Recent Stories
It's the loathsome vibrance of his skin that clues me in--that, and his strange fascination with clocks. Most Federation aliens have varying degrees of tentacle iridescence, but only centurions possess that strange, almost obsessive preoccupation with time.
The morning after she brings him home, I watch my sister's boyfriend. I watch him comb his hair in the pre-dawn light, fingers morphing into the rippling branches he wields as a brush. I watch him scrutinize the clock when my sister sleeps late, watch his eyes track the minor hand's 100-second cycle. I watch him study my reflection in the clock's glassy surface, and I wonder what he's plotting as I tie off my braid--what dark thoughts suffuse that hideous carapace, behind his slitted eyes.
We choose a side-scroller because we see our lives together as linear, and we believe we both look better in profile. Thoughts download in lumps, jumbled, like a dream, and algorithms blend us and make a smooth narrative, and there we are, 8-bit, and they got your hair so wrong, but that is not you, that is you in our game.
Some of it is familiar. I can see the framework, the metaphor, in bears wearing boardshorts, running through the jungle of lime green vines, then a glitch, pixel-flurry, the screen blanks, back again, and finding the key leads to fighting robots with lamprey faces and picking the green door means a mini-boss battle against a giant baby with a chartreuse scarf in a shopping cart, and just before collecting the golden pencil, the glitch again, the blank screen, but only for a moment, then we are back fighting lizards the size of cattle, slipping down rain barrels, and we are underwater, and there it is again--just the briefest fizzle and blank--and we’re back bobbing along, pressing B incessantly for some semblance of weightlessness.
"Every night we pray for the safety and long life of Professor Darwish whose tireless eyes warned us in time. And we thank the many scientists and engineers who built the rocket that pushed the Icy Destroyer of Worlds away from Mother Earth." Here I pause for the children to make some small gesture of honor in whatever tradition they find comforting. "The Destroyer was angry for being denied Mother Earth, so he shoved Father Moon who is not so big. This made Father Moon wobble in the sky. But Father Moon is stronger than he looks. He flung the Destroyer far into space never to be seen again. Afterwards, Father Moon shone like a diamond in the sky as a sign that we were safe." When I get to the part about the bright moon, the young children clap while their older siblings watch in silence.
This is the show I put on with only a decorated sock puppet narrator and a few cardboard cutouts made by a teenage boy I lost track of months ago. The young children watch as though it was a billion-dollar Hollywood production. I end with some simple science demonstrations dressed up as magic tricks. One never stops being a teacher.
“Thank you for coming. We wanted to talk to you about your submission. We have some notes. Is that all right?”
“I mean, sure. I’m still at the beginning of my career. I can only stand to improve.”
You first notice the spots when you take off your glasses and stare at your nose closely in the mirror. They're not very big or very dark, but there they are--indisputable proof of the fact that you're aging, and that perhaps you've spent too much time in the sun. If you were an ordinary woman, or belonged to this time, you might acknowledge that aging is supposed to happen. But you’re vain and in this strange world, vanity is often the only thing that has kept you alive.
So, you mutter curses under your breath, and book another appointment with your aesthetician. You keep dyeing your hair black as a raven's wing, and if your lips have faded a bit with age, no one else has to know that they're no longer naturally red as a rose. It's only the skin that's the problem, and if it's not quite white as snow, there are creams and lotions that promise to help. And surely, no one can hate you for that.
by C.M.F. Wright
Published on Jun 18, 2021
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Published on Jun 17, 2021
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Published on Jun 11, 2021
