Dystopian Med Volume 5: Dystopian Med, #5

By Nicholas Stillman

Treat yourself to seven new medical horrors as societies and sanity break down:

"Alone Enough"

A paranoid boyfriend scans his lover's cells to detect trust in a dating dystopia.

"The Coming Pain"

As the world prepares for a plague, a teenage thief must steal the medicine from murderous stockpilers.

"In Our Efforts to Do Good"

A hospital porter finds his workplace has become a man-made hell full of dungeons.

"Put Them All on an Island"

An armed woman must rescue her brother from an island where vices rain from the sky.

"See for Yourself"

A squeamish debtor must deliver a fresh human face to the medical mafia.

"All Days Windy"

When bionic limbs arrive on the black market, an inheritor can only afford them by playing a grisly game.

"Soaking"

An organ donor must race through life when the dialysis tech of the future robs him of time.

If you like science fiction with a dark vein, get Dystopian Med Volume 5 now for body horror that will mess with your mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stillman Sci-Fi
• Release date: Aug 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386735267

Nicholas Stillman

Nicholas Stillman writes dark but entertaining science fiction. His weekly short stories and collections aim for variety and novelty with fun and thought-provoking twists. They often branch into dystopia, crime, horror, medical fiction, black comedy, romance, adventure, adult, and the completely new. Some of Stillman’s themes include civilizational collapse, addictions of the future, medicine in space, dark psychology, and the terrifying fate of our healthcare. Stillman offers monthly free short stories at StillmanSciFi.com. Get yourself free, easily accessible short stories for life--the perfect way for any science fiction fan to spend time on commutes or at home.

Book preview

Alone Enough

THE STREET OUTSIDE Wade’s favorite coffee shop crumbled further into more of a gray dirt road. The storefront window most mornings provided only a view of the disintegrating city and an autumn coldness which oozed inside as far as it could, usually stopping at Wade. He wrapped his hands around his mug and stared through the dinged glass. Pebbles scattered another inch away as the car chain crunched down the pavement. He would leave a decent tip here again, as so many patrons did. It might keep the doomed business alive a few months longer. Tipping, after all, kept him alive as a server. It gave him his hourly fix in life four streets down on another rotted-out strip.

His years of overpaying here paid off when a small and sinuous woman slid into the empty seat across from him. She looked reasonably scrumptious. Somehow the twentysomething had enough meat on her even  with daily caffeine running laps through her little body. She darted into Wade’s space flirting hard and fast. The words purred out of her as they did for most wired girls who pinged off every table but Wade’s. Today, however, the words came out at him. He could only fasten down a smile and listen. Mostly, he feigned his belief in this new reality. She called herself Dawn.

Dawn had a tiny face which meant a normal-sized face compared to Wade’s. His own features looked too big at most angles, though they helped his smile spread further for tip garnering. Wade gave her the full-blast tip-seeking grin, because he never had a girlfriend before. He had a sister and an aunt who talked to him on holidays. He  handled Dawn with baby sips of coffee and some eye work above the rim. It gave him little breaks from the nodding. The coffee tasted like a dead man’s ashes more than ever, but it let him reset his smile. He relaunched it for fuller effect at what Dawn likely considered punchlines.

She babbled and fawned with her refined little mouth. Surely she knew what everyone could tell, that Wade lived alone and had stayed that way for years. His slight slouch, that calm gaze at the deterioration outside, the look of longing for more of nothing to happen in life—it sold his loner’s story. A bit of fat folded over on his layabout neck, and he never had to worry about what anyone thought of it. And surely, Dawn picked him out because he looked so little picked over. He had IQ points and a miser’s wealth showing through on him. Wade simply looked alone enough to have saved plenty of money.

Dawn told her own story of modernity for an hour, an outpouring of how a cashier gal got by in a city decaying in a century of decline. When Dawn admitted she felt a love at first sight for him, Wade could only compliment her bravery for saying so. He had to hide his true spinning cogs, the realization that she saw him ripe and round for a bank-account cleanse.

If, however, she told the truth, Wade had gotten his tip money back with dividends.

DAWN SAID THINGS, BUT those things didn’t matter. When Wade walked her home after their nightly movie, he could only see these dates as steps in her ulterior plan to leech him dry. Divorce laws had worsened for men in a big huff to speed along the collapse of everything. Maybe the West wanted to start over sooner. Women now could divorce the day after they married and enslave an ex for life. Wade had to look up the percentage of a divorcee’s wealth a woman could extract these days. Even the lowest estimate made him shudder long before the creeping Canadian frost set in.

The city sagged over them as they walked. Every building bled out its discoloration, its corrosive browns and oranges all down the sides. The cracks dribbled more grit on the overgrown slivers of lawn. Only Wade and Dawn still strode. Others moped around them like swaying weeds, rooted here and going nowhere. They slouched and leaned on the ragged, closed-for-good storefronts. Men let their beards out, and Wade saw nothing but feral facial hair, untucked shirts, and unfolded collars flopping in the stinky harbor wind. Women bundled themselves and let nothing out at all.

Dawn had her arm hooked around Wade’s elbow as they walked and chatted. Wade let her do nearly all the latter. His identity crises at 35 continued to 37 this year, adding pressure to make every eyebrow raise count. To fumble a relationship this good could spoil his one chance for a family. Of course, should Dawn scam him all the way to divorce court and life beyond, he’d land in debtors’ prison with no retirement money and no kids down the tunnel. Yet however dark the risks of alimony enslavement, he’d have to act on Dawn’s romantic advances. A lowly server at 37 had to pounce on marriage or risk childlessness.

They talked about the movie. Wade learned how to whip up a logline review for each one, mostly to keep Dawn doing most of the talking. She had yet to spill out signals of any scheme or evince a desire for marriage and financial details in the same sentence. Wade still didn’t know how much of his net worth of 32 grand he ought to tell her about. More money disclosed to her meant a greater likelihood she’d stick with him. However, it also meant more she could divest in court. These days, ruination only took one accidental pregnancy.

Thus, Wade made his loglines brilliant to distract her from ever asking about net worth. Tonight’s movie, like most they had watched the past two weeks, contained subliminal messages to encourage suicide in viewers. Rates of drug overdose crawled up each year; the top moguls had found a way to pick off competition. The world simply dealt with overpopulation in sneakier, calmer ways than most would ever fathom.

Wade explained this, and Dawn’s eyes became startled enough to turn her whole body around. Aghast, she faced the theater two blocks back. She had never noticed the little nudges and praises to suicide implied in the background symbols and dialogue.

At least she said as much.

Essentially, Wade just told her he understood tactics too. Perhaps Dawn would dump him and move on to the next love-at-first-sight sucker. If she genuinely loved him, though, he sure sounded cold just now. Hopefully she wouldn’t mind.

WADE LEFT THE BANK with a strange gaze even for him. He now had a second account set up, quickly drainable should he have to disappear. Most of his cash slept in his regular bank. He’d have to get that out of the system entirely in case Dawn ever decided to ruin him. No one can track numbers that don’t exist.

He walked home stepping on the slanted blocks of sidewalk like floes. This street, remarkably, still had big enough slabs of concrete to step on surefootedly. Their cracks widened almost weekly, though, and grass had sprouted through to smear green on his sneakers. The rugged grates and manhole covers looked like risen fillings among meth-corroded teeth. Ice and city footwear had torn away the curbs which most pedestrians walked on as sort-of balance beams. Time and negligence washed away the dirt underneath like a poison ichor, leaving little else for flat walkways. Traffic hissed near and far. It helped Wade’s own cogs roll even as he watched his feet.

He thought about the price of gold and silver and of actually saying yes should Dawn cajole him into a hasty marriage. She deserved it, if she meant all those things said and committed over the past few weeks. If not, the precious metals would make Wade’s wealth untrackable.

Wade returned to his bachelor apartment. He took off his coat and heaved a sigh into the corner where Dawn wouldn’t see. She made them supper from his kitchenette counter. She looked smaller around food, a perception Wade blamed on working at a restaurant for so many years.