Clones, Fairies & Monsters in the Closet

By Big Pulp

Celebrate pride with gay warlocks, lesbian warriors, transgender femmes fatale, bi-curious neighbors, dyke drug addicts, super-queeroes, fag bashers, freedom fighters, bug chasers, boys in uniform, doctors, astronauts, murderers, prison bitches, survivors, drag queens and CLONES, FAIRIES, and MONSTERS IN THE CLOSET!

Queer Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Science Fiction, Horror & Romance by: Sarah Abraham, Samantha Boyette, Orlando Cave, Beth Cato, Dawn D'Aries, J.W. Griebel, David Hagerty, John Hayes, Chris Hicks, Axel Howerton, Gary Ives, Jennifer Lee, Tim Lieder, D.C. McMillen, David Massengill, Andrew Miller, Molly Moss, Kenneth Pobo, Jason R. Richter, Selena Rosen, Jeremy Ryan, Shannon Schuren, Matthew Sideman, Richard Marx Weinraub, and Tyson West.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Big Pulp
• Release date: May 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311337191

Big Pulp

Since 2008, Big Pulp has published the best in fantastic fiction from around the globe. We publish periodicals - including Big Pulp, Child of Words, M, and Thirst - and themed anthologies.

Book preview

Just the Two of Us

by J.W. Griebel

The world ends and there we are, two lovers—no one else.

The world at our feet; how lucky are we?

I guess I should explain how it happened. It started with a bang and big wind. The televisions told us all about bomb shelters—find the nearest one and hop on in, it’ll keep you safe as a clam. Only the people in the bomb shelters got cooked. And the people on the ground got cooked as well. People in houses, cars, schools—even halfway across the world in the jungle, all cooked. One big human barbeque.

So how did my man and I survive?

By choosing to die, really.

We planned it out the week they told us the Big Bomb was coming. We were going to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge the moment it dropped.

They chose a Monday, if you can believe it; the least eventful day of the week, that day that drags out before you like a mile-long runway with the heat shimmering off the blacktop somewhere off in the distance.

Bobby didn’t know how to swim, and I figured I could forget how if I tried.

We watched the news all week.

The story never changed. Panic for the Big Bomb—make love as fast and hard and long as you can because you’ve only got five days left to live and counting.

And soon five days became four, and four withered into three.

By then we had already scoped out the bridge. It had a nice enough view, the hills and the San Francisco Bay as far as the eye could see; waves lapping at the shore and churning up froth; the sun glimmering off the surface like an oil painting. Things you never really pay attention to when you’ve lived in a place all your life. But I’m glad we chose it. It was as good a place as any to die. In fact, it was better than most.

And before we knew it, the newscaster was telling us that there was one day left, and counting.

One day left to live. It should have scared us but it didn’t. We spent the day in bed, the night roaming the streets, slowly making our way to the bridge.

The usual odd glances we attracted from the old-school man and woman couples, two men walking hand in hand with their heads up and not a bit of shame to show, were no longer directed at us. All eyes were wide. In fact, looking back I think that’s all there was. There weren’t any faces on the street. There weren’t any actual people. Just sets of eyes, made up mostly of whites, floating all around us, blinking as one being.

And before we knew it, we were at the bridge.

No cars were on it. People had given up trying to leave and outrun the Big Bomb. They didn’t know who was dropping it, didn’t know where it was landing, but that didn’t matter because they knew they were going to be blown to bits anyway.

At that point the eyes took the form of people again, and those people shambled across the bridge like the dead.

We had some second thoughts, I won’t deny that. Looking at those shambling forms, we saw just what we felt; hopelessness. Jumping off the bridge wouldn’t make things any better. The Big Bomb would be quick; we’d be dead before we understood. Drowning would be much slower. We would go into shock and pass out after maybe ten minutes, and then from there we would slowly crawl our way up the Chain of Dying.

If we were lucky enough not to float back up before then.

If we did, we’d probably meet the bang and die after partially drowning.

That would be twice as worse.

In the end we decided to take our chances. And when we heard the screams, the voices shouting that it was coming, could smell the collective city shit itself, we jumped. Hand in hand. Mouth to mouth.

We hit the water and immediately separated. Not willingly, or even consciously—we just burst apart.

I did my best to become a plank, keeping my body stiff and pointing downward so as not to float back to the surface of the water and face the explosion.

At first nothing happened, we were just sinking, looking at one another. There was a fleeting moment where I felt as if the entire world had joined together to play a big practical joke on Bobby and me.

Then the water shook.

Just like solid ground, the water rumbled beneath us, tossing us deeper into its black womb.

The breath I’d been holding onto burst from my lungs in a tired stream of bubbles.

It lasted maybe a minute, maybe less. All I know is that it felt like a lifetime, and throughout it all I waited—wondering whenever I could stem the flow of the panic what it would be like when I died, and if I’d know I was dead.

But it didn’t happen. My lungs felt full of glass, compressed beyond human capacity, and then I was floating up, almost torpedoing, the water lashing me on all sides, all too aware that I hadn’t the slightest clue if Bobby had made it or not.

I broke the surface, alternately retching and gasping for breath, and there was Bobby, floating, doing just the same.

When we could breathe, we looked at each other; him doggy-paddling, me treading water.

We laughed.

Who would have thought, that out of all kinds of people, two gay lovers would have been the ones to survive?

After all the years of shit I’d gone through—the torment in school and at bars, the disappointment on my parents’ faces when I’d come out, the days and nights spent wondering if there wasn’t something wrong with me, if I couldn’t just change myself—it almost seemed right.

I helped Bobby to shore, half pulling him while doing a one-armed free stroke, and by the time we reached it we were both crying.

We had been given a new start; a chance to live life our own way, without consequence.

And we intend to make the most of it.

I don’t know why I’m writing this down. Maybe some place in my heart I hope that there are others who, by a freak accident, survived the Big Bomb.

Most of San Francisco is leveled, and I expect most of the world is the same. But we’re holding onto the hope that Hawaii remains somewhat intact. If you find this, know that that’s where we’re heading. Hopefully by boat, if we can find one. If you want to come visit, just to assure yourself that you aren’t alone, or maybe to find a couple friends, we’re good people; you’re free to follow.

In fact, you’re free to do anything at all.

Just as we’re finally free to love as we please.

#

(back to top)

Von Neumann Choked

by Molly N. Moss

My lapel radio activated. Yameen. Janice. Problem, Xia announced from the control room.

I’d just finished recording a hologram message to send to my parents via the quantum entanglement transmitter, and I’d started a message to send to my girlfriend. I paused the recording and listened as Yameen radioed, What’s the trouble?

Hull breach.

I hadn’t felt our ship lurch from the impact. Whatever struck the hull must be small, and the seepage too slow to trigger automatic alarms. I radioed, Whose turn is it to go for a walk, Yameen?

Yours, our first engineer answered, but I’ll suit up, too, in case you need help.

While I grabbed the sleek spacesuit hanging in my cabin locker and slid into it, I thought about my interrupted message to my girlfriend, Sachi. At least, I hoped Sachi was still my girlfriend. We had a stupid argument, the night before my squadron deployed to the Indus constellation for six months of surveying. I shipped out without apologizing, and now I wondered if I should beg forgiveness in the cutie I was recording for her.

As I sealed my helmet, still fretting about my girlfriend, Xia radioed again. This breach is bushwhack.

How so? I asked him.

It’s getting bigger.

Muttering a Japanese swear word I’d learned from Sachi, I seized my toolbox. Less than a minute later, I exited the ship’s aft hatch.

* * *

Out on the hull, I spied the Thing. My heart galloped in my chest at the sight of it. This is bushwhack, all right, I radioed to the control room.

It was mechanical, but it looked like a hybrid of a lobster and a squid. Somehow its tentacles clung to the chassis. With a wicked pair of pincers, it ripped bits of metal from the hull and shoved them into its maw. As I watched, it grew, from the size of my fist to the size of my foot.

Xia radioed, What’s happening?

I activated my helmet’s camera, showing the control room personnel the mechanoid in action. We’ve got an alien Von Neumann machine, I think.

The thing had to be of alien origin, because the Terran Hegemony didn’t manufacture Von Neumann machines. Humans had jump-drive ships. It would be useless to send pre-programmed, self-replicating machines at sub-light speed to do tasks we could sooner jump out and do ourselves.

Radio Officer Xia, Captain Pacheco, and other personnel in the control room held a hasty conference. It didn’t take them long to decide my theory was probably correct.

Currently, we were taking parallax sensor readings in concentric sphere patterns around a yellow-white star in Kappa Indi. Preliminary observations indicated a potentially habitable planet, and on a moon orbiting a gas giant there appeared to be an abandoned research base built by an unknown alien species.

Our squadron may have somehow triggered the alien base’s automatic defenses or an automated exploratory system. Maybe the aliens had used VNMs to attack or scout unrecognized space-going vessels.

That’s all very interesting, Captain Pacheco interrupted the discussion, but I only care about one thing. Can you get rid of it, Janice?

Let’s find out. I opened my toolbox, removed a wrench from its clamp, and tried to swat the VNM off the chassis and into space. As inertia tumbled me in the opposite direction, the VNM seized the wrench in its pincers and gobbled it. Then the VNM grew a little bigger, to the size of a bread loaf.

When I stabilized myself again, I powered up my laser welding torch and tried melting the damned thing. For a few happy seconds I watched metal boil off it into the vacuum, but the VNM shot out a tentacle, snatched the torch away, and ate that, too. In a matter of seconds it not only repaired the damage I’d done to it, but also grew a little more.

I clenched my fists. Greedy little bastard!

Come back, Janice, Captain Pacheco radioed. We’ll prep the escape capsules and get out of here.

By now, the VNM was the size of a microwave oven. The hole in the ship’s hull was as big around as a beach umbrella. Our water supply, which doubled as a shield against radiation, was streaming out of the reservoir layer between the chassis and the interior, dissipating into space.

A VNM using our ship for building materials could be catastrophic. When it reached full size it would make copies of itself, which would grow and make their own copies. Our ship would be destroyed in hours, or maybe minutes. If we requested rescue from other ships in our squadron, they could be infected, too. Just one VNM could end up annihilating our whole fleet.

No, sir. I willed my heart rate to return to normal. If it makes a copy that hitches a ride on an escape capsule, when help comes our whole squadron could be destroyed.

Warrant Officer Mahoney! I order you—

Switching off my helmet radio, I considered my dwindling options. Nothing in my toolbox promised better results than what I’d already tried. If I grappled with the VNM and tried to throw it out into space, it would no doubt start eating my spacesuit and expose me to vacuum. A burning knot sprung up in my throat, choking me, as I imagined doing what might be our ship’s last hope: cutting my tether, wrestling the VNM off the hull, and tumbling both the VNM and myself out into the void.

Never to see my girlfriend Sachi again. I love her, I realized for the first time. My beautiful, romantic Sachi. Forever doing endearingly goofy things, like giving me a feather to remind me of her while I’m away on a Navy tour.

* * *

Sachi drifted into the room as I sat on our bed, folding my service khakis. After clearing a space, she seated herself cross-legged amid the rumpled sheets.

Her cocoa-colored eyes searched mine. I have something for you, Janice. She showed me an emerald green feather.

I stowed the khakis in my duffel bag and arched an eyebrow at her. What’s that about?

She turned the feather round and round slowly, gazing at it with open admiration. I found it, and another to match it, during our hiking date in the Blue Ridge mountains. That’s when I knew I’d found the woman I want to marry.

"Yeah? Who is she?"

Her nostrils flared for a moment, the way they always did when she was annoyed. Take it. I want us each to have one, to remember each other by when we’re apart.

I pulled a hologram cube out of my bag. Sweetheart, when I ship out I take you with me. I activated the cube, and a hologram of Sachi coalesced in mid-air above the bed. In the recording she sat at the kitchen table, leaning toward me while behind her the early morning sunlight shimmered through the window. The Sachi hologram spoke of feeling lucky that she met me.

By my side, the real Sachi deactivated the hologram cube and held my hand. In the Age of Chivalry, ladies gave their knights a favor to carry into battle. A token of the lady’s love, that the knight could draw strength from. She held the feather out to me.

"But I’m not a knight. I’m a warrant officer and second engineer in the Terran Hegemony Navy." I grinned at her, taking pleasure in teasing her, even though her eyes were narrowing with anger.

Then she insisted. And I learned a new Japanese swear word.

* * *

I’d stowed Sachi’s feather in an airtight compartment of my toolbox. Now I pressed the button to open the cavity. The feather floated out and I caught it in one gloved hand, bits of it crumbling off as it freeze-dried in the vacuum. When it wasn’t found among my personal gear, Sachi would know that I carried her favor with me into battle against the alien VNM, and that I’d dream of my lady in the unending night.

Looking at the feather, though, I remembered a recent debate in the mess hall, between the ship’s xenologists. Most argued that DNA must be the same everywhere, and consequently life that evolved on different planets would nonetheless be similar to Earth’s life. One xenologist disagreed, though, suggesting that differing chemical compositions and other local conditions would cause biological incompatibility, for such purposes as digesting each other’s plants and animals.

Yameen’s contribution was why I remembered the conversation. He’d proposed that some degree of technological incompatibility might also occur, because We use ourselves as a template for the designs we engineer. In a sense, we are a part of everything we make.

Suppose that’s true, I found myself thinking as I looked at Sachi’s feather. The chemical composition of the aliens who built that research base might be different from humans in some important way. Like maybe bromine serves the same purposes in them that chlorine does in us. Maybe they built their VNMs to process biochemistry like theirs, but not like ours. Terran life, such as a feather, might be toxic or corrosive to that machine.

It was a crazy idea, born of desperation. But if it worked, I’d still get to tell Sachi I loved her and ask her to marry me.

With a light touch, careful not to shatter the feather, I brushed its tip against the VNM. Most of the feather was intact when the mechanoid seized it with a tentacle and tossed the fragmenting stuff between gaping jaws.

The VNM convulsed once. Twice. And then it went still.

I pumped both fists in the air, grinning like a fool. Then I noticed the water still streaming through the hull breach, and remembered to do my job. I had some cold-welding patches in my toolbox. Not ideal, but good enough for a temporary repair. So I applied those to the ruptured area.

As I packed up my toolbox I glanced back at the VNM. It hadn’t moved since ingesting the feather. Very carefully, I tapped it with my toolbox. There still was no reaction. I reckoned our scientists would like to study it, so I clipped it to my suit harness.

Switching my helmet radio on again, I radioed, This is Warrant Officer Mahoney. Breach repaired, and freaky alien robot neutralized. I’m coming home.

* * *

Back on Earth six months later, I took Sachi hiking in the Blue Ridge mountains again. We sat holding hands on a peak with a magnificent view, and I told her every detail of my encounter with an alien Von Neumann machine. Including the realization that I loved her.

I asked her to marry me. She said yes.

Then I asked her if I could have the other green feather. She asked why.

I need a new favor from my lady to carry into battle. I drank deep of her sweet kiss. And then I couldn’t help myself. Plus, I’ll need it if I ever meet another alien VNM, I added, and I winked at her.

What Sachi said next shouldn’t be repeated in polite company. But my vocabulary of Japanese swear words is growing like a Von Neumann machine.

#

(back to top)

Flowers Grow in Desolate Places

by Sarah Abraham

Jayna set the rifle across her lap. It had been her constant companion for years. She remembered the day it’d first been issued to her, a girl not quite eleven but newly-inducted into the Head. She’d been so proud. Back then, it had never felt so heavy.

With deft hands, she freed the magazine and tossed it onto the mattress. Jayna had field-stripped weapons many times, and within seconds, the well-oiled gun was reduced to its component pieces. She could hear footsteps just outside the barracks, but in this tiny room, cordoned off by nothing but a couple sheets, it was quiet except for her pounding heart.

Part of her wanted to reassemble the weapon and replace it in her rucksack, but that was impossible. Impossible to carry it any longer. She’d never cared much for God or religion before, but she had a promise to keep. Both to herself and God. Jayna dropped the pieces and rolled off the sagging frame of her bed.

She retrieved her sidearm pistol and, with a flurry of motion, stripped this as well. Only when she’d tossed aside those parts did the tightness in her chest finally loosen. She was completely disarmed, completely vulnerable.

For the first time in years, she was free. Jayna smiled.

* * *

The fields of cannabis were burning. Jayna’s unit had failed to protect the crop from the Syndicate’s attack, and now she was trapped in the inferno. While her gas-mask protected her from fumes, the slender trees burned hot and their fan of leaves emitted blinding plumes of smoke. And she had a body in tow.

Kent had been shot and failed to secure his mask in time. Between smoke inhalation and blood loss, he’d been left writhing and incoherent. Still too small to carry the boy, Jayna dragged him one stumbling step at a time. More than the smoke, her growing panic had become suffocating.

Their first job, and Kent was going to die.

Not Kent, Jayna reminded herself, as she pressed toward a seemingly thinner patch of smoke. He was Viper now. He’d taken the name upon joining the Diamond Heads, and it was well-earned. Though smaller than the other eleven-year-olds, Viper had no fear of kids twice his size. He fought as viciously and wrathfully as his namesake. If anyone could survive this, it was him.

Unexpectedly, the leaves parted, and Jayna stumbled past the choke of branches. Smoke still hung in the air, and heat too, but it was less intense. More bearable. Jayna allowed herself a moment on her knees, wheezing as she tried to catch her breath.

Even through nauseous tears, scratched gas-mask lenses and the ever-present smoke, she caught sight of a figure coalescing just meters in front of her. It was a Syndicate soldier by the exotic BDUs—likely an adult based on size and build. From the cautious but unhurried steps, he’d yet to notice Jayna.

She didn’t hesitate. She unholstered her pistol and flipped off the safety. Taking just a moment to aim, she pulled the trigger. The figure jerked with each shot, but she could hardly hear the crack of gunfire above the roaring flames. Even after the figure crumpled to the ground, Jayna didn’t stop until her clip was entirely emptied.

It took a moment to regain enough composure to lower the weapon and, with trembling fingers, reload a fresh clip. That lifeless figure was