Part Two

Hole in the Wall: The Fifth Monday Three – Part Four

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Edele Winnie

“Jocelyn, is it really you?” Carol asked the white-coated woman up on the catwalk. “I am so…. muddled.” Carol ran her hands through her brown hair but the confusion remained. They were surrounded by buzzing machines, tubes and metal catwalks. “What is this place?”

Jocelyn laughed. “It’s definitely not the bank. The Jocelyn who works there with you is just one version of me. A sister, if you like.”

Carol pointed at one of the large glass tubes. It was filled with green liquid and an exact copy of Carol herself, floating languidly. Beside that there were more tubes and copies. Carol shook her head, unable to find words. Beside her, Gary shifted into a quivering red cylinder shape.

“I see you’ve met Gary. He’s a portal jumper. A creature that can transfer between dimensions without decomposing.”

“You make me sound so dull.” Gary complained and transformed into a star shape. “I’m actually a star.”

Everything seemed to be swirling in her head and Carol looked for a place to sit. She settled on the bottom step of a metal ladder that led to a catwalk above.

Gary changed into a rhombus. “There was a cloh enforcer right behind us.” Continue reading →

The Two Bills – Part 2 of 4

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

Edmond Gagnon

Wind & Terrain  

It was Monday, July 11th, and we had to be in Kelowna, B.C. by Wednesday night to meet my sister, Bonnie, and my brother-in-law, Larry. That meant we had to cover 1,100 miles in three days, with most of it on two-lane mountain roads. So far in the trip, Milwaukee was the only 400 miles day. We would have to do three of those. It wasn’t part of my original trip plan, but we had to get to Kelowna a day earlier to hook up with everyone else there.

The day started out nice, with the sun shining down on us. The road was quiet and dry, heading northwest. US 212 clipped the northeast corner of Wyoming, and by midday it put us in Montana. The wind picked up with the later hours of the day. The rolling green hills were nice to look at when the wind wasn’t punching us like a giant boxing glove.

The Custer National Forest kept the wind at bay, but in the open, we blew right by the Little Bighorn battleground. US 212 joined Interstate 90 just outside Billings, where the speed limit is 75 mph. Heading directly west at that point, the gusts made it difficult for me to stay in my lane at the posted speed. We had intended to bed down in Bozeman that night, but the air-hammering got the best of us, and we called it an early day in a town called Big Timber. Continue reading →

Hole in the Wall: The Fifth Monday Three – Part Two

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

Ben Van Dongen

Gary rolled into the portal and fell to the ground, landing with a splat. “Ahhh! Damn that hurts! Tanya? Where are you? That crazy thing threw acid or something at me!” Composing himself, he became a ball again.

The ground was a piece of land, ten metres around, floating in the ether. The bare earth beneath it bowed out, like the bottom of a bowl, but at a sharper angle and uneven.

A large tree sat in the middle, stretching up to the empty nothingness, its roots dangling below the platform. Shrubs and tall grasses sprouted all around, making it look like the tree was dug out of a forest, taking the ground coverage with it.

Hundreds of other platforms floated in the void, stretching out into blackness. Each of them had a single tree, roots dangling below the convex bottom, nothing tethering them, nothing holding them up.

“Tanya? Did you hear me?” Gary formed a cube, a tall cylinder, and went back to a ball. “Tanya!” Continue reading →

Three Days of McKay – Part Two

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Edele Winnie

McKay came back the very next day. Hester was going out for breakfast, which today meant black coffee. There was a young man seated on a bench across from her building. He was wearing shiny black pants, a black shirt and black boots. His hair was dyed black. She could not see how tall he was because he was sitting.

“I took your advice,” he said to her as she passed. “Got some new clothes.”

He stood up then, painfully short McKay, all blacked out. It caught Hester by surprise and she almost said something but bit her tongue instead. They walked together in silence. Entered the coffee shop one after the other, sat at the counter on stools side by side. He ordered what she was having. The barista asked if they wanted separate bills. She said yes. He said no.

She turned to him. “Okay, let’s get through this. This isn’t going to work, you know? I don’t need a boyfriend. And I don’t want you.” Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday – Part Two

/ Alanna / 1 Comment

By Alanna Piche

Looking in the mirror, Cerise gave a sigh of resignation.  She couldn’t believe the lengths she had to go, especially ones involving wearing a vinyl maid’s outfit.  Getting close enough to him would be hard otherwise, and this would make it much easier.  Hell, this would make it impossible not to be close to him.

“C, report,” a voice crackled, cutting into her thoughts.

“I’ve narrowed down the target, and will intercept tonight,” she replied, still fussing with the costume as she turned side to side in front of the mirror. Continue reading →

Titan Run Part Two

/ Justin Cantelo / 5 Comments

She remembered the stories that her father used to tell her about the construction of the moon bases throughout the solar system. Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was their first attempt to build something more than just a base, it became a city, a ‘metropolis’. It spanned a huge part of the moon’s surface and housed well over fifty-thousand sentient life forms. Continue reading →