Earth

The Dale of Five Worlds – Part 7 (Conclusion)

By Christian Laforet

Sam was blindfolded. Her hands secured behind her back. After the Emperor’s men ambushed her and her companions, Felicia and Robi-Jo, at Fresh Choppers 9822, they were loaded on to a transport. She couldn’t help but wonder how the Emperor had managed to get to Hardpan. Although able to communicate across the worlds, he had, as far as she knew, not mastered the technology needed to teleport. A familiar voice answered all her questions.

“You must have known I’d figure it out.”

She tilted her head. “Professor?”

“Pahlease, I’m ten time smarter than that fool.”

“Don!” Sam’s words dripped venom.

Felicia piped in. “Hey, um, for those of us who have no freaking clue what you are talking about, how about some answers.”

Sam assumed her compatriots were secured, as she was. “The Professor was my mentor. He invented the teleportation technology that I’ve been using.”

“Huh,” Felicia said. “So, he turned traitor or something?”

Sam shook her head before remembering her friend probably couldn’t see the gesture. “No. The professor died for the cause. This is his half-wit twin brother Don.”

“Half-wit?” Don roared. “I’ve always been the smarter sibling.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, right. You’re a lazy loser who leeched off the professor for years. I’m guessing you sold him out and stole his technology?”

Sam smiled when no reply came. Clearly she had hit the nail on the head.

Finally, the man spoke. “It doesn’t matter what you think, soon you and your friends will be dead. The Dread Rainbow Emperor will rule the multiverse and I’ll be there by his majestic side.”

Despite all her bravado, Sam felt a swell of remorse fill her. They had lost. “It’s over.” Her voice barely above a whisper, Sam shook her head. “We’ve failed. The great profit Veets was wrong, nothing can stop the Emperor.”

She felt the familiar distortion of a teleportation field wash over her.

***

When the blindfold was pulled from her face, Robi gasped. She expected to see anything but the sight before her. She, and the other two girls, stood in front of a massive window. The pane stretched floor to ceiling and looked out at the most gorgeous world she had ever seen. Towers of sparkling glass and ivory stood like sentinels across the landscape. Lush bunches of trees and foliage carpeted the land around them, and stretching between it all was rainbows. These were not just illusions of light like the ones she was used to either, these were physical arches which radiated glorious colour.

“Holy crap!” Felicia let out a whistle. “This place is—” (more…)

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The Fifth Monday – Hard On’s Curse Conclusion

By Ben Van Dongen

Chad struggled to wake up. His dream, something about a hot Quebecois redhead with a Charles Bronson moustache, kept tugging him back to sleep. Yawning, his jaw cracked, and water slipped into his open mouth. The half of his face he wasn’t sleeping on was wet and cold. The sensation, along with a burning desire to take a piss, roused him.

Burning. The word repeated in his head. Burning. It was distasteful, making him frown and fidget. Burn. He smelled smoke, or char. Burner. The word made him sneer.

“Ah!” He jumped up, running in a circle, kicking up snow, screaming and clutching his bottom.

The grumbled, deep voice of the snoozing demon joined the yells. “Shut the fuck up Hard-On, I’m still fucking sleeping.” The words, accompanied by small fires, caught dry branches and grass in the patch on the ground, melted by the demons heat.

“My asshole is on fire! My asshole, it burns!” (more…)

Better than One – Part 2

By Edele Winnie

Sheila’s dead aunt had made a pile of tin cans in Sheila’s kitchen. The horrible shrunken head had respawned there and then rolled out smiling its sickly yellow gray smile.

“Wassup?” The head said. “I’m thirsty.”

Auntie turned to Sheila. “Do you have any Lime drinks?”

“What?”

‘Something lime. He likes limes.”

“Not lemons.” The head shrieked. “I hate lemons!”

“No.” Sheila stammered. “No limes, sorry.”

Auntie turned and walked to the front door and went out. Apparently to get something lime.

“I think I’m losing my mind.” Sheila grumbled.

“Better than losing your body.” The head said and then cackled delightedly.

“Wait.” The head ordered when Sheila began to walk out of the kitchen. “I can make you live forever.”

“I’d like that.” She answered, and forced herself to look at the thing. It was shrivelled and brown but its eyes were bright and alive and staring back at her. She went over to her big flour bin- a plastic container only a third full of flour at the moment. She snapped off the lid and dumped the flour into the garbage can.

“Wassup?” the head said. (more…)

Better than One – Part 1

By Edele Winnie

Sheila found the shrunken head after her aunt passed away. The poor old woman had been a miserable crank pot. Even though Sheila was young, she had done her best to make Auntie comfortable in these last months, but the shrivelled old woman had only been angry and full of complaints. Her habits were extremely odd- she hoarded empty tin cans and set out hundreds and hundreds of unbaited but ready to snap mouse traps. As far as Sheila could tell there were no mice in the house.

When it was announced from the hospital that Auntie had passed, Sheila got to work. She’d bundled her short dark hair under a kerchief and rolled up her sleeves.

There had to be thousands of empty tin cans in the house and Auntie had removed all the labels. Sheila loaded them into boxes and dragged them outside. She didn’t know if the recycle truck would take so many. It would probably require more than one truck.

At first the cans had seemed fairly new- still shiny. But deeper into the piles and stacks the empty cans were rusted and discoloured. At the very centre the cans were blackened with mould or age or something. In the centre of the blackest cans she found the head. (more…)

Trick or Treat

By Edele Winnie

“You’re going to have contact.” Marge swirled her pale hands over the crystal ball one more time. “Tomorrow.” She looked up at Loretta. “Halloween.”

Loretta’s legs began to quiver and she swallowed hard. “Thank you Marge.”

Marge smiled. She was not some artful gypsy but rather the stretch and strength exercise class instructor for the senior’s home where they both lived.

I’m going to have contact. Lortetta could not stop thinking about it at dinner that night, about her beloved husband Leroy, dead twenty-two years now. How she’d missed him. She’d been in a strange state of late- feeling isolated and alone, even though she’d lived in the senior’s home for the past seven years. She was no longer connecting with the others, staying in her room more, listening to sad music and remembering. The nurses had decided it was depression and added a little something to her daily barrel of drugs but it hadn’t changed anything. So Marge and the cane gang had decided to take matters into their own hands and cheer Loretta up. (more…)

Pretty Shoes

By Eddie D. Moore

Gavin’s head pounded and he could see nothing but the floorboards when he cracked open his eyes. He had hoped to catch the thief that had been sporadically working the area for months. Unfortunately, the thief had caught him instead. The underbrush at the edge of the property had offered a perfect place to hide and watch the house. The last thing he remembered was the soft shuffle of leaves behind him, a moment of panic, and a stinging pain as something struck him on the back of the head. He should have guessed that the thief would use the same vantage point.

He dared not give any sign of consciousness as quick paced footsteps passed. The board under his cheek gave a slight creek and a breeze stirred his hair as the thief passed into the adjacent room. Other footsteps and rummaging could be heard above him. The steps had too short a stride and were too light to be produced by adults. He began to wonder if the robberies were the work of a group of children. His ears burned with embarrassment at the thought of admitting that a scrawny miscreant had caught him unaware and knocked him senseless.

Gavin slowly surveyed the room, got to his feet and moved to a corner. Through the doorway, a couple feet away, he could barely make out a whispered voice in the adjacent room. The voice seemed too deep for a child and sounded odd, almost unnatural. (more…)

The Fifth Monday Two – Hard On’s Curse – Part 3

By Edele Winnie

The long flight to Quebec City was torturous. Cardinal Molson, nearly eighty years old and fortified by a glass of angel semen in water, was a constant attraction on the aircraft.  Women hovered around him like flies on dead meat. Three of the male flight attendants offered to give him a tour of the private areas of the aircraft- or maybe it was their private areas in the aircraft? It required a lot of forgiving, but Molson was up to it. It also helped distract him from his travelling companion. They were flying first class so Mr. T was already over-filled on complimentary beer and little packages of crackers. He was sweating profusely- the skanky smell of beer cold filtered through a human body with a bushy layer of greasy black body hair. The cardinal was named Molson but Mr. T was Molson inside and out. He was so drunk he was eating the crackers without taking the plastic wrappers off.

When he heard the commotion near the back of the plane the cardinal suspected the flight attendants were scrapping over him. Angel semen seemed to be some kind of crazy aphrodisiac.   But this time he was wrong.

“In the name of Allah!” a bearded man shouted. “American Imperialists and crusaders will pay the price!” He had some kind of button thing in his hand, with his thumb poised ready to press.

People were screaming and swooning. Cardinal Molson heard some praying to a Christian God and that snapped him out of his reverie. He raised his right hand- he wasn’t sure why at the time- and a bolt of white light came out and zoomed towards the bomber. And then the light was gone and so was the man. People blinked and rubbed at their eyes. The trouble maker had vanished. Cardinal Molson wiped the tingly palm of his hand on his black pant leg.   Angel semen indeed.

Far below a man with a beard hit the metal roof of a snowy barn and slid off, bones smashed after a freefall from thirteen thousand feet. Fourteen year old farm girl Ashley Bloomfield looked up just in time to be crushed by the falling pulverized body, killing her instantly.   One virgin, anyway. (more…)