I sat on a bench on one side of the small, battleship-gray drop bay of my patrol cutter, Oliveria. The last month and a half of the patrol had been mind-numbing, but taking a ship of wasters into custody would soon make it all worthwhile. ...read the rest...
Colin had a white birthmark on his blonde hair and one on his blonde lashes. Blindingly white and full of bones, he looked more like a towering birch than a teenage boy.
“You want to know how white I am?” He whispered over the book stacks.
Ari glanced at the librarian, then followed Colin’s eyes under the table. He pulled up his pant leg, exposing a white shin, with white hairs like lice, and a constellation of chalk white vitiligo. Ivory freckles criss-crossed his pale lips.“Your turn.”
Ari flushed early Spring green. A rising tide of orange flowed across her thighs.
Drug companies marketed Neuro-Dermo Spectral Emotive Response as a breakthrough in effective parenting. Administered while still in utero, babies emerged expressing their feelings in a brilliant hue of colors. Red for angry, green for lonely, blue for sad. Parents could meet the emotional needs of their children. Better still, label the emotional needs of their children. Equip their children with emotional self-awareness years ahead of what was previously possible.
“This could drastically reduce the number of kids on the autism spectrum, cut back on bullying, launch the next generation into a compassionate phase of humanity!” The doctor preached to Ari’s mother.
“Mood skin,” she echoed, and held out her arm.
In the Nurse’s office, Ari cradled a wet compress against her swollen cheek. Colin stumbled in. Dark red blood dripped from his nose down his snow white chin. He winked at Ari. “Like a virgin on her wedding night.”
Ari blushed hot pink. The bruise on her face crackled blowtorch green.
With guidance, the irrational impulses of early childhood make way for more rational thinking. In this way, mood skin would fade as children developed more sophisticated verbal and social abilities. By age seven, it was guaranteed to disappear entirely.
Rare side effects, such as a progressive loss of pigmentation, mainly vitiligo, were seen in a negligible percentage of clinical trials.
In an even rarer side effect, some children did not outgrow their mood skin at all.
Colin tormented every lab partner until the chem teacher had no choice but to re-partner him with the last available student, Ari.
“Took him long enough,” he sniffed. “Don’t you ever talk?”
Thin blue clouds rose up her neck and painted her jaw.
Colin stretched his bone-white fingers out on the black resin table top. “I suppose if my skin said as much as yours, I might shut up from time to time. But not likely,” he added with a grin.
Sunlight shone through the side of Ari’s eyes, refracting streaks of color onto Colin’s fingers.
Already born with decreased melanin synthesis, Colin was shackled with the next phase of the mood skin side effect, vitiligo. This progressively covered his body, sucking up drops of pigmentation from his skin, leaving behind patches of white. Like splatters of bleach on milky white linen.
In study hall, Colin watched Ari across the table. His pale blue eyes, the only color left to his face. “You’re like a kaleidoscope. All the pieces are the same, but every time I turn around, you look different.”
Bright purple bloomed on the bridge of Ari’s nose, and flowered out over her face toward her ears and hairline, dissipating like ripples in a pond.
Colin snorted in surprise. Ari smiled and dropped her gaze.
As Ari aged, and her emotions grew more complex, so did their expression through her skin.
When kids screamed taunts, she turned pumpkin orange. When they scratched, bit and pinched, she cried streaky green tears.
The day they broke her nose, she bled a rainbow.
Colin rolled out of detention and found Ari by the lockers. “Hey, check it out, I can change colors too,” he said, pointing to a fresh black eye.
Brick red lines dragged down her cheeks.
“I put the other kid in the infirmary,” he dismissed, “don’t worry.”
Her skin glowed pale pink with golden sprinkles.
Colin lifted his skeleton-white fingers to her face, awkwardly tucking a tuft of hair behind her ear, and grinned. “We look like a before and after picture of an Easter egg.”
Her eyelids flushed deep magenta-red.
Ari’s mother sent her to behavioral conditioning. EMDR trauma treatment. Electroshock. Subjected her to sensory deprivation chambers. Hormone therapy. An array of medications. Nothing stemmed the tide of her adolescent mood swings. Or the tandem spectacle on her skin.
By fifteen, Ari’s mother sent her away to a high school for troubled teens. The money from the lawsuit paid tuition in full.
Colin walked Ari to trig. Sickly green blotches covered her face. “What? Do we have a test today or something?” Light yellow sparkled from the upturned corners of her mouth. Colin pursed his lips. “Damn it…”
The first reported death came from a town outside of Duluth, Minnesota. Some eighteen-year-old girl in a grocery store slipped into an epileptic seizure. Spasmed in a light show of color and died before the ambulance even arrived.
A few days later, a twenty-year-old boy on a double-date suddenly bloated blue and white as a corpse and suffered a fatal stroke.
Then a sixteen-year-old in Connecticut erupted in boils. Oozed colorful pus like puddles of gas and died from staph shortly thereafter.
During Assembly, Colin batted a boy’s head about until he finally vacated the chair next to Ari.
Ari glared at Colin. Dark charcoal sank down her forehead, plunging her eyes into sharp shiny blackness.
“Maybe you should get meaner,” Colin said defensively, “After all, it’s not the angry albinos who are dying.”
Ari blanched as white as Colin. An atomic fallout of white ash.
“That was a stupid thing for me to say. Hey,” he said, jiggling her elbow, “hey, don’t be like that.”
Anti-psychotic medications, guaranteed to dull the senses, flooded the market. Homeopathic remedies, colorful as candy, filled the pharmacy shelves. Yoga ashrams, meditation retreats, and Zen training centers, promising to calm the maelstrom of emotions, wait-listed folks well into next year.
Then a Swedish research team developed a risky new procedure to remove the amygdala portion of the temporal lobe. Recipients became indifferent to affection. And danger. Lost their ability to determine whether they liked or disliked a person they’d known forever. But they lived.
Mood skin babies flocked to Stockholm by the plane load.
In the high school cafeteria, Ari choked on a grape. She turned bright red, then purple. Colin leaped over the table, swung behind her and thrust his fists into her abdomen.
The grape ejected. Her body went slack. And Colin felt her back shake with silent sobbing. No one else seemed to notice.
He tightened his arms around her and pressed his face into her neck.
Ari’s mother sent her links to articles, pamphlets, testimonials, all espousing the benefits of the operation.
“A lobotomy,” Colin said flatly. “You really want them fixing you? Again?”
Indigo blue lines appeared along Ari’s lashes. Etched inky designs between her eyes and decorated her questioning brow.
“You look like an old scroll,” Colin said quietly.
His white fingers trembled as he brought them up to her face, tracing the flowery dark swirls. “Like the Declaration of Independence.”
A light projector spun through her eyes.
When Colin kissed her, his lips felt amber warm.
Memory of the kiss murmured through Ari’s bones. The heat inside Colin’s mouth. His long fingers around her skull.
Halfway to her room, her knees buckled.
Swelling with light, color rose to her pelvis. Pooled in her hips. Surged up her spine. Blinded her with sequins and glitter. Pressure built in her brain and burst through the crown of her head.
For one brief moment, she was a circus canon exploding with rainbow confetti.
Then her empty skin fell to the floor.
After the janitor swept up the hall, and all the kids assembled in the auditorium to hear the news, Colin broke into the custodian’s closet. He ransacked the trash bins and gathered armfuls of confetti, stuffing every last scrap into a white pillow case.
He buried his face against the pillow and wept, until the color from her body bled into his.
When Colin relived their kiss, he remembered pressing his nose to her cheek and squeezing his eyes tight. “For once, I’d just like to live on my own terms. Even if it means dying. Wouldn’t you?”
She brought her lips to his ear, and for the first time in her life, whispered:
“Yes.”
Karin Terebessy is a yoga teacher and mother who writes when time allows. Her most recent science fiction can be found in Stupefying Stories, Daily Science Fiction, and also in a big pile next to her desk.
Illustration: Reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” as body painting by Danny Setiawan, (c) Dnystwn at en.wikipedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
October, what a month. People in this world are so fascinated with their “holidays” that they set aside any remaining good sense and judgment they have to allow for fun and festivities. Fools. They make the tasks of the underworld disgustingly easy, even more so than in the days of the plague..."The Van Helsing Women's Shelter," by Aaron DaMommio
I answered the door myself, as I always did when the shelter had visitors after dark. The gaunt man on the doorstep swept aside his cloak with one hand. “I am Nikolai,” he said. “I haff come to take Lucy home.” More than his emaciated physique, the power of his stare gave him away..."Tech Support," by John Oglesby
“Excuse me, young man?” Oh great. I was just about to level-up, now this. I finally get a 15-minute stretch of mindless zombie-killing fun, and grandma has to bring me back to reality. “Young man, I was told that you’re tech support?”..."The Roads to Hell," by Larry Hodges
Toby stared at his ticket: Bus 666 to Hell. After a lifetime in politics, always with the best intentions, this was his reward? The last thing he remembered were chest pains and falling to the ground..."Hunger Gamesmanship," by John H. Dromey
Late one evening, the sound of fluttering wings disturbed a suburbanite who was sitting in his easy chair, reading a book. The man got up to investigate, quickly assessed the situation, and then yelled at the top of his lungs..."Edvard Munch," by Robert W. Hobson
Sebastian Kane flew across the second floor of the mansion like his ass was on fire and his head was catchin’. His blue shirt was torn and bloody, his jeans were rags and equally as red, his chest would need an entire spool of thread to put back together..."Till Death Us Do Part," by E. N. Loizis
Jennifer stared at the man sitting across from her. “Excuse me, what was that again?” “I’m a vampire.” “You’re a vampire?” “Yes.” “As in—dead?” “We prefer the term undead.” “As in a drink-blood-sleep-upside-down-live-forever-kind-of-thing?” “In a nutshell.” “Any other tidbits I need to know about?”..."Back From the Dead," by John Lance
The hunchback reminded Cassius of his first servant, Grimly. The gorilla-like-arms, heavy brow, and dull eyes; it was as if Grimly had returned from the Abyss. Cassius supposed that’s why he agreed to interview Erogi in the first place..."The Pro Turned Weird," by Stephen Lickman
Dr. Edward “Eddie” McDaniels knew that if there were two things that went together, it was horrible weather and revenge-obsessed undead. And that night, the weather was positively crappy. Wave after wave of heavy, autumn rain crashed against the sliding glass door. In the center of the living room, Eddie waited..."A Failure to Communicate," by Phil Temples
On a morning in late October, the alien stepped out of his spaceship into the bright morning sun in the Boston Commons. For all intents and purposes, Gomph looked like an oversized porcupine. At 60 kilograms, he stood nearly one-and-a-half meters tall..."Disclaimer," by Bret McCormick
TRANSACTION COMPLETE **PLEASE READ THIS FULL DISCLAIMER BEFORE CLOSING** Thank you for pressing the “Accept” option on the previous page and legally completing the transfer of ownership of rights and obligations of authorship in the work of fiction entitled My Five Minutes in Hell (MFMIH), penned by Howard Phillips Derbury sometime in ..."The Thing About Analyn," by David Steffen
In retrospect, I should’ve realized there was something bizarre about Analyn much earlier than I did, certainly before we’d been dating for six weeks. But I was a college freshman, barely away from my overprotective mother, and eager to live life..."Fulfilling," by Joy Bernardo
I’d been born and raised in sunny Florida, so isn’t it ironic that the one thing I fear most in life is a night-stalking bloodsucker? I’ve spent many nights staring out my bedroom window at eyes glaring back at me from the trees. My friends and family think I’m crazy, of course...
"Many times book sequels are either let downs that show the original work was just a fluke, or a far better story that diminishes the original work. Happily, Scout's Oath is neither... it is a wonderful continuation of a thrilling story-line that not only stands by itself as a fantastic and fast-paced action thriller, but also extends and gives delightful background and "back-story" to Scout's Honor."
"Swashbuckling fun! Scout's Oath picks up where Scout's Honor left off, with more adventures of David Rice, Princess Callan and a motley crew of allies, enemies, and other characters. This one brings new high-tech challenges to bear on Princess Callan's low-tech world, but as always, the stalwart David, Princess Callan and their friends and supporters bravely jump into the fray to defend it. Full of honor, bravery, love, and a great sense of humor, this is an excellent follow-on to Scout's Honor. This is a great read for the whole family—with characters you care about and that you can identify with. Read Scout's Honor first, then this one. I'm looking forward to the next one!"
Members of the Tri-City Literary Writers Group sipped green tea and waited in the farmhouse’s spacious kitchen. They’d been together for five years and recently switched their meeting location from a coffee shop to this rural dairy farm, after reading a newspaper article. This was their third meeting and they were excited.
Seen through the large windows over the twin sinks, the gray sky threatened rain—a clammy morning transitioning to a muggy day. The women occupied three of the six chrome-legged, cracked vinyl chairs that surrounded a matching laminate-topped table. It was a large kitchen with old white enameled appliances. Blue cabinets covered in generations of paint loomed on opposite walls, broken only by the sink windows. The kitchen’s back door served as the house’s main entrance. Like most farmhouses, the front door was only used for weddings and funerals.
Tiffany Roberts, the writing group’s fourth member, was home with a migraine—though group leader Madison Fairchild suspected Tiffany objected to the farm smell and was making an excuse. Madison sympathized to a certain extent, but the earthy odor of manure, urine and rotted hay was part of the experience…the total Bovine Artistic Therapy™, as praised in the newspaper article.
Madison had winced at the odor as well but after a short time she no longer noticed it. The trick was not to forget to shower and change immediately after therapy. Poor Tiffany had gone straight to a wine-tasting last month and, though no one confronted her at the event, she heard about her “Farm Scent” afterwards.
Phaedra Alexander, the raven-haired young performance artist of the group, shifted her tea from hand to hand, sliding the cracked ceramic mug back and forth. “What do you suppose is taking Lydia? Do you think the herd’s out of balance?” She cast a furtive look at backdoor and the mudroom, the cleanup space between the door and the kitchen. It led to a dairy barn some twenty yards out from the house. In the barn were the twenty cows that weekly provided the group with bovine truth; authentic limbic responses to their writing dilemmas. The herd’s holistic honesty challenged the group’s sincerity and centered their writing. The cows fertilized their imaginations.
Madison placed her hand on Phaedra’s flannel-covered forearm. They all dressed down for the sessions; jeans and work shirts…despite being well-heeled college grads. Lydia always provided Wellies, tall rubber boots. “You know Lydia needs to settle the cows,” Madison said and gave Phaedra a pat. Madison, known as Maddy or simply Mad, was the oldest member at fifty-six. She’d once been a gymnast in college but no longer exercised…or denied herself food. She had first read about Lydia’s farm
Judith Berman cupped her mug in both hands and sipped the tea. “I expect to get through a lot today. My first chapter is so scattered. You would not believe how I’ve been looking forward to this session.” Her gaunt face seemed out of place below her wavy red hair. She was a business attorney, and their newest member. Even in jeans and a work shirt she looked slim and sharp. Writing was her chosen creative outlet and she made sure everyone knew it. “My publicist set a book signing date for next October,” she added.
“That might be a bit ambitious, Judith,” Madison cautioned. “You don’t even have a publisher yet.”
“Or a first draft,” Phaedra added.
“We’ll see what the cows say,” Judith replied. Madison regretted asking Judith into the group but Tiffany’s attendance had become spotty over the last year and Phaedra’s recent performance successes had boosted her artistic confidence to near unbearable levels. Professionals like Judith usually dabbled in writing and were eager to accept an older and wiser author’s writing advice. Not in this case.
The back door opened and Lydia stomped in, pausing at the wire boot cleaner to scrape caked manure. She was big and muscled from a life of hard work. The dairy farm had belonged to her father and would have passed to his two sons if either had wanted it.
“The girls are ready, ladies.” By girls, Lydia meant the cows and by ladies she meant the writers. She flipped her long brunette braid back over her shoulder. Her face was broad and blunt. At forty she’d resigned herself to living alone and making her farm profitable. “Bovine Artistic Therapy” was her own invention. She came up with it after reading about a horse ranch that had made “Equine Artistic Therapy” pay off.
“The morning milking was a little off, but I’m thinking the girls are excited about today’s meeting,” Lydia said. “There is definitely connectedness in the air—a lot of body energy in the barn. It’ll be a productive session for sure.”
Maddy, Phaedra, and Judith made appreciative noises. Anticipating the first session of the day always excited and focused the group. Lydia had learned this and played the group’s buttons. “The cows were telling me they feel there’ll be definite breakthroughs today.”
Phaedra pumped her arm. “Yes! I knew it.”
Judith sniffed, “Sorry, Phay, but I think they were picking up on my first chapter.”
Lydia held up a cautionary hand. “Bring discord and selfishness into the barn and the cows will know it. Nobody will get answers.”
The warning had an immediate affect. All three writers nodded and Judith looked, if not embarrassed, at least mildly contrite. Having done the therapy thing for over a year now, Lydia enjoyed the control she could wield over these women and had to remind herself to stay within bounds. The three Tri-City authors were but one of five writers’ groups that paid for her cows’ advice and inspiration. Lydia smiled inwardly and doubted she’d ever grow tired of her role as a sage cow interpreter—a kind of doctor of Delphic dairy dialectics.
“Okay, then,” Lydia said. “Are we all focused and ready to face the herd?”
The women agreed they were. Lifting key phrases from equine therapy literature and replacing the word “cow” for “horse,” Lydia had advertised her bovine therapy on the Internet and was amazed at the response. Creative guidance, life coaching, and big-animal-emotional-healing were all trendy activities that paid big money. Lydia had always chuckled when she’d read about similar programs and considered it mumbo-jumbo, but the dairy economy was on the ropes and if people would pay good money to hug her cows she wasn’t going to refuse them the chance. Who was she to deny the creative process?
“I hope they’re seeing the future today. I’ve got some very, very important questions,” Judith said as a way to explain her earlier gaffe.
Lydia thought a moment. Personally she had no illusions about her Holsteins. Cows were cows: stupid beasts, lovers of routine who led dull lives of child bearing, milk production, and ultimately were turned into Big Macs. She felt little attachment to any of them. “I believe this weather has them a bit on edge, but that means the herd has turned inward. You’ll get good answers about character development and relationships today. It’s a good day to ask about plot and resolution.”
Satisfied, Judith smiled.
Lydia clapped her hands. “Okay, then. Shall we get at the truth, ladies?”
The barn air was redolent with cow effluent. Lydia loved words like “redolent” and “effluent.” They sure beat stink and manure. She was picking up quite a vocabulary working with writers and just thinking in terms of three-syllable words made her feel better about this new enterprise. She milked three times a day and had accustomed the cows to being questioned mid-morning, before they filed out to the pasture. Cows were sensitive to change and Lydia rejected several suggestions that the writers roam free in the pasture to commune with her Holsteins. For one thing, cows could kick. And cows would eat practically anything, not a good habit when writers seemed prone to leaving pens, note pads, and cell phones everywhere.
“Let’s spend a moment centering,” Lydia said. They walked up the middle of the barn alley separating the cows and stopped to bow their heads for a minute. Bare electric bulbs lit the shadowy interior. Left and right a line of cow rear ends protruded from the stalls. Most of the cows were still feeding and paid no attention to the group. The barn was an ancient wooden structure with a peaked hayloft and a red paint job with white trim. Lydia had installed steel stanchions in place of the former boxy wooden stalls, but the place still had a closed-in primitive cave-like feel. The low, cobwebby ceiling of rafters seemed to compress the cattle odor despite the electric fans running at the doors. Lydia had worried at first that writers would be put off, but to her surprise many of the woman writers felt the barn’s dark oppressive atmosphere was like a womb.
Lydia noticed a Holstein arching her back and grabbed Judith’s arm, pulling the writer away from a healthy gush of urine. “Judith, I think you’ve been chosen to go first.”
Judith smiled. “This one?” She pointed at the cow that had nearly drenched her. Lydia nodded and Judith stepped to the animal’s broad side. Placing both hands on its flank, the writer closed her eyes in concentration.
“All right, then,” Lydia said and let a moment pass. She then said softly. “Okay, she senses you and is ready to tell you the unvarnished truth—what you need to know.”
Judith rubbed the bristly cowhide and talked to the cow. “I can’t seem to get out of chapter one. Every time I think it’s perfect and try moving on I reread it and start changing things. I want to finish my novel in the next three months, in time to be reviewed and slotted as a best seller. What should I do?”
Lydia had trained her groups to wait patiently for answers, which often gave her time to frame a generic response if nothing specific came to mind. It also gave the cow a chance to physically react to the writer, which reinforced the whole bovine part of the therapy. Indeed, the Holstein shifted its stance and Lydia emitted a satisfied, “Ah ha.”
Judith’s eyes popped open and looked eagerly to Lydia, but Lydia held up a hand, telling Judith to wait, implying the cow was not through considering her question.
In the beginning, Lydia had stumbled on her cow replies, sometimes missing the mark, sometimes hitting them dead on. She’d learned that providing direct, specific answers like: “Give your character a reason for why she quit her bank job to become an astronaut,” or “Tell your readers the story has shifted from Duluth to Bermuda,” was the wrong way to go. She had to embrace the writer, not just their work. With experience she learned not to critique but rather concentrate on what the authors needed to hear.
“Okay, Judith,” Lydia finally said. “You felt the way she shifted her position? She’s telling you to shift your expectations. She says you’re worrying too much, spending too much time on your beginning. Trying to perfect that first chapter is unrealistic, especially if you don’t know the rest of the story. Her moving around was her way of telling you to leave the first chapter and move on.”
Judith patted the cow affectionately and spoke with emotion. “But it’s so hard. I want it to be right!”
Two stalls down, a cow bellowed. It had finished its feed and was ready for the pasture.
“You hear that?” Lydia said. “The herd knows what you’re going through, but they are telling you the truth. Move on. They know you can do it. Put chapter one away and start chapter two.”
“But…”
At the end of the barn a cow stomped its hind leg. Lydia smiled. The girls were working with her today. “Hear that? There you have it. No buts, Judith.”
Judith sighed heavily, but it was a sigh of acceptance. She leaned into her cow and gave her a hug. “She’s right. I’ll lock the first chapter in a drawer.” Placing her forehead on the cow’s back, Judith said, “Thank you.” She gave the cow a teary hug and Lydia put an arm around the writer.
“Trust her, Judith. She knows what’s best.”
Phaedra was next and as she settled on the cow across from Judith’s, Maddy took Lydia to one side and whispered, “It’s just amazing, Lydia. Your cows told her exactly what I’ve been telling her for months.”
“The cows don’t lie.”
“It’s incredible,” Maddy added and squeezed Lydia’s arm affectionately. “Your cows have brought this group together—given us focus.”
The rest of the sessions went smoothly, with Phaedra gaining valuable insights into the script for her performance piece and Maddy getting help with her novella. Lydia let the cows out to pasture and the writers retired to the kitchen to recap, make notes, and critique last month’s writing. As the water was set to boiling for another round of tea, Lydia stowed the Wellies in the closet and watched the writers clustered at the table. The tension she felt from them earlier was gone and they laughed and joked as they took out pads and pens.
To a one, they were professional women, college educated and city-bred. That they listened to her was amazing, but then they weren’t listening to her, they were listening to her cows. To Lydia it made no sense when she thought it through. They all must be brighter than that. They paid good money for advice she’d scrounged from a few used fiction-writing books. She couldn’t help shaking her head every time she thought of it. The only rational explanation Lydia could come up with was that smart people needed to let their brains go on vacation from time to time. It was the only way she could describe it.
“Lydia,” Maddy called to her. “Could you clarify what the cow told me about my plot twist?”
“I’ll be right there,” Lydia said and adjusted the flame under the kettle. Through the screen door, she heard the distant lowing of her herd. They were settling in for a quiet afternoon of grazing.
_________________
As an assistant organizer of Minnesota Speculative Fiction for the past ten years, Terry has led critique workshops, participated in readings, and conducted writing presentations. His latest non-fiction project is a book based on the stories told by little library book exchange keepers. Photography and making weather vanes are his two other passions.
