Tripping the Tale Fantastic Read online

  “HOWARD COUNTY POLICE, MAY I HELP U? GA” Each letter was typed slowly. Jessie could tell they hardly got TTY calls.

  “THIS IS JESSIE SWEETWIND OF COLUMBIA. I FOUND WHAT LOOKS LIKE A SEVERED EAR WHILE OUT RUNNING THIS A.M.” Boy, it was easy to lie on the TTY. “THOUGHT IT MAY BE CRIME EVIDENCE. WANTED U TO KNOW ABOUT IT. GA” Suddenly she slapped the side of her big old gray TTY. Too late! She realized she could’ve run back to where she found the ear and simply dumped it. Directing the police to it over the phone would’ve avoided any confrontation with them. She kicked the stout leg of her machine. The printout advanced to the next line.

  “UR ADDRESS, PLS? GA”

  “5340 SILVER BROOK WAY. GA”

  “WE’LL DISPATCH SOMEONE TO UR PLACE WITHIN THE HR. GA TO SK”

  Jessie replaced the receiver, made a gun handshape, and aimed it at the telephone. BAM! She went to the bathtub to give it a good scouring. She took her running clothes out of the hamper, sprinkled some water over them, and threw them on the floor near her bed.

  The fire was getting low so she went outside to the woodpile. Before taking a log out, she took out the paper sack and set it on top of the logs for the cops to see in plain view.

  Much to Jessie’s surprise, the two police officers who came to the door were tall, lean, imposing women, one being African-American. She wore abstract, tribal-looking earrings that dangled from her free earlobes–the unattached kind. The white officer had on simple pearl studs pierced into her lobes that were attached.

  Jessie felt short and fat in her pajamas and bathrobe. She pointed to the bag outside and opened the sliding doors to let the women through.

  The policewomen looked at Jessie sitting by the fire and said something to each other that she couldn’t pick up from lipreading. They were probably already suspicious that she hadn’t said a word and wasn’t staying outside to explain the entire situation to them. If for some quirky reason they decided to arrest her, Jessie thought that the first thing she would go for would be the dangling earrings. Create a distraction by ripping them off the ear lobes and making a dash out the sliding doors.

  They looked into the bag and dumped the ear onto the concrete. How odd that the ear bounced a few times before landing faced down. Heads or tails? Jessie tried hard to suppress a giggle. The white policewoman turned over the ear with a stick and jabbed at it a few times. She held the bag open on the ground and flicked the ear into it with the stick. As she closed it the other officer turned her head sideways and talked to her shoulder. Weird. Why was she talking to her shoulder? When she turned a little, Jessie could see a walkie-talkie mouthpiece fastened there. She turned again with her shoulder hiding her lips.

  Jessie held her hands out to the fire and rubbed them together. They still felt cold. Her stomach quivered. What was her neighbor thinking hearing these officers’ voices and the sliding door going back and forth?

  The African-American policewoman stopped listening and talking to the walkie-talkie and spoke softly, her mouth close to the other officer’s ear. Why? They were outside. The door was closed. They knew Jessie was deaf. Both glanced inside toward her.

  They opened the bag again. Both looked in and nodded their heads, muttering a few more things to each other while looking through the glass again at Jessie. When the officers approached the sliding door, she wondered how these women would read her her rights. Jessie stood up and opened the door for them to let them in. She stood in the doorway and took a quick look outside to be sure nothing was in the way.

  The African-American policewoman came over to her. The tribal earrings swayed and sparkled, catching the light in the living room. They were renditions of oblong African masks. How far she had come, Jessie thought. From the beginnings of man, to slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and now a police officer in her own right. Jessie took her hands out of her bathrobe pockets.

  The officer took out a notepad to write something. Her fingers were long and slender. Well-manicured. Jessie held her breath.

  “It’s probably a piece of pig,” the woman wrote. “People sometimes have pig roasts for Thanksgiving. A dog, cat, or raccoon most likely carried it off and dropped it where you found it.” They thanked Jessie for the call and waved goodbye.

  Jessie Sweetwind sat down in front of the fire and looked at the note again: “piece of pig.” The fire spat an ember. She kept rereading the phrase. How strange that the woman’s handwriting was so sloppy and unfeminine. She was so pretty and had all that power.

  ***

  TAKING CARE OF THE CHILDREN

  Lilah Katcher

  The village was calm and quiet that night, blanketed with snow that glittered under the street lamps. The matron opened the door to the long dormitory of the orphanage, surveying the rows of beds for any sign of movement. The window cast a rectangle of moonlight over one row. All was still.

  She had received the letter last night, the answer to her request for more money for this year’s food budget. The house was full, and they barely had enough to last another few weeks. Winter had come early with the first snow in the first week of November. The annual party greeting the holiday season was tomorrow. If she could save funds by cancelling the party, she would, but they couldn’t afford to pay the fees for last-minute cancellations. Besides, the party was the time that people came from the town and elsewhere, and at least one or two families would leave with the idea of bringing home a child in time for Thanksgiving or Christmas. At least that had been the case for the last several years; the usual numbers adopted had almost doubled the year before. Last year had been difficult too, almost as bad as this one, but they had managed to scrape by all right in part due to having fewer mouths to feed after the annual party. She supposed they could make it work again this year.

  If the children ever wondered why the most difficult guests of the orphanage were among those who got adopted the year before at holiday time, they never asked. But then, the little ones never thought of one another as “difficult,” did they?

  Closing the door, she walked back down the servants’ stairs to the warm kitchen. The cook had finished her cleaning and was putting out the kettle and utensils for breakfast preparation the next morning.

  The children would not go hungry this year or any other, if the matron had anything to say about it. Her eyes lingered on the large kettle that could be used to cook oatmeal or stew for one hundred souls. Last year she had come up with enough meat to stretch through December. The children had eaten happily enough, though the cook, gaunt and thin as she was, wouldn’t touch the food herself.

  They would make do again.

  “Good night, Ma’am,” came a soft voice.

  The matron’s gaze found the weary eyes of the cook. She nodded.

  The cook’s gaze dropped, and she hurried out of the room.

  Yes, the matron thought. She and the cook would make do. And there would be beds to fill in the new year. The matron cut herself a slice of bread and allowed herself a thin spread of strawberry jam. She then cleaned the long, sharp blade, transfixed for a moment as she watched the water sweep bits of red off the knife and down the drain. She ran a drying cloth down the blade and held the point of the knife to the slot in the knife holder.

  A faint shimmer on the blade caught her attention. She paused. From that angle, in the bright moonlight, she saw in the blade a hazy reflection of children, still unmoving in the sleep of the dead. She slid the blade into its holder, plunging the image into darkness.

  Her lips curled in a grim smile. With a final glance around the kitchen, she nodded to herself and left to go to her room.

  ***

  THE TALE OF TWO PRODIGIES

  Jacob Waring

  The Buckland brothers were world-renowned prodigies, famed for their various scientific studies and discoveries. Yet they were better known for their vicious rivalry. Tom was always trailing behind his older brother Jerry, always being outdone and outsmarted.

  For example, there was the time that Tom inv
ented a device that allowed very limited time travel. He was able to send a mouse back in time by ten seconds. Yet his brother improved the device, sent a freshly deceased mouse back to the Jurassic period, and discovered the fossilized remains immediately after.

  Then there was the time Tom painstakingly discovered a miracle vaccine for HIV. Jerry did one better and discovered a cure for AIDS that eradicated the disease, thus making his brother’s vaccine moot and irrelevant.

  Tom devised a scientific theory that would negate the fundamental properties of gravity. Jerry, being Jerry, ameliorated that theory, invented gravitational shielding shoes, and soon after mankind could float on the air. Tom wasn’t upset that it took so much hard work to overturn what was once an unchallenged aspect of Einsteinian physics. He was upset that his brother now had a multi-billion-dollar contract with the top footwear company in America. Anything Tom could do; his brother could do better.

  Tom decided enough was enough. He was sick of his brother getting all the women, accolades, and guest appearances on every hit show. It wasn’t fair that Jerry had won every science category for the Nobel Peace prize. No, he knew that without him, his brother’s success would never have come to fruition.

  Tom would do what no one had yet done: bring back a dinosaur. He couldn’t use time traveling as a method to secure a prehistoric specimen. Tom wasn’t bothered by the ethical dilemma such an act could potentially present. Rather, he feared it could cause a ripple through time that would result in him fading from existence.

  No, he would genetically change a chicken embryo into its prehistoric form. What was the worst that could happen?

  Tom gave his brother a red herring by telling him he was focusing on improving the cloning process that was used on Dolly the Sheep. The distraction worked, as shortly afterwards, Jerry announced to the world that he was in the process of creating a device that could clone specific organs.

  Weeks—months—passed as Tom grew frustrated with his failed attempts of pinpointing the specific genes that would enable the entire embryo to revert from millions of years of evolution. Finally, after a year, a breakthrough! He made progress by silencing the proteins that went into developing the embryo’s beak.

  The embryos showed short, round snouts rather than fused beaks. Tom had succeeded in successfully spitting into the eyes of 40-50 million years of evolution! Next he focused on the limbs and eventually succeeded in producing velociraptor-shaped legs.

  After a few years of development, the embryos went from looking like chicks to looking like miniature dinosaurs. There was only one problem: none of the eggs were hatching.

  While waiting to see if his most recent batch of eggs would have more success, his phone buzzed with a news alert. He clicked on the notification prompt, read the breaking news, and screamed. Jerry was able to clone human organs that were compatible with all those who needed transplants.

  Behind him, one of the eggs hatched. He turned to see a miniaturized feathered dinosaur. Its face was yellow. Its entire body was covered with tan feathers with the exception of its wings which were a hue of blue. Tom recognized the newly hatched creature to be an Archaeopteryx.

  This was it! The moment he needed to finally come out on top of his brother. To finally be the one in the spotlight. Where the ladies would fall all over him, where he could finally appear on Star Trek: Galaxies Beyond and maybe even open a dinosaur safari!

  The possibilities were endless. Of course, Tom simply had to rub it into his brother’s face first. He called his brother, mumbling something about wanting to congratulate Jerry on his recent achievement. Could they meet at his lab?

  Tom arrived at his brother’s laboratory an hour later with wine in one hand and the steel box that held his little feathered friend in the other. They drank, laughed, and acted like caring brothers for once.

  Jerry inquired tipsily about what was in the box. Tom explained, amping up the dramatics, how he defied evolution, and instigated the second coming of the dinosaurs. He kicked open the box, and out came a hen-sized, chubby Archaeopteryx.

  Kneeling, Jerry petted the creature as it cooed, noting that it was cute.

  A vein throbbed on Tom’s forehead as he seethed. How dare his brother act so cavalier about his creation!

  Jerry shrugged, produced a remote, and proceeded to open a door at the other end of the lab that led into an enclosure.

  Out stomped a Theropod, a gnarly dinosaur that was slightly bigger than an ostrich. Its long legs and arms swept across the room and it sniffed at the smaller dinosaur. It promptly ate and gulped down the Archaeopteryx.

  Tom was stunned into silence. His brother explained that he brought the Beishanlong back from extinction. He suspected what Tom was up to and finished long before Tom’s first actual breakthrough. Jerry only proceeded to produce cloned organs as he grew tired of waiting for his brother to catch up.

  Enraged, Tom charged at Jerry; he couldn’t once again be outdone, outmaneuvered like this! Made a fool by his own brother! He would blame his death on the dinosaur.

  Jerry sidestepped and Tom crashed into the enclosure. The door slammed shut. To his horror, Tom heard the growling of Jerry’s Beishanlong.

  Jerry drank the rest of the wine, serenaded to a deep slumber by the screams of his disemboweled brother.

  ***

  STARTING FROM SCRATCH

  Kris Ashton

  Peering around to make sure he was unobserved, John Smythwick carried a brown paper bag across the parking lot, got in his car, and shut the door. He tossed the paper bag on the passenger seat and took his mobile phone from his pocket. Blinding sparks reflected off the letters that spelled BRAYSHAW BIO-TECH across the building’s front. John flicked the car’s sun visor down and tapped through his phone’s contact list.

  He had entered the name so long ago he couldn’t remember what it was—only that it started with a “D.” He scrolled down until he found it, Davison Enterprises, and made the call.

  The phone at the other end rang once before it was picked up.

  “You have something?” said a man’s voice.

  “Something huge,” John said, trying to sound cool and impassive like the stranger he was speaking to. “The fastest fatality I’ve ever seen. It affects the adrenal glands and red blood cells. The rate of replication—”

  “You have seen it in action?” the man said.

  “With my own two eyes. More than once.”

  “Human subjects?”

  “Not yet, but it was engineered such that the species shouldn’t matter. Trust me, when you see it in action you’re going to—”

  “When can you deliver?”

  John thought quickly. “Six-thirty this evening.”

  “Very well. Payment will be made on delivery. Do you remember the delivery point?”

  “Of course. I’ve driven past it five days a week for the past two years.”

  “Call if the plan is compromised.”

  The stranger hung up in his ear. John put the phone back in his pocket. He took two calming breaths and removed a sandwich from the brown paper bag. His knotted stomach wanted nothing to do with food, but John knew that having low blood sugar could be dangerous.

  Fifteen minutes later he returned to the lab, waving his pass at the sensor for the outer door. Three fumigated keeper suits hung from wall hooks. Beside them was a small door that accessed the fumigation chamber. John stepped into a suit, drew it over his shoulders, and zipped it up. He pulled on the hood, which had a clear plastic faceplate, and sealed it around the neck of his jumpsuit. A meshed eyelet below the faceplate allowed air in and out, although it had a flap above it that could quickly create a seal if necessary.

  John went to a second door, where he punched in a passcode to gain access. Banks of fluorescent lights washed all but the faintest shadows from the lab. In the center was a long bench upon which sat two microscopes and a range of other equipment. Desks and computer terminals abutted the left and right walls, while at the back wall were rows
of clear plastic cages ventilated with a fine mesh that permitted only air. Inside the cages on the left were half a dozen rats and mice that perpetually sniffed the air and twitched their tiny whiskers.

  The cages on the right were smeared a deep maroon. If a person were to get close enough, he or she might see tiny black insects crawling through matted hair or springing high to seek escape.

  John hated the little bastards. If he never saw another flea in his life, that would be fine with him.

  George, the chief scientist on the project, coded his way into the lab a short while later. He closed the door and sat beside John on one of the two high-backed stools attending the bench.

  “Missed you at lunch time,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the facemask’s thin plastic film.

  “I had a personal phone call to make.”

  “Nothing bad, I hope?”

  “Just family stuff. You know, the usual overblown dramas you get with a kid at uni and an ancient mother-in-law.”

  George laughed. “All too well, I’m afraid. And it’s Dad who has to be there to solve all the problems. Usually with his wallet.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  The real size of it was that John had invented his wife, kids, and mother-in-law shortly after taking the job at Brayshaw Biotech. He would be glad to let them vanish into nothingness again—keeping track of their names and the important events in their lives was much trickier than bio-engineering.

  “Speaking of size, I think we’re ready to try a larger species,” George said.

  On one of the computer desks was a cage that, except for its dimensions, was identical to those containing the rats. Inside, a white rabbit sat timid and confused, its pink eyes absorbing the nothingness of its plastic prison.