Short Fiction Break

The Shadow of a Hawk

Click, hiss, click, hiss. The toaster clicks and clutches the cinnamon toast, and the kettle hisses. I warm the pot and find the linen cloth for the tray.

Thud, thud. A tennis ball striking the wall on the old tennis court in the backyard. My son Jacob is practicing his backhand. A dozen or more thuds. I smile. A long rally will make him happy.

Tick, tick. The clock warns me that I have three minutes before I’m due upstairs. My father, Isaac Stephens, retired thespian, is a stickler for punctuality. If you miss your cue, you lose your audience and lose the part. Being late for tea will hardly ruin his career. Not now. But given our common knowledge of how lateness jangles his nerves, any dawdling of mine will be interpreted as a lack of care, a desire to rub his nose in his weakness.

“How are you feeling today, Mr. President?”

Subject 34 ignores my question, continuing to focus on the playing cards in front of him. It’s been four weeks since his file dropped into my inbox. Conversations with 34 are rare, but he has slowly warmed to my presence. Every week I look at body language, eye movement. I study. I observe.

Despite his unwillingness to answer most of my questions, 34 is my favorite patient so far. He’s better than Subject 27, who lumbered around the room yelling, or 7, who took one look at my dark skin and refused to speak to me. Prejudice, it seems, lasts beyond the grave.

I look down at my tablet. It has my name, Dr. Roman Bell, printed at the top along with 34’s initials—D.D.E.—scribbled in the corner. Once the subjects are approved by a psychiatrist, they are moved out of the clinic area and are prepared to go out into the world. They are eventually given new identities, so we call them by their numbers instead of their original names.

I can hear the news blaring from the television in the hallway, reporting the third assassination this week. The government is falling, and this project—Project 1776—is the proposed solution.

“Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, two’s six and six is a dozen.”

Andrew pointed at the cards as he counted. Sarah glared at him across the glass-topped coffee table that separated her armchair from the sofa.

“That’s the third dozen you’ve had!”

“I know.” Andrew leaned back on the sofa and beamed. “I do believe that’s £1.50 you owe me.”

“For now.”

The sky went black, as black as the stealthy double hull of her ship, Tango-19, on this, her last mission.

Commander Meredith Conrad eased her ship over the lip of the small planet, one of a cluster now called The Outer Rim. She had seen much in her sixteen years in space, but had never gotten over the sheer terror of Deep Space darkness. The human spirit, she now knew for certain, needs to see something in the night sky.

She was, at least technically, still mostly human, so she let the thought linger. It may have been no more than the ghost of some ancient memory of the brilliant night sky her ancestors had once known—a wondrous display that held for them nothing but promise, until the day the skies forever turned angry, and the rains began.

The tattoo on his left arm reads, in glaring large letters, RACIST AND PROUD.

The henna on his right is a lotus. It will not stay forever, though today that does not matter. He has had it renewed countless times in the past decade. The delicate design serves as a reminder of the lessons he has learned.

“Inner peace is not everlasting,” says his mentor. “Nor is it to be taken for granted. Many strive to achieve it, but so few hold on to it when they do. It’s easy to let chaos invade you, steer you off your path, drive you away from the door to heaven.”

He nods. These are all words he hears daily, but he savors them nonetheless. The stone floor is cold beneath their thin cushions, made colder by the drafts of wind singing through the canyons just outside the temple. He is bare from the waist up but despite the frost forming over the drops of morning dew, he does not feel the chill. This, too, is the result of found peace.

Karen whistled while she washed the dishes. The day was warm and sunny, and peace reigned at Parkland Drive where she lived alone. She smiled. She hadn’t felt this relaxed since she had become sole inhabitant of her home six months earlier, when she had finally sent away her only son, and her husband, yet on different paths. It had been a traumatic affair, but necessary. Now, she could enjoy early retirement from the healthy life insurance she had recently collected.

She thought about pouring herself another glass of Chardonnay when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

Silence.

A flurry of snow sneaks in while the door is open and, when it’s closed, falls to the doormat at the feet of a slight, balding man in his fifties. He places his brown leather valise on the floor with a dull “clunk,” rubs his hands together and shudders.

From behind the reception desk, William, in his mid-twenties, takes in the scene without moving, a pencil poised above a crossword. The man looks over and gives William a pleasant smile. The young man drops his pencil and hurries out from behind the desk.

“Good evening, good evening! Welcome!”

“Good evening, or rather, very bad evening!”

William forces a laugh. “Indeed.”

She wanted a life of her own. A normal life that couldn’t be compared to anything anyone could imagine. A world where she could feel the ray of sunshine on her face with peace of mind. What happened to her? Why was she in this place of distress and torment? She used to be full of joy and wild dreams now she was an outcast forced into this world. Trapped with no way out.

Her mind raced to a time where she had it all figured out.

“Caroline!”

“Day dreaming again?”

Friday morning, Melinda Frey had resolved to get an early start on the day. The unexpected absences of Bill, one of their account managers, had increased their workload for the week, so the only way she could complete her tasks was to put in the hours early. If she could just get the last of the filing done by lunch, she had a chance of convincing the manager to let her sneak out early for the weekend.

The Shadow of a Hawk

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