Issue 139 April 2025

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Editorial: Cleaning Up the Mess

by Rebecca Halsey

April 3, 2025

To begin, I present one of my silly drabbles:

The Trans-Abyss Backhaul

“Whoa! Stop!” it said.

Kris stared at the quivering orb that materialized.

“Thing about multiverses—they need to be connected to the trans-abyss backhaul. Else, suckers can’t spit matter into bangers. We lose visibility on an entire quadrant of space-time. Void wireless only spawns access failures. Endless glitches!”

Kris gestured at the stack of electronics, recently “inherited” from his dad, housed in a faux oak media cabinet. “I just…”

“No!” the orb vibrated. “Don’t touch THAT!”

“But no one even uses VHS—”

“Unplug that and—” The orb popped.

But Kris was done cleaning through grief. YOINK!

One less blinking display.

* * *

This drabble is based on true events. When my family moved into our current house, we inherited a similar stack of electronics, a similar tangle of wires. To this day, we debate about what to do about it (although not with extraterrestrial orbs unfortunately).

I’ve always been pro-unplugging the unsightly mess. Why sustain a tether to a past we had nothing to do with?

But, in the three years we’ve lived here, I’ve only managed to disconnect some of the audio-visual equipment (yes, the VCR for sure). A large bundle of cords remains.

What if unplugging it creates a bigger mess than the one we inherited?

What if starting over is somehow worse?

The stories in FFO’s April 2025 issue are about people left behind to clean up the mess. First is a queen who must end a war in “Practical Knitters” by Louise Hughes. The king is dead after all.

The title of Selphie Ke’s horror flash, “Akane Is Dead,” gets right to the point. Set in a fictionalized 17th century Japan, this story features a courtesan that does the due diligence of honoring her apprentice.

Investigating someone else’s death is one thing, but imagine if you have to cover for your own murder. That’s precisely what Andrew Kozma presents in “You Have Been Murdered.”

Not all messes are as final though, and sometimes the clean-up is in our psyche. In “The Thing About the Castle” by David Hammond, a young boy struggles to fill his empty LEGO castle after his sister has run away.

In “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Teleporter,” M. J. Pettit shows us what happens when you port through the one place in the universe where teleportation remnants aren’t destroyed. “They keep the junk alive. Some sentimentality about the uniqueness of every life.” Two copies, two lives, two choices.

There will always be people choosing to tear down. In America right now, it feels like cords are getting ripped out of the wall left and right. It feels like lights flickering in a thunderstorm. It feels like a particularly stupid supervillain fight.

Perhaps this is why I’m such a fan of Saul Lemerond’s destructive romp through a Target in “Janet and I Try to Get Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts at the Gilbert Rd Super Target. It’s the One in Scottsdale. No, the Other One. The One on Gilbert.”

Let’s hope the only casualty of every fight is a distaste for frozen waffles. Or a pile of LEGO bricks for that matter. Or a burnt pot roast or a bit of drywall to be patched. But who knows what we’re doing to space-time at this moment.

* * *

Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey

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Practical Knitters

by Louise Hughes

April 4, 2025

The Queen’s knitting circle sits in the painted tower, four double-pointed needles and a ball of yarn apiece, as the blackbirds sing in mourning. The sun sets, the stars awake, and points go click, click, click.

Magic, formed with each stitch twist and loop, keeps the candles burning bright.

Mistress Avalard, of the Sing River crossing, uses the pattern her grandmother taught her beside the tollhouse hearth. A string of vines and berries. Winter in the forest. Her socks banish weariness, and holding them, she can hear the trees whisper two miles away.

“Did you see what the honour girls were wearing last night? Those necklines. Those satin shoes! You’d think they were at the summer court.”

Night wears on, the young and very old sleep on in the castle where they’ve sheltered for seven long war years. A shadow falls over the moon.

Lady Verde follows her maid’s instructions. She’s never knit a sock in her life. She mutters the rhyme of it under her breath as she turns the heel. A plain pattern. Beige yarn. Reliable and strong.

The king is dead.

The war in the west rages on and the war in the east slips by. The war in the north freezes solid and the war in the south…well, at least there’s little to be said about that. No news is good news. There’s a map on the table around which they all sit.

Knitting socks for soldiers.

Keeping busy.

“Paulina, did you say your husband was coming home for winterfeast? That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

Archduchess Paulina Naieve made socks as a girl but not since she put up her hair. Not since she went to her husband’s castle in the highlands. She paints now, scenes of mountain passes where the traders meet, and dogs. She’s forever painting dogs. Her socks, a little loose — her tension’s always been off — are blue like the sea. The sea and its power are bound to each stitch.

“My eldest got back from the oracle yesterday. She thinks we might see peace this year. Who would have thought it? Peace in our time.”

Glances are exchanged in silence. A chill intake of breath moves around the circle. Remembering, the King is dead, and this is a knitting circle.

Geraldine de Verdigris knits ten shades of green, from the forest floor to the moss on the castle wall. She has five daughters and five sisters. The pattern keeps to the Southwold twist and bristle. She could knit it in her sleep. Her husband died in battle far away, with his socks worn through at the heel. She is quiet, tall, and ready.

Widow Knight is knitting her socks toe-up because she is weird.

Katerina of the Summer Spring, a ward of the fae, knits her socks without touching the needles, reclining in the chair. She is a promise of good intentions. Her socks glow in the dark but even she has the good sense to start with the cuff.

Knitting socks for soldiers.

Keeping busy.

“Oh, I heard back from the sword-smith in Troll Bridge. She’s accepted my twins as apprentices. It’s such a relief to get them settled.”

The King is dead. Home from the battlefront for only two days, looking for the welcome from his wife he thought he deserved. Instead, a knife between his ribs as he slept. One less thing to worry about. Time to end this, once and for all.

The Queen knits her own socks for the first time in years. She likes the rough feel of the yarn, the tightness of her stitches, the usefulness of her hands. She uses needles thinner than a daisy stem, making tiny twists and lace.

When each finishes their work, they take the darning needle from the one who finished before, binding up the toes and weaving in the ends. Then each lays her socks over the arm of her chair and waits.

“There’s a storm brewing in the west. Dragons they say, perhaps. Fire in the skies.”

The Queen finishes last. She has to. No one can keep knitting if she sits idle. While they wait they pass the finished socks between them, feeling the magic imbued in each stitch. It rushes through their blood and bones like fire.

Each member of the circle holds out first one and then the other to the Queen. She inspects their work, takes it to the window for the dawn light, testing the power of the patterns and the strength of the yarn. Her fingers taste the magic and what each will bring to the fight.

They hold their breath and know they have done their best. They know they are ready. Thirteen women with their hair bound up and their sturdy boots beside their chairs.

The Queen chooses.

She takes the late King’s sword from beside the fire and holds it out to Geraldine de Verdigris, mother of the Southwold. “You shall take command of the armies in the west. Go, with my blessing.”

“By your leave, my queen.”

“Mistress Avalard, Katerina, go with her. Your work is powerful but not quite strong enough to bear the duty of command.”

To each women there she gives an order. They put on their socks, their boots, their swords and shields and helms, and take their leave. To Archduchess Naieve, she gives command of the ships. No one is surprised by that.

The Queen’s knitting circle goes to war and the Queen, who knows her craft isn’t strong enough to pass the test of battle, is glad to have such women she can rely on. She chose well when she summoned them.

She calls the court to bury the King in the tomb of his forefathers and stands alone while they do it. Then she returns to the tower, to the centre of all things. Knitting socks for soldiers while she waits.

* * *

Ⓒ Louise Hughes

Comments

  1. Lenora Good says:
    April 6, 2025 at 11:09 am
    This is delightful. Love it! Thank you.
  2. Erin says:
    April 15, 2025 at 1:35 pm
    I absolutely adored this story. Beautiful, funny, _and_ intense

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Janet and I Try to Get Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts at the Gilbert Rd Super Target. It’s the One in Scottsdale. No, the Other One. The One on Gilbert.

by Saul Lemerond

April 8, 2025

Science Fiction

A man cuts in front of us at the checkout lane. I think Janet knows him because she’s tugging at my shirt, and I can see something behind her eyes, something like a deep, abysmal rage. It is so deep that I know it must be due to more than the fact that this man has over fifty items in the express lane, items that he’s trying to use a myriad of expired coupons to pay for. Or, more than the fact that he’s refusing to leave the line until the clerk calls the manager so he can honor all the expired coupons or the fact that he has every single package of Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts in the store stacked up in his cart.

I don’t mind eating plain old waffles. Janet does.

The man looks back at me. He doesn’t like me. It’s obvious, and it dawns on me. Janet and this man know each other; they have history. I look down at the single box of frozen waffles in our cart, the ones we settled on when we learned there were no Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts, and then I look over to Janet and put my hands palm-up and parallel to my shoulders in a “What’s going on?” gesture.

“He’s mad,” Janet tells me, “because we’re not together anymore,” Then Janet turns her head toward him and shouts to make sure he can hear, “AND BECAUSE JACOB HANDLES REJECTION LIKE A CHILD!!!”

Jacob’s face twists with rage. “I was in love with you!” he screams back.

The clerk behind the register looks on in a tired, exasperated way.

The manager ignores everything and, having input all of the expired coupons manually, says, “That’ll be two-hundred and fifty-six dollars and forty-five cents. Please insert your card.”

“You’re buying all the Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts because you know I like them,” Janet says. “You’re bitter.”

Jacob scrunches his eyebrows and puts his hands up to his temples. I can feel something in the air like it’s the dead of winter, and every movement creates its own static field.

“You lied to me,” Jacob says. “You told me that we would always be together.”

“Hey, man,” says Janet. “I guess I learned that not every High Priest of Panodin, the Great Horned Goat God, is worth my time!”

“I was in love with you!” Jacob says, and his head begins sparkling, like a backyard on the Fourth of July.

“Grow up!” Janet says.

“Panodin the Great Horned Goat God?” I ask.

“I’ve heard of him,” says the manager.

“Me too,” says the clerk.

Of course, they have. Who hasn’t?

A ball of flame forms in front of Jacob’s forehead. Then he points his hands outward, and the fire pillars forth in an apocalyptic inferno of rejection fueled annihilation.

Janet doesn’t move, and I hit the floor as the flame misses us and instead completely incinerates a shelf full of collectable trading cards.

I look over to the smoldering wreckage as embers of card stock rain down like volcanic ash.

“So,” I say, lying on the ground, confused, “this dude, is like, one of your ex-boyfriends?”

Janet bends down and puts her hand on my face, caressing my cheek, ear, and chin. “Oh, honey,” she says, smiling warmly, “that’s really none of your business, is it?”

I frown. “Oh,” I say. Janet’s sort of right. Our open relationship is judgment-free. “I’m not mad,” I say. “It’s just you never mentioned him.”

Janet then stands and waves her hands in a circle around the air in front of her. “Jacob! You ever think maybe we’d still be together if you weren’t such a garbage person?”

“And,” I say to Janet, “you also said that open relationships require open lines of communication.”

Janet stops her hands, so they’re parallel out in front of her body, and a massive bolt of iridescent blue energy blasts forth from between them, decimating everything in its path.

Jacob jumps sideways toward the clerk and takes him to the ground so that neither of them ends up getting disassembled to their base elements like the register does, and the conveyor belt, and the shelve of candy bars, and the t-shirts with “GOOOOOO PANTHERS!!” printed on them.

I watch all these things turn to dust and fall to the floor.

“You never even mentioned me?!” Jacob asks.

Both Janet and Jacob have changed. Their pupils are shaped like hourglasses, they’re glowing blue, and each has two large horns the size of a professional basketball player’s arms curving out from their foreheads.

I badly wish I knew what was going on, and Janet must see the pleading in my eyes.

“Judgment free,” she gently reminds me, playfully wagging her finger. Then she turns to Jacob, slowly saying, “And I never mentioned Jacob because I don’t think about him anymore.”

“What?!” Jacob yells and throws another fireball that misses wide left and grazes the popcorn aisle. The air is filled with a million random pops and a smell that must be the odor of a burning movie theater.

Janet releases a stream of blue energy that obliterates the entire storefront.

I realize the structural integrity of this grocery store is quickly becoming a metaphor for our relationship.

The two of them fly off the ground. The roof is disintegrated, and the two take to the sky, trading energy blasts until they disappear into the clouds.

I stand in the ruins, stunned until the clerk comes up to me with a look of sincere sympathy in his eyes. He says, “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to leave. We’re closing the store.”

I look down at the box of frozen waffles and know I’ll probably never enjoy them again. What good are waffles without someone to share them with?

* * *

Ⓒ Saul Lemerond

Originally published in Electric Spec,  Volume 16, Issue 3, August 31, 2021. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

The Thing About the Castle

by David Hammond

April 11, 2025

When Mom asked who lived in the LEGO castle, I should have said a king. Or a princess. Or an ogre who locked the princess in the tower. Something like that. Instead, I said:

“Nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“A family lived there, but they left.”

“Why?”

I shrugged.

She seemed sad. “Where’s the family now?”

I shrugged.

I don’t know why I said that about the family. It just popped in my head. But once I said it, it was the story, and I couldn’t change it. I tried to picture a green ogre in the throne room and a princess in the tower, but it was too late. There was a family. A family that wasn’t there anymore. Them not being there anymore was the important thing about the castle. Funny how saying something can do that.

Now Mom’s weird about the castle. She says how sad it’ll be when I destroy it, ’cause it’s so beautiful, but when I work on something else, like the helicopter, and I can’t find a piece, she’s like, “Welp, I guess that’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“The piece must be in the castle.” Sad sigh.

So normally maybe I would take it apart to get the rotor blade, which I remember now is a ceiling fan in the tower, but the way she’s holding her breath waiting for me to destroy the castle makes me not want to, so I pretend to find the right piece in the bin, and say, “Ah ha,” and stick it on.

Mom can see I stuck a steering wheel where the rotor blade should be, and she looks concerned, like maybe I’m not as smart as she thought. But then her face goes blank, and she gets up from the family room carpet and brushes a dust bunny off her shirt and leaves without saying anything.

* * *

Mom tells Dad about the castle at dinner. “It’s very impressive. You should see it before he has to take it apart. He said a family lived there but they left, didn’t you, Zack? I wonder if the family will come back. Such a nice castle to leave empty.”

“Maybe they went on vacation,” says Dad.

“Maybe. Did they go on vacation, Zack?”

“I dunno,” I say.

“Maybe they got tired of living in a castle,” says Dad.

Mom snorts. “Who gets tired of living in a castle?”

“It could be drafty.”

“It’s a very nice castle.”

“I’ve heard castles can be drafty.”

“Well, you haven’t even looked at it. What would you know?”

Dad drops his fork on his plate noisily, so I blurt out, “The princess ran away.”

“What?” says Mom.

“That’s why the rest of the family left.”

“To look for her?”

“I guess.”

“I see,” says Mom, nodding. Dad picks up his fork. We all quietly munch our food. Why did I say that about the princess? They were about to fight, so I said it. Now it’s what happened.

* * *

On the way to brush my teeth, Abby’s old bedroom door is open. Mom’s on the bed staring at the string of colored lights over the desk, squeezing Abby’s old stuffed duck. One of her hands grips the duck’s neck like she’s strangling it.

Abby used to do the duck’s voice. He was a psychiatrist named Hugh. “How are we feeling today?” he used to say, sitting on the edge of my bed in the nightlight glow. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Interesting.”

Mom notices me standing in the doorway. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

I teeter, about to move down the hallway, but she asks, “Do you miss Abby sometimes?”

I readjust my feet to keep from falling. “Yeah,” I say.

“C’mere.”

She scoots over to make room on the bed, and I go in and sit. She lets the duck drop and leans over to squeeze me instead.

* * *

“The family came back,” I announce.

Dad swallows. “The castle family?” Wipes his mouth. “Did they find the princess?”

“No. They decided they would be okay without her. They’ll miss her, but they’ll be okay.”

I stayed awake last night thinking up these words to say at dinner.

Dad scrunches his eyebrows. “So… did they stop trying to find her? Or…”

“Well,” says Mom, “at some point they had to move on. Right, Zack?”

“Yes,” says Dad, “of course. At some point.”

“Yes,” says Mom.

Dad looks at the ceiling. “But when that point exactly is, actually, can, you know, sometimes…”

Mom taps her fork on her plate. “The point is, they’re back. That’s the point.”

“Right,” says Dad, smiling at me. “They’re back.”

Except it seems like they aren’t actually back. I don’t know why. I said it, and everyone agreed, but it didn’t work.

* * *

If you lie on your stomach on the floor next to the castle, you get a view almost like the castle is full-sized. The family room carpet stretches into the distance, a field of weedy brown. I blow on a dust bunny to make it roll like a tumbleweed.

I climb the castle steps and enter through the jagged-arched doorway. The knobby brick floor makes walking awkward. I sit on the throne. Dad was right about it being drafty, with that breath-wind over the carpet-plain. I shudder. A beard grows on my face. I am the old king now, wise and sad. The wind blows harder. One of the turrets breaks off the castle and rolls on the ground. Once the destruction starts, it can’t stop. The tower crumbles. The ceiling disintegrates. Rogue explosions from unseen cannons smash the walls to bits.

A scattering of old bricks lie around the lonely king, who fades away for lack of a castle.

The end.

* * *

“Zack took down the castle,” says Mom, sighing. “Did you ever see it?”

“Yes, of course,” says Dad uncertainly. “All good things come to an end.” He smiles at me. “So, Zack, what’s your next big project?”

I shrug, careful not to say anything.

* * *

Ⓒ David Hammond

Comments

  1. Gary Henderson says:
    April 11, 2025 at 10:05 am
    Amazing story.
  2. Kristopher Armstrong says:
    April 13, 2025 at 7:25 pm
    Really connected with this story, as a former lonely Lego builder (and a human with parents). Nicely balanced flash narrative, too!
  3. Poder says:
    April 18, 2025 at 5:41 pm
    Beautiful

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Akane Is Dead

by Selphie Ke

April 18, 2025

Crickets chirp in the grass of the garden, their songs a fervent harmony to the festivities within the Lord’s mansion. Bright lights and laughter emanate from within the paper paneled walls as the Lord enjoys the company of the finest entertainers from the pleasure district of Yoshiwara.

The rising moon’s reflection in the still waters of the courtyard pond is partially blocked by the silhouette of Otoe. A tall beauty, her form is accentuated by layers of garish embroidered silks tied in the front by a huge gold and pink obi of unmatched elegance.

Otoe picks her way across the hill overlooking the Eastern side of Lord’s manor, each step skillfully measured to cause the elaborate skirt of her costume to flutter, sending billows of mist rolling away to reveal the powdered skin of her shapely feet. Her back remains straight as she carefully picks her way across the rocky hills to the temporary stage tucked just out of sight in a little overlook.

This is the way a Yoshiwara courtesan walks. A consummate professional, Otoe’s policy is to wear her best outfits and, of course, provide the best performance at important engagements.

Her three kamuro flutter about her like sparrows, their arms filled with the accoutrement of the evening’s performance – her koto and the white box containing Akane’s remains. The third and youngest girl clings tightly to a doll with a porcelain face, its red kimono rippling in the wind.

* * *

At Otoe’s signal, the kamuro busy themselves with setting up the stage and tuning the koto. While they work, Otoe kneels, lights the incense and gives obeisance to Akane’s ashes, given pride of place on a platform at the front of the stage.

Otoe’s fingers gently caress the koto’s thick red strings, as she prepares herself for the performance. Even now, years after its first creation, they still feel damp, as if the blood soaked into them was still wet.

The first movement of the piece is gentle and playful, the innocent laughter of a child splashing in puddles in the rain flowing down to join with the raucous laughter of the more salubrious entertainments below.

In her childhood, Akane had been the best of Otoe’s kamuro, always close at hand and eager to do her big sister’s business. Her only shortcoming was a marked stubbornness in giving up the name her parents gave her. Since numerous dissuading punishments had no effect, Otoe had been forced to allow this single concession.

Though far from the most beautiful child in Matsukazeya pleasure garden, Akane’s charming demeanour soon made her the darling of Yoshiwara, beloved by all. Her debut was a singularly lavish affair, with clients lining up along the streets and showering the girl with sheafs of money for a mere glimpse of her parade.

* * *

The second movement seems slower, more ponderous, the dying breaths of a woman in exquisite pain.  Beads of perspiration appear on Otoe’s brow as she continues to play, her hands on either side of the instrument, teasing out each discordant note and bending pitch.

“The standard lie of the prostitute is ‘I love you’. The standard lie of the client is ‘I will marry you.’” It was a lesson writ on the hearts of every Yoshiwara courtesan.

Akane had been naive enough to think that she would be an exception to the rule, and foolish enough to believe the sweet words of the first man to promise her freedom. She had given him everything—her money, her jewelry, her kimono and her life—but he had taken more before vanishing into the wind.

Heavy with child and heedless of Otoe’s warnings, she had gone looking for him.

People were scandalised when Akane’s naked corpse turned up in a back alley, the huge wound in her belly spilling her guts onto the street. Matsukazeya’s Mama had been tasked with collecting the body, but the old woman had merely tipped her pipe out onto Akane’s staring eyes and walked away with a disgusted grunt of, “Foolish girl.”

Otoe knew in her heart that Akane’s soul would not be able to rest after such an egregious end.

* * *

Otoe’s fingers fly back and forth across the koto for the climax of the piece. Far below her, the music from within the Lord’s house changes ever so slightly. The hauntingly sweet fluting of a fue, the sensual twanging of the shamisen and the rhythmic tapping of the tsuzumi, each melody complementing the discordant tones from her own instrument.

All of Yoshiwara had agreed with Otoe’s plan. From the lowest Teahouse Girl to the highest ranked Oiran, each contributed in their own way.

Asobi boatwomen entertained customers with mournful songs of Akane’s doomed love, their eyes and ears peeled for her murderer’s whereabouts as they roamed the waterways. Kugutsu puppeteers came together to make a doll to house and calm her spirit. An old Kabuki propmaker, long retired from the trade, made the koto, soaking the strings in Akane’s blood and fashioning the body from the remnants of her coffin.

The musical composition is Otoe’s particular gift.

The youngest kamuro lifts the lid off the white box and watches its glowing contents, the last of Akane’s ashes, rise from confinement, mingling with the heavy mist flowing through the doll in her little arms.

Finally, Otoe looks up and beholds Akane, resplendent in the red regalia of the apprentice courtesan, her hanging entrails barely covered by its many layers. Otoe gives her student a curt nod of dismissal.

Akane bows politely to her teacher, then flies down to join her lover in the mansion below. Though it is unseemly for a courtesan of Otoe’s rank to show her teeth, she cannot help but grin when she hears the Lord’s terrified screams rise up and join with the koto’s song.

* * *

Ⓒ Selphie Ke

Comments

  1. Debs G says:
    April 19, 2025 at 2:42 am
    I really enjoyed this one! The atmosphere and pacing made for a great read. Hope to see more from Selphie Ke in the future.

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The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Teleporter

by M. J. Pettit

April 25, 2025

There are two unspoken rules among experienced long-distance teleporters like yourself. One: Avoid ‘porting through Deneb Stop at all costs. There’s a reason why the least frequented hub in the system is the most overcrowded. Take a longer outward journey. Pay five times the fare. Whatever it takes. Any other option is better than leaving your trace there. Two: Whatever you do, if you ever make such a trip, never teleport through Deneb a second time.

It’s excellent, well-earned advice. Advice you’ve largely lived by, apart from that one, youthful lapse.

Now they’re forcing you to reroute through Deneb Stop. They insist it’s the only available transfer point to Taurus and you’ve an ironclad contract with The Network to record an immersive tour of the nebula. You accept the revised itinerary, reluctantly. Screw the rules. A thirty-six-hour layover on a bustling hub. The odds of running into them are astronomically low. Deneb hosts a couple million residents. You’ll be gone before they know it.

Of course, they’re the first person you see upon materializing and stepping off the platform. It’s like they’ve stood there waiting for you this whole time. Only they don’t seem angry. No, they’re too busy operating the machine. This along with the teleport technician’s uniform they’re wearing makes perfect sense. They needed a job after being abandoned and there’s only one real employer on a transit station.

Avoiding your former self is out of the question, then.

You take a deep breath. This needn’t go terribly. You’ve experienced much worse on the edges of the reachable cosmos. You understood the risks this route carried. On Deneb, alone among transit hubs, they don’t jettison the remnants once the teleport has broadcast all the necessary information onto the next destination. They keep the junk alive. Some sentimentality about the uniqueness of every life.

Time to get to know the person you’ve become.

Except they aren’t you. Not quite. That becomes obvious, if not at first glance. They’re a smidge shorter, thanks to a life lived in a more consistent gravity. The creases around their eyes are etched deeper. They lack that scar on their left cheek acquired during an unfortunate misunderstanding best forgotten. The past decade has treated the two of you differently. You’ve broadcasted your way star to star while your trace remained behind.

You try a bit of that feckless charm for which you’re universally known. “Well, this is awkward.”

“Indeed,” your doppelganger replies, equally cooly. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

Fine. It’s pointless trying to outcharm yourself. Might a touch of sincerity work. They must be curious and you’ve got thirty-six hours to kill. “Listen. We should… catch up.”

“If you want.” They seem decidedly unphased by your sudden reappearance. These kinds of reunions must be a regular occurrence on Deneb Stop, for some remnant or another. “I’ve break in thirty. Meet me at the restaurant on the upper deck. You remember the one.”

You do indeed.

They keep you waiting for two hours nursing a beer and wondering what you’re like. Their decision to remain here makes no sense. They could’ve earned a bit of money and ‘ported out, same as you. Maybe the remnant you left behind did, and then their remnant after that, and the person you’re waiting for is the last in a long line of yous left stranded on this station. The you who eventually gave up and opted to stay. Still, they could’ve booked a slowboat out of here. They could have tried something. Anything’s better than getting stuck.

The possibility of those remnants swarming out there troubles you. Traces of who you once were, reflections of who you might have become. The universe is inconceivably vast and an experienced teleporter rarely backtracks. There could be countless yous bounding about the cold, empty expanse completely ignorant of one another. Countless other buds blossoming into different blooms. Do all those poor imitations share your regrets, along with their borrowed bodies and imagined pasts?

When you’ve about given up, the you from the teleport platform appears without apology or explanation. You suppose you’ve always been inconsiderate of others. It’s one of those consistencies that makes you you. You offer to buy yourself a drink for their troubles. They accept and offload their life story on you.

They seem oddly content for someone left on a transit hub. They speak with strange fondness about their rootedness and the apparent meaning it gives them. Your former self takes great consolation in the conviction that they’re the authentic original and you their pale shadow, riches and fame notwithstanding. Such Denebian nonsense.

“We’ve got a partner and kids?” you ask in half-disbelief. They’ve expressed no interest in learning about you.

“No, I have a partner and kids. You left.”

“They make us, I mean you, happy.”

Your mirror image nods. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Really?”

They got trapped and confused it for a life. The choice sits all wrong. Settling never interested you. Not now that whole galaxies have opened. You inspect yourself in their drab, workaday technician’s coveralls. This can’t make them happy. You’re the same person, right?

“You could meet them. If you like.”

 “The family?”

“Sure.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“Why not?” Their shrug is vague and noncommittal, so like yours. “We’re not so different.”

Up close you’re practically identical, apart from a few fixable blemishes. You could easily fall into the groove of their life. No one ever need notice the difference. Not even yourself after a while.

“Love to.” Your smile always camera-ready.

Maybe a booking error didn’t bring you back to Deneb Stop. Maybe some part of you needed to reconnect.

“Well. Here’s our address. I should get back to work.”

Your device accepts their contact info.

You wish each other well and they’re gone.

Finally.

You pay an exorbitant surcharge to get your ’port out bumped ahead of schedule, leaving without hesitation the next left-behind copy to deal with the consequences of your life.

* * *

Ⓒ M. J. Pettit

Comments

  1. E.D Ambrose says:
    April 26, 2025 at 12:10 am
    Loved this! Great take on the theory behind teleporting.
  2. Louise says:
    May 20, 2025 at 3:17 pm
    omg this is beautiful 🙂

Leave a Reply

You Have Been Murdered

by Andrew Kozma

April 29, 2025

You have been murdered.

This you know, but you want to keep it on the down low.

But it’s messy.  It’s a mess.  It being your body.  Not to mention the clothes, the carpet (but you wanted to get rid of it anyway, reveal the nice hardwood beneath), the bloody footprints, handprints, and the decorative spattering now lacing the walls.

You decide to paint the room red. You take all the plastic grocery bags you’ve been hoarding against Armageddon and a shortage of said-same and use them to dispose of the bloodied clothing, the cut-up carpet, and the bits of your flesh no super glue will hold back in place.

It’s easy at first. The blood and gore is covered up and scrubbed from your body. The open wounds filled with putty and painted over with flesh-toned Clearasil. You’ve checked yourself in the full-length mirror and couldn’t tell that anything was wrong, even knowing where the wounds were. You had to poke them to prove to yourself that, yes, you had in fact been murdered. The prodding didn’t hurt so much as create a small mess, blood leaking through the putty and staining your dress, your favorite dress that you’d worn to give you confidence, now in a plastic bag with the rest of your life.

Tonight is the party you’ve planned for months, and guests are already arriving. What can you say to them? I’ve been murdered. They fill the house with the incoherent noise and spastic movement of the living. You keep the upstairs securely locked. Your closest friend from childhood discretely mentions a smell. You put a roast in the oven. You take hamburgers from the freezer to defrost.

You’re in the kitchen checking on food, your untouched beer on the spotless counter, when you notice the small group of people around you fall silent. Mark asks if you are alright.

You have always hated him.

There is a rough grinding as you straighten back up from looking through the oven’s window. “The roast is doing fine,” you say, but it is close to burning. Your smile causes everyone else to smile in return, in alleviation of awkwardness, even though you have not answered the question, and until this moment you have not thought about internal wounds. The grinding was a broken rib.

You have been covering wonderfully, preoccupied with the party, but now you can’t help but inventory your injuries: a twisted ankle, crushed wrist, bruised temple, dislocated knee, three broken ribs, and a punctured left lung. There is no pain, just an awareness of wrong, and the only wavering of your smile comes not from thinking you will give away the injuries in an unconsidered reaction, but from a suspicion the injuries will show despite your attempts to push them back into obscurity. Someone might notice the jagged end of a rib pushing against the skin or that one side of your chest is flatter than the other (they’re probably too kind to mention something so indelicate).

But then there’s the fear. Someone murdered you. This fear, granted, is not as immediate as it would’ve been if the situation was that someone wanted to murder you. At this point, your murderer should no longer be thinking about you, should assume, rightfully so, that you are dead, and so what point in killing again?

You inspect everyone for evidence. Many people have dirty fingernails, a black residue close to the quick that could be dried blood. A dress covered in red spots. A tie-dyed shirt. None of this helps ease your mind—you know as well as anyone the deceptive power of a shower, a fresh paint job, a new outfit.

The atmosphere grows oppressive. People are still arriving and smoke from the kitchen is causing people to talk. You smile, glad for the excuse to remove yourself from the party proper.

In the kitchen, you turn up the oven as far as it will go and step out the kitchen door into your backyard. The barren garden beds look like graves. Someone has been turning over the soil or stray dogs have found a way through the fence. It has begun raining, but you don’t notice until, looking down at your hands, a finger seems to dissolve. It is only the make-up, but the make-up is all you have.

A voice behind you says that the roast is on fire, that they’re going to throw water on it, that the food for your party is ruined, that everything smells like smoke, that everyone is wondering where you are, that you look forlorn in the rain, that your hair is plastering itself down, that you look like a drowned rat, that beneath your rain-soaked clothes wounds are growing visible, that the wounds are bleeding through the fabric, that they will wait for you inside.

They wait for you inside.

* * *

Ⓒ Andrew Kozma

Originally published in DIAGRAM, Fall 2010. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

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