Writers of the Future, Volume 30

  “Everybody gets their perfect body,” she said. “And knowledge. Everything’s fair. God must be fair.”

  Cyril pondered that. He couldn’t even argue with it. Very even-handed. He couldn’t feel that he had been singled out for some kind of torment. Many people had suffered worse. When his children had died, he was still able to talk to them. It had to feel much worse if they were simply gone.

  “Maybe this is a good thing,” said Cyril.

  “Nobody believes that,” she said.

  “No,” said Cyril. “I can’t imagine that they do. When you wish—when your child dies, or your wife. Or husband, or whatever—you don’t really think of how they’d come back. You want them back just as they were. But then what? Then they’d just die again, later, under other circumstances.”

  “At least they’d have had a life in between,” said Dorcas.

  Cyril smiled. “You’re not the ordinary dead person,” he said. “You have opinions. You have regrets.”

  “What can I regret? What did I ever do wrong?” she asked. “No, I’m just pissed off.”

  Cyril laughed aloud. “You can’t be angry. My wife is dead, and she’s never angry.”

  “So I’m not angry. But I know that it’s wrong. It’s supposed to make us happy and it doesn’t, so it’s wrong, and wrongness feels …”

  “Wrong,” Cyril prompted.

  “And that’s as close as I can come to being angry,” said Dorcas. “You too?”

  “Oh, I can feel anger! I don’t have to be ‘close,’ I’ve got the real thing. Pissed off, that’s what I feel. Resentful. Spiteful. Whining. Self-pitying. And I don’t mind admitting it. My wife and children were resurrected and they’ll live forever and they seem perfectly content. But you’re not content.”

  “I’m content,” she said. “What else is there to be? I’m pissed off, but I’m content.”

  “I wish this really were God’s anteroom,” said Cyril. “I’d be asking the secretary to make me an appointment.”

  “You want to talk to God?”

  “I want to file a complaint,” said Cyril. “It doesn’t have to be, like, an interview with God himself. I’m sure He’s busy.”

  “Not really,” said the voice of a man.

  Cyril looked at the inner row, where a handsome young man sat in the throne. “You’re God?” Cyril asked.

  “You don’t like the resurrection,” said God.

  “You know everything, right?” asked Cyril.

  “Yes,” said God. “Everybody hates this. They prayed for it, they wanted it, but when they got it, they complained, just like you.”

  “I never asked for this.”

  “But you would have,” said God, “as soon as somebody died.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked for this,” said Cyril. “But what do you care?”

  “I’m not resurrected,” said God. “Not like them. I still care about things.”

  “Why didn’t you let them care, then?” asked Cyril.

  “Billions of people on Earth again, healthy and strong, and I should make them care? Think of the wars. Think of the crimes. I didn’t bring them back to turn the world into hell.”

  “What is it, if it isn’t hell?” asked Cyril.

  “Purgatory,” said Dorcas.

  “Limbo,” Cyril suggested back.

  “Neither one exists,” said God. “I tried them for a while, but nobody liked them, either. Listen, it’s not really my fault. Once a soul exists, it can never be erased. Annihilated. I found them, I had to do something with them. I thought this world was a good way to use them. Let them have a life. Do things, feel things.”

  “That worked fine,” said Cyril. “It was going fine till you did this.” He gestured toward Dorcas.

  “But there were so many complaints,” said God. “Everybody hated death, but what else could I do? Do you have any idea how many souls I have that still haven’t been born?”

  “So cycle through them all. Reincarnation, let them go around and around.”

  “It’s a long time between turns,” said God. “Since the supply of souls is infinite.”

  “You didn’t mention infinite,” said Cyril. “I thought you just meant there were a lot of us.”

  “Infinite is kind of a lot,” said God.

  “To me it is,” said Cyril. “I thought that to you—”

  “I know, this whole resurrection didn’t work out like I hoped. Nothing does. I should never have taken responsibility for the souls I found.”

  “Can’t you just … put some of us back?”

  “Oh, no, I can’t do that,” said God, shaking his head vehemently. “Never that. It’s—once you’ve had a body, once you’ve been part of creation, to take you back out of it—you’d remember all the power, and you’d feel the loss of it—like no suffering. Worst thing in the world. And it never ends.”

  “So you’re saying it’s hell.”

  “Yes,” said God. “There’s no fire, no sulfur and all that. Just endless agony over the loss of … of everything. I can’t do that to any of the souls. I like you. All of you. I hate it when you’re unhappy.”

  “We’re unhappy,” said Cyril.

  “No,” said God. “You’re sad, but you’re not really suffering.”

  Cyril was in tears again. “Yes I am.”

  “Suck it up,” said God. “It can be a hell of a lot worse than this.”

  “You’re not really God,” said Cyril.

  “I’m the guy in charge,” said God. “What is that, if not God? But no, there’s no omnipotent transcendental being who lives outside of time. No unmoved mover. That’s just stupid anyway. The things people say about me. I know you can’t help it. I’m doing my best, just like most of you. And I keep trying to make you happy. This is the best I’ve done so far.”

  “It’s not very good,” said Cyril.

  “I know,” said God. “But it’s the best so far.”

  Dorcas spoke up from the ticket booth. “But I never really had a life.”

  God sighed. “I know.”

  “Look,” said Cyril. “Maybe this really is the best. But do you have to have everybody stay here? On Earth, I mean? Can’t you, like, create more worlds?”

  “But people want to see their loved ones,” said God.

  “Right,” said Cyril. “We’ve seen them. Now move them along and let the living go on with our lives.”

  “So maybe a couple of conversations with the dead and they move on,” said God, apparently thinking about it. “What about you, Dorcas?”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I’m dead, what do I care?”

  “You care,” said God. “Not the cares of the body. But you have the caring of a soul. It’s a different kind of desire, but you all have it, and it never goes away.”

  “My wife and children don’t care about anything,” said Cyril.

  “They care about you.”

  “I wish,” said Cyril.

  “Why do you think they haven’t left? They see you’re unhappy.”

  “I’m unhappy because they won’t go,” said Cyril.

  “Why haven’t you told them that? They’d go if you did.”

  Cyril said nothing. He had nothing to say.

  “You don’t want them to go,” said Dorcas.

  “I want my children back,” Cyril said. “I want my wife to love me.”

  “I can’t make people love other people,” said God. “Then it wouldn’t be love.”

  “You really have a limited skill set,” said Cyril.

  “I really try not to do special favors,” said God. “I try to set up rules
and then follow them equally for everybody. It seems more fair that way.”

  “By definition,” said Dorcas. “That’s what fairness is. But who says fairness is always good?”

  God shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I wish I did. But I’ll give it a shot, how about that? Maybe I can eventually fix this thing. Maybe the next thing will be a little better. And maybe I’ll never get it right. Who knows?”

  And he was gone.

  So was Dorcas.

  Cyril got off the hippo. He was dizzy and had to cling to the pole. The carousel wasn’t going to stop. So he waited until he had a stretch of open floor and leapt off.

  He stumbled, lurched against a wall, slid down, and lay on the floor. The quartet stopped playing. The carousel slowed down and stopped. Apparently it automatically knew when there were no passengers.

  A baby cried.

  Cyril walked to the ticket window and looked in. On the floor sat a toddler, a little girl, surrounded by a pile of women’s clothing. The toddler looked up at him. “Cyril,” she said in her baby voice.

  “Do you remember being a grownup?” Cyril asked her.

  The little girl looked puzzled.

  “How do I get in there?”

  “Hungry!” said the little girl and she cried again.

  Cyril saw a door handle inside the ticket booth and eventually figured out where the door was in the outside wall. He got it open. He picked up little Dorcas and wrapped her in the dress she had been wearing. God was giving her a life.

  Cyril carried her out of God’s Anteroom and down the stoop. The crowds were gone. Just a few cars, with only the living inside them. Some of them were stopped, the drivers just sitting there. Some of them were crying. Some just had their eyes closed. But eventually somebody honked at somebody else and the cars in the middle of the road started going again.

  Cyril took a cab home and carried the baby inside. Alice and Delia and Roland were gone. There was food in the fridge. Cyril got out the old high chair and fed Dorcas. When she was done, he set her in the living room and went in search of toys and clothes. He mentally talked to Alice as he did: So it’s stupid to keep children’s clothes and toys when we’re never going to have more children, is it? Well, I never said it, but I always thought it, Alice: Just because you decided not to have any more babies doesn’t mean I would never have any.

  He got Dorcas dressed and she played with the toys until she fell asleep on the living room carpet. Then Cyril lay on the floor beside her and wept for his children and the wife he had loved far more than she loved him, and for the lost life; yet he also wept for joy, that God had actually listened to him, and given him this child, and given Dorcas the life she had longed for.

  He wondered a little where God had sent the other souls, and he wondered if he should tell anybody about his conversation with God, but then he decided it was all none of his business. He had a job the next day, and he’d have to arrange for day care, and buy food that was more appropriate for the baby. And diapers. He definitely needed those.

  He slept, and dreamed that he was on the carousel again, dizzy, but moving forward, and he didn’t mind at all that he would never get anywhere, because it was all about the ride.

  The Clouds in Her Eyes

  written by

  Liz Colter

  illustrated by

  Kirbi Fagan

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Liz Colter lives in a beautiful area of the Rocky Mountains and spends her time off with her husband, dogs, horses and writing (according to her husband, not always in that order of priority).

  Over the years she has followed her heart through a wide variety of careers, including waitressing her way through nine years of college (a year of that as a roller-skating waitress), and has worked as a field paramedic, Outward Bound instructor, athletic trainer, draft-horse farmer, and dispatcher for concrete trucks.

  Currently, she has returned to working in medicine, but her real passion is her writing. Reading The Hobbit at ten and then growing up on Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and Dark Shadows engendered a lifelong love of speculative fiction. When at last she began writing (joining her grandfather, aunt, mother and brother in the pursuit of publication) she became the lone fantasy and science fiction writer in the family.

  She has been creating her speculative worlds for more than a decade now and currently has two completed fantasy novels and a new novel in progress, in addition to her short stories.

  A list of her published stories can be found on her website (lizcolter.weebly.com).

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Although Kirbi Fagan didn’t start drawing until high school, she was a creative and imaginative child. She was raised in the Detroit area and received her bachelor’s degree in illustration from Kendall College of Art and Design in spring 2013.

  After graduation she continued her studies at the Illustration Master Class and attended a mentorship program with SmART School. While preparing her portfolio, she had her eyes focused on the publishing industry.

  Kirbi became extremely inspired teaching young children at the Plymouth Community Arts Council, where she performed theater as a child. She is also inspired by history and is often found digging through thrift or antique stores. To her, the objects contain stories and mysteries that invoke imagery.

  Currently, Kirbi teaches workshops and live art demonstrations, and hosts a theatrical life drawing event for local artists.

  She is active in the illustration community both online and at large.

  Kirbi is working on her first young adult novel cover, which will be published later this year. She hopes that many similar commissions follow.

  Kirbi is honored to be among the Illustrators of the Future. She is enthusiastic for her next adventure in her developing career. Kirbi says, “I’m in it with my whole heart.”

  Visit Kirbi on her website at: kirbiillustrations.com.

  The Clouds in Her Eyes

  A breeze caught at the blades of the windmill, producing a groan of protest from the hub. Amba glanced up at the weathered shaft and cracked wooden blades, both unlikely to see repairs with the well nearly dry. Above the windmill, a great sheet of heat lightning crackled purple and yellow across the dark sky; the sky that promised rain every day as if unaware that it had no moisture left to give.

  Looking anywhere except to the fields, Amba returned to poking the ground with the point of her copper herding rod. Eventually, the vastness of the land drew her eyes across the acres of dirt, flat and featureless, punctuated only by the containment poles.

  The ship was there, closer each day. Its sails billowed and the great wooden hull heaved on invisible waves that rolled between the ship’s dry keel and the dirt of the farm. It had advanced nearly to the top of the second field, the one where the grubs matured into young sparkers. By tomorrow the ship would be in the first field.

  It was no use running for Father. She had done that when it first appeared as a speck on the horizon, at the waning of the last moon. Father had seen nothing. The speck had grown steadily larger, and still he had taken no notice. By the time the Wind Moon was waxing, the sails and the hull had been distinguishable and she had pointed it out again. He’d stared unseeing and unbelieving at the horizon, then grunted and turned away.

  He never mentioned it afterward; never said if he thought she was lying or teasing or, worse, hallucinating, as she had during her illness. If it concerned him, he fostered it in silence, as he did all his worries.

  Amba had worked hard to take over her brother’s duties in the fields after Jass died. Her father did his best to accept her as a surrogate, but telling him that a ship he couldn’t see was sailing over their fiel
ds threatened her fragile progress with him. She had resolved not to mention it to him again, no matter what.

  The ship was close enough now that she could see men on the deck and details of the figurehead: a body, an upraised arm holding something. She wondered if the ship would sail right up to the house, or through the house. She wondered if she would drown when the unseen ocean washed over her.

  Mustering her resolve to walk into the field, she went first to the corral to collect her mallet, then scanned the dirt in the top field until she spotted a ripple in the soil. Approaching the disturbance, she tapped her slender rod into the ground just behind it. The ripple surged away from her. Father said the copper tasted as bitter to sparkers as immature haza beans tasted to Amba.

  She pulled the rod from the ground and tapped it in again at a safe distance behind the sparker. Mature sparkers were the most dangerous. Even with the herding rod’s leather grip, they could give a nasty jolt if she came too close. Zigzagging with the erratic path the creature took, she herded it toward the opening in the small circle of poles that made up the corral. Once the sparker entered, she jammed her herding rod into the ground and hurried to replace the missing containment pole before the sparker wriggled out again.

  I have one ready,” she told Father when she found him in the shed, already changed into his heavily padded harvesting clothes. His only reply was to bend and take one handle of the glass cage. She lifted the other side of the container and together they carried it to the corral.

  Her father’s quiet manner had been peaceful and comforting when Amba was young, but after the fever killed Mother he had become more distant than quiet. When Jass died, her father had withdrawn further still. Amba wished that she knew how to find the old him, wherever he had gone, and help him find his way back. She needed him. She was broken in her own way, with an emptiness since her illness, since Mother’s death, that had never filled up again. It ached sometimes, in the hollow just below her breastbone.

  They reached the corral and set the cage down. Amba braced herself to watch Father harvest. She hadn’t been there when Jass died, but she had seen him afterward, his eyes frozen wide with pain, the burnt and flaking skin that she had scrubbed from his chest and hands before they buried him.