“Give me a ticket or give me a bar tab,” the young soldier said.
After seven beers, the soldier had gone belligerent, but the ticket agent had nothing new to offer. The agent was a dark, square-shouldered man and he spoke with an accent that may have been African or Haitian. “I can give you nothing right now,” the agent said. “When we start boarding, I will see what I have.”
Pushing eighty, Mrs. Mattison reclines on the lounge chair on the mossy concrete patio while her husband clips the naked remnant of rose bulbs from the bushes, and I attend to distributing mulch. I live in a shed behind his house, a gift from Mr. Mattison to put a roof over my head and keep me off the homeless list.
“Everyone calls it dead-heading,” he says, “but I call if live-heading. See, the stem lives, and it is the only way the stem can produce more. Same way in life. My wife and I need to move on and let more vigorous flowers bloom. We don’t wish to die,” he says, casually continuing his work, “but our attachment to life has been robbed by this Alzheimer’s. And our children are scattered across the globe.”
I decided to check again. For the last time. No point keep on hoping the consignment would make it here before the twenty-second.
It wouldn’t. No choice but to proceed before it was too late.
A hologram whirred up and out of the console in a lazy fashion, like a half-cut genie who could not care less about being emancipated.
The soon-to-be-re-incarcerated figure intoned: ‘UPDATE: Next consignment due eighteenth of –’
I jabbed a finger at an ephemeral terminal button. Cut the genie’s damn circuits.
It was still December, but Reggie had a bug up his ass about the high school reunion in June. He didn’t seem the type to me, to organise something so mundane. But he was on the line, breathing heavily, while I examined an ancient list of guests to our long ago graduation party. How the list came into my possession remains a mystery.
No shortage of venues for Literally Stories authors this week as the narrative landed readers on two beaches, Hawaii and the south coast of England (probably), the streets of Vienna, a hellish dystopia on the cusp of apocalypse, and Kipling’s Rottingdean study via Afghanistan.
The soapbox prophets turn to bombs and the lines at the food pantries snake twenty blocks, but my algorithm cranks relentlessly. Markets go up. Markets go down. In either direction, the algorithm wins more than it loses. A few pennies shaved here. A few pennies there.
In makeshift markets, men relentlessly trade. Goods flow. Data flows. The algorithm churns apace. It seems as if the algorithm could function without electricity before it could go without its data. Its appetite is enormous. Its needs are great. Mine seem puny in comparison: a good night sleep. Peace on earth. A kiss goodbye. Safety for my children.
‘I’ve read your tales of India,’ he said, as he sat in my study at Rottingdean, ‘so I thought you might like to hear my story.’
I’d answered a knock at my front door just as my study clock struck midday, and found the man standing on the doorstep. He had looked cold, and oddly distracted.
‘Can I help you?’ I’d asked.
‘My name is Jabez Carter,’ he’d told me. ‘I’ve come a long way to see you.’
Continue reading “The Visitor’s Tale (a ghost story, after Rudyard Kipling) by Robert V. Stapleton”
The air in Detective Dane Lloyd’s former office hung warm and heavy, like something already used. He glanced at the broken air-conditioner near the tiled ceiling and sighed. His headache was half from the heat and half the beer from last night’s celebrations. His own retirement party for crying out loud, but here he was again, all hands on deck since they called him in at five a.m.
Pearce soon came to realise sleeping on the beach was not as romantic as it seemed, especially when a chill breeze swept in off the sea. The moon above remained bright, piercing the unshielded eye. There was the roar of waves to contend with; the whipping wind that sent a spiral of sand into his face and the ever-present danger of discovery or robbery. A young man out at night presents a tempting target for those aiming to do harm. Not that Pearce encountered any; he was simply paranoid about the possibilities.
Once again Literally Stories was delighted to welcome three newcomers to the site this week.
Charles W. Bigelow, Frederick K Foote and Paul Griley.
Before I get to this week’s clutch of writers a small mention for tomorrow’s ‘In conversation with…’ slot, the second of which is entitled Tobias Haglund in conversation with Nik Eveleigh. A certain Mr. S. Crow puts in a guest appearance, too. Storming!
