Fiction War: Nothing was Forever

Note: This is the second of back-to-back weekends with flash fiction writing contests. This one I had three days to write a 1,000 word story with the prompt of "Seven Years." It's pretty open-ended on how that prompt is used. I am happier with how this story turned out, but unlike NYC Midnight contest where you compete in heats and there are multiple rounds, this one you compete against everyone with the Top 15 getting published.

Forever in the form of the night sky stretched out beyond the glass of the observatory’s ceiling, and if it weren’t for the persistent pounding, Simon would have snickered at that thought. Forever. Simon had spent his entire life proving such notions as forever silly. Some men dreamt of the horizon, but Simon grabbed his measuring tape and figured out how far away it was.

Of course, his DNA was pre-engineered for scientific pursuits, just as the wretches pounding on the exterior walls were each pre-designed for specific menial tasks. The DNA engineering program was an unqualified success of the International Senate. The program measured how many laborers were needed to mine, to farm, to clean, to lift, and so on, and bred exactly that many. The precision and efficiency was admirable, but the DNA program paled to Simon’s accomplishment. His work was going to save the earth. Not for everyone, hence the pounding, but for those that mattered.

“Why must they do that?” Margaret, his assistant, asked. She adjusted her spectacles, before returning her attention to her tablet’s glowing screen.

“The wretches are inconsequential, and I am sure they will lose interest before long.”

“Perhaps we should have activated the system from Atlantis as the senate suggested. We’d be safe from these simpletons under the water.”

Simon shot her an irritated glance. A scientist didn’t conceive the most ambitious endeavor in human history and then hide when it launched.

“Margaret, we are safe. Once the system is activated, it’s going to be hopelessly dark out there, and the stupid wretches will disperse in panic. Once I am satisfied everything is operational, we’ll take the transport to Atlantis.”

Stars dotted the expanse beyond the glass, and Simon thought of his grandfather, who once handed Simon a sparkler on a hot summer night. He said it was the date of a once special day, one where people had celebrated with fireworks. They didn’t have fireworks, but his grandfather had an old box of sparklers. They were primitive sources of enjoyment, but Simon cherished the symbolism of the blazing wand, whose life was short and quickly choked out when the flame reached the end of the fuse. Simon remembered signing his name in the dark ether with the sparkler and his disappointment when the letters faded into nothing. 

The sparklers had been Simon’s inspiration when he stood before the senate and proposed extinguishing the sun for a period of seven years. Seven years being the measured time for the Earth to expel the man-made toxins from the atmosphere, and seven years being the time Simon had calculated would rejuvenate a dying sun’s fuel to continue its vital role for another million years. Some of the senate had laughed at him. They weren’t laughing now. No, they worshipped him, and those that had laughed, just happened to not be on the list of citizens assigned to Atlantis.

“How long, Margaret?”

“Two minutes.”

Simon admired the moon, shining blue and bright. In two minutes, it would go dark. The light it reflected strangled by Simon’s revolutionary technology orbiting the sun some 92.96 million miles away. Once his system took over, it would also get very cold, but Simon countered that with his machines, which transferred power from the sun to machines near the Earth’s core.  That would heat the planet enough to keep it from completely dying.

Something huge appeared on the glass of the observatory’s ceiling. The being was silhouetted in the moonlight, and Margaret screamed, having never seen a Gargola, the race engineered with ginormous features and extraordinary strength to carry out grueling manual labor. This one had immense forearms connected to bulbous hands. One hand clutched a gnarled tool that resembled a giant pickaxe.

“Get down from there, you brute,” Simon shouted. He couldn’t fathom what possessed these wretches to protest so much. They were programed to accept dire fates – long, punishing days of labor. The gift of the approaching death was a mercy. “We’ve work to complete. Go on home.”

“WE LIVE!” The Gargola’s voice boomed. More wretches appeared on the glass above, many engineered with DNA from other species to make them useful in various scientific and economic ventures. Reacting to the Gargola’s pronouncement, they shouted and howled and hooted and squawked in approval. “WE LIVE!”

Did they not know who he was? Compared to their simple minds and rudimentary skill sets, he was a god. Hell, compared to anyone else to have graced this planet, he was a god. The power of the sun was in his hands.

“How long?”

“One minute,” Margaret said, her voice trailing off. She was edging ever closer to the door that led to the transport.

Wham! The Gargola slammed the ax into the glass, which rumbled like a starving belly before a feast.

“You idiots!” Simon yelled. He had conquered the International Senate and squashed all that opposed him. He had even silenced his partner, his one-time friend, who had questioned Simon’s methods and his conclusions. That had been a brutal business, a primal reaction on Simon’s part, but he could not have his calculations questioned. His system worked.

Time and time again, the Gargola brought the axe down until the glass cracked, and three whacks after that, it shattered. Margaret fainted as the wretches plummeted dozens of feet to the floor.

Everything went dark then, except for the screen of Margaret’s tablet still gripped in her hand, and a sudden chill settled over the room, the sort of chill that pierced through the skin and buried itself deep into the bones.

There was breathing and grunts and eyes that glowed red. This was ridiculous. Did they not understand? The sun was extinguished. Soon they would all die. What was the point they were trying to make?

“I am God!” Simon screamed into the void – the endless void, and he did snicker at that absurdity. Nothing was endless. Nothing was forever.

“WE LIVE!” The wretches replied before the slaughter.

NYC Midnight: The Good with the Bad

Note: This is the first round entry for NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest. I had the weekend to write a 1,000 word fiction story. I was placed in Group 12: Genre - Fantasy. Location - A dam. Item - A wool blanket. After scoring on one of two stories last year (5 points), I set the goal to score on both this year, and hopefully well enough to advance. Sadly, time goblins assaulted me this weekend, and this story isn't what I hoped it would be. Instead it's poorly paced, awkwardly worded, and flawed in many minor and major ways. Unless the rest of the group failed to submit, wrote in some sort of personalized Esperanto, and/or simply didn't understand what they were signing up for, this one will be a big zero for me.

 

Brief Synopsis: When Henry turns on Nora, he dooms a new world to repeat the struggle between good and evil of the old world. The difference is that Nora is the Dragon.

 

The muzzle pressed against the back of her neck, sending goosebumps down her spine and across her limbs like falling dominos. Nora’s concentration had been on the knife with the golden hilt, so she mistook the sensation for a nervous reaction to the idea of cutting herself. When Henry spoke, she understood that he had his revolver drawn on her.
 

"I have to stop you, Dragon.”
 

“Story as old as time! A sneaky honkey crossing a well-meaning negro. Burn that cracker!” Her Nana’s voice shouted, dominating all the other voices muttering in her head. Nana had been a proper lady, but she had always reverted to her poor southern roots when angry. Nana died before the devastation.
 

 “What are you doing, man?” Her father’s voice bounced off the walls of the subterranean cavern hidden below the dam. Nora remained kneeling on the wool blanket before the pool.
 

“This isn’t the way,” the witch added.
 

“Hush. Nora, let’s get you away from that water. We can’t have your blood dripping into it. The witch was right. We were all drawn here for a reason. My destiny was to stop you. This restless wanderer will finally have his peace.”
 

Nora’s face reflected in the pool. Her thinness startled her almost as much as seeing her bald head. They shaved all their heads days earlier due to the lice. The reflection changed to the haggard guise of the old man from her dreams. Part of him was her now.
 

“Use the blanket!” The reflection said for only her ears.
 

Placing her feet on either side of the blanket, she shoved back into Henry as she pulled the blanket forward. Henry grunted and lost his balance as the blanket was jerked from under his feet. Diving forward into the pool, her splash coincided with a blast that made her ears ring. She would have sworn the pool was only inches deep, but she plummeted downward with no bottom apparent. Using the witch’s knife, she opened a wide gash in her palm. Blood swirled in the still pool, turning a fiery orange before her eyes. Her blood – the Dragon’s blood – would bring life back to the dying world, as the witch had proclaimed.
 

Her father’s hand clasped onto her arm, yanking her up. She emerged to chaos tinted the strange green from the glowing orbs the witch had produced earlier. A blinding white flash warned of another blast, and when the flash receded, Nora was greeted by the witch, who now had a third bleeding eye centered on her forehead. Nora made to scream, but flames burst out of her mouth instead of sound. The walls shuddered, exposed to heat and light like never before. Then Nora passed out.

***

She woke in her father’s arms before the ladder at the top of the stone stairway. The wood rungs led hundreds of feet up to a secret hatch in the dam’s interior.
 

“Where’s Henry?”
 

“Up ahead somewhere. I think you scared him.” Her father laughed, but she could tell she had scared him, too. “We have to get moving. Can you climb?"

She nodded, but the first rung she grabbed squished like a sponge and then disintegrated.
 

"It’s rotted. How can that be?”
 

“Time moves differently down here, and the magic is leaving. I can feel it.”

***

She didn’t know if minutes or hours passed before they reached the open hatch at the top of the ladder, but she was grateful for the glow from the emergency lights of the dam when they got there.

The old machines were buzzing and lights were beeping in foreboding rhythms. Before she could consider those implications, a bullet screamed by her ear, burying itself in the concrete feet away. She rolled away, rose to her knees, and prepared to spew forth a death spiral of flames, but her father’s hand clasped over her mouth.
 

“The walls can’t take another blast, honey. Besides, he’s on the move and out of bullets. I’ve been keeping count.”

They ran toward the metal staircase. As they climbed, they heard Henry singing from above.
 

“Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.”

"What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
 

“He thinks he’s the devil’s tool.”
 

She also noticed a humming growing persistently louder.
 

“What is that?”
 

“Water. A lot of it.”
 

“That’s crazy. We’re in a desert.”
 

“It’s a different world now.”
 

When they burst into the sunshine, her father’s suspicions were confirmed. Water had burst through the dam wall below, and on the opposite side, a great river was nearing the top of the wall.
 

"Hurry, it’s coming down!”
 

The dam walls buckled, groaning like an old giant trying to stand after sitting for a century. The dam collapsed in a horrific rush of water and power, as they reached the safety of the surrounding cliff.

***

The red sandstone that had dominated the canyon when they arrived was gone, buried beneath lush greenery.
 

“You did this.” Her father had tears in his eyes. “The Dragon’s blood brought life back to this world.”
 

“Look.” She pointed to the opposite bank. Henry, in his ragged black suit with a white shirt and thin black tie, stood with his hands in his pockets.
 

“Ah, well. This world will just be like the last.” Her father put his arm around her. “It has its good and bad. Henry is the bad, but he can’t defeat the Dragon. The Dragon is good”
 

She smiled, wanting to believe him. The witch had said as much when Nora accepted the gift, but she was starting to believe the witch hadn’t told them everything. The voices in her head, many of them saying terrible things, reached a crescendo. Henry waved before turning away and disappearing into the brush.
 

It was a new world. There was good. There was bad. And there was the Dragon.
 

“Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad,” she whispered.

 

 

Red’s Book Review: Me, the Mob, and the Music by Tommy James (with Martin Fitzpatrick)

This was a quick 220-page read, written pretty much chronologically starting with Tommy’s musical roots at about 10-years of age while living in Monroe, Wis. The allure for me, as I’ve written before, is that Tommy James and the Shondells were probably my first favorite band. Starting as early as pre-school, I’d put his greatest hits album on our Fischer Price turntable and listen to it while playing pretty much every day.

Considering that early interest, I have to admit to knowing little or nothing about Tommy James or any of the Shondells before reading this book, other than some vague memories of seeing him be one of the pitch men on one of those late-night Time Life album infomercials several years back during my journalism/drinking days.

This is an interesting look at the 60s music scene through the eyes of a guy that I guess probably fits on the second-tier of stars from that era. It’s hard for me to judge that because I do have such fond nostalgia for his music, and I sensed he might be overstating the success of his songs some in the book. He’s not on the level of the Beatles, Stones, or Beach Boys. He’s below that, but I am not sure where he fits in the lexicon of popular music. Maybe Snake could assess that better.

Because Tommy was instrumental in almost all parts of his career, you get a good peek into the business aspects of the music industry during that era, and also the technical aspects of making a record. Looming over the story is Roulette Record’s kingpin Morris Levy, who ran the label like a crime family because, well, it was a crime family. It’s an interesting relationship between Tommy and Morris. It’s almost father-son like in many aspects, just that the father is skimming money from the son to the tune of about $40 million over a five-year period and the father has a history of having people killed. Just an FYI, Morris and other members of his “family” became the inspiration for key characters in the Sopranos.

If you dig that musical era, I’d recommend this one. It’s filled with interesting behind-the-scenes stories, and it has a very easy-to-read style.  

Red’s Book Review: Rose Madder by Stephen King

I figured I’d churn out short reviews of books as I finish them. I sped through the last 100 pages of this on Tuesday, and generally speaking, I doubt I’ll give it much more thought after writing this. It’s a Stephen King book. Not one of his best, and perhaps one of his worst in the sense that it seems like he is following a template, making sure to hit all the obligatory Stephen King plot points and gory details. He does that, so if you haven’t read anything else by King, it probably seems super original.

I did like the idea of entering a painting and interacting with the people within. As usual, there were slight references to his other books including the Dark Tower series and Misery. It satisfies on the surface level by punishing the bad guy, and rewards the good guy. It also includes the usual King epilogue where it seems the good guy has lingering issues and makes you wonder about the future, but that epilogue went on too long. This was one where I was ready for it to be over when the bad guy was vanquished.

I want to finish this off by taking a tangent. Lately I’ve been thinking about coincidences and connections. The root of which probably starts with the nonfiction piece I wrote “Simulating Success,” and continued with Snake’s comments and my response. Anyways, I always find it interesting when a book I am reading somehow connects to something I either just read or plan on reading. You know, like there's some magic in it speaking specifically to me.  In this book, there is a reference to the Tommy James and the Shondells song – Hanky Panky. Now, King almost always includes popular music references in his stories, and more often than not, he includes songs from the 50s and 60s, as those were the songs he most likely listened to growing up. It’s coincidental here because I knew that I was going to read, Me, the Mob, and the Music, next, which is the autobiography of Tommy James. Also coincidentally, James mentions early in his book that his family goes to live near his Aunt Gert (probably short for Gertrude) in Michigan. This was funny because there is a character in Rose Madder named Gertrude, who goes by the name of Gert. If the name had been Bill or Jenny, I probably wouldn't have made a connection, but Gert just isn't one you hear very often these days. Does any of this matter or mean anything? No, probably not, but it’s an interesting idea – maybe one for a story where someone discovers some sort of clues or solves some sort of problem by connecting seemingly meaningless dots in random pieces of literature.