- slipping right through your hands, she's a -

Once upon a time there was a witch. The magic had made her hideous, but it also made her beautiful.

Young men came for her, seeking to use her glamoured looks in the way in which one normally uses young women. She let them come, enticing them and later using their blood and lights for her spells.

One day, for reasons best known to herself, the wicked witch did not let a certain young man approach her. Instead, she unveiled herself of her magicks, letting him see her true form, and giving him the option to escape.

He did, of course, and she let him.

When he was an old man (and she still young, by the standards of witches) he wondered why she'd chosen him, and what would have happened if he'd entered her lair willingly, without needing to be fooled as the others had. If he'd made the other choice.

Of course, there is no way of knowing.

The Shape

This was my attempt at writing in a style reminiscent of Stephen King.

***

There is a drawing on the tile in front of me. A long oval, fatter at the bottom than the top, with a circle in the middle. There is other graffiti around it, but this stands out to me. This is special. It must be a message.

It is drawn in red, while the other drawings are in other colours. Orange, blue, black...no other red patterns. This is significant.

I finish washing my hands and leave the bathroom. Outside, it is quiet. I come here now, at this time of day, when I know it will be quiet, when there will be few people around.

The girl in the black shirt walks past, carrying a cloth. She works here. She is not wearing her necktie today. That is part of her uniform too. I wonder if her boss was angry?

She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the floor, under the tables to see if they need sweeping.

I was going to eat, but I am too busy thinking to be hungry. I leave.

There is a tree outside, near the front door. A silver birch. I reach up and take a leaf. The leaf is oval, fatter at one end than the other. On the way home, I collect leaves, hundreds of leaves, stuffing them into my pockets. When I get home, I put them in my room and go out again. More leaves. The meaning will become clear when I have enough leaves.

It is night now. I can’t go out at night. Those are the rules. I know the rules.

I sleep surrounded by the crunch of leaves. Meaning comes to me in my dreams, but I forget it on waking. Nonetheless, I know it is not leaves. Something else, not leaves.

I walk out, in the watery early-morning sunlight. A bottle glints at me from the gutter, oval in shape, fatter at one end than the other. I pick it up, the weight of the glass heavy and pleasing in my hand. It fits into the pocket of my long coat. I pick up another that lies nearby. I find more, take them home, come out for me. Empty bottles in different colours.

When I get it right, something will happen.

I go back to the place, to the symbol. The bottom half is missing, along with the graffiti below it. I go home and smash the bottles. When I wake up, the marks are on my back. It is a sign that I am on the right track.

It is hard to walk across the room, to find my shoes. I put on my white shirt and it becomes red. My long coat hides it. I put my hands in the pockets and touch more glass.

I go back to the place again, sure that there will be another sign now I am on the right track. The symbol is smudged now, the red blurred. Like flames.

I see the wet floor sign in the corner, a flattened oval in shape, fatter at the bottom than at the top. I take a lighter from my pocket and hold it to one of the holes in the plastic. It does not catch immediately, and when it does, it does not flare up like the symbol promised. I leave, worried that I have done wrong.

I do not go home that night. It is okay to be out in the dark on this night. This night is okay. Tomorrow and yesterday are always okay, but today never is. Except this one.

I do not go back to the symbol for a week. I am frightened that I have been displeasing.

When I gain the courage to go back, the symbol has changed. It is as fresh and bright as it was on the day when it first appeared.

I leave the bathroom again. Outside, the girl in the black shirt walks past me again, this time with her necktie on. It forms an oval shape below her neck, fatter at one end than the other. I read out and grab it, touch it, try to take it. She tries to make a noise, I think, but I put a hand over her mouth. I pull on the tie until she stops moving. They come and find me, afterwards, but it is okay. The symbol, the tie, is red now, like it should be.

The Day the Coffin Opened

I come to the graveyard every week, same time, same coffin. I come to see her.

Her coffin is above ground, a grey sort of opaque, with nothing but her name and dates on it. There’s no markings to show what she meant to people, like on so many other graves around here. Just me, here, every single week.

She was my age, twenty-five. And she will stay my age until the day I die, quite probably.

*

Years pass, five of them. I continue to visit every week. A few other people express an interest in me, but I am always busy, and eventually they leave me alone. I finish my studies and my training and begin working as a doctor. I could not save her, but perhaps the ability to save others will help me to feel better.

The population of the graveyard does not change dramatically. It is very expensive to be interred here.

*

Ten years pass and very little changes. I help to design a new coffin, one that works faster, and is much smaller and far less bulky than the one she is interred in. If we’d had these fifteen years ago, perhaps –

No.

I am still alone.

*

Another fifteen years pass. My hair is grey now, only a little of the darkness left. Salt and pepper. My parents die, as do hers. I sometimes think about retirement, but there is always another life to save, someone else to help. Their voices keep me from hearing the lack of hers.

Sometimes, I forget her face. I can see it now, as the coffin becomes clearer, if I squint hard enough. My eyes are not what they used to be. I can see her hair, shorter than it used to be, but that will change. Her skin is taut and soft on her face, like mine used to be, before the ravages of time.

Between times, I forget what she looked like. Or I confuse what she looked like then with what she looks like now, her pale face and shorn hair inside the coffin.

She is a aunt now. Her sister has children . I try not to think of the life we would have had.

*

Twenty years pass. I am there on the day when the coffin opens.

My hair is white now, and thinner than it used to be. My back is hunched, and sometimes movement hurts me. I wear glasses constantly now, and I am always cold.

I look at the roof of the coffin as she is gently urged into wakefulness. The machinery and wires are obvious, far cruder than the ones I have helped to build since she was interred. If only I’d been more focused, perhaps it might not have taken so long to rebuild her after the accident.

She looks at me, after her long sleep of death. I wonder what dreams she has had.

Her eyes do not recognise me. She addresses me by the name on my name-tag, Dr Haldeman. She asks me what year it is.

“3083,” I tell her. Fifty years after she was first interred.

She tells me that she used to know a Haldeman. She still doesn’t recognise me.

I look down at the liver spots on my wrinkled, arthritic hands and start to cry.

She Will Be Loved

A story loosely inspired by the song She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5, and originally posted on my livejournal.

She's out there. Right now. Watching me, through the windows.

I can't see her. The windows are closed and locked, the curtains drawn. There's no gap through which someone could peer. Yet, I know she's watching me. She's out there, in the rain.

I want to go to bed, and sleep. I'm so tired, but I'm too terrified to move from this sofa. If I move, she'll get me. If my head isn't covered by the blankets, she'll get me. If I make a noise, she'll get me.

Doesn't every child know how that works?

She doesn't leave, not when I'm alone. No one else can see her. I think she retreats when someone else is around, because then I can't see her either. But when I'm alone...

A tap on the window, audible despite the susurrus of the rain, makes my skin break out in a cold sweat.

*

I'd known her for years, that girl with the broken smile. Since she was fourteen, when she started at the high school where I worked.

She was teased a lot, like most of the kids who visited me. Unattractive, at least on the surface. She was overweight. Not enough to be obese, but enough that it was the first thing you noticed about her. I'd seen enough kids growing their awkward phases to suspect that it was merely puppy fat. No one ever believes that explanation until it melts away, when they're fifteen or sixteen. Generally, it's not even as noticable to other people as it is to them - but, in her case, the excess weight rested on her face. In the slight double chin, the puffy cheeks. The full lips merely looked swollen, rather than impactful, as they became when her body lengthened, and she became beautiful. Her eyes were hidden, partly by the cheeks and partly by the thick glasses she wore. After those years, could anyone blame her for not realising that she was beautiful, once she was?

She saw me a lot over those years. Every week, or two weeks. I'd sit here with a notepad. The kids always thought I was writing notes. Really, I just doodled. Prompted them sometimes, to think back on something they'd said. Puzzle out whatever was bugging them.

Hattie - that was her name - well, Hattie's problems were simple, and easy to figure out, but no less painful for that. She came from a broken home. They were pretty rare when I was growing up - first latchkey kid on my block got teased something awful - but they're more common now. And there were so many other things to tease Hattie about.

It was Hattie's father who'd left, coming back every fortnight or so to treat her to an ice cream cone, or a trip to the zoo, or whatever. She told me about that. How he'd started missing visits, becoming bored with her. How, by the time she started coming to see me, the visits had tailed off altogether. How'd she desperatly missed him.

Hattie wanted approval, like every teenager. And, more specifically, she wanted approval from her father. A girl's father is usually her template for men in general, and as far as Hattie was concerned, men left. You didn't give them what they wanted, they left. Heck, even if you did give them what they wanted, they left. Just not as quickly. Hattie always convinced herself that it was something in her that drove them away. That if she could somehow be better, more perfect, then maybe, next time, the time she finally managed it, they'd stay. Maybe if she was perfect, she'd be worth a man sticking around for.

That's what I gathered from her talks with me. It took her a while to open up to me. I'm an attractive man, despite my age. In fact, I'd say my age distinguishes me from the schoolboys here. I keep myself in good shape. Hattie was obviously very attracted to me. And, more than that, she wanted my approval as well, like she did that of most other males, in lieu of her absent father's.

*

A malicious smile, shining through the darkness.

I don't mind spending every day out on your corner in the pouring rain.

*

It was shortly after her sixteenth birthday that things changed. She changed, more than anything. She didn't realise - she noticed the changes, of course, but didn't associate them with a positive affect on her appearance. They did though.

At first, Hattie thought they were kidding. That they were playing a prank on her, setting her up to be the butt of the joke, like they always did. Once she realised that that wasn't it, that they really did like her as she was now...well, the results were unavoidable.

She didn't tell me about the first, though I knew anyway. It was there, in the smile that crept up on her when she thought no one was looking. The way she hugged her knees to herself and rocked on her seat. The way she seemed so eager for our sessions to end, when before she'd pray that the time would crawl. The way she applied make-up with increasing skill, making the most of those lips of hers. Blow-job lips they were, and you could see that now that the puppy fat was gone. They could see it now, rather. I'd always seen the woman inside the girl she had been. But then, I had experience in these matters.

It didn't take too long for her to grow bored with that first one. She complained that he only seemed to be interested in one thing, and that she didn't feel happy any more. More mundane than anything. Hattie didn't understand the concept of her pleasure being the point of anything, and how could one expect that teenage boy to pay anything more than lip service to the idea? Many of them probably claim that they give pleasure to their partners, real or fictitious. Many of them probably mean it, and probably do want their girls to enjoy it. But when the girls themselves don't yet know what that entails, and when they've been brought up - as most are - to believe that only slutty girls take pleasure from it, can one really blame them for being giving? Some of them fake it, or believe that the merest flutter is the real thing, and so the boys never learn. No, what Hattie needed was a real man.

"It's not always rainbows and butterflies," I told her. Real advice, which I knew she'd ignore. When she did, casting this boy aside for another who'd shown an interest, the rumours started. And she came to me again. She didn't tell me about this either, not explicitly, but, really, does she think no one else does? She wasn't the only student I counselled, and Hattie was the hottest source of gossip - at least for that month.

She wanted to talk that time, but didn't. She'd come to it, in time. Right then, I think it was necessary for her to internalise the pain.

"Hattie," I told her, holding the door open as she left. "My door's always open. You can come any time you want."

*

My sister arrives. My wife left long ago, unable to live with the gossip surrounding us. I freeze when I hear the door open, and it takes all of my courage to peek out from under the blanket. I suspect that it's her, Amelia, but for a second, I think maybe it isn't. Though, of course, I know that Hattie never comes inside.

Amelia sighs as she sits down on the sofa next to me. "John..."

She rests her hand on my shoulder, but doesn't say anything else. I can live with her disapproval as long as she returns every so often, to scare the ghosts away. I relax a little. Amelia stands up, and walks over to the curtains, drawing them apart enough to look through them. Under her arm, I see Hattie, outside, soaked with rain, wet hair plastered to her face.

*

Hattie, angry at the rumours, embraced them. After the second, there was another, then another. It angered me, though, of course I couldn't show it. What kind of psychiatrist would I be then? But still; I was always there to help her, and yet she always belonged to someone else.

She was seventeen, the first time. It began softly, subtly as these things do. She flirted, experimenting with this new ability of hers. Wearing shorter skirts, growing her hair longer. Lower bust lines. All for my benefit, of course. She'd play with her glasses, as she talked, taking them off, puting them back on, angling her face to show the best angles.

She was seventeen the first time a boy tired of her before she left him. Her tears smudged her carefully applied eyeliner, even as she desperately avoided talking about what was really bothering her.

"Sometimes, I get so insecure..."

She pulled her sleeve over her hand to wipe her face, a gesture that made her look smaller and more childlike than she was. She'd kept some of her larger clothes, and I suspect that they were purely to contrast with her new size.

I leaned across and kissed her. She'd hinted enough.

She pulled away a little at first. Nerves. Maybe not able to believe that this was really happening.

"Hattie," I murmured between kisses. "I want to make you feel beautiful."

She didn't resist after that, not more than a token amount. The affair continued for seven months. Until Hattie's eighteenth birthday. Until the day my wife found out.

*

Amelia draws the curtains again. I am frozen. She holds me until I warm up, until I unfreeze.

I wonder why she's not soaked, having just come in from the rain? I ask her.

"What rain?" She replies.

It's always raining. My clothes always have a residual dampness. My shoes slosh as I walk, even brand new pairs. I can never be fully dry, ever again, even indoors. Nor can Hattie.

*

It's another student who discovers us. A young girl, a freshman. This would have been her first appointment, had she not been too eager and arrived too early. I think, afterwards, that I should have insisted that a lock be put on the door. Hindsight is always 20/20.

The girl goes to a teacher, and tells her what she's seen. The teacher, a friend of the family, calls my wife before the headmaster.

I'm lucky that Hattie cannot be identified, they tell me. A statement from her, or even her mother learning of our affair would result in a charge against me for stuatory rape. As it is, I will probably be asked to step down quietly. No fuss, no mess. Except from my wife.

She demands to know who it was, if she is the first, how old she is, how long it's been going on - nothing I intend to answer. My silence angers her more, until she storms out into the night.

There is a school dance that evening, that I know Hattie will attend. Although the girls will whisper in corners and exclude her from their groups, the boys won't, taking it in turns to garner her attention. Hattie will be the belle of the ball.

The other students assume I am there as a chaperone, and are not surprised when I take Hattie to one side. We go outside.

"We were caught." I tell her.

She raises her head, her now well-defined chin jutting out, strong and determined. "So what happens now?"

"Nothing, if you keep your mouth shut."

She laughs then. "Like I'd ever tell anyone that I fucked you."

I am angered. "Why did you?"

"Fuck you? I was bored. And you seemed desperate."

I grab her then, smash my mouth against hers, crushing the familiar parts of her body with my hands. She slaps me. I hit her back.

Her nose is bleeding, and her eyes fill with tears. She sobs, reverting to type, looking as unattractive then as she did at thirteen, at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, when I was the one she relied on to catch her every time she fell.

She's still a kid, in so many ways. So petty. It's no wonder she felt the need to lash out at me, to be so crude and insulting when she thought we might be in trouble.

She ran away from me. I got a lift home with another teacher, rather than walk back through the school to the parking lot.

The police tell me that she didn't return to the dance. I'd left my keys in the car - I hadn't expected to be there long.

They dragged my car up from the bottom of the lake a week later, Hattie still inside it.

*

I don't remember the last time I left the house. I don't attend the gym religiously, as I once did. I've stopped dying my hair. It doesn't matter because I never look in the mirror any more. Sometimes, I see her there, looking at me over my shoulder.

She said goodbye, but I know now that goodbye means nothing at all.

The Beefburger of Doom

Akamu

I waken from the darkness.

"I place you over all those that come after you," he says. He has me name all the animals and plants. It is tiring work. He directs me to a stream to drink, and to fruit, to eat. It is good. Fruit is good. The juice drips down my chin. I am uncouth, unrefined. I am a test model.

There is another with me. Sauda. She offends me, with her controlling ways and domineering personality. She scares me, and I tell her she cannot be this way. She leaves. I am glad of the peace.

My days are filled with talking to the other creatures. There is a common language between us, and we are all friendly to one another. We eat the fruit from the trees, and they graciously blossom and grow more. We are never without.

I see the other creatures together. There are at least two of every kind, more for some groups. I feel left out. Even surrounded by others, I feel alone.

I ask him for another partner, a mate to replace she who left. Sauda. He does not respond. I sleep. When I awaken, she is here. Chaia, life.

She is like me, more like me than the other creatures. But she is also different from me. She is soft and spongy where I am harder, delicate where I am sharp.

He allows me to be her guide, allows me to explain things to her. This is how things should be, me leading Chaia, rather than being lead by Sauda. This is what was meant.

Chaia
The world is a strange place. I come to life in a blaze of pain, light exploding upon me. This is my first day, and I am lost.

I am not alone. A creature like me, Akamu, shows me the garden. He shows me the fruit we are to eat, and the creatures we converse with. They are strange too, some shaggy and furred, others scaled. Some slither, some skip, some run faster than I and some slower. They are not like me, not the way Akamu is.

I wish to spend my time with Akamu, conversing with him. I feel safest with him, least alone with him. But he is used to his freedom and his privacy. He wishes to converse with other creatures, and sometimes he wishes to do this alone. He sends me away.

I leave him, and search through the trees. It is there that I meet her.

Sauda

I am different. I am changed and given new form. I am Arin, one who sees the truth. The Morning Star has shown me.

This creature, Chaia, she is like me, like I used to be, but she does not know of me. Akamu, the liar, has kept her in ignorance. He treats her terribly. This is how he wished to treat me. I must save her.

She is eating a fruit when I see her. One of the many that grow in this lonely grove. I slide to the branch close by her, delighting in my new shape. The fruit she eats is green and crisp, a ball of flavour.

The child does not know what she's missing.

I tell her. I have her salivate with the idea of what she could do, of what it would bring her. Power, equal to his, if not greater in its own way. Knowledge. And a hold over Akamu, always, for being brave when he was a coward.

Chaia

She talks to me of power, and of pain. An end to mine.

I know that she is right. That her path is the correct one, despite what Akamu says. Akamu is wrong, I know he is. She, Arin, is right.

When he realises his failure, Akamu will gaze at me in wonderment. I will reach a pedastal that he can never dislodge me from.

I go now, to do this thing.

Akamu

She comes to me, looking not like herself. She moves strangely, glancing back over her shoulder. She seems weary. She has a strange scent, a tang which sets my teeth on edge. I have never smelt anything like this before. I do not like it.

Chaia has changed in colour, becoming blotchy, spattered with something else. At first I think it is her very self that has changed in shade, but then I realise that this is something extra, like the way some of the berries stain our fingers. I wonder what strange fruit she has been at, to have this effect. My stomach turns.

She comes closer. Her teeth seem more obvious, more prominent. The ones at the front are thinner along the edges, like the flint I used to slice through the vines to make our shelter. Some at the edges of her mouth are pointed. I do not have any flints like that. I wonder what they are for.

She holds something out to me, a red, purple mass of something. The strange smell is stronger, and I am suddenly afraid.

"Eat." She tells me. I should not. I feel a sense of wrongness, of something out of place permeating the atmosphere. I shake my head.

She looks at me in comtempt. She looks like Sauda, for a minute, and my fear turns to anger. I take it, whatever it is from her, and bite into it. My teeth slice and tear the strange substance. They cannot do it at first, but then they learn how, and it slips down, easily enough. I feel the red stuff drip down my chin.

Something inside me changes. I see the world differently. I see a series of edges and corners to hide behind, things to watch out for, or to use to attack others. Suddenly, I wish to attack others. My eyes seem changed, along with my teeth, seem prepared to do something I do not yet have a name for. I am filled with a strange energy. I must have more of this.

I surpass Chaia in her skills, soon enough. It is me that the animals are afraid of, running and cowering when they see me, when before they would offer greetings.

On his next visit, we hide from him. We know that what we have done is wrong. We fear he will stop us.

A new look is in his eyes. A look of sadness, of lost hope. We are cast out, to live in the way we have carved out for ourselves. I do not care. The metallic tang I now know as blood is in my throat, and I long to taste more of it.

Deathday

Log 1

This is to be a record of my discoveries while journeying on the planet Ekal.

Honestly, it's quite a coup for someone as young as me to be chosen for this mission. I've only recently graduated from the OmniCorps Training Academy, and I'm already being sent to investigate a whole new planet, by myself!

All right, it's only at the secondary research stage. Ekal has already been eliminated as a threat to the Federation, due to sheer lack of weapons - at least, as compared to those as standard on Federation ships. And it's true that relatively few of those who study at OCTA do so in order to become explorers, as I did. Rather, they go into weapon development, working for the MiniPax Dept. So it's not like I had a terrible amout of competition.

Still, this is a coup. It's what I've always wanted to do.

I must stop writing now - it's time to land. This journey has passed so quickly. I was in hypersleep for much of it, of course, and I've barely wiped the sleep from my eyes, figuratively speaking.

Log 2

I met my guide today - Sehkmata, her name is. An Ekallian who has agreed to show her planet to this outsider. Willingly, of course, but it seems not entirely of her own good nature. She seems almost sulky with me.

At first she pronounced my name as Teraglik!o, with that irritating k-click they include in each of their own names for whatever reason. I corrected her; "Teraglio".

She laughed at me, the only time I've seen her face crack a smile so far.

"Sehk!mata" was all she replied. I find it impossible to pronounce her name, but I believe I am forgiven, as she cannot leave the k-click from mine.

Before now, I don't believe I've fully appreciated just how useful an invention my communicator is. Except for those who are interested in spending years studying such things, only one language is spoken on Terran now, and subdialects do not differ enough to make communication difficult. Out in space, however, it is a different matter. It's not that no one can hear one scream, as was once said. Rather, no one can understand what one screams.

The communicator works, I am told, by analysing voice content - pitch, tone, timbre - to come up with a meaning. It then manipulates the sound waves sent to my ears, forming them into words I will understand while retaining the essential meaning. It is not perfect - that's why part of my training included knowledge of how the little gizmo works, to enable me to make my own decisions - but I am told many of the bugs are out of it now. There are many tales, in the Omnicorps Scic-Dev, of experiments in the early days. These experiments consisted mostly of attempts to break or confuse the little machine, such as by saying something in a tone which one would normally use for an entirely different statement. Or of speaking an entirely fictional language (surprisingly, it had no problem making sense from babbles). With the huge archive of languages, tones, and accents it has access to, it has very few problems making me understood.

The communicator does the same thing to my speech, of course, changing it to another's language while keeping my meaning. What a marvellous little gizmo it is.

Log 3

I have been on Ekal for several months now.

From watching the Ekallians, I have learned that I was wrong to think Sehkmata sulky. As a race, they tend towards withdrawel, and show little emotion. Blunt, they might be considered on Terra, or within the Federation as a whole.

Ekal, as a land, is rather arid and dry, apart from near the riverbanks. There, the land is lush and what we could consider fertile. However, Ekallian crops do not need as much water as Terran ones require, and nor do Ekallian people require as much water as Terrans do to survive. This realisation came very uncomfortably, I can assure you. Sehkmata has agreed that we can move nearer to one of the rivers for the rest of my stay here, as the environment there tends to be more suitable for "Terran weaklings" such as me.

The k-click irritates me less now.

Log 4

It is fascinating how very different cultures tend to celebrate the same things. The Ekallians have festivals, similar to Terran Mardi Gras, days to honour parents, a day on which gifts are exchanged (the Ekallians have no complex reason for that last one - I asked. They do so because they enjoy it).

Tomorrow, Sehkmata tells me, we are to visit an old friend of hers, for another celebration. She was called away before I could ask her what it was. Something similar to a birthday perhaps, or a name day.

Log 5

The Ekallians do not celebrate birthdays. Instead, they celebrate deathdays.

All seemed familar when we arrived at the home of Sehkmata's friend. There was a cake, gifts, decorations - exactly as one might find on Terra. I asked Sehkmata what the celebration was in aid of, presuming it was a birthday. Instead she whispered, "deathday", and my blood turned to ice in my veins.

How macabre, how chilling, how utterly sick, to celebrate such a day. I passed the celebration in a daze, hiding my emotions behind a bright smile, as I have been taught. I believe Sehkmata suspected something, when I disappeared so quickly afterwards, but I needed to be alone.

Log 6

I remember a lesson back at OCTA, which discussed some of the more unsettling customs we might find on other planets, in other cultures which are, quite literally alien to us.

"You may be disgusted, or shocked, or dismayed, or all three," said the professor. "And that's fine now. But, once you leave this room, you must never show that. Your role is to record, not to judge."

So, I shall record. I will go to Sehkmata now, and ask her everything I need to. And I will refuse to show anything other than curiosity over the subject. I refuse to embarass myself or OmniCorps any further.

Log 7

Audio

Sehkmata?

Yes?

How do you...how do you know when to celebrate someone's deathday?

I - I'm sorry?

How do you know which day is their deathday?

It's the day on which they die. When else could it be?

But how do you know?

I am sorry Teraglik!o, I do not understand that question. Do you not celebrate Deathdays on Terra?

No...we celebrate birthdays.

Birthdays?

tone is shocked

Yes.

tone is puzzled

End of Audio.

Log 8

Today, I finally asked Sehkmata when her own deathday is. The communicator changed the date she gave into a Terran form; June 13th. A date only a few weeks away. I did not ask her the year.

Later, I checked the communicator. Perhaps it was in error, with its translation. That phenomenon is not entirely unknown.

I asked the communicator to confirm some words in the Ekallian dialect, words which I knew were accurate. The words for food, hunger, thirst, hydration, sleep, crops...commen words which one could have understood from a simple game of charades, without such a complex and bug-prone piece of equipment.

"Define 'deathday' in the Ekallian dialect." I asked.

"Deathday: the anniversary of the day on which one dies."

"Define "dies" in the Ekallian dialect."

"Dies: to cease living. To expire."

Log 9

Sehkmata and I do not discuss deathdays further. We celebrate hers each year. I refuse any invitations to celebrate mine, not wanting to go through the explanation of why I do not know when it is - or to have someone offer to find out.

It is true, I am a failure as a universal-geographer. But I mind less and less. I am happy, here on Ekal. Sehkmata and I are unable to have children - Terran and Ekallian biology differs too greatly, although there seems to be little difference on the surface - but this does not trouble us too much. Ekallians have long lives and breed seldom, I have discovered. It keeps their population stable, which is the only way it could be, considering the lack of fertile land.

Log 10

For a while I have been confused over the uses of 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' on Ekal. For years, I had simply assumed that the communicator had been mixing them up, and settled for cursing at it in Terran the few times it had come up. Communicators do not translate curse words. Seemingly, the original developers assumed the meaning would be clear without a literal translation. But no, the comm defined 'yesterday' as 'the day before today' and 'tomorrow' as 'the day following this one'.

I asked Sehkmata about the discrepancy earlier today, and she seemed confused. After a lot of talking (and some diagrams, drawn in the sand), I believe we got to the root of it. Ekallians see time as flowing backwards - from the time we know nothing about, to the time we see clearly, and know everything of. It does make a kind of sense.

Log 11

It is not June 13th, but still, Sehkmata died today.

Log 12

I have worried all these years for nothing. Watched over her on that day, all for nothing.

The Ekallians see time as travelling in the opposite direction to the rest of the known universe. Why did it not occur to me that their language would reflect this?

One's deathday, the day on which, as the communicator claims, one ceases living, is, to the Ekallians, the day on which they are born. Before - or, rather, after that day, as they would say - they do not exist. They cease to exist upon that day. They cease to live.

Their birthday is the day on which they believe they enter this life, knowing everything that is to happen, or which has happened, as a Terran would see it.

I have worried for nothing.

I shall return to OCTA. Einstein was right - when one travels faster than the speed of light, one grows younger. I shall reach there barely two years after I left, with a wealth of information on the Ekallians, and fresh for my next assigment.

End Log.

Postcards

I collect postcards
Because my grandad did.
I don't know why he did.
Just that he did.

He collected locations,
Pictures of far away places in black and white.
In his case, places he'd visited.
Perhaps, for the memories.

I collect images of places, too, but in my case,
Not always places I've seen.
I need Brazil, the throb, the thrill,
I've never been there, but someday I will.

That's a promise I make with every postcard.
I collect people, too.
and postcards advertising films.
A musical I've seen, and loved.
That was a gift.Béla Lugosi, who does not drink...wine.
Idina Menzel painted green.
The royal family, such as it is, at the moment.
Historical interest.
One day, it will not be as it is.
The prince will not be the prince, and the heir will not be the heir.

Times change.
But I collect postcards,
Because my grandfather did.