Break From Reality. Daily.
It starts with a light kiss, a gentle pressing of the lips together. I feel tiny, I feel completely unworthy of having this man standing above me, looking down on me. He is burly sinew, he is mature, he seems like a god, he may actually be one. What am I doing?
Yet there is an electricity between us I haven’t felt in a long time, like a shock, and it spreads a sparkly warmth down to my toes.
Save for a faint beeping noise, the room was quiet. It looked and smelled like most hospital rooms I’d seen, cold and antiseptic. A man occupied the couch in the corner, fast asleep. The body of a young boy, about twelve years old, lay on the bed, emaciated and unmoving. The body was connected to several machines surrounding the bed by various tubes and cables. The boy’s soul sat on the side of the bed, legs swinging absentmindedly. A thin, diaphanous cable stretched from him and disappeared into the body’s chest. He glanced at me then turned away, assuming I was just another mortal.
“Hello, Wes.”
That morning, my mother had not felt well enough to get out of bed. Her breath was laboured and it was, no doubt, from the dust and plaster in the air which we had no choice but to inhale. She called out from her room as I was trying to calm the boys. They were inconsolable and at one and two-and-a-half years old I couldn’t help them to understand that maybe there would be more food tomorrow. I held Faisal close to my chest and rubbed Tahir’s back hoping that it offered some comfort.
Rasha jumped up before I had a chance and said, “I’ll check Grandma.” Her tender, helpful heart made me smile just a little and I secretly hoped that she never lost those traits despite the circumstances in which she would have to grow up. She galloped down the hall and at the same second I saw her disappear into the adjacent room, I felt the sound before I heard it and my stomach sank.
I was five minutes late, only five minutes, but the Mentor can be quite unforgiving, as well as merciless. I tried to explain that there were some unforeseen circumstances, but he didn’t want to hear excuses — he never did. I knew the Mentor was demanding when the job was given to me … well, thrust upon me really, I never would have chosen it for myself. I was told the life I had before was gone, but it was hard to let go, and the Mentor thought that made me weak. I didn’t care, though. I wanted to remember the happiness, and the smiling faces of people I loved, but had to leave. That’s why I was late; I went back to observe them, and he knew it.
Sometimes I could see flashes of that old life; bits and pieces of faces, remnants of times that seemed more like dreams than real experiences. The Mentor told me that “my feelings cannot interfere in the job we are tasked to do.”
We could have gone back to work at old man Metzger’s nursery, shoveling gravel and six varieties of manure, each guaranteed to singe the nose hairs off a rhino. We could have caught up on the gossip, snide jokes, and nasal bickering tossed around by Betsy and Selma in the pig-hole they call the employee’s lounge. We could have gone back to collecting our Friday paychecks, enough for a week’s supply of Ramen noodles and five nights at Andy’s rundown neighborhood bar.
We could have left before any real damage done, and I was considering just that, getting ready to grab Pluto by the back of his collar and drag him out of there, already thinking how we’d laugh about this moment in years to come while tossing back beers and smirking at women. We could have turned back.
Then Pluto shot Gert Franklin and it all went to hell.
A jittery stillness shrouded the streets of Berlin. From where he stood, the dull glow from searchlights formed ghosts on the Wall, their bodies twisted and skeletal. Werner threw his cigarette to the ground, relishing the hiss which followed as it melted the snow. Its flame, small and flickering, died in an instant. He was itching to look down at his watch — to count how much longer he had to wait — but stopped himself. Seeing the time would make it real.
Instead, he concentrated on the surrounding buildings, which were hunched downwards as if exhausted. No light could be found — the tenants had nailed their windows shut with wood because the Vopo didn’t want anyone jumping to the West. He missed being able to see into their homes, though; he liked to spend his shifts watching figures walk to and fro, seeing their lives unfold, imagining their stories. Now, there was only the darkness.
The invitation had promised bubbles in exuberant cursive. Did they mean champagne? Why not say that? It was, Evan thought, a dubious enticement to tempt a grown man to a child’s birthday party. Yet here he was sipping stoically from a plastic flute filled with some sweet sugary fizz of questionable alcoholic content.
“You like Ben and Tori,” Naomi had insisted, when he had groaned about the engagement.
“I don’t dislike them,” he had clarified.
The baby appeared to have acquired the status of a minor deity in the home. Professionally produced images that riffed on its inevitable smallness covered the walls. Here was Atticus curled into Ben’s flabby bicep. There he was lying naked in a thatch basket of freshly laundered whites as though he’d snuck in there himself in a fit of puppyish mischief. Next was the child’s hospital band, like a tiny nightclub entry bracelet, encased in a glass exhibit. A plaque gave the particulars: Atticus Tobias Fletcher, Jan. 4, 2008, 8lbs, 7 oz. Why always the weight? Why not 19 inches or whatever height babies were.
It is a very good company to work for. Almost like a family.
Colin, sir. I am an operating technician here. I always wanted to be a doctor but unfortunately … it was not possible. I am doing the next best thing, though. (We need to take this elevator.)
My job is to provide maintenance on Hummans and I have been doing it for … well, quite some time now.
It was not predicted to be the storm of the century, but it didn’t sound good, either. Adam and I listened to the weather report on the radio while I circled the grocery store parking lot, trying to find a space. Everyone was picking up supplies before the weather turned.
“What’s freezing fog?” Adam asked from the back seat.
“It freezes onto anything it touches.”
The Devil doesn’t wear Prada. He actually prefers Dolce & Gabbana.
Satan, The Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, or whatever you want to call him, was sitting in the Tasty Brew Café, sipping a latte and keeping a close eye on one Emerson Fyvush.
Emerson was a curious fellow, tall but hunched over, as if ashamed of his six-foot-five-inch frame. A thick unruly mane of yellowish hair sat atop his head, he had a pasty complexion, and his skin was always covered in a thin sheen of sweat. This whole pale, death look had a tendency to scare small children and adults alike.
Emerson was sitting in the food court at Carrington Mall, back by Wang’s Chinese and American Food. It was a great place to observe people without also being observed. He was watching Judy Hightower, manager of the Chic Boutique, a clothing store for the full-figured gal. Emerson had been tracking her movements for weeks. He had to. I mean, how else could he plot her demise?
The four had been searching for a way out of the windowless, hinge-less room for hours. Jordan paused her fingering of the padded wall to check over her shoulder. The other three searched at the far end of the big open room.
“Yes! Found something! It’s a button!” one of them said.
“Push it!” said another.
CHHHSSSHHHT. CLICK-CLANK. A panel emerged from the wall like a pocket door and slid across the floor. Everyone froze, watching it lock in place to create a new wall in the big open room.
I’m sure it’ll all work out fine, Sarah. But if for any reason I … I’ll tell you the story of what happened today. It’ll take my mind off the pain, as well. I’ve tried to call you, e-mail you, send you a message, but there’s no signal here at all. This is the next best thing, I suppose. I think there’ll be enough battery, so I’ll start from the beginning and try not to leave anything out.
I watched Brittany pack up her desk as people stopped by to congratulate her and give hugs, struggling to hold back their tears. Her going away party didn’t begin for another hour, but already the waterworks were starting. She had only worked here for a little over a year, but everyone loved her.
Everyone except me.
I had volunteered to plan her party, and I had spent the past two weeks making sure that it would be a party no one would ever forget.
There is a protocol for finding a missing person Outside. Number one, you do not jump up and yell, I’ve found him, he’s dead! Life on this arid world is harsh enough already.
Social graces aside, you make no assumptions. Maybe the person you’ve found isn’t the right person, or maybe he isn’t dead. You don’t shout out conclusions the moment you clap eyes on a corpse.
Number two, you call for help and you stay with the body until it arrives. No wandering off into the vast, unmapped areas of Parch, no detective work. Stay put with your suit zipped up and, obviously, Number Three, don’t touch anything.
Number three is a little muddier because Number Four — I may have this out of order — is to revive the person if possible. Nobody wants to be accidentally cremated.
So for the sake of the missing person, for the sake of the colony itself, there are rules, and you’d better follow them.
Mama tells me this place is magic, but I don’t see it at first.
The cool air of fall is only just giving away to winter chill, but there’s not a single red leaf beyond these gates. The few trees standing are bare-limbed and white, as if death permeates the very soil of this place, sapping life out of every living thing. Three words arch over our heads as we walk through: ARBEIT MACHT FREI, work shall set you free. Mother clutches our suitcase in her left hand — the only piece of luggage allowed the four of us. She had packed and re-packed it. Things went in, things came out. In the end, most of what was taken with us was food. Father added a watch and some earrings, saying quietly, “in case we have to trade for more.” Her right hand squeezes my cold finger painfully tight but I say nothing. A hundred people are ushered through the gates behind us.
I am eight and I hear father whisper to my brother, “we can work. If we can work, we can live.”
“It’s just an hour drive inland,” he’d said to her yesterday at the resort’s buffet dinner, holding out the brochure from the front desk. “It’ll be fun.”
Trekking through the jungle sounded anything but fun, but she knew if she went along, it would be it easier to beg off tomorrow, or the next day, when he would undoubtedly have found some other tour to drag her along on. We did your thing, honey. Then she could zone out to the swoosh of the Caribbean Sea rolling turquoise over the white sand.
Any minute now, she knew, he’d grab his camera from his backpack, aim its bulky lens at the pile of rocks, seeing something she couldn’t.
She crossed her arms and tried again to picture what the crumbling limestone might have looked like fourteen hundred years ago.
All she saw was rubble.
Johnny Mitchum was going about 70 down Route 40 in his dad’s 1968 Dodge Dart GTS. Twins Hank and Frank Needham were in back, and best friend Clay Albright rode shotgun.
Aggie’s Diner was their destination, a last night of fun before the twins left to work in Texas and Clay headed to San Diego for basic training.
They’d been friends since kindergarten, but now at age 22, the “Four Screw-ups,” as Johnny’s father called them, were well past the age when people smiled and saw their misadventures as harmless teen pranks.
It seemed they were also beginning to realize that those days of doing a whole lot of nothing were nearing their end, and Johnny suggested, “Let’s ride to Aggie’s, sit in those old greasy booths, and have one last hamburger before we say adios.”
Sarah nervously picked the paint off her nails. There wasn’t much of it left. She’d painted them two days ago, the first day of the hearing. Now only small spots of paint were left on a few of her fingers.
The lawyer in the grey suit and red tie sitting across from Sarah sighed. “I know this isn’t easy, but the judge has left it up to you. You need to decide.”
Sarah thought about how the judge’s face had turned red as he’d lectured her parents. “You’re both a disgrace and if the law would let me, I’d take everything you have and leave you both sitting in the gutter,” he said in a booming voice. The angrier he got, the more the vein in his temple throbbed. Sarah thought it might burst when he stood, wagged his finger at them, and yelled, “You’re the most selfish, self-centered, arrogant, ignorant, contemptible people I’ve ever had in my courtroom.”
“All right, my lovely. Just one more.”
The man pulled the thin blanket up to his daughter’s chin. Her short breaths came in tiny wisps of vapour. The cold air whistling in through the broken windows made the man shudder.
“It was a freezing winter and —”
“Once upon a time, daddy.” The girl’s voice was a whisper.
The worst part about insomnia was all the wasted time. I could have been cleaning my apartment, or binge watching The Crown, or learning Spanish. Instead, I spent hours lying in bed with my eyes closed, unable to fall asleep but too tired to get up.
Once, years ago, I had tried taking a sleeping pill. I woke the next morning mostly naked and stretched out on the picnic table in the back yard. Our neighbor was out on his deck, drinking his morning coffee and staring at me.
My husband was not amused. He had learned to tolerate the blackout shades and earplugs, the pacing around the house in the middle of the night, and the screaming fits if I managed to fall asleep and, God forbid, he sneezed and woke me. He had even weathered the time I didn’t sleep for three days straight and started using a hammer to kill the giant spiders crawling up the walls. Public nudity was a step too far. He moved out shortly after that, and I wasn’t sorry to see him go.
The pocketman treated me with the contempt I deserved. “I trust this suits . . . sir.”
He came recommended as the best master pocketman in Nab, a vital assurance for a gentlemen newly arrived from the countryside. Every gentleman requires an expertly-sewn coat, so that theft and shame can be minimised. Yet it stung, that my innocence was so obvious.
However, I had been robbed three times on my way to the Palace the day before and could not afford to upbraid the pocketman for his rudeness. “Yes. Thank you.”
My first thought is
I did it.
My second thought is
I did it wrong.
I start to form a third thought, but it turns out to be considerably difficult to do when one careens at nauseating speed through a tunnel of psychic subspace.
I often watch him from my hiding place. He always wears a long aviator’s scarf that flows out behind him when he walks, and one of those old leather bomber jackets.
Maybe he was a pilot in his old life — back before the Order.
He wanders late at night when the streets are empty and quiet. That time of night when you can pretend you don’t live in a society run by a group of brutal monsters.
The Order of the Void is in power now. Traditional governments were disbanded after the Order won the War of Annihilation. Chaos followed, and most of the population fled to the outer regions known as the Unknown Territories. The rest of us are captives within these borders, and at the mercy of madmen.
People laughed at Daddy when he told them the dangers of the Order. I wonder what they think now.
“You start, Candace,” Mom said.
Everyone looked at me. I hesitated, trying to decide whether to tell them my news
“Come on, Candace!” seven-year-old Tyson called. “That turkey’s going to grow wings and fly away. I’m starving.”
When the laughter died down, I took the plunge. “I’ve written a short story and it’s going to be published.”
Moe yawned as she stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the basement. She didn’t like coming to the city morgue. It wasn’t that it was dark and dirty like on TV. Filled with fancy robotic lab equipment, stainless steel tables, and intelligent looking scientists in white lab coats, this morgue was state of the art and always pristine. What frustrated Moe the most was the way the people here looked at her after she did what they asked her to do.
The elevator descended and she tucked her hands into the front pocket of her grey hoodie. Biting her bottom lip, she said a silent prayer, hoping the murder wouldn’t be too gruesome or violent. Moe liked using her gift to help the police, but she hated seeing the violent ones. They stayed with her, plaguing her nightmares and invading her daydreams for years after.
Peterson enters. He’s wearing a crumpled grey suit with a grubby scarlet tie and carrying a heavy-looking reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The man sitting behind the desk, wearing a much better suit, puts down the red folder he’s been looking at.
“Well, I haven’t seen one of those for a long time,” he says, indicating the tape recorder.
“Me neither, sir. For some reason he was putting it all on tape.”
Peterson places the machine on the desk with a dull thud.
“Probably being careful,” says the man behind the desk. “You can hack into anything digital these days.”
I made a horrible mistake last night. With the life I chose, I should have known that attempting to date was a bad idea. But I had gotten lonely and now Chad was the one who had to pay for it.
Gray light had begun to filter in through the blinds. I couldn’t lie in bed and stare at the ceiling any longer.
In the living room, I found my roommate Cami sitting on the couch snuggled under a blanket, with a heart-shaped box of candy on her lap. She was wearing scrubs and her eyes looked like she hadn’t washed off yesterday’s makeup. She worked in medical records, so she wore scrubs every day. She also slept in them.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for work?” I asked.
Susan squinted down her nose at her phone. Smartphone, Michael had called it, when he’d sent it to her for Christmas. Too smart for me, Susan thought as she retyped her password again. The screen finally unlocked. No return call from Michael yet.
She dropped the thing back into her purse and stepped into her neon blue tennis shoes. A Christmas present to herself. Dan’s eyebrows had risen at the color, the first time she’d worn them, and he’d wondered aloud if maybe they were a bit young for her. But Susan had shrugged him off. The shoes, so bright they looked like they just might take a walk on their own, made her smile. She’d known the moment she’d seen them that they’d put a fresh spring in her step.
She tightened the hot pink laces and straightened up. “I’m heading out for my walk,” she called out.
Lathom was a fraud. He knew he was a fraud, his wife Maureen knew he was a fraud and his receptionist certainly knew he was a fraud. But thank God, the receptionist was a RADA graduate, between jobs, who was plausible as a smiling, competent professional in front of the patients, even while she wrote Remember: Nose Goes On Front on the medical clipboard.
That receptionist. Annie. Beautiful. Well, he could hardly hire a minger for front-of-house. Annie seemed like proof, like his curriculum vitae, posed behind her glass desk with a bunch of lilies and a reassuring expression.
Annie could have spent her time between roles modelling. Not hand modelling, although her hands were as pale and perfect as wedding cake, but face modelling, leg modelling, belly modelling.
Mom has a particular look on her face. I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head, so I squint and try to get a closer look. I wave my left hand. The flapping motion feels good and helps me think. I try to remember what Miss Katy taught me. I look at her face, I think about the angle of her head, I try to think about today. I think the face she’s making is Disappointment.
“It’s always going to be like this,” I hear her say to Dad. “It’s always going to be empty tables and no friends and her sitting there staring into space.”
We were sitting on the sand at Mission Beach, Greg’s favorite place in the world, particularly now, during the off-season when it wasn’t bombarded by tourists who flocked to town during the summer months.
I convinced him to go with me to the little amusement park next to the Beach, like we used to, and Greg looked more like himself as we risked our lives on the rickety roller coaster, then ate those weird tacos and a couple of orders of fries at the Jack-in-the-Box across the street. For a few moments, I imagined us back in school — what I wouldn’t give to have those days back.
“Ready to go now?” I asked him.
Greg shook his head. He was particularly non-verbal today.
“Alright,” I said. I understood why he wasn’t ready to face it yet; I wasn’t either.
I could have killed my little sister. People say that sort of thing as a joke, or hyperbole or metaphor. They don’t usually mean it.
I thought I was ready for the glowing accounts of Bella’s first week, sophomore year. Would it be as wonderful as her freshman year? Would the stars align? Would my little sister be the first person admitted to Harvard or Stanford from Reagan High School? I pushed the beef casserole around my plate and waited for her to launch. Oh yes, here is comes. Big breathless sigh. Bingo!
“They agreed to let me take pre-calc,” she said, smiling so her dimples showed. “It looks challenging but this way I can take three AP math classes before the end of high school? That’ll look good on my college applications.”
Pretty standard Bella move making her statements sound like questions to seem less vain. Stupid twit, I thought, even though I knew she wasn’t stupid. No, if there was anyone in this family who could be called stupid, it was me. Miss Mediocrity. Yes, Bella was planning for Stanford, and Candace would make do with community college. Ha, ha, ha. I looked around the table at my earnest mother, my sad, grey father, and my silly grandmother, and I thought I might just shock the snot out of them all one day. One day in the not too distant —
“Candace!”
“Mom? Do killer whales get chapped lips?”
I paused in the act of removing the broccoli from the microwave.
“I don’t know. Do you want to volunteer to put lip balm on one?”
Eugene giggled, and I kissed his forehead. He was a quiet kid, usually lost in his own little world. He didn’t have many friends, but he hardly seemed to notice. When he was younger, he used to stare at the sky with this look of fierce concentration, like he was trying to figure out the universe. I had his IQ tested because I thought maybe his genius intellect prevented him from relating to us dolts.
Nope. Average IQ. He’s just a weird little kid.
I won’t say that Doris was asking for it — at least not what she got exactly — but the fact is that she really was the most annoying person.
I’d only been in the home an hour or so and she was at my door, poking her head and nose in.
“So, first day then?” she asked, knowing full well the answer.
“That’s right,” I said, trying to be as cold as possible; the last thing I wanted in this place was the interest, let alone company, of a doddery octogenarian.
“I’m Doris.” She hadn’t caught the animosity in my voice. “And this is Pickles.”
Our presence here ought not to be needed. When the twentieth century ends and the date changes, everything should just roll forward with no problems. Vortex hired the UK’s top contractors to spend months checking the code that runs their systems.
Unfortunately one of those contractors ran tests on the code, and didn’t notice a failure in the results, until last night. That contractor is me.
Only Griffin knows. He ought to report the risk to our client, and our superiors. But he hasn’t, and neither have I. I’m not sure what’s stopping him; for me, it’s pure fear. This contract was hard to win. To admit negligence now would end my career. I need to find the cause, and fix it . Before midnight.
Of course, I might be worrying about nothing. Things might be fine. That’s the trouble — nobody knows what will happen tonight when all across the globe, 99 must change to 100.
“All that time saving up and this is what you want to spend it on?”
I straighten my jacket, tie up my hair, and throw a sideways glance at Burt. “You know what? You can cram it, ya old coot.”
Burt shakes his head and chuckles under his breath. Even after forty-two years together there are still some things we can never seem to agree on. The best flavor of syrup for waffles in the morning, for instance, or the perfect temperature to set the thermostat in the summer, or why he finds those blasted curling contests so compelling, or why I have to drag us to the crafts fair in Tylune County twice a year when we have a perfectly good crafts fair down the street. But this time it’s different. This time I’d set aside my own money for this little indulgence. We’d both agreed that if we set our own money aside for the silly things we want then the other one can’t say boo.
Kasey plunged first into the turquoise water. White bubbles danced across her mask, her cheeks. Her clingy wetsuit relaxed its grip, and her air-filled BCD diving vest, weighed down by the heavy oxygen tank just seconds ago, floated around her shoulders. She took a deep breath through her regulator and pressed the button to release the air from her BCD.
She descended.
The harsh chop of waves at the surface calmed to gentle underwater currents, the bright sun mellowed into dozens of shades of blue. For a few precious moments, Kasey knew true weightlessness, all her worldly cares suspended at the surface as she drifted down into a world of shifting color and light. Her arms floated away from her sides, the bulky underwater camera weightless in her hand.
Twenty feet down.
It was New Year’s Eve and I decided to spend it at home, alone.
Now don’t go feeling sorry for me; this was how I wanted it. I couldn’t attend one more party, couldn’t do one more countdown with a room full of drunken and desperate people who thought the calendar turning from one page to the next meant they got a do-over — a new year to be their best selves. I had enough of that. So I bought some junk food, ordered a pizza, and sat down in front of the boob tube. I was going to ring in this New Year with my best bud, Netflix.
And it was grand. At least for a few hours. However, around 10:30, I heard a loud blast from outside, and a few moments later, the lights went out.
Happy fuckin’ New Year to me, I thought.
“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Like what?”
“I tell you I’m leaving you, and you can’t think of anything to say?”
“It seems like your mind is made up already.”
“It is.”
“Then what’s there to say?”
I have a dreadful cramp in my left leg but if I stretch out I will disturb the others. This space is too small for three adults, especially blokes with their long legs, but we have no choice. The warning has been given and we need to wait, huddled below our stairs until the danger has passed. It will start in two minutes and then perhaps the pain will be over.
Growing up in the 1970s I read the Government pamphlets and knew ‘Protect and Survive’ by heart: take off a door, paint it white, make a shelter. We laughed at the absurdity of it while hoping that we would never need to put it into action. Yet here I am, sixty years old, curled up in the under stairs cupboard with my son and husband, trying to protect them and praying that we all survive.