"The Saints are Coming"

THE SAINTS ARE COMING
By Curtis C. Chen

The platoon waited, lying flat against the dirt slope as the sky darkened above them. Billy pushed his palm into the ground, feeling the damp soil. The enemy was bringing a storm. They always brought weather. They weren't exactly subtle.

"Weapons free, boys!" he called down the line. The soldiers responded with a chorus of clacking noises, chambering rounds and disengaging safeties.

Billy looked around just as a bolt of lightning seared the valley, painting the silhouette of someone coming up the hill. Billy shouldered his P90 and jammed the butt into his armpit, hard, until the soreness there burst into pain. They'd run out of caffeine and glucose three days ago. He tried to focus his eyes.

Shuffling noises approached. The soldiers flanking Billy turned and lifted their rifles over the sandbags.

"Messenger!" came the voice, just before a boy in camouflage fatigues stepped into the light. "Bravo Company messenger for Sergeant Armstrong!"

"Stand down," Billy said. Lightning stabbed the ground, closer than before. "Get in here. You're staying until the storm passes."

"Maybe even longer," somebody muttered as the messenger climbed into the trench.

"Milo, I will cut off your tiny hairless scrotum!" Billy shouted. A few boys chuckled. It was a ritual.

The new boy held out his message with shaking hands. Billy took the plastic card, verified the bar code, and passed it to Jackson, the radioman.

"What's your name?" Billy asked the messenger.

"Private Michael Thibodaux, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir.'" Billy frowned as Thibodaux wiggled a loose tooth with his tongue. A baby tooth. "How old are you?"

"Everyone fights," Thibodaux recited.

"Sarge?"

Jackson held up a deciphered display film. His round eyes looked even bigger than usual. Billy read the message and caught a whimper before it left his throat.

"Platoon!" Billy called. "Circle up and switch to infrared scopes! Eyes on the treeline!"

"Who is it, Sarge?" one of the boys asked, moving closer.

Billy hesitated, then said, "Francis Assisi."

"We're fucked," Milo said.

"I thought EPA napalmed all the animals around here!" said another boy.

"Yeah," Billy said, "I guess that didn't stop him."

"What, zombies again?"

"This isn't the city. We've got room to fight." Billy pointed to Thibodaux. "Now somebody get him a weapon!"

"Oh, my sweet Rapture..." Milo sang. "Halle-fucking-lujah."

More laughter. Rituals kept them sane.

Something boomed in the forest. Billy swung around, his heart racing. The wind blew a smoky odor--almost like barbecue--into his nostrils.

"Anybody see anything?" "Trees are moving--" "Oh shit! Ten o'clock! Ten o'clock high!"

The saint stood fifty feet tall, towering over the treetops. Flying, flapping shapes followed him and circled his head. The beatific glow of his skin illuminated dark smears on his friar's robes. His huge, watery eyes found the platoon, and he gestured with one massive finger. The flying things descended.

"Cover! Cover!" "Are those birds?" "They don't got no feathers!"

"Fucking miracles," Billy grumbled. "OPEN FIRE!"

Their weapons barked. Saint Francis of Assisi roared, and the corpses of wolves obeyed him.

It started raining then.

an open letter to jra

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for your kind words regarding 512 Words or Fewer.

With regards to your admonition, I pledge that I will do my best to not suck, and to achieve my stated goal of posting one story per week. If, at any point, I fail to maintain this standard, please feel free to remark upon whatever you may perceive to be my shortcomings as a writer and/or heterosexual male.

And if you think you can write better flash fiction yourself, well, bring it, punk.

INSERT EMOTICON HERE

Cheers,
~CKL

Inspired by Spam

Yeah, I guess I'm going to get a few comments on this one.

I started writing "October Surprise" back in July for a Weird Tales writing contest. I didn't finish it in time to enter the contest--couldn't come up with a satisfactory ending. Only later did I remember Raymond Chandler's advice: When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

The spam subject line which inspired the story was "McCain says he is a young man trapped in old body." I swear that I was not influenced at all by this Onion article.

I admit the body-switch plot device is a bit of a cliché, but it was fun to imagine how each candidate might react to such a predicament. Not that I know anything about either man. I mean, I shook both their hands when they visited Google last year, but I'm not a touch telepath or anything. I'm a writer. I tell lies to strangers for money. And the pay's not great, so I might as well use my imagination and enjoy the first part.

Audio: "October Surprise"

Music: "too quiet (instr.)" by oldDog from ccMixter, licensed under Creative Commons.

My friend Raj, who is currently taking voice acting classes, had some good feedback for me on this so-called podcast. It's been five years since my own training, and I've forgotten a lot. Feel free to point and laugh. I don't have a director or engineer to do that during the recording process.

I pretty much set myself up to fail with the character voices here. I mean, it's hard enough doing non-caricatured impressions of McCain and Obama, but then I have to go and specify that they each speak in their own cadences, but with the other guy's voice. Thanks a lot, self. Maybe next week's story will feature, I don't know, aliens that speak with two mouths at once. Then again, that might be too repetitive, since this week's story is also about politicians. ZING!

"October Surprise"

OCTOBER SURPRISE
By Curtis C. Chen

Barack watched himself in the mirror as he picked up the phone. It was strange to see that other face staring back at him. It was unnerving to see the unfamiliar body doing what he did.

He dialed his own cell phone number, the one that only his wife knew. It connected after the second ring. He heard the soft hissing of a hotel room air conditioner in the background.

"This is John McCain," Barack said.

Another noise on the other end of the line--a sigh of relief? "This is Barack Obama." It was bizarre, hearing his own voice but not his own speech--the rhythms, the pronounciations, all wrong.

"Thank you for serving," Barack said. It was the first thing he had thought upon waking, when he realized what the pain in his arms was. "I had no idea."

The man on the phone made a dismissive noise. "That was a long time ago."

"So," Barack said, "I'm guessing it wasn't your people who did this."

"No," said John. "If we had, we would have switched you with someone else."

"Unless something went wrong."

"I don't like conspiracy theories," John said. "Can we start by figuring out what we're going to do right now? Today?"

"David has my--your schedule," said Barack.

"I know. You're giving a speech. That isn't going to fly."

He was right. They each had their own way of addressing an audience. "Just follow the teleprompter. Tell them you didn't sleep well. They'll think it's fatigue."

"You trust me not to sabotage you?"

"I think this is what's commonly known as a Mexican standoff."

"Okay," said John, "I'll do the best I can, but if this thing lasts more than a day..."

"What if it lasts forever?" asked Barack. He found it strange that the sudden thought didn't frighten him.

John exhaled. It was a heavy, tired sound. "I sure hope it doesn't. I hope this is just some higher power making us walk a mile in the other man's shoes."

"Or maybe it's like the parable about the two men and the camel race."

"Don't think I know that one."

"A race in which the slower camel wins, but each man has to ride the other man's camel?"

A pause. "Are you calling me a camel jockey, sir?"

Barack found himself smiling, then laughing out loud at the face in the mirror. The whole situation was ridiculous. On the phone, he could hear his own voice laughing, too.

He heard a cracking sound behind him. He turned in time to see the hotel room door shatter inward, broken by a steel battering ram. Four men rushed in. Not Secret Service. They were dressed in black fatigues, wearing gloves and balaclavas.

The man in front raised a pistol and pointed it at Barack's--John's--face.

"What was that noise?" asked John.

"The punchline," Barack said.

He dropped the phone and raised his arms as high as he could. They really weren't that uncomfortable, once you got used to them.

Conceived in Winter

My wife and I both have birthdays in October. Mine was two weeks ago, and hers is next week. People sometimes ask us if the gems in our engagement rings are our birthstones, but they're not.

"Birthdays" was my second story published at 365tomorrows. The plot was inspired by Einstein's twin paradox, but I got the tone from Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry." I think the mashup ends up being slightly more than the sum of its parts.

Audio: "Birthdays"

Still working on the background music. If you know any artists who would be willing to donate some podsafe ambience, please let me know.

I listened to last week's audio post again and realized I'd gone a bit overboard with the voices; i.e., using accents and other funny stuff to distinguish between characters. It's okay on The Simpsons, but not for most narration work.

"Birthdays"

BIRTHDAYS
By Curtis C. Chen

When Stacy was twelve years old, she celebrated her father's thirty-third birthday. It wasn't actually his birthday. It was two weeks before his birthday, but he was leaving on a mission before then, so they had to have the party early.

Stacy thought the party was boring. There were a lot of grown-ups there, drinking smelly drinks that bubbled like soda but tasted bitter. She knew because she stole a sip from her father's plastic cup. He was talking to another grown-up at the time and didn't notice.

"It's only sixteen light-years," he was saying, "but we're not sure how hard we can push the new stardrive."

"And you got that relativity stuff to worry about," said the other grown-up. Except he didn't say "stuff"--he said a bad word.

Stacy ran into the kitchen to find her mother. She was hunched over the sink, alone, her shoulders twitching.

"Mommy?" Stacy said, tugging at her skirt.

Stacy's mother turned to look at her. Her eyes were red, and her cheeks were wet.

"Ready for your bedtime story?" she asked, smiling.

"I'm not sleepy," Stacy said.

"Okay, come on then," her mother said, taking Stacy's hand as if she hadn't spoken.

"Mom," Stacy said. "I said I'm not sleepy."

Her mother squeezed Stacy's hand even harder.

***

When Stacy was sixty-four, she celebrated her father's fortieth birthday. She barely recognized the man who embraced her as the waitress maneuvered her wheelchair into the restaurant.

"My little girl," he said, his eyes glistening.

The waitress brought a plate of food that Stacy wasn't allergic to. She toasted her father with apple juice. She felt tired halfway through dinner, but pinched her arm under the table to keep herself awake.

After all the other guests had left, the waitress brought a glass of warm milk for Stacy and a cup of coffee for her father. The coffee smelled good.

He asked about Stacy's mother, about how his family had been over the last half century. Stacy told him that her mother, his wife, had remarried. She'd waited after the explosion, when everyone thought her father's ship had been destroyed due to a stardrive malfunction. She'd waited four years, but she couldn't wait forever.

"She never stopped loving you," Stacy told her father. She showed him the family photo that her mother had kept until she died, and which Stacy still carried in her purse. It showed the three of them at the beach, sunburned and laughing. He cried quietly.

When they left the restaurant, Stacy's father helped her into a waiting taxicab. He noticed her coughing and asked about her health.

"I'm old," she said, forcing a smile. She didn't want to tell him about the cancer.

Four days later, Stacy got a call from the space agency. They had found her father dead in his hotel room. He had overdosed on sleep pills, washed down with a bottle of whiskey. They said he hadn't felt any pain. Stacy knew they were wrong.

The note read: "No parent should outlive his child."