Nothing More: A Short Story Collection

By Drew Shaw

A short story collection compiled of sci-fi and plain old regular fiction . Some stories reflect the nature in universal beings, some are just plain silly. With each story lasting just a few pages they are laid out sweet and punchy, allowing you to skip through or reread at your own peril.
If you can imagine biting the head off some poor lizard, scouring the oceans of some distant moon, robbing mannequins for sheer entertainment, shifting giant chess pieces, some deceptive multi-lingual interpreter, then you shall have no problem understanding the text you are about to read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467884877

Drew Shaw

Drew Shaw grew up listening to and learning from gifted storytellers in his family, school, and church. Drew has a fascination with the nuances of verbal communication and how reading aloud makes stories come alive. The lessons he learned from storytellers and his experiences as a teacher, instructional leader, and consultant afford him a unique perspective to address relevant subject matter for children and adults. In addition to writing, Drew is the co-founder of Acumen Learning Innovations, LLC, an education consulting company that offers innovative solutions to common challenges for schools and organizations.

Book preview

Contents

Peace Left

Nightwomen

Men in Gods

Rehearsal

Smile

Summer

The Big Chess

The Man Who Sold

the Sand

Those Lazy Giants

Three

Magic Slide

Lumber

Look at Him

Luck is not a Feeling

Gazer

Fable on the Plain

Pool

Portal Graffiti

Wizard

The Want

Parrot

Hole

Double Take

Crash Site

Bumble

Blue

The Adventures of

Jeff and Jim

She Saw

Some Theory

Touch

Tunnel

Train

The King

Monsters

Fixing the Sky

Lighty

Lefty

Good News

That Bitch

Peace Left

On approach we’d watched satellites drift past the window. We’d watched the sun pop out from behind planets and moons. We’d watch the ship’s shadow move along the ice, keeping up with us.

We land with everything intact and a slide along the surface. All the lights behind the buttons calm down and gauges start to adjust. We hear air thrusting between pistons and pipes. The last thirty minutes has not brought a word from anyone. Part of us didn’t want to speak in case we’d wake the planet. We didn’t want to disturb its silence but the ship’s landing had stirred the place. This was the silence as the ship’s mechanisms were calming down; it was to be the purest noise that would ever hit my ears. Back home, the acknowledgment of our landing safely would be bringing about celebration.

So we’re tipping and toeing round the ship to get close to the porthole and all Glan can say is, Fuck. Fuck would be the first word spoken on this planet. Fuck would be just as suitable as ‘incredible’ or ‘amazing’ because there was really no word capable of describing where we were.

This is your first snow. The first time you’d seen it fall and settle. All you wanted to do was go out and play in it. One vast desert of ice outside was to bring on that nostalgia. A nostalgia so thick you could see the snow falling. I finally say, Fuck, because this was what a world at peace was; a world without distraction. We were to disturb that seven billion year peace with our landing and our walking and our drilling.

Being unsure of the sea beneath the ice and what it held we felt like we were sitting in the sky. Looking along the surface; the planet being small enough meant the curvature was visible from the ship. I wanted to run out into the horizon and skid as far as I could.

I think that’s enough staring, Hila tells us.

We get our heads on and go through the checks and motions. When we’re fully geared out we agree on walking the surface for a while, being that it wasn’t part of the mission Glan said our bosses were a few thousand miles away and we felt a little better. Glan decides on rock-scissors-paper and Hila wins. Just before Hila puts her foot on the top rung she tells me she’s scared. Glan steps out, then me. He tells me this is one small step for Glankind.

The ice groans beneath us, the planet yawns. With no landmark to guide us in any direction we wander around separately then make our way back to the ship. When we get back on board Glan is doing all the talking. He spits out an endless stream of adjectives, each word falls short of what this place actually means.

The playtime was over and we contacted home on the transmitter like we were talking to aliens. They talked back, we told them about our walking around and they forgave us, telling us the oxygen supplies were plentiful regardless of recreational uses. Hila told them we’d get down to drilling as soon as possible, then she turned the transmitter off and we were alone again.

The next three weeks is what it takes for setting up the drill. With the weak gravity we’re snails trying to set up a shelter. This is all the training and preparation making clockwork of procedures. Each section that goes up makes my smile a little wider and the conversations that bit longer. I notice Hila, on the last day of construction talking a little less. Just as she’s getting shut eye before the first day of drilling she tells me she’s nervous. She asks me if I’m nervous. I tell her the drill would go just fine, I had every faith in the technology; if something would go wrong it would have gone wrong by now. Then she tells me she’s not worried about the drilling, it would be what we found in the water. What about the first time we go down and something swims right by us Mike? I tell her that bridge would be crossed eventually and that this was simply another training exercise.

We’d been deep inside our planets oceans and found things that no one had ever seen. I was simply telling myself this was the same routine, just a different ocean, different place. The mystery of extraterrestrial life for most explorers wasn’t discovery, for them it would be more of a relief. Religion, philosophy, science and astronomy would shift the moment we got back on that radio and told them what we had found. Glan kept telling us we would be worshipped when we got back home, even more so than the moment we were chosen for the mission. I thought about all that celebrating before anything had happened, what was the point in that?

Then we’re drilling and everything is still going just fine. We’re half way down, still no problems. Twenty percent, ten, five, two. This is the moment Hila heads back to the ship. I can hear her breathing heavy through my headgear over the noise of the drilling. I follow her back inside. She tells me she just can’t. She tells me that the discovery mission is only a two man job and that she would gladly sit this one out. Poor Hila flying this far and not going the distance.

Glan then tells me he’s fine about the whole thing. He was always going to be involved in everything on this mission. He was the only one to encounter the ice being broken at the top whilst I was inside talking to Hila. Let’s frikkin go Mike.

Hila helps with the dismantling of the drill and its sections without saying a word. Glan is talking the whole time, whether it was to himself or me his mind was set as straight as that hole that plunged ten kilometres into the ice.

We say goodbye to Hila for the while we’ll be away. I tell her it’ll be important she kept herself busy as the vastness would make her feel isolated. This was the first time she’d smiled since we ran around the surface like children.

Then we’re on our way down in the pod. Fifty, twenty, ten, five, two, one… . fuck. The tunnel of ice comes to an end and we’re in nowhere. The lights from the pod reflect nothing and any point of reference has gone. The first few seconds of emptiness and I’ve been holding my breath. Like the landing, I didn’t want to make a sound.

The digitals inside the pod tell us we’re two kilometres below the water’s surface. Nothing. Glan starts to get impatient so I try to persuade him otherwise. I tell him life would more likely be nearer its core where it would be warmer.

Then we’re hit by clouds of smoky water. I make it out to be blue against the lights. The curtain of dirt momentarily startles me causing my chest to tighten. Glan gets a little louder.

Out of the black again we watch a creature swim through the smoke. Glan yelps and I finally breathe out. Then we’re down a little further and more lights are coming on. Creatures are producing their own light. With the pod’s own light being brighter than any produced by the creatures; they become attracted to it. Creatures start to cling to the glass and Glan puts his face right up to them. He tells me they’re just like the creatures at the bottom of our sea, same process of living but different shapes. He tells me he was expecting something a little more extreme but it was discovery all the same.

Glan tells me that this was as beautiful as beautiful gets. But I tell him that is only a word. Should we radio Hila? He asks. I tell him no. I’d come this far, served my purpose, succeeded the mission and felt that relief. I could start to go home. But that start would lead to another start. The beginning of more missions here. More extracting of life, materials; knowledge. What would become of this planet? The inevitability of influence would eventually destroy this planet if my kind were to grab hold. I told Glan to keep driving as I unplugged the radio.

I look real close at a creature on the glass, its whole body appears to be its head and it’s smiling at me. I ask Glan what he wants. Does he want fame, does he want a place in human history or does he want this moon to dissolve into space? These creatures will contain more innocence than any simple creature back home. He tells me I’m fucking nuts. But he wants to keep going so we press on and find as we go deeper the life gets denser. I tell him there is a reason why this life is hiding, why it is encased in ice. It was never meant to be found.

Then it’s time to leave for the surface. I’m telling Glan the whole time that we transmit home telling them we found nothing. Being that there were only two of us who went down it would be my word against his unless we brought back evidence and Glan would have to kill me if I was to be stopped in destroying it. When I had told Hila about crossing that bridge when I got there this was how I was to go about it. I had known full well that there was a chance I was to encounter life here on this moon, I had done the training, felt immense anticipation, said the goodbyes but in an instant I had made a decision. Had Hila come down and accepted the life for what it was, kept quiet, kept calm; the situation would have been different.

Then we’re at the surface, Glan gets out the pod the same time as I do and we’re running in slow motion back to the ship. I get inside first and destroy the transmitter in one fell swoop.

Hila is sat in the corner and all she can say is, Can we go home now?

Nightwomen

My ex girlfriend gave me the idea. We’d be walking home from