Fiction

The courtyards of Katsuro’s castle bustled with dozens of soldiers and servants who hurried along to fulfill whatever order the Daimyo had thrown their way. Some men carried individual weapons, while others lugged entire crates or barrels in their arms through the fortress grounds.

Jack Trump awoke from the nightmare drenched in sweat. It was a familiar part of his life now. The memories of the trenches would seem like reality up until the point where his own body would be cut down by a swathe of bullets and he would launch, bolt upright, in his bed. His shaking hands would run over his skin and find sweat instead of blood. It would not yet be dawn but he would rise, wash and dress himself, the nightmare still lodged, like small shards of glass, inside his every movement. Even as he walked into the London streets a scream or a cry for help would invade his ears, as clear and as real as the hawkers selling their papers on the side streets and the cobbles.

JUNE 15, 2006 - MAUI, HAWAII

I'm lying on my back on a bed of undulating seaweed, twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea. I'm Mr. Spock flying through the universe, sealed in a capsule, my destination unknown. I'm a vegetating chunk of humanness, a rotting homo-sapient tuber buried in the slimy earth, millions of worms invading me, crawling into every orifice, devouring my living corpse from the inside out. I'm the centenarian Dave Bowman, lying in that enigmatic and mysteriously uber-sterile green and white room in 2001 - A Space Odyssey, growing older, and older, and older, by the second... whole, but not whole, not wholly alive. What is it to be alive? Perhaps I'm dead and at the same time alive, but mostly… I'm so alone here.

Driving west up Market Street, the first place they stopped was at police headquarters. Parked in the parking lot, Hurts told Amanda to remain in the car, telling her that he would be back in a few minutes. Ten minutes later, he returned, carrying two walkie-talkies, the type that have extended microphones that can be attached to the lapel of a coat or shirt. He set them down on the seat between Amanda and him.

The song “Rudolf, The Red-Nose Reindeer” was being sung by Gene Audrey on the radio as Hurts drove back to his office. Amanda was humming along to it.

Why am I here you ask? I’ll tell you.

I needed a gift for the Earth Winter Solstice Holiday for my wife Susan. She had accompanied me here with the other 49 childless couples to work as “pioneers”. We were establishing The Springboard To Space for future planetary exploitation and travel.

They drove five blocks east down Market Street. They drove to the Wainwright Building which was on the corner of Market Street and Seventh Street. The Wainwright Building was a twentieth-story skyscraper of brown granite and glass. The top three floors of the building housed the employees of International Investment, Inc.

Like most women, Shilpa had a weakness for sales. She loved buying things she didn’t need. And if they cost less, all the better. Why, just yesterday she had had a discount haircut. A friend’s friend was apprenticing at a swank saloon and had offered to cut her hair for half the price. Shilpa needed no second invitation. She had gone in for a complete makeover. Trading her hitherto long tresses for a chic boyish cut.

Jedidiah Hawkins was one of the most evil men in the state of Alabama. He was a good for nothing cheat, whose business dealings were barely within the law. His wife, Ella May, always had bruises and cuts that she attributed to her clumsy ways, but the police knew better. They could not get her to file charges, for she seemed terrified of the consequences.