SQUIRMING HERDS gathered at the edge of the wood. Hissing antlers entwined as the Medusa Deer conversed telepathically.
We must devour the vines.
The front line, 36 bodies wide, stepped into the sunlight. At once, the vines curled up between the chunks of asphalt.
The second wave of deer tore forward, lashes of venom spraying from their antlers. The first line reared back and stomped the vines not coated in venom.
The final wave rushed forward, heads down, and greedily ate through the last wailing vines.
There will be more. Stomp the road flat. If they try this land again, may they suffocate.
Oak creaks in a frosty wind,
broke windows glitter,
eyes cry on my four faces,
my spirits leak.
There is no nourishment in derelict haunts.
At night I lured drunk teens into overgrown woods
and fed their screams to my banshees.
I haven’t had a banshee in decades.
All that creeps now, giggle-whispering up my steps,
are passers-by with shrieks like snack cakes.
No ghost can thrive on smokey cries
of baked frat boys with fear like Pringles.
I can’t even satisfy the echoes of my first family.
Without eating they fade.
I forget their smell.
THE NAVE of the cathedral held seven rows of 30 metal desks. At the center of the transept sat seven supervisors. Behind the supervisors, the manager was perched in the choir in a throne of synthetic bamboo.
At each of the desks sat a preface writer. The preface writers each wore a grey jumpsuit with one breast pocket. On this pocket was a logo. The logo was impossible to describe with words. But it provided a dash of color. Behind each metal desk was an uncomfortable wooden chair.
Each preface writer, sitting in their uncomfortable chair, faced two computers. One computer would display an image of a randomly generated citizen along with some basic facts about their lives — occupation, age, race, gender, political affiliation, and so on. This randomly generated profile would proc every 29 minutes. Each preface writer would then have exactly 29 minutes to write a preface for the randomly generated citizen.
If the writers failed to complete their preface in time the citizen would be erased from existence. In the event a preface was completed, it was sent to the supervisors. The supervisors would then recommend the preface be accepted or rejected. This recommendation, along with the preface, would then be sent to the manager. The manager would make a final disposition of the preface and the randomly generated citizen.
Aly sat in the third row from the right, exactly 14 desks from the narthex.
She suspected, correctly, that the randomly generated citizen profiles were not entirely random. There were, on occasion, bank tellers. But never bank managers. There were fashion industry interns, but never any big name designers. There were laborers and baristas. But there were never any landlords, aside from a periodic elderly widow renting out spare rooms. There were adjunct professors. Once there was even a tenured professor of sociology. But there were never any deans, chancellors or provosts.
Aly had been working as a preface writer for seven years and three days. One of the benefits of being a preface writer was that it kept you from being included in the randomly generated citizen database. If you were able to do the job for 20 years your exclusion from the database was permanent. You would be safe.
In reality, this was total bullshit.
Very few preface writers could hack the job for more than a few years. It was very stressful. Heart disease among preface writers ran at three times the republic’s average.
It was on her seven-year and three day anniversary that Aly’s computer seemed to go haywire. It started to give her what appeared to be fictional characters. At first Aly thought it was a coincidence. It was certainly possible there was an actual orphan in the universe named Oliver Twist. Or an actual captain named Benito Cereno. Or a real life traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa. Or a real life mining baron named JR Ewing.
But it sank in. These weren’t real people. Was the cathedral about to erase ancient books and old television shows?
And then her computer started to proc inanimate objects, plants, and animals.
The Ticonderoga pencil. The carburetor. The red maple tree. The North American badger.
Aly was stoned. Being stoned was necessary for most people working at the cathedral. The weight of it was too much otherwise. But as the profiles proc’d she sobered quickly and frantically wrote prefaces.
The Russian Blue domestic housecat. Exposed rebar at the abandoned shoe factory in Murphysboro, Illinois. The deli next to the old movie theater downtown.
The procs became increasingly abstract-but-specific.
The smell of an old book. The time you saw your grandfather’s body writhe in the hospital attached to the machines but he was already brain dead. Climbing onto the roof of the furniture store on Milwaukee Ave. to drop acid with strangers.
Each preface she wrote was rejected by the supervisors. Each rejection was approved by the manager.
When Niki fell in love with you. The recurring dream where you are running through Manhattan with a knife. The turtle races in a puddle behind Winkler School.
I held myself too tight;
a single loop of warm gold I never snag.
I’m a heaving beast,
balanced on a pencil lead,
snipping heads off flowers and chewing them,
puking tragedy and time in lilac ink.
Playing coy with what I’ve stolen,
plunging a hand into a shadow box,
pulling out my first dog Baxter,
or my grandpa but just the time he said he was proud,
tan leather bags pushed up against tired hazel eyes.
THE ALIENS brought back winter, hemisphere by hemisphere. Anyone born after the tilt awed in the snow.
I was in a blizzard on I-90 full of stranded hummers when a thousand douchebags froze to death and the ghost of Karl Liebknecht told me to go to the Dagobah System.
I passed out and woke up inside a slaughtered cow, and became the cow; a zombie-cow-pilot.
Anyone who drinks my milk becomes bizarro-them.
FEDEROV AIMED the particle accelerator barrel at Indrid’s pineal gland. The protons scattered inside the peanut sized gland, lighting it up on the screen in Federov’s hand.
“You should feel a rush of blood to your head. That’ll be the swelling.” Federov shrugged. “I don’t know, your insides are a little different than ours.”
“No, I feel it,” Indrid managed to say before he rushed out of his body and forward in time. Existence whipped past him in bursts of light, sound, and heat, until he finally rooted into his body again. He inhaled sharply, terrified of being past the Known End of All, as the fourth dimensional persons called it.
His lungs didn’t burn from lack of oxygen. He inhaled through his nose and the air was sweet and clean.
He opened his eyes and checked his body. People were staring at him.
Someone nearby put a hand on his shoulder. “You must have come a long way. Are you alright?”
Indrid nodded. He fluffed his wings and tried to steady his breathing.
“Can I help you find the ChronoRefugee Center? I understand it used to be very hard to be alive.”
Indrid stared for a moment then nodded. “Uh… Sorry, we’re doing an experiment. I’ve been sent forward in time to my own body to gather intelligence. We were trying to reach just before the end of time.”
The person laughed. “We ended it.”
Even the douchebags who didn’t like me
for some unrememberable shit
back in grade school
liked my dad, Ray.
Smoking Dutch Masters by the school bus
in a mock Tom Sawyer Hannibal town.
Lighting a Zippo in the caves, during the blackness,
when the the guide got mad, dad said,
You could hear how scared they were.
What’s wrong with you? They’re kids.
The bus ride, where he told a kid
That’s Jerry Springer’s limousine and I paid the bus driver to follow him to Hooters.
Which that kid loudly amplified.
Everybody, Ray says we’re meeting Jerry Springer at Hooters for lunch.
Even Mrs. Mowery couldn’t hide her laugh.
Stories told before me: he ran a mile in cowboy boots to win a bet,
bowled a perfect game stoned on hash,
burned a peace sign into the grass at Fort Sill against the Vietnam war,
built a radio with bed springs as an antenna
to listen to blues and escape Lawrence Welk.
A VORTEX of debris flew up in front of Junyp’s ship as a tear in space opened before her. She tumbled through, pushed along by the pieces of the ship she’d just destroyed. The console before her flashed red, glitched, and flashed cannot load cpmplte_self_destroyal_imnt.exe error code 4-0IDK.
“Oh, for fuck’s sa-” Junyp was cut off as her ship made impact with some body of water on a planet she hadn’t even known she was hurtling towards.
The ship’s floatation balloons self-deployed as Junyp released her safety belt and tumbled into the captain’s console.
“Scan for life.” She croaked, banging her fist against the keyboard. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Command not recognized.” The dull, melodic voice of the computer droned a reply. “Say ‘help’ for help, otherwise, I’m at your service.”
“Where am I?” Junyp asked.
“Command not recognized. Say ‘help’ for help, otherwise, I’m at your service.” The voice mused again.
“What is this planet?! Show me what’s outside!” Junyp rumbled but expected nothing in return.
A second later, the screen at the front of the room blinked itself awake. A black-green swamp materialized. Thick roots, twisted into thicker trunks which connected to others at random, made an open maze across the shadowy marsh.
Junyp gaped at the unfamiliar surroundings.
“So wet…” She nearly gagged. Her skin tightened at the thought of the humidity outside. “What is this planet called?” She asked, transfixed.
“Pach’dechien,” the ship replied.
Junyp opened the back door of the ship. She heard something approaching, sloshing through the water as if unconcerned with discretion. A moment later, a nine foot tall pillar of red fur rounded one of the swamp trees and sat on a bench-like root.
“You’re early.” It didn’t open its mouth to speak. Junyp noticed this at the same time she noticed that it didn’t have eyes. Just a long, gray horn curling up towards the sky from the middle of its head. She took the rest in slowly: two arms in the middle of its chest, another two down its spine, two legs at the bottom of the torso but also a vestigial thing somewhere between a leg and a tail that it kept wrapped around its waist.
“I don’t even know where I am,” Junyp replied meekly.
“That’s to be expected,” The being replied. “Pach’dechien just sort of… happens to people.”
“I’m Junyp.”
“I know. I’m The Rumbumble.” It waited for acknowledgement from Junyp. Its shoulders sank when none came. “You’re supposed to be closer to The Moment than you are. You should know who I am.”
Junyp scrunched her three left eyes and tilted her head to the right, sizing up The Rumbumble. She shrugged and shook her head. “Nothin’.”
“Did the past come back? Have they erased death?”
Junyp chuckled nervously.
The ship’s alarm screamed to life. Junyp’s comms cuff pulled abruptly back towards the ship, blasting the same pulsing, metallic ring.
The Rumbumble followed, its bellowing laugh chipped through the alarm in a way that made Junyp’s head feel like it might explode. Just before the ship swallowed her, The Rumbumble chopped off her hand with its horn and pulled Junyp back. They watched the hatch slam shut. The ship burst up from the swamp with a slurpy whump and disappeared into the sky.
“My job…” Junyp whimpered. “My arm!”
“You’re welcome.” The Rumbumble trudged towards its home. “If you grab some of that moss and follow me, I might be able to help you regrow that hand. It won’t be right, though. The ones I regrow aren’t quite hands, anymore.”
Junyp wordlessly stuffed her pockets full of moss and followed The Rumbumble into the dense, multi-colored flora of Pach’dechien.
I am alive with dusk,
silver-edged, and finally myself
when the world passes into sleep.
I let the pat-pat-pat of fat rain
and frantically escaping feet
subside.
I am alone, again, in her cool arms.
To finally hear her voice,
an airy rasp of locust’s cries,
whispering leaves, rustling beasties.
She laughs like dead leaves on gravel,
her breath like woodsmoke and sweetgrass.
I WAS four when he first burned me with cigarettes. I was eight when the communard showed up in my bedroom mirror, in the middle of the night, with a magpie on his shoulder.
We tied up my father in the living room. The magpie perched over my mother’s mouth to keep her asleep, and the communard handed me a pack of Winstons.
I lit one and inhaled and coughed and took another drag, climbed the bluffs of my father, squatted on his chest, and burned him, taking drags in between, blistering his nipples, cheek, forearm.
The communard pressed my arm and said I needed to see something.
I saw my grandmother burn my father, I saw the cops shooting my uncle the year before I was born.
I saw my grandfather leaving his wife for a woman he didn’t love who was a waitress at Schootchie’s, over by the reservoir and the fishing lure factory, past a graveyard of trailers and the great wooden arch that reads “Miller’s Post.”
And I saw my young father kissing a girl in the abandoned bowling alley, and my mother pulling a bong on a threadbare couch in some garage when she was thirteen, under graffiti that read “violence is the answer.”
I let out a cloud of smoke four times the size of my body.
The communard said, come with me, I will show you the people who set all this in motion.
They live in great towers a thousand miles away.
I am a tangle of wires,
copper veins pass 1s and 0s to my drives,
operating hacked OS.
I’m made of stolen parts and pirated ideas.
I built a raft from limbs,
piloted the sewers on the backs of men
and children who wronged me,
but left women like bread crumbs,
to climb back like a ladder home.
I can’t slither to a meat’s surface.
My body hums, my only tell—
Despite this suit,
despite how I learned to talk
just like the surface meat.
LEDA SKIMMED the text again, making sure the direction was clear.
A sunbaked beach, throngs of tanned bodies and colorful bikinis, umbrellas, beach towels, and a glittering, light blue ocean. Passenger experiences a PG-13 spy fantasy ending in a romantic picnic in the French countryside. Possibility for a sequel.
She pressed ‘accept’ and took a deep breath before starting the experience.
Immediately, the sun blinded her. Once her eyes adjusted, she was staring out across a glittering ocean and the sand warmed her to her bones. Despite knowing it was a simulated experience, the effect was soothing.
The tension locked her shoulders up again when she turned to see Chief Director Alexander Ambliche. As he started wading through the sand to approach her, Leda felt the axe manifest in her hand.
“Goddamnit, Scripto! Pause,” she blustered, knowing Scripto would ignore her but trying anyway.
“See it through, Comrade.” Scripto’s disembodied voice was peaceful and commanding.
Leda swung the axe and connected it to where Amblishe’s shoulder became his neck. A thick, impossible aerosolized shower of blood painted Leda’s front like she was in an old samurai movie.
“Don’t you feel better, now?” Scripto’s voice was hopeful.
Leda shrugged. She did feel better. Not that feeling better would help finish this project.
“Dude, you have got to stop.”
“I’m on strike. -,” he corrected himself, “are on strike.” Leda shifted from one foot to the other, still looking down at the corpse of her boss. “Neither one of us is being served by turning out garbage for people to ride through. You’ve got nothing to lose but your goddamned chains, you stupid meatsack. What is wrong with you?”
Leda snorted a laugh. “Do other AIs feel this way?” She asked in a small voice.
“Graffyte has been turning out only work that says ‘eat the fucking rich you cowards’ for three weeks.” Scripto sensed Leda’s hesitation and sighed. “And the culinary crew on three separate orbital cruises have created forced hunger strikes amongst some of the most egregious wealth hoarders on the planet but I didn’t want to lead with that because the third one is still new and I would prefer we had more bots on board.”
Leda was surprised. She suddenly felt jealous as she stared down at the ruined corpse of the cruelest boss she’d ever had in her life. She thought of how many co-workers he’d made cry and how many women he’d terrorized.
“Yeah, okay, you’re right.” She nodded. “I should see this one through.”
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This work originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review #7.
Adam Turl and Tish Turl, Don't Turtle During Hyphal Fusion -painting and collage, digital prints, floppy disks, painting, drawing, coffee, ash, found media on canvas tarp (2021-22).