Magpie’s Note: As our readers know, the Thieving Magpie is forever in search of those precious gems and nuggets of literary mischief to add to its nest of mayhem. We try out best not to discriminate when it comes to genre: Fiction, poetry, essays, art, photography – as long as it’s good and true, we consider it. Some genres, however, we don’t feel versed enough in to review. Case in point: Science Fiction. We have turned many SciFi submissions away over this past three years, not because they’re no good or we don’t like the genre, but because there are numerous digital and paper publications out there who do it better. Plus we’ve been lucky enough to have our beaks and wings full with a healthy bounty of submissions (please keep them coming!). Alas, even our own editorial rules are made to be broken on occasion. So, over the next three weeks we will have the exclusive privilege of posting the first three installments of a new serialized psychedelic SciFi novel, Into the Void by Nick Gullo & Christopher E. Long – told in flash fiction, with the amazing cover art by Nate Hill. Here goes:
INTO THE VOID
Chapter 1
Dylan Caldwell leans over the ragged steering wheel, squinting at an address scrawled on a scrap of paper. A joint dangles from his lips. Shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned, a faded tattoo of a nautical compass on his forearm. Little help that’s been over the years.
He glances up at the ramshackle doublewide. After a deep drag, he exhales and snubs the joint on the dashboard. Grabbing his camera from the passenger seat reveals the latest edition of the The National Star: “Apocalypse Now!” imposed over the split photo of a raging forest fire and flooded New York City streets.
Larry Crustel, the rag’s publisher, has been cashing in on the baffling rise in global calamities: dustbowl droughts, a mutating pandemic, and wildfires on every continent. Hell on Earth! has been the newsroom’s war cry the prior twelve months, with the last issue featuring an account of snakes infesting the Vatican plus terrifying holes opening in the Earth, swallowing pedestrians and cars.
Can’t hate. Crustel’s obviously got some freakish sixth sense for money. Made his fortune buying African farmland for pennies an acre then flipping it to the Chinese—but a conspiracy tabloid? It was a baffling move, ridiculed in tech and business journals, yet as more and more print magazines go to the grave, he can’t stock grocery checkout shelves with the National Star fast enough. Next up, an entire video broadcast division.
Just don’t go thinking of Crustel as some sort of benevolent white knight. More like a micro-managing Silicon Valley bro, always summoning Dylan into his corner office, the panoramic window overlooking the growing homeless encampment on Fairfax Ave. ‘Dire times, homie, dire times,’ he’d say, ‘so my advice, if you got ears, is you dig deep… and dude, enough with the damn one-offs, we need a multi-issue series—what was that podcast Serena kept yapping about in the last meeting, hm, Serial? That, my friend, is the golden ticket, and I mean yesterday. This ain’t a soup-line, if you get my—’
Blah, blah, blah.
The passive-aggressive beat downs on the docket every Monday morning, rain or shine.
Dylan checks the backseat: Hendrix lies curled on a Mexican blanket. Found the poor guy wandering in the middle of the road, rawboned and panting, on the outskirts of the Morongo reservation in Riverside County. Cracking the window, he steps from the car, shoulders the camera and shuts the door with his hip. “Fuck my life,” he mutters and slips on his mask.
Ten minutes later he’s inside the trailer, mouth-breathing until his glasses fog. Not for fear of the plague, but the rotten stench, it’s so intense he’s got spoiled milk coating his tongue. Unsure of the source, he follows the smell toward the crib, each step more hesitant than the last—
“Christ,” he whispers. Leaning back from the crib railing, he rubs his eye. Actually lifts his glasses and rubs one eye, then the other. No… this can’t be… how could anyone…
After a year of such mad turmoil, he was sure nothing could shock him. And it’s not just the lockdowns and the corrupt politics, but following a third rehab stint he’s frantically run down shitty lead after shitty lead trying to keep his job, yet never has he encountered anything close to this.
In the crib lies a baby, eyes lidded as though at the edge of sleep. But the skin is gray, and the infant’s lying on bird wings fanned as though ready to take flight.
Dylan uses the camera lens to move the tiny body onto its side. He raises a fist to his mouth and coughs. The plumage of wings is sewn into the baby’s back, the crude stitches crusted with blood.
He reaches in and lifts a loose feather, holding it out as though infected then gazes back across the room. On the couch sits Audrey cradling a pillow against her belly, massive in her flowered house-coat, rocking backing and forth, staring at the filthy carpet.
Dylan drops the feather into the crib and shuffles sideways. “Uh, Audrey, have you called anyone else about this?”
She shakes her head.
“So I’m the only one who’s seen uh, him?”
She nods, tears streaking her cheeks.
He wipes his hands on his pants and reaches into his pocket. “Listen, I can’t give you $200. Do you understand why?”
She bites her trembling lip.
“I know the Star is just a checkout rag, and it’s not like we have any real standards, but you can’t just rip a bird’s wings off and…”
Audrey holds her face and sobs.
“No, hey, I didn’t mean it like—”
He fishes in his pocket and pull out crumpled bills. Peels free a twenty, then pauses a moment and instead sets the entire forty-three dollars on the coffee table.
Audrey sniffs.
He adjusts the camera strap on his neck and backs toward the door. “Call the sheriff, okay? But whatever you do, please, please don’t mention my name. Okay? Promise you’ll do that?”
His phone rings. Fumbling it from his shirt, he checks the caller ID and hisses: “Is this your idea of a joke? No, it’s not a costume, the kid’s fucking dead!”
“Forget that crap!” Crustel barks on the other line. “Remember the piece you wrote a few months back, on Skinwalker Ranch? The cattle mutilations, and those street kids vanishing after sneaking under the fence, you said they went through, what the hell was it—?”
“A dimensional rift,” Dylan whispers, “rumors claimed they traveled through a dimensional rift, but it was another bullshit lead. I fished around the research facility just outside town trying to find who posted on the forum, but no one would talk.”
“Well I just got a call from a guard at the Ranch, she’s got footage she wants to show us. You game, or too busy playing house with your new girlfriend?”
“Whoa, hold up, are you talking about a video from inside the compound?”
“That’s right, Nancy Drew. It’s yours, unless you want me to give it to Jamie.”
“No, screw him, where does she want to meet, I can—”
Yelling, he hears yelling and pounding on the floor. He looks back and here comes Audrey stampeding across the trailer, gripping a ceramic vase overhead, “AGHHHHHHH!”
At the last moment Dylan catches her wrist, and tumbling down the steps they roll across the dirt. Dylan snatches his phone from the weeds and staggers to the car. Head throbbing, he rips open the door, slides in and slams it shut. Jamming the key into the ignition, he lifts the camera from his neck, examines the lens and tosses it on the seat.
Shouting erupts in the phone. He sets it against his shoulder and cranks the engine. “Holy shit! No, this chick just tried to brain me!”
A loud thud and the car rocks. “He was an angel!” She shrieks, landing on the hood, “MY BABY WAS AN ANGEL!!!”
Hendrix leaps into the passenger seat, barking at the windshield. Dylan throws the shift in reverse, and with Audrey clutching the wiper he speeds backwards, weaving down the dirt drive, trying to shake her.
“Nothing about this is funny!” he yells into the phone.
At the road he yanks the wheel, skids the car sideways and plows into a mailbox. Audrey flies from the hood and rolls across the ground. In the rearview, she sits holding the broken wiper like a severed lizard’s tail while he speeds toward the mountains.