page 994

by corinne delmonico

paul looked at the list of things helen had given him to pick up at the supermarket. elastic bands… vitamin c tablets… dunkin donuts iced coffee drink… dish detergent… pomegranate juice… reese’s peanut butter cups… bottled water… corn chips… paper napkins… and on and on… i don’t know why we need all this stuff, he said. a bear in the woods doesn’t need all this stuff. it needs water, helen said. but not in a plastic bottle. it will drink it from a plastic bottle if a human leaves one in the woods. we have had this conversation before. it was not very amusing the first time. or the second or third. i was just making an observation. i was just a guy making an observation, if you want to live with the bears in the woods, go live with the bears in the woods. but if you wander into somebody’s lawn and they shoot you, don’t come crying to me. i don’t know why you feel this insatiable need to belittle me. i am just a guy… helen stood up. that’s it, she said, that is the 1,000th time you have said you are just a guy. i said when you hit that mark i would leave, and now i am. but you can’y leave me now, paul protested. no? why not? because of everything that is happening. the seas are rising … an asteroid belt is threatening the earth… human values are eroding… a plague of spiders is infesting arizona and new mexico… the price of gold has collapsed… there are periodic blackouts all over north and south america… nobody has any respect… you can’t leave me now… we all have to stick together in times like these… what is the point of sticking together if nobody has any respect? hmmm? and with that helen went into the bedroom and emerged a few seconds later with her old red cardboard suitcase , the one she had purchased so many years ago in utica new york and carried all over the world. well then, good bye, paul said. good bye, just a guy. the door closed by itself behind helen. she was gone. finally. now what, paul wondered. he did not have to go to the store to buy any reese’s peanut butter cups or pomegranate juice. there was a book of 1,000 crossword puzzles he had never quite finished. it should still be in the lower desk drawer. he retrieved the book of crossword puzzles. he had done more than he remembered - 993. he found a pencil and started to do the puzzle on page 994. 1 across - a flamboyant concatenation. a gratuitous rodomontade.

the letter

by emily de villaincourt

when iris moved to the big city, she was lucky to find a cheap room right away. the room was not in a regular sized apartment building, but in a smaller building on a side street a few blocks from the bus station. iris was told by the rental agent that the building has formerly been a “mansion”, whatever that was. the rooms were a little bigger, and the ceilings a little higher, than anything iris was used to, and she liked that. but they were cheap because they had no a/c and the agent warned it might get cold in the winter because the windows were not that tight. but iris liked that you actually open the windows! all the other tenants of the building seemed to be old. in their forties and fifties, snd some maybe even in their sixties. iris occasionally talked to the other tenants, in the corridors, or entering or leaving the building, and she found some of their ways curious and a little bit interesting. she had had little experience of really old people previously, as her own mother was only thirteen years older than herself. her teachers in school had been mostly computer programs or cyborgs, with an occasional woman her mother’s age or younger. one of the odd things about the old people was that some of them received mail. paper mail, delivered every other day by a person on a bicycle. the front door of the building was unlocked during the daytime, and the person on the bicycle would leave the mail on a little table in the hall just inside the door. it was then up to the individual tenants to look at the mail on the table and retrieve their own. most of the mail was advertisements - what one old woman told iris was called “junk mail”. some were “personal mail” sent by one individual person to another, and a few of those had the addresses and return addresses written on them by hand with an ink pen. iris never expected to receive any mail. no advertisers would have her new address, and her mother or her friends from school would never write. iris had looked curiously at the little piles of mail on her first few days in the building, but then forgotten about them. so she was surprised when she was starting to walk up the stairs to her room one day and an old woman standing at the table said to her, honey, haven’t you seen this letter for you? it’s been sitting here for three days. iris went over to the table and saw one hand addressed letter. she picked it up and it was indeed addressed to “iris smith” with the correct street and number of the building. there was no return address. she looked at it uncertainly.. maybe there is somebody else named iris smith here, she said to the old woman. it is a common name. no, the old woman replied, i know everybody’s name who lives here, and you are the only iris smith. maybe there was an iris smith who lived here before. i suppose. but how likely is that?. honey, it has your name on it and i guarantee if you open it and read it, no one is going to arrest you. go ahead, open it. iris turned the letter over in her hand. how do you open it , she asked. here, let me open it for you. the old woman slit the envelope open with her fingernail, and handed it back to iris. iris unfolded the letter inside the envelope. the writing was clearly legible and she read it aloud. dear iris, you do not know me, but i need your help. you do not know my know my name, and do not need to know it, but only you can help me. i am your reverse, or what people in your dimension might call a double or doppelgänger. everything you do in your dimension, i do the exact reverse in my dimension, and vice versa. if you look up, i look down. if you are awake, i am asleep. if you are happy, i am sad. if you do something interesting, i do something boring. if you are having sex with somebody, i am meditating. if you smile, i frown. if you go up, i go down. which brings me to the true subject of this letter. i am in despair, complete despair about something - an affair of the heart - which need not concern you. i want to end my wretched existence. but, alas, i do not have the nerve to do so. here is what i want you to do for me. go to the top of a tall building, any tall building, at least thirty stories high. that is all you have to do, just go to the top of it. and stay there for a few minutes, or as long as you like, and then come down again. but because when you are going up the thirty or more stories, i will be falling down them, to my richly desired doom. i hope you will do me this small favor. sincerely, your double how weird is that, said iris. what do you think, she asked the old woman. i think someone is having a little fun with you. iris shrugged. i can’t think of anyone who would. you know, i bet if you did what the letter said, you will get another letter asking you to do something else. i think it would be interesting to find out. but it is up to you. i don’t know. i know just the place to go. the top of the y building, which is about forty stories at least. they have a nice little restaurant up there. they have wonderful salads. i will go with you, what do you say? all right, iris agreed. the old woman’s name was marvis, and iris did not mind her company and some of the things she talked about were sort of interesting. so a couple of days later when iris had a day off, she and marvis took the elevator to the top of the y building and went to the little restaurant and marvis had a salad and iris had a cup of tea and a chocolate eclair. nothing happened so far as they could see, that day or the next day, and there was never another letter, and they forgot about it. then one day it occurred to iris, suppose somebody wrote me that letter and left a copy of it and then jumped off a building and then the police found the copy of the letter, would they arrest me for murder? or for being an accessory to murder? but still nothing happened, and eventually iris forgot about the incident for good, and she moved to another, smaller apartment closer to her job.

vengeance

by horace p sternwall

eddie was in chuckie’s place, just starting to dunk his cheese danish into his coffee when he looked up and saw frankie sitting by himself at a table in the corner. eddie had heard frankie was in town, looking for ray, but he was still a little surprised to see him. he figured it wouldn’t do any harm to go over and talk to him, so he picked up his coffee and danish and went over to frankie’s table. hello frankie. hello yourself. haven’t seen you around for awhile. i guess you haven’t. mind if i sit down? frankie shrugged. suit yourself. eddie sat down. so what brings you back in town, he asked frankie. i think you know why i’m back in town. you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. i’m looking for ray. oh. you seen ray lately? a little bit. i do a little business with him now and again. everybody does. everybody has to. if you say so. so old ray’s doing pretty good, huh? pretty good isn’t the word for it. he runs this town, huh? runs the town? i don’t know where you been, frankie, but ray runs the whole west coast and beyond. and has for a while. i‘ll tell you where i been, but first you tell me how good ray’s doing. has he still got that big house out by the lake? no, he sold it or gave it away years ago, when he started getting really big. he lives in a big castle now, in this state he bought up north, idaho or montana or one of those places. it must be nice. you been there, seen it yourself? once or twice. you wouldn’t fucking believe it. he’s got everything. he’s got a million guys guarding the place, a fucking army. more swimming pools than you can count. a million game rooms, with every game you can think of, night and day. and if you’re a pal, you don’t have to pay to play. food - the place is one big buffet. every kind of booze ever invented, right there for you. i suppose he’s got a few women around. i was just getting to that. he’s got this special harem or palace, just for himself, where he keeps the hottest babes, for the heavy duty, you know. and he’s got another harem of women one cut below, for when governors and presidents and ambassadors come to visit him. but besides that, there’s hot women and cute chicks all over the place, every size and shape and color you can think of, and they know what they are there for, and they do it. eddie nodded. i think a life like that might make a guy a little soft. well, ray must have thought of that, because once a year, he goes on this safari for about a month, up in the yukon or some fucking place where it snows all the time, him and his favorite boys, what he calls his mighty men, and they hunt grizzly bears and three thousand pound wild boars and roast them around a roaring fire and tell stories and sing songs and all that shit. frankie laughed. and that keeps him from going soft? i don’t know about that. how about you, frankie, what have you been up to? you mean ever since that son of a bitch set me up thirty years ago? let me tell you what i been up to. the first ten years i’m in a fucking chain gang, out in death valley. i plot for years to escape, with three other guys. then just when we are about to make our break, one of them finks out. the other three of us get sent to another chain gang, in the middle of the indian ocean, building this new island for the king of this and the shah of that and sons of bitches like that - maybe like ray. maybe. anyway, this place makes death valley look like a kindergarten, there is no union or banker’s hours, if you get my drift, and after nine or ten years i snap and kill one of the guards. here is where things start to get tough. they put me on yet a third chain gang, this one on the bottom of the pacific ocean building some kind of radar station where the bastards who rule the world are going to contact the bastards who rule the other worlds out in fucking space. there is not a whole lot of fresh air, and i feel i am finally in hell itself. but i escape. by myself this time. but i don’t get very far. i come to this undersea kingdom ruled by an evil mermaid and i get captured and made a slave. and the things i did there, and the things they made me do, trust me, you don’t want to hear about. so one day i am on this gang working on a coral reef. by this time i have just about given up hope. and i see an abandoned diving bell drifting by. what are the chances i can get to it, or that it will work if i can get to it? one in a billion. but what have i got to lose? i swim over to the diving bell, with these mean lobster-guards right behind me, and i close the hatch door behind me in their faces, and i pull the first lever i see and what do you know, i go right to the top. i come up off the coast of fucking japan. i lose myself in tokyo. i get a job as a strikebreaker for this rich guy in japan. i start to save my money. i meet this chick, and it’s beautiful. she begs me to stay, but i am a man on a mission. i save enough for a plane ticket and here i am. that’s quite a story, frankie. yes, here i am, ready to pay a call on my old friend ray. well, it’s no concern of mine, but i don’t like your chances of getting to him. there is always a way. there is always a way, if you just hang in there. but look at it this way. you’ve been through hell for thirty years. and ray’s been leading the good life, ruling the world and hanging with the beautiful people, for those same thirty years. how is anything you do going to undo that? neither of you are getting any younger. if the booze and cocaine and babes haven’t killed ray off by now, what difference does it make if you do now? maybe you should go back to that woman in tokyo, if she really cares about you. the only thing i care about is getting my fingers around that son of a bitch’s throat. eddie looked out the window. fog was rolling down the street. if frankie is serious, he thought, about trying to get at ray, i am not doing myself any favor by sitting here palavering with him. eddie finished his coffee and got up. well so long, frankie, he said, and good luck. you are going to need it. later, eddie felt kind of bad about saying, you are going to need it, to frankie, because it was not really necessary. but when a guy is down, it’s just instinct to give him a little kick. it’s nature’s way.

celebration

by fred flynn

a great celebration had been prepared. had in fact, been in preparation for decades. a celebration of the new year - the year 1,000,000. and a celebration of the crowning of the new imperator. the new imperator whom everybody already loved, as their face and hologram and life and loves had been steadily broadcast for years before the coronation, ever since they had been chosen by lottery from the empire’s seven trillion inhabitants. a whole city had been built for the celebration and coronation , and all the inhabitants of the empire transported to it to witness the great events. seventeen days of feasting and dancing and partying had preceded the day, feasting and dancing and partying such as the universe had never known. now all was in readiness. a golden throne had been set up on a great platform at the back of the newly created city. the new imperator, the old retiring imperator, and the archbishop waited in a room behind the throne. a long, wide boulevard stretched out in front of the platform. the boulevard itself was empty and swept clean, but behind barricades on either side, the citizens of the empire waited. the seventeen days of partying had exhausted them and they waited silently, many with tears of joy running down their cheeks. directly in front of the great platform and on each side of it stood serried ranks of detachments of the elite units of the various imperial armies, in their splendid uniforms - red for the avars, blue for the bulgars, green for the partisans, gold for the scythians, white for the amazons, and so forth. a brightly colored battleship from each of the imperial space navies floated overhead. the archbishop appeared on the platform. he approached a small lectern in front of the throne. the archbishop looked out at the massive crowd and the wide, empty boulevard. suddenly a lone figure appeared at the opposite end of the boulevard. a man. a lone man. a man in black. with a pistol strapped to each hip. he began walking up the boulevard, toward the platform and the archbishop. the crowd was silent, stunned… then a cry rang out… * the next day. a gray, overcast day. the same crowd has been assembled along the boulevard. they are silent, even more than yesterday. the imperial regiments are drawn up around the platform as before, but they are all dressed in black. in place of the throne, a gallows has been erected on the platform. the man in black, who had walked up the boulevard the day before, stands on the gallows with his hands tied behind his back. a hooded figure emerges from the room behind the platform. the hooded figure carries a black book. suddenly a murmur is heard from the crowd. another figure has appeared at the other end of the boulevard. it is a little dog. it runs up the center of the boulevard, wagging its tail, and barking… * it was almost closing time at the shelter. the little dog looked up at the man. i think he really likes you, mr perkins. isn’t he a cute little guy? yes, he is. and friendly. yes, he looks friendly. his time is almost up. if you don’t take him tonight, and if nobody else shows up in the next fifteen minutes, we will have to put him to sleep tomorrow… i don’t know. i can’t make up my mind…

a day at the beach

by fred flynn

alex, dylan, lee, preston, chandler, harper, taylor, kennedy, jody, and gray were dropped off at the beach , with strict instructions as to their regimen for the morning. they were to run two miles along the beach, rest, swim a half mile out and back, rest, do the series of aerobic exercises they had been taught to do, and then wait for coach morgan to bring them their packaged lunches, which they would eat on the beach before beginning the afternoon program. they had plenty of water if they needed it. the beach was lined with hot dog and ice cream stands but coach morgan had not thought it worth mentioning to the students that they should be avoided. chandler and harper were running the first of the four laps of their two miles when they passed one of the hot dog stands. a muscular plebe behind the counter of the hot dog stand shouted to them as they passed, best dogs on the pacific coast! only two dollars! special sauce included! chandler threw an amused glance at harper but neither broke stride or responded to the young man’s call. when they had run half a mile, they stopped, turned around and ran back the way they had come and passed the hot dog stand again. and the muscular young man was still behind the counter, but with a slight scowl on his face. these are good dogs, he yelled. healthy as all fuck! give them a try, they won’t kill you! again, chandler and harper did not break stride, but chandler turned as they passed and gave the troll what he, chandler , thought was a friendly smile, indicating that while he had no intention of buying a hot dog, he was taking the fellow’s shouts in a spirit of good fun. chandler and harper each took a few swigs of water when they returned to their original starting spot. alex and dylan were also at the spot but chandler and harper did not think to mention the hot dog vendor and his truculent behavior to them. chandler and harper set off on the third of their four laps. this time when they passed the hot dog stand their tormentor was standing in front of it. chandler and harper deliberately avoided looking at him as he shouted. what are you, too good to eat a fucking hot dog! with special sauce! contribute to the economy, why don’t you, you one percent pieces of shit! there was an ice cream stand just past the hot dog stand, and this time the young woman behind it also yelled something at chandler and harper, but they could not make out what they said. one more time, harper laughed as they started back on their last lap. i wonder if he will pull a gun on us this time. but chandler did not laugh or smile at her words. they approached the hot dog stand for the fourth time. the muscular young man was still standing in front of it, leaning back against it - at least, chandler thought, he is not standing directly in our path - and he had been joined by the young woman from the ice cream stand. i think it’s sad, the troll shouted, just sad. you don’t know what you are missing, college boy! the young woman from the ice cream stand laughed, but before the troll could continue, chandler stopped. look here, fellow, he addressed the young man, this has gone far enough. so far as i know this is a public beach, and i don’t know of any law that requires me or anyone else to patronize any particular establishment, no matter how special their sauce or how special any other attribute they may possess… as he spoke, chandler became aware that a small crowd of snickering plebeians was gathering around himself and harper. the hot dog vendor smiled. i guess you ought to know about those things, college boy, going to college and all. actually, my friend, you give me too much credit, chandler replied. at the moment i am only in prep school. only in prep school! the young woman from the ice cream stand repeated, and she and the troll and the gathering crowd all laughed as if this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. come on, kid, lighten up, the troll laughed. what did you think we were going to do to you? we’re at the fucking beach, not in the jungle of outer mongolia or someplace. he threw his muscular but short arms to the sky. turn that frown upside down! it’s a beautiful day! and we’re in america, harper added. that’s right, babe, we’re in fucking america! ha, ha, ha! chandler always felt that he had acquitted himself well, and had learned some valuable life lessons from this encounter. fifty years later, chandler found himself holding the title of secretary for intergalactic relations for planet earth, and as such was the head of the diplomatic team confronting the advance party of the petrocerian empire, whose outrageous demands regarding interstellar trade routes had aroused angry mobs and emboldened demagogues in cities across the solar system… but whose military capacities could only be guessed at… as he walked down the corridor of the petrocerian ship, chandler hoped that the firmness he had shown on that long ago day at the beach would stand him in good stead,…