Mobius Blvd: Stories from the Byway Between Reality and Dream No. 4 | February 2024: Mobius Blvd: Stories from the Byway Between Reality and Dream, #4

By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

There is a byway between reality and dream. A transit we call Möbius Blvd …

Inspired by the enigmatic Möbius strip, a mathematical construct that defies conventional notions of linearity and infinity, Möbius Blvd has no beginning or end but exists in a place where reality and dream have fused … coalesced … merged. With each turn of the page, you'll encounter a unique blend of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction—fiction that will challenge your perceptions and leave you in awe of the infinite possibilities that exist within the written word.

Indeed, Möbius Blvd is far more than a magazine; it's an experience. It's an exploration of the infinite, a passage through dimensions where the only constant is storytelling at its most daring, a kaleidoscope of wonder and terror. Join us on this winding, never-ending journey of speculative fiction that will keep you entranced from the first twist to the last loop. Open your mind to the limitless worlds of Möbius Blvd … and discover that the boundary between fiction and reality is as thin as a strip of paper with a twist.

In this issue:

SETT
Jon Gluckman

WHERE THE TALL CORN GROWS
Mary Jo Rabe

DRAG MARKS
Rutger Middelburg

LAST SUPPER
Patrick Crerand

FLASHBACK DAWN
Wayne Kyle Spitzer

LONGEVITY
Vivian Doolittle

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
Charmaine Arjoonlal

A SPECIAL GAME
Troy Ernest Hill

KILL THE FINNISH WOLF
Robb T. White

HOLLY WOODS MAGIC: GARDEN GNOME DAY
Ross Kimble

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb's End Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224490851

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

Book preview

CONTENTS

––––––––

SETT

Jon Gluckman

WHERE THE TALL CORN GROWS

Mary Jo Rabe

DRAG MARKS

Rutger Middelburg

LAST SUPPER

Patrick Crerand

FLASHBACK DAWN

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

LONGEVITY

Vivian Doolittle

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Charmaine Arjoonlal

A SPECIAL GAME

Troy Ernest Hill

KILL THE FINNISH WOLF

Robb T. White

HOLLY WOODS MAGIC: GARDEN GNOME DAY

Ross Kimble

SETT

Jon Gluckman

––––––––

To illustrate how unreasonable Sett was, I won’t tell you about how he makes me pay for my shop overalls, with Sett’s Foreign & Exotic Car Service embroidered on the bib in gold script lettering (Sett, having delusions of grandeur, thinks his establishment is of those pristine exclusive service centers catering to the ultra-wealthy, the 1%, but really he’s a guy in a gutted Mobil station with two bays, and garage doors you gotta pull down with a cord), but what I can tell you about, is the time he put an entire box of clumping kitty litter into the oil well of my brand spanking new Mustang GT, with those red Brembo brake pads (and, man, do I like those red Brembo brake pads), and how that boy-oh-boy, can seize-up all five liters of its V-8 like‌ a sack of quick-dry cement, well let me tell you, those pistons froze to their cylinder walls like touching your tongue to a train track in the winter, because this was his idea of revenge, and somewhere, sometime, I heard someone say, when you seek revenge you should dig two graves, but when all I did was accidentally brush his daughter Arev’s breast with my elbow (no less) as she stood way too close, there, much closer than she should have been standing, on my left side, leaning into me over the bench, whispering in my ear, us, a pair of quotation marks, side by each, calling me Suga while I reached for the Feeler Gauge, to tune up that Lambo, and then she sticks her tongue in my ear, and my hand, in reflex, snaps back to bat it away, like it would a mosquito, well, that’s how it happened, I mean Sett’s garage is going to blow a hole in itself, so full of garbage, you can’t scratch your ass in there without disrupting something, a real Sanford & Son hoarder’s nightmare, a live game of Jenga, having things like carburetors, and fan belts, fall on your head, well, maybe then you can understand, I didn’t mean nothing by it, didn’t intend nothing (truth is, I ignored her, didn’t look at her once, which might have pissed her off), so she’s gotta make this big screaming deal of it, like I’m some sort of Me -Too molester, like it’s my fault, well maybe when looking at it through my eyes, then the clarity will come to you like Moses parting the Red Sea, without someone needing to explain anything about how this happened, you see, she has them hanging out all over the place anyway, and sure, what red-blooded American male (although technically I was born in Coicoyán de las Flores, Mexico and immigrated here when I was one, when dad, who carried me through that wall of fire known as the Mojave Desert, thought it might be a good idea to get the hell away from the Guzmán-Zambada Organization), wouldn’t want to, you know, take a feel around for a bit, but that’s not what’s going on in my mind — and this was not like Varma who’s always hanging around the garage, and wants me to come to his restaurant The Spreading Lotus for lunch, who insists on showing me that picture of his wife, not like you would show one where you love her so much you gotta show it to everyone, her smiling benignly while reading on the couch, and the sun’s pouring through the window just right, like God trying to show you something about her you couldn’t see in the shadows, no, not like that, because this picture is only from the waist down where she’s got no clothes on, and her legs spread like a Groco spanner, and the focus is on her shadowy altogether, and I know it’s his wife only because Varma says, My wife, (like this is all his wife is to him) as he turns his phone to me, and I jerk back like I’m stung by a hornet, not expecting to see that (!!) if you know what I mean, and I kind of feel bad for her, and look at Varma a little sideways after that, and it makes me feel nauseous thinking about patronizing his establishment, ever, (I don’t know who can eat that Vindaloo crap, anyway) — and that’s certainly not a reason to go around digging graves, as in what I mentioned earlier about revenge, like using a hammer to kill a fly, ‘cause I love my wife, and I barely knew I did it, intended nothing at all for God’s sake, we all make mistakes, things just happen, I don’t swim in those sewers, I’ve got more class than that, because if I had intended, you can bet it wouldn’t have been in that stinking garage, in Sett’s Foreign & Exotic Car Service, it would have been after some fine dinner, where I’m treating her right, like at Steak 38, which is a steakhouse owned by The Mob out on Route 38 there by the Pink Petals Motel $35.00 per night, where most people go after their New York strip and cherries Jubilee flambé — but Sett saw it, saw it his way, and says nothing (one of those, don’t get mad, get even, guys) — so, on that next Tuesday, my GT don’t start and blows a header, for no reason I can immediately comprehend, only after a thorough post-engine-seizure investigation, when I’m ripping apart the entire premises, looking for evidence of anything, that empty box of Soft Paws surfaces in the dumpster behind the garage (the guy doesn’t even own a cat), why, this just confirms my reasons for despising this unreasonable Armenian with nothing sparking in the brain pain, if you catch my drift, and him saying things like We need-a put-a more-a hookers on-a the peg-a-board-a to hang-a the wenches, and things like that, that make it impossible to understand a freakin’ word that leaks from that broken-tooth, black-hole of a mouth, or who becomes so incommunicative that he shuts down completely, so how was I supposed to know he got so angry with me, and if he’d said something, I might have had the chance to explain myself, but when he didn’t even speak to me for three days, when I thought he was just going through one of his silent spells (he can be a moody guy; this was not unusual) and I, I didn’t even know I’d done anything that might set off his temper to where he would pour clumping kitty litter down my oil fill port, for Christ’s sake, and thus destroy the car I’d saved, and saved, and saved for, and only bought last week, brand new, off the lot, given the measly chicken scratch he pays me to grease-monkey for him, and now, now, I have to take the B12 Local which stops at every stop, all 37 of them, I counted, taking me over an hour to get here, to get to Sett’s Foreign & Exotic Car Service to make that scratch, and then every time getting yelled at by Sett for being late, when those guys from the veterans’ home who need to use the hydraulic wheelchair lift to get them into the bus take too long, like when it jams halfway up, and has them flailing — like those nylon tubular guys with their long arms, and their asinine smile, set on a blower that cuts in and out, so they’ll waver and undulate, like a snake charmer’s snake, that they use for grabbing your attention about a mattress sale, or used cars — in mid-air, and then all of us on the bus, even the lady in the pink Wanda’s World of Make Up shirt, with the gimp leg who wears a black hairnet (God only knows why; she’s obviously not in the food industry) and beige support hose rolled at the top, whose cracked gray desert face shatters with impatience, having to wait until the service guys show up in their toy van with the yellow light going around and around, while she’s shrieking, THEY’S GONNA DOCK ME YOU SONS-A-BITCHES, THEY’S GONNA DOCK ME!—- well, this is what’s unfair with this life, where someone gets reamed out or punished for something he has no control over or something so minor, so incidental occurs, like with Arev, who has the nicest rack you’d ever want to lay your eyes on — and what was she doing in the bays, anyway, shouldn’t she have been at her desk in the office taking calls and putting on lipstick — like she was when I smacked Sett, so hard, like Alex Rodriguez, clean across the workbench (the self-same one that got me into all this trouble) with a tire iron — his face doesn’t work anymore like it used to, and so that now, finally, the score is all evened up, and I’ll get the respect I’ve been looking for all along, and maybe even a raise? 

WHERE THE TALL CORN GROWS

Mary Jo Rabe

––––––––

Cathy McKeever looked up through the dusty, living room window, watched the cornstalks sway purposefully in the wind, and smiled. Rows of corn with brownish-green stalks at least seven feet high undulated proudly in the wind. She had more than one good reason to go outside and let her long, gray hair wave in sync with the corn.

There were claims that watching waves on water could soothe you and strengthen your creative powers. For Cathy watching the corn stalks wave in the wind had always helped her discharge the clutter from her mind, even before she got the messages from the kernels.

Unfortunately, after sitting for a number of hours, her chubby legs felt a little stiff, her ankles looked definitely swollen, and her neck didn't want her to make any sudden moves. She had spent too many addicting hours hunched over her trusty laptop while analyzing data from JPL in Pasadena.

Despite everyone's doubts, she was doing more creative work telecommuting from here on the family farm in Iowa than she ever had in academia. Lately, of course, with the assistance of the corn kernels, she had discovered a number of interesting formations in the Milky Way galaxy.

Now, though, her itchy, dry eyes felt like she had been out baling hay without protective goggles. And she was thirsty. Giving it some thought, she probably hadn't eaten or drunk anything for far too many hours.

She sniffed, indulging briefly in wishful thinking. Nothing. No smell of food, just the familiar fragrance of house dust and dog. She had neglected to put anything in the crockpot before she ran up her laptop.

Except for the reassuringly loud hum from her old laptop, it was quiet in the old farmhouse. Her foster puppy must still be outside chasing rabbits. He would yap at the door as soon as he wanted to come in.

Cathy felt at home in this rickety, old farmhouse, especially when the walls creaked in harmony with the whistling wind.

Her great-grandfather had been the mad, hyperactive builder in the family. In record time he had put up a medium-sized, two-story, white, farmhouse with green shingles on the roof and a massive, three-story, red barn. His now weather-beaten wooden fences were the acknowledged guardians that protected the farmland as far as the eye could see.

Cathy, of course, was no farmer and had never paid much attention to the land. She was a driven astrophysicist who enjoyed living a fairly solitary existence on the farm. That the Iowa cornfields would provide her with breakthrough data about the cosmos hadn't even been part of the original deal.

Her grandfather had been the passionate farmer, rescuing the farm from the bank during the depression, raising hogs and cattle, and growing the grain to feed them.

Her father got rid of the animals that were bankrupting him and raised all the grains that would sell, constructing mammoth grain dryers and silos to store what he grew.

When her parents died, Cathy inherited a farm that she didn't know what to do with at first. She had never had much in common with the others in the area. That never changed, but as an adult, Cathy enjoyed brief encounters with rebellious, local teenagers who reminded her of herself at that age.

She had a permanent position at JPL by that time but impulsively decided to move back to Iowa and telecommute. Cathy herself was pretty much a loner, preferring a limited number of people or none at all around her. She had actually hated the time she spent in Pasadena and honestly did her best work here on the Iowa farm.

Living at home, in the house she grew up in on the family farm, was the best decision she ever made. There was an incomparable peace and quiet here in the drafty old house a good half mile from the gravel County Line Road.

This relative isolation, along with dark skies, did good things for her fifty-something, introverted soul. And her not entirely voluntary foster dog, was better off with a whole two hundred and forty acres as his hunting grounds, which he terrorized daily.

On this gray, October day, Cathy remembered hopping barefoot through the squishy, warm mud in the cornfield several summers ago, skillfully batting away the cornstalk leaves that threatened to slice her face. Her aching feet, stiff from curling under the dining room table while Cathy worked at her laptop, loved this kind of freedom.

During that particularly significant summer, the outdoors had reeked vaguely of decomposing vegetation combined with the smell of ripening ears of corn. Even then, penetrating smells hadn't annoyed her. Strolling through cornfields had always distracted her analytic brain and liberated her creative musings.

On that day, some squeaking noises had emerged in the center of her brain and exploded outwards. Cathy must have fainted and collapsed into the muddy row. She only regained consciousness when Killer, the foster pup, licked her face and howled.

Sorry, the high-pitched voices had screeched. It sounded like they were coming from the surface of her skull.

It took a while for the universal translator to kick in, and then we had the volume up too high, the voices had continued. "We're sorry to have caused you any unpleasantness.

Cathy had shaken her head and wondered if she had a concussion from falling to the ground. What else would cause these auditory hallucinations?

Can we talk? The voices got more and more incessant.

Cathy had pulled herself up to a sitting position in the mud and looked around. She couldn't see anyone, and, as far as she knew, there was no one in the vicinity who might come up with a technological trick to broadcast a tight beam of sound directly aimed at her head.

No, no, the voices had continued. We are the extraterrestrial visitors you people keep fantasizing about, except that we are real. We exist in a group mind and can divide up into as many physical parts as necessary. Naturally, we have our own agenda, the reasons we are here. You are the first intelligent creature on this planet we have been able to communicate with.

Hmm, Cathy had thought. Maybe this isolation on the farm is making me schizophrenic. I'm hearing voices, and, being an astrophysicist, explain their existence as visitors from outer space. She remembered this as a thoroughly depressing thought.

No, no, no, the squeaky voices had continued. We are real, real space aliens. We just found your corn kernels to be a compatible residence for our stay here.

All right, Cathy had thought. Prove it.

We are transmitting data about the celestial body you named Sedna to your primitive computing device. This is data that you and no one else on your planet has ever had and which you can't invent in a believable fashion. Check out the numbers, and have your colleagues at JPL confirm them.

Cathy had still been sure that the voices were pathological symptoms of a mental disorder she was now afflicted with, but had seen no harm in pulling herself up, brushing off as much mud as possible, staggering to the farmhouse, and taking a long shower. Foster puppy Killer had been immediately bored and took off chasing a pheasant.

After she had dried off and gotten dressed, Cathy had run up her laptop, expecting it to prove that she was imagining things. Instead, there was a new file containing previously unknown data about Sedna's moonlets. Cathy had immediately checked all the data she could find about Sedna and concluded that the data was new but consistent.

She had sent it on to one of her few friends at JPL who was able to finagle a few hours at the newest outer-space telescope and confirm that Sedna indeed had tiny moons with the size, shape, and mineral density that Cathy's data predicted. Cathy had told her friend that the numbers had come from some creative calculations Cathy had fooled around with.

Then, with this confirmation, Cathy had returned to the cornfield and begun the enduring bonds of companionship with the space aliens in the kernels of corn in her fields. The stalks grew well. Jack Cassidy, the neighbor farmer who did the agricultural work on her farm for a fee, did a good job keeping the soil and the plants healthy.

We mean well, they assured her back then. And there is much we could assist the creatures on your planet with, especially when it comes to accumulating knowledge and more efficient means of logical thinking. However, we haven't been able to talk to any of the people here. They simply don't listen to us. They even seem to find our communication attempts intrusive and disgusting.

Hmm, Cathy had thought. I only heard you when I deliberately emptied my mind of conscious thought. Then you were loud and clear.

We have had enough time to mull things over, the voices then said. We thought we needed to be more intrusive, but in a way your fellow creatures wouldn't notice at first. That's why we came up with the idea of merging with corn kernels. They are especially compatible with our metabolic reality and, once consumed by the inhabitants of your planet, make it possible for us to insert chemicals into the minds of Earth creatures that make them more amenable to the necessity of logical thought and life-long learning.

And how did that work so far? Cathy had asked, genuinely curious.

Not as well as we hoped, the voices had admitted. People just don't consume enough corn. That's why we are desperate. Would you be willing to help us, and can you?

Let me sleep on it, Cathy had thought. She did and decided that the corn kernels, which was how she thought of the aliens, had a point. So many problems on planet Earth were due to ignorance and people's inability to engage in logical thought. Possibly the aliens also had ulterior motives, but Cathy decided helping them was worth the risk.

We truly have no ulterior motives, the voices had assured her when she returned to the cornfield the next day. The galaxy will simply be a more pleasant and productive place when all sentient creatures can think clearly.

I think I know of a way to help you, Cathy had begun. "I can make sure that the corn from my fields is used for high-fructose corn syrup. This is a kind of powerful sweetener, like a sweetener on steroids. If you can maintain your existential integrity during the