you’re a doctor,” he said.
She did not say anything more, but he noticed how she put the vials of his blood into a row marked green in the case she carried. He saw other rows of vials, some marked red, blue and orange.
“You will not suffer anymore,” she told him before leaving.
That night the three men talked about their options. They agreed to try escaping, although no one knew much about the hospital building or the city for that matter. They got up several times during the night to try out their legs. They were still weak, but they felt they could at least get down the stairs. They agreed to try the next day when the Teladorians left them for several hours in the afternoon. At least they wouldn’t make any noise bumping around in the dark. But the next morning he found his two conspirators dead.
“What happened to them?” he asked the doctor.
“They died in their sleep,” she answered.
“I will too?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “you have passed the seventh night.”
He watched as the Teladorian doctor took blood samples from the two dead men. He could not believe it. They came so far, suffered so much. For what? To die in their sleep? And what about him? Once again he dodged his appointment with death. He who never won anything in his life now seemed to be on a winning streak. For what prize? To learn it took seven nights to beat this thing? To be one of the only survivors of a colony of a hundred-thousand living souls? What next? He felt his energy drain from him, despair settling in. He lay there numb.
He barely noticed the doctor at his bedside until he felt the needle prick his arm. That was real enough. She took his blood, placed his vials in the green row as before. He saw the other vials lined up in blue, red, and orange rows. They were all there. Just as the doctor finished, several Teladorians he never saw before entered the ward. Right away he noticed they did not wear masks. They wore the same type of silver suits he saw the first day on the road. A voice in the back of his head said, “military”.
The whole ward became tense. Several of the other Teladornians raised their voices against the newcomers, one even stood barring their way into the ward. A brief shouting match ensued with the newcomers winning. The newcomers looked at him, but they went to the woman’s bed first. Another argument broke out. The woman began to shriek. The female doctor taking his blood left him and hurried over to the woman’s bedside. Now all the Teladorians were around the woman’s bed, their backs to him.
In that moment the man considered making a run for it. He would have to sneak by the Teladorians and out the door. It was tempting. He wanted to run free once more. But he knew he would not get far. Then he noticed the case of blood samples. The doctor left it on the stand next to his bed. He saw the green vials, his green. He saw the blue and red and the orange. He reached over and quickly switched them
When he finished he closed his eyes and lay back. He felt the softness of the pillow, the coolness of the sheets on his feet. He opened his eyes only when he heard the Teladorians at his bedside. The woman had stopped shrieking. There was no sound coming from that corner of the ward. The newcomers, the military men, stood at the end of his bed. For the first time he saw the full face of a Teladorian- small, thin mouths set low, almost where a human would expect the chin to be, little bumps in the middle with two slits for nostrils, small eyes set further apart than human eyes beneath a smooth, broad forehead.
The man looked into those eyes. They glared back down at him. They were not the kind eyes of the Teladorian doctor he became familiar with the past week. They were cold, calculating, devoid of any warmth or compassion for him. They were eyes used to seeing harsh decisions made and carried out. The man knew he would not escape from the ward that day. He understood now he was the last piece of living evidence. His luck had finally run out.
“It is a good day to die,” the man said to the newcomers at the foot of his bed, “wouldn’t you agree?”
The doctor fumbled with the translator.
“What did you say?” she asked him.
“The woman, the human woman is dead, isn’t she?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I am very sorry,” she said.
“I am too,” the man said, “I hope your children stay safe.”
One of the newcomers handed the doctor a long, metallic object which looked like a fat fountain pen. She held it in her hand for only a moment, then she leaned forward and delivered the poison into the man’s arm. The man smiled at her. He smiled at the other Teladorians. He would not go screaming and kicking.
The doctor set the translator on the stand. She picked up the case of blood samples.
“Get those to the lab at once!” one of the newcomers commanded her.
“Yes.”
Most of the Teladorians moved off, but two of the newcomers remained at the foot of the man’ bed. They looked down at the last human, the last survivor of the colony, watching him fade.
“Return him and the woman to the places where they were first found,” the senior Teledorian said, “then completely sterilize this room. There should be no evidence left that they were here. Nothing. Make it exactly the same as the other sites.”
“Yes, sir!”
For my third fantasy story I wanted to create a new creature, but more of an urban legend. One day when I was out behind my house I was startled when my wife turned on the dryer in the basement, and the vent on the back of the house banged. The idea then came to me for a creature that could sneak into houses that way. And it gave birth to the stickelhopper.
The Stickelhopper
Copyright 2010 by S. Thomas Kaza
Uncle Mike missed the last wooden step on the patio. His ankle twisted, and the full weight of his belly hanging over his belt came down on it. Pain shot through his foot. Without thinking he quickly shifted his weight back to his right foot, which kept him from falling flat on his face. But the can of beer he held slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. Before he could bend down and pick it up, half of it poured out onto the patio stones.
“Shit!” he said. But just as he said it, he noticed two of his nephews lying in the grass near the side of the house.
“You did not hear that,” he told them with the dumb, boyish smile he always used to get himself out of trouble.
But the boys did not appear to even have noticed. One of them held a stick with a small round net on the end for catching butterflies. The other one held a flashlight, which was turned off. They both stared at the back wall of the house.
Slowly Uncle Mike limped over towards them. “What are you boys doing?” he asked.
The younger nephew, his older brother’s boy, looked up with an annoyed frown on his face and shushed him. The older nephew, his younger sister’s boy, whispered, “we’re waiting…..” without taking his eyes off the wall.
“Oh, sorry,” Uncle Mike said also lowering his voice to a whisper, “Waiting for what?”
“A sticklehopper,” the younger boy answered.
“A what?” Uncle Mike started to ask, then a smile spread across his face. From his boyhood memories he remembered the stories his father used to tell, stories about ghosts and foxes that changed into beautiful ladies….. stories about snipes and sticklehoppers.
“So you’ve been talking to Grandpa?” he whispered, taking a slurp of the beer remaining in his can.
The boys nodded.
“God,” he thought, “Did that man never stop? He used to scare us out of our wits with those stories. Now he’s doing it to a second generation.”
Then he got an idea.
“Hey,” he whispered to the boys, “Did Grandpa tell you that they bite?”
Both boys looked up at him. Uncle Mike wanted to laugh when he saw their mouths drop open, but he kept a straight face.
“They do?” the older boy asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Uncle Mike said, “I got bit once. I didn’t see the damn thing, b
ut he took a nice piece of flesh out of my finger. I must have bled for an hour.”
The boys looked at each other.
“If I were you,” Uncle Mike said before turning around and walking off, “I wouldn’t use a net to catch it. I’d get a gun to shoot it.”
After he left, the younger boy whose name was Ken, pushed himself up into a sitting position. “What do you think?” he asked.
The older boy sat up too. “I don’t know. Didn’t Granpa say we could catch it?”
“I think so,” Ken said, “I mean, he said we should shine the light in its eyes and…..”
“And what?”
“I forgot,” Ken said.
“I got an idea,” the older boy said, “Wait here!” He got up and ran off around the corner to the driveway side of the house. Ken held the flash light pointed at the dryer vent, his thumb on the switch, waiting to turn the light on at the slightest sound. He heard the voices of his aunts, uncles, and cousins coming from the front of the house. They were all out there. Then he heard a car door slam. The next moment his cousin came running back around the corner.
“Look,” he said, holding something up.
Ken struggled to see it in the gathering darkness. “What is it?”
“A slingshot.”
“You gonna kill it?” Ken asked.
“If it tries to bite me…..”
The two boys settled back down. Ken held the flashlight. His older cousin held both the net and the slingshot. He felt around on the ground for a stone or something to use for the slinghot. They were not sitting there in the dark more than a