The clockwork bear and the two armies

(This was written for a contest to craft a steampunk fable).

The clockwork bear and the two armies (933 words)
By Morgan Johnson

Once upon a time, in the country of Victoriana, a revolution was erupting. The biological entities of the land were angry at their treatment at the hands of the clockwork citizens. The clockies charged them higher taxes. They ignored them in the clockwork parliament. More forest and field was torn up every day to make room for the great coal furnaces and the great spring winderies.

The beasts took up arms in secret and met in coffee shops to discuss armed revolt. Protests were staged that shut down the thoroughfares of Faraday City. Progress ground to a halt. The clockwork militia was mustered and took to the streets. Rage hung in the air like so much smoke.

At the place where city and forest met lived an old bear. He was the veteran of many campaigns against the enemies of Victoriana and experienced in battle. He had been discharged from service after an explosive device robbed him of his legs and his left eye. Upon retirement from the Integrated Forces of Progress, the bear was outfitted with steam-powered legs to help him walk. A small coal-burner was mounted in his belly for fuel. And a clever system of springs, cams and lenses replaced his eye and part of his brain that was addled from his years of valiant service.

The bear planned to live out his days reading on his porch. He would feed his burner sparingly and walk only when necessary. There was no more peaceful place in the world on a summer’s day than his cottage, soaked in sunbeams.

One day a stranger arrived on his porch. She was a tall clockie soldier, arms forged of copper and tin. Reinforced wheels sprouted from her sternum, and she moved very, very quickly. Mr. Bear, her voice chirped from a speaker in her shoulder, Victoriana stands at the brink of war. Every citizen must take up arms against the beasts of the field. Our way of life must be preserved. Your country needs you.

The bear shook his head slowly, his eye lens whirring gently. No, miss, I will not take up arms. For I am surely a beast of the field. Have I not fur? Do I not bleed? Be gone from here. The clockwork woman nodded, made a note upon a punchcard, and left.

Later that same day a graying ape strode out of the forest. Noble Bear, he said and saluted, your deeds are well known amongst the animals of the revolution. We need your help in this just cause. Our people lose more every day and soon we shall have nothing left. Your experience at war would be a great asset during this uprising. The ape bowed low and looked at the bear expectantly.

The bear snarled at the ape and swat him with a paw. Look at my legs and my face, brother Ape. Do I look like a beast to you? I am built more of iron and steel than fur and meat. I do not belong with you. The gray ape shook his shaggy head sadly and left for the forest. As he entered the treeline he turned and spat at the bear.

The war when it came lasted only a week. Both sides, the animals and the clockies, lost many brave people. Too many, many felt. The deaths had been swift and extensive. The damage to property and homes was enormous. After only a week the entire country was sick of war. The clockwork council met with the animal elders. They formed a new parliament with equal representation and vowed to share power. Never again would Victoriana suffer a civil war.

A great party was thrown in the capitol, a party larger than any ever before. Fine foods and liquors were spread for the animals on long wooden tables. Buckets overflowing with premium fuels and oils were laid out in abundance for all the clockwork citizens to indulge in. The bear stirred from his cabin at the intersection of the city and the woods and stoked his burner. He rumbled into the capitol as the party got underway.

The streets were clogged with partiers. Clockies danced arm-in-arm with the monkeys of the trees. The gazelles raced the wheel-bodied messengers. Songs were sung in a chorus of voices both biological and technological.

The bear approached a food-laden table and grabbed a mug full of bourbon. But the gray ape was there and slapped the mug from his hands. This food, the ape growled, is for the beasts of Victoriana. But you told me you were a clockie. The bear hung his head and left.

His burner was running low on fuel, so the bear went to the overflowing buckets and grabbed a scoop of the high-grade coal. But the wheel-bodied recruiter was there and snatched the scoop from the bear’s paw. This fuel has been provided by the government, she chirped, for the specific use of the clockwork citizenry. As you have previously stated that you are an animal, this fuel is forbidden for your use. Good day.

The bear dragged himself back to his cabin at the border of the city and the woods and lived out the rest of his days alone.

Moral: He who chooses no sides, belongs to none.

Or, as Aesop said: He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.

Or maybe it’s what Dante said: The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

Blank--story in progress

I opened the door and I saw a blank. It was vaguely man-shaped. As the door swung past his shimmery outline he tipped his blank hat and gingerly stepped into my apartment.

I think I'll name him Scott.

He doesn't have a smell exactly, the blank, but he isn't exactly odorless. My nose wants to smell something when he's around, but it doesn't. It gets nose-strain. Nose-ache. I want to spray him with perfume.

Scott has moved in now. He sleeps on the couch most nights and waves at me with his eerie fill-in-the-blank hand when I leave for work in the morning. When I come home I hear him turn off the TV--Dr. Phil--when I open the door. I think he uses the phone, too.

I cook for him and he eats it even though he doesn't really have a mouth. I want to tie a string to a ravioli and see where it goes when he swallows, but I haven't yet. After all, it may choke him.

On the weekends we go for drives or sit in the park and work on the crossword. He's very helpful with it, even though he can't speak.

It's like having a dog without the drool or a cat without the mind games.

Last night, I woke up to see Scott climbing into bed next to me. His blank body sliding beneath the sheets that fell flatly against the firm mattress. In the morning he was spooning me, his arms weightless and cool.

We didn't talk that night about the transgression, the new course our relationship was charting. We didn't have to.

He's taken to cooking me food. Empty steaming bowls, plates piled high with nothing at all, glasses redolent with absence. I devour it all.

The famous and talented horror author, by Morgan Johnson

And so when the famous and talented horror author was forced by true love to find a new career his first instinct was to keep on producing horror, but not novels and short stories. Movies, he decided, were the way to go. They had a larger audience, he justified, so I'll have more exposure and who really reads books these days anyway?

But to his disappointment and consternation his ideas did not translate into film very well. His terrifying novel about a man who--due to a gypsy's curse--cannot see automobiles was ridiculous on screen. The actors weren't as malleable as his characters. Lines that he had imagined delivered with quiet terror with muttered brashly through clenched sweaty teeth. The mousy gypsy's daughter who attempts to redeem the car-plagued man was played by a jive talking, wise cracking hoodlum. Things spiraled out of control swiftly.

Not to be put off so easily--after all, it was no easy battle to get a book published these days and the famous and talented horror writer was no stranger to the maneuverings of the entertainment industry-- he tried again to make a movie. Maybe, he reasoned, the problem is that I took a "book" idea and made it into a movie. Maybe, he decided, I need a purely "movie" idea?

His next film was about a man short on cash and deep in debt who in desperation sells his body to science. the man mistakenly believes that they will wait until after he is dead to reap what he has sown. But every Friday at four PM the harvesters come and take a part of him. At first it's just a patch of skin or some hair: for grafts and plugs. But as the weeks roll by and the man's gambles and prospects crumble around him he begins to run out of skin and they claim other parts of him. No matter where he is on Friday at 4 they arrive and harvest. He runs and flees to remote areas, locked rooms, undersea depths, foreign countries with hostile relations to the US: none of it makes a difference. All of his fleeing costs money, unfortunately and soon creditors, repo men, process servers and the mob are all after him. The film culminates in a shot of him running down an empty new York street, no skin left on his body, half his organs gone, missing an arm and with the sound of a thousand footfalls approaching.

Test audiences vomited and broke into crying fits. Legal action was taken. Against better judgment and the advice of their attorneys, the film was released. massively. The idea was, supposedly, to recoup some of the money they lost in the lawsuits during the test screening. Unfortunately, the new cut of the film was lost and the ashamed and nervous editor replaced it with the pre-test screening original cut. Audiences were traumatized.

And so when the famous and talented horror author left cinema he decided to get away from horror and try his hand at childrens' picture books. He and his love were now married and were planning on having children. It seemed to him that this was perfect. he would write stories for his children, and they would be then stories for all children. It made so much sense to him.

His first attempts were massive successes--children's literature and fairy tales are seething with horror--it was nothing at all for him to rework the classic fairy tales adding his own dark twist to them and setting them in modern times. Anti-Disney sentiment was at an all-time high and parents and children alike welcomed a respite from the sanitized safety that Disney had in recent years become.

After releasing a dozen award winning and best-selling books he had his own child, and his writing changed. Newborn babes, it is well known, do not follow the same sleeping patterns as you or I. They have their own plans and their own agenda. So it was that the famous and talented and terribly sleep-deprived childrens' author wrote his most horrible and terrifying book yet. "When you cry." It was written in short bursts, each story being no more than two pages in length and each story having been written immediately after he had been woken up in the middle of the night. The stories in "When You Cry" were soaked with rage and anger at children. Every story featured a little boy being murdered by his father--in a different creative way each time, mind you--after he has woken up his father crying.

Parents expected "When You Cry" to be like the Author's previous works: dark, but ultimately fun and with an important moral message. They did not expect or notice the new style until it was too late. Eagerly parents everywhere had perched on the edges of beds and read the first story aloud to their beautiful impatient children.

The first story is about a parent who has had enough of their bratty child pestering them to read the new story from their favorite author's new book. So the fed-up parent has poisons their child during dinner and calmly pretends that nothing has happened until that evening when the parent is going to read the new book to the child and the child dies before hearing the last . . .

No child anywhere that night could sleep.

The horror author, unable to escape his nature, continued to write.

The moon called my name and I had to answer (rough draft)

(Sorry, this is longer than one page. It's 12.)

By Morgan Johnson

We had been friends for more than a dozen years, before the ship came between us. The Ship. We tried other names: the craft, the saucer, the UFO. But none of them stuck. Change is difficult. It's hard to change yourself, and even harder to change someone else.

The three of us─Maki, Scott and I─met in elementary school in Sarnia, in Ontario. It was grade two, and already the division between the sporty kids and the nerdy kids was becoming obvious. While other boys were chasing girls or playing football in the wet grassy fields that surrounded our school the three of us huddled in a cul-de-sac and pretended we were robots. It was the only place free from the pummeling winds. Maki always wanted to be Optimus Prime. Scott was often Megatron or Starscream. Me? I would take whatever role was needed for our little play: Soundwave, Bumblebee, or any of a myriad of other Transformers all memorized from after school cartoons.

We stayed friends. This is the surprising thing, I guess. Not so much the ship we built, but rather the relationship we had going into the project. When you've been together for that long, so much goes unsaid. So much can be assumed. We'd seen each other at our worst. We'd been playing Risk when we heard Scott's step-dad beating his mom. Dungeons and Dragons had been captivating us when Maki's sister almost died from an insulin crash. Gaming kept us together; it was clear. When I was at University in Michigan and had my breakdown, I told them during a marathon Halo 2 match. I told them through in-game chat.

Maybe the artificial worlds we toiled in were an insulation from the pain of the small town where we clearly didn't fit in. Maybe safely wrapped in layers of user interface and lighting effects we could speak the truth to each other. Other boys may have used beer or violence to achieve the same honesty. I don't know. I can't speak for other guys—I only know what I know.

When you have a friendship based on gaming, there is an unsteadiness that seeps in. Unlike most male groups, there is no alpha. Scott may kick ass in Street Fighter 2, but Maki was unstoppable in Super Mario Bros. Me? I was the Dungeon Master. The storyteller. I kept myself above and apart from their contests. I was never the best at any game, but I was the smartest at most of them. The fun for me was in discovering the patterns, the methods. I'd watch them play and speak up when I realized the how of it, the why of it. The actual performance of the games was uninteresting to me; I left that up to my friends.

We didn't even have a serious argument until we built the ship. The Ship.

I say that we built it, but that isn't true. It was Maki. It was all Maki. He'd been working on it for years, behind our backs. He had a lab in his barn that he never showed us, never showed anyone. In all my memories, I can never recall going in there until the day he revealed the prototype to us.

It had never seemed strange to us, the lab, the obsession with science. Maki's parents were optical physicists. I didn't know what that meant then, and I still don't, now. They did work for NASA, the rumor was. Or maybe for the CIA. They worked in America, that much everyone knew, somewhere across the Bluewater Bridge in Port Huron.

***

One night, after our first year of college but before the Ship, Maki and Scott and I were lying on the roof of Maki's folks' house. We were all in winter sleeping bags, zipped up and around so that only our faces peeked out. We were staring up at the stars and talking about comic books and movies, about girls and college classes. We all three of us were in jeans and hoodies, pasty-faced and cold.

Maki had been quiet all night. Then, during a pause in the conversation he said in a quiet and still voice, "The moon spoke to me last night."

Scott and I remained still, waiting for the punchline.

"It said that it had a mission for me. A dangerous mission."

Scott laughed nervously. I listened to my heart thud quicker and quicker in my chest.

"The moon told me I had to build something, and I started last night." Maki coughed and rustled in his bag.

No one spoke for minutes, so I broke the silence. "What do you think the human race will name the first planet we discover?" I asked. My voice was muffled and made distant by the covers.

Scott grimaced and opened a can of Jolt cola. "Probably something awful and corporate like 'Ford Planetoid brought to you by Bank of America in conjunction with Exxon.' But we'll just give it some crass new name like Planet Ford or Planet 2 or The New World."

Maki laughed. "I always wondered when I read science fiction stories about who named the planets. Like, if some explorers arrive at a desolate and uninhabited planet named BaaKuu-Oombaba 9 then that means someone at some point discovered the planet and gave it this crazy name."

"That is one fired astronomer," said Scott.

***

It was during the next summer, the summer after our sophomore year at college that Maki showed it to us. We had been watching cable at his house, which was a rare occurrence. His parents didn't like anyone being in the home when they weren't there, especially us. But on this day Maki didn't care.

"To hell with their rules. This is a thing I have to show you." He removed his glasses and wiped them on his Weezer shirt. "Grab a coke and meet me at the barn in five minutes." Scott and I looked and each other and shrugged. This was the most forceful we'd ever seen Maki. He was always quiet, passive. A nice guy, keeps mostly to himself, you might say.

When we finally roused ourselves and ambled outside, Maki was standing in front of the barn door. His folks had expanded the barn a few times before he was born, when they collected cars, and so they had turned their pole barn into a six-car garage. But now they carpooled to work in a hybrid so the garage-cum-barn was empty and there Maki had constructed his lab.

He was grinning ear to ear and blushing. "You are the first people I have shown this to." Maki laughed nervously, "But you won't be the last." He stood ramrod straight and made a saluting gesture to the two of us. In his hand was a garage door opener. He asked for a drum roll, and we complied by slapping our hands our jeans and hooting. "Taa daa!" Maki yelled as all the barn doors crept upwards at once.

The first thing I noticed was that Maki had knocked down all of the dividing walls his parents had put in, making the garage into one large space. Making it back into a barn, really. The second thing I saw was that the roof had been reinforced with a hexagonal dome, Buckminster Fuller-style. The third thing was the ship.

It looked like a bronze frisbee or the world's biggest penny. It was almost as wide as the barn and ten feet tall. It was round and tapered at the edges. I was speechless. It was floating half a foot off the ground.

Scott wasn't speechless. "It's a goddamn flying saucer!" He yelled, punctuating every word with a playful punch into Maki's shoulder. "Where'd you find it?"

"Find it?" Maki scoffed. "I built it."

And what do three young men─boys, really─do when they have a flying saucer? What would you do? We climbed in without caution. It was the kind of moment we'd spent our whole lives preparing for, steeping in science fiction as we had been. We knew a jetpack future was always right around the corner, and here was our proof. A section of the saucer whirred open before us and from above I knew that it must look like pac-man. Inside was a captain's seat and a couch and a small room. Whereas on the outside the saucer had been gleaming bronze, inside it was pure Maki: rough cut wood and duct tape, cast-off computer parts and furniture scavenged from the trash. Not far from the captain's seat I saw the mini-fridge I'd used in the dorms last year. It smelled of glue and sweat and old couches, of cigarettes and stale beer and plastic. It smelled like Scott's house, actually.

Scott took the lead, as always, and clambered into the pilot's seat. Maki and I sat on the edge of the moldy sofa behind him. "How does this work?" Scott asked while gripping two salvaged joysticks mounted on the chair arms. Maki showed him.

One button made the ship's hull transparent to us. One button made it opaque. One button lifted the ship to a height of a hundred feet; another brought it within inches of the ground. It was all very simple. "The ship is invisible to radar and we can make it mostly invisible, too, by hitting this active camouflage button." He spelled camouflage wrong, I noticed. "I haven't really taken it out before, so go easy on him. Okay, Scott?"

"Him?" Scott asked. "Him? Fuck that. This ship is a woman. It needs a woman's name." Scott tilted the controls forward and slowly steered the ship out of the barn. "Like Whitney or Ashley or Amber or Tiffany." He hit the ascent button and the ship noiselessly rose higher. "Something feminine."
***

The first thing we did with it, once we got the hang of the controls, was look for girls. We sailed over to America, to Port Huron, and looked for the popular hang-outs. It was almost nine at night by this time, and the sun was setting and casting warm shadows against the landscape. We found ourselves following the roads we knew, and even stopping at stoplights sometimes. We took turns piloting the ship, but Scott was the best at it by far. A lifelong obsession with flight simulators had trained him well, apparently.

The world looked different from the air, even from only a hundred feet up. Houses weren't doll-sized exactly, but the oddness of their shapes was plain. Houses look square from the front and from all sides, but from above they are complex and multi-faceted. They look like nothing so much as dirty molars in a never-ending mouth. And Maki wasn't kidding about the hundred feet limit─we stayed exactly one hundred feet above every car or house or tree. It made for a jostly ride of endless dips and jumps. "I'll fix this," Maki muttered, his face green and sweaty. "I'll fix this jostling."

We found girls everywhere we looked. At a strip mall. At a Starbucks. On the lakeshore or walking down neighborhood streets. Scott rejected them all in turn. "Too many." He'd say. "Too tall." Passing by a Hot Topic he broke into laughter, "Too goth. Too lame. Too young."

"Once we find girls, Scott," I asked, "what will we do?" I leaned forward on the couch so that my face was just above his shoulder. "Will we land this UFO and ask them to take us to their leader? Will we ask if they want to see a movie or go cruising?"

Scott's brow furrowed. "Fuck. You're right. We need a plan." He looked around at the inside of the ship. "And we need to spruce this place up. Make it more Sci-Fi and less basement-y."

"And then what?" Maki gasped, sweat beading on his upper lip, making him a cartoon cautioning against seasickness.

"And then, my friends, we prepare the probes."

"Take us back home." Maki demanded. "I'm going to be sick."

***
We went to work then on the interior of the craft. We watched old Sci-Fi films and took notes on the aesthetics. The cheeseball interiors of an Ed Wood flying saucer were appealing for their ease of implementation, while the organic designs of Farscape were comforting but impossible to reproduce. We watched Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. We cleaned out the Science Fiction section at our local video store and watched the films in fast forward, pausing when a ship's décor was visible. We met before work in the morning and again in the evenings. For weeks we did nothing but work on the ship. You'd think we would grate and run on each other. You'd think tempers would flare and fights would erupt. But they didn't. We agreed on everything, somehow, and worked as happy as Smurfs.

I checked out Time/Life home repair books from my library job and we studied the methods revealed within, crowded around a workbench in Maki's barn. Scott and I took turns buying breakfast on our way to the workshop. I'd bring bagels, fruit, yogurt. Scott would bring donuts, McMuffins, cold pizza. Maki would have a pot of coffee ready by the time we got there, the scent of it filling the barn like the odor of potential labor.

Scott worked at a Home Depot store and shoplifted whatever he could. What he couldn't shoplift he mis-tagged and bought with his employee discount with the help of an underage cashier he was flirting with. "Everyone steals," he said, explaining away our objections. "My boss is building a deck on the back of his house and a pool all from lifted materiel. It's like why you get a job there, I guess."

We limited our use of the saucer as much as possible during this time. But we did still use it. While Scott and I redesigned the inside, Maki kept improving on the controls, the guts. We took the ship up to test this and it flew so smooth you'd think you were sitting still in someone's living room, watching the flight on television.

One afternoon, after getting the flooring complete we took a break from working on the ship and flew it up north, onto Lake Huron. The air was still and the sun was high above us. The day felt timeless and golden, a never-ending afternoon. We parked a foot above the water and opened the mouth of the ship. I sat and took off my boots and dipped my toes in the lake. Maki opened a brushed steel compartment on the wall and removed two rods and a tackle box. And so sitting on a perfect afternoon in a UFO we had built, we fished and swam. Drank beer and napped. It may have been the best afternoon of my life.

The next day, in the barn, Scott was very talkative. "We need a plan, guys. We have this amazing thing. This ship. We need a plan for what to use it for. I mean, if we're going to meet girls with this thing─get laid with it─we need a solid plan. We need to bring our A game."

"We could do something else with it," I suggested.

"We could explore. Go under water or to the moon or something." Maki's voice rose, he was almost begging.

"So what I'm thinking," Scott continued, "is that we need to look the part. If we have this sci-fi spacecraft with the sleek interior, it won't do anything for us if we roll up on some chicks and step out in our flannel and jeans and D&D t-shirts."

I looked down at my shirt. It said, "I roll twenties."

"We need props. We need costumes. We need spacesuits."

Maki looked at the floor, cupped his chin in his hand. "Spacesuits, eh? I can do that."

Within a week we had functioning spacesuits, good enough for the void─or so Maki said─and strange enough for Scott's plan. They were a deep green and slightly bulky. The material was slippery and shiny, like chrome or latex. Our boots and gloves and helmets and belts were a gleaming silver. Wearing the suits, we looked amazing.

"Where the hell is this from, Maki?" Scott ran his hand across his suit's slippery arm.

"It's leftover from my parents' work."

"NASA?" Scott asked?

"CIA." I said.

"Whatever. See if they fit." Maki tapped the seal between the suit and the helmet. "If this is loose, you'll die."

***
With the ship built and outfitted, and our suits made and fitted, all of our preparations were done. Still, we stalled. Scott kept finding reasons why he couldn't fly. He had a late shift. He had an early shift and needed some sleep. He really wanted to see a certain movie. Maki kept saying he needed to run more tests. Double check things. Run diagnostics. I never even had to give my excuses, but I prepared them anyway.

The summer was nearly over before we gathered our courage and gave it another shot. It was in August, I think, and the humidity was incredible. You could scoop an empty glass through the air, and by the time you moved it ten inches it'd be half-full of water. The evening was thick with the sound of katydids, crickets, tree frogs. All those beasties that are so shy during the day and such stars at night.

I was afraid that it'd be too hot in the suit. That it would be like sixth period in class, at the end of the school year when every muscle in your body is overheated and screaming "Nap!" at you. That I'd be a cat in a sunbeam, if I put the suit on. But of course Maki had planned for that.

"These suits are space-safe. And even though space is at best three degrees Kelvin, you get all that heat from the sun scorching you. All that radiation. Spacesuits get really, really hot when they face the sun and intensely cold when they don't. They're built to handle it though." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and took a breath. "The original NASA suits used quickly moving water and gold plating to control the heat."

Scott interrupted Maki, "We don't need to know the history, man. Just tell us how to turn on the damn AC."

But he didn't need to. Maki was right, the suits kept us cool. We stayed a perfect sixty-three degrees, not too dry and not too moist. The suits felt bulky, and the helmets were a bit hard to see out of. But they were comfortable. I could've dozed off in one.

We suited up that night for the first time, and took the ship out. We flew silently and smoothly across the lake and into Port Huron. Our breathing was loud in the ship, or maybe just in our ears. We joked at first, cheering and hooting and bouncing with excitement. But once our voyage got underway we quieted down. Ran silent.

Just off I-94 we saw a girl on a ten-speed. She had long brown hair back in a pony-tail, a white t-shirt clung to her. She wore shorts so short they looked like underwear. She could've been our age, or a bit older. "Her," Scott said, pointing through the transparent floor. "Let's get that one."

We shot down the road, hidden in the darkness. If she had looked up at that point, she wouldn't have seen anything unusual, maybe a slight blurriness in the stars. Scott parked the ship at the next big intersection, over a traffic stop separating two lonely dirt roads only a mile away from a roaring highway, but they could've been a million miles away. There were streetlights on every corner, tiny buoys of light floating in that American night.

As the girl on the bike slowly pedaled towards us, Maki switched off whatever it was that made the ship mostly invisible and I turned on one of the outside lights. We were ten feet above the ground now and shiny as a penny in a sunbeam. As we'd discussed, I trained a light on the girl, as if she were a deer I guess. She stopped pedaling, and her mouth dropped open. She had braces.

Scott steered the ship ever so slowly forward and slid open the front door. We must've looked like a star fallen to earth trying to gobble her up. She didn't move. As the ship came within inches of her shins, I stepped forward and offered my silver-gloved hand, lifting her up into our cabin. Wide-eyed and agog, she complied.

Scott had explained the plan like this: hit them with wonder, startle them with the impossible. It will either make the girl awestruck and compliant, or she will run off terrified and "really, if a chicks scares that easy then she isn't worth my time." Once the girls were in the cabin, we'd make our move.

"The ship will give them permission," Scott said. "Everyone really just wants to get laid anyways," he'd said. "This just gives them a way to give in to their natural desires─like alcohol does." He'd said. "It's all about easing inhibitions."

It worked.

I don't know what Scott said to her or if he even said anything, but suddenly his helmet was open and they were kissing. And then his suit opened and she had his cock out, and in her mouth. Right there, in the cabin, on top of the driver's seat that we all had spent so much time making we watched Scott have sex with the bike girl. The braces girl. The pony-tail girl.

The ship wasn't large, and the cabin wasn't roomy by anyone's standards, so when Scott was there thrusting into that girl, his feet kept poking me. Her head bounced off Maki. It was awkward, is what I'm saying. The entire abduction couldn't have lasted more than fifteen minutes, but as I counted the bumps of sweaty feet against my shiny green suit, it seemed to go on forever.

And then the saucer opened and Scott was escorting the girl out. I heard him say, "Your help will be vital to our research" in a strange accent, while climbing back in and shutting the door. Holding her panties in his grinning mouth he steered the ship sharply upwards and killed the lights. "Now my friends, it's your turn." He was naked.

Maki tore off his helmet and flung it at Scott's head. "Home, Scott." Maki's face was red and tense. "Take. Me. Home."

"Yeah," My voice echoed loud in the helmet. "I need to get up early tomorrow." My stomach was tight and knotted and I felt warm inside the suit.

Back at the barn, Maki was screaming. "That's it! Never again, Scott. Never ever again." Maki never lost his temper, and seeing him screaming now was like seeing your mom cry, or like seeing a limping puppy. You just really wanted to make it better so he'd stop making that expression.

Scott shoved Maki to the ground and pointed two fingers at him. "What the hell is your problem. I thought this was the plan?" Scott was still naked. He turned and gave me a shrug. "We talked about this. This is why we built the ship."

Maki leapt up and punched Scott in the chest with a balled-up fist. "I built this! And this was your stupid plan!" Tears burst forth like a balloon exploding. "I never wanted to meet girls."

"What? Are you some kind of fag?" And at that final word Maki staggered as if struck, and switched off. His face became slack and his green eyes deadened. He walked stiffly from the garage and across the walk to his parents' house, while lightning bugs blinked around him.

Scott ran after him and bellowed, "Fine! I'll just use the ship without you!" But Maki wasn't listening.

The next day at work was a blur. I kept getting distracted, mis-shelving books. I took a two hour lunch by accident, and then ended up not even eating any of it. I went to Maki's that night, but his house was dark. I tried calling, but there was no answer.

Scott showed up shortly after, still wearing his retail vest. "Ready for round two?" He was grinning.

"Not really," I said.

"Well you better get ready."

We flew back to America, back to the backstreets and byways that had been abandoned since freeways cut through. We flew down roads, past parks. Across parking lots and fields. Sometime near two a.m. we found them. Two girls─women─standing behind a dingy bar. Scott lowered the ship and I hit them with the high-beam. Again they froze, and again we scooped them up.

One of the women was black─African-American─and was wearing jeans and a red silky top. She was smiling and dazed and very skinny. I guessed she must've been ten years older than us. The other woman was blond and heavier, but she had a real nice smile. She was wearing a button-down blouse and khakis.

Scott undid his helmet and his features looked alien, menacing in the dim sci-fi lighting. He stepped forward and ran a gloved hand against the black woman's cheek. She stared at the ship. Scott stared at her. I stared at Scott. And the other girl stared at me.

The blonde stepped towards me and lifted off my helmet. I hadn't had the seal fastened, so it lifted off easily. "Oh," she said in a breathy voice, "you're cute." She leaned forward and kissed me. It was the first time I'd kissed a girl. It was wet and warm and squishier than I expected. It reminded me of the first time I'd eaten squid, actually.

My stomach twisted about and I felt suddenly ill. Glancing over at Scott, I saw him already on top of the other girl, her shorts on the floor of the ship. The blond was watching them too, her eyes wide, she turned back to me and grinned and leaned in to kiss me again. She stuffed her tongue into my mouth, and I tasted oatmeal. I tasted cigarettes. I pushed her away. Said something like, "I can't do this." Or, "I don't want this."

I don't really remember. There was a weird humming outside the ship. Something loud and deep, like chimes, but also far away. The girl tried to grab me and pull me in for another kiss─she kept glancing across at Scott─but her hands slid without purchase on the suit. She said something, but the chimes were too loud. I couldn't hear her.

Then I was outside. I was walking away from the ship. Moonlight limned my arms, my face. I was glowing. The sound of the moon on my face chimed in the air. I had no idea what was happening. Then the sound faded and my vision cleared.

Back in the ship, Scott was making out with both the girls. I sat on the side of the road and listened to my iPod and waited for something else to happen.

Flying back to the barn, Scott couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "Two chicks at once, man! Two!" He gunned the ship forward, the acceleration pressed me back into the seat like a dentist's blanket. "I mean, I don't know why you pussied out, but I'm glad you did." He jumped up and down in his seat, laughing, and steered the ship upwards. The moon filled our field of vision and I shuddered.

"I don't think this is right," my voice was muffled.

"Naw man, we tested the ship for these speeds."

"No. This thing we're doing─the girls thing. It feels wrong. Dishonest. It's like . . . date rape or something."

"Fuck you."

"We need to think about this."

"Fuck you."

"I'm serious."

"Yeah?" Scott snarled. "Well I'm no rapist."

"Drop me off at home."

The next day there was a message from Scott on my machine. It said, "Maki's pissed. He said we're cut off. No more joyrides. He said he's taking the ship to the moon." He paused and I could hear his teeth gritting. "And I'm not a fucking rapist."

I avoided them for a week. I just worked at the library, went to movies by myself. I sat in diners and read. I didn't go out at night if I could avoid it. Every phone message for me, I deleted. There were no more chimes.

One week of intentional avoidance turned to two. Became three. The calls stopped. I'd be shelving books and absentmindedly making plans to hang out and play a new game with Scott, with Maki and I'd have to remind myself I didn't have any friends. Was it date rape? Was it wrong? It certainly didn't feel honest.

During all of our plans and work, I never thought of the consequences. I just enjoyed being with my friends.

Three weeks then became four. A month after our last flight in the ship, I went back to Maki's. I figured it'd been long enough. The barn was locked and dark, so I knocked on his front door. Maki's mom answered, she was wearing a green terrycloth bathrobe and severe black glasses.

"Yes?" She looked through me.

"Is Maki home?"

"Oh, no. He's been gone for a few days." She started to the close the door but I stepped forward and into the house.

"Where'd he go?"

She was flustered. "He left a note. It just said he was going away for a few days."

I ran to the barn.

We'd blacked over all the windows while we were working. We didn't want anyone to see what we were doing in the barn, but now it meant I couldn't see in. A brick from the driveway solved that. I peered in and saw that the barn was empty. No ship. Nothing. Every tool and piece of equipment was gone. The air smelled stale and musty, like it'd been empty for weeks.

I got back in the car and drove aimlessly, turning at every red light. Driving deeper and deeper into the country. Past gas stations and corn fields. Past forests and lakes, I drove and drove. I crested a short hill and the moon loomed large on the horizon, larger than it had any right to be. As I was staring at the craters and crevasses that crossed the face of the moon, the air shimmered before the car and I slammed on the brakes.

Light poured forth and blinded me. Through the fingers of my right hand, I saw a wide and flat copper colored disc. The light poured off it like honey from a spoon. A sliver of blackness split the craft open and yawned wide.

I found myself stepping forward.

A gloved hand reached out and I grasped it, feeling the strength in that hand.

I was pulled up and into the ship, dazed from the light. A suited figure stood before me and I saw myself reflected and backlit in his helmet. I looked like an angel.

Reaching forward, I undid the pressure seals on the helmet and removed it. I saw who it was, and smiled.

Outside, the moon began chiming away. Ringing out across the tops of trees, drowning out the growl of my car’s engine. The chiming grew louder and it sounded like words.

Maki leaned forward, and kissed me.

this one time

We were at this place, this like little diner place. I dunno where it was, James was driving and it was hot, I had my bare feet on the dash and my hand sailing and like a kite, you know, out the window, and my head on Thomas’ shoulder because he was in the middle, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, because he never did unless he had to. So I wasn’t paying attention.

Anyway, horseshoe counter and red vinyl seats and all that. I ordered the same as James, a burger and a shake. He smirked at me like, girl, cantcha make up your own mind? But it was okay. We spun around on the stools even though they didn’t wanna spin really, and my thighs stuck on the vinyl, and while we waited for our food we ate sugar packets out of the dish and spat out the balls of chewed-up paper into the ashtray.

Thomas was standing next to the car putting on a shirt from the back seat, and then he was across the street stealing cigarettes and buying a pop from the 7-Eleven. When he walked into the diner he sat on the other side of James and when the waitress came over (she wasn’t too impressed by us, even though I smiled nicely at her) he ordered a burger and a shake, and so then I smirked at James, and James laughed, curling up and almost knocking his forehead on the countertop.

“Freaks,” Thomas muttered, and we laughed more.

The burgers were big, like six or seven inches across, but thin, with “thin buns, just like James,” Thomas said, quietly like he thought he could get away with it, and then they had to sort of wrestle with each other, still on the stools, until I hit James in the arm and stood up to whack Thomas on the head. Then they settled down, but James made me switch with him so I was in the middle.

Five bucks each and that was like all our cash, right there, and it was dinner time and everything, but the sun wouldn’t be setting for hours. We got back in the car and I was still in the middle, so it was harder to put my feet on the dash or lean on either of the boys. But I got to be in charge of the tapes, and I put on the Dead Milkmen and then Op Ivy and we all screamed for a while and then I put on the Velvet Underground and we mellowed out and smoked some of Thomas’ stolen cigarettes.

There was no place to go, so we just drove around, but then we found this unfinished little subdivision out on this dirt road. We figured nobody’d be there after nine at night, so we parked in the middle of the half-made subdivision road and got out and ran around. It was still hot so that didn’t last long. Thomas stretched out on a pile of boards and James and me sat on these huge spools of pipe.

Later I thought there must’ve been something going on long before I started driving around with them. And I’m not sure how I got to be the one, by the way, except I’d been hanging out with Annie earlier in the summer but she’d gone to band camp, so then when James and Sara broke up, somehow I was the one who got to take that spot on James’ velvety-plush front bench seat. We were always in the front because the back was full of clothes, shoes, tapes, bathing suits, other people’s yearbooks, you know. Empty cigarette boxes. A witch’s charm that Elizabeth made for him.

So yeah. We wandered further in and found some grass and lay down with a couple of sweatshirts to protect us from the dew. Before Thomas could get settled and lie down James sat up and leaned over me and kissed him, and yeah, I wasn’t sure how I’d not known it was coming. But they were beautiful and awkward and the lowering sun shined them and shadowed them, Thomas’ bright hair, James’ dark smile, so I lay there and watched until Thomas pulled away. I couldn’t read his face, but James was gripping my wrist really hard and the whole moment was like the fragilest thing I’ve ever seen. So I put up my other hand, the one not in James’ death-grip, and touched Thomas’ arm, like, it’s okay, and then they kissed again, and it was.

grandfather puzzle

I sat at my grandfather’s knee and waited. Why are girls always portrayed sitting at the knee of elder men? No matter. He was my grandfather, and I adored him. He was intent, cradling the puzzle delicately and firmly directing its destiny at once. I was restless, slowly filling up with excess energy like water waiting to boil. But I had committed, which calmed my intuition to bolt from the room in search of more exciting diversions.

I watch myself sitting in memory, far from that place and in it at the same time. I see now that I remember it differently than it was. And yet, my memory is accurate. Columbus, Mississippi on a sticky hot summer’s afternoon. I wasn’t used to the hot clinging to me with such determination. No escape. No escape except for my grandfather’s knee, towering over me like a shady oak, where the insistent heat seemed to loose its grip on the top priority of my mind.

He seemed to sit immobile for hours, staring at the marble, perhaps communicating telepathically with it, coaxing it toward the center ring. My eyes darted rapidly back and forth between his and the marble in the puzzle, concerned I would miss the moment and fail to learn the winning secret yet again. I tried to take in everything: his hands, his posture, his gaze, any subtle movement of the marble in its casing, and any betrayal of what he might be thinking. But while his focus seemed never to waver, mine rolled in and out like ocean waves. Who was in the kitchen? Would we go to the store later? When would it be my turn again? Wait. Did he just move? Did I miss it…again?

I remember my grandfather. I remember who I saw him to be in the world. I remember his patience and his quiet. I remember how his humor always caught me by surprise. I remember trying to decipher between his serious appearance and his jovial nature. I remember how he seemed to know every word ever conjured and the many meanings attached to each one. I remember his gentleness and the care he applied to each endeavor he undertook, regardless of its ultimate significance. I remember wanting to be like him.

I had missed something, but perhaps it hadn’t been the secret to conquering the puzzle. I couldn’t yet tell. He moved. I’m not sure if it was his eyes, his hands, or his resolve. But I know he moved. I drew in a breath to ask him but he stopped me as if pressing a pause button with a simple dip of his chin. So, I held the breath and the thought, and I returned to watching his every move. I thought I caught sight of a smile creeping from his eyes to the corners of his mouth, and my eyes darted to his hands. With a swift, confident swish of a motion, his wrists dipped down, reached forward, rose up and returned to their start. Magically, the marble leapt to the center ring and settled there as if it had always been there and would never think of leaving again.

We both released our breath and smiled with satisfaction. At least, that’s how I see it now. At the time, I wanted to learn to beat the puzzle. I wanted to be elegant like my grandfather rather than clumsy like the 7 year old I was. That desire is clear to me as I see my intention doing battle with my restlessness. But the puzzle fades in my memory while my grandfather and I come into sharp relief, floating before me as if we’re still sitting there, him in his armchair and me on the floor looking up at him. I see us shaping each other, learning each other’s styles for living in the world. I see how his approach to the puzzle is lighting a path for me that I am still walking today. I see my wonder at the world renewing his own.

His deliberate movement suddenly melted as if he just stepped, lifelike, from the canvas of an oil painting, to carry on his day. He handed me the puzzle, and I reached for it, surprised he hadn’t carefully set it aside to enjoy his triumph for at least a short while. “Take your time,” he said as he smiled and stood to return to his daily tasks.

I see now what I missed in my own distraction all those years ago. He had chosen his moment. He had been patient, and he actively enjoyed the challenge. He observed it from all angles, and savored it. And then, he literally took his time. Before that moment, I had not realized I could do that, too. Before this moment, I had not realized the lasting value of what he’d taught me on that summery, southern day.

Written by Angela Booker
March 17, 2007

The Thief of Memory came in the night and crept on caterpillar legs into my bedroom. With a sound like a whisper being torn in half he crept onto the bed and perched on my chest. He weighed less than nothing. His face was the face of a kewpie doll or a grasshopper or a flat black square with blinking lights. I can’t recall which.

"Oh ho!," He said in a voice that roared and resounded about my apartment. "I didn't expect to find you awake." He smiled, or maybe he didn't.

"Yeah," I explained, "too many dates after dinner." I tried to shrug to show that I knew it was a silly thing to do, but I found myself unable to move at all.

He smiled a large toothed smile, his tongue lolling about. Or maybe he just winked. "There's a lot of sugar in those. They're much better at breakfast., especially with cream cheese and honey."

I took offense to receiving gustatory advice from this monster. "Look, can we just get on with it?"

The Thief of Memory frowned, or maybe his lights blinked. "Since you're awake I'll grant you a boon: think of one memory and remember every detail of it you can and maybe I'll let you keep that one." His jaw dropped open like a snakes and a large slimy tongue licked about my ear. "Just don't think 'Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.'"

I was mountain biking with my step-dad and best friend when I was seventeen. It was a humid August afternoon in Michigan. Mosquitoes were thick in the shade and sweat soaked my hair. The trail we were on was narrow and dusty. It used to be train tracks, but they'd been pulled up and turned into this. Ten miles down and ten miles back, that was the plan. I fought to keep up with the others, who were more athletic than I. On the ten mile trip back to our truck my friend spotted a series of small hills just off the path. The hills were sandy and taller than me, but not by much. We took turns riding up and down them, savoring this break from the straight and narrow path. I stood at the top of the tallest hill, feeling a touch of vertigo and fear. But the others had sailed down it without a problem, so I tried too.

I inched forward until gravity gripped me and pulled me yelling down. I screamed with joy and felt the adrenaline burn through my blood. But then my front tire hit a rock and then some deep sand. Before I knew what was happening I was sprawled face first in a mud puddle. My mouth tasted of blood and I realized I was crying. My shoulder was sore and my arm was twisted too far around. I had mud in my nose and eyes and mosquitoes were already feasting on my neck.

My friend and step-dad both laughed and rode down the path. They hadn't realized what happened.

I stood and tried to pick up my bike, but my right arm wasn't moving right. I felt bone scraping deep in my shoulder. Using my left hand I picked up my right shoulder and lifted until I felt my collarbone sliding back into place. It was hard to ride the bike that way--left-handed--but I made do. I only fell off twice. After a few miles the others realized I wasn't behind them and they came back to find me covered in mud and blood and gritting my teeth as I rode down the trail.

"Why'd you save that one?"

I thought about it and said, "I can make new happy memories easily. Forgetting how good hot buttered toast tastes, or the feeling of sleeping in a lover's arms or the pleasure of reading a really good book--all of these things I can do again, and I plan to. In fact, by taking these memories from me you've allowed me to experience the joy of them for the first time again." I nodded at the monster on my chest, " And I thank you for that."

The Thief of Memory grumbled and frowned. "That's a first."

"But the bad memories and the really painful ones, those are the ones I learned from and those are the ones I don't want to repeat. That I don't want to forget."

The Thief laughed and the rolls of his caterpillar shook and swam. He sounded like bowling balls rolling down stairs, like glass boxes being dropped from a great height. "You will always make more bad memories, too, you foolish thing. You will make them until the end." And the Thief slinked off my bed and out the door, laughing all the way.

And then I fell asleep.

Written by Morgan Johnson
Submitted on 5 March 2007