The Inevitability of Earth

By David Nickle

When Michael was just a kid, Uncle Evan made a movie of Grandfather. He used an old eight-millimeter camera that wound up with a key and had three narrow lenses that rotated on a plate. Michael remembered holding the camera. It was supposedly light-weight for its time, but in his six-year-old hands, it seemed like it weighed a ton. Uncle Evan had told him to be careful with it; the camera was a precision instrument, and it needed to be in good working order if the movie was going to be of any scientific value.

The movie was of Grandfather doing his flying thing — flapping his arms with a slow grace as he shut his eyes and turned his long, beak-ish nose to the sky. Most of the movie was only that: a thin, middle-aged man, flapping his arms, shutting his eyes, craning his neck. Grandfather’s apparent foolishness was compounded by the face of young Michael flashing in front of the lens; blocking the scene, and waving like an idiot himself. Then the camera moved, and Michael was gone —

And so was Grandfather.

The Looking Men

by James R. Kristofic

(also publishes as Jim Bihyeh)

Hiram knew his father, Jonah, could not refuse the Looking Men on the night they asked him to help kill William the Reeve.

Jonah had been the first villager of Corfe to speak to the captain of the Looking Men, the one called Sir Ethan the Red Greaves, after the Looking Men and their tall war-horses arrived by the main road to examine the first deaths from the Black Hand. The wandering friar of Corfe, a red-faced, balding man who had summoned the Looking Men, rode behind them on a bony mare. The friar had briefly addressed the free peasants who’d gathered at the mill and promised he would explain all in the morning after the Looking Men had rested. Hiram knew what everyone else knew about The Looking Men: they served the Church and bore scars from the Crusades to the Holy Land. But they were also knights loyal to their King Henry of England, so they could be trusted. And the friar promised they had come for the good of Corfe.

But the friar had died that night when the Black Hand had laid itself upon him.

Camp

by Jeremy C. Shipp

My muscles tighten. My teeth clench. My irritable bowel is seriously pissed off.

I’m no good at sitting.

“Hold it together,” my dad tells me. Not physically here, of course, but why would that stop him? Hold it together—that’s easy for him to say. He’s made of steel bars and rivets and bolts. Me, I’m held together with Elmer’s glue and pushpins and chewing gum.

Memories vibrate. They fall and crack open.

The Man Who Sank

by Colin P. Davies

Niall is the worst of us. He’s meaner, more vicious, more crazy. He hates everyone: Jamaicans, Asians, queers…. Chances are he hates me as well. His Dad had been a violent waste-of-DNA and Niall intends to make us all pay. He doesn’t care about anything…and yet, only last Saturday, when we met up as usual, I found him anxious and attentive to every stranger on the street.

For half an hour, we’d been hanging around the launderette, hoping to spy at least one of the Jones twins, in their short skirts and ankle boots. Rain came down fine and bright in the orange warmth of the street lamps, and I felt colder than natural for an August evening. Jimmy sat on the bus stop bench, drinking. The canopy sheltered him from all but the strongest gusts. Somehow he’d got hold of a bottle of Woodpecker. Niall tried to light a cigarette in the open doorway of the launderette. He mumbled, “Shit, shit…” as he battled with the wind. Then he turned suddenly and gazed up the street.

“What’s your problem?” I said.

He cupped his hand around the lighter. “The wind….”

“No…you seem edgy. Are you expecting someone?”

“Maybe…I don’t know.”

Old Ways

by Dan Dworkin

The man in the doorway was backlit by the low hanging sun, and when he told her about Ray it didn’t seem real.

“Dead?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

Fatima gripped the front of her blouse and twisted. She steadied herself against the door jam, and when she spoke it was a whisper, “Imkonsiz…”

The detective frowned, as he was not learned in Uzbek, “I’m sorry?”

“I say, is impossible.”

Everything about her was fragile and too thin — her wrists, her neck, even the skin on her face, which was translucent in the morning light.

“I wish you were right about that, ma’am.”

Come to My Arms, My Beamish Boy

by Douglas F. Warrick

Most of Cotton’s memories were gone. Like the name of the ship he had served on. Like the name of his commanding officer. His daughters’ names, which husband went with which daughter, which grandchildren came from which marriage, which fiancé held hands with which granddaughter. That had mostly melted away. His head felt like an icebox, like someone had opened the door, maybe just to grab a beer or to check the expiration date on the milk, and let all the cold air out, filled it up with thick stagnant heat. Alzheimer’s was a muggy goddamned country, the airless stomach of a huge beast that takes its sweet time digesting old useless machinery like him.

He could hold Audrey’s hand, like he was doing now, and he could remember her name and he could see the wedding ring he had given her all those years ago, could run his trembling fingers over it and feel its coldness, its sharpness, and for a couple of moments these things were all he needed.

But he couldn’t remember the wedding, not a goddamned thing about it. He’d reach as far as he could into that broken old icebox, strain to stretch a little further and try to find the little details, what did her dress look like? How did she wear her hair? Was she smiling? Was she crying? It was gone. Melted. And he’d panic because he knew it was there, knew that if he could just reach a little further… And he’d look around and realize he wasn’t at home. He was in a hospital bed. And he’d look up at her and try to say, Audrey, I’m scared, dammit, I’m scared and I want to go home! And all he could ever say was, “Audrey… where’s the cat?” or “Audrey… I don’t know…”

And Audrey said, like she always said, “Hush, Cotton.” And he could see himself in her eyes, a useless old man, or not even a man but a reminder of the husband she ought to have. And he could see how tired she was, could see the part of her that wished the whole mess would just end. The part that wanted a period on the end of this awkward run-on sentence, not that he could blame her. It would be a period, too. Not an exclamation point like he’d always kind of wanted in his Navy days, a smile on his face and the devil at his heels, a man’s sort of death. It—no—he would end quietly with a mushy melted head and a single dark period.

The Reign of the Wintergod

by Eugie Foster

The doctors come and ask me questions, but they always ask the _wrong_ questions, so I’m stuck. I can give them the wrong answers or no answer at all. I try to explain, try to teach them what the right question is, but they never listen.

“How are you, today, Carolyn?” they ask. And, “Did you have the nightmares again last night?” And occasionally, “Ready for your medication?” The last question I don’t mind as much. The round blue pills give delicious sleep — sleep without dreams. They just make it harder to sleep without them. But the purple pills, the ones with the jagged edges, they make me numb, detached, and that frightens me.