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Winner January Flash Fiction Contest 2008
Scott Bell
"Out of Service"
November 3rd, 1971 . Marcus Cranberry stood in the corridor reading the Post’s dramatic headline.
Cities Finest Stop Chess Board Serial Killer
Unmoved, Marcus folded the paper neatly beneath his arm and inserted 25 cents into the Coke machine, already aware that the man of whom the paper spoke laid 5 floors above, fighting for his worthless life as doctors dutifully attempted to repair his bulleted heart.
Late shift morgue attendant and janitor for the Norfolk Veterans Hospital, Marcus was a modest man who took enjoyment in his organized spaces and spotless tile floors as a rare source of measured pride.
Marcus punched the Coke button and waited for the familiar clanking from within the chilly sentinel. Nothing.
He furrowed his brow and bent down to read the flashing letters offering an explanation.
OUT OF SERVICE
He heard a ding, straightened himself, (hoping the Coke machine had reconsidered), then looked down the hall. An orderly exited the elevator with the lifeless body of a shrouded man lying on a gurney before him.
“Evening Marcus, got the man of the hour here. Where you want him?”
“Put im’ in 12,”
“Ok Skipper.”
As he trundled down the hall, droplets of blood fell from the deceased’s exposed hand, victimizing the freshly mopped floor.
Marcus rolled his mop bucket from beside the stubborn beverage dispenser then stopped, seeing something impossible in the maroon line perforating the hallway floor.
In the cloying stillness, Marcus imagined he was back on duty aboard the USS Bowfin, deciphering transmissions and listening for German U-boats in the dark pressures outside.
-.... ...-- ... .--. .- -.-. . ... -.. . .- -.. .-.-.- --- -. . ... .--. .- -.-. . .-.. . ..-. - .-.-.- -.... ...-- ... .--. .- -.-. . ...
63 SPACES DEAD (STOP) ONE SPACE LEFT (STOP) 63 SPACES…
In horror and disbelief, Marcus read the impossible statement encoded in the repeating Morse code of bloody dots and dashes. He laughed uneasily, attributing his misinterpretation to the late hour.
…The slosh of a bucket, the turn of a mop….
Marcus positioned the gurney against one walls, (orderly gone, crimson message eagerly erased) then noticed door 12 standing unexpectedly open.
Unnerved, Marcus grasped the steel latch and peaked into the shadowed hole. The curve of the white linen covering the top of killers head stared back from the black like a cataract. Seeing his newest resident in quiet repose, his nerves calmed from a tempest to a mild scream. He closed the door.
Following a reflection from the overhead fluorescence, Marcus looked down to find a thin sheet of ice on the surface of his previously steaming bucket of mop water.
…………Click……………
Without turning around, Marcus knew with certainty that door 12 again stood open.
He swallowed hard, his throat clicking audibly as his mouth went dry.
A cold respiration caressed the nape of his goose-fleshed neck as the killers reeking breath curled invasively into his nostrils. Superimposing his own fears onto the killer, Marcus envisioned the composite figure of a fully decorated German officer bearing down behind him.
Marcus did not turn, choosing to exchange precious seconds for distance. With military conditioned speed, Marcus ran for the morgue’s open door, thrusting the broom handle before him like a bayonet against all that lay in his path.
At the end of the short hall, Marcus plunged himself through the already open elevator doors then spun to face the hallway.
The naked killer bore down on him with incredible speed, not running, but gliding, his pale feet dragging lifelessly behind, his unsutured chest held wide by a carelessly left retractor.
Marcus pounded the randomly flashing bank of elevator buttons with one hand, the other holding the mop against the closing killer like Charlton Heston to the Red Sea .
In final desperation, Marcus dropped the mop, clawed open the hatch at his feet and pressed the emergency phone to his ear. Against a crackle of static, the voice of the killer hissed through the receiver.
“Oooonnnneeee ssssppppaaaacccceeeee lllleeeefffftttt”
The slosh of a bucket, the turn of a mop and in that time, Marcus Cranberry became one more of the morgue’s many interred guests.
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Epilogue:
November 17th, 1971 . The Norfolk Post ran the obituary of Marcus Cranberry; no cause of death; no family remembered; a modest listing for a modest man. Beneath his name stood three simple words………OUT OF SERVICE.
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Honorable Mention January Flash Fiction Contest 2008
Christina Steiner
"Transcendence"
He had held his gun pointed at my middle. I knew he’d kill me.
I’ve heard that at the time of your death your life flickers before you, important events -- and some that seemed insignificant at the time they happened.
When the shot echoed in the room, I already had my life’s revue. For just a moment I stood there, and then my body slacked in confusion and hit the floor with a hollow thud.
All that does not matter. That day had been my day to traverse into another ambit.
An exhilarating lightness came immediately over me. Having shed my body, I floated unrestricted by gravity or weight. I metamorphosed into a zephyr. My tiny particles mixed and moved with other particles in the troposphere of this earth.
It did not take long to figure out my navigational mechanism. I can explain it only this way: my entity separates and merges like a magnet with its own DNA.
I move about the earth slowly or rapidly, riding the winds or the liquid waves. My particles can align themselves into a string of beads or cluster like grapes, abiding my will.
Overall I like my way of being. Heat and cold have had no influence so far. There is no physical pain or discomfort; there is no physical pleasure either. In time I hope to figure out the intricacies of my being.
All the places I missed in my former life are open to me. I perched on top of a snow- covered pine tree in Alaska, snuggled up with a homeless person in New York City, invaded the ear of a giraffe in Kenya and cumulated on top of a road bomb in Iraq. That was tricky; I did not know the outcome of that one. It took awhile for my particles to assemble again. In the process I discovered that only violent demise meets this fate. My scattered particles bumped into the soldier’s, and danced a confused tango, trying to connect but not quite fitting. What a thrilling experience this was for me. When the dust settled so did the particles.
After that incident I developed this theory that our DNA was close but not a match. I don’t know if I ever find a mate. My belief is that 99 percent of the DNA has to be the same to connect with another whisper of air particles whose magnetic field is within the realm of mine. I dream about it, because the psychological pleasures would be doubled and the sorrows would be shared.
Sometime I wish I could interfere but I can’t. I longed to warm the homeless man or to warn the American soldier, but it is not my place. My only consolation is that the soldier too became a whisper of air. I’ve learned to endure the emotional turmoil of the living entities around me. It took a while for me to harden and to accept this state of being just a powerless observer.
I’m unclear whether I hate my killer. The experience he brought upon me is infinitely more interesting than the life I led before. Early on, because I could, I went to find him. He was rotting away in a jail cell, imprisoned by four walls and by his physical being, while I’m free and liberated. Since he is awaiting his execution on the electric chair, I expect, he too will become zephyr.