‘Hello, Tycho Centre, this is shuttle Nostromo, over.’
‘Yes Nostromo, Tycho here, over.’
‘There was a hell of a judder as we left the rail launcher, and there’s a red light flashing on the front control console, over.’
‘Hold one Nostromo, checking, over.’
There’s a quick double rap on my apartment door and my son, Elijah, opens the door and walks in like he’s paying the rent. He ain’t. “Pop, what’s up dude? What’re you watchin? Why don’t you have the game on? You got beer? I know you got beer.”
He goes directly into my tiny kitchen and comes back with two bottles of beer. He flops on the couch beside me.
The only reason that I’m starting this way is that I have the radio on.
I fucking hate ‘Coldplay’.
‘Fix You’ just showcases what a whining, irritating voice Chris Martin has. He sings and I want to open a vein…No, an artery! He is a mammary testicle of a man.
“Someone really lives here? Geez. Always thought the place was abandoned.”
Detective Kolar undid her seat belt and opened the door to the cruiser. “Even in this state, it’s still a multi-million-dollar home. I’m sure he can’t sell it, plus you know how stubborn these old guys can get.”
“I guess,” said Detective Slaski. “Still, you’d think he’d put some of that website money into renovations. It’s…I don’t know, a little creepy keeping it like this.”
‘We were fair game
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.’
Anne Sexton, Rapunzel
The sound at the end of the phone was a metallic female voice, not her mother’s. “I’m sorry.” Pause. Her mum’s voice: “ANGELA.” Pause, then the robot woman again.
“… cannot come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Mum, I don’t want you to worry, but please call me back if you can. I just wanted to tell you… I forgive you.”
Geneviève Gueron was as French as one could be. And while her peers were riding up and down the waves of hormonal instability, lamenting one second, rejoicing the next, she was simply and unequivocally in love with her life on the French Riviera. It had taken her some time to get used to the fierceness of the sunrays of the South, as the lack of obscuring buildings or tufts of sky made them bounce right off her white skin which would respond instantly with sizzling red spots. And with each day that passed, the deep yearning for her favourite dusty bookstores in Paris gave way to the undisputable dogmatic truth proclaimed by her parents, who had convinced themselves their new hometown would be kinder to them.
Harold Marold was confident his new discovery was going to be big. Really big. Sure, his previous inventions hadn’t all turned out as he hoped. The periscoping contact lenses caused vertigo and motion sickness. His electro-socks to eliminate foot sweat were “shocking” — as he’d found out the hard way. And his chainsaw-equipped drone for trimming high tree limbs had its drawbacks. But his current project couldn’t miss. It was going to bring about world peace.
