Sunday, August 12, 2012

Periphery


At roughly 1500 words, this bit of micro fiction will hopefully inspire your own entry into Strange State's Flash Fiction writing contest. Good luck!

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Crap! That was the worst flight ever in the history of aviation. Anyway, miss you already. This summer is gonna suck balls without you.  But I guess it will be a good experience.  If I don't learn crap at this internship, it will look good on my application. I mean, come on. They'll take one look at it, see Oxford Physics Department, and space on the rest.  LOL! I hope you're working on your tan, I don't think England has seen sun in weeks. Thought this was summer!!  The host family is really nice.  They're always cutting these really corny jokes.  I don't get half of it.  I mean, they're speaking English and yet... So much for my impression of a bunch of cold, stiff-upper-lippers.  :-D  The dad's a professor at Oxford himself and his wife bears an uncanny resemblance to the Queen.  I'll send you a pic.  There's a son around my age and their daughter is in her 20s. She's visiting right now with her fiancee.  Well, I gotta run, but I miss you big time and hope you're keeping busy.  The summer will be over before you know it. LOVES YOU!!

CNEXT CHAT with tconrad@mail.net (Trish)
Mike:  Hey! You there?
Mike:  ?
Trish:  Hey, baby! Just got home from work.
Mike:  I keep forgetting I'm five hours ahead. LOL!
Trish:  Derrrrr. You dork :D
Mike:  LOL! Some scientist, huh?
Trish:  That's my genius. Just don't go looking for any braniac girls while you're there!!
Mike:  Nobody but you, sweetie! :-D
Trish:  I mean it, not even a sideways glance! >:|
Mike:  LOL! As if I could (he says feigning earnest sincerity)
Trish:  Goofball. You forget I know all about your unnatural peripheral vision and how you can practically read a book on the side of your head.
Mike:  Hardly. But you know my weird googly lizard eyes are just for you.  8-D
Trish:  Awww... You really know how to charm a girl. :D
Mike:  I'll e-mail you a video I just took. There are these really weird clouds. It's like the sky is one giant piece of fluffy corrugated cardboard. I think it's called undulatus. I'll search online. But it looks like it's glowing. It just the glow from the city, but it's cool anyway. Wish you were here.
Trish:  Awesome. Yeah, send me the video. And put your cute face in it. I miss yoU!!
ERROR: MESSAGE FAILED
Mike:  Just tried to send it, but something's wrong with the site. Maybe the file is too big.
Mike:  Trish?
Mike:  You there?
Mike:  Damn chat window. Must have frozen up. Don't know if you're getting this. I'll try to send you an e-mail.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Sorry about that. Site froze up, I guess. Anyway, I'll try to get that pic to you.  It's really weird.  I mean, it went from being cool to being weird and then REALLY weird. We were all standing in the garden (backyard to you and me) looking up at the sky and those strange clouds when we noticed that it was actually some bizarre optical illusion. I mean it was there, but it wasn't way up in the sky. The freaky cloud was probably only 15 or 20 feet about the roof. And it was glowing on its own. It wasn't the lights from the city. I'm thinking some physics experiment ran amok over at Oxford. LOL! It's kind of creepy. It's still there. I've never seen anything like this.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

This shit is freaking me out. We finally got tired of looking at the weird cloud, so we come inside to turn on the TV and see if there's something on the news.  No TV. Mr. Miller can't get anyone on the phone either.  The internet seems to be working, but I can't pull up hardly any websites. I can access my cnex homepage and pull up my mail, but I'm not sure you're getting these e-mails. I'll keep trying.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Now it's really getting scary. About an hour ago, the cloud sort of...descended.  It was like someone was covering us with a big glowing blanket.  We're all inside. We've got the windows shut and blocked in case it's some toxic gas.  Fuck. I seriously want to go home now.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Maybe it's going away. The glow is getting fainter. I'm just too tired to stay up. It's like 3 in the morning. Hope you get these. Love you. :(

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

No, it didn't go away. It got worse. I woke up this morning and everyone was already up. We looked outside, but...I don't know how to put this. We can't see outside. The windows are covered in this milky looking rubbery tarp thing. It's translucent, so it lets in some light. Not much though. It's sticky and its composition doesn't seem very consistent, like the rough texture of a fruit rollup when you hold it up to the light. It's thicker in some places and thinner than others in a sort of stripe pattern. It's a milky white, rubbery, sticky, striped fruit roll up draped over the house like a fumigation tent. And it freaks the shit out of me!!

We're going to try to get outside.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

The cloud is gone outside. But it's gray and foggy and still and quiet. I'd feel like we are the last people on earth if it weren't for a truck that passed by awhile ago. The people inside looked dead. There was just this vacant look of their faces like they'd just gone through hell. I thought of Eastern Europe for some reason. Refugees. Anyway, there are fruit roll ups on all the houses. It's like someone has boarded up the whole town and put dust cloths down over the furniture. At least we're out in the fresh air. It wasn't a gas, I guess. The lack of communication is really getting to us. We tried to find the neighbors, but no one's home. Other than that one car, we haven't seen anyone else. The Queen is losing it. Mr. Miller is trying to be brave, but... The sister is hysterical--especially since her fiancee seems to have run off in the middle of the night. Maybe it was this morning. Their car is still here, but he's gone. Ran off I guess. The only person who doesn't seem messed up by all this is the son. He has this weird calm about him. He doesn't exactly smile and laugh, but his face is so...pleasant. Gives me the freaks. I miss you. I'm beginning to think I'm not going to see you again and it scares me. I love you, baby.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Is this an attack? Terrorism?

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

More weird shit. Went outside again with Daniel, the son. Cripes, he's like some sort of citizen of Stepford. Anyway, we're looking at the giant tarp thing, trying to use some science about all this. As I'm looking at it, I spot this flash of light or something out of the corner of my googly lizard eyes. It's like an eye floaty though. If I look toward it directly, it disappears. But if I stare at the tarp and just look at it peripherally, I can just make out the faint outline of something in the sky above the house. It's like...looking at glass in water. I only get hints of it. I think there's something invisible over the neighborhood. I don't know if it's me cracking up or there's some sort of UFO or military weapon or interdimensional portal or mass hallucination going on. I just know it's weird and scary.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

Fuck!!! I just showed the rest of the family the strange invisible structure in the sky. I'm not crazy. They see it, too. The odd thing is--now that I think about it--Daniel (the Stepford Son) was looking at it the whole time we were out there earlier. I'm sure of it. He knows something, but to be honest, I don't think I've heard him really say more than 5 words since the cloud showed up. Everyone else has been yelling and screaming and crying. I just never noticed. It's like he KNOWS something. Maybe I'm getting paranoid.

To: tconrad@mailnet.com
From: patient0@cnex.com

We're bolted inside! We've hammered the doors and windows shut and covered them with whatever we can find. We went out to look at the thing again when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Moving toward us are two shapes, like men walking in fog.  Smaller, but only slightly. Strange, dark forms. So gaunt. It scared the fuck out of me. I didn't want them to see that I could see them. They just kept creeping over to us. I pretended to be staring at the fruit roll up tarp while I reached out for a large shovel only inches to my right. I grabbed it real quick and swung it at the shadow. I hit it!! There really was something in the nothing. Something we can't see, something I can only glimpse. It screamed. It was like a rabbit's scream if it were loud like a lion. It scared the piss out of me. That's when we all ran back under the tarp and started boarding up the house. I don't know if you are getting these messages or if I will ever see you again. Know this: I love you.

NOTE: This was a dream I had on 8/12/2012. I awoke at 5 am to jot this down before I lost it all. As the notes took shape, I saw how easily they could lend themselves to an epistolic format as e-mails.

Copyright 2012 Cullan Hudson

3 comments:

STi.Boy said...

Bizzarre dream. Cool story.

Cullan Hudson said...

Thanks. I think it must be greatly informed by Guy de Maupassant's "Le Horla," which is a fave story of mine. There's an invisible entity stalking the protagonist in that one as well. He can only catch glimpses of him. That must have been in my subconscious as fodder for this dream.

Cullan Hudson said...

Also a note as to the writing. It might seem sloppy (shifting verb tense,etc.) but this was intended. It's meant to read quite extemporaneously, as if it were a true e-mail. We don't really edit ourselves when we send e-mails or converse through online chats. We just write and it sometimes comes out crap. I had to stop myself, actually, from editing this too much.