Once upon a time, many years ago, Hannah traveled to a brand new and far away World.

A humid jungle planet that was empty of alien life, it was nonetheless bursting with exotic kinds of vegetation. Having visible water on its surface it presented an alluring target for brave young colonists.

The human race was in the middle of what later will be known as The Great Migration. They had no hope but to leave and start again somewhere else so the human race planted their seeds all over the galaxy in a desperate act of survival and called the action Great.

Just a mere few decades before the Great Migration was conceived the Earth was changing in a way that could not support human life as it was descending into perpetual winter. Chain reactions resulting from human actions started centuries ago had caused an exponential and unstoppable change on the surface of The Earth.

The temperature inside the atmosphere that has been rising slowly since the 1900s was causing the permafrost along the globes once permanently frozen edges to melt a little bit more every year.

Unknown to anyone, the permafrost in the north and south of the planet held beneath it a million years’ worth of rotting pools and their vapors. This gruesome mass was made up of dead animals and plants buried in vast fields of death over the eons.

The gasses this mass grave omitted were luckily trapped under the permanent ice for all these years, but no more. Once five percent of all the permafrost on Earth melted one too warm a summer, it released to the atmosphere a huge amount of greenhouse gasses. Their levels in the earth’s atmosphere hit a crucial point and a few short years of never before seen climate disasters were the prologue to a permanent change in The Earth’s climate.

The countries that suffered the most, mainly the Northern Hemisphere ones, gave everything they had for the construction of the first Migration Fleet. Their sacrifice saved the human race. Even though some would say, it was the actions of the very same countries that caused the climate change in the first place.

The deal was simple and thousands took it. Hannah and Itzhak, newlyweds and desperate, went along for the ride.

Each migrant committed to working through the first tough ten years of the settlement unpaid, and if and how they survived, they were to be rewarded by receiving a share of the produce and a piece of the land.

Tiny satellites that were deployed prior to any colonists’ drop-offs supplied ample information from above for years in some cases. Later on, they will provide a means of communication for the new settlements, but first, they brought new data on each possible location and this one looked unbelievably good.

LV-420 was enveloped in comforting signs of life; it had lush hills and valleys that were cut only by enormous rivers along its landscape and the temperatures read 30º-50ºC, not very comfortable but still extremely livable. There was no movement seen by the satellites in the thick green below, orbiting the planet for a decade before the actual colonization began, strengthening the suggestion that this Planet had no life forms but plants on it.

A great find, an amazing location if it was true and Hannah and Itzhak pulled more than a few strings to get on this particular Colony. The planet known only as LV-420 was a perfect destination and was to be their new home, that is, if their colony survived.

Every migrant had a real chance of survival. Everyone who left on The Migration believed it to some degree, or they never would have left.

The odds of survival on the colonies, unfortunately, were not very high and by the time Hannah was getting ready to ship out the rates stood at a sixty percent total destruction rate. A huge improvement after the first year of the Great Migration, the one no one survived.

The first wave of colonists were sent to the dwarf planets inside the Earth’s Solar System and died out completely within a few short months. Their deaths asserted the fact that it was impossible to inhabit a planet with no presence of water in its atmosphere. Means of making, storing or reclaiming water from waste all eventually failed, and the entirety of the first wave died from thirst. The earth watched them perish in horror and desperation from above.

For the second wave of The Migration, the search widened through the galaxy to much further away Solar Systems, further than ever before thought possible, but specifically to planets with visible water on their surface.

A Planet with no animals or plants was preferable, exotic life proved fatal to the colonists almost every time. Unfortunately, alien life could not be avoided on most plants selected for colonization because water usually meant life. It turns out that life pops up almost everywhere where liquid water was found, alien life that was inhospitable and almost always fatal to the newly arrived settlers. 

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Carnivore

1.

Farmer Watson opened the door to the cowshed and stepped in. The cows shuffled in anticipation of exercise and food. He slapped one on the back to get it to move, but instead it resisted.

“Go on, go!”

Instead, they surrounded him.

Something pushed him to the ground. He grunted, nervous.

“Hell you doing?”

Then, something tugged at his earlobe. He screamed. A cow stood on his chest, bit his nose. Others tore at his arms, legs, his face.

They only stopped when all that remained was tough bone or muscle tissue. And that was happily devoured by the rodents.

2.

Paul loved the countryside, watching the wildlife. He could relax, not worry about being bullied or taunted for being fat.

A squirrel ran past him, then stopped, staring into Paul’s eyes. He grinned.

Another appeared, then another until he was surrounded by almost a dozen.

 One bit his ankle. Another ran up his leg, nipped his throat.

They charged.

He fell and was smothered by ferocious animals. They scrambled over him biting, chewing, tearing. His screams only stopped when one forced its way into his mouth, scurrying down his throat until he choked him to death. They ate him whole.

3.

Keith dumped the body in the river and sighed. Another one to add to the collection and the local wildlife would do the hard work for him, stripping the remains of flesh and any evidence. 

He smiled. A squirrel scurried to the water’s edge and began to drink. He was doing the countryside a favour, adding protein to their water supply. Maybe they’d get a taste for it.

He turned and was startled to see a cow standing over him. It had a red smear across its face. It stepped closer and nudged him. Keith’s last thought was of taste.

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Crossed

Crossbows

Crossbows, I understand.

People, I don’t.

Take Daryl. He shows up at Ace Crossbows, the day after he gets fired, goes into Wagner’s office. I hear shouting, a gunshot. I see red spatter the translucent office divider, and Daryl comes out with a gun, shouting and shooting. Patterson dropped like a wounded moose, bellowing.

I ducked behind a display case, grabbed a Wonderbow Special, loaded, and waited for Daryl to stop and reload. I took my shot. Got him.

What happened? Maybe there was too much pressure and Daryl snapped. 

Like a crossbow.

Maybe I do understand people, after all.

Cross Words

“Right hand, green,” Hal said.

How did Sibyl talk him into this? He came here, broke up with her, and now? Playing one last game of Twister, “for old time’s sake,” she’d told him.

Sibyl said, “Left foot, yellow.”

Pain shot up his leg as Hal’s foot hit the circle.

He said, “Right foot, green.”

“Left hand, red,” she said.

Hal’s arm snapped, and he crumpled, moaning, onto the game mat.

She stood over him, smiling in malicious triumph.

“Never play games with a witch, Hal. Don’t you know? Words can kill,” and she said, “Heart, Code Blue.”

Game over.

Cross Reference

The last library patron wouldn’t leave.

Mr. Edwards explained, “Sir, it’s past closing time. You’ll have to go.”

The shabby gentleman stood, proclaiming, “I must finish my work!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but the rules are the rules. I must ask you to leave.”

The man swept papers into his carpetbag, strode to the door, and snarled, “May the Drabeg rend your flesh!” and he left.

“Drabeg?” Mr. Edwards murmured. Librarians may not know everything, but they know how to find out. He walked to the card catalog, opened a drawer, flipped to a card, and read:

Drabeg

SEE:

Behind you.

Invasion IV – The BEMS

The briefest of all invasions, the BEMS (short for “Bug Eyed Monsters”: a traditional term) appeared at the second convention of the Universal, National, International, Conclave of Real Nerds (UNICORN) in 2065 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Even given the number of people at the convention engaged in cosplay, it took only a few hours before many participants noticed a number of their fellows wearing unusual, dark blue costumes, with segmented arms and legs and huge masks covering their entire heads. These masks featured gaping, toothless mouths, a fine set of antennae, and huge, bulging, incredibly realistic insectile eyes. The eyes gave them their names. Each of the BEMS was accompanied by a tall, beautiful blonde woman in lacey lingerie and high heels, wearing a bubble-like space helmet and a space suit that seemed to be made of cellophane. There were twenty-six BEMS and twenty-six blondes.

During the course of the UNICORN, the BEMS were both sociable and popular although they declined to speak. There are thousands of videos, selfies and stills of the BEMS and their blonde companions, posing arm in arm with participants. Many rumors spread as to who the BEMS were: the cast of a soon-to-be-released sci-fi movie; members of some strange cult of billionaires; or enemies of the Raelians. It was discovered that the BEMS had an entire floor in the hotel that was hosting the convention. By the end of the first night of UNICORN, this collection of rooms, which became a giant suite, was the location for a continuous party, providing seemingly endless food and drink. At all hours, attendees at the convention could be found enjoying themselves and attempting to chat with the BEMS, who inevitably responded with friendly nods. Many of the participants camped out in the suite for the duration.

Apparently, the BEMS had anticipated their popularity. They came equipped with BEM masks, small versions of their own heads that could fit over one’s head and which were given away free. Soon, hundreds of convention goers, especially youngsters, were wearing these masks both in the convention hotel and out in the streets and public places of Madison. Also available free were BEM bobble heads, BEM coloring books, BEM action figures, and a full set of trading cards, one hundred and four in all, showing the BEMS, four pictures of each, in various poses, with fanciful names: Awful Abner, Bang-up Bill, Cool Charlie, etc., down to Zealous Zeke.

In the closing hours of UNICORN, the BEMS, all twenty-six of them, gathered in a circle in the center of the convention hall, with their blondes. A goodly section of the crowd, sensing that something was about to happen, gathered round them. The BEMS chanted together in an unknown language for several minutes, while pumping their segmented arms up and down and stamping their feet. This was suddenly followed by a great, roaring cheer, which was taken up by the crowd. Immediately after, the BEMS and their women left the hotel. A silver-colored, windowless vehicle, roughly the size of a bus, with sixteen soft tires, came rolling up the hotel driveway, and the BEMS and the escorts entered. The vehicle rolled away and vanished from sight. 

The twenty-six women were let out, each still in her spacesuit and lingerie at the hotel in Madison where twenty-six rooms had been occupied by the lovelies since they day they had arrived in the city. Each night they had been taken back there from the convention hotel around midnight and picked up in the morning in their costumes, both ways by twenty-six limousines. The BEMS remained at the UNICORN hotel the entire time seemingly not sleeping at all.

It turned out that the blonde ladies had been hired as a group from a talent agency in Las Vegas. They had been flown to Madison in a chartered jet, where they found their rooms in their hotel waiting for them, along with their costumes, which they thought to be hilarious. They were provided with little illustrated booklets explaining their roles as escorts to the BEMS. They were questioned for several days by the FBI, CIA and other security agencies. They knew nothing of the BEMS, who apparently never spoke, but who were invariably kind and polite, only insisting, nonverbally, that the ladies stay with them when they were in the convention hotel.

As to the eight-wheeled silver vehicle that picked the BEMS and their ladies, it was determined that it made a stop a few blocks from the second hotel, where the BEMS picked up twenty-six pizzas, mixed plain, pepperoni and anchovies. And twenty-six liters of Diet Coke. Later, it was spotted several times on highways leading north out of Madison. The final time the vehicle was seen, it was leaving a local road onto a dirt track leading into a state forest, fifty kilometers from the city. The vehicle and its passengers were never seen again.

One of the items given away by the BEMS was a comic book alleging that the origin of the BEMS was a planet circling a star not far from Earth. The BEMS in the comic were depicted as happy tourists on vacation. Their amusement with common human objects is depicted. Their favorite thing seemed to be a hand-operated eggbeater. Their method of reaching Earth is not depicted. 

It’s hoped that the BEMS may visit UNICORN again someday.

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Birds of a Feather

1.

She looked out the front window, the wind-swept rain splattering the glass, the empty street outside a soft blur. 

“Bad enough we’re under quarantine, did we have to get this damned storm too?” she sighed, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. She lit up and dropped the Bic lighter next to the pack as she walked through the rooms yet again, looking for a distraction.

She inhaled deeply as she ran her fingertip lightly across the books on the shelves, then glanced at the body on the floor.

“I should have killed someone with better taste.”

2.

He watched her moving around in the house, ignoring the howling wind driving the rain like pellets from a shotgun shell. She reminded him of the actresses in those old movies, the black and white mysteries he liked so much.

It was her hair. How he’d enjoy running his hands along those silky strands as she pressed close to him in a darkened room, imploring him to protect her from whoever was stalking her, following her around.

Sure, that’s how it went in the movies, but for real? Never, not for him anyway.

Well, he thought, maybe it’s my turn.

3.

Bored, she went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. 

Typical guy, she thought, leftover take out from who knows when and a cold six pack on the top shelf.

“Waste not, want not,” she giggled, taking a bottle of beer and twisting the cap off as she let the door close. She took the revolver out from her waistband and set it on the kitchen table, rubbing her belly as she took a healthy swig from the cold bottle.

She was kneeling down to look at the food in the pantry when she felt a hand on her hair.