One Side of History

If there’s one thing that writing history has taught me, it’s that it really doesn’t matter which side of the line you’re standing on in a fight.  Everybody’s a bad guy because they are willing to do anything to survive.

Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself today. Yesterday I quietly sided with the rebels, but today the police were standing between my daughter and the rebels.  Not that she cared about what the rebels want. She’s not interested in things that happened before she was born, so the why of the protests isn’t something she notices.

I told her to stay out of it. I told her she shouldn’t be taking sides when she didn’t understand. It’s not really legal for me to tell her what I remember, though, so I fell silent when she shrugged and said she was going down there anyway. She said she didn’t see why those idiots should change her plans for the day. I thought back to the way I had distanced myself from similar “idiots” in the past, and found I was unable to object without undoing decades of careful phrasing of events.

The bottom line is that I agree with the idiots getting beaten in the streets, but I’ll fully support crushing them to keep my daughter safe. They’d crush me if they could.

Waiting for Annabel Lee

I’m in Annabel Lee’s garden when sun abandons the sky. It’s taken me a month to distill the right flowers:  a poppy pod, some valerian, a bit of passion flower.  Nothing as obvious as deadly nightshade. I don’t want to die; I merely want to slip into purgatory for a few hours.

The small angel that marks Annabel’s memorial glimmers in the fading light, and the moonflowers unfurl their fragrant bells to welcome the darkness. I’ve no reason to be impatient now that I’ve made sure everything will go my way.

Annabel designed this garden to come alive at night, and it does. The frogs begin singing.  The nighthawks swoop to capture whining mosquitoes. The weeping willow rubs its branches melodically. The moonlight spreads out like silk on the pond, and a thousand white flowers glow along the water’s edges.

Sitting in Annabel’s dark heaven, I smile as I sip from my vial.  Just enough to ease my way. I know I’m not welcome where I am going.

Annabel is not watching for me when she enters her garden. She’s running her hands along the flowers, searching for anything that needs her tending. She checks the pond for debris, then drifts over to pluck a dead branch from the holly. She’s focused on her little world, utterly unconcerned about me and my suffering.

“Annabel,” I whisper, and she ignores me. “Annabel,” I say louder. She stoops closer to her flowers, and I suspect she is smiling slightly as she runs her thumb over the petals. I stand and step closer. “Annabel,” I say in my warning voice. She stands and starts to move away. She thinks I’m powerless and weak. She thinks she can leave me.

“Annabel, you will pay attention to me,” I say firmly. I emerge from my dreams and grab her arms to turn her toward me.  Her dismay at my power is as it should be. She is so stunned she tries to pry herself free, something she had not done for years before her death.  “Annabel,” I say in my kindest, sternest tone, “you should not have tried to leave me. That is not allowed.” Her years of training do their work; she shifts her gaze to me and says woodenly but without resistance, “Yes, dear husband. What do you want?”

Now she knows there is no parting from me.

Jack Frost Helps the Brownies Prepare for Christmas

Illustration by Declan Gatenby

 

Without a doubt, the whole catastrophe was Jack Frost’s fault.  The brownies were doing a perfectly fine job of cleaning up after the family’s night of Christmas decoration.  They were picking the tinsel out of the carpet, collecting the cookie crumbs, and setting the misplaced ornament hooks back in the storage boxes when Jack tapped on the window pane.

“Hey, friends!” he said in an exaggerated whisper.  The brownies stopped their chores and peered up at him anxiously.  The rules were clear on humans interrupting their work, but they weren’t certain if the rules applied to other fairies.  If humans interrupted their work, they had to leave the home and never return.

“Shhh!” said Big Tomkin as he dumped crumbs into his cookie sack. “You’ll wake up the little ones and they’ll see us!”  The other brownies nodded, relieved that Big Tomkin had taken control of the situation.  None of the brownies wanted to leave the Jenkins home, so his treatment of Jack as one of their own was met with nods and smiles.

“Okay.  I just thought you might want to know that there’s a big problem only someone on this side of the window can see,” Jack teased.

Big Tomkin turned a concerned face to the window. He knew that sometimes he and the other brownies missed things because it was hard for them to see everything in the room.  He also knew from the humans that Jack Frost was sometimes silly and annoying. However, he couldn’t recall any fellow fairies complaining about him, and humans did not have a good sense of humor.

“What problem?” he finally asked, deciding that he did have a duty to at least consider that there was a task that the brownies had not noticed.

Jack motioned Big Tomkin over to the window.

“Look at the tree from this side,” he called to the brownie.  Big Tomkin shimmied up the end table and slid onto the windowsill behind the tree.

“What’s wrong?” He asked after a moment of staring.

“Well, friend, the problem is that most people see the tree from this side, but all the nicest ornaments are on the other side.” Jack Frost pointed to the damaged and unattractive ornaments that hung on the window side of the tree.

“Not my job,” Big Tomkin huffed.  Jack frowned at him.

“Not your problem? Aren’t you supposed to make the house look nice?” Jack said in a shocked tone.

“No. We’re supposed to make the house clean.” Big Tomkin only had a brief moment to be proud of himself for outwitting Jack. Jack gave him a sad look and softly cleared his throat.

“Hmm. Isn’t the reason you make the house clean because you are making it look nice?” Jack urged. It was no secret that while brownies understood the difference between clean and dirty, they were not necessarily known for their wonderful fashion sense.  After all, they were still wearing the shabby knitted hats that went out of style not long after humans began watching television.

With Big Tomkin still staring at the tree, Jack smiled and said, “I’ll help you.  Just move things where I say, and you’ll save your humans the embarrassment of having the whole neighborhood see their messy, messy ornaments.” With a bold air of confidence, Jack patiently guided the rearrangement of the ornaments.  The brownies huffed and groaned as they moved the heaviest of the ugly ornaments to the side of the tree facing the room. Jack carefully directed them to bring only a few of the lighter, pretty ornaments to the window side of the tree.

“There!” he exclaimed. “See how much nicer it is with just a few of the lovely ornaments on this side, and all the other ornaments on the other side? The Jenkins family will love you for this, I guarantee it.” Jack giggled as the horizon began to grow rosy with coming sunrise. “Whoops! I have work to finish,” he called as he left the brownies to gaze at the results of the night’s labor.

Big Tomkin and the other brownies were still admiring their work when the morning alarm sounded to wake up the humans.  They were out of time and unprepared when the tree, weighted in the front from the shifted ornaments, suddenly fell forward with a loud crash.

Big Tomkin had a moment of paralyzed horror before he fixed the problem the best he could. Just as the light came on in the Jenkins’ bedroom, he pointed to the other brownies and hissed, “Go get the cat and shove it in the tree!” 

At the Museum

The night is quiet as I twirl and dance among the abandoned cars along the street.  I whirl past a dusty white station wagon with “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned” on the bumper and a half-eaten corpse in the driver’s seat.  No Rapture, my dear sir.  This is 100% apocalypse and 0% salvation, all lingering whimpers and no mercifully decisive atomic bangs. I nod and wave at the decaying driver as I leap onto the hood of the car and pirouette onto the sidewalk. I’m almost to the museum now.

The lack of adequate cover for living humans has made Central Park sparse pickings, so most of dead don’t hunt here any longer. I don’t smell human anyway. I smell like petroleum and grease.  I’ve held out for as long as I could, and tonight I’m done.  I’m not even going to try to rage against the death of light anymore.

The moonlight reflects off the white façade of the building.  I am dancing in a spotlight, but I’m not worried.  The dead don’t sneak up on people.  They just stumble along until you have nowhere to run from them.  They’re the turgid ebb and flow of human misery that Matthew Arnold bewailed. I chuckle and tell myself I’m moving through Arnold’s land of dreams.  At least the museum still glistens like a lost paradise nestled in the shadows of the park.

Before the Plague, I would visit the museum and wish I could be there alone, without the mindless shuffle of tourists and the ridiculous groaning of school children who had no interest in Rembrandt’s use of shadow or Monet’s deconstruction of light. The living had no art to them, and I resented how they intruded on the art of the dead.  I suppose this is the world I wished for, but I don’t want to live in it.

I gaze up at the broad steps that lead to the museum’s entrance. Eventually I realize that I can’t bear to risk burning the art after all. I settle in the middle of the silent steps that once bustled with mischievous children and chattering adults.  The end of the world is not nearly the boon I thought it would be.  As I light my match, I console myself with Sylvia Plath’s manifesto:  Dying is an art. I’m going to do it so it feels like Hell.

 

This is my entry for the Zombie Apocalypse Flash Fiction Contest, a promotion to help support the publication of J. Whitworth Hazzard's excellent zombie collection, Dead Sea Games Series. 

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Want to write like me? Personal coaching and critiquing by Miranda Kate.

Tending the Trees

Tending the Trees
800 words
Beth Avery
Dieselpunk

 

Garrett came in and set the twig on the kitchen table, its photocells slowing fading from a bright yellow green to a dull yellow. He sat down with a heavy thump before he glumly gave me his report.

“The trees are getting ready to move from the south acre, and the east acre is only at eighty percent for its nitrogen levels.” He fiddled with the dying twig instead of meeting my gaze. I wrung out my dishrag and set my hand on his shoulder. The barren land that ringed our house was only 500 yards wide.  A full grown mechnaoak could cross it with ease if resources away from our home were too tempting. We would have to get the east acre to full fertility soon or lose our trees.

“Did you splice the break?” I asked.  A dead twig like the one on the table could disrupt the whole circuit of the tree.  Not only could we not afford to lose a tree, but a dead companion usually caused the whole herd to move to more welcoming regions.

Garrett stood up and grabbed the tool bag. “Could you do it, Amelia? You have more success with this than I do.  Last time I gave myself a shock that knocked me three yards back.  It’s Number Four.  I’ll go with you to show you the break.  We probably should get it done now.” He seemed to realize suddenly that he’d made a mistake by taking the time to come in and tell me instead of fixing the break immediately.  Leaving a gap in a mechnaoak’s circuitry was risky. I nodded and went to the entry to get my insulator gloves with the thick rubber fingers.

Garrett stood ready to resuscitate me if I made a mistake, but it was just a gesture.  I never made a mistake with the trees. Since biodiesel sap oozed from the break in the bark, this job was more than just repairing the circuitry. The flashpoint of the oily sap was too high to start a full fire, but the sap could heat up enough to make it too hot for me to work.  Donning my gloves, I carefully spliced the sap tubes and removed the sticky fluid before I turned my attention to the slender wires that powered the tree’s mechanical systems.  The wood around the wires was organic, but the sap that kept it alive was pumped using the power from its electrical system.  I needed to fix the wires before the wood began to die.  I examined my pliers to make sure there were no breaks in their rubber coating before I gently teased the wires away from the wound in the tree’s bark and directed them back into the river of electricity coursing through the tree’s trunk.  A few taps with the soldering wand, and the circuit was completed without further incident.

Garrett followed me as I went from tree to tree, noting the slight decrease in the intensity of the  greenness of the photoleaves, a clear sign that meant the trees had nearly depleted this field’s nutrients.  The thick cables that siphoned electricity from the trees to the house would not work as a tether if the massive mechanoaks choose to leave us.  They would churn the earth with their iron pipe roots and plow across the barren of alkaline soil until they reached the rich fields of our more fortunate neighbors, leaving us exposed and helpless. If we couldn’t coax them into moving to the east field, we would lose our protection from the wind and the sun along with losing the house’s source of energy.  Even though our mechnaoaks didn’t produce food as well as shelter and energy, we could not survive without them.  The nitrogen that fed their organic system had to be found or we would die.  Heaving a sigh, I turned to Garrett.

“I can give a pint, and we’ll probably have to take some from the children too.  Three of the goats can be leeched for at least a pint.  We’ll get some bloodmeal out of that. We emptied the waste tanks last month, so there’s not much in them, but hopefully it will suffice if we put it through the rapid cycle composter.” I squeezed his hand.  With an air of confidence that I did not truly have, I said firmly, “We’ll be alright.  The trees will stay.” 

As the midday sun reached its full strength, a million photoleaves expanded above us, converting the sun’s rays into electricity and shielding us from the blinding light that filtered through our herd’s canopy.  The light was harmless by the time it reached us, and we were careful to stay under the blanket of dappled shade as we made our way back to the house. 

Dormant

In winter my mother would turn blue

Light blue half-moons of chill imbedded

Under her fingernails

Winter’s dry breath wicking the moisture

From her lips and leaving them

Cracked with painful canyons of rusty red

 

While I played outside

Burrrowing adventures through the snow

And peering under the pond’s skirt of ice

To catch glimpses of its secret world

Of dormant life.

 

I am cold now.  Winter has finally caught me.

I find a strange peace in knowing my mother’s

Winter waiting is reborn in me. Like her,

I will shed my cloak of ice and return

When the earth needs my tending.

Baldar's Betrayal

How did Baldar feel
To know that his loved ones
Were lining up to sling
Weapons of mass destruction at him?
The golden child, the best beloved,
the petted and protected one,
finally laid bare to
the gleaming jealousies
cleverly swaddled in the guise
of good fun and the necessary testing of
promises and reassurances.
With Baldar's tourmaline eyes
forever directed inward,
the gods were free to let
nasty secrets
pass in glances between them.
In the name of love,
Baldar allowed such blows to
whistle around unshielded ears.
For him to expose these petty betrayals
would be a treason of the heart.
So Baldar stood,
hands at his sides,
the guilty innocent who
has taken more than his share
of the praises and laughter.

He collapses from within before
the killing blow is even flung.