SCIENCE  FICTION        FANTASY       HORROR    ~  FLASH   FICTION      MICRO  FICTION ~      

 

June/July 2009
Vol. VII No. 6   ISSN: 1545-3650
Home Contact US Submissions
 

AlienSkin Magazine®
Published Bi-Monthly Online

 
 
Up
Airy Chick
A Ballad at Silver Hill
Cookies From the Threshers
Curse of the Nail
Dixie Fried
Infatuated
Jerry
The Kiva
Last Waltz
A Little More Echinacea
Mask man
Of Vengeance
Offerings
The Passing
The Root of all Evil
The Secret Weapon
Sensory Overlord
Topper's Shop
Vanity Fields
The War Without Blood
 

 

~ ~ Snowbound ~ ~ by Phil Adams, Ohio
Deep snow. Endless blizzard swirl. Safe Chalet ravaged. Yeti's fleshy snack screams in vain.
 

 

 

~ ~ Memento Lost ~ ~ by K. A. Patterson, Pennsylvania
Gray ore pulses. Tarnished fob, foreign chevron paste, polished hums ancient code to space.
 

 
 


Featured Fiction
The Passing

by T. S. Bach  ©2009

The walls radiate an ambient blue while a lilting melody suffuses the air.  In the center of the room, sitting on a brilliant white marble toilet, naked, aside from a softer-than-silk bathrobe, is Leland Merz.  He is silently going over the pills he took an hour ago.  The white and yellow and blue ones the staff had given him, and the little red one in the shape of a triangle his friend Steve assured was a must your first time.

The room itself is perhaps twelve feet on either side and as much high, with every surface a shifting video screen creating a symphony of colors and images.  It gave the impression of floating in a void or being wrapped tightly within the comfort of a womb.  The pills only heightened the euphoria as Leland, who had only just turned nineteen, began the four hour process of moving into adulthood.

It was as if only this morning he had been five years old attending his first anatomy course.  In those classes he would daydream and wonder what it was like for people before the Human Efficiency Standards of 2197.  What was is like using so much time eating three meals a day, sleeping, and excreting bodily wastes?  He would laugh and think how silly and what a loss of functional time that had been for society.  But, like many boys his age, he also held a romantic curiosity and affection for the era.  It had been such a carefree world, unregulated by the genetic factors and constraints that had wrought the chemically-perfected human body known today.

Leland wondered what it would be like to have a bathroom in your home and digest your food on a daily basis. He thought about the bodily mass he was about to pass.  About how the food tablets he’d been ingesting since birth were processed with such rigor that it had taken near twenty years to develop.  About how from this day on he would make the trip to a digestive spa and partake in the joy and relaxation of his constitutionals. How wonderful would it have been for those in the past to have done this every day he thought!

Of course, he knew that it had not been such a joyous occasion then.  An occasion where your first is greeted with celebration and gifts from parents and relatives.  He had been to the museum and seen, and even sat on, a toilet in a model of an old-world bathroom.  They were not heated, nor did they gently massage and invigorate your lower organs into waste production.  There were no pills to extend the voyage and enhance the emotional and physical impact.  It was, sadly, a daily routine and a less dramatic affair.  One that was squandered and who’s pleasure was disregarded as low-brow.  There were even distasteful jokes about the product itself.

How far our genetic modifications have come to let us take delight in this progression into adulthood, he thought to himself as the wall’s visuals changed into a lifelike forest scene.  Lush and tropical, the smell of damp earth and fresh flowers filled the air and he let himself relax.  He let the toilet massage and loosen him for the coming event.

As Leland’s body melted into the seat he closed his eyes and could feel The Passing.  He smiled and thought how foolish the romantic musings of his youth were.  To make waste daily would only dilute the importance of the event.  This, here and now, was far beyond what those in the old-world had experienced.  This was art.  This was civilized and it was beautiful.

by T. S. Bach, Colorado  ©2009

Tom Bach is a 29-year-old junior high math teacher living in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.  Writing is one of many outlets for his scattered and overactive imagination.

 
 

Back Next
 

AlienSkin Magazine®  Copyright ⓒ since 2002 by Froggy Bottom Press and its Licensors.           All rights reserved.