Fiction Vortex - May 2013

  As you can see, each monster has a different remedy, but the most important thing to remember when dealing with whatever would threaten your garden is to have a firm hand. If you hesitate, falter, or just don’t go after this threat with everything you have, you will fail. You will lose the one thing you cared for in this scarred world. You will find yourself in a darkness that will be all the more complete, all the more consuming, because you, if even for a fleeting moment, held the promise of light.

  Of course, if you do manage to protect your garden, it will be safe, secure, healthy, and appealing! Now doesn’t that sound nice?

  Holly Casey grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee with two siblings, parents, and a number of different animals over the years. Currently, she is finishing her last year as a student at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and will graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Dramatic Arts and a minor in Creative Writing. Though she has been reading and writing from a young age, Undead in the Daisies is her first story to be published.

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  The Way Station

  by Shay Hatten; published May 14, 2013

  The wheels on the bus went round and round and round, and sitting inside, Terry was dead, dead, dead.

  In spite of that, or maybe because of it, he looked out the window at the road ahead. And saw it end. Not in the earthly way, not with roadblocks and construction signs, but in a more ethereal sort of way. It just ended. Disappeared. So did the landscape that it ran across. The whole desert simply stopped about thirty feet in front of them. And they were moving towards it at full speed; which, for this bus, was about fifty miles an hour.

  Terry rose to his feet and stepped out into the aisle.

  “Going down!” the Driver called.

  “Hey, Driver!” Terry shouted. “Is this it? The grand finale?”

  “Not quite,” the Driver said, and spat a wad of tobacco out his window. “Got a few more passengers to pick up. Now sit back down, else you’re apt to come flyin’ up here next to me.”

  “Yes sir,” Terry said, and sat back down. Sat back down, and watched through the window as they plunged off the edge of the road into the vast expanse of that unbelievably blue sky, sky bluer than any he’d ever seen.

  ~~~~~

  He remembered it; his dying.

  Remembered walking down Fifth Avenue. Remembered the pain shooting up his left arm. Passersby swarmed around him as he sunk to his knees. As he clutched his chest. As his vision faded out, and as his body released massive amounts of DMT, causing him to see that bright white light at the end of the tunnel. All that typical death mumbo jumbo. He was actually disappointed, in his final moments, how cliché it was.

  Then he slept.

  Slept for what felt like a day, but what was, he knew in reality, much, much longer. Or maybe not. Maybe it was mere seconds. However long, it was a span of time that existed outside of everything he’d ever known, and goddamn if it wasn’t the best night’s sleep of his life.

  When he opened his eyes, he was standing in a desert unlike any he’d ever seen; a desert that stretched on in all directions with no mountains or other landmarks to denote that there was anything in the distance other than more desert. Even the sky was devoid of characteristics; no sun, no clouds, nothing but blue, blue, blue. Blue forever.

  In this desert, there was nothing but sand. Sand, and Terry, and the road.

  It was old and cracked and the paint was fading, but that was clearly what it was; a highway cutting across the ground, perfectly bisecting the desert, reaching forever in both directions. Terry stood by this now, underneath a sign marked, of all things, “Bus Stop.” Like the road, it was cracked and old and in dire need of replacing. At some point a shotgun had sent a round through the middle of the thing, rendering it barely readable. When he looked at it he was struck with the faintest pang of recognition. Something about all of this; the desert, the battered sign, seemed so familiar. Was it something from his childhood, years spent in Arizona? But no; his bus stop had been on the corner of his residential block and he had preferred his deserts road-free. Terry disregarded the notion.

  He knew what he had to do.

  He had to wait.

  So wait he did. For an hour, two hours, longer, shorter, some length outside of time itself.

  Finally the bus came rumbling along.

  Rumbling; that was the only way to describe how it moved, spewing up black smoke and practically shaking from side to side. Although to be fair, Terry couldn’t be sure if that was the fault of the bus or the cracked road it drove on. The way it was going he wasn’t sure it would even make it to him.

  And when it did, when it rolled up next to him, screeched, and rocked back on its wheels, he wasn’t sure it would ever start again.

  The door squealed open and Terry found himself looking into the face of the Driver. Middle aged, overweight, and wearing a backwards Red Sox cap, the Driver looked at Terry with what resembled disgust, but could just have been neutrality worn on a face that time had rendered harsh.

  “Can I ask you something?” the Driver asked. His jaw moved up and down as he spoke, and Terry could see the thick slop of tobacco working around in his jaw.

  “Sure,” Terry said, for lack of anything else.

  The Driver’s jaw worked up and down a few more times as he looked around; then he turned back to Terry and said, “Where are we?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Course I don’t know,” the Driver said. “You’re the one who this should look familiar to.”

  “Well it doesn’t. Never died before.”

  “Give it a minute,” the Driver said. “It’ll come to you.”

  Terry looked around again, took in the sign and the endless desert, the sunless sky, and realized what he was seeing. “This is my childhood, isn’t it?” he said. “Not one memory, but the amalgamation of all the time I lived in Arizona. The bus stop, the sunny days…”

  “Care to explain why I’m fat and old?” the Driver asked.

  “I did this to you?” Terry asked. Then he laughed. “When I was a kid, the school bus driver. He was this big scary looking dude; always terrified me.”

  “Probably that’s it then,” the Driver said. “Now come on, get on the bus.”

  “Where are we going?” Terry asked.

  “Where do you think?”

  Terry honestly had no idea, but regardless, he got on the bus. This desert, he thought, had shown him about all it had to offer.

  As soon as he was clear of the door, the Driver spat a wad of tobacco through the opening. Then he hit a switch and the door slammed shut.

  “Stay behind the line,” the Driver said, and pointed to a strip of peeling yellow tape on the floor.

  “You’d think you guys would be able to afford better buses,” Terry said as he took a seat near the front.

  “This bus could’ve been whatever you wanted,” the Driver said. “You’re the one that made it old.”

  ~~~~~

  As the bus fell through the sky, Terry grabbed the front of his seat and looked out through his window. They were diving straight towards a body of water.

  He would have called it an ocean, but that wasn’t what it was, not really. It was big enough to be an ocean, stretching in all directions like the desert had done, but with no waves, no wind, no visible wildlife, there was nothing to classify it as an ocean. It was just water. From up here it might as well have been a giant kitchen sink.

  Terry braced when they hit, but there was no impact; they just slid into the water. Slid into it, straightened out, and then they were driving on nothing, watery blue stretching all around them.

  Up ahead, Terry saw, was a young woman. He felt brief empathy at her having died so young, but then realized she probably hadn’t. Probably, like the ocean, this was some ideal version of what she had once been.

  Terry was struck with a very strong urge to be able to see his own face, but when he looked at the window he saw that it b
ore no reflection. Even at the front of the bus there was no rearview mirror. He supposed it wasn’t necessary. No traffic on these roads.

  The door opened and after a brief conversation, the Driver ushered the woman on board. Terry couldn’t hear the conversation, but didn’t think he needed to. It was likely the same conversation he’d had … minutes? hours? days? However long before.

  “It’s a cool boat, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?” Terry asked. He turned to the woman, who had taken a seat across from him and was now leaning in timidly to speak.

  “This boat,” she said. “It’s pretty kickass. And the Driver; what a cutie. I mean, if you’ve gotta die, this isn’t a bad way to do it.”

  “Where did you grow up?” Terry asked.

  “Hawaii. You?”

  “Arizona,” he said. “It’s a bus for me, and the Driver’s old.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” she said.

  “No,” Terry said. “It’s nice.”

  She smiled at him and said, “Well I guess that’s the point.”

  Terry smiled back.

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them the bus peeled away for the briefest of moments. For just a flash, he was on a speedboat that was somehow swimming underwater, and the Driver was young and grinning and had what Terry had once heard his wife describe as ‘sex appeal.’ Then Terry was back on the bus.

  “Going up,” the Driver yelled.

  “Is this it?” the woman asked, leaning in towards Terry. “Are we moving on?”

  “Not yet, I think,” Terry said. “I think we’re picking up more people.”

  ~~~~~

  The bus took them out of the water and into the sky, and from there back down to Earth where they drove through jungles, and across icy plains, and over mountains, and through deep endless meadows. They drove through big cities in small towns and villages in the south of France, all devoid of people except for their one expectant passenger. And as the

  seconds? days? years?

  passed, the bus got more and more full.

  Until, eventually, every seat was filled.

  “Going up!” the Driver yelled.

  The bus started to climb, rising from the boardwalk it had been driving across and ascending towards the sky. A sky blacker than Terry’s darkest dreams.

  “Hey Driver!” he called. “Is this it?”

  “This is it, alright!” the Driver called back.

  “What’s next?” Terry asked. “What comes next?”

  Terry looked at the Driver. And for the briefest of moments, the old man peeled away. For the briefest of moments, the Driver was a ship captain, a pilot, a jungle guide, a man, a woman, a child, black, white, big, small, there, gone. For the briefest of moments, he was everyone and no one. For the briefest of moments, he was everything. And nothing.

  And still, he only smiled.

  Shay Hatten has written three novels, several screenplays, and dozens of short stories. One of his short stories was recently published on TheFictionShelf.com, and one of his screenplays, titled Another Life, currently resides on Amazon Studios’ “Notable Projects” list. More information about him, as well as samples of his work, can be found at his website, shayhatten.com.

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  Nth Chance

  by Konstantine Paradias; published May 17, 2013

  I saw myself across the street today, waving at me; did my absolute best to ignore I-across-the-street, despite my constant protestations. From the corner of my eye, I noticed that I-across-the-street was grasping a slip of brightly colored paper. I picked up my pace, then bumped onto a young man who shoved me back violently, causing me to tumble back, spilling all my worldly possessions onto the sidewalk as my nylon bags ripped.

  I-across-the-street ran toward me the minute he saw me stumble. I used the pedestrian crossing (I’m finally catching up, though this seems absurd) and made my way towards me, the paper still firmly grasped in hand. I-from-across the street said:

  “It’s 42! Monday’s forty—”

  Then a semi-truck with damaged brakes rolled over I-in-the-crosswalk, making a sound like two dozen knuckles popping in unison, followed by a loud series of thumps.

  Around me, the crowd was screaming or pointing their fingers at the bloody mess spattered all over the asphalt. The young man that had shoved me mumbled something about kittens before violently vomiting. I picked up my possessions, stuffed them in my coat pockets and turned my back on I-all-over-the-asphalt without sparing me a single glance.

  Even a sight as traumatic as watching an exact and perfect duplicate of yourself dying in the most horrible fashion can grow tedious after the first dozen times…

  ~~~~~

  My name is David Jinks. And I’ve been killing myself trying to pull off the same blindingly stupid experiment every day for almost a year now. Well not myself, strictly speaking. Try to think of the multitudes of Davids that have perished as possible Davids. I once tried giving them numbers, in an attempt to rationalize with these strange events. I not only grew used to the horror, but also terribly tired of it.

  Oh sure, when David-1 slipped from the balcony railing while he was busy explaining that he was ‘I, from the future!’ and I saw him crash head first on the ground, I nearly went insane with grief.

  But by the time David-39-or-so was impaled by a stuffed swordfish, which was launched from the roof of a car that braked to avoid running over a dog crossing the street, I merely shrugged and kept on going. Even let out a chuckle.

  I have managed to piece together a possible theory (or even explanation) to the origins of the Davids that plague me, as well as their deaths. It is a story I have begun to piece together since before David-3′s untimely demise by accidentally swallowing a salted peanut — to which we were both allergic — while drinking beers at a bar. As David-3 was swelling, eyes tearing up, he gasped out a brief explanation:

  He was from the future.

  My mind was reeling with possibilities when I was visited by David-4 in the homeless shelter. David entered the bathroom to relieve himself and moments before he slipped on a tile, breaking his neck on the toilet bowl, I found out that:

  He was hailing from a future when I was rich. Not financially secure, or even moderately rich, but mind-bogglingly rich.

  David-5 tapped my shoulder as I was hunched over a burning drum barrel with some of my colleagues. He had not yet tried Hooch’s moonshine, which made him turn around and spit the fluid, rich in alcoholic content, into the drum barrel. This caused the fire to leap up at him, setting his shirt on fire and causing the bottle of moonshine to combust into flame, eventually turning him into a cinder. He told me that:

  I was living the big life. I was a great man, and Sheila had come crawling back, and the kids didn’t hate me anymore.

  I met David-6 under the bridge where I went to sleep sometimes on hot nights. He was playing with Ginny, a stray pit bull that I was feeding with scraps whenever I had the chance. Before Ginny got inexplicably agitated and ripped his throat open with her bare teeth, he informed me that:

  It had all started with just one lottery ticket that I would win five years from now, given to me by some stranger as I’m begging outside Grand Central Station.

  David-7, baffled by the fact that I jumped right to the point as he sat by me on the park bench and confused by my knowledge of his identity, tried to find out how I could have possibly known all this before a stray bullet fired by a police officer during a crack-house bust got him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Overall, David-7 would have been useless, had he not served to provide me with the following very useful bits of information:

  Each David had no knowledge of the actions or fate of every David before him. Each David acted of his own accord, but each David had the same purpose — to make me rich before the appointed time.

  I attempted to inquire of David-8 when we met inside the abandoned 50th street subway station. It had been an old hideout of
mine, away from the prying eyes of my fellow homeless and without any living creature in sight. I had picked an old ticket booth to meet with him in, one that seemed stable and would allow for an extended discussion.

  David-8 let out an effeminate scream of panic as I tapped the dirty glass and motioned him over. I had him sit down. I didn’t offer him anything to eat or drink, despite his protestations. I told him:

  “You’ve come here to tell how I am going to get rich and get Sheila and the kids back five years before I win that lottery ticket.”

  “How … how could you know that?”

  “You’ve told me. Well, to be fair, you didn’t exactly tell me. Not you, anyway.”

  David-8’s expression was that of such confusion, it looked as if he was watching crabs forcing themselves on a dolphin.

  “You’ve been at this seven times already. Eight, with you included. Each time you die.”

  “I…” he stuttered. He’d gone whiter than paper. “I … died?”

  “Well, not you. The seven ones before you.”

  “Seven times? Seven … oh dear God, no…”

  “Oh shut up. I’ve watched me — that is, you people — die each and every single time, right in front of my eyes. I’ve had to live with that crap, while you didn’t! Now, man the hell up and give me some answers, before you bite it too!”

  “What? No, no, wait! I can’t stay here! I need to go back! What if I die? Then it’ll all have been for nothing! Oh God…” David-8 made a move for the door. I grabbed his sideburns like Ms. Forager did back in Sunday School and tugged hard. I knew that the sensation would make him sick to the stomach.

  “What were you trying to tell me? How can I get the hell out of this life? How will I get rich five years earlier? Tell me, you bastard!” He was mewling now, a sickening and pained sound. I never thought such noise could ever come from my mouth.

  “Experiment … small time scientist research team … they’re experimenting with time or something … never quite figured it out … please stop it, please!” he squealed and I let him go. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he kept talking: