Waiting rooms are always the worst, she thought. This one was at least nice. Nice. And clean. Tidy, airy, bright with big windows letting in the sunshine reflected from the cars that sat waiting for owners who will have changed. Small changes, changes that the lolloping, dozy cars would never notice. Some of the changes would be in the mind, anyway. Knowledge, certainty, fear.
“It’s really exciting,” said the studio executive, straightening his tie and holding out his hand. His guest shook it warily. “We almost never run tours so I think you’ll agree it’s a bit of a treat.”
“It’s a great privilege,” said his guest. “Can I just ask – how do you create so much content on such a small plot? The studios are…”
Granddad always says he’s a scientist, an inventor, but really he’s just crazy. He’s never discovered anything, his inventions are all just broken wheels and elastic bands gathering dust in the shed and to be honest his “Scientific methods” leave a lot to be desired.
“…bones, for some reason!” and he laughed; hugely, uproariously. She sank into herself. Oh god, that laugh. So certain of its own hilarity, so arrogant, so obnoxious. A toxic cloud of self-amusment that drifted slowly out from him until it stifled the genuine fun from any given room. He should have a warning, a yellow triangular sticker slapped on his face. Caution. Fumes.
She fumed. He could feel her resentment, white hot burning a hole in the sofa they just about shared. The gulf between them made it feel like two separate pieces of furniture. He tried to lighten the mood with a joke that screeched down to Earth in flames. Why did she do this? Incinerate the joy around her? She should have a warning, a red circle. Danger! Naked flame!
Those two are so great together, though you wouldn’t know it to hear them talk. They have a real spark, true chemistry. The way she reacts to him… It’s like hate, but you can see she’s knocked out by him, and she makes him just explode. They should have a warning, a big sign. Keep out. Private.
Felmohsa-Randit Shelbros dam Leyostaam was new. She had arrived in the airsphere as a student just three or four months ago and neither of the two resident professors had any idea what, exactly, she was supposed to be studying.
Continue reading Airsphere Comms
When everything is going to Hell, you could do worse than a cocktail. She could only find Martini glasses, so Martini it would have to be. No Vermouth in the cabinet. Sherry it would have to be. Bitters cover a multitude of sins. And sins, she reflected, cover up a mouthful of bitterness.
We were in the tunnel when they blocked it. Perhaps they knew we were in there as they set the charges, perhaps they did not. Someone must have seen the train go in at one end or the other but both sides decided to detonate at the same time, and schedules are schedules.
He bites down and it tastes of wolves, jaws clashing in the deep of the woods, it tastes of soured milk spilled carelessly across stone, it tastes of the copper-coin heave-inducing flatness of his own blood. He bites down, pressing his teeth together, feeling them meet in the middle. Harder, and his teeth begin to crack and splinter under the pressure. He whimpers and shrieks, voice muffled and tortured by his self-inflicted pain. The creature in his jaws squeals likewise, squalls like the sea. Strands of muscle shear through and he continues to bite down.
Sometimes all anyone wanted was to hear the rasp of the projector, the glassy sheet of film purring coolly though the gate and painting its vivid light on the wall. Some days it was all that I could think about, the thought that the darkness could be lit this way, like magic. Like stars up close.
Seed money, he called it. The few coins tossed into the violin case at the start of the day. No, the viola case. He would always correct me on that, and eventually it became our joke. How’s the violin practice going? It’s a viola, and I need as much practice as you need lessons in cheek. At that I would put whatever change I had into the case. Always I had some money, carefully preserved from whatever I’d bought earlier that morning.