Sol's Sci-fi Thirdly Magazine Issue 2

By Sue White and Robyn Henry

In this second issue of Sol's Sci-fi Thirdly Magazine we have five stories. Effluxion by Sue White, Of Celestial Bodies by Art Brindle, The Fields of Allata by Hansel Brink, Urmer by Grace P. Epping and The Lady Lies by Robyn Henry.

In 'The Lady Lies' by Robyn Henry in which a mother finds out the price of revenge. In 'Effluxion' by Sue White a man realises something about his companion on a journey in Space. In the 'Fields of Allata' by Hansel Brink a soldier decides to make an uncharacteristic decision. In 'Celestial Bodies' by Art Brindle a father confronts home life after his long absence away at work, and in Urmer Grace P. Epping Urmer is a victim of her abusive husband but later disappeared. What happened to her?

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunshine City Publisher
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393276258

Book preview

The Lady Lies By Robyn Henry

1.

Not a moment passes without my thinking of her. I didn’t need the memorial to remember her lying there by the sidewalk bleeding to death in the dead of the night - alone, dying and scared. Or the choking pain her memory brings back each time I miss her.

Ignoring the pain, I made the shrine with her favourite things in the whole universe: scented candles, her cuddly teddy bears and flowers - plenty of bright field flowers - because that’s what people do for those they love who die tragically in the street or peacefully in their sleep. We bury our dead but not their memories. I even wrote her name on the wall in big bold gold letters. My first and hopefully the last graffiti I will get to write in my lifetime.

When I'm done I step back and I think her shrine is both beautiful and sad - at least that is what I think. And looking at the can of paint in my hand I remember it has been a long time since I've picked up a brush or even a piece of charcoal to paint anything on canvas. When we left Earth I left my hobby there too and now she was gone as well. I am alone now in the universe.

Regardless of the pain I went to her shrine everyday at dusk to replace and light the candles. I also went simply for my own sake. I felt it was better doing something with my time rather than mopping around at the house. The combination of grief, hopelessness and idleness results in unfathomable self-pity. Everyday I already battled against Grief's fierce tentacles that relentlessly wanted to draw and plunge me into choleric depression. I didn't need Self-pity to also join in my fraying. All this heartache and pain was thanks to Bastinado.

You see, Bastinado, by his own hand, had hurt me too deeply for me to just forgive and forget. Revenge or justice or both were called for here.

So I stood there, possibly for the umpteenth time since the killing, feeling the same hurtful emotion of hopeless loss that wouldn’t go away with anything I tried. Intoxication, yoga, sober logic, physical effort or the passage of time, all weren't working. So I stood there whilst holding in my left hand her valedictorian portrait tightly against my heart and in my other hand a lighted candle as a tear fell to mingle with the fallen rain on the sidewalk, as I thought of her smile, tender mercies and loving kindnesses I’d never know again. Gosh, I miss her terribly.

The last time around, unheard to the world, my inner voice was crying and inconsolable as I tried to make sense of the violent finality of her untimely demise but failing miserably each time I thought of it.

This time, unlike the last, I hold together my outward peace with the little sanity and dignity I’ve left, all the while thinking: surely what could I do against Bastinado, my malfeasor, but only with prayer try to get through this as best as a mother could, what when the Police Chief had himself promised me to my face that he’d his best investigators doing all they could to disprove Bastinado’s verified but false alibi and to catch whoever else was responsible? Justice would be served in the due course of time he'd promised. In the meantime life as time does should go on.

As I stood there I remembered with anxiety the whole incident of hopeless proportions which had occurred at the police station the day when everything went teats up, when Bastinado was being released before my very eyes without being charged, when I saw his smug eyes and sly smile of the devil he was flash triumphantly as he passed looking mockingly at me with a disconcerting devilish stare, when suddenly intuition told me with rock solid certainty he’d killed her. Honestly what was I to do except trust my own motherly instinct and if I trusted it, to positively act upon it?

Uncharacteristically I’d furiously attacked him by clawing and punching his face; for up to that point in my entire life I’d been a gentle soul. In my book, violence was never a last option as others regard it. To me violence was never to be resorted to, but not on this day - my anger saw to it. I’d flown at him like I was Eumenides: all fury, fangs and claws. For a man famous in the underground world on Minor Lorw II for his high level of unforgiving belligerence, Bastinado surprisingly had taken my punches without retaliation like he’d expected to be attacked, like he needed this; and indeed he did need me to act in a barbaric irrational manner as I was to harshly learn moments later.

We’d tumbled like clutter over a desk before falling in a cacophony of battle to the floor, one on top of the other, with our limbs messily entangled. Then I’d glared loudly at him: Why? Why her? Why my baby? Why take her away from me? Answer me, damn you! Why?

For a moment he lay still underneath me, peering at me with an unreadable hard glint in his eye, letting my punches land harmlessly on his hand shielded handsome face. Then quick like a cat he’d surprisingly held my hands in a vice like grip. Instantaneously many hands began pulling us up from the floor and apart with little success. Then in the ensuing mêlée, Bastinado mercilessly seizing the opportunity to taunt, knowing the memory would incense me further and haunt me forever, pulled himself to my left ear and cruelly whispered something I still hear in my nightmares even today.

She squealed like a piglet he’d said his voice audibly clear and crisp so that I wouldn’t mishear each syllable. Just as the last word left his lips he’d unhanded me as I became horror stricken at the thought. And in that instant he fell away and our eyes met as it where in a rubbery, sticky and viscous moment as the thought of what he’d said slew me to my heart and bones.

I'd searched his face for confirmation of what I thought he’d said, doubting my hearing; maybe in my state of being grief-stricken I’d lost my mind and I didn't know it. And because of it I had begun hearing confounding things, things I hoped badly to hear, things that would bring closure to my loss and grief, things only justice could assuage. At my searching gaze he’d smiled just slightly with his eyes and vaguely from the corner of his mouth like he knew what I was looking for and what I dreaded to hear, facts like she’d suffered and at his hands.

Like a piglet he’d tentatively mouthed in silent locution just so only I could read what he was saying. He'd then nodded just enough for me alone to notice when he saw I'd got the meaning he'd intended, before he'd winked with his left eye a gotcha! Like a fool he'd primed me so well with that first taunt.

The only thing I could do was try to reach for him in unabated shock and irrepressible fury wanting to question him further, wanting to beat the truth out of him before replacing it with the fear of God the