Telomerase

By Ian Muneshwar

You lost your first word when I began to lose my hair.

You brought a wicker basket to the hospital and opened it in the waiting room, taking out a blue-checkered blanket that you spread out over our laps. Inside the basket there was a book of Greek myths and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into crustless triangles, just how you used to make them when the kids were young.

I told you that this was silly, that cancer was no picnic, but you just grinned like you had set me up for that very joke.

When the needle was under my skin, the nausea starting in the pit of my stomach, you opened the book. You read Hades with a seething hiss that made the child across the room giggle; Zeus was a grand baritone that reminded me of what you were like when we first met, all blustering, billowing confidence.

After the first few tales you got up, saying you had to get something. Your lips tried to form the last word, to tell me what it was, but you couldn’t make the sound. I asked you to spell it out, to write it down, but the word was gone completely, even its roots burned out of your memory.

You came back with tea in one of the hospital’s Styrofoam cups. You pointed at it and tried to summon the word again; your thin lips parting, the tip of your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth.

Tea, I said. Hot tea.

Shaking your head, you picked up the book and started where we had left off. (Continue Reading…)

White Noon

By Aidan Doyle

The dogs’ barking let me know I had visitors. I reluctantly left my chair by the fire, pulled on my boots, and took my thundergun from its place on the wall. I rarely had any visitors apart from Magnus, which was how the dogs and I liked it.

When I opened the cabin door, the sun’s brightness made me squint. The sky was bluer than a husky’s eyes. Most folks enjoyed summer’s months of continual sunlight, but I preferred the peace of winter’s darkness. Nobody but a lover expects things of you when it’s dark.

I walked across the crisp snow, my breath appearing as a mist in front of me. A ten-dog team pulling a sled with two people in it drew to a halt outside my cabin. The two figures stepped off the sled, one of them crouching down to check the dogs and the other striding towards me. I recognized Kristin’s loping gait before I could make out her face. She always looked as though she was in a hurry to reach tomorrow. It had been years since I’d seen my sisters.

Kristin wore a heavy coat with wanted posters stitched onto it. All of the villains had their faces crossed out. A pair of silver thunderguns rested in holsters by her side.

“It’s a fine day for sledding,” Kristin said. Her tone suggested that only the most inglorious of cowards would disagree.

“Fine day for staying warm,” I replied. (Continue Reading…)