Is it fear? Fear of what? Succeeding? Failing? I know that I have good ideas, they just need to get out of my brain and onto paper. Maybe I need a change of scenery.
Whatever it is, it's happening and I'll need to find a way to work past it.
In the mean time, here's a couple pages of a short story, sort of a sci-fi dystopian future with a dash of Cthulhu mythos added in - though that last part might not be apparent in the first few pages. Enjoy. Comment. (Though, I am here alone. Here the echo? I do.)
The Thing In The Net
by
Earl T. Roske
Casey and I had
been best friends as long as we could remember. I became a reporter. Casey
became an electrician. Not because he dreamed to be one as young boy but
because early mandatory career path evaluation by the state determined that
this was the job where he could best serve the homeland. Perhaps if Casey’d
been allowed to choose his own career path the horror he accidently unleashed
in his lab would never have happened. Perhaps he’d still be alive today. And
perhaps our world would not be in the path of the danger looming invisibly
ahead.
Not everyone was
misplaced by the mandated career path evaluation. Since I’d begun to write as a
child I’d fallen in love with it. So when the state determined I could best be
of service as a reporter I hadn’t felt any sense of loss. I’d get to write for
a living.
Others, those who
felt they’d been improperly categorized like Casey trudged along in jobs that
gave them no sense of purpose or direction. This was the will of the homeland,
however, and it was not to be question.
People like Casey
had to find other ways to fill the void in their lives that comes from having
the wrong job. The state wasn’t about to let anyone change careers. The state,
with all of its psychological science, doesn’t make mistakes. All of us knew
better than to question that fact. But the state did encourage creativity.
Poetry, theatre, art films, painting, sculpture, even macramé, just so long as
the art didn’t question the methods or intentions of the homeland.
I knew that Casey
had creative talent beyond solving complex physics equations he found in the
physics journals and writing elaborate computer programs. However, I’d never
have guessed him for a sculptor. But as I stood in the gallery, not just
looking at the weird forms he’d molded with his own hands, but listening to the
people talking about his work in words I’d only seen in the art columns of the
paper…. I was impressed, hough I’d never admit that to him.
“Chunky!” I heard
the nickname I’d earned in middle school. High school swim team and track team
had removed the source of the nickname, but the name never left.
“Everyone here
for the free snacks?” I asked Casey as he excused himself from some adoring
fans and weaved his way through the crowd to me.
“Could be,” he
said.
Casey looked
nervous as well as pleased with the attendance and attention. And there was
something else.
“What’s going
on?”
“Art exhibit,” he
said.
“I can see that.
But you’re holding something back.”
“I’ll tell you
later. Come look.”
And Casey, the
suddenly popular sculptor, took me on a quick tour of his art.
The sculptures
were not your traditional torsos or heads of beautiful or famous people. They
weren’t detailed depictions of animals or trees. They didn’t – and this seemed
a bit crazy at the time – they didn’t even seem to be of this world. They
looked like someone had taken several earthly species and put them in a bag and
then shook them together, pouring the new and the strange out onto the table.
“I know limited
recreational use is legal, Casey, but have you exceeded the max on your ration
card?”
Casey laughed. It
was the kind of laugh when someone realizes you don’t get the joke. “No drugs.
None. Messes with my math.”
“This isn’t
math,” I said. I pointed at the sculpture that looked like a bumble bee with a
scorpion’s tail and bat wings done in leopard print. “This is ….”
“It’s crazy.”
“It’s not even
remotely anti-system. Which is a good thing. If the censor-committees even
thought for a moment… that’d be bad.”
“You couldn’t
find any thing here that speaks against the state.” His words were said with
confidence.
We’d moved on to
a sculpture that might have been a spider. If a spider mated with a caterpillar
that’d previously been crossed with a beetle.
“This isn’t an
interpretation of the state’s fear of movement towards change?” I’d meant it in
good humor jest, temporarily forgetting that there is no humor when it comes to
the state’s opinion of itself.
There was a
immediate bubble of silence in the vicinity of my gaff. Everyone looked at
everyone and only when it was clear that no one was a state agent and the
exhibit wasn’t going to be crashed did the conversations slowly ramp up.
“Sorry,” I said.
Casey moved
closer and I expected a rabid earful for my foolishly flippant comment.
Something I would have deserved. Instead, he wanted to know one thing. “Do you
really think my work could be considered a threat to the state?”
“No,” I said. “I
just had a stupid attack.”
“You’re sure?”
“About the stupid
attack?”
“We both agree on
that,” he said and stepped back, smiling. “The other.”
“I don’t think
you have anything to fear. I’m not even sure how to interpret them,” I said as
I watched many people stop and stare at Casey’s work before moving on with many
backward glances. Some laughed and made jokes, many looked uncomfortable, and a
few were intrigued enough to buy one of his misshapen sculptures.
“Maybe they
aren’t supposed to be anything but what they are?”
“What? Like alien
bugs?”
“Do you think you
can keep a secret?”
What was that
about? We’d been keeping secrets for each other since elementary school. I know
I’d tripped up with my crack about the state. I’ve seen editors make the same
mistake in meetings. Of course, they’ve disappeared as well.
“Despite my
stupid attack just now, you know I can keep a secret.”
“Show’s over at
midnight. Come back then. I’ve got something you need to see.”
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