Category Archives: Dusk

September 2, 2012

The Curse Mound

It was Halloween and I was hiking in the mountains alone. It all started because I hate costumes. My friends were all dressing up and having a party or something but I couldn’t make myself get into the right spirit. So I went hiking.

I hadn’t intended on being out late, but that is one of the hazards of hiking unfamiliar trails in Korea. The sun was going down and the light was just turning golden when I came to a pile of rocks by the side of the trail.

At first, I thought it was natural, but then I saw the thin pieces of shale positioned up and down, like knives, behind a flat stone that looked like a small altar. There was a smaller stone lying on top of it. I picked it up without thinking but then dropped it immediately when I felt a sharp pain in my fingers. I saw blood seeping out of thin, red lines in my fingertips. I thought that the edges of the rock were just sharp until I flipped it over with a stick and saw that someone had attached razor blades to the sides of it. I clenched my bleeding fingers into my fist and tried to quell the fear that had suddenly sprung into my heart. Someone had purposefully put the blades there as a trap.

In the middle of the small rock, between the glued-on razor blades was a red circle with four Chinese characters in it. Normally, I would be fascinated by such a thing, but at that moment, I just wanted to get off the mountain. I took a picture of stones, then carefully pried the blades off the small stone and took it with me. Night fell before I could make it back to a main road, and for the first time while hiking in Korea, I walked fearfully, looking around me and starting at every night noise.

The next day, I showed the stone to a co-worker of mine, Mr. Soh. He looked at it with a frown, then asked, “Did you make this?”

“Of course not! I found it on a mountain,” I said. “Can you read the characters?”

“Yes,” he said, as if it were obvious. “It is like a name seal. The first three characters are someone’s name: Park Jong-In. The last one though—usually it is the character for “seal”. But this one is the character for “murder”. Is this is a joke?”

Not a very good joke, I thought. Neither did he, after I showed him my bandaged fingers and told him about the razor blades and the mound. “I will do some research,” he said.

It took him two weeks. I didn’t want to press him, so I didn’t mention it again. My fingers healed and the strange stones were pushed to the back of my mind. Then, late on Friday, Mr. Soh came to my classroom and put some photos on my desk.

“Do you know why Koreans build stone piles?” he asked.

“I thought it was something women did if they wanted a son,” I said.

“Sometimes. It is for any wish, or to have a prayer answered.” He showed me a picture of a short tower of stone, shaped like a beehive. I had seen many like that.

“But the one I saw—”

“I found that too. I talked to a very old mudang, a shaman who had heard of such a thing. They are not used now at all.”

“What is it, though?”

“It is a curse mound,” Mr. Soh said. “For cursing or killing someone you hate. It is the closest we have to black magic.”

I thought of the razor blades cutting my fingers and a shiver went down my back. “Do you think I’ll be okay?”

He laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “You scared? I think it will okay. The mudang said that they used to sacrifice an animal on the curse mound before putting the name stone on it. Maybe this person wanted to use human blood instead. Don’t worry, it’s a very old custom.” As if that made it any better.

When Mr. Soh left, I searched for the name Park Jong-In for almost an hour. There were hundreds of them. Just before five o’clock, I came across one article and my breath caught as I saw the words “Park Jong-In” and “body”. I could have read it in Korean, but I was impatient and I dragged the whole thing into Google Translate. As I read the clunky machine translation, my fear grew until my heart was pounding. The article read:

Last night, the body of Park Jong-In was discovered in the mountains east of the Wonju. He apparently alone path for hiking and slipped. His family on October 31, he is missing and search efforts continue after that was announced. Police unsure of the cause of the wound, but the cause of death was loss of blood due to several large wounds on hands and arms. Dominated the incident an accident.

15 Comments | tags: creepy, curse, fear, fiction, Korea, mountains | posted in Dusk

August 29, 2012

The Book of Time

By David Stewart

A man built a house on a plot of land. He lived through good and bad and when he died, his house stood empty. People soon forgot him, but the house remembered.

It remembered his first night there, when he woke, alone, in the middle of the night and almost cried from loneliness. It remembered the joy of his wedding, the trials and worries, the accumulated pain and blood of scraped knees and new babies. The faces that came, and changed, and passed on through its rooms, it remembered.

The house was sold, and sold again, and then finally abandoned, until its windows were empty and vacant and its roof settled slowly into the floor. The years passed until the house was gone but its memories passed to the land. Even when that was built over and paved and excavated for basements and sewers, the land remembered the stories of those that had lived on it.

It remembered until the land sank into the oceans and water covered the area where the man had built his house and lived through good and bad. Its history was eventually forgotten by everyone, but it still remains, written forever in the book of time that only One can read.

15 Comments | tags: fiction, history, house, mid-week flash | posted in Dusk

August 27, 2012

The Mermaid’s Kiss

By David Stewart

This story was inspired by the song, Turn Loose the Mermaids, by Nightwish. I recommend it for reading music.

It was the kite that I saw first as I hurried along the dusky road in search of a place to camp for the night. It was a small square of dark blue that bobbed and swayed in the upper breezes, far above the hedgerows that bordered the road closely on both sides. I came to a gap and saw the world suddenly open in front of me.

I was standing on the top of a slope that descended several stone’s throws to the edge of a firth, an arm of the ocean that stretched inland to the mouth of a fast-flowing river. On the slope was a cemetery and in the twilight, each etched stone had its identical shadow that stretched back towards the east. On one of these stones, close to the water’s edge, I saw a hunched figure sitting and holding the string of the kite.

I went down to talk to the person and perhaps find a place to stay the night. When I got closer, I saw that the figure was an old man dressed in a tattered grey jacket. He was staring out towards the firth, but looked up at me when I approached.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said without preamble. “This is not the place for your sort.”

“And what sort is that?” I asked.

“The uncursed sort.”

This intrigued me immensely. “My name is Horus Vere,” I said. “I collect many things in my travels but mostly I love stories. Tell me, is this cursed ground?” I sat down on the gravestone of a Mr. Archibald Duggan (1550-1623) and waited for his reply.

“Why else would an old man be flying a kite alone in a graveyard at sunset, if he were not cursed?” he asked. I had no response to this feat of logic, so I waited patiently for him to continue.

“I used to come here every day when I young, to fly kites with my friends,” he said. “One day, we arranged to meet here in the afternoon, but the wind was strong that day and the others decided not to come. I launched my kite as I waited and it tugged fiercely on the string. A sudden gust snapped the string and it fell into the firth, about a score yards from shore.

“I should have left it—any sane person would have—but it was my favorite kite and I hated to lose it. So, I took off my jacket, tunic and trousers and waded into the frigid water. I was a fair swimmer, but the wind was blowing from the land and quickly pushed the kite further from me. When I finally reached it, I looked back to see that I was far from land and the wind was pushing me even further towards the middle of the firth.

“The swim back was a nightmare. I made very slow progress and I could not rest or I would be pushed out and lose what distance I had gained. My head slipped beneath the surface, but I pulled myself up. I went down again, and again I thrashed to the surface. But I was exhausted and I knew that I was about to drown.

“Finally I sank down into the darkness of the firth, too exhausted to struggle anymore. I breathed in a gulp of water and my consciousness was just starting to fade, when I felt something brush my arm. I thought it was a fish at first, but then it grasped me. Something pressed against my lips and air was forced into my lungs. I opened my eyes and saw a woman swimming in front of me, her skin a greenish tinge from the water.

“Several moments later, I pulled myself, coughing, onto the shore. The woman was beside me, and I could see now that even in the air, her skin had a greenish cast. She was naked and beautiful.”

“A mermaid?” I asked. I was beginning to think this man was either mad or toying with me.

“Do you believe in mermaids?” he asked.

“I have never had any reason to.”

“Neither did I,” the old man said. “She did not have a fish’s tail, as they do in the stories, but she was no ordinary woman.

“‘Thank you for saving me,’ I said to her and she nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ she asked. ‘Kiss me again,’ I said.

“I had not been meaning to say that and I was embarrassed, but she crawled carefully up to me, keeping one foot in the water, and kissed me again. Then she told me her name and slipped back into the water.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“I cannot tell you.”

“You have forgotten it?”

“No,” he said. “It is a name I could never forget. As soon as I heard it, it crept into every corner of my mind and I could keep my mind on nothing else. I would not tell it to you, lest the same thing happen to you.

“For several years after that I would come here and meet with her. Sometimes I would summon her by flying the kite, but sometimes she would call to me with her singing. She had a high, whispering song that floated on the breeze and drew me irresistibly to her.

“When I was seventeen, the town found out that I was meeting with someone here most every day. I heard the word ‘monster’ and ‘succubus’ whispered about. They came to kill her, but I saw them coming up the road, my father leading the way. She begged me to go with her, but I was afraid.

“‘I will wait for you here,’ I said. ‘But I cannot return,’ she replied. I was still afraid and did not believe her fully. She gave me one last, long kiss and then dove into the water as the people reached the top of the hill.

“I was sent away to the southern counties by my father, but I returned and stayed here, tending the graves and flying my kite. I have waited years for my lost mermaid. I could not have stopped even if I wanted to. The memory of her last kiss still burns on my lips and her name is as fresh in my memory as always.”

The old man stopped. I wondered if he told this story to everyone who stopped by or if I were privileged somehow. The sun went down and the golden color drained out of the landscape. Soon the darkness would be complete.

“You may stay in the old cottage by the woods,” he said. “I will stay here.”

I would have argued with him, but the memorial stone of Mr. Archbald Duggan was none too comfortable and I gratefully moved to the cottage. It was shabby and dank, but when I got a fire going, it cheered up immensely.

I awoke in the middle of the night to hear the wind sighing in the branches outside. With a start, I thought I could catch words in it. I jumped up and looked out the window.

The moonlight was shining brightly on the cemetery and the black water of the firth. The old man was gone from his gravestone perch. I put my hand on the door latch, but something stopped me, perhaps my oft-unused common sense. I went back to my bedroll on the floor and lay listening to the melodic breeze playing through the trees.

The next day dawned sunny and clear. I packed up my things and went to see if the old man had returned. His seat was empty. I stood for a while, and was just about to leave when I noticed something buried in the grass by the gravestone. After digging in the tangled grass, I pulled out a rotted cross of wood with several scraps of dark-blue cloth still clinging to it. Nearby was a spool of twine that fell apart when I picked it up. It must have lain there for years.

I thought of taking a piece of the cloth to remember this place with, but I knew it was not for me. The wind was singing in the trees again as I left, but I dared not look back at the water for fear of what I might see and what I might do then.

11 Comments | tags: fantasy, fiction, ghosts, Horus Vere, mermaid | posted in Dusk

July 22, 2012

The Girl Who Could Snee

By David Stewart

This is not directly related to the story, but it is the inspiration. Source

There was once a little blind girl named Margaret who had few friends she couldn’t see. This sounds like a lonesome proposition for someone born blind, but in fact, Margaret had many friends. She could not see them in the traditional way, but that did not bother her one bit. When her mother told her that she was blind and could not see, she accepted it calmly and then proceeded to make up her own word for her perception of those creatures that were dancing and waving all around her. She called that sense “snee”. She couldn’t see at all, but she could snee with the best of them.

The things she snaw (the natural past tense form of snee) were usually larger than she was and generally happy. They differed from each other much more than humans did. What’s more, they drew to Margaret like a horde of hungry children to a single lollipop. Apparently there were not many people who could snee.

The sense of snight was a strange one. She could not snee anything she could touch. When she asked her mother why this was, her mother (who did not understand the idea of sneeing) patiently explained that it was because she was blind. As well, with the creatures Margaret could snee (she called them snurps), she could tell their emotions, their motivations and their basic personality at once, as if they were wearing all that information on a badge on their chest. This was good to know, but all of the snurps Margaret snaw were kind and benevolent. Actually, she had never sneen a bad snurp in her life.

Of all the snurps Margaret knew, three were especially close to her. They didn’t have names before she met them, but she called them Splik, Drizzlepop, and Mr. Crustypeppers.

“Good morning, Margaret.” She woke up and saw her three snurp friends looming over her (she did not need to open her eyes to snee things. This made it hard to get to sleep when they were capering around her at night, generally acting like buffoons). The alarm clock went off, beep, beep, beep and she swiped at it, accidentally knocking it to the floor.

“Beep beep beep,” Drizzlepop said in a chortling monotone. “Beep beep beep. I like human music.”

“Happy birthday, Margaret,” Mr. Crustypeppers said. He held out his two translucent blue arms that looked like they were carved from ice. There was just empty space between them. “We baked you a cake! You just can’t snee it,” he added with a wink.

“Thank you guys,” she said, sitting up in bed and yawning. “Thank you, Mr. Crustypeppers, you piece of garbage. You really are a stupid cow.” Mr. Crustypeppers beamed and put the invisible cake carefully down on her desk, also invisible to her. She had once told the snurps about insults and Mr. Crustypeppers had been so tickled with the idea that he had insisted she insult him at every opportunity. If she forgot for a while, he would prompt her, saying, “So, Margaret, who’s a stupid cow?” Then she would remember and say, “You are, Mr. Crustypeppers,” and he would grin with pleasure, showing both rows of his long, blackened fangs.

In reality, it wasn’t her birthday. Every so often, the snurps would get it in their heads that it was her birthday and they would have a party. She had told them about birthdays but she wasn’t sure they really understood it. She wasn’t sure they understand the idea of time, for that matter.

Margaret was getting dressed when her mother came in. The slurps were outside by the road—Margaret could see them capering around, running back and forth, dodging things that were invisible to Margaret.

“Marg, we’re going to go for a drive after breakfast,” her mother said. “Dad got the day off, so we’re going to go have a picnic. Does that sound good?”

It did sound good to Margaret and an hour later, they were on the highway, headed for a state park called Pickett’s Notch. Margaret had never been there before. Of the three snurps, only Splik was in the car with her. He liked to sit down, although his tentacle-like arms were hanging down through the floor of the car and bumping along on the road surface. He was much taller than her and his head was probably sticking up through the roof. Drizzlepop had no legs and was floating along next to the car. She could just hear him singing along with the hum of the engine. Mr. Crustypeppers was nowhere to be seen. He often disappeared when they went on long trips and showed up when they arrived. Margaret was not sure how he traveled.

On the way, she snaw other snurps floating by or bounding through the air above them. They all waved and called her name. Even snurps she had never met before knew who she was. She gave small waves in greeting, but could not say anything without worrying her parents.

The breeze felt fresh and warm when Margaret opened the door and stepped out at Pickett’s Notch Park. Her mother told her how beautiful the view was; how green the trees were and how she could see for miles out over the valley.

Margaret could see nothing. Instead, she snaw two green snurps standing a little ways off, staring at her. She could tell instantly that they were not friendly and they did not want anything good for her. It was a scary feeling to see that kind of malevolence in a snurp. The green snurps just stared at her, not moving.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t like it here. It’s scary,” Margaret said.

“Scary?” Her mom laughed. “What are you talking about? It’s a gorgeous day: the sun is shining and there’s a wonderful breeze. Plus, there are other people here. See?” Even after eleven years, her mother still had lapses of forgetting she had a blind daughter.

She took Margaret by the hand and led her towards the green snurps and then past them. Margaret’s sense of unease continued to grow. They went down a short slope and Margaret suddenly snaw another snurp come into view. It was one of the biggest ones she had ever met and thin and willowy. She knew immediately that it was evil.

It looked at her for a moment, then started towards her. “Margaret,” it said in a dry hiss of a voice. “I have heard quite a bit about you. I heard you could see us.”

“I can’t see a thing,” Margaret said. “But I can snee you fine.”

This response made the snurp pause. At the same time, Margaret felt a hand on her arm.

“Come sit down, Marg.” It was her father. “Your mother has a blanket laid out.” There was worry in his voice. She knew that her parents sometimes overheard her talking, apparently to no one, and they didn’t know what to do about it. They worried, but not understanding, they tried to ignore it. They couldn’t hear the snurps, only her.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” she said. Splik and Drizzlepop had moved in front of her and were trying to make themselves look bigger. She looked back to see other snurps above her at the top of the unseen hill. She had never sneen snurps fight or attack a human and she wondered what would happen.

At that moment, Mr. Crustypeppers appeared out of nowhere. He gave a keening scream, like the howl of a furious predator. Hearing that noise of rage from her sweet, happy Mr. Crustypeppers scared Margaret more than anything.

Several other snurps appeared behind the tall, willowy one. There were about twenty of them, then twenty-five. She looked behind her. Only her three friends were close. There were other snurps further back, looking on.

There was going to be a fight and someone was going to get hurt. She was not sure how a snurp could get hurt, but her three friends were vastly outnumbered and about to defend her.

“Mom, Dad!” she cried. They were there in a moment, asking what was wrong.

“I know you won’t understand, but this place is dangerous. Please, we have to get out of here now.”

“But Marg, we just got here. I made all this food.” There was hurt and disappointment in her mother’s voice. Just be normal and let’s go have a good time, Margaret added mentally, in her mother’s voice.

“I’m so sorry, but we have to go now.” Margaret started moving back up the slope, feeling her way as she went. Her parents did not say another word. Her father took her arm and gently guided her to the car. She could hear the clink of dishes as her mother packed up the food she had prepared.

Margaret looked back. The evil snurps had followed them back to the car, but had not tried to attack. Splik got in the car with her, his eyes glowing in a way she had never sneen before.

They had a subdued picnic in the backyard. Her parents did not ask what the trouble had been at Pickett’s Notch and she was too disheartened to try to explain what they could never understand.

It was really hard having parents who could not snee.

That night, her three friends crowded around her bed as she went to sleep.

“Would those bad snurps have hurt you?” she asked them.

“We will protect you,” Drizzlepop said and the others nodded, conveniently not answering the question.

“Thank you for appearing and defending me, Mr. Crustypeppers,” Margaret said. “You really are a stupid cow.”

The grin on his face told her that it was all she needed to say.

24 Comments | tags: fantasy, fiction, Margaret, quirky, snurps | posted in Dusk

July 20, 2012

Alone on Top of the World

By David Stewart

Dawn came far earlier than it did for those down below. The bright, cold rays hit the upper edge of the valley, making the bare rock glow as if on fire. The sheep began to get restless. Aerin woke up.

It was bitterly cold in her small valley on top of the world. Even an hour later, when the sun reached the grass on the valley floor, she walked around in her huge, wooly cloak that made her look twice as big as she really was. The sun rose, pale and watery in the thin air, and shone its cold rays on her little world.

It was just her, in that tiny valley on the summit of Mt. Odinokii—her and her flock of Ambrulo sheep. Everything about the valley was special. There was a special reservoir cut below the valley because rain almost never fell that high up and every drop that did was precious. The grass was special since normal grass would not grow in such cold and thin air. The sheep were bred specially for high altitudes and it was said that it was the thin air that made their hearts delicious beyond imagining.

Aerin herself was special. She had been chosen and had trained for five years until she was an expert on everything concerning the Ambrulo sheep: breeding, diet, surgery, infant delivery, psychology. She stood alone in expertise concerning the Ambrulo.

She led the sheep out of their pen and into the long fenced-in lane towards the water trough. As they walked, the sheep pushed against levers that drove the pump that brought the water up from the reservoir below. Aerin walked next to them, calling them by name and inspecting them. Once they had all drank and started grazing, she went over to the pulley and looked down.

The pulley was her only contact with the world. There were actually two pulley and two platforms: when one went up, the other went down, a thousand feet or more to the first staging platform. Beyond that, there were more ropes and pulleys and then a narrow, treacherous road that wound for miles down the side of the mountain until it reached habitable regions.

Every two weeks, she sent a sheep down and in exchange, received its weight in food—her only food for the next two weeks. The sheep was then brought down the mountain and two hundred miles to the palace, in full haste and with a full security detail. There, its heart was prepared by the one chef in the kingdom who was qualified, and then eaten by the king and his nobles.

Aerin went to the grazing flock and walked through them, burying her hands in their thick coats as she passed. “Nivis, perhaps? No, let him grow a little more. Jasquet, maybe? No, let her stay with her lamb a little longer. Peros? Okay, let it be Peros.” She guided the chosen sheep out of the flock and towards a scale where she weighed it.

A flash of a red flag far below told her that they were ready. She guided Peros onto the platform, then closed the gate. A lever pulled, the anchor released and the platform swung free. She began adding small weights to the platform, until a moment later, sheep and platform began to descend.

Aerin stood looking out over the world, waiting. The darkest of blue skies above her reached out in all directions until it reached the curving horizon far away. Below, the land spread out like a mosaic of greens, browns and blues, except where huge white masses of clouds obscured her view.

Many minutes passed before the ascending platform arrived, filled with food and the next shipment’s weight requirement. Long before, there had been notes for her from family and friends and the workers on the lower stages. No more, though. She unloaded her food in silence and carried it into her cave.

She lay on top of the observation tower, her high platform built in the very center of the valley. The sun had passed its zenith and was slowing dipping towards the western curve of the Earth. Aerin lay looking up into the featureless dark blue and this was how the high-air sprites found her, as they always did.

“Aerin, Aerin, come play with us. Come fly with us.” Every time, like a greeting.

“I have no wings, my friends.”

“Neither do we,” they laughed. “Wings would do no good up here. Come, though, and be like us.”

“But who would take care of the sheep?”

“What care do they need? There is nothing to harm them here.”

“Who will give them water?”

“Let them figure out how to walk through the fenced lane by themselves. If they are too stupid, then maybe they do not deserve to live.”

“Who will send them down every two weeks to the king?”

“The king? He will not starve without an Ambrulo heart to eat every two weeks. Do not worry about him.” There were many sprites around her now, laughing, playing, beckoning her towards them. “Come, come be one of one, Aerin the Lonesome, Aerin the Solitary, Aerin, Queen of the Upper Airs.” They laughed, but they were not mocking.

“And how would I become like you?” she asked, although she knew what they would say.

“Leave your confines. Jump from the edge of the mountain. Fly up among us and soar through the atmosphere, higher and higher. Too timid, too shy, too tied to the cruel, hard earth.”

“I am not like you,” she said, as she had said many times before. “The Earth has a pull on me which I cannot escape, even if I tried.”

The sun had reached the borderland of the western horizon. Already, at the base of the mountain, it was full night. Aerin got up and herded the sheep into the cave, shutting the heavy doors against the freezing darkness that encroached on them.

She went to stand at the western edge of the valley and watched the sun descend to meet the Earth in a rack of fiery clouds. As she looked down on the world, alone, her heart ached with a pain that had nothing to do with the cold or thin air. The sun went down and black, icy night covered everything.

The sprites were playing and shouting in the air far above here, dancing among the cascade of glittering stars that pierced the blackness. The ache in her heart eased as she watched them and she smiled as she pulled her hood up around her head.

Life is still beautiful, she thought.

4 Comments | tags: fantasy, fiction, mountains, other worlds | posted in Dusk

July 6, 2012

The Woman in Blue, Part 3 of 3

By David Stewart

The Woman in Blue, Part 2

…Jack Simons walked into the house. It seemed mere seconds since he had left it that morning. He was tired and aggravated, although he didn’t know why. And his finger hurt. Slowly, he parted his fingers and saw two words, cut in tiny strokes on the side of his left ring finger. Stay calm.

Someone must have known about his outburst the night before.

He sat down at the computer. Hi, Sarah.

Hi, Jack. How are you feeling today?

He felt like crap and wanted to punch something, but he forced a smile onto his face. I feel great. How about you?

I’m good, Jack. I’m good.

Over the next few days, it seemed as if everything in the house began conspiring against him. The next day, the toaster started smoking on its own. That made the sprinkler system go off, which soaked everything in the house, including his bed, but strangely, not the computer. Sarah had no explanation for this, as much as he accused her of setting it up.

Stay calm. The words rang shrilly in his head, making him more angry, if anything, but he contained his rage. This got easier when he discovered an extra heating unit and other electronics stuffed inside the mangled remains of the toaster and he knew that they—whoever they were—were testing him, trying to get him angry.

On the night of May 21^st, Jack was woken up by sounds of movement coming from the living room. He went out and turned on the light to see a burglar—no mask, though—standing in his living room, filling a large bag with electronics and knick-knacks.

“What in Styx do you think you’re doing?” Jack asked, although it was pretty obvious.

“Go back into the bedroom and you won’t get hurt,” the burglar said. He was young, in his early twenties probably. He gave Jack a saucy sneer and suddenly Jack wanted to kill him. Not for the stuff he was stealing—it wasn’t Jack’s anyway—but just for being an arrogant prick who thought he was tough and thought he was in control.

Stay calm.

Of course, this was only another test, to see what he would do. Jack forced a grin onto his face. Are you watching this, Sarah? he thought.

“Ah, come on. You’re not going to hurt me,” Jack said, suddenly changing his tone and giving the burglar a easy grin. “You just want this stuff and then you want to go, right? How did you get in?”

“Uh, the back door. It was unlocked,” the burglar said, suddenly unsure of himself.

“Makes sense, I honestly can’t remember ever locking it. Hey, do you want the TV?” Jack asked. “I don’t watch it anyway.” He unhooked the cables from the back and then carried it over to the door. “I’ll get the microwave for you too.”

Twenty minutes later, Jack and the burglar had stripped the house of anything of value and piled it by the back door. Everything except the computer and the telephone. Jack had offered them, but the burglar had declined, not surprisingly.

“Now go into the bedroom and shut the door,” the burglar ordered. “I’ll carry this stuff outside.”

“Fair enough,” Jack said. He went into the bedroom and lay down, listening to the burglar moving things out of the back door. He wondered if the burglar lost his memories every time he went through. That would be pretty funny. He wondered if Sarah was watching all this and what she thought of it all.

He heard the door shut and then there was silence. A moment later, the phone rang. Jack smiled and then got up to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Jack. I saw you were up anyway.”

“Yeah, funny thing about that.”

“Jack, I’m here to tell you that it’s over. The experiment, that is. They say you passed.”

“Okay, now what?”

“Now, you can leave, for real.”

Jack heard a buzz and a click. Looking out in the hall, he saw that the front door was standing ajar.

“You’re in prison, Jack,” Sarah’s voice said. “You were sentenced to life in prison for killing two men, but you were lucky enough to be chosen for this experiment, to see if your behavior could change if you had no memories—to see if you were fundamentally bad or not.”

Jack knew he should shut up. His brain kept telling him to, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a robot that has a GOOD-EVIL switch that might get flipped to GOOD if I couldn’t remember being a criminal? And you were going to prove this by trying to make me angry? Anger doesn’t equal evil, Sarah, and calm doesn’t equal good.”

“Jack,” her voice was sweet but warning at the same time. “They passed you; don’t try to convince them to undo that. This is only Stage 1. If you go out the front door, they will still be monitoring you, although you won’t know it. You’ll forget everything about this place and about prison. You’ll have a new identity and wake up in a hospital, supposedly with amnesia.”

“Amnesia?”

“The Department of Corrections isn’t too creative with their ideas,” Sarah said and there was a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Will I remember you?”

“No, you won’t.”

“Then tell me: who are you, Sarah?” Jack asked.

“I am your fiancée,” she said, after a pause. “We would be married now, if two men hadn’t broken into your house a week before our wedding. You beat them both to death. The warden asked me to help in the experiment as a control, because I knew you. I was the one person you could never forget and they wanted to prove that you could. I love you, Jack.”

“I won’t do it,” Jack said. “If I have to be in prison for the rest of my life, so be it. I don’t want to forget you, out there. I’ve been trying to remember you in here and I couldn’t. I don’t want to live like that for the rest of my life, especially now.”

“Jack,” Sarah said, “you don’t remember now, but there was a time when you fell in love with me. You pursued me and charmed me and made me fall in love with you too. You told me you did this experiment for me, so let me do this for you, Jack. Let me find you and make you fall in love with me again.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you. What do I do?”

“Just walk through the front door. There are machines built into the door frame. You won’t remember anything after that and we can start again. I love you, Jack.”

He wanted to return the feeling, to say he loved her too, but the words sounded false in his mind. He didn’t even remember her. “I will love you too,” he said. Then he hung up the phone and walked out the front door…

7 Comments | tags: burglary, crime, experiment, fiction, memory loss, prison, prisoner | posted in Dusk

July 4, 2012

The Woman in Blue, Part 2 of 3

By David Stewart

The Woman in Blue, Part 1

Time flies when you only remember six hours out of every day and for Jack, the next few days seem to slip by like ghosts in the night. There were no more scratches on his body or messages in his briefcase, although he pored through every scrap of paper in it.

He talked for hours with Sarah, although the conversations were dry and often frustrating. She would not reveal anything about herself and he knew almost nothing about himself to tell. She was constantly asking how he felt: if he was angry, if he was relaxed. The questions themselves put him on edge, but he never told her that.

Jack began to fixate on her more and more as the days went by. She was the only person he knew in the world and his only contact with the human world. All his pent-up frustration, suspicion, loneliness, and lusty desires—they all became focused on her. He found himself loving her and hating her both, without even knowing who she was.

He wondered what she was like and if he had known her before—out in the real world. For all he knew, the Jack outside knew her and the two of them had lunch together every day. Not that it helped the Jack in here any.

If he was in a good mood, he would tease her and try to cajole her into telling him more about herself. What’s your favorite color? Come on, what’s it going to hurt? Let me guess: is it blue? All he ever got were smiley emoticons and avoidance.

On the fifth day—May 14^th according to the computer’s calendar—Jack walked through the door with a sore foot. The pain was coming from the inside of his left foot. He sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, covering that part of his foot with his hand and slowly stripped off his socks. He pretended to be stretching and raised his hand slightly to see the side of his foot. Here, the cuts were deeper than before and easier to read. Sarah bday, they read.

He had sent himself another message—against the rules—to say it was Sarah’s birthday. That must mean he knew her on the outside, unless this was only part of the experiment. He was getting frustrated with the whole thing. Sarah would not even tell him when it was going to end; just to be patient. Maybe there were other, darker forces lurking behind her, telling her what to say. He tried to see her as a victim as well in order to shield her from all the rage that were boiling inside of him.

Jack sat down in front of the computer. Yo Sarah, happy birthday!

For a moment, there was no response. Then, How did you know?

May 14 is your birthday, right?

How did you know? Did you remember it? Tell me, Jack, did you remember it was my birthday?

It was either that or admit he had read it off scratches on his foot. Finally, he typed, Yeah, I saw it was May 14 and suddenly thought it was your birthday. I guess I was right.

What else do you remember? Do you remember me? Describe me.

The only thing he associated with Sarah was the icon of the woman in the blue dress, but that probably wasn’t even her. He didn’t even know if the person on the other end of the chat program really was Sarah. They knew he didn’t remember and they were trying to trap him. Suddenly, he didn’t care anymore.

You’re eight feet tall with a lazy eye and long fingernails, he typed. You like raw seafood and nude demolition derbies.

There was no response to this. “Answer me,” he growled. So, what are you doing tonight for your birthday? Got a hot date lined up?

He barely even knew what he was typing. All he wanted was to get some sort of reaction out of her, to make her show herself as human, to show even a little of herself to him.

Wanna go out with me? Come on, just come pick me up. Or just come on in and we’ll screw on the couch.

There was no answer. Jack had been getting more furious as he wrote and now something seemed to explode in his head. “Answer me!” he screamed out loud and picking up the chair, he hurled it at the window.

The chair rebounded off the glass without even leaving a mark. Bulletproof glass. He was looking around for more furniture to throw when the phone rang.

The phone was in the kitchen. Jack had picked it up when he had first arrived, but there was no dial tone and he had ignored it as only a prop. Now, he strode over to it, jerking it savagely off the cradle.

“What.”

It was a woman’s voice on the other end. “Jack, what are you doing?” She sounded scared.

“You got me in a prison here,” he said. “And now I find I can’t even break the windows? I’m done with this. Let me out.”

“Jack, you agreed to do the full length of the experiment.”

“Yeah, well now I’m unagreeing to it. I want out and I want to keep my memories.”

“Jack, please.” There was pleading in her voice. “You must be patient. I know you don’t understand right now, but you have to trust me.”

“Why should I trust you?” Jack demanded. “I don’t even know you. Who are you anyway?”

“I’m Sarah.”

“Do I know you, out there?”

“Yes…yes, you do, but I can’t tell you how.”

“Just tell me if we are related. Are you my sister, cousin, mother?”

There was a slight pause. “No, we’re not related,” Sarah said. “Listen, I have to go. Remember Jack, be patient and trust me.” The line went dead.

Jack put the phone down and went back to the computer, but Sarah had logged off. That night he dreamed about her, but she always seemed to be just beyond his grasp.

The next day Jack got up and robotically went about getting ready. At 7:35, he stood in front of the door with his briefcase full of meaningless lesson plans and student reports. It seemed to get harder with time, having to walk through that door that erased all his memories and deposited him, a second later, back in the same place and hours later. Finally, he sighed and stepped forward…

…Jack Simons emerged from the model house attached to Northcross Prison and was immediately surrounded by guards. They took his briefcase and while they watched, he undressed and was handed an orange prison uniform.

Sub-Warden Neese, walked up to him with a tablet computer, shaking his head slightly.

“How did I do in there?” Jack asked.

“You got violent, Jack,” Neese said. “You tried to break a window with your chair. I was about to pull the program right there, but Sarah convinced me to let her call you and calm you down. You’re not doing well, Jack.”

“It’s not fair, though!” Jack said. “If you would just let me know what was going on, I’d behave for you. I’d be as good as gold.”

“You know why we can’t do that, Jack. Of course you can play nice for a while. What we are trying to determine is if you are a fundamentally dangerous and unstable person. I’ll see you back here in ten hours.”

“It’s all bull, if you ask me,” Jack’s cellmate, Chris Jamer said. They were lying on their bunks, staring at the ceiling. “Who wouldn’t get anxious and violent in a place like that, where they don’t tell you anything? They’re trying to get you to fail.”

“I have to try to get another message through to myself,” Jack said.

“Man, you know they said they would cancel the whole program if they caught you doing that again.”

“I’m going to fail anyway,” Jack said. “They said Sarah phoned me in there. I wonder if I recognized her voice. I gotta do this for her.”

“If you get caught trying to sneak another message in to yourself, you’ll never see her again,” Chris said. “You were lucky enough to be chosen for that program. Don’t screw it up now.”

“Give me your razor. I’ll make it small and put it between my fingers. They’ve never checked there yet.”

“You’re a fool, Jack,” Chris said, but he reached under his mattress and pulled out a tiny razor blade and handed it to Jack.

At 5:00, the guards came for Jack. They led him to a staging area where he undressed fully and stood naked while the guards checked him for contraband and messages.

“Arms up.” He raised his arms. “Fingers spread. I said, fingers spread!” One of the guards seized Jack’s ring finger. He looked at it for a second, then gave a harsh laugh and threw the hand down. “I didn’t see nothing,” he said in a low tone, “but you’d better follow your own advice in there, cuz after today, you’ll never see the inside of that house again, if you don’t.”

Jack got dressed in his teacher clothes and was handed his briefcase. Then he walked through the door and into the house…

The Woman in Blue, Part 3

4 Comments | tags: experiment, fiction, memory loss, prison, prisoner, science fiction | posted in Dusk

July 2, 2012

The Woman in Blue, Part 1 of 3

By David Stewart

The first thing Jack Simons remembered was walking into his living room. He stopped and looked back down the short hall that led to the heavy wooden door behind him. He gotten there somehow but could remember nothing about it. After a moment, of confused indecision, he walked back and opened the door…

…and walked back into the living room. Again, he could remember nothing about being outside—it was as if he had jumped forward in time. He was carrying a briefcase that when he opened it, was filled with lesson plans and student assignments. It seemed as if he were a teacher, but it was terrifying that he could not remember where he worked or even what he taught.

He could not even remember the house he was standing in. It seemed spacious beyond his price range, with large, hermetically-sealed windows that looked out onto a narrow lawn, bordered by tall hedges that blocked all further view. The living room furniture was all modern and shiny; he had definitely not picked it out himself. A quick search of the rest of the house revealed a bedroom with a new bed, but his own clothes in the drawers, and a bathroom with his brands of toothpaste and shampoo, all in unopened containers. The kitchen was stocked with everything he normally ate, all in new and unopened packages.

At the other end of the house was another door that looked like the front door. It was locked by some method that bypassed the key and deadbolt. The window next to it looked out onto a front lawn that was also surrounded by a high hedge and a high gate he could not see over.

In the living room on a side table was a laptop, open and logged on to a chat program. The only contact was someone named Sarah. The icon was a gorgeous woman in blue dress. Jack reached over and typed, one-fingered: Hi.

Hi Jack. The reply came almost immediately, as if someone had been waiting for him.

He sat down at the table. Who are you?

I’m Sarah. How do you like the house?

It’s fine, but it’s not mine. Where am I?

You’re in your new home, at least for now. You are part of an experiment in memory, which is why you don’t remember anything beyond a few moments ago. Don’t worry, you volunteered for it.

I don’t remember volunteering for any experiment, Jack wrote.

Duh. 🙂

The familiarity of the reply caused a flash of anger in Jack, but he restrained it. He typed, Just tell me when I can leave.

The experiment will last a few weeks at most. Don’t worry, you have the permission of your principal and school. I know it will probably be hard, but you won’t be able to remember what you do outside and when you’re outside, you won’t remember what you do here.

So you split me into two people, then.

Sort of. It may be difficult, but please remember, you volunteered for this, so follow the rules. Don’t write notes to yourself. Your principal assures me you will never need to bring work home.

So what am I supposed to do? Jack asked.

Whatever you’d like. We provided a selection of books that you requested and the TV is programmed to all your favorite channels. Anything else you need, you can pick up when you go out tomorrow.

So, I’m a prisoner?

There was a slight pause. You can leave at any time. You just won’t remember it when you return.

Do I know you, out there? Who are you?

Just call me Sarah.

The next day the alarm rang at 6:00. Jack considered not getting up. It was hard to worry about a job he could not even remember. Eventually, though, he got up, showered and got dressed. He left the house at 7:30, his briefcase in hand…

…and walked into the house. The clock on the living room wall said 5:22 and he felt tired. The house was as silent as before. He had logged off from the chat with Sarah the night before and turned off the computer, but now it was on again and logged into the chat window.

There was a small pain, lurking somewhere in the back of his mind. As soon as it came into his conscious mind, he realized it was coming from his right armpit. He rubbed at it, but it did not go away. Finally, he went into the bedroom and took off his shirt, wondering if a bee had crawled into his clothes and stung him.

On his side, just below his armpit was a series of tiny red lines that looked as if they had been cut with a razor. They seemed to form letters, but the whole area was red and swollen. He pressed on it, forcing the blood away from the skin and suddenly the red lines stood out. Cameras.

Cameras? Was this a message from himself on the outside? He felt a chill run through him. Sarah had said he could not send messages to himself. Jack looked around and quickly put his arm down.

He went downstairs to the computer. Are you there? he typed.

Yes, Jack. I’m here. How are you feeling today?

How would I know? Listen, are there cameras in this house? Are you spying on me?

There was a pause of half a minute and Jack could see that she started to type and then stopped several times.

Yes, there are some cameras there, just to monitor you for the experiment. You knew there would be when you signed up for this.

Maybe the me out there knew, but you could have told the me in here. Are you’re watching me while I take a piss?

No, there are no cameras in the bathroom. We respect your privacy.

Yeah, sure they did, he thought. They put him in a bugged house and left out the bathroom for the sake of his privacy? He went into the bathroom and flipped his middle finger at the mirror, the light and anywhere else he thought could hide a camera. Then he went back to the computer.

Did you see that?

See what, Jack?

Yeah, right. Suddenly everything that she said seemed sinister. He looked around the room and then slammed the laptop shut.

The Woman in Blue, Part 2

8 Comments | tags: experiment, fiction, memory loss, science fiction | posted in Dusk

June 18, 2012

The Long Ride Home

By David Stewart

The darkness enveloped me on all sides like a shroud of fear. Leaves, twisting and shuddering in the night breeze, fled across my path as I steered my bike down the quickly darkening lane. Streetlights gleamed periodically through the gloom. It was becoming foggy.

Strange, I thought. They said that fog almost never appeared in that area. In fact, it was the first time I had ever seen fog this thick and cold. A sense of panic crept over me with clutching fingers as the mist settled around me. My bike was already dripping with condensation and I was damp from the fog and an anxious sweat. My hands were becoming numb from the wet steel handlebars and I was getting tired.

The turnoff to my driveway should be somewhere up ahead. It was taking longer than I had remembered. Maybe I had already passed it, obscured by trees, darkness and the mist that now blanketed everything. I had only lived in the area for two weeks and I had never gone much farther down the lane beyond my house. Something had always restrained me, a small tugging in my heart to do something else that had always seemed more important.

Suddenly, as if pulled by a preternatural sense, I turned to see two small points of light piercing the gloom some ways behind me. Headlights. An irrational terror seized me, as if those lights were the roving eyes of a beast that was searching me out. I looked wildly for a place to hide, to escape. The trees seemed to draw closer to the sides of the road, blocking any passage through them. Retreat was out of the question. The only way was forward. If only I could reach my driveway before those lights overtook me. I slammed the bike into a higher gear and started to pedal harder. The sleek frame sped along the slick asphalt.

I was being silly, I realized. The headlights behind me most likely belonged to a farmer, driving home from the store. I started to slow my pace until I looked back at the lights again, much closer now. Those pale, unrelenting beams bored straight into my mind, melting all logic and rational thought as they went. Adrenaline flooded my veins and again I was off like a shot. My muscles were aching and I was dragging in breaths in ragged gasps.

The car was closing fast; my last burst of energy had made little difference. At any moment it might overtake me. Then, at the last moment, it appeared: my driveway, like a tunnel in the trees on the right. The brakes let out an indignant shriek from the water, and gravel flew as I skidded recklessly into the driveway seconds before the car roared past. I took a deep breath and turned to go up to the house.

With a start, I noticed for the first time the tall iron-wrought gate that now barred my way. Beyond it, row upon row upon countless row of bone-white gravestones rose like broken teeth out of the fog.

This was not my driveway.