"Date Unknown"

I have another story here to share! Please enjoy and leave a comment down below to tell me what you thought of it. And be sure to check out my facebook page at facebook.com/authoremilyblue. It only takes a few seconds to follow me and you'd be supporting someone who works very hard. And now, to Date Unknown!


Date Unknown

All our lives we saw them, the ones who didn’t belong. They flickered in and out of our realm, sometimes gray, sometimes vivid and vocal. They never stayed long, momentary connections or glimpses out of the corners of our eyes. But now they are gone for good, and we don’t know why. Something went awry and they are gone, our sister worlds that used to touch ours.

This began as all things do, far back into the past. A chain of events led us to this moment here and now, as I stand in the Silent world. In one of the Silent worlds. 

Are we the only one left? The ones above me won’t say, and I fear this means the answer is yes. 

The moment I am sure my feet are firmly on the ground, I touch my ear with my middle finger, pressing against the nodule of metal clipped there. My microphone, the two-way relay between myself and my team back in our world. 

“Receiver. Do I come through?”

For a moment, nothing but chilling Silence in my head, echoed by the reality I currently inhabit. Then, the voice of my Receiver filters through our connection. 

“You come through, B-9412. What do you wish to report? Was there a problem with transfer?”

The B stands for Broadcaster. As for the numbers, I don’t know, though I certainly have a theory. I feel that all we Broadcasters have our theories, though I never met any of the others before to confirm this.

For myself, I believe our numbers correspond with the numbers of the Silent universes available to walk through.

The team consists only of Receiver, Command, Monitor, and myself. I don’t know their real names, cannot identify them on sight. I cannot even say what gender most of them are, though Receiver seems decidedly male when he speaks.

“I have within my sight a sign which displays the name of my current location. That location is…”

“Unimportant.” 

I pause. The rate at which our sister worlds went Silent on us varied due to the subtle differences between us, but the locations usually didn’t change. However, sometimes they did. I should confirm this with Receiver, especially since I am standing right in front of the sign. 

“Monitor has already logged the location. We can see it,” Receiver says, referring to the cameras implanted in my eyes, behind my corneas. 

To confirm everything, to have it recorded in as many ways as possible, is the standard operating procedure that has been ground into my mind over and over again through months of training simulations. 

However, I’m not questioning Receiver’s judgment. Yet another thing I learned during training is that my superiors are always right. Always. 

“Understood. I will continue on and if I notice anything else, I will bring it to your attention.”

“We’ll be watching,” a new voice replies. High-pitched and crisp, this one belongs to the person known as Monitor. Monitor doesn’t often speak but when he does, it sends a chill down my spine. I don’t trust him. 

Dropping my hand, I just stand and look at the sign. Trenton, the sign says. Scorch marks obscure the bottom half of the wooden surface, devouring what might have been written there. 

. I shake my head and turn away to look out at the rest of the town. I stand in a patch of grass along the side of a cracked road. Dirt brims in the fractures and weeds root within, rising upward rather than spreading out. Faint birdsong carries over from the distance, across a large, empty plain of grass which must have been a park at one point, though long since fallen into disarray.

On this side of the street there are many small buildings, all of them collapsed. Large buildings line the opposite side, similarly buckled in upon themselves as if they couldn’t take the strain of existence. Something terrible came this way, wreaking havoc upon the little town. 

I pull in a deep breath and try to rid myself of the chill inside me by focusing on the chill outside. A sharp, dry wind blows through the town, rustling through the grass and stirring the weeds. The weather is the same as on the other side, the onset of autumn. 

On the opposite end of the empty park is a neighborhood, rows of houses separated by lines of trees. The leaves have fully turned color, mostly brown and dirty gold with a scattering of crimson.

I must discover what caused this Silence. There are so many things that can lead to the destruction of a world. As we are the last left, we must avoid them all. To that end, I will record as much of this world as I can. Even the most insignificant details may become important at a later date. I will never know. Monitor will review the data and decide for themselves. I am only a walking camera. 

I will patrol up and down the streets from the point where I have Entered, performing quick and thorough searches of each building as I am able. I am not to linger but I must scan smoothly and completely so that Monitor can accurately assess the video feed relayed to them. This journey will take hours, perhaps years; there is no way of knowing when I am done until I am told so.

My survival depends on supplies sent to me through Entryways at scheduled times. No scavenging. No disturbing the records.

There are many like me. But here, I am alone. 

I set out up the street, walking past the little houses. Many of them are impassible, the doors blocked by avalanches of rotting wood and brick rubble. The ones that I can enter soon form the picture that they are not homes at all, but stores. Shelving remnants burdened by destroyed goods fill the interiors, though for the most part there is little of value. When this world ended, the looters and survivalists made their move to take what they could. 

One store is filled entirely with broken glass, shattered bottles. The smell is rank but musty and very, very old. 

Knotted tangles of obliterated metal block the entire front of what used to be a refill station for automobiles. There must have been an explosion, decimating the structure.

Past the station, a broad expanse of road leads to the left and right for an eternity. I follow the road only long enough to reach the next neighborhood street where individual patches of yard surround husks of houses. Once separated, now united in the unnatural quiet that blankets them. 

Fallen debris blocks me from many of the homes. However, I occasionally manage to gain access to catch a glimpse of the past, mainly in the form of mementos: a book tossed into a corner, the cover bleached from sunlight but undamaged; an empty birdcage, the bars rusting.

Furniture is a common feature, torn couches and lamps scattered everywhere. Tables and chairs and shelves both large and small, most of them broken. Vegetation invades buildings wherever possible. Ivy climbs down the walls. Trees burst up through the floors. 

Outside, leaves swirl around my boots, drifting down from above, disturbed by the fierce wind. Squirrels leap through the canopy, visible when they bound across bare branches. 

Clouds the color of charcoal obscure the sky, allowing none of the true color to show through. I stop and look up as a maple leaf brushes past my shoulder, wondering what that color might be. Blue, or gray with deathly ashes and smog?

Static bursts in my ear and I touch my microphone. “Yes?”

“Keep your eyes on the ground. The sky doesn’t matter.”

Monitor’s reprimand forces my head down. If I mess up here, I will be pulled out. My whole life I worked towards this and I will not have it end in failure.

But I don’t say that out loud. 

“Understood.”

I get moving again. So far, this world is very much like my own, the differences so slight that they might be missed if a person wasn’t looking for them. A few forgotten vehicles lie about, decaying, rounder than the ones I am used to. The buildings stretch taller, cant asymmetrical to one side. I like that. 

Finishing my patrol of the first street, I head back up the next, finding much of the same. No vehicles this time and the destruction is muted, but otherwise nothing changes. I expected this and it doesn’t bother me. Much of this journey will be similar. 

I pass by the park again after going down the third street and notice this time that the weeds gather in some places into enormous clumps. That is odd and will warrant searching, but for now I move to the fourth street. More of the same, but there something new awaits me halfway down the fifth. 

Several deer amble across the road, with quivering black muzzles and white tails that flick around as they walk. The hooves are dainty and small, making no sound as the animals cross the concrete. Though each one looks in my direction, they hardly seem to care that I am here. 

As soon as they safely cross the street, more appear from behind cover. These two are smaller, with a gangliness that suggests they haven’t fully grown into their own bodies yet. After the pair comes another, this one as red as a winter sunset, snowflakes streaming across his flanks. Binging up the rear is a stag with a thick scruff of fur around his neck. His antlers are surprisingly small for a creature so impressive, which suggests that he too had much growing to do. 

Static crackles in my ear. “I hear you,” I say. 

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Receiver sounds awed, admiring. 

“I didn’t take you for an animal lover.”

“In the absence of humans, they have reclaimed what once was theirs. Poetic.”

Yes, all of this is poetic in a dark sort of way. Destruction and an end to life as these people had known it, yet still life is thriving. The Silence isn’t truly silence, not as I have been led to believe. This world isn’t empty. For the lack of humans, it seems all the more full. I have never seen so many birds, and the squirrels carry conversations with dozens of participants. And I won’t forget the family herd of deer anytime soon, wandering gracefully across the grass. The fawn prances about between its older siblings, biting playfully at their tails and making them chase him away. 

I almost like this world. We had arisen and now we were gone, and a new generation had begun. 

Hours pass. Morning turns to afternoon, and already the sky darkens. Aside from an occasional comment from Receiver, I am left to my own devices. I am growing cold and beginning to be hungry, but my first supply to Enter into this world isn’t scheduled until tonight. I will have to bear the discomfort, which is easy enough as I am enjoying myself. 

And then the birds stop singing. 

I stop where I stand, my heart fluttering. I listen, searching for something to tell me what has gone wrong, but then I understand. 

I touch my ear. “Receiver.”

“Monitor answers. “We hear it. Or, don’t hear it. This isn’t a good sign. Get in cover. Now.”

I turn. The front porch of the nearest house has collapsed but the door is still accessible but before I even move, a shadow shifts in the doorway, lunging in my direction. 

I cry out and now the birds are chirping again, echoing my alarm. Wings beat and small bodies take to the sky. 

The dark shape stops a few feet away and I clamp one hand over my heart to keep it from following the birds.  It’s only a dog, a black Labrador with friendly eyes. His tail wags uncertainly, or perhaps I should say tails, as he has two of them. His muzzle twists up at one side, teeth protruding at odd angles, and hard tumors bulge from his left shoulder. 

The ground heaves, roiling, and my thoughts break as the dog throws himself inside his den, seeking shelter. I stumble, grabbing at the grass, trying to catch myself, but then the world bucks again and the lawn rushes up to meet me. Leaves crunch under my body. Something heavier falls in the distance, and then right nearby. I can’t breathe. I can’t get up. Something groans terribly and I think it might be the earth itself. 

And then, only stillness. A few distant shrieks from alarmed birds, sharing the news of what happened. Panting, I push myself to my knees and try to stand. 

“B-9412! Are you okay?” Monitor sounds truly panicked and that fills me with affection for him, that he cares so much. Maybe we’re more than just a team in name, after all. 

“B-9412!” Receiver chimes in. “We see you standing. Did you hit your head? Is anything broken?”

The intensity of my own emotion surprises me, carried on tsunamis of adrenaline. The air feels too cold and I shiver. The trees look too sharp around the edges, branches like knives.

“I’m okay,” I reply. “Just shaken.”

“Can you continue? We can pull you out…”

That’s not necessarily true. Forming Entryways is such a complicated business that they must be programmed far in advance, scheduled rigorously. And, sending is not the same as leaving. I can’t just walk through the Entryway when they send my dinner, unless I want to turn inside out.

I shake my head even though it must be disorienting for my team to experience such a thing through my eyes. “I wouldn’t let such a small thing stop me.” 

“Good,” Receiver says. He sounds relieved. “Continue on but be careful. That may not be the last of it.”

Almost as soon as he finished speaking, I realize that the pounding I’ve been hearing this entire time isn’t my heartbeat echoing in my ears. It’s coming from somewhere else, and the ground starts to move again underneath my feet. This time, it isn’t wrenching up and down. It’s shaking, like me. 

The trees rattle overhead and the few birds that settled down from before take to the skies again. Squirrels on the ground now flee back into their trees, clinging to the branches. The warning is clear. Get out of the way and fast. 

But I can’t escape from something that I don’t even understand. 

The sound beats, a cadence, produced not by one thing but by many all at once. It reverberates across the sky, propelled through the emptiness. I cry out again into the Silence as I see something coming my way from back at the end of the street. It’s the deer again, dozens of them, hundreds, a bounding mass of lithe flesh and muscle. Fur rubs against fur, generating static, a brewing storm.  

They thunder through the gaps between the houses, leaping fences, trampling weeds. I am metal and they are lightning, descending jaggedly. 

My team is silent. No voice commands me to do anything. I am alone. I am alone, and there is nothing I can do but turn on my heel and run as fast as I can away from them. 

Everywhere I look, deer. They surround me, in front of me, behind me, to my sides. There are no openings as they swamp me with their numbers, blocking me from reaching a tree or throwing myself through a doorway. Occasionally a hoof strikes my ankle or a firm flank brushes against my hip but these animals are meant to be light on their feet and they do their best not to collide with me. The noise is deafening, and the smell of animal and churned dust fills my nostrils. Still they dash around me and I start to think I might outlast this. As long as I keep running in a straight line, don’t make any sudden changes, this enormous herd might fully bypass me and I will be okay. 

And then something hits my head and I am on the ground, battered by hooves, my shock-numbed body registering the pain and not knowing what to do with it. The world is nothing. Darkness and pain, felt and not felt, and jagged concrete digging into me from beneath. I curl into a ball and wait for it all to end.

Until I am dead, or there are no more deer. 

I don’t know how long it takes; maybe I’m not immediately aware of when it ends. The numbness gradually drains from my body, sensations filtering back in. The dust settles. The birds settle. Everything settles. The birds sing again, and at some point a small animal runs over my shin. Even minimal pressure hurts and I groan. My head aches, mostly along my right ear.

I need to report in. I hurt. For all my bravado, I don’t think that I am going to be able to stay here after this. 

I raise my finger to my ear, encountering heavy, sticky wetness. A gash curves from my earlobe, flesh torn shallowly for several inches along my skull. Blood soaks my hair, cools rapidly on my neck. 

I can’t find my microphone. Judging by all the blood and the fact that my ear feels like it has been torn in two, it must have been an antler tine that did it. 

“Receiver?” I say, then hold my breath. If he responds, if he is saying anything, I might be able to locate the microphone. 

I can’t hear anything, though no doubt they can still see through my eyes. They must have seen that I took a hit. If I make it clear that I can’t hear, they might do something about it. There must be some sort of emergency procedure in place for this. 

There must be. 

Very slowly, I put my hands on the ground and push myself to my knees. I look at my hand as I do so. It is scraped and battered just like the rest of me, but there is simply too much blood to have come from those abrasions alone. So, now they know I am injured.

The world wobbles a little around me but I don’t feel like I have a concussion. I have gone through that and more, in training. Head wounds bleed a lot anyway, no matter how small. My balance quickly evens out and I am able to get up. 

Metal glimmers in the leaves on the sidewalk but it is the wrong shape for my microphone. The microphone works through the same sort of process by which we create Entryways. Despite its sensitive nature, it is a compact ball no larger than a marble. This metal in the grass is a cracked acorn of a thing, split in half and simultaneously gutted. 

I stare, my mouth slightly open. Who knows how expensive these devices are, how difficult they are to create? And this one has been completely destroyed, as useless to us as these abandoned houses, just a husk of its former self. They must be seeing it. All of them. They will act on it when they can. Won’t they?

I don’t know what to do in this situation. This wasn’t covered in my training or in any of the simulations. I can’t hear my team. They can’t guide me. Am I to wait this out until help arrives or am I to go on as normal?

Perhaps it all depends on me. 

I look down at myself, trying to assess how hurt I really am. Everything aches and my left ankle feels a hot and swollen, but it holds my weight well enough. I don’t seem to be having any difficulty moving my arms or legs in general, and the bleeding from my ear should stop eventually. I’m sure it will.

I continue my patrol of the neighborhood as if nothing has happened. I start to limp as the streets go by, but I do it still. I explore the houses that I can, the yards, and I make sure to scan the areas as smoothly as possible. 

My ear starts throbbing, then feels hot. My shirt collar dampens with blood. Animals avoid me, scenting copper. I am vastly uncomfortable, the temperature dropping. The gray, overcast sky gains a distinctly rose tinge. 

All I can do is keep going. 

The unusual lumps in the park reveal themselves to be the overgrown remnants of picnic tables and bleachers. I hesitate after making this discovery, wondering at the reason that I feel so absent. Hunger, perhaps. Or maybe shock. 

The sky is already growing too dark for normal twilight as I set out from the park, heading to the next sector of the neighborhood. Storm clouds gather in thick clumps, black as ink, black as night. 

I am not looking where I am going and I end up walking by my destination, facing out towards a field past the neighborhood, a gradual downward slope that follows the highway. And past the field, nothing. 

A mile out from where I stand, the fields and highway end in an enormous barren stretch of gray dirt that encompasses a circumference the likes of which I can’t comprehend, mainly because I can’t see the borders. There is nothing. No husks or remnants of anything. No new plants have moved in to make their home in that barren soil. It is Silence given form. 

It deserves recording. I have, after all, decided to do my job until I am pulled out of here. I must trust in my team, and I must give them reason to continue trusting in me. 

Limping, I walk down through the field of weeds in the direction of the colossal circle. 

A black rain begins to fall, and night continues to approach. I fall back on my training, reciting a report to myself.

Current status: Uncertain.

Location: Trenton.

Date: Unknown. 

The End

©2018 Emily Blue 

Be Better, Not The Best

I recently heard something that really made me think. I think I saw it on Twitter, though I’m sure the person who posted it isn’t the first person to say something like this. What I heard was that you never stop making self-improvements.

That seems like such a simple thing, right? It’s so self-explanatory. But I think that’s something we forget about in our individual quests to be the best. The only thing is that there’s no such thing as the best. Someone is always going to do better than you, and someone is always going to be worse.

Even if you reach the top of your field, or if you become the fastest, the strongest, the smartest, you can always push past your own limits. You can find new limits. You can begin to work on something else. It never stops. Even a few years ago, thinking of this would have made me feel defeated. What’s the point? Hell, even now, I still feel my resolution fade in the face of that idea. However, sometimes, I also think it’s kind of exciting. Times change and I can change with them, or I can continue to hone what I know. The world is doubly open to me.

I don’t know what that means to anyone else, but to me it means that I will continue to write and read, stretching my mental muscles. I can play with various mediums of art, testing and refining. I can play the piano. I can learn to play chess and dabble in photography, and practice yoga poses.

I can be me. I can be a better me, but never the BEST me, because that would mean it’s the end. And, as we all know, it’s about the journey and not the destination. 

Be sure to check me out at www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue or follow me on Twitter, where my handle is @Miss_Emily_Blue. I post different content for each platform, so be sure you can catch all of it!

~Blue

Back From Some Time Off

This past April was one of the hardest and most confusing months I've had in a long time. Tax time is always stressful and this time it was compounded by a broken laptop and a loss. My dog of almost 15 years, who I have had for a majority of my life, passed away. She was suffering, going down quickly, and I couldn't bear to see her that way, but knowing now that I don't have her with me any longer is just as difficult. 

Sally was a black lab mix, with some terrier, border collie, and who-knows-what-else in her. She was sweet and gentle and smart. Her eyes were so loving. She had so much personality. 

I'm going to miss her forever. 

Even now, I'm still trying to get myself back on track. Work has been difficult and my mental health has been swinging from one extreme to the other. I'll be perfectly fine, and then I'll be depressed. Slowly, things are evening out again. I hope to continue posting on my blog and putting updates on Facebook. Getting everything back to normal will be best. Sally always tried to cheer me up when I was sad and I know she would be unhappy if I just stayed low.
On the opposite spectrum of things, something else that has kept me busy lately was a visit from my brother and his wife. It was nice to see them again after so long.
There's so much else to say that I can't even imagine how I would say it all, so I'll just leave it here.

Be sure to check me out at www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue, where I'll be posting again soon, or follow me on Twitter, where my handle is @Miss_Emily_Blue.

It's good to be back.

~Blue

"Before The Storm"

I have decided to start with something new! Every now and again, I'm going to post a story I've written. If the story is very long, I'll post it as more of a serial, with weekly updates, or something like that.
Mostly, I just want to share my writing. It's what I love to do.
So, without further ado, here is the first story I'll be sharing. It is called "Before The Storm" and since it's a shorter work, I'll just be posting the whole thing. Please enjoy, leave a comment, and be sure to check me out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue/.

Before the Storm

This was his fourth round with a new prescription and pretty soon he was going to call it quits, face the inevitable.

Finch stared at the laptop resting on his thighs, then blinked and rubbed his eyes with his hands.  His vision cleared, though fog still clung to his peripherals.

Sighing, he adjusted his glasses on his nose. A weather alert shrilled in his ear from another tab, interrupting his work on a design for a client. Thunderstorms approaching, an advisory for potential tornadoes. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, now even the damned outside conspired against him.

Maybe he’d better give his eyes a break, check his cupboards to see if there was enough to outlast the bad weather. At the very least, the pause would give him a chance to mull over his next move on the project. In recent months, he’d gone for a minimalistic, modern approach on his designs. That was “in” these days, he told clients. Which was true, though the real reason he wouldn’t admit was that it was just easier on his eyes.

But this client had already pushed him through several iterations, each one including more and more detail. It was getting to the point where he could hardly see what he was working on anymore. The time he spent on this piece already demanded more money than he would be paid. Maybe it was best to cut off now, take his losses, admit he couldn’t do this anymore.

Shuddering, Finch pushed the thought out of his mind. He couldn’t do anything if he had no fuel to work on.

Standing up, he staggered towards the kitchen. Dishes sat in the sink, fuzzy and gray; he blinked, rubbed his eyes again, and realized the cloudiness was a mass of fruit flies and not a result of his failing vision. The trash reeked, probably encouraging the bugs to thrive.

He stood for a moment, wanting to be stunned at the squalor he lived in and incapable of it. Work took precedence over cleaning, or else he wouldn’t have a place to not clean.

He went to the fridge. A carton of eggs huddled in the door and he picked it up. Empty shells rattled around inside Styrofoam. After tossing it in the trash, he grabbed at the gallon of milk sitting inside on the shelf. A half-inch of white liquid gathered at the bottom, looking fine and smelling questionable.

His cupboards were in a similar poor state.

“I’m lucky it’s not a snowstorm coming.”

Most of the local businesses would have closed down already if so.

In any case, a guy could make scrambled eggs without milk, but he couldn’t make scrambled eggs without eggs.

A glance at the microwave clock showed 5 p.m. exactly. Plenty of time.

He headed out the front door and stepped into a gust of wind that carried an unusual humidity for February. Illinois weather at its finest. No wonder there were storm warnings. When the cold front hit this pocket of warmth, things were going to be nine different kinds of crazy.

Leaves skittered around his feet as he limped across the gravel of the parking lot, heading in the direction of the nearby four-way stop. A short way down the street was the school, and then there wasn’t much of anything for about half a mile straight. At that point, a right turn would bring him to the store.

Usually.

He didn’t get that far.

Every other step sent a dull throb reverberating up to his hip. Sharper pain, like a cramp, settled in at the joint there. Breath rasped in his lungs. His chest could never seem to get full enough, even though before the accident he considered himself to be in pretty good shape, never met a physical he didn’t pass with flying colors. Now, exercise kicked his ass and he’d lost his driver’s license.

The journey stretched out before him, an impossible trek. Half a mile to the grocery store, however many steps he took inside there from start to finish, and then half a mile back while carrying groceries. God, how he would ache. Aspirin couldn’t touch that pain, which seemed like a vine constricting his bones.

Rather than climb up the steps to the sidewalk running alongside the school, Finch clumped his way over to the other side of the street. He checked over his shoulder several times while crossing, a nervous habit he hadn’t been able to shake off no matter how hard he tried to resist.

Having reached the other side, he stopped and tilted his head back to try and distract himself from the ache. Right overhead, the sky was pale with dusk and completely clear. However, in the distance, brooding gray clouds approached at a fast clip. The wind blew again, stirring more leaves, flattening Finch’s clothes against his body. He shivered, rubbing his hands together. When had it grown so cold? Wishing he’d grabbed a jacket, he got moving again.

There was a park only a short ways beyond the school, abandoned this time of year at this time of day. Nothing moved through the swaying shadows cast by neighborhood trees, which were all far too large for the yards in which they grew. No birds chirped, their evening song conspicuously absent. Finch couldn’t hear any cars from the main road, only a short distance away. He couldn’t see anyone.

A muted thump broke through the quiet. Only one, followed by an unmistakable swish and a series of hollow bouncing sounds.

As a tall guy, no way could Finch ever forget that sound. Someone was shooting hoops out on the concrete court at the park. He played out on similar courts in his youth, as well as in the gym.

Finch squinted, nose crinkling and upsetting his glasses. He could barely make out two -three?- silhouettes running underneath the hoops. The streetlight nearby illuminated them, though the orange glow seemed diminished in the face of the clouds billowing ever closer as the seconds passed. The sky looked like a stormy sea now, all clashing currents.

An odd time to be playing but good for them, he supposed.

Faint laughter fluttered through the air. Children. Two of them, from the sound. And a third voice, an adult.

As Finch came closer, a shapeless blob he’d believed to be a bush turned out to be a police cruiser parked along the street. A cop was out in full uniform, various badges and reflective pins outlined in neon.

The cop dribbled a basketball at midcourt, passing the ball back and forth from one hand to another.  The two kids, small boys, rushed at him from either side to gang up on him. As if this was a normal day on the job, he picked up the ball, aimed while the boys bounced around in front of him with their arms waving, and took his shot.

Finch slowed down, watching. The ball sailed so straight and sure that even he could follow its path, an umber comet, before passing through the hoop. Nothing but net. Swish.

Not perturbed at all, the kids cheered. Finch felt like cheering himself, his blood racing a little faster through his veins. One of the boys peeled off, racing after the ball. The ball bounced over the sideline, rolling into the street right in front of Finch. The boy glanced over at him as if just realizing he was there.

The cop and the second kid were talking, although they turned as they noticed where the other went. Finch glanced over at them, hoping the cop wouldn’t recognize him as the weird guy who never left his house. He never got loud, never started fights with anyone, never did much of anything, but that didn’t mean he was anyone’s favorite.

Finch bent down to grab up the basketball as it came to a rest at his foot. Jolts shot up his leg as he bent his knee. He grimaced, feeling like fangs were gnawing on his flesh. “Here,” he said, tossing the ball to the boy.

The boy caught the basketball with both hands. “Thanks,” he said. Something flickered across his face and then he hurried away again.

This evening game, in such a peaceful little town, played in the face of an approaching storm, made him wonder if there might not still be some innocence left in the world.

Finch looked out at the cop again, who waved at him. “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?”

The wind picked up even more now, sharper, colder. “You could say that,” Finch replied, raising his voice to be heard. He glanced over his shoulder and then moved deeper into the road, straying away from the yard he was walking along since there were no sidewalks here. “A little foreboding.”

“We like it,” the cop replied.

We?

“When you can taste the rain, the pressure, it’s the best time to be outside. Good for the skin.”

As someone who only ever felt sticky and uncomfortable in the face of humidity, Finch didn’t agree. He hesitated, wondering whether just agreeing would get him labeled as a brown-noser, when he finally figured out what had been bothering him this entire time. Light dripped across the police officer’s cheekbones, thick and yellow, the wrong color to have come from the streetlamp. His eyes bulged from his face, immense and not nearly the size they should have been at all.

He opened his mouth to scream, to call out to the kids, to tell them to run –the one in the street might have a chance- but now he saw their faces glowing, too. Pointed fangs spilled from between their lips, terrible, joyful smiles.

The boy with the basketball stepped closer to Finch, nails long and hooked where they jutted from his fingertips. They pressed against the rubber, on the verge of puncturing through. “Want to try?” His voice slurred, words tangling around his elongated teeth.

It’s my eyes, he thought now, almost pleading with himself. I’m on the verge of going blind. Everything is going. Blurring together.

“Sure,” Finch croaked. He reached out one hand and took the ball, automatically dribbling it on the street as he walked over to the basketball court. The cop and the other boy watched him as he came up, and he could feel warmth filtering from their eyes in sharp contrast with the approaching storm.

The basketball felt good and comfortable in his hands, his body remembering what his brain had forgotten. He didn’t need to look down to be able to dribble, guiding the ball up to midcourt just like he was 16 again and trying out for the team.

“Go on,” one of the boys said, their voice overly encouraging. “You can do it, Finch.”

There were three people in this entire town who knew his name and none of them were children. Feeling as if he had entered into some weird state of vertigo, Finch caught the ball as it bounced against his hand for the final time. He lifted it up, brought himself into the correct position so that his fingers skimmed over the bumpy surface, and took his shot. He jumped automatically, coming down hard on his bad leg. Pain shot up through his right side and he grabbed at his hip with both hands.

“Dammit!”

Swish.

Overbearing heat pressed up against his side. A pair of powerful hands gripped his shoulders, steadying him. “Careful, there. Easy.”

“I’m okay.” He replied as he naturally would, then froze as it came back to him how odd this situation was. Those hands holding him up felt like twin vices, bones of iron beneath thick leather coverings. Sharp, curved talons pricked through his shirt, dimpled his skin. “Sorry. I think I should go.”

“That was real cool!”

Finch turned his head to watch the boys race off after the basketball, pushing and shoving and laughing like children should. That sense of vertigo crashed against him again, and the subsequent gust of wind nearly finished him off and knocked him over. He might have fallen anyway, if not for those preternaturally strong hands.

“Looks like you’ve still got it,” the cop said. “Old injury?”

“I should go.”

“Where are you headed?”

Finch bit his tongue, trying to keep himself grounded. “The store. I wanted to get there ahead of the storm.”

“Hmm. No car?”

“No license.”

I can’t be having this conversation with this creature.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the cop, feeling as if he would certainly go mad if he looked at those bulging, predatorial eyes again.

“That hasn’t stopped people in the past. But good for you, following the law. Not many humans like you anymore.”

He said humans. Oh, my god. He said humans.

The cop tilted his head back. Finch witnessed something horrible out of the corner of his vision, which seemed now to be betraying him with its clarity. There were folds on either side of the police officer’s neck, crusty jowls that twitched and pulsed, seeming to open and close like flower petals without ever showing what lay underneath.

He felt as if his thoughts were slipping, like he was standing poised with one foot crashing towards the ground, where he had noticed too late a snake was lying in wait.

“The weather front is moving in pretty fast,” the cop said. “Can’t you feel the lovely pressure?”

Finch needed to look at this guy’s badge, pay attention to his features so he could remember him later. He couldn’t. Just couldn’t. Instead, he watched the kids taking free throws at the other end of the court.

“You’ll never make it to the store and back home, not with that leg of yours. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Hop in my cruiser. I’ll save you some time, get you the rest of the way to the store.”

“I… I couldn’t,” Finch said. “What about the…”

Boys? Kids? Monsters?

“They’ll be fine on their own.” There might have been some sort of underlying meaning to the cop’s statement. “And we won’t be gone long. Only a couple minutes. Come on.”

And that was the pity of it, the part of this whole terrifying situation he hated the most, was that the drive with the cop would only take a few minutes. By foot, Finch would take so much longer. He couldn’t even try to run away. He was at the mercy of these creatures.

One of those hands returned to his shoulders, clamping down. Impossible force turned him around, pushed him in the direction of the cruiser. All he could do was stagger along where the cop wanted him to go, his legs shaking, his heart quivering in his chest.

The cop reached out with his free hand, opened the passenger side door, and pushed Finch toward the seat. “Go on,” he said. His voice was pleasant, but Finch thought he could detect that strange undercurrent again. Cold claws scraped down his spine.

Finch lowered himself down, hardly feeling the pain that shot through his hips. The cop closed the door, then walked around to the other side and let himself in. He brought keys out, stuck them in the ignition, and turned them. The engine snarled to life, sounding like a monster itself. Finch clutched his hands tight into fists, struggling to keep his breath from speeding up and showing his fear.

The cop started driving, making a pleasant humming sound in the back of his throat that was nearly consumed by the rumble of the engine.

Finch looked down at the door handle.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” the cop said. “After all, we’re almost at the store. Isn’t that what you want?”

I don’t know anymore.

30 seconds later, the police car pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store. The cop brought the cruiser all the way up to the front door, from which filtered a comforting light the likes of which seemed heavenly.

Finch grabbed for the handle. His fingers slid, slick and damp, over the metal.

At the same moment, five sharp points pressed against the back of his neck. “Now,” the cop said. His voice lost the pleasant edge, become a hissing and gnarled thing that barely held a distant resemblance to anything human. “I’m going to let you go. But if you tell anyone about what you’ve seen here tonight, it won’t be good for you. Do you understand?”

Finch looked at those mad yellow eyes in the reflection of the side mirror and nodded.

“I need to hear you say it, boy.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I understand.”

“Good. Now, get out of my car. I’ve got places to be and little time to get to them.”

Finch gripped the door handle again, pulled on it, felt the latch click. The door popped open. He stepped out, set his aching legs down on solid ground, and thought that he had never been so glad to be in pain in his entire life.

Reaching back, he shut the door. The cruiser pulled away, working in a long circle around the parking lot before going back in the direction of the park.

Not knowing what else to do, Finch went shopping. 

The End 

©2018 Emily Blue 

Phantoms, by Dean Koontz

I don't believe in evil. And I especially don't believe in evil in stories.
I think it's a cop-out to use the concept of "evil" as a reason for the events in a story to happen. It's perfectly fine for characters to believe in evil or to say something is evil (although too much of that as a running theme makes me roll my eyes) but for an author to say something is evil? I don't like that. It's just my opinion, but I think it's cheap. It's an excuse.
Maybe it's the fact that I'm an atheist. I don't believe in an ultimate good. I don't believe in an ultimate bad. That just isn't how it works, in my head.
I don't think people come out of the womb bad, or evil, or destined to be such. I think mental issues and certain experiences and life events, and a whole host of other possibilities, can and do contribute to someone's actions and behavior. An inclination to the negative, if you will. However, to me, that is not evil. People are not evil. And weather phenomenon and natural events, like tornadoes and earthquakes, are certainly not evil.
I feel like this is my soapbox. Whenever this comes up, I have to talk about it. And it's all because of Dean Koontz.
The concept of evil is a running theme in the books of his that I have read and I think it's just a waste of time for an author to claim something is evil, to use the narrative to claim that. That's not a reason. It's not an explanation. It's nothing but a tactic, a cheap one.
Now, that isn't to say I think only my opinion is right, or that evil should never be discussed or written about. It's a bit like jump scares in horror movies. They are cheap. Overrated. They often don't work as they are intended to, because they are used without thought, or skill, or just not in the right manner.
And then there will be a jump scare that just WORKS.
If it fits the story, if the presence of evil has a POINT in the story, if it is a driving force, if there is a reason for evil to be a reason, then it will work. But if it's just a theme and it's being thrown into the story all the time, it makes me roll my eyes and yawn and be frustrated.
Despite all this, despite the fact that I'm standing on my soapbox jabbering to the internet right now, devoting a whole blog post to this idea, I really did like Phantoms by Dean Koontz. It's an older book of his, published in 1983. I liked it a lot. It dealt with subjects and concepts I am interested in. The story was well-paced. The characters were likable, or at least believable. The ending was even pretty good for once.
I just wish writers would hold true to this: Everything in a story must have a reason to be in the story. There needs to be an explanation, a reason, a connection. Coincidences and one-in-a-million chances in real life do happen, but fiction is much, much less forgiving.
Therefore, a story about an ancient creature who causes mass disappearances -as in Phantoms- probably shouldn't be described as evil. What does that add to the story? Unless that is what the characters believe personally, which is different from what the narrative states as fact, it adds nothing. Literally nothing.
I think that's the end of my rant! Be sure to check me out at www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue, or follow me on Twitter, where my handle is @Miss_Emily_Blue.
Until next time!

~Blue