Make your opinions count! Vote!! in the October 2012 SDMB Short Fiction contest's Anthology Thread!

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Anthology Thread of the SDMB Short Fiction Contest, October 2012 edition. The poll will appear in about 34 hours.

A quick recap of the rules -

At 9 AM EDT, Wednesday, October 16th, 2012, I posted a link to a photo (found by random means) and also three words (again, obtained by random means) in an auto-reply message at sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com. Writers still have until 10 PM EDT, Monday, October 29th, 2012 to write an original piece of short fiction, no more than 2,000 words in length, based in some way on that photo and those three words. All interested participants will be working from the same compulsory material.

As of the posting of this thread, there will still be ~34 hours left to any interested participants.

Writers - send your completed work to me, preferably in a .doc format, at sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com before 10 PM EDT, Monday, October 29th, 2012. I will verify that it is 2,000 words or less, and I will post it in this Anthology Thread. Please include your SDMB username, and please let me know if your story incorporates any special text such as bold, italic or underline. (These codes do not always transfer directly, and I do want your stories to look right.) I will post the stories as a ~100 word teaser, followed by the rest of the story in a spoiler box, (Click the button labeled ‘spoiler’ to reveal the text, for those not familiar with the SDMB.) with the authors’ names in separate spoiler boxes.

At 10 PM EDT, Monday, October 29th, 2012, a multiple choice poll will be established to determine the readers’ favourite story. I would also ask voters to choose those stories that have incorporated the compulsory material in the most interesting manner. At the end of a week, the poll will close and we will declare a winner of the PoeHenryParkerSaki award.

The poll, once established, will be a secret ballot type poll. No one need ever know how you voted. I would, however, encourage everyone to please vote. You are providing an important source of feedback to the writers.

While we welcome readers’ comments, may I please request that readers hold off until after the poll is established. That way, the first posts in the thread will all be the various stories. After the poll is established, your comments are enthusiastically encouraged.

The compulsory material is -

The Photograph

and the following three words -
Spiral
Assuring
Ungainly

And now, here are the stories that this contest has produced. I want to point out - the authors’ user names are in spoiler boxes at the end of the stories. Please do not be fooled by the fact that they appear in ‘replies’ sent by me - only one of these stories is mine.

Enjoy!

Le Ministre de l’au-delà

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

He is a cold, ruthless son of a bitch who thinks nothing of torturing women, selling children into prostitution, chopping up his enemies into tiny bits and tossing them into the Hudson River to feed the fishes.

Oh sure, in this photo, Dmitri Solakov looks like a frail, weak, ungainly old man; the type of guy who would spend his golden years playing chess in the park with the other old codgers. But FBI Agent Brian Sanders knew better. Dmitri was the head of a NYC Russian mafia gang that dealt with international drug smuggling, extortion, Ponzi schemes, sex trafficking and murder for hire, among other nefarious activities. Make no mistake, Dmitri Solakov is truly an evil bastard.

[spoiler]However, Dmitri was also slick. On paper, Dmitri Solakov was simply a very rich and savvy real estate developer/investor with properties around the world. Despite decades as head of the NYC Russian mafia, he didn’t have so much as a single parking ticket on his record. The FBI had scoured every bit of information they could find and never, not once, could they link him to any of the crimes they knew full well he was responsible for and had masterminded. In addition, nobody in their right mind would ever implicate Dmitri or testify against him - they also knew full well what he was capable of doing, and had done, to those who had become even the slightest threat.

However, it was Agent Brian Sanders who had finally taken a look at the big picture and come up with a plan – a long term, slow process – but one that was now finally paying off.

Dmitri had a son from his much younger trophy wife who died giving birth to him. His name was Sergio and he was a student at Cornell University in upstate Ithaca, NY. It was always assumed that young Sergio, as sole heir, was being groomed to take over dad’s business, but again – no proof. Sergio was a bright kid and was studying Economics. However, Sergio’s true love had always been soccer – which is why, of all the Ivy League schools he could have chosen, he picked Cornell. Quite simply, they had a great soccer team.

In researching Sergio, Agent Sanders noticed that Sergio’s college roommate was a kid from Iowa named Michael Gardner. Digging further, he found that Michael was the son of an Army war hero. Sadly, both of his parents had been killed in a traffic accident when Michael was only 17. Despite this tragedy, Michael was a very bright kid and had had his choice of academic scholarships in computer technology from any of the Ivy League schools, but his passion for soccer had also brought him to Cornell.

Agent Sanders was intrigued by the connection between the college roommates and soccer teammates; one the son of a war hero and the other the son of Russian mafia boss. If he could get Michael Gardner’s help, he might find a way through Sergio to get to his father, Dmitri.

It appeared Sergio was involved with a girl named Elena Koshkov, a gorgeous blonde, a student at Columbia and, not so coincidentally, the daughter of one of Dmitri’s henchmen. Elena would go up to Cornell on some weekends, and Sergio would go see her on his occasional trips to the City.

It was during one of Sergio’s trips to NYC during their sophomore year that Agent Sanders had first approached Michael Gardner at school. He told him he was from the FBI and they need help getting info about Dmitri Solakov, Sergio’s dad.

Michael was not easy to convince. After all, he and Sergio were best friends – they had been roommates since that first day at school and were teammates on the soccer field. Now, after two years and no other real family, they were practically brothers. Agent Sanders had to be blunt – he told Michael of the horrors Dmitri had inflicted on others, and how he could help them bring this evil gangster to justice, assuring him that Sergio would not be implicated. This was also true. To the best of the FBI’s knowledge, Sergio had never done anything illegal – yet – and was simply being groomed to take over for dad.

Michael still wasn’t buying into it until Sanders said, “Your father was a war hero. Do this for him.”

Sanders saw Michael visibly react to that. There was a pause. Michael seemed to think that over and then quietly said, “OK. For my father.”

It took time. Michael was able to find out one of Dmitri’s private accounts due to a bank transfer he had belatedly made for Sergio’s birthday. Michael was also able to log into Sergio’s email and get some names that had been mentioned casually in connection with trips his father had made, and meetings with people in New York. Then he was then able to hack back into Dimitri’s mafia buddies’ email accounts, and that is where the really good stuff was turning up; accounts and banks, activities - plus names of cities and locations where people had gone “missing” after having meetings with Dmitri. Slowly but surely, Agent Sanders was building a file that was finally leading to specifics; names, places and accounts. It was paying off. Soon they would have enough to file charges that would stick and, at a minimum, get Dmitri thrown into prison for life. Plus, they were getting enough info on other Russian mafia members to break up most of the Russian mafia in NYC.

By Sergio and Michael’s senior year in college, and shortly before graduation, Michael finally handed Agent Sanders the info he needed to wrap this up. For a graduation present, Dmitri was giving Sergio use of his private jet. Sergio had asked Michael where he should go, and what he should do. Agent Sanders came up with the idea of the two of them first taking a wild trip to Mexico, and then they would fly back, give their testimony (but don’t tell Sergio that part), and then Sergio could take Elena on a romantic getaway to Europe. Sergio thought that itinerary was a great idea. His father agreed.

However, Michael told Agent Sanders that this was also their big break! Dmitri was actually using the plane first to have some drugs flown in from South America, and there was going to be a money exchange at the airport right after he and Sergio got into the jet and flew away on their trip. They could get Dmitri in the act of committing a crime!

This was the big day.

Sergio and Michael were packed and ready to go. One of Dmitri’s limos had picked them up from school and was driving them to the local airport.

Agent Sanders was already at the airport, with a team of agents spread out, some dressed as mechanics, some driving luggage carts, some out of sight, but they all had a clear view of Dmitri’s private jet as it landed.

Dmitri’s private body guards exited the plane first, and then Dmitri himself exited the plane. Dmitri’s plan was to wait and see Sergio and his friend Michael to get on the plane and go off on their adventure, and then he and his guards would take the limo back down to the city.

Two of Dmitri’s guards started unloaded large crates from inside the plane and put them off to the side, behind the plane, out of sight. Agent Sanders couldn’t see exactly what they were, but from the size of the crates, it did look like it could be a sizeable haul of drugs. One of the guards was on a cell phone and nodded to Dmitri. It looked like whoever was making this exchange was also on the way.

Sergio and Michael showed up. Agent Sanders was surprised at how cool Sergio was to his father – no bear hugs or great emotion – simply a friendly handshake. Actually, the handshake Dmitri gave to Michael looked almost more familial.

Dmitri and Sergio spoke briefly and then Sergio and Michael boarded the jet.

“Remember, hold back – wait.” Agent Sanders said quietly, everyone hearing what he said in their ear buds. “Wait until those two kids are in the jet and it takes off…”

The private jet started to taxi slowly down the runway. It got about 200 yards away, picked up speed and then gently lifted off into the air.

Suddenly, three large, black SUV’s came almost out of nowhere – screeching to a halt. Dmitri’s guards pulled their guns, several large men from the SUV’s jumped out and Agent Sanders and his team were shocked to see the start of a huge gun battle between Dmitri and his men, and the men in the SUV’s.

“What the hell is that!?” Agent Sanders yelled as he watched everything spiral out of control. Suddenly the FBI was all over the scene, bullets flying in all directions. When it was all over, Dmitri and his six bodyguards were dead, and all of the men in the SUV’s were also dead. The smell of vodka was everywhere – that is what had been in those large crates that had been unloaded from the plane – not illegal drugs.

The jet had soared into the air. At Sergio’s instructions, the pilot made a few graceful, circular passes over the airstrip as Sergio and Michael looked out the window and down at the chaos unfolding beneath them.

Sergio watched his father collapse from the gunfire and die. Under his breath, Sergio said, “Die, you sonofabitch, die.” They both saw the piles of bodies and the FBI start to swarm over the scene as their private jet then slowly straightened out and started to rise higher and higher.

“We did it…” Sergio said, and then he leaned over and kissed Michael – long, hard and passionately.

Their plan worked perfectly.

Lovers since that first month in the dorms, Sergio knew it would be suicide if anyone, especially Dmitri, ever found out he was Gay. Elena was the perfect ruse – Dmitri sent her up to see Sergio on a regular basis to pass information; ever cautious, Dmitri never trusted phones or email – everything had to be said in person. At Cornell, rumor quickly spread that Elena was the mysterious, gorgeous girlfriend of that Russian dude. Neither Sergio nor Michael felt the need to correct this rumor. Michael was the nice - but shy, quiet computer nerd, soccer freak. They were the perfect hetero roommates.

Michael had not wasted any time letting Sergio know the FBI had contacted him, and it was Sergio who thought up the plan to free him from the family business and from that bastard father.

Michael understood; he had his own ghosts – his father had been an alcoholic bully, beating his mother and, suspecting his son was a queer, beating him as well. He was driving the family home drunk, in a rage, when he drove off the road – killing himself and Michael’s mother. Michael came out of the accident without a scar – well, no physical scars. When Agent Sanders had said to do this for his father, Michael was more than happy to do so; to screw the government; the same government that gave medals to a prick who beat his wife and kid.

All Sergio had to do is accidentally let that bitch Elena know that Dmitri was smuggling a large shipment of drugs (not vodka), and was keeping the money to himself. He knew Elena wouldn’t hesitate to blab this to the family, who would not take kindly to this greedy maneuver.

Oh, and Dmitri’s hidden $274 million that Sergio and Michael transferred 30 minutes ago to their new accounts in Switzerland and the Grand Caymans will be a nice nest egg when they get to their real destination, and pick up those new passports – and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be Mexico, Agent Sanders. Don’t even bother looking for us there.[/spoiler]
Author - DMark

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Smoke coiled in circles, rising ever upward, graceful and unhurried, as if carrying nothing but good. Blue smoke, carrying memories. And promises.

Barb ached. She hurried on, past the café and its smokers, exiled to outdoor tables in the chill air.

To home, at last, shivering. Some nights, she drank vodka or rye, some nights she drank tea. The evening hours that followed depended on what she poured. Sometimes Barb felt that the decision wasn’t even hers, that she was helpless. Tonight, though, it was the comfort of tea, and there was no sleeping away the dull hours that other people filled with homecoming greetings, dinner, and conversation. In other houses, there would be homework and laughter. She was restless in a silence that the radio or the television couldn’t fill. The night was too long. How then, were the weeks so short? Here it was, Friday night again.

[spoiler]A project was what she needed to fill the hours between five-thirty and bedtime. There were so many things left unfinished, the remnants cluttering up the rooms, so maybe that’s where she’d begin. Pick a project, any project. Make a decision. Don’t waste time.

Well, there was painting the living room. Half done and never finished, the paintbrushes and rollers long grown dry and stiff, nothing but rubbish now. The bookshelves were still in the way of the last wall, and there were just so many books there. Books she’d wasted her money on, when the library card was in her wallet. Books she’d read just once. Books she’d had since high school, and ones she could never seem to part with. Books she’d meant to read. The passages of her life were in the passages on the shelves. Once she gobbled up mystery after mystery, regardless of the quality of the fiction. Poetry and literature. Big bestsellers that promised glamour and escape. Slim volumes of artful prose. Hopeful texts on losing weight, saving money, and learning French.

On impulse, Barb started taking the books down, and walking them across the room to rise in piles against the other wall. She needed to do something. And not run to the grocery store and shamefully request cigarettes at the counter. Keep busy, and don’t think. Do something, and don’t drink. She piled books upon books, until she needed a box to keep going.

All that money spent on books. So many read just once, and hauled around with her in every move she’d made. She poured another mug of tea, turned on the news, and began to sort into keep and go. She’d give some away. Maybe an old folks’ home or the hospital. Be realistic. Will you really re-read a twenty year old mediocre mystery, when there are so many books you haven’t read yet? And the library is waiting.

Tonight she’d finish emptying the shelves and moving them away from the wall. She’d sort through the piles of paperbacks and hardcovers, and tomorrow morning, she’d go and buy new paint brushes and rollers, and more paint. Painting would be something to do while it rained from Saturday morning to Sunday night. She’d finish the room, and put the shelves back, and have only books she loved and cherished resting there. She’d shed books, even if she couldn’t shed pounds or regrets.

There was The Spiral Dance edging out from the pile, a book from ten, or was it twenty or more years ago? The spiral dance of smoke, rising. No wonder the phrase seemed familiar. She didn’t remember when she’d bought the book. She’d never finished it. Just another fancy, discarded. And how quickly twenty years had vanished. It was something to do with witchcraft, a folly of her distant twenties, when she was still searching and still cared, and anything could become real. Baptised Catholic, become a Wiccan. Anything was possible back then. And they were a pretty set of words: witch craft. Women’s words, wise women’s words. If only she could really make magic from her hands and her heart.

After all, it was October: it was everything to do with witches this month, this month of colours that blazed and burned in a sky the colour of smoke. Smoke. Oh, how she ached. She wouldn’t ache in the morning, though. Not tomorrow. There would be no headache, no queasy belly churning, no shame for how much the level in the bottle had gone down since the night before. There could be new starts, even if it was October, and death was everywhere. It was a season for wearing bones and laughing at the darkness. But even death was assuring in a way; it meant there was an end to everything, a final chapter. Like welcome sleep. A time when the lights go out, and time ends.

But it didn’t, really. The leaves turned and fell, the nights were black and cold, but the turning was endless. Spring would come, like it or not.
Yellow leaves chased her down the sidewalk, and a ghost moon slipped behind scudding cloud. There was the smell of wood smoke and new cold in her nose, and orange pumpkins on porches. Some nights it felt as if things were gathering, growing stronger, as if something was going to happen, to change.
Autumn was a season of death, with a darkness that matched hers. Barb liked it, welcoming that shadow in the ending of the year. Maybe she’d pick up that book again and see if there were some handy spells inside: how to eliminate all the filing she was behind on, how to empty her email inbox at the office, how to lose twenty pounds, find a lover, and not miss smoking.

Barb was walking. Ungainly with the twenty extra pounds she found when she quit, she was trying to shed them. At least it was pretty now. The colours of the season meant that time could not be slowed or stopped. But there was such a beauty in its dying. She slowed, looking around, feeling the pounding of her heart. It was an old neighbourhood, and the oak trees were tall and full, arching over the street, gold now. She wanted to fill her eyes with the colours of the trees and the brush, blazing in death against the cold grey sky.

She walked. Nothing in her closet fit properly any more, and she was clumsy with the new burden she carried. It was a weight everyone could see, and she could not hide, no matter how many layers of loose black she wore. In the morning, she dressed in mourning for something lost and gone. She’d turned apologetic, when she wasn’t angry. Apologising to everyone, everywhere, for the sin of being a fat, single, middle-aged woman. How dare she take up space on the sidewalk, at the checkout line, in life? It was easier to walk at night. Maybe she needed a dog, an excuse to be on the October sidewalks alone, in neighbourhoods not her own.
Barb parked the car at the hospital, and paid an extraordinary amount for that privilege. Familiar anger shot through her like lightning as she dug for money and bought a ticket. Where had it come from? Smoking must have damped it all these years. She quit smoking and found a thread of something else twining within her, something dark red. Anger, rising upward just like the smoke she missed. Smoking had dampened it and lifted her sadness.

Sandy from the office, gone the past few weeks, had her baby. Barb had been tasked with dropping off flowers and good wishes. Everyone else was busy with family and plans for turkey dinner. Fill the hours, she’d thought, volunteering. Keep busy.

She’d picked up the flowers and a package of cigarettes, and brought the card that everyone at the office had signed. The cigarettes were in her purse, waiting. When she got home, she was going to go stand outside the back door, and she was going to go back to her old friend in the darkness. Her throat ached for it, and she was tired of fighting.

But everything was confusing. The main entrance had moved, and even the emergency department wasn’t where it used to be. A construction crane rose over the parking lot, and there were signs directing visitors and ambulances to different directions than she remembered.

Barb wandered around, peering at contractors’ arrows and confusing directions. She rode an elevator up and another one down, and went along one corridor after another, but the maternity ward was elusive. She wanted to cry. She hated hospitals. Why had she ever volunteered to do this?

Hospitals had that smell. The smell of Jello and plastic trays and disinfectant and death. They all smelled the same. She remembered walking down a long hallway, losing her mother’s hand. She must have been small. She remembered glancing into an opened door, and seeing an old man covered in tattoos. She didn’t know what they were, wondering why someone had drawn on his skin. He was reaching up to another’s arms, a woman dressed in nurse white. She remembered her mother running to her at last, and pulling her away.

It had been just like this, an endless corridor, both sides filled with rooms, filled with people, with pain. She was lost again.

Being here was like a bad dream. All she wanted to do was deliver flowers to Sandy, but she’d gotten confused by the construction and detours and new wings and temporary signs. She’d wanted maternity, and found mortality. She just wanted to get the visit over with, so she could go home, and have a drink, ignore her painting, and draw that hot smoke deep into her lungs. Sleep would come early, and so another week would be over. But first she had to find the room, deliver the flowers, admire the tiny squalling bit of life, and have an awkward conversation. Then she could go home.

But she was lost. Christ, this was a nightmare. Just typical. She could swear this had happened before.

Of course, it had. That old man with the tattoos. He’d been marked with them, and it had scared her. Well, we’re all marked, she thought, turning the corner. A set of elevators. A sign on the wall. Arrows. Maternity. Marks of our lives, marks of our choices, whether tattooed in ink on our skin, or show by what muscles are hard or soft, and whether we are fluorescent pale or sun tanned, or our hands callused or soft. You can’t hide marks life puts on you, or the twenty pounds you’d found. But with a tattoo, you can at least choose which ones that you want to tell your side of the story. Inking of tattoos layered memory and belief on the skin, living canvas.

Maternity. At last.
Barb walked past the smokers on her way out to the car, shivering in the October night, their skin as thin as dying leaves, wearing cotton gowns and dragging IVs. That will be you, she thought, stinking of death, coughing and helpless.

If you quit that, you can lose twenty pounds. If you quit that, you can do anything.

She dug in her purse, and found the packet. Before she could change her mind, she flung it into the garbage can, and waited for the frustrated tears to come. They didn’t. Neither did the anger.

She dreamed of that old man. She dreamed the man was transformed, the tattoos, black and white line drawings, filled in with vibrant colours, the person in white become an angel of death. She dreamed she watched him die, watched him rise up, and leave the world. There was peace.

Barb woke, sobbing.

Sunday, she painted.

And she selected a stack of books that she’d not read, and books she wanted to read again. There were worse things to have spent her money on. She put them by the chair by the window, and went back to painting. Covering up the old, leaving the walls clean. Barb breathed deep. Tomorrow was Monday. She wouldn’t sleep uneasy tonight, sweat oiling her skin, and the stink of vodka on her breath. She would face the week with a smile, even if it was a false one, and wear it until it was real.[/spoiler]
Author - Savannah

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

‘Can I see the drawings, Grandfather?’ The old man heard the voice, could just about accede. He spent his strength carefully now but he could refuse this one, his only granddaughter, nothing. Weightless but ungainly, he shuffled and moved enough on the hard hospital bed to allow his pyjama coat to fall open, and the girl’s eyes opened a little wider as she gazed on his ‘drawings’, his tattoos.

[spoiler]He lay back, exhausted by the small motion, happy in a small way to give the child something to be interested in. Her father, his son, had left her here to keep him company in what he supposed, hoped, even, were his last hours or days. His son didn’t want to stay, he knew that and couldn’t be surprised or blame him for it. He had been the same when Elena died. Even now, when nothing mattered, that made him sad, the thought of his wife’s last days. She was so frail and small, her strength and life all spent on others, on him and their son. Her black hair turned to white, her green eyes leached of colour, turned glassy and dead. And to see her like that, her mind gone, the egg he fed her smeared grossly yellow on her face as she laughed or cried or howled in outrage at whatever mad fears or fancies had taken her that day… it was too much. He had never loved her, she knew, but he had been fond of her and he had struggled to help her in those terrible last weeks.

At least he wasn’t like that. His memory was intact, more or less, for better or worse.

‘What’s this one?’ the girl said, and he couldn’t answer, but he knew where she was looking, at the inside wrist, the spiral tattoo. The last one, the one that took him back, back to a past that he never left.

He can see Andrei leaning over, the crude needle in his hand, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘It’ll hurt, yes?’ he is saying, ‘more than the others. The wrist is a sensitive place.’ He nods, full of eighteen-year old bravado, well used to the cutting and stinging now after a dozen tattoos, all executed here in this tiny berth. ‘You are a little afraid?’ says Andrei, and the boy shakes his head, a smile playing on his lips. Andrei always asks this and the answer is too true to need saying, the answer Andrei had provided the first time they spoke; everyone is afraid. The tattooist’s strong hands slide up and down his arm, and he listens to the thudding from the engine room below even as his own heart starts to speed up. ‘Ready?’ Andrei says, moving the needle closer, and he nods, as silent and ungainly as ever in the older man’s presence. Andrei smirks and nods and the boy’s jaw tightens at the now-familiar sting and bite of the first penetration. Andrei looks up, smiles, wipes the bead of blood away, then cuts again and again, etching the spiral into his flesh,his strong hands holding the boy, keeping him still and calm.

The boy spends most of his time watching Andrei himself, his strong hands and clear eyes as he works, but he also pays attention to this design, the spiral, taking shape from nowhere on his wrist. It is like a knot, complicated, strands looping and turning in and around each other, no beginning and no end. Andrei had suggested it to him, said it was different from what every other sailor had, that there was no charge, it would be a present from him. It would be a reminder of Andrei, for after the war ended.

‘And this one?’ Back here, now, the girl was looking at his chest, at the biggest tattoo. It was kind of her, or maybe she knew no better, to try to engage him in conversation. He had always been a quiet man, a bit odd, people had said, and now that he had, perhaps, things to say, he couldn’t speak. Since he could not answer, he tried to smile. The girl didn’t notice or care, just frowned in concentration at his chest. Two heads, etched clumsily, the first tattoos Andrei had cut into him. He had turned up at the tattooist’s berth without a clue of what he wanted, just desperate to look more like the other men, more like a proper sailor. Six weeks on the Marat had made him no friends but he was starting to realize that there was more to being a sailor than wearing the uniform, and this was his first attempt to throw himself more fully into this new life, one chosen for him by fate and conscription.

‘Who told you I tattoo?’ Andrei says, lying on his bed, hardly looking up. ‘It’s against ship rules, you know.’

‘Everyone,’ the boy replies. Andrei laughs at that, clear blue eyes full of light. Tattooing is theoretically against the rules, but there are few men on the ship who don’t have some designs on them and everyone says that Andrei did the best work.

‘I suppose there’s not much point in denying it then.’ He sits up and turns round to face the boy fully. ‘Do you have something to pay me with?’ The boy nods, mute again, feeling foolish now, like a child in front of a teacher. He pulls out a pouch of tobacco, a ration he hasn’t used, unable to stand the stuff. ‘That will do,’ says Andrei, reaching for it. ‘Thank you very much. Now, what can I do for you?’

Andrei just nods when the boy shrugs. Apparently it isn’t unusual for men to turn up and leave the choice of design in the tattooist’s hands. As he opens the wooden cigar box which holds his needle and inks, he talks: ‘Your first should be of yourself. Over your heart, just here,’ and he turns and lays his hand on the boy’s chest. ‘Yourself, always first and foremost,’ he says, and the boy nods, sure there was something wise in the man’s words. Andrei nods also, taking muteness for agreement, and he prepares his needles as the boy strips his shirt off.

‘You are a little afraid, huh?’ he says, and the boy shakes his head furiously. Andrei snorts. ‘Listen,’ he said, rubbing the boy’s arm. ‘Everyone is afraid,’ and with that he makes the first cut, pulling back immediately to allow for the boy’s automatic jerk. He laughs as he readies his needle again. ‘See, it’s not so bad.’ The boy watches the needle carefully, ready now for the bite. ‘Not so bad,’ Andrei repeats, ‘but you’d be crazy not to be a bit afraid.’

As he works, the boy watches him his blonde hair and strong neck. Their heads are close, close enough for the boy to smell the other man, a rich, earthy brew of soap and sweat and tobacco. The tattoo is nearly finished and Andrei is wiping blood away from the boy’s chest when the first bombs drop, far out into the sea, but close enough to rock the ship. Nikolai looks up quickly and seizes the side of his bunk to steady himself. The boy stays still, his hands still locked onto the small table in front of him, but he has felt colour drain from his face. He knows he looks terrified and shame uncoils in him. The ship is silent, briefly, after the first attack and all that can be heard is the sound of German Stukas flying away, ready, no doubt, to bank hard and return. The siren kicks noisily into life and the silence is shattered. Still, the two men sit in the tiny berth, one packing his needles and inks away, one frozen, rendered useless by terror.

Andrei, finished with his tidying up, stands and prepares to go aloft. He looks at the boy. ‘You are a little afraid, huh?’ he says. The boy says nothing, can’t speak. But he listens. Andrei smiles, puts his hand under the boy’s arm, somehow assuring him with his touch. ‘Everyone, ‘ he says, ‘is afraid.’ They leave together and go above to help man the guns.

The old man is asleep now, and the girl is bored, looking to see if there is anything to read, anything to do. But the old man’s memories go on as he flits between wakefulness and sleep. That night, and many more, passed and the ship survived. It couldn’t last, though, and there was a mad fatalism among the men which the boy learned to share. He filled his spare hours with trips to Andrei, gathering more and more patterns and, with it, more courage. They never spoke much; just ‘You are afraid, huh?’ and the answer, never changing. Even in sleep, even near death, the old man hears Andrei’s voice, and he mouths the words, and smiles, even as he is back in June 1941, the night the Stukas came for them on the Marat, a hell of fire and flashes and screams, the prow of the ship blown clean away. And he made it into a safety boat, but there were too few and he watched, and watches again in his hospital bed, as men thrash the sea into furious lather, their blood making an obscene paint of it, the ship tipping up and slipping away, massive and black and, finally, gone, lives and inks and needles and Andrei with it.

And that is how it ends, an old man dying, then dead, in a hospital bed beside a bored girl, his mind burned with images of fire and strong hands and blue eyes and love, one finger tracing a spiral tattooed on his wrist, and he is not afraid.

[/spoiler]
Author - The Mighty Boosh

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

“Comrade Doctor!” The orderlies were worried, almost as much over disturbing my lunch as whatever had caused them to burst into my office. The smaller of the two glanced at his companion, but didn’t receive the assuring look or comment he’d hoped for. “Madame - Mistress - Doctor-”

“Comrade is fine.” I said, dabbing the corners of my mouth with a napkin. “What is the problem?” But the orderly had exhausted his bravery. I hadn’t been at the facility long enough to learn all their names and they weren’t sure of my nature. All they had were the rumours of my previous work and the new patients in their care. They were used to ailments of a more physical nature.

[spoiler]Gregor, the larger of the two, rolled his eyes up and left, nodding towards the secure section. “He hef another tattoo.” When I’d first met him, I’d thought Gregor was impaired. He was just from the extreme Northwest, a Baltic fishing family leaving his accent almost Norwegian.

“Thank you Gregor, I shall attend.” They waited, unsure until I added. “You may go about your duties.” It was always a jolt, leaving my office, entering the industrial green of the main facility. I took my time, also wanting to observe.

The orderlies were already some distance away. They wore rubber soled shoes which squeaked arrhythmically on the linoleum, not upstairs but towards the staff cafeteria. Gregor appeared to be singing to his companion. “Go ahead and yoomp, yoomp!” He gave a short hah of laughter and hopped and danced his way down the corridor. His ungainly gyrating did not amuse.

I turned and found my way to the stairs and the secure wing. Comrade Matron and Comrade Physician were arguing heatedly and quietly outside the nurses’ station.

“I’m telling you, none of my staff would leave a needle behind.” Matron insisted.

My subordinate tried to soothe her. “These people are very cunning, I’ve seen prisoners making ink out of-”

“Prisoners, Comrade?” Matron asked, half a beat before I would have. “This is a hospital.”

“Of course.” He replied smoothly, with a smile that said he was merely humouring her. “A hospital.”

I stepped forward, letting them become aware of my presence. “A facility.” I corrected. “Our duty is to neither imprison, nor treat, merely to observe and report.”

Neither of them dared argue. The matron bobbed a curtsey, the physician nodded curtly. They had both argued against my department coming into their . facility. Most of their patients had been moved on to other hospitals before my people had been moved in. Except for the one man who had been there all along, the man we were in fact discussing. Matron still looked ready to argue, so I assured her. “He doesn’t need to steal things. I am sure that these ‘tattoos’ are merely hysterical stigmata.”

“More sedation, then?” Asked the physician to Matron’s scorn.

“The drugs don’t work, they just make it worse.” There was a moment where we both stared at the woman. Such an outburst was unheard of. She turned on her heel and strode away.

I thought I heard her humming, but it may have been the heating coming on.

Comrade Physician frowned briefly and dismissed her from existence with a shrug. “So, Madame Comrade, you believe he thinks these pictures onto himself?” The look he turned on me was trying hard to portray honest enquiry. It almost succeeded.

“I have read the reports.” I said. “He had left my old facility long before I arrived. The experiments we used to conduct were not . scrupulously controlled.” I had to be careful; criticism from me would be reported even if not from the matron. “We were competing with the Americans, of course.”

He nodded, and I could see that this old chestnut had crumbled his reservations.

“So, we took people we thought showed psychic ability and we tried to develop that. Drugs, electroshock, sensory deprivation and overload. Many were damaged.”

“And now we care for them.” He said quickly.

“Of course.” I smiled without a trace of warmth. “The results seemed promising at the start. Remote viewing was especially well received by the authorities, but ultimately .” If the viewing were of the past, was that not just memory? If the future, pure guesswork?

“Nothing?” Like so many men of science, he wanted to believe in something more.

“Nothing useful.” Even if something seemed accurate, it would be uselessly after the fact before we could verify it. And there was always the danger of confirmation bias, that we confirmed things because they fit the viewing rather than because they specifically had been seen. “Much we cannot explain.” Much we would not explain since the explanation was gross cruelty or negligence on our part. I sighed deeply, my assuring, confident manner all used up.

“Like him.”

“Yes.”

He’d been removed from the other facility; even the worst of the others feared him. It was believed that isolation was the key. Perhaps that was correct, but it had been decided far too late. We could now trace his influence in a great spiral of echoing contact. Some of the staff at the previous facility had recovered, but most were beyond any help.

There were no further reasons to delay. I walked into the ward with a professional smile. “What can I do for you today, Mr Lernov?”

The walls in this room were cream coloured, washable surfaces. This was the worst part of the whole place for me. To know that they expected blood, vomitus, fecal matter and worse, to be smeared, sprayed and flung. A single cot with a rubber sheet, to complete the humiliation of a man who had never been less than fastidious in his habits.

“Give me hope, Johanna.” He was the only person here who used my name. I found myself wishing he meant it. “Please help me, I’m falling.” Indeed, he staggered. An ancient, bald, harmless man. I steadied him, noting again how the signs of a youthful vigour were still apparent on the aged remains. He was still barrel-chested, still clear of eye and if his skin sagged, well he had the years to justify that.

“I know the last one.” I said. “It’s from an American, Hank something.” It had come over the airwaves, scratchy and wavering. The latest thing from the forbidden broadcasts.

He smiled and kept hold of me, not really interested. We had long ago confirmed that the tunes and words were real, sooner or later. “I have a new picture.”

“I heard. Do you think it is from now, or the past?” I kept to the long established policy that there were no other options. “May I see it?”

He smiled once more. Both of us ignored the orderlies as they came into the room and stood discreetly by the door. Comrade Physician stood closer, I could see his reflection in the walls. Lernov removed his shirt, raising his arms so I could see the newest face. “He looks like a sailor, with that hat.” I observed.

Lernov shook his head. “Imagine.” Then he mimed someone shooting a gun. “Not yet, he’s in Hamburg.”

“A German?”

“No, English.” He sighed. “So much that I do not understand.”

Whatever he experienced - whatever we caused him to experience was changing. The older tattoos were more detailed, though blurred and distorted with age. One of the first, a crown covered his lower back from hip to hip, was rich in complexity. “Like his music.” Lernov had said, though no amount of research had discovered a musician called Mercury and 'Queen" was hardly a name to bandy about in the post-imperialist state.

Now the pictures were mere outlines, a few features sketched in, but none of the elaborate detail. His health was failing and I could do no more than ease his passing. Officially of course. “My dear, who may as well jump?” The pictures appeared rarely, usually heralding another outbreak in the people around him. And the people around them and so on.

“Hah, we will both be gone long before them.”

I leaned close, whispering. “The large orderly and the matron, but not the physician or the small man. Why?” The affected would sing their lives, becoming less politically acceptable, harbouring dangerous ideas and dangerous ideologies.

He took me into a dancing pose, waltzed me around the room and whispered back. “They have no song in their heart.”

“And what will happen to those who do?” Before answering, he spiralled me out to arm’s length and spun me back close, all in perfect 3/4 time.

“Slave to the rhythm. Freedom.” He shrugged, making it seem a part of the dance. “Do you like the music?”

It was a Stravinsky waltz, long declared bourgeois. From the moment he’d taken me in his arms, I’d heard the swelling strings, my feet had moved to the one two three. I had no more control than Gregor or Comrade Matron. “I like all of it.”

“It needs a channel.” He said, looking at me with exhaustion, grief and resignation.

“Ah.” I gripped his hand. I could hear echoes of other tunes behind the waltz. I understood words that talked of history long gone, and yet to be made. Love and sex and loss and joy.

He smiled and the energy of the dance became too much. One surprising, ungainly step and I held his full weight. The orderlies sprang forward, guiding Lernov to the cot, while I kept hold of his hands, assuring him that there would be no medications, no shocks to the chest that would keep him in this world one moment longer.

His smile was blissful. “Voulez vous?”

“Uh huh.” I ignored the questions looked at me from the others. Lernov’s grip loosened, the beating of his heart slowed and stopped. I snapped my fingers until someone thought to hand me the discarded shirt and I could cover his face.

Back in the haven of my office, I hummed the waltz. There was a dark spot on the back of my wrist, perhaps the beginning of a semi-quaver.[/spoiler]
Author -Maggenpye

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

I was halfway through my bodywork session with Sasha when the knock came. “I’m sorry, my friend, I’m afraid I may have lured you here under false pretenses,” Sasha said, as always, eye-rollingly fond of speaking in old movie clichés. I opened the door to find myself staring back at a small group of sharply dressed men in black suits with sunglasses, earpieces, and deadly serious expressions. Sasha had always been somewhat of a b—

But lest you get the impression that I was half naked getting an intimate massage from some voluptuous Russian model, in truth I had been giving the massage, and Sasha was half naked. Russian yes, but no model, Sasha Radinsky was a bald, crinkly old man with no body tone and an assortment of questionable tattoos.

[spoiler]Despite being a mature mid 30s man myself, I had never been able to completely subdue my inner teenager from giggling over what I thought of as a woman’s name, but which was a fairly common name for Russian men, being applied to this cantankerous old fart.

It didn’t help that a few years back I had invited him to a party at my brother’s house, where Sasha proceeded to get under my brother’s skin so much that he had made a comment to him, something along the lines of his personality closely resembling that my brother’s ill behaved mangy adopted stray dog.

My brother had been rewarded with a sucker punch and a chipped eye socket for his efforts. But the dog had gotten renamed after Sasha, and every time I heard his name I had to compose myself to not crack a grin thinking about the accuracy of my brother’s comments. Yes, Sasha had always been somewhat of a bastard. And sometimes, like his namesake, he could be a real bitch.

So, no more party invites. But I still saw him for private sessions. I had several personal projects I was trying to finance and the money was too damn good to give up. A few years before I met Sasha, I had done some consulting work for an experimental military project intended to research whether alternative forms of physical and mental training such as meditation and yoga would be of any benefit to troops or special forces. Although the project had good results, it was still rejected as being outside the entrenched mindset of those in command.

Still, it had afforded me the bonus of a security clearance that now allowed me to make top dollar as a masseuse and bodywork instructor for various higher ups in the Capitol, including Sasha, though exactly what position he held or what department he actually worked for had remained a mystery to me. And business had recently started to take a sharp upswing due to all the stress the policy makers were encountering after the poofs invaded DC.

Again, not to give the wrong impression, there was no sudden influx of strapping young men with a predilection for one another cramming the busses to Washington for some rally, march, or fabulous party. Indeed, that might have afforded me to opportunity to reverse the tide of my currently dusty social calendar. No, these poofs were extraterrestrials.

Poofs, so called because the top of their heads resembled a sort of round, white, wrinkled puff ball. Poofs, poof balls, puff heads, and the like were not the end to the wide assortment of colloquial terms they had collected among our population after their arrival was announced and the slow snippets of information about their appearance and mission were revealed to the public. Squids, squid heads, Wilsons, volleyballs, squints, squibs, coat hangers, coat racks, squealers, clickers, were other colorful names they had picked up. I won’t even get into the origin behind “goukan” and the like. There was a brief “Ood” trend too, before all the threatened litigation took the sails out of that notion.

First contact is a funny thing. What should feel like some grand majestic event ends up in reality being Junior High school all over again.

Of course the name they had for themselves wasn’t pronounceable, because they didn’t communicate through spoken language for the most part. They superficially resembled in part large squids or octopods, and lived predominantly in tidal pools, seldom straying too far into or out of the water. Under water they interacted through electrical signals, signing, and touch. Out of water, they also used a series of slurps, squeals, and clicks.

So we had no usable proper noun, and I’m sure simply translating would have resulted in something equally fruitless like “us” or “people”. Their original welcome message and first series of back and forth transmissions had been through a series of makeshift pictographs, so someone on the first contact team had deemed to call them the Kanji, after the series of Japanese logographic characters which their pictograms vaguely resembled.

Sasha sat up, told the men to wait outside, and put on his shirt while I closed the door. "Michael, I have a proposal for you. It’s the real reason I called you here, but since you may be going away for a while, I just couldn’t resist getting in one last massage. You are, after all, the only one who could ever loosen up that shoulder knot. His usual mischievous grin had transformed itself into what I assume was his honest attempt at a genuine disarming smile, and which I had no doubt he was completely unaware that it had been remarkably unsuccessful in settling my nerves.

“I’ll keep it short. The poof, er, Kanji negotiations have come to a crucial point, and we are in need of a special sort of… diplomatic team, and I want you to be part of it.”

“Me?” My mind raced. “I’m not exactly qualified for that sort of thing.”

“Nonsense. I don’t know how much you’ve been following what information has leaked to the public so far, but our friends have various complicated ways of communicating to each other, prime of which involves forms of bodily motions and also touch. Both sides are frustrated with the slow progress involved in the ad hoc symbolic back and forth, and are on board for full contact. And they also have expressed a strong desire for a more formal, and excuse the expression, hands on partnership.”

“So you want me to play “miracle worker” to a group of Helen Keller ETs?”

Sasha lapsed back into his mischevious grin. “Nicely put. I see I’ve had a good influence on you. But I’ll need your answer pretty much right now. Either way, of course, you’ll be sworn to secrecy. I know I can trust you, so I’ve taken the liberty of not making you sign the non disclosure form in advance. What do you say?”

I suppose I should have felt put on the spot, to say the least. And I should be asking all sorts of questions and getting various assurances before agreeing to something so crazy. But the truth was I didn’t exactly have any important personal obligations to attend to, and compared to the various projects I had been saving up to finance, well, they just didn’t compare to this opportunity. Not even close. Still, something inside niggled.

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Secrecy, time commitment. The pay is ridiculously good”

I still didn’t trust him. Sasha was never fully forthcoming, and with Sasha, there was always a catch. But, still.

“I’m in.”

…

Like I said, first contact is a funny thing. It only dawned on me after meeting the Kanji that I had never actually seen any photos or videos of them. The only images that had been released were artist’s impressions, as though the aliens had been witnesses in a trial and the judge had ordered no photography allowed inside the proceedings.

So the impression I had of them in my head was the same sort of airbrushed idealized notion gets of something when reading a novel and having only a tiny bit of cover art to fuel one’s imagination. Anything potentially unsightly or awkward gets smoothed over in the mind.

Reality, on the other hand, was one damn uncanny valley after another. First of all, was the discrepancy between the illustrations and their actual appearance. Not that the drawings were wrong, they were just comparatively stylized. Seeing the Kanji for the first time was sort of like viewing amateur’s attempts at creating photorealistic CGI versions of cartoon characters.

Secondly were the things illustrations can’t even hope to portray. The smells, for one. They weren’t necessarily bad, just new, unusual, strong, and not something conveyed in a picture. But mostly it was their sadly hilarious attempt at mimicking human formality.

They had somehow gotten it into their puffy heads to make some sort of attempt at looking like our higher ranking military personnel. Which I guess to them meant a vaguely humanoid shape, and a stiff frame, neither of which they naturally had.

They had rigged up what essentially was a rolling clothes rack over which was draped a rigid approximation of a one piece uniform, which a hole at the top for their heads to fit through. The wheels were of the sort you get on supermarket carts, and they were only able to move by pushing against the floor inside the uniform with one of their longer dangling tentacles, so their motions were a ridiculous ungainly lurching mess.

Rather than the stately intent, they came across simultaneously starchy, rigid,and oozy, like a salty sailor.

Their attempt at a “national anthem” reminded me eerily of dubstep.

And as I suspected, there were catches. The first was the fiercely competitive nature of the mission. Though we had been brought to the facility as a “team” the aliens were looking for primary diplomatic representative, and all of our training was for the purpose of them deciding who would be the best match.

There were whispers of something else, but I found myself ignoring those thoughts, however, and concentrating on the mission. The training truly was fascinating, and I found myself wanting to be chosen. I had spent months in one of their makeshift tidal pools mimicking their fluid motions, learning to communicate with them, and doing my best to perform with my comparatively awkward limbs the nuances of their beautiful spiraling tentacle dances.

Finally, I was chosen. Tentatively, as were still looking for a final test of compatibility, both in spirit, and also in form. The test was two fold – and each component was equally important. The first was the ritualized ceremony, which would indoctrinate me into their ranks, provided I could respectfully and genuinely complete it to their satisfaction.

The second was that, as I mentioned, they had a more deeply involved variety of communications that just their motions. They had allowed that I wouldn’t be able to replicate their squeals and clicks but those were minor anyway. Their most direct, personal, meaningful, and intimate way of interacting were through slight electrical signals transmitted through the skin. With practice (and I had had just enough practice, sometimes with the aid of certain pharmaceuticals, to be confident I could go through with the ceremony), one could enter a shared imaginative mind space.

I won’t bother with the details of the ceremony, which would be cheapened by a mere verbal description, or of the incredible mindspace I entered, the nature of which couldn’t be portrayed in all it’s wonder and beauty. I’ll get right to the final catch.

I should have known. With Sasha, there was always a catch.

After the ceremony was completed to their satisfaction, during the human part of the celebrations, Sasha took me aside and revealed to me the true nature of the ceremony. It wasn’t enough for the Kanji to have simply a diplomat. For them to feel truly comfortable and trust me completely, I had to be one of their own. And that meant far more than just learning their language and being named an honorary member of their people. I had to be married to one of their own. I had, unknowingly, been hitched to an alien.

Sasha had always been a bit of a bastard.

But as it turned out, this arranged marriage of convenience would end up being an adventure that was more rewarding than any marriage I might have imagined for myself.[/spoiler]
Author - jackdavinci

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

“I had a strange case at the hospital today; I could have used your help.” said Sheena, as she cleared away the dishes.

Piotr gave her a quizzical glance as he set down his cell phone. "Funny you should say; but go on.’

“Well, we don’t know anything about him. He was wandering around Whyte Avenue without a coat, and someone called the police. We can’t understand him, he doesn’t answer us, and he doesn’t have any identification on him. His language sounds Slavic, but none of the nurses can understand him, and he doesn’t respond to their questions.”

[spoiler]“I got an e-mail from Sergeant Miller, who deals with missing persons. He wants me to come in and meet someone they found on the street today. I think it’s the same fellow; I’ll see tomorrow. What can you tell me?”

“It’s as I said, we don’t know who he is. He’s at least in his seventies, probably older. He seems disoriented, we can’t understand him, he has no ID, and we don’t quite know what to do with him. He’s in a locked room right now, because he might be a fairly advanced case of Alzheimer’s. But mostly, we’re trying to figure out where he came from. If our Alzheimer’s guess is correct, he’s at a stage where someone was probably looking after him. It may mean that something’s happened to that person.”

“That all makes sense. Sergeant Miller wanted me to come in and see if I could understand him.” Piotr had a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages from the University of Kiev; he had met Sheena here in Edmonton when he was finishing his research into the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. He was now teaching Advanced Linguistics at University of Alberta; Sheena was now into her second year as a nurse at the University Hospital.

Sheena remembered the strange sight of the man’s ungainly form stretched out on the hospital gurney. At first, she had difficulty restraining him as she gave him a sponge bath, but gradually he had relaxed. His atrophied musculature exaggerated the wrinkles in his skin. The strangeness of his tattoos was made even more extreme; they looked like connect the dot puzzles on a deflated balloon. “I just hope there’s a way we can help him;” she confided “It must be so awful to be trapped inside your own mind with no way to communicate.” Piotr gently hugged her from behind and carried her off to bed.

The next morning, Sergeant Miller shook Piotr’s hand and led him to the locked room. “We’d be grateful for any light you can shed on his situation, Dr. Hutsul.” The man was sitting over by the window; he didn’t react to their entry into the room.

Piotr stood at the opposite edge of the window, but the man said nothing. He tried Czech first, politely saying ‘Good morning’. Nothing. A less formal greeting in Serbian produced no response. He drifted back to Sergeant Miller “Does anyone at the hospital know if he can hear at all?”

Miller shrugged “I don’t know; want me to yell at him from behind and see if he jumps?”

Piotr thought. “No, let me sit here with him for a while; he must have said something to somebody or you wouldn’t have guessed he spoke something Slavic.”

“Are you all right if I leave you alone with him for a while?” asked Miller. “I need to check in on a few things, and maybe it’s that he doesn’t trust cops.”

“I’ll be fine.” said Piotr. “I’m just not sure he’s all there, you know?”

The door closed, and after a few minutes of silence, Piotr pulled up a chair by the window. No reaction; the old man sat still and silent. “Well, this is boring.” thought Piotr, and he hummed quietly to himself.

Suddenly, the man turned, and worked his mouth rapidly. He spoke, but it was as if he was speaking with his mouth full. That might have been the Polish word for ‘lullaby’ - he grabbed at the chance and very politely said ‘Would you like me to sing?’ in Polish. The reply took about thirty seconds to produce and the man’s effort was obviously painful, but the answer was ‘Yes’.

Piotr paused for a moment, then haltingly, sang the Polish Christmas lullaby to the infant Jesus. He stopped frequently, but the old man just listened. Finally, when Piotr finished the first verse, the man said ‘Thank you’.

Only he said it in Ukrainian.

Piotr was starting to put some of the pieces together - it was all but impossible to tell anything useful from the man’s pronunciation. Each word was artificially elongated and over-enunciated, ensuring that his specific accent would remain a mystery. Speech impediment? Medical condition? Piotr didn’t know, but he could at least pass that fact on to someone on the medical staff. As far as dialect went, the man seemed fluently bilingual in Polish and Ukrainian, borrowing freely from each language. This meant this man was probably from Gallicia or Volhynia.

It also meant that if he were in his late seventies or his eighties, he had lived through an awful period of history. Those were both places where, during the Second World War, Germans, Russians, Ukrainians and Poles had all committed heinous acts - mass killings, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide. The Polish side of Piotr’s family had disappeared in those years, and there was no longer any trace of what had once been their small, Polish farming village. His maternal Grandfather had no idea what had become of any of his brothers; Grandfather himself had hidden away on a night in Lviv when the University had been decimated.

Piotr gently said the Polish word for ‘Wife’, half-expecting to hear the word ‘dead’. After a long, difficult pause, the phrase ‘Don’t know.’ came out, in Polish.

Piotr started to ask something more, but the man rushed to the door with surprising speed and vigour, reaching the knob in an instant and pulling as hard as he could. After a minute’s struggle with the door, he started to circle between the door and the window, without taking in any of his surroundings and without paying the least attention to Piotr. The sergeant and a pair of burly male nurses came in, and the old man’s circular route collapsed into a spiral of despair. They held him for a moment, and then led him to the bed. He struggled briefly, then gave way to his exhaustion.

Piotr left the man with the nurses and spoke to Sergeant Miller about the pathetic little he had discovered. Miller sighed “Can you get an address or anything? I have a missing person, but I don’t know who’s missing him or why.” Piotr assured him he would do what he could to help, and report anything he found that was useful.

Next, Piotr was speaking to one of the doctors who specialized in Alzheimer’s and palliative care. Now that they had some idea of what he was saying, it was easier to diagnose his physical condition. The prognosis wasn’t good - the speech impediment and the fact that his lucid periods were only intermittent indicated that he was suffering from an advanced condition of Alzheimer’s. Dr. Robitaille asked if Piotr could make himself available to translate during his examinations of the man. Piotr agreed instantly.

The man had calmed now, and lay still and unresponsive on the bed in the room. Dr. Robitaille suggested they go in and try to start, and Piotr agreed. While Dr. Robitaille framed a question, Piotr stared into the man’s face. He tried to see beyond the signs of age, and imagine the face of a younger man. Impulsively, he whispered ‘Casimir?’, but the man just lay on his side, curled up and slowly rocking back and forth.

It was a week later that the strange man muttered a string of numbers that Piotr recorded. It was the address of a dilapidated bungalow on the north-east edge of Edmonton, the home of Danuta and Andrzej Małcużyński. When the police investigated, the woman seemed to have slipped getting out of the shower; forensics said the body had been there at least a couple of weeks. No newspapers or mail to give any sign that something was amiss. It would seem he had just stepped out and shut the door behind him. Signs were that she had been looking after him herself for at least a year. Piotr was asked to help the police go through the house in the hope of finding next of kin.

It had been foolish to hope that he had found any connection to the missing side of his family, and yet, he could taste the disappointment in his mouth. It would take weeks to go through everything that they found and trace back to where this man had started out - for the moment, he had to be content with finding that they had been sponsored over to Canada in 1995 by a local Polish church which had gone bankrupt and no longer seemed to exist. Their church had been deconsacrated, and was now eight condominiums, offering casual elegance in the city starting at $650,000. There were no children, and no sign as to what had drawn them to Canada in particular.

In amongst the papers were several worn black and white photographs, showing a family group under a cherry tree. The photographs could have been any family, any where, at any time. These could have been the ancestors Piotr’s family had lost, or they could have been the people who had killed them. Somehow, the impersonality of it all was what brought on his melancholy. Meanwhile, the only person who could have shed any light on those people and their shared history was having his mind slowly but inevitably erased by Alzheimer’s disease.

He had spent a couple of frustrating days researching into Andrzej’s life, scanning through websites that started with established fact, followed by purely speculative genealogy, quickly descending into accusation and denial of genocide. After following a link to a particularly nasty site, he deleted his browser’s history, turned off the computer and went to the bedroom.

Sheena was curled on her side, rocking gently back and forth. He stood for a time in the dark, studying every curve of her body. He turned his mind slowly and deliberately away from the hatreds of the past, and stepped toward his hopes for the future.
[/spoiler]
Author - Le Ministre de l’au-delà

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

I woke up with Abigail prodding me in the shoulder, and I groaned. “Oh, Boris!” she said, and let out a long breath. “You’re okay.”

I turned over, and moaned. Every part of my body was aching. “I wouldn’t say that.” But I managed to get to my feet and take a look in the bedroom mirror. I didn’t just look ungainly this morning, I was worse than old - though the tattoos on my arms and chest were vividly black - especially the spiral over the left side of my heart. “I think a complete workup would be in order.”

Abigail nodded, suddenly the picture of professional competence. “Right away, Mister Golovin.”

[spoiler]The workup didn’t take long, but it seemed to sap the life out of me. Abigail was thoroughly competent throughout. She made my favorite breakfast, Blini with eggs and cheese. I waited until we had finished eating before I asked the question.

“How bad is it?”

She looked straight at me. “Pretty bad. I know you’re not fond of hospitals, but it’s my advice that you should see the doctor - tomorrow.”

I couldn’t help raising one eyebrow. “Tomorrow?”

“That’ll be enough - to spare yourself the worst of the pain, all he can do. Today - what do you want to do today?”

For a while the notion that I didn’t have much time had grown around me, but I didn’t suspect it would be this short. “I’ll need to dress and hit the road. It’s a two-hour drive to Greenville. Once I’m on my way, you can take the day off.”

Abigail’s mouth dropped open. “Sir - you may be feeling strong, but I wouldn’t advise you…”

“You don’t need to advise,” I snapped. “I may be dying, but I am still your employer. I need to go to Greenville and see a man about taking care of something after I am gone. You cannot stop me. Are you going to accept that with grace or not?”

I could tell that she counted up to five in her head. “Does it count as ‘accepting with grace’ if I insist on driving you?”

“No, that’s not grace.” I thought for a moment. If Abigail knew what I had to sort out, there’d probably be trouble. On the other hand, if I managed to drive myself off the road on the way to see Mister Wright… then I might as well not have gone. Coming back, it won’t matter so much…

“…But I’ll take it.”

I never remembered a two hour drive as quite so long, or awkward.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question or three, Abigail?” We were just passing the sign that said ‘Greenville 42.’ “Since you’ve intruded on my personal business today, that is?”

“Certainly, Mister Golovin. You were always welcome to say something; I hope I didn’t make you feel like the subject was off limits.”

“Okay. Are you… involved with anybody?”

“Romantically? No.” She drove on in silence for a minute. “I’ve been married twice now, but my first husband died and the second cheated on me repeatedly. Is there a reason you’re interested in knowing?”

There was, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. No woman wants to hear words of love from a dying man, especially not a man who she’s probably going to have to watch over as he croaks. So I mumbled something vague and asked about her family and her childhood, just as if I hadn’t been fishing. I don’t think she was fooled, but she didn’t push it.

Sir Matthew Wright answered his own door, wearing a sharp blue shirt and those black pants that fade into the background. “Good day, Mister Wright. Is it the butler’s day off?”

“Actually, yeah,” Wright muttered. “Won’t you both come in, and who’s your friend?”

“This is Abigail Moore - she’s my personal caretaker and nurse.” I’d asked Abigail to stay in the car while I talked with Wright, but she’d refused, saying that after the stress of the trip, she should keep an eye on me. I thought she was really just curious.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Wright.” Abigail offered Wright her hand as he led us to his sitting room. Wright shot me a look, and I knew he wanted me to give him a better introduction. Since I was here to ask a favor, I went through with it.

“Abigail, this is Sir Matthew Wright, an old business acquaintance of mine.”

“Sir?” she repeated. “As in, you’re a knight?”

“Yes, actually I am,” Wright said, showing his secretive smile. “It’s good to see you, Boris; the landscape hasn’t been the same since you retired. How’s your health these days?”

“Really bad,” I said. “Well… I don’t have much time left.”

“Oh - sorry.” Wright’s dark blue eyes fixed on me. “So - are you here to talk about assuring protection?”

“Yes.”

He waited a long moment for me to elaborate, then got it. “Miz Moore?”

Dammit, did he have to talk so much? He could tell that I didn’t want her to know anything - but maybe he wanted Abigail to clue in, and then say that he’d intended no harm. “Yeah,” I muttered, picturing Wright pulling out my teeth.

“Anybody else?”

“Nobody left.”

“I see.”

I reached into the inner pocket of my jacket and produced a crystal as long as my middle finger, transparent and pale green. “I realize that this is a poor thank you, but it’s all I can offer.”

“A poor price indeed,” Wright said, and shook his head slightly, folding his arms to emphasize that he wasn’t reaching for the crystal.

“Dammit Wright! If our positions were reversed, I’d do it for your wife and your daughter, the butler too, and not ask payment.”

“Yes… you probably would.” Wright sighed. “But I’m not as selfless as you are - and if I were that kind of man, I’d probably be the one dying right now - or dead long since. I cannot undertake Abigail’s protection after you die without a significant favor in exchange, and you aren’t going to be around to keep a promise. Unless you hold a marker of somebody else’s that I’d accept in trade - but I rather suspect if you did, you’d simply ask them this favor directly.”

“Wait a second.” Abigail stood up. “What’s going on? Why are you talking about protecting me? What danger am I in?”

Wright looked at me. “Oh, I’m sorry. She doesn’t know?”

“I’m sure as hell about to know,” Abigail said. “Boris, tell me the truth. Do you have enemies, which might come after me once you’re dead? Is that why you wanted to come here?”

I sighed. “Yes, that’s about it. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I wanted to get you some kind of protection, and Sir Wright seemed my best lead.”

“What enemies, what were you mixed up in? Is this about the Russian Mafia or some goddamn thing?”

Wright chuckled. “No, no, it’s not anybody’s mafia. Tell me, Miz Moore - have you seen any of Boris’ tattoos?”

She glared at him. “Think about it. I’m a nurse. I’ve seen every inch of him.”

“Did he ever tell you what they signify?” Wright pressed.

Abigail shook her head.

“They are the mark of his membership in the secret Order of Rasputin, and the source of considerable mystic energy.”

“Mystic?” Abigail was looking back and forth between the two of us. “You guys believe in magic super-powers or something?”

“Are you up to demonstrating, Boris, or should I?” I shrugged, and Wright rose to his feet, crossing the room, and lifted a short sword off its display hooks. “I’m not a mystic, but my knighthood is - unusual. You might call me a Soul Knight.” And in a heartbeat the blade was bathed in bright blue fire.

“Ahh!” Abigail backed away from Wright, shot me one sharp look, and bolted for the door. Wright watched her go, then put out the sword, hooked it onto the wall, and hurried after her. I stood, but felt my head swim and my knees tremble, so I settled back down, pulled out the phone, and scrolled through the contacts list, wondering who else I could talk to once Abigail calmed down.

It was ten minutes later when Abigail and Wright came back in, together, and I shot them a sour glare. Abigail hurried over to the sofa. “Are you feeling okay, Mister Golovin?”

“I’m not strong enough to chase after a healthy woman in the prime of her life, but I’ll be okay,” I told her. “Steven - I’m sorry to have bothered you, and we’ll be going now. Thanks for hearing me out, and… everything.”

“It’ll be my pleasure to watch over Miz Moore after you’re gone,” Wright said, extending a hand to me.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did she say something to turn you into an altruist, all of a sudden?”

“No,” Abigail said. “I promised to do him the favor, in exchange.” I turned to stare at her. “Well, why not? It’s more empowered this way, after all; it’s my life he’ll be watching over. I’d have accepted your paying for the protection, if you could, since you got me into this mess, but you can’t and I can. I’m doing it; you can’t stop me. Are you going to accept it or not?”

“What kind of favor?” I growled.

“Yet to be determined,” Wright said airily. “Not sexual or otherwise demeaning to her honor of course, I insisted on making that clear up-front. Do you have any other concerns?”

I thought there should be something else to say, but it was out of my reach. “No, thank you. Come on, it’s a long ride home.”

“Must you be going? I could treat for dinner,” Wright said. “Fortify your body for the journey.”

“That would be very kind,” Abigail said, squeezing my hand. “Where did you have in mind?”

The sun was setting behind the hills as we approached suburbia.

“Sir Wright told me a little about your life, sir,” Abigail said, breaking the long silence. “Of all the innocent people you saved, and the monsters that you helped get off the streets for good.”

I sighed. “The human monsters, or the not-so-human ones?”

“Well, a few of both, I guess he mentioned.” Another pause. “Can I ask why you didn’t tell me when I first came to work for you? I mean, not about the magic super-powers stuff, I might not have believed it immediately. But…”

“I intended to tell the caretaker that working for me might be risky,” I admitted. “But when you came to the door - I was struck by your beauty, and hid the truth rather than scare you away.”

“Oh.”

The silence grew thick as she drove up to my house. “Well, despite everything… I’m glad I got to know you, sir.”

I smiled back. “Thanks. Come pick me up early tomorrow. Should we go to Doctor Edmund’s first, or straight to the hospital?”

She thought about that for a second. “I don’t know. Guess we’ll figure it out together, when the time comes.”

I nodded and got out of the car myself, walking down the path through the front lawn needing nobody’s help. In just that moment, I felt I could jump high enough to never fall down.
[/spoiler]
Author - chrisk

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Several explosions lighted the skies over the Maikop oil fields, Andrei was helping his comrade soldier limp away from the destruction, both of them were lucky to be alive.

“Andrei!” said Fyodor looking back as the last charges did go off, “I’m afraid several of the well towers and pipes are still standing!

Andrei began to be assuring, not much left to do when your whole army is running away scared of the German juggernaut pouring into the Crimea and the Caucasus.

“Don’t worry, we did our best, and besides, those Nazi dogs will find out that the wells are also clogged with concrete, those huns will had a hard time getting our oil.”

[spoiler]He was correct, Hitler attempted in the dark days of the fall of 1942 to take over the oil fields of the Caucasus, he managed to take this one that Military engineer Andrei Ivanov and others were attempting to demolish near the city of Maikop but Hitler only had control of it for a few months.

Officially the Russian army was doing an organized and fighting retreat, but Andrei and all the soldiers knew that it was a demoralizing rout, it was more demoralizing when it was taking place in the sea of mud they were ungainly walking towards what was left of the Russian front, at this rate they could be soon with their backs to the Caucasus mountains. Fyodor had a twisted ankle and a bloody head, and was complaining a lot about the rasputitsa (sea of mud), but Andrei pointed out that while it slowed them down, the German mechanized army was even more boggled down in the mud.

The rain stopped just as they reached a field hospital, the medical treatment of the soldiers was one of the few areas the Russians had an advantage then. Most soldiers that managed to get there survived, of course, they were sent to combat as soon they got better, so there was a reason for that quality.

After leaving Fyodor in care of the nurses, Andrei learned that his instructions were to go to help in the defenses of the city by the Volga, Stalingrad.

That city was the perfect combination of military and symbolic objectives, and both Hitler and Stalin knew it, Andrei however only knew that most of his unit members were dying every day and that he could be next.

When he arrived Andrei’s duty was mostly dedicated to keep the underground refuges north of the city from falling apart under the relentless bombardment from the German air force and artillery. Dogs and other animals were reported to swim away from the city during the shelling and machine guns going off, and yet humans like Andrei still went into that meat grinder. For him it was not much due for the love of the leader, but it was now more for the love of the motherland. At least the soviet army could reply with their own artillery from the other bank of the Volga and it was quite a sight when those Katyusha rockets made spirals towards the enemy at night.

Seven hellish months later, the soviet army encircled the entire German 6th army with portions of others inside Stalingrad, by the time the Germans surrendered more than a million soldiers and civilians had died.

The main battalion Andrei was attached to arrived to the dilapidated headquarters of the Germans in Stalingrad, Andrei found some documents that the Russian intelligence officers, who were even feared by the Russians themselves, had left tossed in the floor. It was mostly letters from soldiers despairing after a commander had been called by the German command to go back to Germany just before they would be crushed, even so the soldiers understood and declared that they would continue the fight. There were also some odd notes from Field Marshall Von Paulus, Andrei saved the letters, the notes and other documents as mementos.

The battle of Stalingrad was such a disaster for Hitler and it showed the world that Hitler was not going to win the war, a few years later, it was the Russian army the one that conquered the capital of the Nazi regime: Berlin.

For Andrei it was indeed better to build the bridges over German streams than destroying his own in Russia during the dark days of 1942.

After victory was declared in Europe, the cold war made Andrei hang around in the soviet army and he retired with the rank of Engineering Corps Commander in the 70’s

He still remembers all the ones that sacrificed their lives and how much he changed during those 7 hellish months in Stalingrad, he was not sure what to make of the 7 decades of changes his country had, but one thing was sure, the changes in his body were not welcomed.

Not only are his former comrades dead or dying, but the ideology he was following was dying also; however, many Russians still do remember the sacrifices of the great patriotic war and leave failed ideologies in the past while continuing to celebrate the remaining heroes of the great war.

Commander Andrei Ivanov was the one limping ungainly, he was almost 90 now and his latest gout attack was extremely painful; however, he managed to get to the small hospital on his own.

The young nurse that attended him was worried with the shortages in this small hospital in the small russian state of Adygea, she had to move from room to room assuring patients that the doctor was coming soon, even though on occasion they had to send some patients home.

Andrei got help from the nurse in undressing and to get to bed to start his treatment when she could not help notice his tattoos, big tattoos of soldiers and sailors, with Lenin, Stalin and former or now lost loves engraved in his arms and chest.

“Are you going to the capital of the republic for the Day of Memory and Mourning?” the nurse asked.

“I was, but the gout is almost killing me now, if you can help me get better I hope to be present in the big celebrations in Stalingrad…”

“Volgograd,” the nurse corrected.

The Commander sighted as he knew it was already a lost battle to maintain the old names used during the war, and at the time of the breakup of the old soviet state in the 90’s, he even thought of removing his Stalin tattoo, but it still got the ladies interested… he still thought vainly; but in this case nurse Maria Faustova was not interested on him but on his past, while nursing was her job, she was interested in history and managed to get an interesting conversation going with the Commander, interrupted only by the need to attend to other patients.

While shortages of some items and manpower was noticed by the Commander in the small hospital, there was still progress seen, at least some modern electronics were present and the nurse forgot her portable computer in the room of the general.

Commander Ivanov looked with amusement at the portable machine “Lenovo?”, he thought, sounds Russian but even he knew that it was most likely coming from China, he had some knowledge of computers gained just before he had retired from the army, and he had some time and basic lessons from a few years ago at a library. He wondered if he could get the nurse to check information about the German units mentioned in his old papers as he knew that young folk was very good at finding information with computers nowadays.

It was later in the afternoon when nurse Faustova had time to return to check on the Commander, she found him in bed, somehow he had managed to get his briefcase and was attempting to read some of the old documents he had, he explained to Maria that he was still mulling into giving his papers to the Memorial Museum in Volgograd, but he wondered if his war trophy would be used, unintentionally, to elevate the memory of the nazis.

Maria’s eyes brightened, when he realized what the Commander had in his hands. She had volunteered a few years ago to work at the Memorial Museum in Volgograd and she realized that the papers the Commander had were very valuable, historically speaking…

The Commander was not sure, even after the great conversation he had with Maria, he still mourned the death of his dear friend Fyodor from a few years ago, and he realized how few items he had of him and he was not happy to realize that he had now more mementos of the enemy and they were more likely than his friend’s to appear in a museum…

“I rather burn the whole thing.” He told Maria.

This worried Maria, the Commander was likely to check out of the hospital soon as he was responding well to the anti-inflammatory treatment, but at least she had one more day to try to convince him to offer his papers to the museum.

The next morning an exhausted Maria got to take care of the Commander, he was feeling much better and looked forward to the memorials and parades in Volgograd, when she helped him put on his clothes, Maria brought up the subject of the papers.

“Oh, maybe I will donate one or two papers with the signatures from Von Paulus, but I think I will burn the rest after the celebrations.” Andrei said.

Maria then replied: “Would you like to get some advice from Colonel General Merezhko himself?

The Commander was stunned, he knew the Colonel was still alive but Commander Ivanov thought a Colonel would not get down to this small hospital to talk to who was then just a military engineer.

“What? Is he here?”

“No,” explained Maria, “a speech the Colonel made in the previous memorial celebrations at the Museum was recorded and a friend there sent a link to me, you should watch it…

This time the old soldier’s eyes lighted up when he saw Colonel Merezhko making the speech in the Museum in the screen of Maria’s computer, the colonel made the point of wearing a civilian suit and in his speech he pleaded for the reconciliation and enduring peace between the two nations formerly at war, and pointed out at the ongoing efforts at identifying the fates of so many soldiers, Russian and German alike. Several German soldiers attended thanks to the wonders of telepresence. There were few eyes, and not only Russian, not filling up with tears by the time the colonel remembered the fallen from Stalingrad with a famous poem about the war that mentioned the struggle that took place in the city.

The general looked at his briefcase and then at Maria and said:

“You said you know the curator and the director of the museum?”

“Yes, and they also informed me that if you part with your documents you will be rewarded with a grant. Comrade Ivanov…”
Andrei could not help but smile at that old fashion greeting, and some small tears somehow managed to come out of his old dry eyes, and he attempted to hide them with slow and trembling presses of his fingers to the corner of his eyes.

And even though he had still some pain, both physical and emotional, he stood up and offered the whole briefcase to Maria.

“Take good care of it, and lets not forget anyone, ever.”

And he did not, before leaving to the Memorial services, Andrei also contacted the museum and advised them to sent that grant to Maria’s small hospital.
[/spoiler]
Author -GIGObuster

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

It was the start of my shift and he was only my second patient. The thing about this job is you never now what you are going to get until you met the patient. He seemed fairly lucid as he lifted his head to see me coming in.

“Good morning, Mr. Jones, My name is Joanne and I will be your daytime nurse”

“Good morning nurse”

“How are we doing today”

“If I was good, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” he said with a half smile.

They all think they’re a comedian. Everybody has the same lame jokes.

[spoiler]“Aren’t you cold with your shirt off like that?”

“No, I am always hot, this feels nice”

“Interesting tattoos, I rarely see a man your age with so many, my best friend wants us to go get one together, but so far I’ve been too chicken”

“These on my chest here and forearms are pictures of my brothers, They have all passed away. I’m the last one left. I realized a few years after my parents died that it was hard remembering their faces. I didn’t want that to happen for my brothers so I got all of their faces tattoed on me so I could see them every day and when they died I wouldn’t forget their faces. I never told them about it. Would have seemed morbid, I ended up liking getting the tatoos and got a few squiggles and spirals as well.”

Jeez, that is kind of morbid.

“And they never noticed, like when you went to the pool or anything? Here is the button that calls a nurse and I will put the remote on the table right here.”

“By the time I got it we hardly ever saw each other any more. My brother John he was in the service and met a girl from California, when he got out they moved there. My oldest brother Bobby, he moved down to Florida after he retired, and my youngest brother Sam, he got a job with the post office and transferred down to Texas, he always had a thing for cowboys, even as a kid.”

This ones a talker, just won’t shut up. At least he is coherent.

“I’m the last one alive, and I won’t be alive too much longer. Pretty soon the memory of all of us will be gone.”

“Oh, Dr. Samuels will get you fixed up, you’ll see, he is the best around. He will get you on your feet in no time. This may hurt a bit, should be just a little pinch. There that wasn’t so bad.”

“It shouldn’t be like this you know, this isn’t the way it was meant to be.”

“What do you mean, is the tape pinching you?”

“No, I mean this whole thing, me in here alone. A sick man should be surrounded by my family.”

“I am sure they will visit you”

“I doubt it, too far to come until the very end. I see my kids and grandkids once of twice a year and all they want to know is what I bought them. It is my fault as much as theirs but it is so humiliating trying to get involved in someone’s life when they don’t want you. A lot of ungainly conversations, I tell you. I bet they never really got over me leaving their mother and are taking it out on me now. You know families were meant to live together, generations living together in one house. Grandparents helping to raise the kids, while parents work out in the fields. That is why people live so long. Must animals just die right after fertility is over. But people live long so the grandparents can help raise the kids and impart of the knowledge they have gained, assuring valuable knowledge is not lost., but passed along to the next generation.”

Fertility? Who talks like that?

"That is what bothers me about all this, I could die happy if I felt like I had done my part. I 've lived a long time and have got alot of hard fought wisdom to share but no one to give it to. "

This is starting to get sad, I better hurry up and get this over with so I can go to the next room, that guy is never awake.

“Like I noticed how your eyes lit up when you mentioned Dr. Samuels, seems like you might have a little crush on him”

He did not just say that, tell me I did not just hear that.

“You know most women, they go about getting a man the wrong way. They think it is all about them. They spend all this money on hair and pretty dresses, but for a man it is all about ego. It is not about how you look it, its about how you make them feel.”

Shut up old man, why won’t you shut up?

“Laugh at all his jokes, listen really instensly like everything he says is interesting, there is nothing a man finds more attractive than a woman who wants to hear him talk.”

Now he is getting sexist, why are old people always so sexist?

“Girls today act to slutty all the time, a man doesn’t want a slut. He want a lady who will become a slut for him. You know how in all the movies there is a repressed girl with her hair up in a bun, and at some point she lets her hair down a loosens up? That is the male fantasy, long hair is a symbol of sexual availability. When a women with short hair undoes her hair it means she finds a man so attractive it has made her sexually availability. There is nothing more appealing to a mans ego than to think that he has had that kind of effect on a woman.”

I can’t believe I have to listen to this, if this were any other job, I could claim sexual harrasment. I’d rather change bedpans all day then listen to this creepy old man go on and on about “sexual availability”.

“So many women are jumping into the sack with guys, hoping that it will get them their man, but if you really want to impress a man, it is not what you do in bed, but calling him the next day and telling him, 'I didn’t know it was possible for it to be like that, I just never felt anything like that before. You tell that to a man and you’ll have a fan for life”

I am going to throw up, I wish I was a doctor so I could give him a sedative and put him to sleep, and wouldn’t have to hear this.

“The doctor will be here to see you in a couple of hours, press the button if you need anything, and make your lunch selection on the paper and I will be back to check on you in a little while.”

“Thanks a lot nurse, I know I can ramble hope you don’t mind.”

I hope Dr. Samuels gets rid of this guy, quick. I am not in the mood for another creepy old man. I can’t wait til Dr. Samuels gets here, I hope he likes my new haircut. I sure paid enough for it.

[/spoiler]

Author -Puddleglum

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

So it was a Tuesday night in the bar and I’d just arrived for work, Traffic was kind of light so far. We’re a small neighborhood place, but just down the street is the local hospital, and that’s where our name came from, The Recovery Room.

I like tending bar. It’s the ideal job for someone who likes people watching, and given our location some of the hospital folks come in here for a drink or two, The stories I hear from them can range from extremely gross to unutterably sad, to the gut-busting hilarious. There was a time a nurse was griping about a patient in the ER. He was high on who knows what, and mistook the sink in his cubicle for a urinal. “Dumb bastard! I had to call the Biological Hazards team for the cleanup, you know how things are these days with exposure to blood or piss, and they took friggin’ forever to get there. All he did was giggle!” She snorted in disgust. “Oh well, at least I got to call Security and have him restrained.” Another snort, and a shrug of her shoulders.

[spoiler]One thing I’ll say for most of the hospital patrons like the nurse is that they’re discreet. No names or anything like that, just stories, and they drink after their shift. And although this Tuesday was, as I said, slow, I was expecting that to change later, because earlier we’d all heard a wailing chorus of sirens, who knows how many, go screaming by in the street. Blue and red lights made flashing spirals in the early evening dusk as ambulances and police vehicles sped by, one after the other in a deadly parade. Something, somewhere, must have gone wrong in a big way. If kids had been involved we’d get those wanting to numb their nerves or drown their sorrows, assuring The Recovery Room of good business. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t hoping for people to get hurt. It’s just that I know the pattern of how this place works.

This time didn’t follow the pattern. There wasn’t any rush, later, just the usual crowd, and I was rather surprised. But not too long before closing, when almost everyone had left, a woman came in, a doctor.

Dr. Carolyn Skippen didn’t come in too often, as she has a family, but I always noticed her when she showed up on my shift. We were just of an age, having graduated from high school in the same class. She went to medical school, and I went into the Army, spending ten years in uniform. Now I tend bar. I’d never had the nerve to tell her how I’d had a major crush on her. In those days it just wasn’t done, and I had to stay in the closet until after my military service was over. Carolyn was everything I’d wished I could be, smart, beautiful, self-confident. I believed her life was perfect. Me? I was short, stocky, awkward, and ungainly. I tried to joke about it, saying I had the body my German ancestors bequeathed me, but inside I wanted to be like Carolyn. In those days I had fantasies of rescuing her from terrorists or something, and being on the receiving end of her affectionate gratitude.

The crush is long over. I have, as the actress said “some friends of my own” now. Carolyn got married, to another doctor, and they have two kids I think, a boy and a girl. I think the girl is married, so Carolyn could be a grandmother sometime soon. Perfect family, perfect life still. Which goes to show you just how little assumptions are worth.

That Tuesday Carolyn’s eyes were red and sunken into her still attractive face. We’re almost forty years out of school but she kept her figure and is still, as they say “A fine figure of a woman.” I actually gained a figure after school, since I got the chance, while in the military, to study martial arts, and that shaped me up. And knowing self defense gave me a confidence I hadn’t had before.

Carolyn usually sits at a table but this time she stalks over to the bar and sits down right in front of me. “Jenna, get me a Guinness. Then another. Then many, many others.” She drops her face into her hands as I turn around to get her a draft.

She’s on her third draft, unusual for her, when she abruptly asks me a question “Have you ever heard of the Declaration of Geneva?’

I pride myself on my trivia knowledge but this one is new to me. “Nope, can’t say that I have.”

“What about the Hippocratic Oath?”

“The oath doctors used to take?”

“Not used to take. Some still do. It got updated, like most things. After all, I don’t know anyone who swears by Greek gods anymore.’

“So what’s this Geneva thing?”

Carolyn frowned in thought. “It’s kind of an alternate oath some doctors take. It got started after WWII and some say it was a reaction to medical atrocities German doctors committed in the camps. It’s been updated too.”

Obviously she had some reason for bring up something obscure like this, so I prompted “So?”

“I was in the ER tonight.”

“I thought I heard a racket go by, about seven o’clock. Bad one?”

Suddenly tears exploded out of those red, sunken eyes. I grabbed a clean bar rag and she buried her face in it. Eventually she wiped her face and muttered into it “Damned Declaration”

“Someone you know?” That’s a nightmare for medical practioners.

My heart sunk when she whispered, in a ragged tone “Used to know”

A fourth Guinness and Carolyn starts to calm down again. I’m starting to think I’ll have to cut her off, but decide not to worry because it is almost closing, and she obviously needs to vent to someone.

“You mentioned a ‘Declaration of Geneva‘?”

She heaves a sigh. “It’s the one I happened to take, after graduating. The school didn’t require it but back then I was young and idealistic.” In a sing-song voice she recited “I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life; I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;”

“That’s the oath?”

“That’s part of it”

“So there’s more?”

Another sigh. “It was bad tonight. Only two patients though, for all the sound and light show noise. A guy got knifed, but he’s going to make it. The other was the woman who tried to kill him.”

“Was she the one you used to know?”

Carolyn shook her head, and said in a low tone, “Nope, it was him.”

“Then it’s good he’ll be okay”

“I hope he rots in Hell forever…”

This brought my eyebrows to attention, and I began to be a little concerned she’d blurt out what is so coyly called “privileged information” But before I have a chance to say anything she continues, as her head hangs down.

“I walked into the ER and there he was, on the table, those nasty tattoos on him. I hadn’t seen him since I was eight, but I recognized the tattoos. He was a young neighbor from up the street, lived alone…”

(Can you say ‘sinking feeling’?)

“One day he asked me to help him with his dog that was hurt. I wanted a dog, but my parents said no way. So I went into the house with him…”

I make it a policy to never(well, almost never) touch the customers. But here, I leaned over the bar and put my hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to say anything, you know. I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“I never told my parents. He said he’d kill them if I told them ‘our secret’.”

“You never told anyone at all?”

“He moved away not too long after, and it was just that one time. But it seemed like forever until I stopped having the dreams he’d come back.”

“Couldn’t you find a way to pass him off to someone else?”

Now Carolyn’s eyes narrowed. “I wanted to finish the job that woman started. There he was, old, in pain. It could have been easy”

The light bulb went on in my head. “That’s why you mentioned that oath, isn’t it?”

Back down goes her head. “Yeah, I’m a doctor after all, I guess. I just couldn’t do it.”

From me, “but damned Declaration, right? Sucks to be bound by an oath.”

She shook her head, with a faint air of surprise “No, not really.” She swayed a little as she got to her feet.

“Let me call you a cab”

“Thanks Jenna. Sorry to have unloaded on you like this.” She paid her tab and left when the cab showed up.

After the bar was closed I stayed a while. I have the key and I sat there in the dark for a while, thinking. So life hadn’t been absolutely perfect for Carolyn after all. And I remembered a man with tattoos, and a hurt dog, just like her story. He’d moved into a rental house up the street when I was a kid, about eight, and didn’t stay long there either.

I told Carolyn it sucked to be bound by an oath. An honorable and ethical woman Carolyn

I smiled into the darkness. I know where he is. And while she may be bound by an oath, I’m not.[/spoiler]
Author -Baker

[maggenpye]

Subscribing.

I’m reading through these one at a time and really enjoying them.

I’ll read at least twice before posting notes and voting.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Miles Toliver began to make a fuss as soon as he entered Tanglewoods’ front door, not even waiting to pass the foyer before beginning to complain. A nurse with a pasted on smile swooped in and took the old man by the hand. He resisted being led into the building, casting an accusatory look over his shoulder at the young man who accompanied him and the nurse.

“Now, Mister Toliver,” the nurse said soothingly. “You’re going to like it here.”

The young man gave her a hard look, like he was wondering how much of the woman’s time was spent assuring old coots like Miles that they were walking into a veritable Disneyland for the aged. She pointedly ignored his gaze.

[spoiler]“Won’t,” Miles declared, sticking out his lower lip. When he spoke a spiral in one of his tattoos rode into view when his collar slumped. Once upon a time he’d been in the army, but those days, along with most of his muscle mass and virtually all of his hair, were long gone.

“Oh, I’m sure you think that now,” the nurse continued, obviously moving on to humoring the elderly. She had quite the bag of tricks as far as the young man was concerned.

They made their ungainly way down the hall, mostly because Miles was about as tractable as a donkey, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity came to a halt outside a door. It reminded the younger man of the door to his old dorm room. The nurse fished a key out of her pocket, and held it up so that Miles could see it clearly. Or as clearly as he could with his failing eyes. “This key is yours,” she said, as if revealing that he was being trusted with a matter of great importance. “We feel that it’s important that the residents be the only ones who unlock their doors.”

This had the younger man speak up. “But what if he locks himself out?” he demanded to know. “His memory…”

Miles scowled and the nurse looked slightly alarmed. “Mr. Toliver-”

“Henry,” he told her.

“Of course, Henry.” Now she seemed to have turned her attempts to smooth things over on him, and Miles smirked when he noticed. “We of course have a spare key in the office for just such an emergency. I was speaking of the general day to day goings on, of course.”

“Un huh.”

The nurse held the key out to Miles. “Would you like to do the honor?”

Miles made no attempt to take the key from her. Instead he played with his dentures, which were obviously loose, sucking on them. Drawing himself up to his full height, he glared at the nurse. “How long do I have to stay here?”

The nurse blinked, and then shut down. Henry decided that her programming didn’t have a handy script for a question like that. Laughing he said, “Dad, you make it sound like you’re going to prison.”

“What would you call it?” the elderly man demanded to know. “I’m getting kicked out of the place I’ve lived for thirty years and shipped over here. If that isn’t like being imprisoned, I don’t know what is.”

“Dad, that’s a little much,” Henry protested.

He idly wondered if Miles would get around to telling the nurse that his first tattoo was covered up by others. It had been a series of numbers precisely inked up one arm. Now it was lost under swirls and loops, totally obliterated. Henry supposed that it was better that way, and no matter what he wasn’t going to stand for it if Miles took to comparing the retirement complex to the concentration camp. As far as he knew Miles had joined the military as soon as he was freed. He hadn’t really paid all that much attention when Miles had cornered him in a hallway to tell him about it.

Miles rounded on him with surprising energy. “Stop calling me that. I’m not your father. No son of mine would do this to me!”

The nurse gave Henry a sympathetic look, and he figured that this, at least, was something she had a ready line for. Probably a lot of the old folks said the same outrageous things. “See?” Henry asked her. “Do you see?” She nodded almost imperceptibly. “It’s okay, Dad. I forgive you for forgetting me the way you do. I must seem like a right bastard to you. But I only want what’s best for you. The way your mind wanders, it’s not safe to leave you alone anymore.”

Miles shook his head rapidly. “I barely know this boy,” he insisted.

“But you do know me,” Henry retorted. “Explain that, if we’re not kin.”

“Well,” Miles sputtered. Turning to the nurse, he said, “He moved into my building a few months ago.”

To the old man’s obvious disappointment, the nurse nodded and said, “Yes, Henry told us that he moved in to care for you.”

“Care for me! He’s done no such thing. I care for myself.”

“And that’s the great thing about Tanglewoods,” the nurse said, slipping back into selling the place. “Our residents are independent with as many tasks as they can be, for as long as they can be. We only step in when it becomes necessary.”

“Give me the damn key,” Miles growled as he pawed it out of her hand, surprising her. Looking extremely bitter, he jammed the key into the lock and opened the door.

All three peered inside, and Henry wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t terrible, but it looked like the suite of a moderately priced hotel rather than a place to live out the last years of your life. Shrugging, he was glad it wasn’t his new home. Miles shuffled inside with a world-weary sigh, then looked back over his shoulder. He gave Henry a hateful look before saying, “this isn’t over, boy. I’m going to have my lawyer spring me so fast your head with spin.”

“Do what you’ve got to do, Dad,” Henry said blandly. “I’ll leave you to…this.”

Miles made a shooing gesture, and Henry stepped back to close the door. Glancing at the nurse he said, “I’m sure you’re curious how such an old man came to be my father, when he’s old enough to be my grandfather.” She opened her mouth to protest, but Henry didn’t let her. “The old goat was my mother’s professor. He barely know me because he let her struggle as a single mother rather than stepping up and taking care of us. Guess his wife insisted upon him not having much contact with us.” Henry looked forlorn. “Since he doesn’t know me, he makes things up. Most of it bad. Please don’t judge me on what he might spout off.”

“Oh.” The nurse looked abashed, obviously not having expected such an admission. “We’ll, uh, take very good care of your father.”

Henry gave her a wan smile. “I know. That’s why I picked this place. But are you really going to let him pester a lawyer?”

The nurse shook her head. “We assist all calls with an operator. When residents try to call people on the non-approved list, the connection doesn’t ‘go through.’”

“Gotcha,” Henry said with a cynical nod. This made the woman flush. A moment later she responded to someone who hadn’t called and hurried off.

Henry was slower to leave, glancing back every once in a while. He half expected Miles to make a break for it, but the old man’s door remained firmly closed. Probably inside sulking, Henry surmised. He didn’t much care. Miles was an old fool, and he wasn’t sad to see him go.

**

Once Henry was outside, standing by his car, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed a familiar number. “Hey, Billy. I think you should give the building super a call tomorrow…yeah, there’s a new opening in my building…Remember that old douchebag down the hall? The one who called the cops on us because he thought our movie was too loud the last time you visited? He just moved into a retirement home, you know, one of those places they warehouse old folks until they die…Hell no, his own kids won’t visit him, so why would I? Anyway, if you need a reference for the super, let me know. That’s what cousins are for.”

When he hung up Henry whistled a tune and slipped into his car. Tanglewoods lived up to their reputation for being really lax about checking into people’s backgrounds before taking on clients, and it had worked out as well as he could have hoped. Tricking Miles into taking a drive with him, by promising to take him grocery shopping, had been the hard part. The rest, cake. Even if Billy didn’t get the apartment, at least the next person down the hall would likely be far less of a pain in the ass than Miles had been.

Henry didn’t spare a glance back when he headed back into the city.
[/spoiler]
Author -Elfkin477

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

And there’s the poll! Now, I get to relax and read for a while.

Allow me to open the floor to your commentary. This is one of the great things for the contributing writers - the direct feedback from our readers is invaluable, especially from such an august and discerning crowd as the SDMB.

Vote however you wish, but above all, please vote.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

By the way, someone in the Logistics Thread had asked about a translation for the text surrounding the picture…
Caucasian (as in those who reside in the Caucasus regions) Politics

Making a Medical Storm

In Adygea residents remain without health care because of health care reform -
READ MORE

[maggenpye]

Reviews

Ain’t Gonna Be Mexico
Nice twist at the end. I found the character of Dmitri to be a bit heavy handed and I’d have liked to have seen some emotional reaction from Agent Sanders when he works out what’s happened. I wasn’t entirely clear on why they suddenly started shooting when the DUV’s arrived. Otherwise a well paced and clever story.

Marked
Drew me in very much with the descriptions of giving up smoking, very evocative. There was a shift at the end and I’m not sure if the whole thing was a dream – was she ever actually trying to find the maternity wing? Loved the line; “Barb parked the car at the hospital, and paid an extraordinary amount for that privilege.”
Spiral
Great story. I knew someone who went through the sinking of his ship during WWII and this story could have been one of his. Loved the character of Andrei and the repeated hook “Everyone is afraid”. This got my first vote.

Full Contact
Took me a while to get the play on Full/First contact, but it paid off in a chuckle when I did. Cool idea using massage as a tool for communication. Reminded me of Harry Harrison’s early short story work.

John Doe
My second vote. A heartbreaker. Sheena and Piotr seemed fully formed characters. Liked how the mix of languages was used to identify the specific location and history for Andrzej. It held me right through to the end with the believably mundane horror after a lifetime of extraordinary horrors. Well done.

Protection
Interesting concept. Ell developed in that the reader knows the reveal about what they do just before it happens (the best time). I wasn’t sure why Wright initially refused or what kind of favour he could possibly receive from Abigail. Nice ending, that worked well.

Don’t forget comrade, Volgograd, not Stalingrad.
I feel I let this story down, the dense history was more than I could take in. With more story driving the facts, it would be much more my cup of tea. I’m rather in awe of the research that must have gone into this.

Wisdom calls out
Liked the concept of the old man wanting to pass on everything he’s learned and being ignored by everyone. I found the narrator’s voice quite difficult to empathise with, it might have been better with a contrasting male character who was equally oblivious and shallow. Or, having the nurse be brighter and bubblier instead of so bitter and bored. It would work well as a stylized 1950’s farce.

Declaration of Geneva
And vote number three. I’d never heard of this declaration before I read this story and it didn’t matter a bit. Finding out it’s real was just a bonus after a well told story with a lovely little twist in the tale. Kept me completely hooked from start to finish and I never saw that last line coming. Hurrah!

Welcome to Tanglewood
A neat little tale. Believable characters and situation. I’m sure I’ve met that nurse. The only issue I had was guessing the ending about a third of the way in. Henry making sure Miles couldn’t get to a lawyer just clinched it. It was fun though – I really like the dialogue between Henry and Miles.

[puddleglum]

I found the picture hard to write about. I wanted to write something fun, but the picture was sad and disturbing. It seems like all the writers wanted to get away from the picture as fast as possible, it was just too real.
Ain’t Gonna Be Mexico This story seemed 75% set up and almost no actual story. The characters did not seem like real people at all. The twist at the end was tacked on without any foreshadowing. It seems more like an outline for a book than an actual story.

Marked This was really well written. It really captured the mood of the photograph. The main character was very believable and real. However, nothing really happened, it could have used more plot.

Spiral Very well written, but unrelentingly bleak. Could have used a little comic relief or something to alleviate the oppresiveness of death hanging over the story.

Music Man Had some trouble figuring out exactly what was going on and how the people in the story felt about it. This could have used more plot and less intro.

Full Contact The massage part felt tacked on and the idea of a top secret masseur going on a mission with aliens sound very silly. The beginning was rushed and it felt like the summary of the first four chapters of a book instead of a short story. Also, he studies their language and is able to communicate well enough to participate in the marriage ceremony but not well enough to understand what is going on seemed a big stretch. However, the premise was intriquing and when I got to the end I was ready to read more. Probably because it was least about the picture, this was the most fun story and also my favorite.

John Doe This was well written but unsatisfying. I had just read a book about the horrors of post WW2 europe so I was acquainted with what happened between the Ukrainians and the Poles in a way most people are not. I wonder if those who are not acquainted with that piece of history would understand the story. The lack of a denoument was very realistic but what I like about fiction is that it provides closure in a way real life never does, so I was wishing for something more to happen. It speaks well of the character development that I was rooting for the narrator to find what he was looking for.

Protection The problem I have with this genre is that the characters never seemed too bothered by the revelations of supernatural things. It bumped me when the secretary finds out her boss is a soul warrior battling supernatural evil and then is calmly discussing with him in the next scene. Also him having a crush on her and being happy about that was discordant with him finding out he is terminally ill.

Don’t forget comrade, Volgograd, not Stalingrad. The intro to this story seemed as long as the story itself. I never understood the significance of the papers and so was never invested in what happened to them. I think the exposition could have been better handled in a reminensce by the old soldier instead of third person.

Wisdon Calls Out I got the idea for the story when someone wrote a story last time with Charles Buckowski in the title. I thought about doing something Buckowski-esque this time, about an old man giving advice to a young man. However, the picture was too sad and the nurse seemed female so I thought something raw and dirty would not be appropriate, but I kept the idea of a grizzled old person talking about love and sex. I thought the idea of two people who needed each other but were totally miscommunicating was sufficiently sad for the picture but not oppressive. I wanted the story to be spare and sparse just like the room in the picture, but I think it may have gone too much that way and could have used a little more story to it.

Declaration of Geneva I think this could have been alot better if there were hints that the doctor knew the bartender had a crush on her and used that to get the bartender to murder the old man for her. As it is the murder idea seems to come out of nowhere.

Welcome to Tanglewood The twist at the end does not seem to go with the rest of the story. The old man does not fight hard enough, and the idea that it would be easy to get a non-family member committed to a assisted care facililty is not believable. Someone in my family went through going into an assisted living facility and it was difficult so I just did not believe the situation.

[DMark]

I have been really busy at work and not had a chance to write up my comments yet, but hope to do so soon!
Liking the stories so far!

[jackdavinci]

Great stories, everyone!

General comments: I was greatly amused by the fact that although there was nothing particularly Russian about the photo itself, it was hosted on a Russian website and that element seeped into a lot of the stories including my own.

It was also interesting how unified most of the stories were with literalness of the old man medical theme.

It’s hard to decide who to vote for, because the stories varied so much in their strengths and weaknesses.

Ain’t Gonna Be Mexico, post #2
I really loved this story, and the way it played with who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. I was a little confused about the trap though - Dmitri is supposed to be the crime boss, so it seemed weird that he could get in trouble for embezzling his own money. It would seem to me he could just dictate his cut out right. I had to go back and reread to see if some bigger boss was mentioned. Otherwise though I quite enjoyed it.

Marked, post #3
Very writerly, and poetic. A great character study. But a bit too heady. It’s all imagery and metaphor, and nothing much seems to actually happen. And what does happen isn’t all that clear. She quits smoking and starts painting after she gets some sort of insight due to seeing a scary man at a hospital? I can’t quite figure out the connection.

Spiral, post #4
This story was very hard to get into, but was full of cool ideas. I think if you prune it a bit and expand in other parts it would be a great story. Certainly the bones are there, the idea of a girl asking about tattoos on an old man, each a marker of a life mystery event, and the parallels between fear of death and the actual immanence of death.

The Music Man, post #5
The story had great build up, but I’m not sure what happened by the end. A Russian psychic patient simultaneously predicts and causes perestroika through the music of Freddie Mercury and psychosomatic tattoos?

Full Contact, post #6
Wow, every time I read this I find more typos. I almost wish we had two deadlines, one for the first draft, and another for editing. I had to delete two or three paragraphs to try and get under the word limit.

I was amused by the comment suggesting my story had the least to do with the picture because of all the contests, I felt like this was the first picture that really inspired me and gave me the story elements I needed. Some of the alien stuff had come from a dream I had about first contact, but the picture gave me an anchor, and the idea that a high security clearance yoga instructor might be the best person to communicate with tentacle signing aliens.

On the other hand, it’s understandable since the picture seems to have made nearly everyone else think of old men dying in hospitals.

I admit to pandering to the commenter from past contests who focuses on the beginning and ending by putting a mystery in the first paragraph and a twist near the end.

John Doe, post #7
This started out as a mystery, and then turned into a meditation on frustration. The lack of satisfaction makes me wonder if its based on a real event from the authors life. I was entranced by the parallels between your story and mine with regard to the perils of communication, and between your story and my life, digging through the remains of my late fathers estate and making sense of the artifacts left behind by a life lived.

Protection, post #8
An interesting take on the standard trope of being introduced into a secret supernatural world.

Don’t forget comrade, Volgograd, not Stalingrad., post #9
I had trouble getting through this story. It seemed like a dense memoir and I wasn’t sure I wanted to wade through it to get to the point, if there was one. I tried reading it backwards but that didn’t help either.

Wisdom calls out, post #10
Brilliant! The story turns on itself. Everything I thought was anticipated by the protagonist. Great example of author as reader. And a fun look at uncomfortable truths.

Declaration of Geneva, post #11
The story got a little sidelined by the confusion between Geneva and Hippocratic, but I liked the turns it took. I kept expecting it to be a different sort of story than it turned out to be, in a good way.

Welcome to Tanglewoods, post #13
Hah! Clever twist, if a bit straining on credulity. Who is paying for his stay?

[maggenpye]

The Music Man - for those who asked. The photo reminded me of dancing -the position of the arms, the smile. The man’s tattoos reminded me of John Lennon’s line drawings, one of the half seen tattoos on his chest looked like a picture I’ve seen of John Lennon, so that doubled up.

I tried to play with expectations by having Gregor singing a song from the 80’s then placing the story in the early 60’s with the Hamburg reference.

They don’t quite know what’s happening themselves, like the remote viewing, no-one knows it it’s past or future, reality or imagination. What they do know is that some people react to contact with Lernov by becoming little reflections of him, quoting lyrics etc. This effect is strengethened at times where tattoos appear.

Johanna has followed him from a previous facility. She loves music enough to risk being reported for listening to illegal radio stations. When she realises that Lernov is dying, she takes his power so that she can, like him, have all the music. Whether the music causes or reflects social change is debatable, as it is in real life.

TLDR version: In Soviet Russia, music plays you!