Spiders in Space. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

 

It all started off innocently enough, as such things often do, from a casual remark over a pint down at the old Cock & Bull.

Perhaps it was that third pint, but Harry had gotten this look on his face—Harry often had that look on his face, and this was one of those times.

“Spiders. Spiders writing Shakespeare—in space.”

“Hah. It will never go, old chap.” Hamble made a face. “It’s too obvious—too derivative.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Hamble snorted.

“What are you going to do? Gobble down some radioactive psilocybin and write that up?” He shook his head. “Why not monkeys, anyways?”

They’d have a much better chance in his opinion.

“It’s just like you said. It’s a little too derivative.”

“Uh, huh. Why not. It’s a hundred-million dollar grant, after all. Or more.”

The competition would be fierce, and not all of them crackpots, either.

Hamble considered it further.

“All right. We have nothing to lose. Just promise that you will try and keep it short—”

In the end, they had agreed to go with the monkeys.

***

The American Association of Astronautics had been founded by a bunch of major tech-bros in order to do some third-party lobbying on behalf of an entire industry. This was understandable enough, considering their plan to put a gazillion satellites into orbit, not to mention colonizing Mars and eventually, at least to hear them tell it, the very stars; and maybe even Uranus. Their biggest problem in terms of public relations was the prospect of forty launches a day, from each of a hundred-odd sites all across the nation, and as often as not from ecologically-sensitive areas, and just a little too close to suburbia in some cases. The odd rocket blowing up on the pad, or worse, above people’s heads, was only a secondary consideration.

Some genius had suggested a competition, open to all comers—and in their own words, give us your idea, and we will put you into space.

The total pot was two-hundred-fifty billion dollars. Once a year, in what had become an annual media ritual. Literal pocket change, or pulled out from under the cushions of the couch, for what were some fairly major dudes...

The competition involved first, second and third place, with a series of consolation prizes of one hundred million each.

Harry grinned, hunched over the keyboard.

Using existing assets, he figured he could easily do it for a couple of hundred million, three, three and a half at the most.

A few work-from-home engineers and a post office box was all they really needed.

It wasn’t the technical feasibility which worried him—it was the rationale for such an experiment, especially as he was going up against all the best universities, as well as a hundred, a thousand other hopefuls, big defense corporations and even high-school science projects. These were always good for some feel-good publicity, and every year, it seemed an effort had been made to squeeze one or two of the latter into the launch schedule. Calling it pure science, for some future benefit of the human race, (or hetero sapiens, by a recent presidential decree), had been the best he could do, and no one expected the President of the United States to be all that good at Latin anyways. Or even anthropology—

It was all laid out, thirty-one pages, all nicely formatted and with a few artist’s impressions just to bring it to life.

It was all there.

He bit his lip, and hit send.

 

***

 

The International Space Station had its challenges these days, abandoned for some years in fact, but a team of professional astronauts had brought up the original cargoes, first the work-stations, then the feeding and watering apparatus, a few bales of straw for bedding, and then, finally, a half a dozen monkeys, who, in some sense, reflected the challenge of maintaining a number of unsophisticated hominids in Low Earth Orbit when the subjects had limited knowledge and zero understanding of the ethical implications of their existence.

They were, in a sense, colonists—

They would have to be fed and watered, and provided with heat and an atmosphere just like everybody else.

When it came to intellectual stimulation, all that really took was a few pictures of bananas on a screen.

The last flight had brought up Hamble, joining Harry through the hatch and after stowing his gear, they had spent a few hours bringing in priority consumables. After a quick breather, on a word from Harry, he was strapping his backside down for a thorough briefing.

Sooner or later, the ISS must come down, but in the meantime, the human complement were all volunteers and all operations were on their own personal waivers.

He took a good sniff and heaved a deep sigh.

Hamble could smell every person that had ever been up there, and that was just a fact—

“So. Tell me about the spiders.”

 

***

Those are some ugly spiders...

“I’ll get to the spiders in a minute. Suffice it to say, the monkeys haven’t gotten too far along, although they did come up with a pretty good little sonnet just the other day…it was quite romantic. Also, you’re going to be up here for a hundred and seventy days. Try not to masturbate too much; it saps your vitality.”

“Hah.” Hamble’s brow clouded.

His most recent conquest had been a pretty little blonde of indeterminate gender orientation, with corn silk hair that had, in the end, gotten caught up in his teeth.

“A hundred seventy days, cooped up with half a dozen monkeys…and how many spiders did you say?”

“Well, it’s not that bad. We have to keep our eyes on the goal, after all, which is whatever cash is left over after all of this. And then there’s our memoirs, late-night talk shows, obscure podcasts, merchandising, and the like.” He glanced at his notes. “…so. In order to avoid explosive decompression, the bananas had to have an atmosphere at sufficient pressure to be transported into orbit. This is how the original spiders, or a bunch of eggs maybe, got up here. They seem to be doing very well, once the first few generations hatched out, and it’s all very exciting…somehow they survived all physical checks and routine irradiation, stuff like that…” He’d been thinking about that irradiation, and the micro-gravity, and perhaps some unique genetic expression in a novel environment.

People thought that evolution took a hundred million years, the very same people who had added five or six inches of height and a hundred pounds of average body weight in a single century.

It wasn’t always like that—the Galapagos finches, for example.

The monkeys, born on Earth, had been thoroughly screened and no surprises there.

Hamble considered it.

“The PETL people are all over it.”

“The what?”

“People for the Ethical Treatment of Literature.”

“…ah.”

“…why can’t we just get AI to do it, that’s what they’re saying…”

“Because that would be too easy—and it wouldn’t get us a few hundred million for this bullshit either. It would also defeat the whole purpose of the experiment. Which is to get a few hundred million for this experiment, but enough said about that…”

“If it wasn’t for bad news, we wouldn’t have too much news at all.”

“Hmn. Speaking of bad news, in compartment eleven, there’s a big, fat marmot that likes to eat rocks. No idea where he came from…that being said, we’re not here for science, so much as to generate controversy.” This was the old Russian module, which had leaked like a sieve.

Repairs had been carried out with brushes and crazy glue, and it was said the crew had been high for days due to the fumes…

Hamble stared, mouth open.

“Ah—a what?”

“A big, fat marmot that likes to eat rocks. My current theory is that it was some kind of unofficial mascot from a previous mission. When they returned, of course they had no idea of what to do with it. Figured it would just die or whatever, but, by this time, it was such an influencer, a real internet sensation, that some folks founded a foundation, and decided to feed the thing as long as it lived…” It was just one more payload, at so many dollars a kilo. “His name is Peter and the kids just love him.”

“And where in the heck did the rocks come from?”

“Ah. Gifts from adoring fans, just raising awareness of the need to send rocks or something. Some little place in southern Illinois. Ineffectual do-gooders, if you can believe it.”

“Oh, Darwin.”

“We only did so much research, right, and this was one of those popular middle-school projects. Miss Hillman’s grade-seven class of 2034, somewhere in Illinois, all those bright and shiny little-kid faces. The judges went for that one like fruit-flies on a baby’s blanket.” In that sense, an unforeseen circumstance.

 

***

 

Harry consulted his notes again.

“Okay. One more thing.”

“What’s that?” As if that weren’t enough.

“The spiders have come up with something resembling a short passage of Nietzsche infused with subtle undertones of Kafka. And I mean new material, and not just some egghead rehash…in spite of all those legs, plus the mandibles, all them freaking eyes, spiders really don’t type all that much faster than monkeys. Also, the caps-lock appears to be stuck on. It may be a while before we get much more on that one…”

Argh.

He looked up.

“So. I guess it’s about time we had a look at those spiders.”

***

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Hamble recoiled from the small view-panel on the hatch. The common, yellow house spider, Cheiracanthium, hundreds of them, had grown impressively large, their abdomens now as big as a tomato…

“I did say it was interesting.”

“Ah! Ah! No…no.”

“Yes.” Harry uttered a long, deep sigh. “Come on, Buddy. They’re beautiful spiders. It’s only a hundred seventy days…we might even learn something from it.”

“I want to go home.” Oh, Mother, how he wanted to go home—

But those spiders were effing big.

Hamble had a thought. He turned to look at Harry.

“How in the hell are you feeding them things, anyways?”

“Oh. Very, very carefully.” With a twist of the crank of the hatch, and one good, quick shove, Hamble was in there and it was time to kill the microphone and the cameras for a while.

So far, so good.

And—

Tomorrow was another day.

 

END

 

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The Fearsome Touch of Death. Robert E. Howard.

Dr. Stein.

Robert E. Howard

A Tale of Stark, Unreasoning Terror

 

Weird Tales February 1930.

 

As long as midnight cloaks the earth

With shadows grim and stark,

God save us from the Judas kiss

Of a dead man in the dark.

Old Adam Farrel lay dead in the house wherein he had lived alone for the last twenty years. A silent, churlish recluse, in his life he had known no friends, and only two men had watched his passing.

Dr. Stein rose and glanced out the window into the gathering dusk.

"You think you can spend the night here, then?" he asked his companion.

This man, Falred by name, assented.

"Yes, certainly. I guess it's up to me."

"Rather a useless and primitive custom, sitting up with the dead," commented the doctor, preparing to depart, "but I suppose in common decency we will have to bow to precedence. Maybe I can find some one who'll come over here and help you with your vigil."

Falred shrugged his shoulders. "I doubt it. Farrel wasn't liked—wasn't known by many people. I scarcely knew him myself, but I don't mind sitting up with the corpse."

Dr. Stein was removing his rubber gloves, and Falred watched the process with an interest that almost amounted to fascination. A slight, involuntary shudder shook him at the memory of touching these gloves—slick, cold, clammy things, like the touch of death.

"You may get lonely tonight, if I don't find anyone," the doctor remarked as he opened the door. "Not superstitious, are you?"

Falred laughed. "Scarcely. To tell the truth, from what I hear of Farrel's disposition, I'd rather be watching his corpse than have been his guest in life."

The door closed and Falred took up his vigil. He seated himself in the only chair the room boasted, glanced casually at the formless, sheeted bulk on the bed opposite him, and began to read by the light of the dim lamp which stood on the rough table.

Outside the darkness gathered swiftly, and finally Falred laid down his magazine to rest his eyes. He looked again at the shape which had, in life, been the form of Adam Farrel, wondering what quirk in the human nature made the sight of a corpse not only so unpleasant, but such an object of fear to many. Unthinking ignorance, seeing in dead things a reminder of death to come, he decided lazily, and began idly contemplating as to what life had held for this grim and crabbed old man, who had neither relatives nor friends, and who had seldom left the house wherein he had died. The usual tales of miser-hoarded wealth had accumulated, but Falred felt so little interest in the whole matter that it was not even necessary for him to overcome any temptation to pry about the house for possible hidden treasure.

He returned to his reading with a shrug. The task was more boresome than he had thought for. After a while he was aware that every time he looked up from his magazine and his eyes fell upon the bed with its grim occupant, he started involuntarily as if he had, for an instant, forgotten the presence of the dead man and was unpleasantly reminded of the fact. The start was slight and instinctive, but he felt almost angered at himself. He realized, for the first time, the utter and deadening silence which enwrapped the house—a silence apparently shared by the night, for no sound came through the window. Adam Farrel had lived as far apart from his neighbors as possible, and there was no other house within hearing distance.

Falred shook himself as if to rid his mind of unsavory speculations, and went back to his reading. A sudden vagrant gust of wind whipped through the window, in which the light in the lamp flickered and went out suddenly. Falred, cursing softly, groped in the darkness for matches, burning his fingers on the hot lamp chimney. He struck a match, re-lighted the lamp, and glancing over at the bed, got a horrible mental jolt. Adam Farrel's face stared blindly at him, the dead eyes wide and blank, framed in the gnarled gray features. Even as Falred instinctively shuddered, his reason explained the apparent phenomenon: the sheet that covered the corpse had been carelessly thrown across the face and the sudden puff of wind had disarranged and flung it aside.

Yet there was something grisly about the thing, something fearsomely suggestive—as if, in the cloaking dark, a dead hand had flung aside the sheet, just as if the corpse were about to rise....

Falred, an imaginative man, shrugged his shoulders at these ghastly thoughts and crossed the room to replace the sheet. The dead eyes seemed to stare at him malevolently, with an evilness that transcended the dead man's churlishness in life. The workings of a vivid imagination, Falred knew, and he re-covered the gray face, shrinking as his hand chanced to touch the cold flesh—slick and clammy, the touch of death. He shuddered with the natural revulsion of the living for the dead, and went back to his chair and magazine.

Don't go to sleep...

At last, growing sleepy, he lay down upon a couch which, by some strange whim of the original owner, formed part of the room's scant furnishings, and composed himself for slumber. He decided to leave the light burning, telling himself that it was in accordance with the usual custom of leaving lights burning for the dead; for he was not willing to admit to himself that already he was conscious of a dislike for lying in the darkness with the corpse. He dozed, awoke with a start and looked at the sheeted form on the bed. Silence reigned over the house, and outside it was very dark.

The hour was approaching midnight, with its accompanying eery domination over the human mind. Falred glanced again at the bed where the body lay and found the sight of the sheeted object most repellent. A fantastic idea had birth in his mind and grew, that beneath the sheet, the mere lifeless body had become a strange, monstrous thing, a hideous, conscious being, that watched him with eyes which burned through the fabric of the cloth. This thought—a mere fantasy, of course—he explained to himself by the legends of vampires, undead, ghosts and such like—the fearsome attributes with which the living have cloaked the dead for countless ages, since primitive man first recognized in death something horrid and apart from life. Man feared death, thought Falred, and some of his fear of death took hold on the dead so that they, too, were feared. And the sight of the dead engendered grisly thoughts, gave rise to dim fears of hereditary memory, lurking back in the dark corners of the brain.

At any rate, that silent, hidden thing was getting on his nerves. He thought of uncovering the face, on the principle that familiarity breeds contempt. The sight of the features, calm and still in death, would banish, he thought, all such wild conjectures as were haunting him in spite of himself. But the thought of those dead eyes staring in the lamplight was intolerable; so at last he blew out the light and lay down. This fear had been stealing upon him so insidiously and gradually that he had not been aware of its growth.

With the extinguishing of the light, however, and the blotting out of the sight of the corpse, things assumed their true character and proportions, and Falred fell asleep almost instantly, on his lips a faint smile for his previous folly.

***

He awakened suddenly. How long he had been asleep he did not know. He sat up, his pulse pounding frantically, the cold sweat beading his forehead. He knew instantly where he was, remembered the other occupant of the room. But what had awakened him? A dream—yes, now he remembered—a hideous dream in which the dead man had risen from the bed and stalked stiffly across the room with eyes of fire and a horrid leer frozen on his gray lips. Falred had seemed to lie motionless, helpless; then as the corpse reached a gnarled and horrible hand, he had awakened.

He strove to pierce the gloom, but the room was all blackness and all without was so dark that no gleam of light came through the window. He reached a shaking hand toward the lamp, then recoiled as if from a hidden serpent. Sitting here in the dark with a fiendish corpse was bad enough, but he dared not light the lamp, for fear that his reason would be snuffed out like a candle at what he might see. Horror, stark and unreasoning, had full possession of his soul; he no longer questioned the instinctive fears that rose in him. All those legends he had heard came back to him and brought a belief in them. Death was a hideous thing, a brain-shattering horror, imbuing lifeless men with a horrid malevolence. Adam Farrel in his life had been simply a churlish but harmless man; now he was a terror, a monster, a fiend lurking in the shadows of fear, ready to leap on mankind with talons dipped deep in death and insanity.

Falred sat there, his blood freezing, and fought out his silent battle. Faint glimmerings of reason had begun to touch his fright when a soft, stealthy sound again froze him. He did not recognize it as the whisper of the night wind across the window-sill. His frenzied fancy knew it only as the tread of death and horror. He sprang from the couch, then stood undecided. Escape was in his mind but he was too dazed to even try to formulate a plan of escape. Even his sense of direction was gone. Fear had so stultified his mind that he was not able to think consciously. The blackness spread in long waves about him and its darkness and void entered into his brain. His motions, such as they were, were instinctive. He seemed shackled with mighty chains and his limbs responded sluggishly, like an imbecile's.

A terrible horror grew up in him and reared its grisly shape, that the dead man was behind him, was stealing upon him from the rear. He no longer thought of lighting the lamp; he no longer thought of anything. Fear filled his whole being; there was room for nothing else.

He backed slowly away in the darkness, hands behind him, instinctively feeling the way. With a terrific effort he partly shook the clinging mists of horror from him, and, the cold sweat clammy upon his body, strove to orient himself. He could see nothing, but the bed was across the room, in front of him. He was backing away from it. There was where the dead man was lying, according to all rules of nature; if the thing were, as he felt, behind him, then the old tales were true: death did implant in lifeless bodies an unearthly animation, and dead men did roam the shadows to work their ghastly and evil will upon the sons of men. Then—great God!—what was man but a wailing infant, lost in the night and beset by frightful things from the black abysses and the terrible unknown voids of space and time? These conclusions he did not reach by any reasoning process; they leaped full-grown into his terror-dazed brain. He worked his way slowly backward, groping, clinging to the thought that the dead man must be in front of him.

Then his back-flung hands encountered something—something slick, cold and clammy—like the touch of death. A scream shook the echoes, followed by the crash of a falling body.

***

Robert E. Howard.

The next morning they who came to the house of death found two corpses in the room. Adam Farrel's sheeted body lay motionless upon the bed, and across the room lay the body of Falred, beneath the shelf where Dr. Stein had absent-mindedly left his gloves—rubber gloves, slick and clammy to the touch of a hand groping in the dark—a hand of one fleeing his own fear—rubber gloves, slick and clammy and cold, like the touch of death.

 

END

 

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Lenny Lays an Egg. Louis Shalako.

Poor old Lenny...

Louis Shalako

 

“Is he prepped?” asked Doctor Rolf Ludwig, duty intern on the night shift in this busy metropolitan hospital.

“Yes, doctor,” replied Nurse Betty-Ann Genomi, a tall, brown-haired woman in her mid-forties with large, cone-shaped breasts.

Saint Athelstan’s was only a stones-throw from the police station, so they got all kinds of winners in here.

“He’s complaining about abdominal pain and the x-rays…well,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s real, all right,” he agreed, hands up in the air as he stared at the shots clipped into the light box.

“Wow,” he said.

The patient was face down, sedated but conscious. His frizzy red hair, rheumy, bloodshot blue eyes and swollen red nose bespoke a life-long love affair with the sauce. The bedclothes, steamy warm after coming out of the cubby, were pulled back to reveal the patient’s pale and globular gluteus maxima.

A nurse reached up and adjusted the light, and the rays of brilliant white reflected back up from the patient’s heinie.

“What’s your name, buddy?” asked Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny,” said the Caucasian male, who was about five-foot seven and approximately a hundred and forty-five pounds.

“How are you doing?” asked Betty-Ann, right there at his side.

She held onto Lenny’s hand with an open and sympathetic look.

“Am I going to die, doctor?” asked Lenny in a slurred manner.

“Nah,” assured the doctor. “We’ll have that nasty old thing out of there in a jiffy.”

“All righty then,” he noted. “Put a little petroleum jelly on there for me? We’re going in, ladies and gentlemen.”

A small titter went through the assembled class. This was a teaching hospital, and no opportunity was too small to pass up.

“Okay. We’re going to be doing a manual dis-impaction of what looks like a hard and compacted stool. Whether it is from compression during anal intercourse or some other cause is no concern right now.”

The doctor heard a few more gasps and giggles and he looked up for a moment.

“Pay attention,” he said. “The odds are you will have to do this sooner or later. I’m just grateful, but it doesn’t look like a light bulb, which I have also done.”

He patted the patient on the shoulder, but Lenny was pretty much out of it.

“Give me the retractor,” he muttered, and then the doctor got on with the job at hand.

“That’s strange,” he said. “Lenny?”

“Uh…yeah…?” said the patient and everyone laughed, even the doctor. “Whaddya want?”

“Well, I would kind of like to know what this is, if you have any idea,” said Doctor Rolf pleasantly.

Lenny stared wild-eyed and desperate at the floor.

“You mean you don’t know?” he gasped, and tears sprung into his eyes.

“Do you feel any pain, Lenny?” asked the Senior Nurse, Betty-Ann.

“No…?” said Lenny.

The room was silent.

“It’s not a stool,” said the doctor.

He watched on the screen as the forceps slid gently alongside the foreign object.

“It’s hard,” said Rolf. “But not too hard. It’s not metal or glass.”

Relief was apparent in his voice and what little they could see of his demeanor behind the cap and mask.

“Well, what have we got here?” he mused, pulling what looked like an ostrich egg from the long-suffering patient, one Lenny Bonsalvo.

“Was he drunk when he was brought in?” asked the doctor.

“No,” Betty-Ann shook her head. “But he admits to problems with alcohol.”

“It’s hard to believe he could swallow that, drunk or sober. I find it hard to believe he could do that, shove it so far up there,” he muttered.

"It's not a stool..."

***

“He must have had help, Doctor,” she murmured neutrally and in a non-committed tone.

“I tend to agree,” said Rolf. “Well, I guess you can’t blame the man for not wanting to talk about it too much.”

“Do me a favour, nurse?” he asked.

“Of course, what is it?” she replied.

“Clean that thing up for me. I want to show it to George. You know what! I think I’m going to show it to poor old Lenny, too.”

***

Lenny stared up from the bed in dismay.

“That thing—that thing was inside me?” he gaped.

“Yeah,” agreed Doctor Rolf. “I have to be completely honest with you, Lenny. I was sort of wondering if someone put it there. Did you have help? I am a doctor, and I’m not judging you, Lenny, but…”

“What! But what?” bellowed Lenny.

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” said the doctor. “I was just asking! It’s my job, you know? But I was kind of wondering if somebody did this to you? You know, like maybe as a joke, or even some kind of abusive situation—”

Lenny clambered up and out of the bed, staying on the far side from Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny, Lenny!” the doctor tried reassurance. “No one is judging you, Lenny. Honestly, I’m more curious than anything. I sort of wondered if you were in some kind of trouble.”

Lenny’s arm shot out and he pointed an accusing finger, seemingly at a loss for words.

“What’s the matter, Lenny, why are you so upset? I’m just trying to help you,” soothed Doctor Rolf.

“Ah! Ah! Ah,” screeched Lenny.

“Whoa! Simmer down,” said the doctor.

“It’s hatching! It’s hatching, that thing is hatching, doctor!” shouted Lenny, then he fell over backwards, hitting the adjacent bed and the patient in that one began screaming too.

Rolf took a quick look at the thing in the jar and his eyes almost bugged out of his head.

***

Doctors Rolf and George Malassori stared at the apparition in the jar.

They had it in a workroom off to one side of the internal medicine lab.

“What the hell?” muttered the normally soft-spoken George.

He straightened up, shaking his head in disbelief.

“It’s like a gecko, all covered in ketchup,” he marveled. “Let me get a sample of the fluid.”

“Yeah,” breathed Rolf. “It’s like a baby alligator or something. This is amazing…just nuts.”

“I won’t contradict an expert,” noted Doctor Malassori. “You’ve just made medical history, incidentally.”

“Huh,” said Rolf. “Lenny did. Not me.”

Malassori laughed in agreement.

“Can’t say as I blame you,” he said.

"Don't worry, gentlemen. Just another object up the bum."

***

Rolf had other emergencies, and the usual rounds, and he was asleep behind his computer when screams and thumps awoke him with a distinct nervous shock. You could read about adrenalin, and you could dissect the human body, and you could listen to witnesses. But this was real adrenalin and he had no objectivity.

The doctor ran sliding out into the hallway, to be confronted by a small wave of green-clad nurses and screaming people.

They almost bowled him over as he hurriedly stepped back into the room. He reached out and tried to grab an arm as they sped past.

“Nurse!” he yelled but she gave him a frightened glance and just kept going, looking back nervously and sobbing.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but she was clearly hysterical.

She spurted off again, shaking her head and moaning incoherently. Rolf thought about declaring a lockdown. His heart pounded in a moment of indecision. He needed more information.

As Doctor Rolf rounded the corner at a dead run, he ran smack into a hellish scene, the likes of which he would never forget for the rest of his life. Their floor security, Mister Nicholby, lay dead on the floor with his chest torn open and a black cavity exposed, and a thick trail of blood smeared in a path along the floor.

Nurse Betty-Ann had the gun up and was drawing a careful bead.

The sound of a shot, quickly followed by another, was shockingly loud in the now-quiet corridor.

The doctor flinched and covered his head, as a little fall of dust came down from the ceiling tiles.

Rolf stood there, open-mouthed, taking in the bizarre scene.

“Got the little bastard,” she said, looking calmly into Rolf’s eyes and blowing smoke from the end of the barrel.

“Nurse…?”

Doctor Rolf swallowed. His unbelieving eyes found a huddled, dirty dishrag-like form up the hallway.

“What the hell is going on around here?” he asked in shock. “What—”

The strident call of the overhead speakers broke into his state of mental inertia.

“Doctor Ludwig to emergency, Doctor Ludwig to emergency,” he heard, in a kind of relief.

Finally, something he could understand. Something that made sense. He was tempted to give his head a shake, or pinch himself or something.

He stepped over to the nursing station, reached over and grabbed a phone. Awkwardly, he put in the number, making sure to get it right first time. His hands were shaking.

“Yes? Doctor Ludwig here,” he reported. “What have you got?”

“Please get down here right away, Doctor Ludwig,” came the breathless voice of Nurse Helga Slovodnik. “We have another Lenny. Doctor George thinks we may have another one of those things.”

END

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Core Values, Chapter Fifty-Five. Louis Shalako.

Trying to feed one.

 

 

Chapter Fifty-Five

 

Mayor Hope Pedlar…

 

 

 

When someone finally got around to remembering about the Mayor, her body was found on the balcony. She was missing her right arm, and something had been feeding on her plump carcass.

The face was almost unrecognizable, but it was her, all right. They say she bled to death, and that it was very quick.

Investigators found a green plastic Tupperware bowl beside her and a used piece of Blaran Wrap on the kitchen counter. Apparently the Mayor had been trying to feed one of the creatures some leftovers, according to police, a home-made tuna salad consisting of elbow noodles, onions, celery, tuna and mayonnaise.

With a million dollar grant from the Scow Corporation, the Mayor Hope Pedlar Memorial Art Gallery and Public Library is under construction at the time of this writing.

No one begrudges her that.

Andy Bandy, inconsolable, read the eulogy at the funeral, a closed-coffin affair, and died six months later.

As some said, he died of a broken heart, or just plain uselessness.

 

***

 

The Guardian-Standard soldiers on. For a few days it was put together by guys like Bruce Lipshitz, brought back out of semi-retirement, and Les Purvis, who has been awful quiet lately, Ken Noble and others. Barnes is on sick leave for psychological problems. It is unclear when and if he will return to his duties.

Transferred to Afghanistan.

Bill O’Keefe died of a heart attack, running up the stairs to the second-floor newsroom. Decades of easy living, two packs of regular smokes a day, and a litre-a-day whiskey habit finally caught up with him.

Mackenzie Schwartz was reassigned to the war in Afghanistan, where she reports daily though the written word, both for her News Service employers and as a free-lance journalist.

She’s probably more man than some will ever be, and more woman than some will ever have.

Les figured that out after a while, and has also applied for a transfer.

This writer wishes them well.

 

***

 

The Hot Dog Bandit was no more. Bru didn’t really care what happened to him, but from now on there were no sharp-fingered pinch marks in the buns. Hot dog buns, hamburger buns, any kind of buns, they were all good now.

Whether the Hot Dog bandit was killed by a giant mutant ninja salamander, as the media was now calling them, was unclear and in Bru’s mind irrelevant.

For all he cared, the guy got picked up by the Detroit Tigers.

Or perhaps it was just some construction worker, headed out to Calgary or Fort McMurray. Maybe some electrician, or a pipefitter gone home to Prince Edward Island, or somewhere on the east coast. Maybe it was the Mayor. Or some guy who worked in research at Buncor. Or maybe it was some simple-minded old foreign lady, or Chief William P. O’Shaughnessey, whose body was never found. It could have been anyone, but whoever it was, they were gone—perhaps picked up in a meth lab raid somewhere, or died with a needle in their arm in some alleyway.

Maybe they got eaten. No one could say for sure.

Who cared?

Certainly not Bru.

He still had plenty of problems of his own to deal with.

It really didn’t matter to Brubaker, although he occasionally wondered if somewhere in Canada, somewhere in the world for that matter, someone was even at that exact moment going through the rack. So fresh-smelling, all warm bread and plastic, pinching every damned one of the friggin’ things.

Some poor stock boy getting blamed for it. You would think the Hot Dog Bandit would notice after a while that there is a little plastic tag, and that it has a date on it.

For them it’s not about freshness. It’s just plain ignorance. A kind of mega-abuse on a nanoscopic scale. Totally random and arbitrary.

Life isn't fair sometimes...

The fourth kind of stalker.

Certainly some people are stubborn, but there’s more to it than that.

Something sick, something evil, something menacing, something deep, and latent in their subconscious mind, deep in their very souls, something rubbing them the wrong way.

They know who they are. And life isn’t fair sometimes.

They say there is a kind of justice in the world, but sometimes you wonder.

As Chuck Brubaker once said in a letter to the editor, “You don’t need any training to be a philosopher.”

(But it might help.—ed.)

Ultimately Brubaker learned a lot about himself.

When things are going good, that is not the measure of a man. It’s when the chips are down, and the whole world seems to be against you, it’s what you do then.

That is the measure of a man.

 

***

 

Walter LaSally drove around and around and around, pushing snow across the parking lot at the Charity Casino, grateful to have won the bid for another season. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth he went.

With a pudgy little wife, three ill-behaved kids, a house, a business, people depending on him for their wages, he managed the stress by never being seen without a beer in his hand. Walter was aware that he was a little man, with a high-pitched obnoxious voice, no obvious skills, and no real education. He was trapped and he knew it. He would be cutting grass, plowing snow and drinking beer by the pool for the rest of his life.

He would be rooting for the Leafs for all of eternity, and hanging onto his own set of core values.

(And probably not getting much joy out of either one. — ed.)

He knew who he was.

In this writer’s opinion, a more perfect fate could not have befallen him.

Life has a way of taking care of all the little injustices.

END

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

"That's all, folks." - Butt Plug.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Chapter Thirty-Four.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

Chapter Forty.

Chapter Forty-One.

Chapter Forty-Three.

Chapter Forty-Four.

Chapter Forty-Five.

Chapter Forty-Six.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

Chapter Forty-Eight.

Chapter Forty-Nine.

Chapter Fifty.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Chapter Fifty-Two.

Chapter Fifty-Three.

Chapter Fifty-Four.

 

Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.

 

Louis has books and stories available from iTunes. He also has some art on ArtPal.

 

Thank you for reading.