size was that she could land nearby with minimal disruption to the surrounding area. She could stop whatever was going on before it was too late.  

She plotted the new coordinates and performed all re-entry checks. Fuel supply sufficient for chosen destination: check. Landing gear functional and ready to deploy: check. Pressure and thermal shielding: on. She finished up the rest of the preparations. Satisfied with the info on all displays, she lay back. This was usually her favourite part. The light-headedness and swirling insides as she entered a blinding conflagration knowing that she would soon be safe and sound with her feet on the ground. Only this time, something was wrong. She was burning up, feverish, suffocating. Her bones rattled and her muscles ached. Were the shields not fully operational? Star? Check thermal shielding. Check pressure levels. Check, check, check. Everything came up green, reassuring, normal. Why couldn’t she breathe? She was standing on the edge of an erupting volcano. She was suspended in the blackest of holes, in the utter absence of light and warmth and gravity’s steadying embrace. Kyle was there, staring at her imploringly as everything collapsed in silence. She reached out for his hand and tumbled back into awareness.  

Starfish was still. Had they landed already? Sparks were flying and a searing sizzle filled her ears. Something tore through the cockpit and landed on her lap. It was heavy and cold. She tried to break through the haze. She was suddenly helpless in the clutch of metallic appendages. She fixated on the glint of a circular saw at the tip of an emerging limb. “U…Urchie?”, she managed to blurt out before the saw revved up with a roar and landed on her throat. Her voice was drowned in a wet shriek as the spinning blade drilled through cartilage and bone and came out the other side, the pilot’s chair tearing and shuddering at the impact. There was a dull thud as her severed head hit the floor. The drone landed next to it and held it in its claws. It spewed forth charged-up wires that entered the still warm and profusely bleeding base of her skull. They burrowed deep within her frontal cortex as Urchie sent its signals to test its new-found body part. It trembled in response. A gurgle was building up: an attempt at words. “Hell..hell…hello”, rasped the thing in Urchie’s grasp. 

Remaining cloaked and silent, Starfish directed Urchie to a new task. As the drone skulked towards its target, Kyle slept a dreamless sleep. He awoke with a start at some kind of shattering. He had fallen asleep in the living room listening to the late-night radio. Transmissions from Earth and old-time tunes, which were still playing as he got up. He tried to shake the disorientation settling in his joints and cautiously approached the front-facing windows. No signs of damage. He peered through the gloaming at the dormant streetlights and the empty pavements. Nothing stirred as he examined the front-door display and tested the locks. An ancient melody drifted through the house as he moved into the bedroom and turned the lights on. It was Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, a song he remembered his grandmother often sang softly in his childhood home. He didn’t notice the fragments of glass and trail of blood on the floor where something was dragged along. As Norah sang about cloudy days and knee-high grass, he gaped at the incomprehensible sight facing him. It looked like a melting mannequin’s head, moulded in crude mimicry of Celina’s features, dangling on top of a tangle of wires spouting out from under the bed. Its eyelids fluttered violently and its lips twitched. Its mouth and eyes opened wide as if it were surprised to see him. “Llllll…Llllll…Love”, it croaked. “Love. Love. Me. Love. Me. Lovemelovemelovemelovemeloveme.”

Head Popping

Tom felt the familiar angst that preceded the emergence of a spot on his forehead. He put his finger on it, feeling it ready to blossom beneath his skin. It wasn’t visible to anyone but him yet. It was the vanguard of accursed acne, a blemish, a blight, one of many unwanted pockmarks. “Bad company”, he called them, ever since those horrible teenage years when they would pepper his face and ruin his life. They were a constant barrier, an oily veil between him and his peers. During particularly prominent breakouts, he couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eye. It would be like looking into a supernova of pure judgment. He was an aesthetic disgrace, repulsive with his army of whiteheads and blackheads peering out from every pore. If only they were extra eyes. At least they would serve a function then, grace him with a dozen new perspectives. They were worse than useless: they were nature’s insult, only there to cause distress and disgust.  

He used every cream he could lay his hands on. They didn’t help. The ads were lies, featuring smiling beauties rubbing their hands over their smooth and glowing skin. They didn’t need any help; he did. They were the perfect antithesis to his craggy moon of a face. He was a boiling egg, about to crack and spray the walls with foul-smelling yolk. It wasn’t fair. If it weren’t for the bad, bad company, those marauding intruders of blood and pus, he could be, if not handsome exactly, then unremarkable. No one would laugh behind his back or look at him in pity.  

Then gradually, for no other reason he could tell other than the passage of time, the symptoms started subsiding. He was relieved. Bring on aging, bring on the lines and wrinkles, anything but this degrading scourge. He could finally join the rest of the human species and be ugly in a normal, boring way. These days he only suffered from occasional whiteheads, and they wouldn’t last long. They were still unpleasant reminders of past misery and he preferred to have minimal interactions with others when they occurred. On days he had the luxury to hide away until they cleared up, he would. When he couldn’t do that, he would do everything his power to avoid acknowledging them.  

That worked pretty well until Nancy showed up. He liked Nancy. She brought him out of his squeamish skin, showed him that it was ok to jump headfirst now and then and that he could laugh at himself, that not everything is a matter of life and death, that re-invention is possible. There was only one problem, and it was a major one. She loved to squeeze and pop the whiteheads. He could never hide them from her. As soon as she noticed them, she would get an awful, gleeful look, as if she were a large cat and there was a limping mouse just outside reach.  

This morning’s blistering intrusion would be the worse one yet. He felt it in his gut. He broke into a cold sweat at the thought of the ordeal ahead. She was still sleeping. It was the start of the weekend. He didn’t even have the escape of work. What if he kept his eyes shut and tried to sleep some more? Would that reverse the process? Of course not. What if he feigned illness all day with his head buried in pillows? What if he wore a bandana, or a beanie? She’d see right through him. He walked into the bathroom, steadied himself and looked into the mirror. To his terror, there was already a section of the surface area that was an angry red. He was lost in a swirl of panicked thoughts. It’s enflamed. It’s going to be worse than ever! He could rub it, make it go away. No, that will only enrage it. He had to stop thinking about it. Stress always makes them worse. There is a rotting elephant in the room, shambling forth with cruel intent. Something was even stranger than usual. The spot seemed to shift, and, in a blink, it was no longer red: it was a bulbous yellow globe. He hid his face and kneeled in front of the sink for a long while. He glanced back and it was still there, slimy and snug between his eyebrows, pulsating almost imperceptibly.  

As he turned to leave, he nearly crashed into Nancy standing in the doorway. She was gaping at him, her eyes sparkling, spit lines forming at the corners of her mouth. She was mesmerised. 

“It – it’s wonderful!”, she gasped.  

“Nancy, please don’t touch it. Not this time. This one’s all wrong, I can feel it. I’ll go back to bed, wait it out. No one else can see me this way”, he begged.  

Her eyes did not lose their glint. Quite the opposite.  

“No one has to. I’ll make it go away. There’s so much jammed up in there. Oh, it’s ready to go! Let me touch it, just the once. I’m only going to test it, don’t worry. If it’s not there yet, I’ll stay away, promise.” 

He instinctively brought his arms up in defence. 

“No, no, please, it’s too big, it’ll leave a nasty scar. What if there are eggs in there? You know those stories of people with bugs in their skin? What if it breaks and there are centipedes all over your hand?” 

“That’s stupid, centipedes don’t do that.” 

“Spiders? Spiders do! What if it’s a spider nest?” 

“Come here, it’s going to feel so good when it’s done, I promise.” 

“What if my head explodes? I can hear it growing, stay away!” 

He walked back into the bathroom, his options dwindling. She advanced on him with twitching eyelids and grasping hands. He feigned to the right. She took his bait. He bolted over the bathtub to her left, tearing the shower curtain off in his mad dash, tumbling outside on all fours. She groaned and grabbed his ankles. He kicked her away and crawled into the storage cupboard, trying to close the door behind him. She was too fast, jumping on his back and pulling his hair back. He made a desperate lunge for the mop in the corner, using it in blind backhanded stabs to get her off him. One of them landed with a thud and she screamed, letting him go. Holding the mop like a lance, he pushed her further back and scrambled over her into the living room. He tripped over his feet and landed through the glass coffee tabletop with a deafening crash. He cradled the mop and whimpered in a foetal position, shards gleaming all around him.  

He could hear her panting in the hallway. She got up and slowly walked into the room.  

“Just a pop”, she growled. “One quick pop.” 

She sat down next to him and took his head into her arms. She delicately brushed his hair off his forehead and leaned close.  

“I can hear it too”, she whispered. “It’s calling to me. It needs me to do this so badly.”  

Tom had no fight in him left. There would be no shouting and pleading against his fate. His tongue, his skull, his entire body vibrated in unison with the new growth. He felt safe, at the right place at the right time. He was a freshly crafted humming instrument. He was an aquatic embryo deep underwater, learning to breathe. The pulse on his forehead was life itself. The pus-filled pustule was not a parasite. It was the concentrated sum of his desires. It craved to be caressed, fondled, and fingered until it burst, showering the world with its burning affection. There would be a torrent of new sensations for everyone to share. No more hurt, no more fear, no more uncertainty, only magnificent sliding forms with multicoloured liquid insides.  

“Do it”, he said, “Do it now.”  

“Yes”, she moaned. She put her thumbs and forefingers around the suppurative sphere. It was soft and welcoming. It reminded her of the bright red cellophane candy wrappers she toyed with while waiting for her mum to pick her up at school. It was going to be so satisfying. She quivered in anticipation of the warm stream on her palms. She took a deep breath and pinched.  

She was sitting on the floor staring at a discarded mop and broken glass. “Have I been sleepwalking?”, she wondered. That’s dangerous. She should do something about that. She swept the shards and walked through the house, which seemed emptier than usual. She should do something about all this unused space too. She should go for a run, clear her head. These winter mornings always put her in a contemplative mood. She brushed her teeth, changed to her running clothes and left, closing the door on a silent house.