Browsing Tag

sci-fi

The Last Human

Posted on October 25, 2022

Written By Phillip Morris

Raul woke up in his spartan one-bedroom apartment famous, but not rich. He’d have given his life to have it the other way around. That was impossible of course and the cause of his issues.

The US government provided Raul with a small stipend through the Department of Health and Human Services, and more recently a small security detail. It was enough to save face internationally, but getting more than the minimum was contingent on Raul committing to more “voluntary” studies. Journalists and talk show hosts were also surprisingly stingy. The latter couldn’t even be bothered to provide Raul an escort through the parking lot to his beat-up civic, and getting shot once was enough to make all flashy appearances unappealing.

Trying to find a regular job was an issue for most ex-cons, however only Raul could add to that general stigma simultaneously being a freak, the second coming of Jesus, the devil incarnate, and a reminder of the hiring manager’s mortality. It all depended on who you asked. If you asked Raul, he didn’t feel like any of those things.

According to a documentary they played before Raul’s interview with the BBC when the last Madagascan baobab tree was identified it only took thirty years for every other baobab tree on the island to die off from the Triple D threats of deforestation, drought, and disease. Drought proved to be the most thorough killer. The baobabs on protected nature reserves that had survived fungus and insect infestations, had their massive trunks dry to brittle paper after a decade of shorter wet seasons and longer dry seasons. Trees that had seen the turn of two centuries died off within a generation. All save one. The last baobab had its good and bad years, but it always survived. No wonder people were put on edge when the last human was identified.

Raul’s status colored every job application. Interviews were just a pretense to see him in person, as inevitably a few hours later a rejection email would come to his phone.

Dear Mister Johnson,

Thank you for your interest in the Salesperson role. We regret to inform you that we will not be moving forward with your application at this time. We wish you the best of luck in your search for employment.

He put his phone down and took several deep, slow breaths as Ash had shown him. Ash was Raul’s daytime security, he appeared in the hospital on Raul’s second day recuperating from being shot, and he was well-versed in stress management techniques. Raul learned a lot in the two months they’ve been together. Still, there were times when Raul got so upset the scars on his neck throbbed.

It helped that Raul had stopped approaching emails with the giddy excitement he had when he first got the phone. It was frustrating how they always left vague what exactly about his application led to the rejection. There was no mystery if the email came near instantaneously after he sent his application. If that happened, he was certain a machine rejected him for checking the Have You Ever Been Arrested? box.

Gone were the days when he could hit the pavement and talk directly to shop owners when he needed work. He had tried that the week of his release only to be told time and again to apply on the website.

At the family cookout for him that first weekend his cousin Shon, formerly Lil’ Shon, gave him an old smartphone so he could finally “Get online.” Shon left it in the hands of his eldest daughter Kamisha to actually get Raul set up. Kamisha couldn’t understand how he had never used social media, and Raul couldn’t understand how so many kids could afford to be on the beach all the time.

The rest of the conversations with the family were fairly typical: aunts and uncles commented on how he looked just like they remembered; siblings and cousins got philosophical about how everyone should get out of prison early now that weed was legal in Cali; Raul’s dad tried to pry details out of him about what it was like on the prison fire crew, while his mom tried to change the subject. Raul had a panic attack while taking carne asada off the barbeque and his dad stopped asking on his own.

Everyone avoided talking about him being the last human, so it was easy enough for Raul to chalk up any awkwardness to his being out of the world for nearly three decades.

Raul was getting ready for bed when he felt his phone buzz. It was an email from a company he’d applied to only a couple of hours earlier, one of his last applications of the day.

Dear Mr. Johnson,

Thank you for your interest in our company. We regret to inform you that blah blah blah.

Raul opened the email just to get confirmation before deleting it. His inbox was surprisingly clean, even for only being a few months old. Rejection email, deleted. Two-for-one pizza deal, deleted. A distant relative asking for money or answers he didn’t have, deleted. Of the twenty-four emails left twenty-one were from family or old friends, two were from his parole officer, and one was an invitation to meet with the Los Angeles Office of the International Conservation Authority.

He hadn’t applied for a position with the ICA, but it was only a matter of time before they reached out. The weeks spent walking around town, sitting in front of the library computer, and checking his phone for work were dulling the shine on his fuck the government badge of honor.

Besides, they weren’t directly tied to his government.

Tap, tap, tap.

A small black bird sat on the windowsill looking at Raul expectantly. Raul looked to Ash who was focused on scanning the people walking past the glass wall of the office.

Tap tap tap.

The crow cawed and flapped its wings. It certainly looked like it wanted to come in. Raul could appreciate wanting to trade the midday sun for an air-conditioned room. However, it was doubtful Dr. Mist would appreciate a wild animal occupying her office.

Tap.

Raul opened the window and the crow hopped inside then took a short flight to the perch Raul had taken for a hat rack. It was at that moment Dr. Mist re-joined them.

“Sorry about that, the Director had some last-minute concerns and may be joining us later,” she said. “I see Kilakila is joining as well. He’s the last ‘Alala, must’ve felt a kindred spirit in my office.”

“You don’t keep him somewhere safe?” Raul asked.

“Forever would be a long time to keep him cooped up don’t you think? We planned to leave him on the reservation in Hawaii, but he followed the team out of the jungle and back to our hotel. He’s since become the star of our outreach program, which could be you moving forward.”

“I’m really not cut out for fame, Dr. Mist.”

“Please just call me Sarah. There are too many PhDs around here to bother calling everyone ‘doctor’. As for being famous, that cat is out of the bag. Now let’s get the formalities out of the way.”

“Do you need a copy of my resume?”

“No need, I have it on the computer. You can relax, this isn’t really a job interview despite… formalities.”

Raul dropped the folder of copies back into his backpack.

“You have a business degree?”

“I took all the classes, but I didn’t finish my thesis.” He paused only briefly before adding, “Because of my arrest.”

“Right, and your only work experience is in food prep?”

“I had a stint on cleaning before moving to the kitchen. And in college, I tutored high school kids.”

“That’s good to know. A lot of our outreach is with children. No one gets as excited to see Kilakila as elementary schools.”

“I haven’t worked with kids that young.” When he applied for a janitor position at a Jr. High School, they were very clear that his drug conviction would disqualify him from ever working in a school. “Actually, I don’t have any experience with young children at all. I was the youngest. My nieces and nephews were born and grown while I was away.”

“Don’t worry too much about it. They’re just like adults, only more honest and curious because they know they don’t know everything. When I talk to them my goal is to nurture those traits so that they last into adulthood.” She scrolled her mouse wheel up and down a bit before asking, “Weren’t you also with the prison firefighting team?”

“I was. That just seemed so far away from anything I’d be doing here.”

“True the only time an alarm goes off is when someone smokes inside but having first aid training is always a perk. Most of the executives and politicians we meet with are so old they could have a heart attack any minute.”

A solitary chuckle escaped from Ash.

“Now, I have to ask, why do you believe you’re the last human?”

“I was told I was likely to be when I was the only survivor of my fire crew. Then that it was even more certain after I survived getting shot.”

Raul noticed Sarah’s eyes dart down to the scar on his neck. It looked like a small flesh-colored spider was drinking from his jugular. That it also looked like it had had years to heal, instead of the two months it had actually been, gave further support to his claim. His would-be assassin sent a letter from jail apologizing for doubting him and asking to be blessed. Even if dispensing blessings were something he was capable of, it was far too soon to ask for forgiveness. At best Raul would support a plea of insanity.

“There isn’t a perfect formula for identifying the last member of a species.” Sarah was explaining. “For centuries it was obvious because they were the only ones left. After something killed the rest of their kind they kept on living. We’ve added to the list the ability to survive traumatic injuries, and seeming immunity to disease and infections, so symptoms are mild if they appear at all.”

“It would be great if you could figure it out without the trauma.”

“I wholeheartedly agree. Kilakila here,” the crow made noise upon hearing his name. “Yes, you. He has scars to suggest he was attacked by a ‘lo before he joined us. That’s a hawk which is also on the endangered list so we couldn’t exactly, you know, eliminate that threat even though we could see it coming. Had genetics been more advanced in the 90s, perhaps we could have identified him sooner and given him a bodyguard. Though honestly, we still don’t know the secret. Plenty of species fade away without leaving anyone behind, in rare cases there’s two or more, and now there’s you.”

There were two light knocks on the door before it was opened by a man in a dark suit who smelled like an ashtray.

“Don’t mind me,” he said, taking the chair next to Raul closer to the window.

“Raul, this is Director Cox. Director, we were just going through the criteria for identifying lasts. I was explaining how we hope to find genetic markers to speed up the process.”

“Oh yes, Health and Human Services shared some preliminary results from you and some of your relatives with us.” This was the first Raul heard of any of his family going in for study. “The most remarkable thing so far is that you’re wholly unremarkable. Putting us back to the classic tests for last status. Can I see your notes?”

Director Cox turned Sarah’s screen so he could read what had been written. He finished so quickly that either there wasn’t much there, or he only gave it a cursory glance.

“When was the last time you were sick?” he asked, turning the screen back to Sarah and his body towards Raul.

“I was in the hospital twice this year. First for smoke inhalation, then when I was shot.”

“Those are relevant for later, right now I want to know the last time you were sick with an infection. Like a cold or flu.”

“When I was released from the hospital this last time my family took me to an all-you-can-eat sushi place. I spent the rest of the day in bed, on the toilet, or over it.”

Director Cox admonished Sarah with his eyes.

“Did anyone else get sick?” Sarah asked.

“No, just me.”

“Did you eat the same things as everyone else?”

“Yeah, everyone tried all the dishes. I’d never had sushi before so everyone else took the lead on ordering. Even if I hadn’t gotten sick, raw fish wouldn’t be for me.”

Sarah cast her own look to the director who was ready to move on. It had seemed there were some more questions Sarah had skipped that bureaucratic tedium demanded answers to. Raul was left uncertain of the facts of his own life after just a few minutes so he knew Director Cox could have had a promising career as a police detective.

“The Equal Opportunity Act prevents us from asking when you were born,” he said. “But would you say you have lived beyond a typical human lifespan?”

Raul knew five schoolmates that died before they finished high school, two of his friends overdosed in college, and everyone on his fire crew was dead; most of them were many years his junior. When he got out of prison, he found there were a few more friends to miss thanks to cancer, diabetes, and a heart attack. He seemed to be doing better than average, but “typical” here was based on a white middle-class life so he answered in the negative.

“No immortality, no exceptional genes, and it’s questionable if you’re immune from disease. Survivability is the only marker left and we’ll need significantly more details than what we’ve got down so far.”

“I’ve already answered that question and most everything else came up in interviews I’ve given. Everyone else I meet seems to have seen them, so I’m sure you’ve seen them twice.”

“I watched your sit-down with Oprah three times now actually. You don’t have the job yet Mr. Johnson, and I’m the one giving final approval. The Chinese put up a candidate this month and are already ending over detailed reports. Russians are preparing a claim too.” Director Cox went to the still open window and lit a cigarette from the pack in his jacket before continuing. “Do you have any idea what it will mean for humanity if we officially designate the last human when there are eight billion of us left? I think this exercise is important enough that it deserves a bit more first-hand detail. Don’t you? You are not the first to claim to be the last, every month some loon calls us up or gets a spot on some conspiracy show. They waste everyone’s time because they don’t know what it means to be last.”

“I don’t know what it means either.” Raul blurted. He noticed the scars on his neck feeling sore. “I didn’t have a dog in this fight before I became the prize.”

“Except for it being your get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Director Cox, that is highly inappropriate.” Sarah was red with second-hand embarrassment.

“I don’t think it’s inappropriate to examine Raul’s motivations for his claim. The same as we do everyone else’s.”

Ash spoke up from the back, “Director Cox, could you put out your cigarette?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Ashley Winters, Raul’s Secret Service detail.”

“Huh,” Director Cox replied, seeming unimpressed. “Is anyone else bothered?”

Sarah looked to Raul, and he knew Ash was also waiting for his reply. Prison killed Raul’s smoking habit and he was grateful for it. Without the years to heal, he’d never have qualified for the fire camp; and if he had, he’d probably have died with everyone else. Unless he really was what they said and even with withered tarred lungs he couldn’t die. He could’ve been roasted alive by the flames and he wouldn’t die. Just like how he was shot in the neck and didn’t die.

Raul shook his head “No, it’s fine.”

“Great, then tell us about the physical trauma you survived, and we’ll see if that pushes you over the threshold.”

Raul was not fine. The embers of the cigarette, the crackling of the flames during a long drag, and the smell of smoke got into Raul’s head so that, as he spoke, he was taken back to the town of Greenville with its roaring flames and stinging black air.

His crew was working as hard as any other to save the town. They cut and cleared anything that might become fuel for the fire, but still building after building was lost to the encroaching flames.

Heavy clouds of smoke made keeping visual contact with his team difficult. Seeing crews a block away was impossible.

When the command was given to abandon the town their radio channel was last on the list, so it came too late. Before they knew what was happening the wall of flames became a ring: they were trapped.

Their captain had them link arms and got them to a nearby parking lot to wait for a rescue that wouldn’t come before their oxygen ran out. Raul succumbed just like everyone else, coughing and gasping for air.

Everything went dark, silent, and calm.

When Raul came to, Ash had his hand on his shoulder and was walking him through a mantra. Raul’s muscles were relaxing and the excitement in his nerves was dissipating. He stopped his right hand, which was gently stroking Kilakila, who had moved to the desk. The bird nibbled Raul’s thumb to encourage continued petting. Sarah and Director Cox were no longer in the room.

“You alright now?” Ash asked, searching for the answer in his eyes. “You don’t have to keep going with that prick. He knows they need you here because you’re not lying and he wants an American for the last.”

Ash went directly to the truth of things when he chose to speak. Raul knew he was right, but he also knew that first impressions mattered. Things couldn’t be left with him looking like a traumatized idiot.

When Ash left to retrieve the others, Raul got Kilakila to hop onto his arm to be carried back to his perch.

“Thank you,” he said. He continued stroking the bird until Ash returned with Sarah who immediately apologized for what happened. “You couldn’t have known. Open flames have triggered spells before. Never happened with cigarettes though.”

Director Cox walked in with his coat replaced by several spritzes of cologne. His face lacked a notable amount of smugness. Raul was sure Sarah helped wipe that off.

Director Cox cleared his throat, then said, “If you’re ready, the only thing left to cover is the second incident.”

“The assassination attempt?”

“I’d appreciate more details. You stopped giving interviews after that, so this is the first time I’m seeing that scar. It doesn’t look so bad. It’s so small I’d think anyone would have a good chance of surviving that.”

Director Cox had obviously never been shot or known anyone who had been. Raul undid the top buttons of his shirt and pulled down the back of his collar so the director and Sarah could see the full extent of the exit wound. The bullet had nicked his spine and sent metal and bone shrapnel blasting through his flesh. His spine was left largely intact, but the doctors told him it was a miracle he survived and wasn’t paralyzed. It was also miraculous that he was fully healed in a couple of weeks instead of years.

The office was silent.

As he was redressing Raul said, “I’m not claiming to be the last human, I’ve been told I was. Just as I’ve been called a demon, an angel, and before that a criminal, and before that a degenerate stoner. I’ve never claimed to be anything and what my existence means for humanity is for people like you to figure out. I’m focused on little things like being able to split the bill when my family goes out for food.”

Raul took the following day off from sending applications. He spent the morning on his phone looking up simple and cheap pets. Tarantulas and snakes were in the lead because he found something calming in how they moved.

He was making a sandwich for lunch when his phone gave him a buzz. Unlike every other time, it felt like he had all the time in the world to check it. Raul left the phone in his pocket until he finished his meal, washed the dishes, and talked with Ash about the benefits of a tarantula over a dog.

Phillip Morris is a Californian living in Rotterdam. When he’s not writing dry instructions booklets, he’s likely writing colorful short fiction. When he tweets it’s @lephillipmorris.

5. Use the tools at your disposal. Creating with Principles Phillip Morris Prose

Strongman, Kicker, & Lucy

Posted on July 26, 2022

Written by Phillip Morris

Strongman is strong, Kicker is a steam-powered horse that can fly, and Lucy imagines things. Strongman is really a boy about to be ten, Kicker is only real because Lucy imagined him up, and Lucy really is just a nine-year-old girl. Strongman’s real name is Jake, Kicker’s real name doesn’t exist, and Lucy’s real name is Lucy.

Jake and Lucy are orphans. Kicker is, by definition of being a figment of Lucy’s imagination, an orphan as well. They are troubled children that try not to cause too much trouble. But they are runaways from their foster home so by definition their life is trouble.

Jake’s parents might not be dead. They might just be in big jail far away, he tells himself that often. When they went to jail they often went together because when they sold drugs they did so together. That meant that Jake was often left alone. He would be sent to his treehouse, that’s only a wooden platform, whenever anyone came over so no one knew he was alive besides his parents. Not the methheads or the cops, at least not until they broke in looking for drugs and caught him stealing food respectively. They each found out why Jake called himself Strongman. Though the cops had the benefit of having a taser.

For bureaucratic reasons, Jake had to spend the three-day weekend in jail where he was forced to be a strong man among grown men. Afterward he was sent to a foster home too full of kids.

Lucy’s parents are dead. She knows this for sure because she imagined her Dad burning to death one night while he was in bed with her mom. Afterward she too was sent to the foster home too full of kids.

Jake, Lucy, and Kicker now live in Jake’s parents’ house on a hill, outside of town, overlooking the undesirable buildings that lower property values, like the county jail. Well, Jake and Lucy live in the house, Kicker lives outside where there’s all the grass he can eat and a big tree he can sleep under.

Lucy could imagine her and Jake in a bigger house but jake was afraid his parents wouldn’t come home if they couldn’t recognize it. Lucy is happy enough to imagine the house has a big blue pool on the lawn that matches the house.

When they need food, imagined food won’t do. Lucy forgets what they ate at some point and the food disappears before it’s digested. Kicker used to disappear too, but after the fire, he became Lucy’s best friend in the world. That means that even when he isn’t on her mind he’s in her heart.

Instead of imagining food, Lucy imagines she and Jake are grown-ups and takes Jake out grocery shopping or to restaurants around town. She pays with the money she imagines is in her purse. That money she usually remembers long enough for it to safely disappear into the bank. Sometimes she forgets sooner, but that hardly ever happens.

Unfortunately, it happens enough that the cops track down the counterfeiters. When they get to the small blue house on the hill they only find Jake and Lucy. Kicker wasn’t imagined to be very brave and runs into the hills whenever strangers come, leaving only a trail of steam from the stacks on his shoulders.

Jake tells the cops that his parents aren’t home which would be enough for the cops to leave them alone for a while, but one of the cops, for personal reasons, happens to pay attention to the missing kid bulletins and recognizes Lucy as being reported missing from the foster home. The cop would’ve recognized Jake too if the foster home’s owner cared about the boys as much as he did the girls, and bothered to report Jake missing too.

Jake doesn’t think to lie when the cop asks who Lucy is and says she’s his friend. Lucy doesn’t think to lie when the cop asks her name.

Jake is strong enough to stop the cops, but Lucy doesn’t want him to hurt good people and she goes along peacefully.

For bureaucratic reasons, Lucy has to wait in jail until the foster home’s owner can get her. The cops at least let her wait in the yard because neither the male nor female inmates are out there.

Lucy sits at the table in the yard and looks up at the hills. She can see the blue that’s Jake’s house and the pool and the tree beside it. She imagines he’s inside pacing, angry, wondering how to get her out.

Kicker’s back though he’s not much help because he only ever wants to run away from trouble.

Lucy imagines Jake going to the pool to relax but finds the water’s all gone. In rage and frustration, Jake rips off the ladder and breaks it into its constituent poles. The last pole in his hand, to his surprise, is no longer just a pole but a telescope. He uses it to spy Lucy sitting at the table in the yard of the jail waving at him. Then she points up. Above Jake is his treehouse which he goes inside of and when he looks out to Lucy again this time she’s making a throwing motion. Jake looks around for something to throw though he doesn’t know why or how it would help. Lucy imagines he figures out what to throw when he finds the spear with a long, long length of chain with the other end wrapped around the tree.

That spear plunges deep into the ground in front of Lucy. The loud thud of its impact gets the attention of everyone in the jail. The cops yell at her as she grabs onto the chain and tugs it twice, in the universal signal that she’s ready. Jake yanks the chain back with all his strength. The chain flies into the treehouse hard and fast. It tears up the tree as each link hits and suddenly he’s afraid of what will happen to Lucy when she comes in.

Thankfully Lucy imagines Jake stands ready to gently catch her.

Police cars are speeding up the hill with their sirens blaring, but Kicker has learned to be brave and doesn’t run away. At least not until Lucy and Jake are safely on his back. Then he kicks off the ground and into the sky.

Phillip Morris is a Californian living in Rotterdam. When he’s not writing dry instructions booklets, he’s likely writing colorful short fiction. When he tweets it’s @lephillipmorris.

2020 Contributing Writers Pandemic Prose

Fogland

Posted on December 14, 2020

Written by Keith ‘Doc’ Raymond

The day after the fog settled on the world, it seemed it had never been any other way. The sun became a memory, diffused in haze. The fog hugged the earth, or floated high above, out of reach, but always there. Jets could not fly above it, and we did not have the will to leave the atmosphere.

Satellites returned images of the blanket over the globe. ‘Gray soup’ one talking head declared it. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, the fog cast a pall over everything bright and cheerful. Folks didn’t have the energy to be depressed about it after a while. It defied explanation and wouldn’t lift. Neither science nor religion could shift it. That was years ago.

Explanations abounded, but answers remained absent. ‘A post-pandemic deliverance from light,’ whispered in hushed tones we heard everywhere people gathered seeking an explanation.

***

Deidre headed south from Ireland and Gerald headed north from South Africa both seeking the sun. They converged in Marseilles, elbowing each other, attempting to see a witless speaker at the port. It ended abruptly, when a woman used her broom to shove the man into the bay. Those gathered didn’t laugh, nor even react.

As people dispersed, Deirdre offered the hungry looking black man she elbowed a coffee and croissant.

“I’d love a bouillabaisse,” he answered.

“So would I, but it’s a bit early in the day for that, mate,” she responded.

“How can you tell?”

Deirdre watched the woman that had brushed the guy off his soap box . She returned to sweeping the floor at her cafe. She was muttering curses to herself, Deirdre suspected, as she popped her ‘P’s. “I go by looking at the restaurants around here. C’mon, there’s a boulangerie up the street.”

He followed her like a lost puppy, and in a way he was. He was just off the boat from Africa. “Your English is good,” Gerald noted, sparking up the conversation as they walked in silence.

Deirdre smiled, “I’m not French. I came from Ireland.”

“Looking for the sun?” he asked. It was a common question.

“Thought I might find it nearer the equator, maybe in the Sahara where it’s hot.”

“Sorry to disappoint. I just came from there. More gray soup. Save your time and money.”

Her look of despair was plain. The grass was no longer greener, only a uniform brown everywhere, or gray rather. Even colors were bleaching as people entered monochrome. Fishing around for something to say, she offered, “I’m Deirdre, you?”

“Gerald, just Gerald, no Gerry.”

“Right then, Gerald. Here we are. How do you take it?”

“How do I take what? The weather? This fog?”

“Nay, your coffee, ya dosser.”

“Black like me.”

“You’re a cheeky bugger!”

Gerald smiled; his first time in Europe. He rethought her command of the language with all her slang. They were two folks cast adrift. Both seeking the sun, both disappointed. Meeting at the edge between two continents. As they sat with their coffee and croissants, they both wondered which way to go next.

“It’s a zombie apocalypse,” Gerald said, glancing around at all the blank faces slurping and munching. Even those in conversation seemed to murmur conspiratorially and shift their gaze when the foreigners looked back at them.

“Effects of the after party.”

He looked at her funny.

“The pandemic, the dumbing down. You know, this fog has seeped inside us. It swamped us. A brain fog inside and out.”

He nodded. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Deirdre,” she answered, flipping her hair like she used to when she was a teen. She didn’t mean to flirt, maybe it was an act of despair. “So where to?”

“Find a hotel, check-in…”

“No, I mean, long term,” she said blushing, thinking he had ulterior motives.

“What do you say? We go East? Maybe out to the islands?”

“Together?”

“We are looking for the same thing. Sunshine. Why not?”

Her mind was going several places at once. He watched the play of thoughts roving over her face. “I dunno. I’m a loner.”

“Me too. Loners together alone.” His white teeth gleamed as he smiled. “Maybe save some cash. Two alone is cheaper than one.”

Deirdre looked out the window, thinking. A ray of sunlight burst through the fog. She pointed, and soon everyone else pointed at it. They pushed and shoved, getting out the door to track it across the sky. People raced after it, their faces staring upward, hoping to catch some on their faces.

Gerald and Deirdre ran down to the port. People were shouting and pointing. It wasn’t much. A strip of sunlight drifting west to east. Cars crashed into each other, trying to catch up to it as it moved across the field of fog. A cacophony of horns and raised voices. Old folks grabbed their chests, gasping, falling to their knees. Kids danced joyously. Then it was gone.

The pall of fog fell back across the city. Cars stopped, people froze. They willed the rays of sunlight back. Prayed for it. It was a tease, a broken promise. All the while, a news bulletin blared out into the street from TVs talking about the freak incident. The sunlight started in France, crossed the border into Italy, then vanished.

“The sun moved the wrong way,” a mother uttered in French.

“No, no, always west to east.”

This led to arguments and yelling while Deirdre and Gerald watched, amused. Their hearts sank, feeling the loss of the sun once more. Not willing to fight over it like the others.

Gerald turned to Deirdre, “It’s a sign. We go East.”

“East might be okay. The sun rises there, right? It may rise for us.”

“I like the ‘us’ part.”

“I do too,” Deirdre answered, and flipped her hair, feeling girlish.

END

Dr. Raymond is an Emergency Physician. He practiced in eight countries in four languages. When not writing, he is scuba diving. In 2008, he discovered the wreck of a Bulgarian freighter in the Black Sea.

2020 Pandemic Phillip Morris Prose

The Autopsy of Donald J. Trump

Posted on November 25, 2020

Written by Phillip Morris

After years of the media rarely mentioning his name, the 45th President of the United States was once again in global headlines, “Donald Trump Dead!”

Trump was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial in New York. No official cause of death was given in the early articles, but reports of a bluish hue to his body suggested asphyxiation. Video surveillance of the hall outside his cell only showed guard patrols in the time between when his dinner tray was retrieved and when his body was found at breakfast.

The Trump Re-election Campaign Committee called for an investigation into the prison kitchen staff.

“Everyone knows kitchens are filled with Mexicans and radical-left Democrats,” Donald Trump Jr. said from the campaign’s headquarters in Costa Rica. He went on to spread suspicion among everyone with access to the former President, including the medical staff that attended to him during his bout of stomach flu and weeks earlier, and several Democratic members of Congress that never interacted with the President.

“Did they poison him?” Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani asked from his own cell in the prison’s psychiatric ward. “Did they hide needles in his diapers? I don’t know. You don’t know. There are a lot of questions about emails.”

Prison and DOJ officials were quick to rebuke claims of foul play and urged the nation to remain calm. They promised a quick and thorough investigation into the cause of death expressing confidence that if it wasn’t natural: “Then he did it to himself.”

Photos of Trump’s corpse spread like California wildfire online. His supporters scrutinized every pixel so even the most mundane details were woven into keystones of grand conspiracies. One theory that rose to prominence early was that he had been poisoned during a court appearance weeks earlier, but that his body was so strong that his only symptom was a lack of bladder control. Despite video footage from outside of the cell showing otherwise, the theory concluded with the assertion that a Soros backed assassin was hired to finish the job by strangling him..

Trump’s opponents amused themselves by parodying the memes his supporters produced as evidence for their theories. A comparison of Trump’s trademark orange tan juxtaposed with his post-mortem blue was re-imagined as an action movie poster that was shared over one million times.

The Trump autopsy was completed in less than a week. In a muted press conference it was announced that Trump’s official cause of death was a fungal infection that had gone unnoticed in earlier exams. The medical team that performed the autopsy quickly left the stage without taking any questions after stating the body would be cremated as a precaution.

The mundane explanation did little to stifle the public’s curiosity. Just a few hours after the press conference an anonymous post appeared online claiming to be from someone who worked with the county coroner.

“It was aliens that killed him,” the poster claimed. “I saw the body. They were crawling out of him. He was on his stomach so his butt was in the air and these yellow tendrils were coming out of his anus and moving in the air like vines looking for a hold. I didn’t see what they did to the body but they kept calling in more and more experts to examine it.”

What should have been dismissed as the ravings of an internet troll got picked up by the mainstream media and amplified. Leading another anonymous individual to publish an article in the New York Times that offered further details on Trump’s bodily invader. The Times verified the author was an investigator involved with the Mueller Report.

As the author saw it, if Mueller’s focus was less narrow and his approach less conservative Trump’s infection could have been discovered years earlier. Misconduct by Trump from before the start of the campaign was all but ignored unless it was directly relevant to later criminal actions, which caused a lot of now pertinent details to be overlooked.

An extensive investigation into Trump’s trips to Russia was whittled down to bare bones in the final report because failed business deals and evenings with sex workers were not considered relevant without explicit evidence that Russia was using them to blackmail him.

“We couldn’t verify the existence of The Pee-Pee Tape, so we had to proceed as if it didn’t exist. However, we all believed its existence was likely, and we were certain the acts rumored to have happened, actually happened.”

According to the article’s author, that certainty came from the story of a housekeeper who worked at the hotel Trump stayed at in Moscow. She was not a witness to the events of Trump’s romp with the sex workers but she did clean up the aftermath.

Initially the suite seemed to be in the standard state of disarray for travelling businessmen. The bedding needed to be laundered, there were roomservice hamburgers to be tossed, and left over drugs to be resold. What stood out as unique was that the chaise lounge was “absolutely drenched in piss.”

The housekeeper recommended the chair be sent for a professional cleaning, but her manager ordered that she clean it the best she could and mask the scent with perfume.

She did as she was told and thought nothing of it until the next week when she was again cleaning the suite. She noticed the chaise lounge had developed a yellowish tint and immediately panicked thinking the cleaners she used had damaged the expensive piece of furniture.

She began scrubbing it again using only water and found that the cushions had also changed to be uncomfortably stiff instead of luxuriously soft.

The housekeeper told the interviewer that she felt movement in the cushions, but she ignored it thinking it was only her imagination. Then a thin yellow tendril emerged from the fabric wiggling in the air like it was looking for her hand.

She ran out of the room screaming that the chaise had to be burned. Her request was ignored until the entire cleaning staff one by one refused to clean the suite. When finally the hotel’s management inspected the suite with their own eyes the lounge was removed from the hotel less than an hour later.

The anonymous author ended his article by speculating that the fungus was purely terrestrial in origin. Nothing the investigators uncovered could be related to alien visitors. To support his reasoning he cited numerous examples of strange fungi, including several fast moving varieties and even some that could control the behavior of small animals as part of their reproductive cycles.

Unfortunately for the curious, Trump’s remains can no longer be studied directly because the day the New York Times article was published his body was hastily cremated.

Phillip Morris is a Californian living in Amsterdam. When he’s not writing dry instructions booklets, he’s likely writing colorful short fiction. When he tweets it’s @lephillipmorris.