Cheating Death By John Ritchie
“Every medical intervention is, in a sense, cheating death. Postponing the inevitable.”
I knew I was looking in his direction, but all I was seeing was an internally generated image of the Grim Reaper, grinning. My condition was untreatable. It didn’t matter to me that Dr Bradley had just told me that research predicted a cure for my condition within the next five years, or possibly sooner, I had six months and counting. I realised the room had gone quiet.
“I’m sorry…”
“I know the idea can be shocking, but realistically there is no alternative, if we are going to give you any hope at all.”
“Hope, what are you talking about? You just said I’ve only got six months.”
“Oh, my apologies. I thought you were listening to what I was saying about cryognenics.”
“Cryogenics? Are you serious? Surely that was thrown out years ago as unworkable.”
“On the contrary, research has never stopped. Particularly in Russia. They have made great advances. They have successfully resuscitated primates after ten years.”
“I’m not a monkey!”
“No, but you are dying. I am offering you a chance to cheat death, at least temporarily. You are, after all, only twenty-nine.”
I run the conversation again and again in my head as I wait for the anaesthetic to take ef…
The first thing I hear is a low hum, as though an electric motor is running quietly somewhere nearby. Then there is the sound of voices. Confident, assured voices, discussing something that is well within their area of competence.
I think about my arms and legs and I discover there is evidence of sensation. I start checking the rest of my body and discover that I am apparently lying on my back and naked under a light covering.
The voices change, they are curious about something. The conversation picks up pace, yet there is something strangely stilted about the words as though the language is unfamiliar to the speakers.
“He is awakened, I sense.”
“Affirmed. I sense it also.”
“Commence assessment of vital signs and cognitive activity.”
“Affirmed. I am streaming the data.”
“Adjust nourishment and medication according to your findings.”
“Affirmed.”
I find myself being moved to a reclined sitting position. I look around, but the room is empty. I wonder who has been speaking, then the lens, of what appears to be a camera above the bed, moves towards me. I must have reacted, because a voice says.
“Do not be alarmed, you are safe.”
“Safe? Safe from what?”
“The panovirus.”
“WHAT!”
“You have been in cryostasis, so were not affected. We are programmed to nurture all living humans so we will take care of you; the last of your kind.”
Faces in the night By Rollo Waite
He staggered from the darkness into the light with but one thought: ‘Who the hell am I?’ He then chanced a furtive look at his reflection in the shop window. The face was haggard and unfamiliar. He ran his hands over his unkempt beard, as did the reflection. The hair on the head was frayed and stringy – like a pathetic, discarded puppet. Then he saw the eyes, those terrible eyes which looked into his own – mad eyes, cat's eyes, not a man's eyes. He sobbed with disbelief, rejecting the sight of this strangeness.
‘Rodriguez?’ he asked. As he uttered this new and impressive name, his voice felt deep and sonorous, and seemed to reverberate in the solitary silence. It made him feel good. ‘Rodriguez.’ He softly repeated the name – it had already gained a comforting familiarity. He smiled boldly at the face in the window and addressed it mischievously. ‘Rodriguez, you silly fool! What are you doing in this strange place, looking so dirty and ugly?’
He screamed. The lips in the window had not moved – but hadn't he spoken?
He reeled away into the night up a dark street and, moth-like, headed for a glittering, dancing, neon-lit window. He immersed himself in its brightness, rubbing his hands together.
As if under a shower, he looked at the hands. They were coarse and cracked, with dirt under the nails – not his hands. He strained to see a face in the window. There was nothing there but the faces of clocks which wickedly winked at him. The brightness almost blinded him. Shielding his eyes, he yelled, ‘Are you there, Rodriguez?’
His voice seemed to disappear into the glittering harshness. All that remained of his speaking was the quivering of his lips. He was profoundly lost with nothing, no one to protect him from this madness, this wickedness.
He turned away from the brightness to the window where he had discovered Rodriguez. As he got near, he nervously called, ‘Are you still there, Rodriguez?’ His voice sounded shrill and cackling, like that of an old hag.
Then he saw the face in the window – an old face, a sad face – not Rodriguez – the face of a hopeless derelict. Suddenly he remembered something. The tears ran down his face as he nodded his head and tenderly asked, ‘Is that you, Paddy?’
The face in the window answered, ‘Yes, I'm Paddy.’
With a superhuman effort, he summoned one last vestige of pride. He stood tall and resolutely addressed the apparition in the window: ‘Well Paddy, my name is Rodriguez.’
The Black Widow By Deborah Rickard
A silken web slips across my face as we emerge from the wood, dense with oak and scrub. I step out of the mass of mangled ivy curling round my ankles and stop, dead still, smoothing the back of my hand across my cheek. There's nothing there. Jake gives me a look.
"Spider's web," I answer his unasked question, and a shiver shimmies up my spine.
"Hurry up!" he grumbles. "We'll be late for tea," and he charges on through the long grass to the velvet lawn.
I stand a moment, looking up at the Georgian house across the green expanse, watching the windows aligned in proud symmetry on its stone façade observe me with disdain. Inside, the chink of teaspoons on bone china would be punctuating the murmur of subdued chatter, and delicate pastries would be being served on three-tiered cake stands as a string trio sighs softly in a corner.
I can't tell Jake about when I used to come here before; though Rory and I had been too nervous to cross the threshold of the hotel, too naïve even to ask if we might have tea. We were newly married and merely wandered in the wood and danced in dappled sunlight while birdsong serenaded our lovemaking, and the umbrous scent of trees and dark earth bound us tight together. We would laugh and dip our toes in the chill waters of the pond, hidden behind banks of hawthorn and cow parsley, and roll in the long grass here on the edge of the wood. We were happy … for a while. But then the pain began. And then the poisonous tendrils of ivy twisted and turned and crept like a noose around his neck, stealing his breath, and his life. And it was over.
"Come on!" Jake yells impatiently from across the lawn. "I haven't paid a fortune to stay in a first-rate hotel and get messed up by sodding weeds and mud!" He brushes his hands briskly over neatly pressed trousers. "You're so weird! Why can't you show some appreciation for God's sake?"
I linger in the long grass a moment longer, casting a backward glance at the wood and the memories before stepping forward, promising I'd return. And bring Jake with me to weave a rope of woven ivy around his neck. Just like I did before.
Mrs Barnes and the Were-Ralph By Sophie Green