Issue 47 August 2017 Flash Fiction Online August 2017

None of it would’ve happened if Jane had known how to pick up a dropped stitch, and that’s exactly I told Pastor when he popped in to investigate the peculiar noises coming from the Fellowship Hall.

But he asked me, as head of the Martha Society, to write a blurb for the bulletin explaining the damage, so here goes.

Tuesday, Beverly brought her niece — the plain one, not the former Miss Minnesota — to knit scarves for the Alaskan orphanage. It was Jane’s first time at Martha Society, so we tried to make her feel welcome, even though she didn’t know a garter stitch from a moss stitch. Margie loaned her knitting needles, Bonnie offered some yarn, and Irene showed her how to cast on.

That was our first mistake. Everyone knows Irene uses the English method; everyone else here uses the German. No wonder Jane dropped the stitch and opened up an interdimensional wormhole.

We were all discussing the congregation’s upcoming 150^th anniversary when a gaping hole opened right where Jane had dropped her stitch, with a gust of wind as loud as Revelation’s trumpets. To be honest, that’s what we thought it was. Betty fell to her knees, and Rhonda started confessing all sorts of things I won’t repeat here because that’s between her and her Savior.

It wasn’t until Beverly leaned in too far and tumbled headfirst into the hole that we realized what we’d created. We all peered in and there she was, standing in the church sanctuary and listening to the sermon of the man who’d been pastor there 150 years ago.

We hauled her out and then the debate really began.

Margie wanted to witness the crucifixion, but we told her that was morbid and really, wouldn’t the gospel writers have mentioned if a bunch of pale-skinned women wearing bifocals and cardigans had shown up on Golgotha that day?

Bonnie had always wanted to see Babylon’s hanging gardens, but I had no desire to get thrown into a fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and whatever-the-third-guy’s-name-was. Everyone else agreed.

Irene wanted to see Christ calm the storm and insisted we’d be fine because the sea’s so salty you can’t sink, until Betty pointed out that the storm was on the sea of Galilee, and Irene was thinking of the Dead Sea. Besides, just because it’s salty doesn’t mean you can’t drown in a storm or get eaten by a shark, and that opened a whole new debate about whether sharks could live in the Dead Sea. (They can’t, but that’s irrelevant.)

Most of us were too preoccupied to notice the effect our discussion was having on the wormhole. Each time someone piped in with their own idea about where to go, the hole on Jane’s knitting needles pulsed and shivered, changing to the event mentioned, be it the belly of Jonah’s whale or the dung-scented insides of Noah’s ark. Each new idea caused its swirling edges to warp, and the wind grew so intense that those of us sitting closest to Jane had to discreetly scoot our chairs away so as not to muss up our hairdos.

By the time we’d formed the Interdimensional Research Subcommittee (Margie couldn’t stop laughing: “We’re the IRS!”) and narrowed down our top three trip choices (the feeding of the 5000, David’s fight with Goliath, and the seventh day of creation), the hole was spinning so violently and whirring so loudly it was like listening to Gladys pump out the Hallelujah chorus on the organ Easter morning.

“It’s unstable,” Jane shouted over the wormhole, her hands still positioned (incorrectly) on the knitting needles.

“The stable!” Rhonda shouted. “We didn’t vote on the nativity stable!”

The wormhole crackled with electricity, and from somewhere deep within it came the sound of cattle lowing and the cry of a newborn child that made everyone stop knitting mid-stitch and listen.

“Is that—?”

All might have been fine if Pastor hadn’t poked his head in just then, asking what was going on in here, the apocalypse? And, well, it seems the Second Coming was simply too much for the wormhole to handle. There was a giant bang! and the next thing we knew, Jane, Pastor, and the entire Martha Society were thrown out on our behinds into the narthex, leaving nothing behind of the wormhole or the Fellowship Hall except a giant crater, two knitting needles, and a singed piece of yarn.

And that, fellow members of St. Paul’s, is how our Fellowship Hall got sucked through time and space and why today’s potluck will be held in the basement instead.

As summer draws to a blistering end, it’s time to look back and wonder how it flew by so fast—and yet so slowly. As someone with children (aka she who has been pelted with pool noodles, bottles of sunscreen, orphaned flip-flops, board game boxes, and Cheetos wrappers), the weeks between the last day of school and the first are both eternal and instantaneous. 

It really does defy the space time continuum.

As a child, I spent my summer breaks reading. To this day, I can’t navigate anywhere, and my mother blames it on having my nose constantly in a book. One of my favorites continues to be A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. When the movie trailer launched last month, I’m pretty sure I terrified my children by jumping up and down in the kitchen and then collapsing into tears. “It’s Mrs. Whatsit.” They just stared like I’d lost any marbles I had left.

“I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.”
― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

You see, in A Wrinkle in Time, Megira is the awkward geeky girl who doesn’t fit. She’s all of us. We might not all be geeky or awkward or have trouble talking to boys, but we all have something that makes us feel like an outsider. And whatever that is, A Wrinkle in Time shows that in some alternate universe, our weakness is our greatest strength.

For this month’s issue, we bring you our own version of the space time continuum. In each one, characters might not understand but it doesn’t change the extraordinary reality of the worlds they inhabit.

Andrea Corbin’s “Three Ways to Ruin Your Best Friend’s Birthday (And How She Fixes It)” is a delightful caper filled with adventure and hijinks across time and space. It’s an exploration of how our best intentions often go awry and how a true friend is willing to overlook even the most egregious gaffs … like escaped polar bears.

In “PLAIN JANE LEARNS TO KNIT WORMHOLES” by Wendy Nikel, the Martha Society and their knitting will never be quite same. It only takes one wormhole for everything to go to hell. Casseroles not included.

Travis Burnham brings us a bittersweet yet heartbreaking exploration of love and loss in “That Dark, Sweet Magic.” A talking apple tree and a shoe golem might be beyond understanding, but the main character’s love for his late wife resonates in all of us.

And finally, appearing yet again (it’s like we can’t get rid of him), Stewart C Baker has allowed us to reprint “Proceedings from the First and Only Sixteenth Annual One-Woman Symposium on Time Manipulation” originally published in Time Travel Tales. The academic lecture circuit has never had a travel budget quite like this. Not that it would need one. Or would it? You’ll have to read this one to make up your own mind.

Enjoy!

Hello, and welcome once again to the first and only sixteenth annual one-woman symposium on time manipulation. This year’s theme is “Collapsing Space; Expanding Time.” Our speakers, as we all know, are Dr. Mirai Keiko (iterations 1 through 16).

All presentations are to have been held in the hotel’s ballroom earlier this morning from 9:00am to 9:55am. If you are unfamiliar with the theory of simultaneous time-space n-breaks we ask that you attend the pre-symposium workshop delivered by Dr. Mirai Keiko (iteration 16) from 7pm to 10pm tomorrow evening at the excellent sushi bar across the street (saké is on us). We especially encourage those of us who are earlier iterations to attend.

Recordings of each presentation have been made available on the symposium website along with this message. Please do not view the recording for your own presentation until after you have delivered it—pre-cognitive fugue states don’t help anybody.

We thank you for your careful attention to these instructions, and look forward to having already seen how we will all work together to advance the research and practice of time manipulation.

Dr. Mirai Keiko (iteration 9), chair

Dr. Mirai Keiko (iteration 13), vice chair

* * *

Session Title: “As I Was Already About to Will Have Just Finished Starting to Be Saying…”: Conjugation and Simultaneous Time-Space N-breaks
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 13)
Abstract: As Adams & Streetmentioner (1980) make clear, verb tenses during time travel can be confusing. Time-space n-breaks exacerbate the problem by at least a factor of twenty, as one must discuss not only what is/has/will (be/have been) happen(ed/ing), but what is/has/will not (be/have been) happen(ed/ing) in other iterations of the same time-space locale. Despite this, I argue that the use of simple present is best in most cases, for obvious reasons.

* * *

Session Title: “How Many Time Manipulationists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?” and Other Questions of Quantity
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 7) & Mirai, Keiko (iteration 12)
Abstract: We present a new model hypothesizing that, despite the arguments of Mirai & Mirai, the maximum possible number of simultaneous n-breaks before time-space ceases to cohere can be no greater than 12. We also present a new model hypothesizing that, despite the arguments of Mirai & Mirai, the maximum possible number of simultaneous n-breaks before time-space ceases to cohere can be no greater than 15.

* * *

Session Title: What Happens When There Is No ‘When’? Theoretical Consequences of Stretching Time-Space to Breaking Point
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 8); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 10); & Mirai, Keiko (iteration 11)
Abstract: We present some consequences of having too many simultaneous n-breaks in time-space. Amongst these are: recurrence, perpetual superposition, recurrence, cause ceasing to follow effect, recurrence, Ovidian transmogrification, and recurrence. In some rare cases, effect may cease to follow cause instead, and events may recur.

* * *

Session Title: Towards a Novel Approach for Penetrating the N-break Barrier
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 4) & Mirai, Keiko (iteration 2)
Abstract: We posit that mirrors, when placed in strategic locations around the area used for time manipulation, can increase the possible number of simultaneous n-breaks indefinitely without danger. We prove our findings by reconfiguring the ballroom to hold an infinite number of iterations.

* * *

Session Title: If You Are Reading This You Must Get Help: Consequences of Stretching Time-Space to Breaking Point
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 14); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 6); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 15); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 4); & Mirai, Keiko (iteration 16)
Abstract: This study explores the conclusions of Mirai, Mirai, & Mirai in greater depth by if we have succeeded you will find this message in the proceedings please help us we no longer know who we are or where we are or; rather, we posit that superposition is by far the most likely consequence compared to Ovidian transmogrification and if we are us or me and me and me and me and me in endless combinations fighting for control mirror-related trickery of Mirai & Mirai. Such tricks risk of a body that none of us owns this endless pain this limitless confusion if you do not stop it it will spread and spread and spread oh please if you are there if anybody is there please help us our only chance is if you can [abstract truncated: exceeds maximum length]

* * *

Session Title: The Mirai Effect: Limitless Iterations in a Compact Space.
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5); Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5); & Mirai, Keiko (iteration 5)
Abstract: No abstract is available for this paper. Video footage shows six hundred years’ worth of otherworldly screaming condensed into fifty-five minutes, while flickering abominations dance around/through/inside an impossibly large stone obelisk. The final five minutes of footage do not show the conference room, but a montage of beach scenes, the tides rising and falling in cadence with the fervor of the screams as inexplicable shapes swim through the shallows.

* * *

Session Title: The Effect of Pre-Cognitive Fugue State Hangovers on Time Manipulation
Presenter(s): Mirai, Keiko
Abstract: No abstract is available for this presentation. Video footage shows Dr. Mirai stumbling into the deserted ballroom five minutes late, downing two aspirin with a bottle of water. She taps on a tablet, then appears to watch something on it. “What am I just about to will have been already said?” she mutters. “That doesn’t make sense.” She shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, then looks around the room, apparently just noticing that it is empty. Something that she sees outside the camera’s field of vision surprises her, and she jumps backward, cracking the mirror. There is a flash, and the remainder of the footage shows only the ballroom, devoid of light and life save a softly flickering glimmer in the broken mirror behind the podium. From somewhere far away comes the cry of a solitary loon, the rustling and flapping of wings.

Previously published in Chappy Fiction’s Time Travel Tales, December 2016. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

The first big one was when I took my best friend to see the solar eclipse over New York in 1925. I thought it was a great idea, me and Nisha standing in the middle of the Bronx in drop-waist dresses and cloche hats, bundled in woolen coats against the January cold. Nisha adored historical fashion, so it seemed like a thoughtful present for her twenty-seventh, even if the time-hopping wristbands from the Telarians cost the same as my rent. Alien tech’s not cheap to import, I figured, and Nisha’s the best person I ever met, so my budget could suck it. Besides, I wanted a vacation, too. I’d never been able to take one before.

But it turned out to be about zero degrees outside, we’d grabbed the wrong size boots, and then Nisha got into a small but fierce argument about the presence of her brown skin with a small and equally fierce white woman. Me and Nisha and the woman and the three others who came to Nisha’s side were all too distracted to do more than glance up at the miracle happening in the sky. For a second, when the angry racist lady shoved me flat on my back in the street, I stared up at the dark, my brain fritzing about what time it was or if I’d hit the time band accidentally, until Nisha helped me up. I could feel snow and dirt and who knows what else seeping into my rented outfit.

We could’ve tried to hop back five minutes and over a block to see it again, but that would’ve violated the rental contract for the time bands, and I couldn’t afford the penalty fees on top of everything else.

* * *

A few years later, I bought tickets for Nisha and me to see the Flying Polar Bear Circus. Again: Sounded like a solid idea. Nisha loved a spectacle, and always thought more should be done to save critically endangered species. If Telarian flight implants combined with human love for training wild animals got people to pay attention to polar bears, great! All the proceeds went to preservation efforts, too.

Except I really should’ve taken into account the lockpick set Nisha owned, and clarified that it’s action, not spectacle, that Nisha loved.

In the end, it was about thirty percent my fault that Nisha let the polar bears out of their cages and helped them fly to a liberation group that took them to a rehabilitation station near the Arctic Circle. I mean, I did hold the door for her.

But it was one hundred percent my fault that I ran smack into a guard on the way out.

* * *

Finally, I had the greatest idea ever: a trip to the Telarian home world. Just me, Nisha, Nisha’s husband José, and my partner Sam. We booked as soon as the Telarians announced they were preparing two-way travel for humans. We’d heard it was astonishingly like Earth and entirely unlike it, with beautiful islands and vast continents, thousands of cultural destinations to choose from. Plus, floating cities on the ocean! The Telarians said a month on Telar meant only six weeks away from Earth, thanks to their ships. Perfect.

I didn’t think twice about how much Nisha was reading about Telar, or the language lessons she started a full thirteen months before the trip.

Halfway to Telar, we got news of a previous ship that disappeared on the way back to Earth. No sign, no explanation. Sam had to talk me out of a panic spiral. “It’s a fluke,” Sam said, their voice soothing me through the door of the bathroom, where I was curled up on the floor. “The Telarians have been making the trip for years.”

Even though it was her birthday, Nisha scheduled me for her Telarian psychic massage, saying that she wouldn’t have any fun if I was stressed out. The masseuse, I learned afterward, hadn’t been fully trained in human psyches. Especially stressed psyches. I didn’t sleep for three days, and all of us missed a trip to the floating city of Mnelosk while I panicked and hallucinated.

In the end, our ship did return to Earth without incident, but none of us were on it.

Whoops.

* * *

Each birthday, Nisha gave me a tight hug and said, “That was such a good present, thank you!”

I said, of the eclipse, “We didn’t see anything!” to which Nisha replied, “I saw people come to my side to shut down a fool.” Then Nisha raised her glass to me. “Cheers!”

I said, after the Polar Bear Incident, “We got arrested!” and Nisha gave me a high five. Then she added, “And I met José!”

I said, during the trip to Telar, “Nisha. Nisha. We can’t just stay here. We’re Earthlings!” to which Nisha said, “Being an immigrant isn’t so bad, sweetie,” and unlocked the door of the flat she was moving into. “Besides, I’m not keeping you here.”

Sam looked bewildered but intrigued when I told them about Nisha’s plans. The whole trip, Sam had been marveling at the purple-tinged sky, the variety of Telarians all around us, and now Nisha’s view of the ocean from her flat. At a party, José introduced us to the Telarian who was helping the two of them through the process of staying; me and Sam had long talks under the alien stars — about Earth and what was there or not there, about being afraid, about what matters, or rather, who matters.

I realized that Nisha was way better at this birthday thing than I ever was — see, for birthdays, I always had the first part of an idea and it went sideways. Nisha improved it.

A week later, on my birthday, Sam and I moved in next door.

When this column started, I had given up on writing novels. Now?

The debut novel of my first series is HERE!

Behold, HEX-RATED: A BRIMSTONE FILES NOVEL is now released from Night Shade Press!

Publisher’s Weekly: “Steeped in the style of 1970s pulp detective fiction . . . Brimstone is cut from the cloth of the classic wisecracking detective, and Ridler peppers the text with perfectly pitched hard-boiled vernacular. The novel’s wild mix of comedy and supernatural perils bodes well for its detective’s future adventures.”

And the great Brian Keene called it, “Deliciously uncomfortable, wonderfully gritty,
and a worthy successor to the occult detectives of old.”

I’m a legit author.

Published from New York to Cali and all points in between. Positive reviews and endorsements, from my command of plot to characters.

So the big question is . . .

… how the hell did it happen?

We will return next month to get the final installment of The Gutters, which will explore the years Before Brimstone, when I paid my dues in massive amounts of failure, broken dreams, and stupidity. When I stopped worshipping success and had to survive. Because in a strange way, when I gave up on dreams, better things than dreams happened.

Things like reality, in the form of a debut novel.

Now, please, go forth and make me the raging success you WANT me to be!

ONWARD!