House of Zolo's Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 1

By House of Zolo

A woman confesses to killing god… Two people stand on the edge of the abyss that is the end of the world… A hidden history of earth is revealed in the interpretation of mysterious found manuscripts… An alien entity takes root in a suburban garden and starts transforming the neighbourhood…

These are just few of the many ideas explored in this exciting new collection from the House of Zolo. Writers and poets from around the world conjure fractured dimensions, cast dark nightmares and offer alternatives to the apocalypse as they navigate to the very edges of time and back. Delving into themes of post-humanity, future-shock, and the consequences of climate change, these short stories and poems fearlessly explore what it means to be human. Alternately dark and hopeful, heartbreaking and humorous, this volume contains stories and poems to spark the imagination and inspire new perspectives on the future.

 

HOZ's Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 1 is an international collection of short stories and poems by some of today's most compelling writers: Jessica Barksdale, Joe Baumann, L. X. Beckett, Melanie Bell,  Jenny Blackford, Robert Borski, Shenoa Carroll-Bradd, M. S. Chari, Deborah L. Davitt, Joe DiCicco, Steve Dillon, James Dorr, Kevin Freeman, Amelia Gorman, Vince Gotera, Russell Hemmel, Richard Leis, E. H. Lupton, JBMulligan, Jennifer Loring, Sally McBride, Stephen McQuiggan, Laurel Radzieski, Samannaz Rohanimanesh, George Salis, Lucy Stone, Ojo Taiye, Cohl Warren-Howles.

 

Curated and edited by Nihls Andersen and Erika Steeves with guest poetry editor Jon Parsons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Zolo
• Release date: May 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989587089

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by House of Zolo

Copyright of individual works is maintained by the respective writers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior writer permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Volume 1

Publisher, Nihls Andersen

Copyeditor, Erika Steeves

Poetry editor, Jon Parsons, PhD

Cover art, J. E. Solo

ISBN: 978-1-989587-04-1 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-989587-05-8 (E-Book)

ISBN: 978-1-989587-06-5 (Kindle E-Book)

Astro-Archaeologist’s Log previously published in The Poet’s Haven

Digest: Strange Land, The Poet’s Haven, May 2017

August originally published in Blank Fiction Magazine, 2014

Golden Age originally published in MINDSPARKS, Spring 1994

Silver-Clean originally published in Midnight Echo 6, November 2011

Velvet Revolution originally published in Cosmos Aug/Sept 2010 #34

House of Zolo

Toronto, ON

www.houseofzolo.com

To dream is but the beginning….

- Zolo

Contents

Copyright

Introduction

A Million Years Down

The Emperor of the

Half-Garden

From Bee-yond

All Rooted Things

My Hands Are Full of

Nightingales Leaving Us

The Mother Board

Confession

Raining Ghosts

The Shade of Eve

Tide-Borne

In Communion with the

Invisible Flock:

I Fall to Pieces

Here at the Hotel

Velvet Revolution

BEASTS 2.0

Camp Cupid

Now We Are Free

August

Rail Work

Astro-Archaeologist's Log

Journal of the Former World

Starring You in the Role

of the Fourth Rider

Panopticon

Alternative to the

Apocalypse: #4

The Organism Condition

No Birdcage Breast

Golden Age

Silver-Clean

Tears of a Neutron Star

Walking Among the Ruins

Asterozoa with the Cut-Off Hands

Witness

Contributing Authors

Introduction

Hundreds of writers responded to our inaugural call for the House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature. We asked for stories that defied the usual conventions of empire, that explored the future, trans-humanism, artificial intelligence, and alternative realities. The number of submissions we received was impressive, but the scope and caliber of the content took our collective breath away. Reading each story and poem was like opening a gift.

Authors of speculative literature are a special kind of writer, fearless in exploring the most challenging of unknowns while encapsulating the ethos of our time; they are the ones who have their finger on the pulse of the future. They gaze into the dark places, ask the tough questions, and it has been an inspiration to see how far these creators will adventure in their pursuit of the truth—to the very edges of time and beyond.

The stories and poems in this volume will thrill you, they will startle you, at times they are cynical or funny, at other times they deep-dive into horror or bring us to the verge of utter heartbreak. We experience nightmare visions, stories about the extinction of human beings, poems about the intelligence of living things. We examine the singularity, the apocalypse, future shock. At the heart of this collection there is a deep concern for the state of the world, for the upcoming challenges we may face as we merge more deeply with technology, and for the costs of our negligence as a species on the fragile ecosystems of our planet. The work in this volume vibrates with compassion, it pounds like a heartbeat.

The House of Zolo was founded by writers and editors who love speculative literature and who want to create more space and profile for this work. Thank you for supporting speculative fiction authors and for joining us on our first venture as an independent publisher.   

Nihls Andersen,

Toronto, 01/01/2020

A Million Years Down

by Joe DiCicco

JAS HAD GOOD EYES . Big eyes, always open wide behind their goggles. But even she couldn’t see that far down. It was just too dark down there.

Dark . . . and deep.

It hurt her brain to think about, even with dual neuro-laxants in. So she didn’t think about it. She knew Deke didn’t either, no more than his eyes relayed the information to his brain; visceral, purely sensory. No more than synapses firing off what the goggles registered.

It was a nightmare down there. Absolute, unending. Deep, deep down there. A massive cloud, greasy, the color of copper, roiled through, coalesced with a sickly pallid cloud from the opposite direction. Swirling into each other, mingling like oil, or sick cream, it moved on sluggishly as another storm rolled through. This one broke apart quickly, segmenting into a swarm of undulating devils. Jas felt nauseous looking down there. She added ten to her neuro-laxant meter. It was, after all, just information her eyes relayed to her brain.

She turned to Deke, saw him adjust his face mask. She did the same, breathed deep the clean air flowing in through the tubelets. The wave-light on both their chest plates still glowed butane-blue. She saw his goggles aimed down, knew the big, clear eyes behind them were fixated. The haze all around was especially thick tonight; sick yellow, the color of fever-shit. The sand was mostly still, though an occasional cyclone, weak and gaunt, screamed up from below the scaffold, deposited sand around their boots.

How deep is it? He spoke at last, gaze remaining downward.

No one knows. Turb-meters can’t read that deep.

Maybe it has no bottom? Just goes on and on and on. Forever.

After a moment Jas began to shake her head. No. There’s something down there, something solid. There has to be.

She couldn’t see his eyes behind the heavy goggles, but knew they would be watering up now. It’s horrible. It’s . . . terrible. Like a nightmare. They said it was thrilling, striking, breathtaking. It’s not. It’s crushing . . . it hurts.

He was right. Jas knew he was right. It was painful information for the eyes to relay to the brain.

Crushing.

There was no beauty here, no awe or wonderment. It was not a sight any human being was meant to witness. It was too far. And Jas knew now, for certain, what Deke already did:

It was very close to the end.

She’d had some idea when he suggested they ascend the scaffold. In fact, she had been waiting for it, waiting for what they both knew was coming. It had to come. This simply could not continue. And the entrance at the base of the many stairs had been unguarded. Yes, that had removed any doubt; there were very few left.

Deke turned his head to face her, the wind picking up the tail of his trench coat, flapping it over his belt. Are you sure, Jas? I . . . I need you to be sure. Is the time right? Is the time now?

She drew back the meter on her laxant, let her eyes register the information, fire it to her brain. It was his survival instinct making him ask these questions. That instinct was so human. Here, at the end of it all, and still that instinct made him doubt what they both knew was surely the truth.

Yes, she was sure.

You know the answer to that question. There’s no sky anymore. Just black. No stars.

She could see now, even through the goggles, that he was crying. That was understandable.

Are you sure we shouldn’t go neuroid? It’s not . . . it’s not too late to upload . . .

Is that what you want? To be information and emotion? That’s essentially what we are now, just on a different substrate. Would the emotions we feel be happiness?

Already he was shaking his head. No. Of course not.

Jas nodded. It all had to end sometime.

There’ll be no trace. No trace of us. Of anyone or anything. Look, already the wind smoothed out our tracks in the sand. He turned to the right, pointed in the direction from which they had ascended the scaffold. It was true. Not one boot print remained.

Just like that, we disappear. Into nothing. No one left to care. No one left to remember a damn thing about any of us. Who we were. In time, there won’t even be ruins.

A massive cloud like ink parted in the center, and for a brief moment a hole could be seen beneath, a hole in the swirling storm. It was a murky abyss diving down, down, down . . . never ceasing.

A million years down.

Deke swiveled his head back to Jas. His wave-light had gone neon yellow. What?

That’s what they used to say. It’s a million years down.

It can’t be. Can it? That far?

She shrugged. The tubelets in her own face mask were weakening, drying up one by one. Why not?

We’ll be dead long before that. Long, long before that.

Yes, we will. But we’ll fall for a million years. We’ll fall forever.

Take your goggles off. I want to see your eyes.

She did, one, then the other. He smiled. Here, at the very end of everything, he smiled. Then he removed his own goggles.

And now she was smiling. She always did find those eyes captivating; massive, butane-blue.

Do you remember the music? he asked, eyes blinking tears. The notes? The way they sounded?

She nodded. Repetitive . . . and sad. Nostalgic. They play soft now, muffled, but they play. I can still hear them.

"I can, too. I’ve heard them in my brain all this time. It’s always the same notes. Restrained, always restrained. Haunting. Doo doo doo doo DOO doo dooooo." That’s how they play. I guess those notes are the only beauty left. Our memory of those notes."

Jas could feel her own eyes watering now, tears rolling down her cheeks, drying quickly in the shrieking wind. "Doo doo doo doo DOO doo dooooo. It’s a string note, a steel string note. It’s not synthetic. It’s not vibrant digital. It’s played by hand, a relic. Doo doo doo doo DOO doo dooooo."

Remember those notes. I think it’s important we remember those notes.

After a moment he stepped forward, opened his arms wide. She went to him. The wind picked up, drove a wall of sand over them, sent his coat dancing up and around his belt.

Are you ready? he asked, big eyes now closed, closed for the last time.

There’s no more sky, just black. I’m ready.

I’m scared, Jas. Why should I be? I don’t know. But I’m scared.

She craned her neck up to him. I am, too. Hold onto me tight.

Are we the last? The very last?

I don’t know.

He held her with both arms, leaned toward the edge of the scaffold, ever slightly. "Remember the music, Jas. Let the notes play in your brain. Doo doo doo doo DOO doo dooooo."

And then there was only empty steel scaffolding. The wind shrieked, sending walls of sand up the many stairs and roaring in all directions for many miles. In another moment, four boot prints, two large, and two much smaller, were gone completely. There was only the tawny sand, blown smooth. It erased any trace they had been there at all.

The Emperor of the

Half-Garden

by Sally McBride

ACRYSTAL FLAKE WITH multitudes within, traveling.

The Emperor, falling. From the devoured, into the unknown—but that was what the Emperor did. A free spirit, and not much else.

He landed between blades of grass, sifted down past shreds of dead insects, dry leaves and clumps of dirt, and burrowed under the compost bin at the bottom of Marjorie Doon’s narrow garden in Scarborough, where the moisture, nutrient supply, and relative quiet seemed perfect. It was dark, but it was lovely.

To be in soil again. To be growing. Plumping slowly into a scrap, a lozenge, a tuber-like little thing among the worms.

Almost perfect. An Empire is better when it is bigger. An Empire, by its nature, must expand. But the morsel of planet-skin into which he’d settled was disturbingly segmented. Lines of heaviness slashed across and under the fertile ground, formed of metal, stone, and even the pale shadows of hydrocarbons. But there was the electric feel of cognition in the atmosphere. This world held useful attributes.

So the Emperor, once settled and of a decent size, extended tendrils of matter, electricity, and mental curiosity, and eventually, when Marjorie Doon approached the compost bin bearing a yellow plastic pail of vegetable scraps, eggshells, and coffee grounds, he contacted her mind. In place of her thoughts—fish sticks for dinner, whether to have coffee with Susan and Lou that morning—he inserted a nubbin of potential. An idea, basically.

Marjorie dumped her pail of scraps into the black plastic bin, replaced the lid, and paused for a moment. It seemed to her that she had only just now—at 9:30 in the morning—awakened. The air seemed especially clear. Its humidity laid a gloss of sensuality across the skin of her arms, and she noted without surprise that all the tiny hairs were standing up and quivering. Could it be her proximity to the overhead power lines? Which were what made her narrow townhouse so affordable. If so, she should try to bottle the thrilling feeling and sell it. She felt taller, younger.

A focused excitement gathered in her belly, why and for what she did not know. Something. Perhaps that feeling of higher purpose the self-help books encouraged. Marjorie returned along the concrete path to the kitchen of her home, whose only drawback was that the garden was so long and narrow. A half-garden, really, the long wooden fence between her side and the neighbors’ side casting a shadow that never crept completely away.

A half-garden isn’t enough. One wants more.

Well then. She mounted the steps, opened the screen door into the kitchen, placed the yellow plastic pail on the counter. Wasn’t her son Robbie’s computer right upstairs, in his bedroom? Which, since he was at work right now at the Jiffy Mart, was sitting unused?

She could get online and get into the stock market. Make money. So simple. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

In eleven days, Marjorie had accumulated enough money to buy the other half of the duplex right out from under her neighbors, who were merely tenants. And had too many vehicles and a yappy dog. She made an offer to the owner that the owner couldn’t refuse, and once in possession of the real estate had promptly evicted The Yapsters, as she called them. The sight of the moving truck retreating down the street gave her pleasure.

Making money was easy. Why wasn’t everyone doing it? The next time she took the compost scraps down to the bin, she realized she’d better encrypt Robbie’s machine better. His passwords were rather simple.

Never mind—first things first. The garden was more important. Take down the fence, thus expanding the yard to full size. Get someone to tear up the concrete pathway, dig up the remnants of an old septic tank, its feeder pipe and drainage field. Let the ground breathe a bit.

Get a bigger compost bin.

Marjorie hired a contractor to open up the two halves of the duplex, making the whole thing into a really nice, roomy home. She quit her job at Bea’s Baked Goods Discount Outlet and worked on the garden, mostly at night. It was a half-garden no more. The compost bin was doing well: lots of lovely fertilizer was cooking up nicely. Marjorie was feeling rather good about her ability to get things done. She was taking care of business.

Plus, all the flowers that were popping up! Some of which were weird and ugly, but the kind of ugly that is oddly beautiful. Some pale and slender, others robust and meaty. Many of them emitted a nighttime glow that showed her where to dig, where to add the chemicals she purchased at the hardware store. So many plants! Lush was the word that came to Marjorie’s mind. She had the best garden in the neighborhood, not that anyone cared.

✽✽✽

On a Tuesday in early August she asked Robbie to take the compost scraps down to the bottom of the garden and dump them into the bin.

He wouldn’t do it. Not out of laziness, which was her first assumption. He said, It’s creepy down there, Mom. There’s . . . I dunno. Electricity. Down there. Makes my feet hurt.

"Your feet?"

Yeah. Hey, uh, I think I’m moving in with Julie.

And Robbie moved away, to live with his girlfriend across town. He took his computer.

Marjorie bought a new one. Three, in fact.

She turned Robbie’s bedroom into her office, which was large enough to accommodate multiple computers and screens. Finding that she didn’t need much sleep anymore—and in fact was mostly up at night anyway—Marjorie got into the Asian stock markets and soon was able to buy five more homes, each with a lovely big yard.

But this first one was the best.

Her eyes glistened in the dark as she stroked the lid of her compost bin. The original one, where she had . . . how to put it? Stepped through a door. That was it. A door into a life of riches and growth. A word popped into her mind: fecundity.

Fecund, she whispered, as if it were a dirty word. Fecund. She licked her lips. She herself wasn’t fecund anymore, what with the hysterectomy. The night grew silent. Silvery dew formed on her arms, like tiny stars. She licked the dew and it was sweet as honey.

The yards of all the new houses would bloom with the strange and beautifully ugly plants that made her skin shiver. Her eyesight was better now, and her sense of smell. Lingering by the compost bin was heady, like being at a department store perfume counter. Shivery. The way she had felt, once, with that man whose name she’d never known . . . not Robbie’s father.

She knelt on the ground. Sniffed it. Time to add blood meal. And another animal carcass. Squirrels were so foolish. Dithery. Humans were, in her opinion, even more foolish, but one couldn’t hope to find them squashed on the road.

✽✽✽

Diligently, Marjorie transplanted ugly/beautiful and sometimes squirming plants to new abodes in the new yards.

While Marjorie was expanding her empire, the Emperor was also expanding his. The yellow plastic bucket kept delivering sustenance, and radiation from the local star was penetrating the ground more evenly now that the shadowy intrusions of metal and concrete, tile and plastic were gone. This new place into which he’d fallen was good. He could stretch and slither and creep and grow. He could see his offspring make their way to new empires of their own.

The only wrong thing was the proliferation of small—minuscule—life forms. Bacteria. Fungi. Viruses. In other Empires he had vanquished them easily, but here . . . here there were uncountable trillions of many and varied sorts. Their robust determination constantly outflanked his tendrils, their stupidity indifferent to his capillaries of electricity, no matter how intricately they proliferated.

The larger life forms—worms, insects, the occasional bird—were easy. He simply drew them down and absorbed them. It was the multitudes of invisible organisms that were becoming a threat.

Attempts to contact their feeble, attenuated intelligence failed. He was accustomed to being unique, alone, a concentrated node of potential for the long ages of travel to new Empires; they were millions, billions, each its own tiny fleck of life. He was One that became Many; they were Many that had never discovered the trick of becoming One.

The Emperor began to realize that his extremities were being eroded. Nibbled and severed, dragged away and eaten. He thrust them out anew. He directed the yellow plastic pail to bring more and better nutrients. In strength there was domination. And yet his strength toppled like memories, rolled under the tide of tiny life to join the sand. One night, rather frantically, he sprouted multiple fruiting bodies which would spread his unborn selves at random into the air. It was an act of desperation.

Is this Empire over already?

No! He had a whole planet to conquer, and he had barely begun. Other Empires had spanned globes, until the last hungry ugly plants and tendrils and towering columns had gobbled everything. Everything! Why else would he seek a new Empire under a new star?

He fought the multitudes, altering the characteristics of the soil in which he throbbed and pulsed and twitched. Acid leached, strange chemicals squirted and flowed. The flowers that sprang from his body toward the light of this yellow star became larger and more ugly. Some of them started to bleed and cry out.

The creature into whose mind he had placed an idea, so long ago, came to see what the commotion was about.

Marjorie Doon quickly understood that something very bad was happening. She coughed, swatted at