Category: Flash

Flash: The Dream of You and I

Erin Penn

Photo by Boshoku on Unsplash

“Who is more powerful, the dreamer or the dream?”

I look over. “What kind of question is that?”’

“Just asking,” you reply.

“Nope, start making connections, I want to follow how ordering calamari led to this my ADHD friend.”

“You sure?”

I shake my head in exasperation, “Of course I’m sure.” Seeing the server walking over, I do say, “But hold that thought until we get the food order in.”

Placing the order took almost no time, both of us being well familiar with the menu, though the calamari appetizer was an experiment. One new dish a visit to help me break out of my autistic bubble. I once ate nothing but mac and cheese or tuna salad for a year according to my mother, and I wouldn’t eat both of them the same day, let alone the same meal. Drove her nuts. Added to the fact I couldn’t swallow pills until my early twenties meant she had to ground up vitamins and hide it in the food to keep me healthy. I have since learned to go further afield, though I still ordered the lobster mac and cheese tonight.

What can I say, it was a rough week at work.

Once the server left, I nodded to you, “So…”

“What?” You reply fidgeting with the napkin and fork, folding the cloth through the tines.

I sigh, used to this as much as you are used to extracting me from my house for our weekly Friday dinner, even though I like it enough once we have left my comfort place. “Calamari to dreamer or the dream.”

“Oh, oh yeah.” Your face lights up and my heart skips. We aren’t like that, you are too ace, but I love it when I can make you happy. “So calamari is tentacles right?”

“Sure.”

“And I am working my way through Lovecraft at the moment.”

“Why are you doing that again?”

“Trying to figure out racism in writing and how it changed over time,” you inhale deeply, “But anyway, so Lovecraft has Cthulhu. Tentacles.”

“Okay, calamari to tentacles to Cthulhu to Lovecraft?”

“Nah, Lovecraft isn’t in the chain, other than present hyper focus.” The fork in your hand bounces against the table making a nice chime, and I am once again glad my stims are related to doodling, much less noticeable and socially acceptable. I have enough other issues in social situations. “Anyway, in some of the stories, so I guess Lovecraft, anyway, in some of the stories, the Outer Ones—”

“Never heard of Outer Ones, I thought they were all the Old Ones.”

“Yeah, you don’t like horror so you never studied this shit, anyway, the Outer Ones cannot be part of this existence, but in some of the stories it can be interpreted as though the Outer Ones are dreaming of the Old Ones, and I was thinking of which is more powerful, the crazy half-realized Outer Ones who can’t be here, here-here,” you wave at the restaurant using your fork like a wand, “or the Old Ones which can exist in our world, but only as dreams.”

“Ah, hence the question, who is more powerful, the dreamer or the dream.”

“Exactly.” You reach across the table and squeeze my hand with the hand not holding the fork.

I freeze a moment, until you say “sorry” and stop touching me. “No, it is okay. Just give a person some warning please.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Forgiven. It’s okay.” I twist up one side of my lips while pressing them together in a semi-smile. “Back to the question asked – strictly rhetorical, or can we talk about it, because it is interesting.”

We stop for a moment as the server drops off our sodas and the bread basket with bread straight from the oven. They always run a little behind on the bread on Friday nights, which is one of the reasons why we like to come here on Fridays. We both adore hot, hot bread, so instead of cool bread in a basket being ready the minute we sit down, on Fridays we have to wait for it to come out of the ovens. Sometimes that means we don’t get any until our food is ready, but most Fridays, the bread hits the table about the same time as the salads. Speaking of which, a second server comes up behind our primary server with a portable table and a tray filled with greenery, mine with no dressing and yours smothered in raspberry vinaigrette.

When the servers retreat, I reach for the bread. I always eat one of the buns before anything else. It’s too good to pass up and I slather it in salted butter. You use the fork you have been playing with to move around the salad until every inch of the leaves glisten with lightly pink oil.

“I’m thinking the dreamer is more important, until the dream takes on a life of its own.” I take a deep inhale of the yeasty bread, then take a bite. Life with yeasty bread is good, especially compared to the store-bought loaf sanitated to an inch of its life so it can stay in the fridge for three weeks without mold while I make my sandwiches to take into work. “Like Martin Luther King Jr.”

You point with your fork, agreeing with me. “Exactly, yeah, I see that. ‘I have a dream.’ He was a dreamer sharing a dream.”

“A dream which lived beyond him but couldn’t have lived without him. An infectious dream.”

“A COVID of dreams.”

I snort. “I know some political people who sure think the dream of ‘when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’ is worse than COVID.”

“I can tell you which one I rather catch,” you reply.

Having dropped off food for a week at your doorstep during your round with the disease before the vaccine came out, I know which one you rather catch too. I had been worried sick about you even though I barely knew you at the time, just a coworker who was badly sick, even though you weren’t sick enough to go to the overflowing hospitals, thank god.

May the goddess keep Morgan wrapped up in hugs until we can all met again on the other side. I miss you, you big craziness.

“Hey, come back to me,” you say.

I look down at the salad, now carefully sorted into lettuce, carrot strips, cucumber, and olives. I would have eaten the tomatoes automatically. They drip on the other food and need to be removed quickly. “Sorry … Morgan.”

“Oh.”

You never met my high school best friend, and I hate that. You and I, we had only met at the office Christmas party in 2019 and only got to know each other in the year the world ended. During that time, everyone needed to help the ones near them and Morgan lived on the coast. City lights of New York had drawn Morgan in and so many COVID arrivals from around the world.

I inhale deeply and breathe out. Your eyes grow soft.

Breaking the melancholy, I pull out one of our standard Friday questions, “How was your week?”

Morgan is a topic for sofa, blankets, and ice cream at home and you understand this.

“Funny you ask…”

(words 1,255; first published 2/4/2024)

Flash: Hope for the Future, the First Baby Born Off Earth

Erin Penn

Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash

Five percent gravity just wasn’t enough. Carolyn bounced the three-month old baby on her shoulder as best she could. “Anything yet?” the annoyance in her voice made the convicted murderer running coms wince.

Being a convicted murderer on a ship of convicted murders meant little, but Larry Jackson had been an organized serial killer before being caught whereas Carolyn Haywood embraced her disorganized anger. If she flew off the handle, they could end up being down one of the sixteen women on the ship, or one of the few people with enough of a brain to operate the machinery around them. Namely him. It was a toss up if his chosen guards would react in time to subdue her or help him.

Keith and Akeem also had more brains than brawn and he had assigned them guards accordingly. If they were to make Sirius in forty years, or at least their children, brains and training had to survive. He wasn’t sure if money people back home cared if the convicts actually lived to arrive, or if the machine dropping into orbit was all they actually cared about. It didn’t help that theirs was the ship with the longest run of the four sent out in the “volunteer” program of life sentences being served offworld.

“We are four light months away from Earth. We sent them a message as soon we knew for certain you were pregnant. If they responded immediately, the earliest response would have been twelve minutes ago. That is if the relays are even working.”

“They fucking well better be.” The woman paced the small room in the stride they all had learned since gravity had become noticeable again under the constant acceleration. “It’s bad enough we had to listen to all the shit they send to us, we better be able to send stuff back to them.” She spun carefully, still bouncing the baby in hopes of a burp. They all lived for the burps. “Let me tell you, if we don’t get help, if we don’t get answers, me and the girls are locking our legs until you figure out how to turn all of this off. Or, best believe me, I will be castrating the lot of you.”

“Carrie, I do believe you. Here, let me take Hope.” Larry stood, extending his arms slowly. “You need to get rest.”

“None of us fucking parents. What were they thinking sending us up here before fixing us.” She handed over the baby and left the comm room, her two guards following her.

Just over two hundred people to start, they were down to ninety-seven in one year. Larry rocked the crying baby over one arm, patting the back, hoping for something. Back up by eight without a loss of a single precious woman since Larry and Farrelle established order in their own ways and merged their groups. Only two women weren’t pregnant or new mothers. With a ratio of five to one male to female, the only reason the other women weren’t pregnant was Missy had her insides ripped out because of cancer and Eve had entered menopause during the trip at thirty-four. Bastards made sure everyone was young and fertile when plucking them from the prisons.

Guess that answered the question. The billionaires funding this experiment wanted someone to arrive on the other end.

“Come on, Hope. You can burp now.” Larry wasn’t sure this one was his, but Carrie had been one of the ones he fucked, the dates matched, and there weren’t many white guys on ship, especially after the initial dominance games. As dark as she was from her mother’s side, Hope’s father had to have been white. Hell, her daddy might be among the dead they were changing over to fertilizer according to the manuals left behind by the scientist bastards. “You need to burp so you can eat some more little girl.” She was weirdly thin around her rolls of baby fat. No gravity to fight and constant colic for all the kids made a mess.

They would need to keep better mating records for the future, so their children didn’t end up with three eyes and one leg. That would go over like lead balloon with the disorganized members. He walked over to his notebook to write the thought down to discuss with the gang heads.

The comm dinged as he was closing the book. He bounced the baby on his leg, as he deciphered the message. “Reproductive Procedure Manuals stored in folders 369SXE with the passcode HaveFun; and Progeny Procedure Manuals Years 0 to 5 stored in folders 963EXS with passcode GoodLuck.”

“You are fucking kidding me.” Larry worked his way the folder system. “I really hate the scientists. You think me keeping thumbs as trophies was sick. If I had you in my dungeons…”

His two guards took a step toward the exit. Both were disorganized anger killers, and even after being assigned to him for months, still couldn’t figure how his cold temper worked. They did understand his methodical psychopath brain had kept them alive, killing others until their gang was one of the last ones standing, and that ability to make people suffer and die whenever he wanted shook them to their core.

“Got you. Search on baby gassy colic burp.” Larry clicked the button with flourish. “Hope, my little baby doll, get your fingers crossed.” For the next thirty minutes, during which the baby fell asleep across his legs, he flipped through the screens, after which he stood and passed the baby to Lester.

With a voice as cold as ice, he informed them of what he found. “There is a tool to draw air out of the belly and mouth. It worked for adults on the space station, and they adjusted it for something they think could work on babies and toddlers. It’s with the rest of the newborn equipment they have stored behind section six-eight. I now have the code to open it.”

“We could have used that shit for the last six months.” Lester said, struggling to hold the now awake and hungry baby. “Why didn’t they tell us before?”

“They better hope I never figure out how to turn this ship around.”

(words 1,041; first published 1/28/2024; created 11/15/2023)

Flash: Memory of a Kiss

Erin Penn

Photo by YesMore Content on Unsplash

Cooling foam still dripped off the newly landed spaceship when the skin cracked and dropped a disembarking plank. Two spacers slid down the rail either side of the steps and barely caught the landing as they adjusted to full planetary gravity. Hurrying away from the ship, they ignored the person yelling words not legally usable on the planet. Local laws did treat ships like embassies, allowing some breaches in etiquette, and basically making the whole port a bastion against the religious restrictions found on Saints World.

The two ignored their fellow crewman. You snooze, you lose. Someone had to stay on ship at all times. Sucks to be Stan. Short for Standby for those who don’t spend a lot of time without gravity. After one final gesture, the figure walked away from the hole, the plank reversing course and resealing the skin. The younger of the two would apologize and trade out later. How much later remained to be seen.

A tiny bar cut out a corner of the customs area, inside the port. Spacers didn’t have to jump through immigration, visas, and tourist entry hoops to get their drink of choice.

“Beer,” were their first words in atmosphere in six weeks.

Saints World restricted words, religions, sex, genders, species, actions, imports, exports, clothing, and a host of other things. If humans could figure a way to make a law about it, Saints had a law. One of those laws was no drinking alcohol.

Except the monasteries made really good alcohol of all sorts – wine, beer, buzzbee, distilled liquors. None of it could be legally exported, except the buzzbee; too much money to be made there for the Church’s governmental coffers. For locals to drink, they had to pay an indulgence tax.

The Port of Call bar folded the tax into their fees; spacers didn’t care.

The two beers hit the smoothed, shiny local wood surface after credits transferred.

They sipped the drink slowly, swallowing carefully. Microgravity taught caution in eating and drinking; food couldn’t always figure which way was “down” when swallowing.

The younger of them shuddered, his Adam’s apple transversing up and down his throat with precision.

The elder set her drink down and sucked in the unrecycled funky air of the spacer joint, still sweeter in its own way than Far Meadows Finder, though she would never say that within the ship’s AI hearing range. She adjusted the ship’s earpod, verifying activation, something both of them should have done before leaving the ship. Mammy likely had followed the regulations to the letter, hence why he remained on ship. FMF pinged back.

The bartender leaned against the wall, watching the customs area for any clients. “Evie, Adrian, welcome back.”

“Father Andrews,” Evie nodded, taking another small sip of the nutty brew. “May as well pour Adrian another. He has the body mass for it.”

The young man hummed agreement beside her, breathing through his nose, the stein never leaving his lips.

“Done.” The monk-custom official drew another beer off the tap and placed it on the wood between them. “Sister Evie—”

“Just Evie, I wouldn’t want to be branded a heretic for assuming citizenship I had to give up.” She smiled sadly at him. “Spacer Evie if you must.”

Father Andrews leaned on the stool behind the bar, not quite sitting, likely some new restriction of when rest may be sought on a holy day. All days on Saints had some holiness to them. “Spacer Evie, may I ask a question?”

Adrian dropped one empty glass and reached for the next. The elder spacer laid a hand on his. “You only get this one, and in an hour you are reporting back to the ship. Think wisely about what is next.”

“Yes Captain.” He picked up the beer and edged toward the stained glass and plants decorating the customs waiting area.

Evie watched until he settled in the colored lights from the sunlight streaming through the glass from the local dual stars. “Please, ask away,” she said, taking another small sip.

“I know spacers can’t drink much in space. Especially crews the size of yours. Always on rotation and may need to respond with no moment’s notice in an emergency, therefore can’t afford any recreational impairment. But why is beer so important to new arrivals? It’s all they want. Not wine, not buzzbee, not whiskey or gin. Just beer.” The monk reached for the empty glass, accidently brushing the top of her hand where it lay on the bar. “I know you got The Neer, the near-beer substitute, but all spacers want is beer as soon as they arrive.”

“The Neer is worse than pis…not quite perfect.” Evie changed her words soon enough the high-ranking monk wouldn’t need to report them. The custom’s area did obey planetary regulations, mostly.

The Saint grounder shook his head. “I know it is not Blue Mountains or Crystal Stream, but the bitter and hops has a good mouth feel. Sure the foam is missing, but you can’t have that in space.”

“Worst thing inside the skin, needing to burp and can’t because the body doesn’t know how to in the microgravs.” Evie ran a finger through the condensation, wondering at it. On ship, those drops would be breaking off into balls of water she would be needing hunt down, while the other on-duty crewman would be adjusting environment to prevent more condensation from occurring. “Neer isn’t beer, even with the trippy version providing the five minutes relaxation effect. No bubbles. The bitter is off somehow. Gravity holds the world.” She shrugged, taking another sip. “Drinking The Neer is like … a memory of kiss. When all you can have is the memory, you turn it over in your head a thousand times.” She looked at Father Andrews for a moment, pushing against at least four commandments but worth it, making eye contact with eyes that exactly matched Adrian’s in color. “But nothing can compare to being held and kissed by one you love.”

(words 1,002; first published 1/21/2024 – created 11/14/2023)

Flash: Painted Sunflowers

Erin Penn

Image from Kristina Sepanidenko on Unsplash

“Alaina, what have you done to your face!” Debbie explained.

“I got it painted.” The young woman turned her face to show off her left cheek. “I got a flower, isn’t it great.”

“No, I mean yes, that is really pretty, but—” Debbie grabbed Alaina’s face and turned it to see the right side of her face, examining the design there in the glow from overhead street lights. “Why did you get a black dragon painted? I know it is the dragon festival and all, but black, and on the face, that is just asking for trouble.”

Yanking her face out of the other’s hands, Alaina said, “What are you talking about? I only got the sunflowers and bee painted.” She reached up and touched the one cheek with the bright yellow oils. Then she lifted to touch the part of her face Debbie had been manhandling. “I didn’t do anything here.”

“Oh, don’t lie, let me get this wiped off before anyone sees,” Debbie licked her thumb and set about rubbing the layered design, hoping to smear it to unrecognizability. “You don’t want anyone thinking you are a rider.”

“Debbie, Debbie, ow, that hurts.” Alaina tried pulling back from the determined woman. “I didn’t do anything there. And while the face painter offered some cartoony designs of dragons, she hadn’t offered anything that could be mistaken for a rider tattoo.”

“Just let me…” Debbie rubbed harder, “it’s not budging. What in the nine realms did she use?”

“Stop, stop it.” Alaina grabbed both of Debbie’s hands. “You are scaring me. Debbie!” she shouted, causing several of the other festivalgoers to turn their way, some of them stopping and pointing. “What is happening?”

Debbie slow blinked her green eyes. “It’s real. It’s not moving, it’s real.”

“Rider.” “Black flyer.” “Is that a girl with a dragon tattoo?” whispers started in a circle around them.

“No, I got nothing there.” Alaina assured her.

“By Moxie and Damion, come here.” Debbie pulled Alaina to a nearby storefront glass-plated window by their joined hands. “You just became a rider Alaina.”

“Please, who would choose…” Alaina stared at the reflection in the glass. “Women don’t become riders.”

“They do.” Debbie touched the glass beside Alaina’s cheek. “White or red, sometimes even green.”

“Maybe it is a really dark green?” Alaina leaned in close, but the Illumination from the night street lamps didn’t give much reflection.

Debbie shook her head. “No, it’s black.”

She reached out and touched the glass herself. “A dragon chose me.”

“It’s the Festival of Choice, when the dragons finish their second molting.” Debbie wrapped an arm around her friend. “New riders are always chosen.”

“But kids, or matrons, or trained fighters, or someone else, anyone other than me.” Alaina laid her head on Debbie’s shoulder. “I’ve never been chosen before.”

“You only get chosen once.” Debbie quoted the old saying.

“No one in my family has flown. Not ever. It … I mean …” She wailed, “I got work tomorrow!”

(words 501; first published 1/14/2024)

Flash: Against the Sky

Erin Penn

Photo by Hassan Sherif on Unsplash

Rufus Orion Zerafshan showed up on time the day after Skyfall went black. As a middle manager in the recruitment and training department for Vella Utilities, his job wasn’t essential to the emergency but his particular job hadn’t been exempted from the blanket order of everyone report. He figured a day of shuffling paper in a heated office wouldn’t be a bad way to celebrate the success of his rebel cell group while everyone else ran around trying to get the power back on that they had taken down.

He had pulled it off. Nearly five years work to create the network needed. The big break happened sixteen months ago when the Home-at-Last terrorist attack showed the weakness in the grid. Then grooming and recruiting Taurus and Virga took another five months. With them in hand, the rest had fallen like dominoes.

Now he had proven himself. Make an impact, Scorpio had ordered. Have the city feel the grip of terror. Mission accomplished. Promotion within the organization should follow. Establishing a group raised him out of the general pool to middle management. Maybe next he could get an office with a window.

Rufus pressed the sensor under his name, smiling again at having his name with a permanent desk, and the door to his office slid open. “Scorp—” he cut himself off.

The man sitting at his desk said, “Close the door.”

Rufus slapped the inside sensor, then set it to private. “Is it…” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “safe for you to be here?”

Scorpio sat forward, his black Vella security uniform collar displaying two pips of a low-level patrolman. “Today no one is asking any questions of where security can and cannot be, thanks to you.” He gestured to the singular chair Rufus had in front of his desk for supplicants wanting to be hired into utilities.

The plastic molded seat had no comfort to its form deliberately, but Rufus sat quickly.

“No one will hear anything.” Scorpio touched a small box in the center of the desk. “Report.”

“Sir, it went off exactly as planned. What I submitted on Second-Day is exactly what happened.”

“I believe I told you to back off the Avery, compromising only one of their substations.”

“I’m sorry sir, but Taurus had infiltrated them first. Those devices have been in place since the summer, and the cell would have questioned if I told them not to attack Avery. The only way Vella remained untouched is by me lying about improvements being made to our internal security systems.”

Scorpio leaned back. “I didn’t realize the devices had been in place so long. You hadn’t indicated that. Weren’t you worried about them being found?”

“Virga is an artist, no one would suspect anything. And, sir, you did say to keep my reports to a bare minimum.” Rufus rocked back and forth to keep his butt from numbing. “Cell security. ‘You are an essential ingredient in our ongoing effort to reduce Security Risk.’ – Kirsten Manthrone. You said, the less people know the better.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Scorpio squeezed his fist tight enough the mysu-leather crackled. “Well, you did amazingly well and we will need to throw a couple of sacrifices to the Christians newsies before the hunt gets too deep. Where are Virga and Taurus and how soon can you arrange another meeting?”

Rufus jerked, a light flush rising against his skin. “Sir, I followed the plan. If successful, I dissolved the cell.”

“But you still have a way to get in contact with them?” Scorpio leaned forward. “Don’t you?”

“I mean, I still have Virga’s contact information somewhere in the … no, she helped me delete all connections between me and the others.” The ex-cell leader shook his head. “I think I remember where she lives, maybe. Somewhere in the New Hope Projects. She had scored exceptional during the vo-tech testing in third grade and became a gifted-potential.”

“And Taurus?”

“Leo hired him to move something and suggested I tap him for delivery connections.” Wiggling in the steadily more uncomfortable chair he had plucked out from the catalog for just this feeling, but never thinking he would be one in the seat, Rufus continued, “He was a dayworker for the Greens organic foods. I never learned where he lived. Perfect for cell security.”

“How about their names?”

“Virga and Taurus.”

Scorpio scoffed. “No, their real names.”

“I don’t remember.”

The security’s officer fist pounded the table, making everything on it jump. “You’ve been working with them for a year, and you don’t know their real names?”

“No sir, cell security.” Rufus leaned forward. “You said to keep everything as isolated as possible and I did. I did everything you told me to. No names, not ever.” Rufus actually knew both their names, where they lived, and their family connections, but rules were rules and Scorpio didn’t need to know he could reassemble the cell if he needed to. Because if he betrayed his people, Scorpio would think he would also be willing to betray him and Rufus didn’t think he would survive that. Better to appear to be an idiot that follows the procedures than a potential leak.

“Fuck.” Scorpio stood, circling the desk.

Rufus rose to meet him. The office barely had space for two men standing.

Gripping the rebel by the shoulder, the security officer asked, “You sure? The dogs are yelping for blood and tossing them some bones could save a lot of trouble.”

“Sir, I’m loyal. I do what I’m told.” Rufus looked as earnest as possible. “I did everything asked. We did a great work. ‘Individuals do not create rebellions; conditions do.’ – H. Rap Brown. These are the perfect conditions. The FirstLanders have to listen to our needs.”

“A rebel to the end.” Scorpio frowned. “We really could use more like you in this world Rufus.”

The manager stood a little taller under the grip of the other. “Thank you sir.”

“Too bad you died resisting arrest.”

A blast blew through Rufus’ belly and traveled part-way into the next office. The Vella security officer sent a second blast through the other man’s head, destroying the brain casing to keep any Pisces psychics from looking for evidence where they shouldn’t.

(words 1,045; first published 1/7/2024)

When the Stars Align series

  1. When the Stars Align (12/24/2023)
  2. Against the Sky (1/7/2024)