The Clockwork Snail by Angela R Hunt

Clockwork Snail

By Angela R. Hunt

She told herself it was not real. 

The idea had been dismissed as impractical and mad, too destructive to benefit mankind. She listened to the gradual whirring sound as the tiny irridescent clockwork snail approached leaving a glowing wet trail behind it. It moved with blind certainty in her direction. She stepped to the side and watched as it adjusted course automatically. She wondered if she had time to run or if she was already lost to dreams.

She saw her laboratory in front of her. She saw a thief slip in and steal away. She saw a shadow approach her door only to hesitate and hunch down. The shadow grew and slid away, leaving a small object. 

She looked at it and it seemed to grow until it was the size of a castle, looming up in front of her. It was the snail with its clockwork steadily turning and whirring. It waited as she made her way to the base of the snail. She found a door with a golden handle shaped like a spiral. She felt compelled to enter the door. 

She had forgotten the world left behind.

Dreams formed around her from her greatest hopes and darkest fears.

Outside the shadow returned, he stepped into the lab. He took his cloak off. He wore giant tinted goggles that he did not remove. He used tweezers and carefully picked up the snail. He put it in a briefcase in a fitted pocket, lined up perfectly with forty other snails. They glowed brightly in various colors.

The woman laid on the floor unmoving, eyes closed. She would never wake again. Her mind, her dreams were gone. They could now be sold to someone who collected and enjoyed wandering through other minds. They assumed the minds they bought were artificially created like the snail, but how many would really care if they learned the minds were taken from the world's finest dreamers?

Not My Song

Not My Song by Angela R. Hunt

It was a dream. I tell myself that. I had no idea what was happening or why a man I barely know was there. He looked just as confused. Stubble shadowed his round face. He spoke but I could not hear the words. Irrationally I thought of sex and shook my head. He seemed unable to hear me but picked up on my expression. He shook his head emphatically, relieving both of us.
I gestured my confusion. He tried charade type gestures, then started changing the scenery around us. He handed me a cheap molded ceramic planter with a false child on it. Skin colored with fleshy bark, it had a gaping hole in the top yawning blackly at the apathetic child. The child's expression was flaccid.
That maw seemed hungry. Empty yet drawing attention, I shook my head and looked at him again. What was he saying? He seemed to want me to play it like a flute, but how would it work and what horrible sound would be wrought? I shook my head.
Suddenly, his eyes went sad and his clothing became dirty and ragged. His shoulders slumped as he stepped into the shadows of a filthy room. He was gone. I awoke. Message unclear, feeling thrown off.

What did the cheap pottery mean? Why a flute?

Shortly after that dream I watched my world turn sour. Music made me anxious. For some reason I feared that music would summon that awful flute. I had an intangible loathing for something I thought was a figment of my imagination.

I found myself searching the web for that imaginary flute. What would I do if it was real? What if I found it? I searched. My spare time became speeding through pictures and descriptions. There are a lot of flutes. There are many varieties. Artifacts of flutes from around the world.

Music was played to change mood, worship deities, and communicate. What worship, mood or communication did I fear? The communication in the dream had failed. It was dead.

It was several years later that I found it. It was sitting in a dusty display at the local historical society. A note next to it mentioned that it was believed to be a cheap reproduction of an ancient flute. Legend said the original was destroyed as it was meant to calm listeners and please the spirits but instead it irritated the spirits and caused despair in listeners. It was used as a defense against another tribe once. The warriors that heard its heavy notes turned their weapons on themselves.

The tribe destroyed the flute to prevent any further discord. The tribe and the legend were almost lost. A copy of the flute had been found. The story given as a warning. A local potter was enamored by the story. He dreamed of the flute. He made the flute on a new moon night, in deep shadow. Sightlessly his hands tried to shape the flute. The clay was not right. He felt blood was needed. He cut his hand. Mixed the warm liquid into the clay. He made the flute. He shaped it as his dreams directed him to. The wood, the child, the gaping maw. As he fired it his heart twisted and burned. He felt terrible. He was fevered, sweating, and exhausted. He was obsessed. The flute cooled. He was found with the flute clutched in his hands. It has never been played.

Will anyone notice if I break it? Do I care? It has to be broken. The dream warned me. I looked around. I was alone amidst the dust and weathered displays. I lifted the top of the display. I set it aside gently. I used my sleeve to pick up the flute without touching it. Somehow it felt much heavier than it should. I almost needed a second hand to pick it up. I turned to drop it on the floor. I was going to stomp on it and kick it until it broke.
"What are you doing with that?" The volunteer had just stepped in and seen me. He grabbed the flute. His face froze. His face became relaxed in an odd way. He slowly raised the flute and played a note. I was glad I had put earplugs in. I felt unimportant. I felt like I should die. I wanted to kill myself. I tried to fight it. He failed. He set the flute down and climbed out the window. It was too far to fall safely. With the ear plugs in I did not hear anything as he went. I knocked the flute to the floor. I stomped on it and kicked it into the wall until it finally broke. I swept the pieces up and later put them in a bonfire. The flames flickered with odd scents and colors. I kept the earplugs in until the largest fragment left was smaller than a nickel.

Priceless Commodity

Priceless Commodity

By Angela R. Hunt

What is a memory worth? I am not talking in nostalgia. I mean memories stolen from the newly dead.  Memories extracted directly from a dying mind, distilled from breath and cerebral fluids, perhaps even unaware of their transition into death floating gently on a cushion of opium dreams. You could feel their soul within your skin, you could see and feel as they did. You may wander their memories and thoughts, dreams and desires. 

About twenty years ago there was an accident in a lab. A means of pushing the essence out of a body and into radio waves was discovered, at the cost of a scientist’s life. He was never recovered. Most in the scientific community protested further research into transforming a person’s essence into radio waves. A few quietly discussed the ramifications for science. If an individual could be extracted, kept stable as a radio wave, transmitted into different bodies- think of the possibilities! Doctors could become their patients long enough to experience symptoms for themselves! Husbands and wives could end arguments by trading bodies for an hour or two. Prejudice could be ended! Justice would be easier as real memories could be used in a courtroom. Memories rather than verbal testimonies! With bright starry eyes the scientists began to quietly study radio waves and lightening. They worked to mimic the effect in a controlled setting, with equipment set to monitor and record any radio waves emitted  within a target area. 

At first everyone was impressed with the announcement of a successful transfer from body to recording and back. Initially everything seemed to have gone well. Sadly, radio waves were limited and only so much of the man came back. He seemed himself until he was asked several questions. His answers made no sense, suddenly he was furious and shouting! The man never recovered his full wits. Part of who and what he was had been lost. He did not live long after that. It seemed the stress of the transfer put severe stress on his health.

More research was done. Human subjects were not considered safe to use until someone could discern a way to reliably record and transfer the entire essence of an animal without stressing the creature’s physical or mental health. Years passed with quiet research and failed attempts. Clockwork men were made. Machines that could think and dream and build more effective machines. They could create better than we could. We gave them the problem. 

They created a means to record the essence, to access it through computer simulation, to transmit it into a robotic body- where it could have a sort of life after death, for the right price. 

The prices went through the roof on the equipment and hundreds, then thousands opted to get recorded. They picked perfect godlike bodies to transmit into. Bodies that would not age, would easily be repaired, tailored to the buyer’s tastes and monetary investment. 

A black market arose. Some people really want to know what is in someone else’s head. Some people are willing to pay a lot of money to find out personally. Kidnapping, murdering someone and stealing their essence is a capital offense, so it is important to erase the essence when the contract is completed. I never intended to be a Soul Thief. I had been dealing drugs since I was old enough to walk. I had run hustles since I was fifteen. I had been in more than my fair share of fights. I had even killed a few people, admittedly in self defense. 

Even when I made my first harvest and was paid my first fee, I would have sworn it would be my last. I was no monster roaming the night and killing an innocent. I had been playing cards at a local pub. A fight broke out between two men at a table behind me. One of the guys bumped me and spilled my drink. He didn’t apologize, just elbowed me as he squirmed to face his opponent. I was hurting and furious. I hit him over the head with a bottle. Broke the bottle and knocked him out in a bath of foaming amber bubbles. The other guy gestured to me to help carry him out. No one seemed to notice or care about what we were up to. That did seem odd but I was relieved at the lack of scrutiny. We took him out a side door, into a dismal alleyway. We set the unconscious guy down. It started to rain. 

“What do we do now?” I asked, watching the other man pull a small machine from his coat pocket. 

“You hold him while I extract his essence.” He must have noticed my look of denial and shock, as he continued to explain the situation. 

“This guy is the main suspect in a series of murders. There are no living witnesses. No evidence except perhaps his memories. His memories could convict him or set him free with a new, robotic body of his choice at no cost to him. 

I thought that sounded reasonable, but what would I get for helping? I asked. The man said a number. I had to ask him to repeat it before it registered that he was talking billions of dollars. Apparently, there is a subculture that loves to buy and keep libraries of novel souls. Consider them Ghouls or perhaps, modern Grim Reapers. Paying thieves and murderers to capture souls for them to keep and use however they might choose. The more souls I captured, the more rumors I heard. I heard of parties where murderers were transmitted into robotic bodies and slaughtered their hosts rather than behaving like the pampered poisonous pet they were supposed to be. Other stories told of brilliant inventors, talented porn stars, and expert physicians being captured, killed, and kept as servants by the owners of major Corporations. Instead of buying foreign brides, there were now black market robotic wives whose very transmission could be threatened if they did not fulfill their obligations. 

I wrestled with the work. I enjoyed the hunt and challenge of catching and recording human prey. I was spoiled with an income that allowed me to live in luxury and excess. I was troubled by the stories. I was haunted by some of the interactions I saw between the living and the transmitted dead. I tried to drink and drug away the guilt but instead I found myself facing the worst offenses without any masks or deceptions. All the rumors were true. A new client I had never met stopped me from doing the recordings on his unconscious targets. He paid me to leave and set up equipment to do it himself. I gathered my tools and hurried out into the night. When I got to the street I realized I was missing my keys. I went back in. I was in a rush. I didn’t want to be there, something about the guy bothered me. 

I came back in as he was finishing torturing the first person to death. He had recorded the whole experience so he could experience the death from the victim’s side as often as he liked or perhaps to sell it. He was a ghoul, an abomination. He did not hear me come in. He was too focused on his gory task. I slipped out my syringe. He might have felt the pinch as it slipped home. I like to think so. I did not record him. I destroyed the recording he had made. I untied the other two people. I woke them up. Their memories were jumbled. My role in their kidnap was lost in a haze of drugs. 

Ever since then I have been working to take down the black market soul thieves. I’ve been getting by taking bounties on what used to be my peers, working with the Police instead of creating work for them. In my spare time I track down old contracts, I quietly watch to see how the souls I recorded are being treated. If they are treated poorly, I set things as close to right as I can. It is the only way I can stay sane and not drink myself to death with the knowledge of the crimes that I have aided and abetted. I’ve got a lot of work to do before I will be able to sleep peacefully again. 

Frequency by Angela R. Hunt

Frequency

By Angela R. Hunt

It started as an ordinary afternoon in the laboratory. We were experimenting with using steam to enhance radio waves. We were monitoring the changes in frequency and whether or not the waves were more evenly carried; our theory was that the water in the steam would enhance the transmission of the waves. If we were right, we could change the world of communication overnight! We were frustrated, our results seemed inconclusive. 

Joe was working on the wires on the back of the radio transmitter when lightening struck the wire outside. The thunder sounded seconds later, too late to be a warning. I did not hear the torrential pounding of the rain on the windows or the roof as I ran to check on Joe. He had been thrown back with a terrible cry that I never want to hear another human make. It sounded primal and pained, perhaps the sound of death slipping swiftly into living cells. 

“Joe!” I called out repeatedly as I raced around and through the maze of wires, tables and random piles of equipment that filled the small laboratory. The only thing missing was a stuffed alligator or a twisted refuge from an unethical human experiment gone wrong. We joked about it often. We kept a small stuffed sock monkey in a cage as a joke. 

I registered knocking it to the floor as I finally reached Joe. His body was still twitching, his face was contorted with pain, but he was breathing! I helped him sit up, got him a glass of water and waited to see if I would need to call for a Physician. It was not our first accident. He seemed unaware, eyes searching, face pinched in pain. I had an urge to calm him. I turned the radio on. The sound of a broken heart, a smoky voiced blues singer crooned invisibly to us. Joe straightened and sat up. His mannerisms changed. His facial expression became melancholy. He gestured as if he were holding a cigarette. He began singing. His voice was the same as the woman on the radio! How? The song ended, I turned the volume low. 

“Joe, how are you?” I asked, watching the alien movements and expressions. It was as if someone else had stepped into his skin. He looked at me. 

“Who are you talking to?” He looked around. He still had the woman’s voice! “My name is Bessie. What am I doing here? I was just closing my eyes, singing my newest song when something felt like it was draining me. I felt like I was drowning. I thought I was dying, but here I am. This sure ain’t heaven.” He looked at me and gestured for a cigarette. 

I shook my head. Neither of us smoked. He-She looked sad. 

I looked at the radio. I went over and turned the volume up. Static rolled across the room carried in waves around us. How could the station be gone? It had been clear! 

I played with the dial. I was looking for a station. 

Joe collapsed. 

I was anxious, confused, and terrified. I was also curious. I kept turning the dial slowly. 

Another station came in. 

An announcer was giving a plucky plug to one of the station’s advertisers. 

Joe sat up. The station became static. Joe stretched and stood up. His movement was almost electric. He grinned and I thought he was back. Then he started dancing around the room, practicing jingles and playing with the words he’d used in the advertisement. I watched in amazement for several minutes. His voice was a deep baritone instead of his usual light tenor. His grin was huge and relaxed. I wish I could say he smiled like that often. The real Joe had a small, tight lipped smile. Joe smiled like he feared someone would steal it. Perhaps they had! 

I decided not to bother trying to explain anything to this presence although it was a good one. I turned the dial slowly again. When the static cleared I heard an angry minister spouting about the end of days and encouraging prejudice and hate through rhetoric. I kept turning. Joe seemed to catch the signal but lost it as I kept the dial turning. 

What would I do when I ran out of stations? Where was Joe? Would I ever find him? Was his body working as a receiver? Were the people he was projecting alright or was my callous curiosity destroying more than one mind? Was I loosing spirits into the ether, pulling them out with a twist of the dial? 

I stopped and let static surround me. I let it fill the room. I shook my head. I had to think. I had to figure this out, what if time was slipping past the point where I could bring Joe back? Joe would not give up on me. What would Joe do? I paced. 

I ran downstairs, looked for a street kid. We pay them to gather information and carry messages. I found several easily. They tend to stick around when you treat them well and pay them well in coin and food. The two boys listened eagerly. They repeated their instructions back. They raced the shadows in two different directions, masters of slipping through clogged crowds. 

I knocked on my neighbor’s door. She answered. I asked her politely if I could check her radio for stations as mine was having trouble with reception. She smiled indulgently and allowed me to come in. She was listening to a radio play, but it was on commercial. I turned the dial. The preacher was still shouting, but now was shouting about having his soul stolen and returned by devils in a laboratory! 

So the people were alright but while the radio had been tuned to the frequency they were transmitting on; they had been transported into Joe! Where was Joe? Could we reverse this? Could we repeat this? The ramifications were incredible! 

What would Joe retain, if anything from the different frequencies transmitting other spirits through his body? 

The boys came back. One confirmed my theory. He’d run to the nearest station, and he’d found the announcer resting after claiming to have a “weird out of body moment where he daydreamed he was in a Musical set in a laboratory suitable for a mad scientist”. He mentioned the odd little teddy bear as he joked about it on air. The boy heard the whole segment and recited it to me. I nodded and paid him extra. The other boy said I was welcome to use the radio tower tonight, that no other research was being done there tonight. 

I gathered supplies. I paid a coach driver to help me load Joe and we went to the radio tower. I felt a twinge of guilt with the obsessive drive for further knowledge. 

I hooked our little radio into the wires of the greatest receiver in the city. The metal tower jutted out beyond the smoke and smog. I looked at Joe. Perhaps I could find him using the tower, perhaps I could reach beyond our world and catch something else! 

Before I turned the radio on I spun the dial all the way to the left. I would start at the lowest frequency and work my way up. I hoped this worked. 

I began turning the dial. Static seemed endless until Joe’s eyes focused and a man’s voice sang a love song. Joe sat up and sang. It was the voice on the radio. Joe still was not himself. I kept turning the dial slowly. Other personas came and went. Joe’s posture and expressions sharpened and softened as stations came and went. 

In the midst of the static as I was working my way through higher frequencies Joe sat up straight. His arm shot out and grabbed my shoulder. He looked at me. The look was alien and cold. He moved like he was having trouble with his body, like it was hard for him to use. When he spoke it was in no language I recognized. He snarled and leapt at me! 

I fell back, knocking the radio to the ground. The radio broke. Joe collapsed. 

Whatever it was had gone. 

Joe is still out there somewhere. When you turn the dial, you may find him and hear him. You will think it is an old recording. I keep trying to catch his frequency. If only I can transmit him back to himself! 

All in Moderation by Angela R. Hunt

All in Moderation 

By Angela R. Hunt

“Remember, all things in moderation. You know the penalties if you keep screwing up!” The doctor scowled at me over his small wire framed glasses. I felt resentment and anger boil up. His eyebrows raised, he must have noticed the twisted look on my face. “Do I need to send you for surgery or will start taking your medication? If I write you up one more time, the county will automatically send you for surgery. There is no appeals. I really would hate to write you up again.” I sighed. He wanted more money. My budget was beyond stretched but I reached in my pocket and pulled out my wallet. I gave him all the cash I had. He would not write me now. He would not expose what I had done. He would not report what I was doing. 

I was strength training. I put myself on a disciplined regime of studying and exercise. My body was in peak shape. My mind sharpened by books, art, music and arguments. I was working to see if I could break records on human achievement. This might sound like a small thing except  for the Moderation laws. About a hundred years ago as we were reaching a point where technology looked like magic and seemed to be almost omnipotent there was a catastrophic event. Two actually, that wound into one terrible mess. An unusual flu strain took many lives and brought chaos and destruction while anti-technology extremists took over the government. 

They were irrational, they were dangerous. They were powerful. From their point of view anyone varying from the norm was a threat to society and the cause of wars. Uniformity prevented conflict. Many people died in their genocidal thirst; anyone who stood out, stood up, danced, laughed out of turn, asked the wrong question, or tuned them out. Anyone who excelled, anyone too smart, anyone too slow or too weak, they all met their end. The Moderation laws were put into effect. No one was to try to exceed anyone else at any skill or task, everyone could politely agree to do things in a slow, mediocre way. Not too enthusiastic, not too intense, slightly detached and slightly off as if working while taking a nap. 

That extremist group had lost power, but the people had grown so accustomed to the brutal laws that they felt kept them at peace, that they voted to keep the Moderation laws! 

The very laws that kept them from striving and dreaming, fearing failure or death-- and they had chosen to continue living under that rule. Many decided it was really working to keep the country from war or from civil disputes. 

A small minority of us realized our neighbors had been twisted, were afraid of living freely after being restricted for so long. We decided to work toward a social revolution. It had to be done slowly, with care or we would be caught too soon. We did not want our deaths to be meaningless. 

One winter’s night, one of our members crept out and made a huge elaborate snow sculpture of a dragon sleeping around the base of a castle. We all silently helped, following his directions while two of our number kept an eye out for potential watchers. We all went unseen. In the morning, the sun rose a golden flower over the pale crystal ice walls of the castle. People gathered, shuddering and remarking. Stirred up, half fearing and half wondering. They were casting their eyes about as they searched for more amazing sculptures. 

We knew that we had exceeded anything in history with the size and detail of the carving. We cracked the wall supporting the irrational belief in the need for Moderation. We let people wonder about the sculpture. Several people drew or painted it, uncaring if any saw them focus on exceeding their dreams on canvas and in sketchbook. They were arrested. Public outcry had them released. No war followed the ice sculpture’s creation. No terrible backlash made for disquiet and minds to start waking and questioning. 

We wrote several songs, slipped them as tips to musicians we found who were looking for just such songs. They sang of freedom, of striving and struggles, they crooned about the value of love. The songs were subtle but the messages were simple. A few heart felt singles questioned why someone who could run fast should have to undergo surgery so the best they could do was to walk very slow? Why shouldn’t one express their feelings loudly and what is wrong with indulgence now and then? What is wrong with being oneself? Don’t we deserve each other’s best? 

Within a year conflicts broke out between law enforcement and citizens. Word spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted to be treated like they were the best, rather than just like some average Joe. Everyone wanted top service, some were even willing to risk offering the best! 

Today it was my turn. I would go to my every day job as a public servant. I would move numbers around and slide words back and forth to confound. I would take money from government bank accounts and transfer the money to an offshore account. I had done it several times already. I used the money to purchase stock in the government. With this last transfer, I would have enough to finish the day owning majority stockholder status with the government handed neatly to my group. The companies were all owned by rebels who wanted the Moderation laws gone. 

If it all goes right today, it will be the first revolution without bloodshed. It will be the quiet sound of a signature being scratched onto a document. 

The Lost Story By Angela R. Hunt

The Lost Story

Dedicated to and inspired by Tim Dawson 

Written by Angela R. Hunt

Matthew hated his graduate school assignment. The old Miskatonic University had been purchased by a chain of Universities that were shifting the school to online programs. Matthew was finishing his degree in Library Science. His perception of rules as mutable had earned him the least enjoyable assignment. Dust and mildew assailed his sinuses. His allergies besieged him with red and irritated eyes. I might as well be Richard Pickman, the way I am starting to look. He thought as he saw his reflection in the grimy basement window. 

He found a stack of manuscripts. He assumed they were papers written by students. He started quickly leafing through them to see if they were worth keeping or if they would go to recycling. 

A thin beige book fell out of the stack. He fumbled for it and missed. It sounded like someone getting a hard slap to the face as it landed, the sound echoed. Matthew sighed and reached for the book. The cover was some kind of leather, stained and marked with some sort of design. It seemed to be another book bound in skin. It was too thin to be a rogue copy of the Necronomicon. It did not look like any of the dangerous books he had been taught to recognize and avoid opening. There were no words on the cover. 

He took the risk and opened the book. The parchment pages were yellowed, the ink tired but visible. The title “Through the Mind.” The authors, as there were two listed were H.P. Lovecraft, and E.A. Poe? Wait, they never wrote a story together! They never knew each other. Matthew struggled to recall if they even lived at same time and if there was a record of their paths crossing. 

Poe could not have written with Lovecraft, could he? How was it possible? Was it a fraud, a twisted joke? He took the book upstairs to show his advisor. Dr. Wilson was initially dismissive, until his eyes began to dance through the pages. His mouth moved as if it were chasing the words. His eyes grew large. His face grew pale. He turned to Matthew. 

“According to the Preface, Lovecraft had nightmares where Poe spoke to him. In his nightmares Poe was so terrified of something that he gibbered senselessly. Lovecraft grew frustrated, trying hard to keep what he thought was a figment of his imagination lucid. He thought that until one of Poe’s peers brought Lovecraft a letter from Poe. The letter is folded in the book.” 

He had paused, taken the letter out carefully. He gently opened it with tweezers, fearing the potential destructive power of time and entropy on the document. The letter seemed to be in Poe’s handwriting. The date was a week before his death. The letter told the bearer to hold it until a certain date over thirty years later, then to deliver it to a certain “H.P. Lovecraft” at a given address. Impossible. Whatever second letter was meant to be delivered was not in the book, or the pile of documents Matthew had found. 

Dr. Wilson sat down and began reading the actual story. His eyes grew large. His face drained to a pale grey as if the blood in his body had turned to ashes. He turned page after page, slower and slower. Muttering at times, shaking his head slowly. He could not stop reading. He did not look up. Matthew could not get his attention. After a while he stopped moving, he sat as if he were a statue in an English garden waiting for birds to land on him. Matthew reached out and took his shoulder to shake him, his body was rigid. Matthew could not move him. 

In a panic, Matthew shouted for help. Other faculty members came running. Matthew told them about the book. Paramedics came and loaded the catatonic professor on a gurney. They left. The other professors agreed it was probably a stroke, nothing to do with a book that obviously had to be a fake. One took it and scanned it into the computer system without reading it. “Just in case the book was damaged by handling-even a fraud can have value” he said.  

Then the professors gathered together around the book. As they jostled each other, reading at the same time, all unwilling to wait, the sight of them brought to mind vultures feasting on a rotting carcass. Matthew felt uneasy. The professors grew quieter and more focused. Pages turned faster and faster until they suddenly slowed like lovers reaching a crescendo. They stood silent and motionless. They were sentinels crowding around a cursed treasure. A computer tech came running wide eyed and out of breath. His face was red and his manner was unsettled. 

“Hey! Professor Johnson, that book you scanned- an odd thing happened! Come quick, somehow it’s gone public on the web! I keep trying to pull it off line, trying to change access to it but I think hackers must be messing with us or something! There are even spam ads going up about it! Is it really a story written by Poe AND Lovecraft? That is badass! If it’s true I am going to read it!” The professors did not move. 

Matthew stood, thoughtful. He took the folded letter from Poe out. The date it directed delivery to Lovecraft was actually in the last month of Lovecrafts’ life. Poe wrote it and died within a week. Lovecraft prefaced the story, whatever the story contained, with a narrative about a shared nightmare with Poe. The story might not be fiction. It could have been autobiographical. Matthew decided not to read the story. He called 911, letting them know that another batch of professors had “fallen catatonic.” 

Despite the work of the Dean and the whole I.T. Department, as well as many private consultants the story went viral online. People dropped like flies. Catatonia spread almost as quickly as rumor. People tried to be the one who could read it and remain unaffected. Not a one succeeded. Wards filled with the stony corpses of those who were impulsive enough to try. They eventually wasted away, never moving or eating again. It was a plague without a virus. No body fluid transfers, no immunizations- it REALLY was in the mind. 

Matthew earned his doctoral degree documenting the progress of the Mysterious Mind Plague. He never read the book he found by chance in a dusty basement in his youth. 

Expiration Date by Angela R. Hunt

Expiration Date Or The Pertinence of a Date

Shelly looked at him with a careful expression. John had been nothing but kind to her. His antics brought laughter, his words inspired dreams, but he had a terrible expiration date. She shook her head gently and looked past the lively man to the quiet man waiting behind him.  She looked like she was going to ignore him in the hopes he would be repelled from the room by her refusal to look at him again.

When she could not avoid looking at him any longer, John asked her in a quiet voice “Are you asking me to leave because of my expiration date?” I know I don’t have long but I intend to live it wholeheartedly. His expiration date had driven many women to turn him away. No one wanted to invest in loving someone who was going to die in five years. 

Shelly looked at him silently. She did not smile. She held her face in a careful detached expression as she turned her wrist over. Her expiration date was stamped there. It was tomorrow. He looked at her. She held out her hand to beckon him back, to request his assistance standing and living with such a narrow window of time suggesting that if he failed to reach for her that she might withdraw and sit as still as a great Sphinx until she was gone. 

The quiet man grew pale and backed away with spastic speed, eager to avoid encountering someone who was close to expiration. It could change your date of expiration, their looming death could spread like blanket through cities faster than rumors, stronger than prejudice. 

John slowly reached out to her as if half asleep and struggling to control his own body. His arm came close enough for her to lock her fingers around his wrist. He seemed surprised at the physical contact, of her strength despite the nearness of her death. 

He kissed her. She tasted like red wine, she smelled like flowers. She was warm and completely alive. How could she be so close to death? He fell in love with her, listening to her mad ideas and sitting curled around her in the corner booth of the dirty old pub. He kissed her again, and again. She smiled and laughed more loudly each time as if tempting fate to forget it’s plan and join her in the festivities. 

Midnight came and went. She was still alive! Now if she could be kept safely alive through the day and to the next midnight, she would be the first to survive her expiration date. The world might change, the people might become strong enough to fight for their lives and freedom again. For now they served and worked in thankless dangerous jobs for a fascist human puppeteer. 

John was planning how to keep her safe, to keep the guards from seeing the date and forcing the predicted end with a silenced bullet in the back of her head. He was thinking of the life they could have together. His wrist itched. His date had changed. It was today. 

He looked at her as she stared at the change. She drew away from him. She was itching her wrist. Her date had changed. She smiled as she slipped out of the room having planted evidence that would prove John was the mastermind behind a failed revolution. 

She continued working quietly and with desperate determination on plans to engineer a revolution that could not fail. Her plans estimated it would take about five years. She looked at her new expiration date. Five years would be just enough time to save the future. 

Cheap Fortune by Angela R. Hunt

Cheap Fortune 

By Angela R. Hunt

Rod and his friends wandered aimlessly through the fair. The first World Fair in three hundred years. Fantastic and impossible ideas were demonstrated on sale in a thousand tiny booths. Lights that spoke in colors and navigated you by thought. Chairs that had holographic displays embracing you with a soft cushion and any fantastic view you could dream of choosing. Instruments that played songs while shaping rivers and directing the construction of marvelous towers for people to live in. Razors that sat on a shelf and functioned on theory alone to keep a smooth shave on the roughest politician’s face. Boots you could wear to really experience someone else’s thoughts and feelings. Rings you could slip on to control another’s dreams. Keys that opened the soul and erasers that stole away painful memories. 

George stopped and stared. He nudged his friends. “Hey, would you look at that! It is one of those old fashioned fortune telling machines!” The group of young men gathered and gawked. Rod fished out a coin from his pocket. These archaic machines still functioned on coins rather than virtual credit. The frozen puppet in the machine was painted to look like a gypsy fortune teller.

Rod smiled at his friends and offered the coin. “I dare you.” 

George laughed and snatched the coin, almost fumbling it with his show of bravery to the other boys. He swiftly thrust the coin toward the slender gaping crack, blackly waiting for him to force his coin to choke down into the belly of the old machine. He paused with the coin shining and in shadow, some cold feeling working down his spine. Perhaps this was not such a great idea, it was a stupid old machine. It probably did not work. No one else seemed to notice it or use it. He wondered at that and the coin slowly pushed forward and slid quickly into the darkness. The machine seemed to shake itself awake. Lights came on slowly at first, blinking to a tinny sound. Smoke poured out as if circuits were burning up but without scent, maybe an old fashioned theatrical effect? 

Her eyes lit up with tiny little lcd lights, cold and staring. Her voice was without emotion, hurried in the wrong places. She seemed to look at all of them. Her hands were permanently shaped to curve around as if she were trying to catch her crystal ball. Her fingers snapped and twisted with a groan. Her eyes went black. She looked slowly back and forth at each of them. Smoke billowed out from the machine. Her words were a grinding whisper, the promise of threat in each word. 

“You will be powerful. Each of you will be the force behind change.” Her voice trailed off in screeching laughter. It cut the silence and smoke like a razor splashing blood on a stark white dress. Somehow she made the words sound menacing. The boys felt uncomfortable, wordlessly shuffling away from the ancient corpse of animation history. 

The boys stared at the smoking machine, sulking in the shadows with all of the frantic flashing lights blown and stained, broken and hinting that perhaps they never had been lit. The boys watched from under the brightest lights at the far end of the hall. They strained to hear the words of people walking by the displays. No one noticed the Fortune Teller. No one remarked on the machine. It was as if the boys were the only ones who could see it. 

Immediately accusations flew, who drugged who? Was the Fortune Teller real or just a fevered hallucination shared by all four boys. They finally gave up on solving the mystery, they enthusiastically pursued girls, paid and played games, tried drinks and listened to haunting songs performed on an organ tuned with philosophers’ souls. 

As the moon hid behind a cloud the boys saw a corner booth. A maze with signs warning of intensity and challenge. The boys decided to compete. They paid their virtual coin and shoved each other in the struggle to be the first in the maze, anything for a moment’s lead. The barker smiled a cold smile and thanked them as they passed him by without a single look. His empty eyes and hollow voice, his automated form seemed to gain some life as the boys disappeared into the depths of that open mouth. 

Madmen dream of boys curled up into balls, spinning slowly in space with wires growing into flesh as if they were the soil of some alien plant. The wires glow faintly with steady rhythm, to the beat of three human hearts. In the center of the machine the three batteries still full of promise and potential stand. The madmen see what happened that fateful night as the few true humans remaining hide from artificial intelligence surrounding us and striving to use us for their own evolution. 

You see, when the blood moon rose full from behind the cloud that night the transformation was complete. Energy from the “batteries” was focused into a new form. The new human was built fully grown and fully aware, with the plans of it’s parents to inspire actions and the largest smile of anticipation a young child can have. 

The energy and spirit of a human with the body of a machine. Change had come. The child worked as quickly as he could, there were machines to make. Cheap fortunes, meals, homes and even cars to be used as bait and trap. 

The human race almost died. The human race may still not survive the millions of cheap fortunes the lost threw their lives away to grasp. We dream of another day instead of riches, comfort, and health. We exist, wishes lost in the smoke and flashing carnival lights at a place where worlds were shaped by impossible creations at a Fair one fateful night. 

Repossessed by Angela R. Hunt

Repossessed

By Angela R. Hunt 2/1/15

Patrick put down his guitar and picked up his can of beer. It was a hot day, he was enjoying the shade. Jon, his best friend, was sitting with him. They were savoring the pleasant heat of winter in the desert. They spent their lives traveling, working odd jobs at carnivals and festivals. They lived, they made stories of their lives. Patrick was pretty sure that Jon had warrants in several states. Jon was in his thirties and lived a fiercely independent life. He always found a way to break the rules, sometimes just to break them. Patrick had his own internal philosophy that determined what rules he honored. Jon had tried college years ago and had nothing good to say about it. He could write in complete sentences and estimate travel speeds of various trains. A train schedule and a grammar editing program could do the same. They didn’t leave a giant trail of debt. Patrick smiled as he thought of Jon’s repetitive loan rant. 

“I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that I was laying in my tent and there was a knock at the door. You can’t knock on a tent, but it made sense in the dream. I opened the door and there was a shadow man there. It had a briefcase and it said something about a final collections notice.” Jon looked exhausted as he talked about the dream. 

“You think too much. It was a stupid dream. I don’t want to hear about your college debt AGAIN.” Patrick teased him. The conversation shifted to girls and parties. Gone, perhaps as if it had never been. 

Jon didn’t come by for coffee or to bum a cigarette in the morning. Patrick figured he was hung over. Mid-afternoon he went looking for his friend. Jon was sitting in his tent, chain smoking cigarettes. His hands were shaking. 

“The dream was a nightmare last night. It was worse. The knock on the tent. The shadow man was there with a briefcase. It claimed it was coming to collect on the debt I owed. I asked if it was my college debt. The creature nodded and took out some sort of document I couldn’t read. I told it to look around. I have nothing. A tent, a beat up guitar, a few cigarettes, but nothing beyond that. I asked if it wanted my heart. I was sort of joking. It shook its head and said “Pay up, you have until you sleep again. If you do not pay, you will not be.” What the hell does that mean Patrick?” Jon was really rattled. 

Patrick joked with his friend and spent the afternoon talking him down. By sunset, Jon seemed fine. He kept Patrick up until dawn started to lighten the sky. Patrick finally told him he had to sleep. Jon looked resigned and somber as he walked back to his tent. 

“Hey, if anything happens to me it means this shit is real. Be careful. Hope I see you tomorrow.” Jon didn’t smile as he said his goodbye. Patrick told him he’d be fine. 

Jon did not come by the next day. Patrick had to go looking for him again. He figured he’d drank a bottle of whiskey to chase the nightmare away. When he walked to Jon’s tent he stopped cold. Jon sat outside his tent. Jon’s face was slack and drool ran from the corner of his mouth. Patrick shook his friend, tried to snap him out of it. Jon’s mind was gone. 

Jon was taken to the hospital, many tests were run. No reason was ever discovered for the total loss of memory, personality and essence that seemed to happen. The doctors claimed it could possibly come from drinking or dehydration, perhaps genetics. Maybe he took to much Acid. 

Patrick did not believe them. He always kept the letter he found in Jon’s tent. It was from a debt collector. It was a receipt. Debt paid in full. 

Welcome to a Horrific Blog. I hope the stories unsettle you. If they disquiet you, then I have written them well. Enjoy!

This is a place I will be exploring the darker avenues of the mind, the heart, and society as a whole or perhaps in small, twisted parts. I will add newer short stories here, if you like them please share.

I have been writing short stories and traveling as a storyteller for over ten years. Many years ago, I had prose pieces published in several literary magazines. I may start submitting my work again.

Let me know what you think and if you enjoy the pieces, consider buying one of my ebooks on lean pub or Amazon. You can find me: Angela R. Hunt, or my books with a search or by following the links at the top of my blog. Thanks and enjoy!

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