pdf - Waylines

EDITORIAL
The Big Bang
fICTION
An Echo in the Shell
BY BETH CATO
Fleep
BY JEREMY SIM
The Message Between the Words
BY GRAYSON BRAY MORRIS
INTERVIEWS
A Chat with Cat Rambo
The Writers Room
CHRISTOPHER BARZAK
film
Featured Film Maker
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOS
Screen Gems
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Welcome to issue 1 of Waylines Magazine!
We are thrilled to finally be launching, and even more thrilled that you've taken
the time to pop along and take a look.
And we can promise that we've got some great stories and films inside.
As we were putting together issue 1, a particular theme came to dominate our
thinking in preparing the interviews, choosing and editing the stories, and selecting
the films we wanted.
Decisions.
Decision making, whether it be long and ponderous, or split second and instinctive, takes place every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
Some we make with conscious thought, with planning, with foresight.
Some we make as we react to external or internal pressures, as we stumble forward in our lives.
Some we make, knowing, or not, that they will lead to hurt, or to disappointment.
Some we make, knowing our lives will be the better for it.
Some are more ambiguous, ready to surprise us at a later point.
Some are inevitable...
We made a decision on Sept 3rd, 2012 to start a science fiction magazine of our
own. Along the way, we've encountered all the above, but ultimately that initial
decision has led us here, to issue 1!
In issue 1, we have three short stories, three short films, a feature with Cat Rambo
and her new collection, Near + Far, interviews with the authors, an in-depth interview with our Featured Film Maker - Christopher Kezelos, our film review section
Screen Gems, and our regular Writer's Room feature, where Alisa caught up with
the marvelous, Christopher Barzak!
Grayson Bray Morris takes us into the mind, and space craft, of Ankti Remsi and her
struggle to reconcile her decisions in the past with that of the pressure of the present in The Message Between the Words.
Beth Cato explores how family relationships can be devastatingly, and subtly redefined by sudden change to one member, and how their decisions impact their
future in the heartbreaking An Echo in the Shell.
And...
the big bang
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WAYLINES
Jeremy Sim sends us to the most unique hotel in the world with some of the most
unusual guests ever to stay there, and definitely the most lively and interesting hotel
owners we've seen this side of Fawlty Towers, in Fleep.
For our films this issue, we haveKevin Margo tells a very personal story in Grounded, exploring death through one
pilot's crashlanding on a foreign planet. A fantastic visual sci-fi feast.
Francesco Calabrese has crafted an intricate and touching tale of a monster, bringing realism to the true-to-life horror story, Lovely Monster.
And finally...
We have a beautiful animation to show you - Christopher Kezelos's The Maker. A mesmerizing fantasy that will enchant you with its music, story and creatures.
We hope you enjoy the stories, the films and the interviews. If you want to send us a
message, you can do so on our site, and we can also be found at Facebook and
Twitter.
Issue 2 will be available March 1st 2013, and will contain new fiction, new short films,
our Writer's Room guest, and an interview with Minister Faust and his War and Mir series.
Safe Journeys!
Sincerely,
D and D
4
The Big Bang
Our featured author for issue 1 is Cat Rambo and her book, Near +
Far, which is now available from Hydra House books, either as a print
edition, or as an e-book.
The book collects 12 “Near” stories and 12 “Far” stories, and
part of the unique experience that is “Near + Far” is that it
has been designed in a similar manner to the classic Ace
Doubles of yesteryear. More on this in the interview below.
Ultimately, it’s the stories that matter, and included within these
pages are some of the most heart wrenching, beautiful, odd, and
downright funny stories you’re likely to read in any collection in 2013.
We could go on, but instead, how about we get Cat to speak about
the collection herself:
Ace doubles. For those
readers not familiar, what
were they? And why did
you decide to structure
your collection, Near +
Far, in a similar style?
Basically it’s two books bound
together back to back; flip
the book and you’ll find the
companion volume. The formal
name for it is tête-bêche, which
means “head to tail.” I decided
to go with that format for two
reasons. One, the book started
as a plan for two books, one
containing near future stories
and the other far future, and
this seemed like a great way
to combine them. Two, I read
a lot of those Ace Doubles
growing up and loved them.
The format’s my homage
to that important influence.
Can you tell us a bit about
the cover art, the artist,
and the process of working
with Hydra House Books,
who published Near + Far?
Two artists contributed art for
the book. Both of the lovely
covers were done by Sean
Counley, an English artist. He
did a marvelous job, producing
evocative, interesting covers
that each referenced a specific
story. The interior art was done
by a long-time friend, Mark W.
Tripp. Part of the fun of arranging
the book was deciding which
piece would go with which story.
story we found particularly
compelling with its theme
of social disconnect. Which
story, or stories resonate
with you the most, and why?
Wow, that’s a tough question.
I loved working with Hydra
House. Publisher Tod McCoy
was
patient,
professional,
innovative, and always as
interested in and passionate
about the book as I was.
The collection explores a wide
variety of themes, and the
two halves segue quite neatly
with “Legends of the Gone.”
“Therapy Buddha” was a
A CHAT WITH cat rambo
5
WAYLINES
To some extent all the stories
resonate
for
me.
Having
produced them, I can’t replicate
that “click,” that lovely moment
when a story speaks directly
to a reader, for myself. Stories,
though, where I feel I managed to
adeptly hit the note I was striving
for include “Amid the Words of
War” and “The Mermaids Singing,
Each to Each.” But there isn’t a
single story in there that I’m not
perfectly happy with, even the
very odd ones like “Legends of
the Gone.
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A chat with cat rambo
We were drawn to the unique
qualities embodied in the
character of Tikka, from “Five
Ways to fall in Love on Planet
Porcelain.” What character,
or characters do you feel
a close bond to, and why?
How have the web and other
social media impacted upon
your own writing career?
Tell us a little bit about the
class you run concerning
maintaining
an
online
presence.
Belinda in “Surrogates,” perhaps,
and her dealings with a world in
which she’s primarily part of a
couple. And Ms. Liberty in “Ms.
Liberty Gets a Haircut,” which
is actually inspired by a novel
about Ms. Liberty and her group
that I wrote in grad school.
I’ve been very lucky in that
many of my publications have
been in online magazines, which
I think helps build one’s name a
bit more, perhaps, than some
of the print publications. I fight
a constant battle with social
media – while it’s useful (and
fun!) for building my brand, that’s
still time that could be used for
writing. That’s one of the things
I emphasize in my Building An
Online Presence for Writers class
– how to do things efficiently
and get the most use out of
the time one spends poking
around on the web getting
distracted by cat pictures.
If we didn’t have Cat Rambo,
the writer, what other Cat
Rambo might we expect to
see?
I’m pretty sure it’d be either Cat
Rambo the game designer or Cat
Rambo the software developer.
I’m a longtime gamer, and my
work with Armageddon MUD
was actually where I started
learning how to program.
Another possibility is Cat Rambo
the veterinarian. As a kid, the
James Herriot books made a deep
impression on me and that’s all I
wanted to be for a year or two.
Most of my classes are taught
online, using Google Hangouts,
which always makes me feel so
futuristic. In the round of classes
that’s coming up, I’m offering
the Online Presence class as
well as some others: Writing F&SF
Stories, a flash fiction workshop,
The Art of the Book Review,
Literary Techniques in Genre
january 2013
Fiction, Editing 101, First Pages,
and Everything You Need to
Know about Electronic Publishing
(which I’m co-teaching with
Tod
McCoy,
who
knows
much more about it than I.)
Who were a few writers who
were formative influences for
you, or ones that you hold
with great affection?
I wouldn’t mind going back
in time to hang out with some
of my favorite writers: Joanna
Russ, Theodore Sturgeon, Alice
Sheldon, Fritz Leiber, and Thomas
Burnett Swann all come to mind.
and “Grandmother,” which
appeared as an Escape Pod
original.
What are you working on at
the moment, and where can
we find more recent work of
yours?
Publications coming up in
2013 include a couple of Daily
Science Fiction appearances, a
story I co-wrote with Ben Burgis
in GigaNotoSaurus as well as
Podcastle, and anthologies,
including Athena Andreadis’
The Other Half of the Sky (space
opera), Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s
Beyond the Sun (SF), and Airships
and Automatons, edited by
Charles P. Zaglanis (steampunk).
I am finishing up what I hope is
the final! rewrite of the fantasy
novel I’ve been working on
for nigh a decade. Recent
publications include a novella
for the Fathomless Abyss series
Cat Rambo has edited anthologies as well as critically-acclaimed Fantasy Magazine. Her
work with Fantasy Magazine earned her a nomination for a World Fantasy Award in 2012.
She teaches at Bellevue College as well as runs a highly successful series of online classes.
She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she
claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow.
John Barth described Cat Rambo’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia.” Among the places in which
her stories have appeared are ASIMOV’S, WEIRD TALES, CLARKESWORLD, and STRANGE HORIZONS,
and her work has consistently garnered mentions and appearances in year’s best of anthologies.
Cat Rambo maintains a web site here- http://www.kittywumpus.net Her online classes can be found herehttp://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/upcoming-online-classes/
A CHAT WITH cat rambo
7
Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award
winning novel, One for Sorrow. His second book, The Love We
Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree
Awards. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction,
Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best Fantasy and
Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The Year’s Best
Science Fiction and Fantasy. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in
a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has
taught English in suburban and rural communities outside of Tokyo,
Japan. His most recent book is Birds and Birthdays, a collection
of surrealist fantasy stories. Forthcoming is Before and Afterlives,
a collection of supernatural fantasies. Currently he teaches
fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown
State University. Find out more at: http://christopherbarzak.com/
FAVORITE AND LEAST FAVORITE
THING ABOUT YOUR WRITING
SPACE?
My favorite thing about my writing space is the
artwork that friends and family have made for
me, based on some of my novels and stories, that
surrounds me there. I'm lucky to be friends with
some amazing local artists who are sometimes
inspired to make visual variations of things I've
written, and I'm lucky enough to have been gifted
with some of that artwork. They surround me like
talismans, good spirits, and that helps me as I work
on writing whatever I'm currently preoccupied with. My least favorite thing is the very old carpet, which
really needs taken up, which I'm doing this coming
summer, taking the floors back to wood. I look
forward to buying a nice rug to lay under my desk.
PROCESS PORN, PLEASE. WHAT
IS YOUR TYPICAL WRITING DAY?
Process porn is difficult for me, mainly because I don't
have what I think of as typical writing days. I'm not
the sort of writer who writes every day, which is the
typical thing you hear you're supposed to do in all
of those books about writing and how to be a writer.
Granted, I have gone through many periods of my
life when I have written every day, sometimes all day
and all night long, and I have even written on days
when I've been struck down by illness (when I lived
in Japan and was recovering from the mumps, for
instance), but in essence, I need to be compelled
8
The Writers Room
to write. A vision or a voice has to snag on my
imagination, my spirit, and drag me to the table to lay
it down in words. If that's not there, I'm not interested.
There were periods in my life when I was younger
that I didn't feel compelled to write, but I thought
I should be trying to write anyway, because of all
those voices from writing teachers or authors of
how-to writing books saying you're supposed to.
It doesn't work that way for me, that write-everyday wisdom. Whenever I try to force myself to write
without that force tugging at me for some mysterious
reason, I tend to write things that I'm annoyed with
or frustrated by or even things that just plain bore
me. After a while, I gave myself permission not to
write when I don't feel like I have a story to tell. It
was very freeing to do that, because by giving
myself permission to not write, I opened myself up
january 2013
to new stories, to new experiences. When I'm not
writing something, I'm able to watch new movies, to
read new books, to go for long walks in the woods
or to even just sit around with my thoughts flowing in
whatever direction they want to go in. When I snag
on a vision or a voice, though, I can't do much else
but listen to it, to write it down, until I've brought it to
completion, and all of those other things go by the
wayside. When I'm compelled to write, I may write
a couple of pages a day, at any time of day, or
I might write five or six before I feel like I need to
break from the dream and let it come back to me.
There's a kind of dance or a movement between
the writer and story, a mediation that occurs in
the process of writing (at least for me). Writing, for
me, is a little bit like trying to lure a flighty ghost
to come to me. I have to make it feel welcome.
I can't move too quickly, or it will disappear in
my hands if I try too hard to grasp hold of it.
BIGGEST THING THAT KEEPS
YOU FROM WRITING WHEN YOU
SHOULD BE WRITING?
WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU WERE
READING BUT AREN'T (BECAUSE IT
DOESN'T EXIST)?
I wish I was reading a novel called Albondocani, by the
Danish writer, Isak Dinesen, who had apparently been
working on a book of that name at the end of her (Isak
Dinesen was a male pseudonym for the Baroness Karen
Blixen) life. Her secretary felt the title meant something
along the lines of "I'll pull myself together," which Dinesen
often said was one of the mottos she lived by, and that the
book would have been a kind of mosaic novel, or novelin-stories. Dinesen wrote some of the finest Gothic tales of
the twentieth century. I would love to have seen this novel.
SUPER POWER YOU WISH YOU HAD?
I would really like to bend reality to my will, if I could,
just for those times in my life when I feel powerless or
unable to make my life go the way I want it. If not that,
because that's pretty damned powerful, then I'd at
Myself. Always myself. No excuses. If I have a story
demanding to be told and I'm not doing it, it's my
own fault. I can make time for it, however busy my
day job teaching university has become, however
many things are going on in my life in general. I can
make time to write, and if I'm not writing when I have
a story to tell, then it's just me being lazy, or in some
cases, afraid I won't be able to make the story right,
so I put it off until I feel like I can't put it off any longer.
I do think that might be part of process, though, too.
This waiting, sometimes, for a buildup to the point
where I sit down and feel like the story's been sitting
inside me for so long that I'm going to work really
hard on it after such a wait to bring it into being. the writers room
9
WAYLINES
least like the convenience of teleportation. I hate
flying and driving, though I do like to take trains.
WHAT SHOULD A READER DO
AFTER READING THIS?
Read one of my books or stories and let me know
what you think (Birds and Birthdays). I like hearing from
readers about things I've written. It's worth more than
money or anything else, hearing from people who
have read things I've written and have something to
say about it. It's the truest and realest kind of reward
for this kind of work, I think, knowing your stories are
out there, becoming a part of other people's lives.
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The Writers Room
Christopher Kezelos has been making films for more
than a decade. With a BVA from Sydney University in
film production, he’s worked as a writer/producer/
director on ads, online videos and award winning
shorts. He even has his own production company Zealous Creative. Christopher wrote and directed his
first animated short in 2010, titled Zero. His latest short,
The Maker, has screened at over 60 festivals and
won 21 awards. Waylines features The Maker in our
Janaury 2013 issue, so head on over to view the full film.
We caught up with Kezelos during the busy winter
season where he gave us some insightful answers
about The Maker, filmmaking and the future. Enjoy!
WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND
“THE MAKER,” THE STORY BEHIND
THE STORY?
My friend Paul Halley is a talented music composer.
I convinced him that he needed a video clip so
his music could reach a larger audience and that
he should bank roll it! I had also been aware of an
amazing artist from Ohio, Amanda Louise Spayd.
I knew her intriguing puppets would compliment
Paul’s music perfectly and allow us to create a
beautiful haunting world. Paul’s compositional
piece Winter was so uplifting and dramatic and was
used as the inspiration for the story. As the project
moved forward it became clear the narrative was
too compelling to be “just” a music video clip and
before we knew it we had made another short film!
WHAT WAS YOUR GOAL WITH THE PIECE?
Our short film Zero was so well received by
audiences around the world but it was the only
animation we had ever done. The goal with The
Maker was to complete a follow up film to ensure
that we had a solid show reel for future work and
to prove to ourselves we weren’t a one trick pony!
WHAT SECRETS WOULD YOU LIKE TO
DIVULDE ON HOW YOU WERE ABLE TO
ACHIEVE SUCH GREAT ANIMATION?
The Maker took six months from story conception
to completion of post production. We shot it with
a Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i / Kiss X4 Digital) and
used Dragonframe Stop Motion software. The
preproduction was the longest part of the schedule
taking over 2 months to complete the one set and
two puppets. As our film was made in Australia and
christopher kezelos
11
WAYLINES
our puppet maker was based in Ohio, we relied
heavily on UPS and Australia Post to get us across
the line! I won’t divulge the actual budget amount
but will say it barely covered material costs. This
means you have to be super resourceful and a lot of
the R&D was completed on the fly. If you go to our
YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/
zealouscreative you’ll see a great behind the scenes
video on how one of our boy genius animators Mark
Lagana created a camera dolly out of a recycled
scanner and used film stock as the driving mechanism!
actually been making live action shorts for 10 years prior
to our first stop motion. For me a stop motion set is exactly
the same as a live action set except you have puppets
instead of people and everything is much smaller.
With my live action and visual arts background I was
confident I could produce these amazing worlds with a
low budget. CG unfortunately wasn’t an option, with
that said my dream is to one day make a CG feature.
HOW BIG OF A CREW DID IT TAKE
TO ACHIEVE “THE MAKER?” ARE
THERE ANY JUICY PRODUCTION
EVEN THOUGH WE ARE FANS OF TALES YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?
STOP MOTION ANIMATION, WE
WERE CURIOUS WHY “THE MAKER” There were 28 dedicated and talented people who
up the crew for The Maker, all were volunteers
WAS MADE AS ONE. IN A WORLD made
or working for near nothing salaries. What happens
OF DIGITAL, WOULDN’T GOING CG on set stays on set! I will say that towards the end of
BE EASIER?
production I had a bit of a meltdown when I couldn’t
I have many skills; director, producer, editor,
compositor, designer and chocolate connoisseur...
but sadly 3D animator is not one of them! I had
WHY DO YOU WANT TO TELL
VISUAL STORIES? WHY DID YOU
BECOME A FILM MAKER?
I have always loved the world of movies and from a
young boy used my dad’s VHS camcorder to make
my own films. As a teenager my friends and I would
make martial art videos inspired by Jean Claude Van
Damme. Sadly my roundhouse kicks ain’t what they
use to be! After graduating from film school though,
I moved into the internet industry which had just
boomed but I was always drawn back to filmmaking.
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featured film maker
animate a scene due to technical difficulties, so I
rewrote the whole scene to make it easier. It’s when
the male finishes making the female and shows her
I love to entertain, I love to make people laugh and cry
and one of the greatest rewards from making my films
has been the audience response. As both our films are
now online, fans from all over the world contact us daily
to let us know how much my films have inspired them.
WHAT HAS INFLUENCED YOU MOST
AS A FILM MAKER?
So many influences but particularly the DIY spirit of Robert
Rodriguez, the magic of Tim Burton and the grandness of Spielberg.
january 2013
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE
FUTURE?
We have so many plans! We want to make a
feature stop motion animation, and would also
love to make a live action feature one day.
WHAT ARE YOU
WORKING ON?
CURRENTLY
We just started a web series we called Smooshies
which can be found on our YouTube channel,
which is NOTHING LIKE our previous shorts… warning
it’s not for the faint hearted! The Smooshies are
dirty little monsters that get into mischief around
the home. It’s a bit of fun in between our bigger
projects. I am currently in pre production for a
our next short, which is more in the vein of Zero
and The Maker and should be online in February/
March 2013. People can subscribe to our YouTube
channel to watch all our films, behind the scenes
videos and catch all our new releases. Otherwise
we continue to develop our feature film scripts.
christopher kezelos
13
From the classics to the recently released, these are some of our favorite films. Find
something great to watch today. All reviewed from a film maker’s perspective
sci-fi
14
Screen Gems
fantasy
horror
docs
shorts
january 2013
Alien encounters – there once was a time when it wasn’t so clichéd. A
time when there wasn’t a series dedicated to it (X-files). A time when
the idea was still intriguing. Those were the days of Close Encounters. Yet
even today, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is able to evoke intrigue in
a way only Spielberg can do. Made in 1977, the effects surprisingly hold
up today. Most of this is a result of how it was shot (keeping the aliens
silhouetted and seeing the spacecraft through their lighted beacons).
The rest of what makes Close Encounters work is all Spielberg. From the
frightening to the weird to the serene, Spielberg is able to layout iconic
moments that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Yet while Spielberg
may be the God of directors, his writing is not quite as immaculate.
While the story here has some great scenes, it is the weakest part of the
experience. It is able to evoke the wow factor of 2001 (which is what it feels
like it is aiming for), but at the same time is not always clear what it is trying
to do (until later moments) and creates a lull in the middle of the film. But
all that is easy to overlook simply because there really is no film like Close
Encounters -- a film that welcomes alien contact, that doesn’t fear it, that
doesn’t turn it into an alien invasion, that doesn’t even have conspiracy
as part of its equation. It’s a great idea and
a breath of fresh air in the sci-fi film world.
Even if it was made almost 40 years ago.
Prometheus has beautiful visuals. It has style. It’ll keep you on the edge
of your seat. It also has a story that is almost secondary. In all, a typical
Ridley Scott film really. But the one sure thing about Prometheus is, it is
cool. The aliens are cool. The designs are cool. The opening scene is
cool. The final battle between the two aliens is cool. For Alien series fans,
this is a welcome addition. Prometheus is much better than the last few
installments and almost a great movie in its own right. That is thanks to
Prometheus’ concept -- it takes one of the coolest moments from the
original film (the scene with that mysterious looking alien in the gunnerlike seat) and creates a back story to it. And for the most part Spaihts and
Lindelof make a story that lives up to that intrigue and mystery (despite
the Ancient Alien aspect). Unfortunately, there are so many holes in
the story that it isn’t completely satisfying. Some hugely important parts
of the story aren’t explained, like -- why did David do what he did to
Elizabeth? Why do Aliens look like they do? (other than finding out where
they came from, it’s kind of the whole point of this film really). And with
the lack of a singular enemy, I at least, felt like there wasn’t enough
here. That by the end, we were just getting started. But if you have
seen a Scott film, this kind of underdeveloped story is pretty normal. I
can’t actually think of a film of his where the story is as clever and well
done as the visuals. But that doesn’t mean
this is a bad film. It will entertain, it will thrill,
and it will be (for the most part) satisfying.
screen gems
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WAYLINES
This is what every film maker aspires to make visually. Pictureperfect framing. Music-video slow-mo. Amazing color coordination.
Imaginative settings and costumes. And these are all signature Tarsem
traits, so The Fall will definitely hypnotize you with its visuals. Usually
as a result, however, Tarsem’s pictures lack on story and acting.
Fortunately, this time those elements are satisfying (although they
still do not quite stand up to the visuals). The story of a suicidal man
telling a fantastic tale of adventure to his only friend, a little girl (also
in the hospital), starts off slow but builds to an emotional peak which
is satisfying. The acting, however, is a little flat. The adults do a pretty
good job, but its Untaru, the child star, that is a mixed bag. While
she does generally a great job, and she has many cute moments,
there are many moments where it is obvious she is not acting.
Moments where it’s pretty clear she’s forgotten the lines, or is adlibbing. Luckily, those moments are few. Despite this negligible issue,
The Fall is a movie you should see. The
utterly amazing cinematography and art
direction make up for any other shortfalls.
You can’t get much better than this. With Miyazaki on top of his
game, not a single frame of this lush, creative, magical epic goes
to waste. With a new wonderfully weird twist, character or place at
every turn, it is impossible not to love the magical journey Chihiro
takes into a dreamlike realm in order to save her parents. I’ve been
a fan of Miyazaki films for years and have been studying them for
a long time (I even wrote a paper on his films back in film school).
SA has all his trademark touches. In my opinion it is the pinnacle
of his career, using all the techniques, themes and ideas he’s
developed previously and mixing them all into this wonderful potion.
Everything here has a fantastical realism that is sometimes funny,
sometimes cute, sometimes creepy and always works. On top of
that, there are the usual symbolic environmental themes present
in all of Miyazaki’s films (e.g. the river god spewing pollution and
waste, etc). And while the story might not be as accessible to an
audience not familiar with Japanese culture, it is still an adventure
that can be enjoyed for exactly what
it is -- a brilliant fantasy. See this movie!
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Screen Gems
january 2013
It is amazing what can be done with plastic surgery nowadays.
Anything is possible. And that is the underlying concept behind The
Skin I Live In, a haunting tale of a doctor gone mad, and the victim
of his surgical crimes. Banderas is amazing here, portraying ‘the
mad scientist’ teetering on the edge of sanity to perfection. But it
is the direction that really stands out. Almodovar brings a classical
haunting to the film, making the concept disturbing without delving
into graphic gore which would have been easy with the content
(and would have cheapened this). Instead, with an almost Kubricktouch, Almodovar uses
music and
minimalistic juxtapositions to create an
experience that is truly haunting. This one
will really get under your skin. Watch it!
Atrocious acting, gallons of cherry red blood, and a wildly
inappropriate soundtrack -- yet Deep Red is still great. Following
a string of murders surrounding him, a pianist finds himself the next
target as he unravels the mystery behind the attacks – a great start for
a horror story. What makes Deep Red work is the mystery that keeps
you in your seat, and the outstanding camera-work that pulls you to
the edge of it. While rough by today’s Hollywood standards, many
of the shots are creative, evoke the intended mood/information,
and are sometimes just plain cool. Next is the sound track, and
well, there are a number of things to say about the soundtrack. For
one, it is very interesting, and at times cool. For another, it kills many
tense moments with some odd seventies rock. Lastly, it is obviously
inspired by Tubular Bells (not a bad thing). However, there is one
piece of music that is played twice that sounds note for note like
a track from Tubular Bells (making one wonder how it got released
with no lawsuits). Despite these quirks, Deep Red is a great film to
watch for aspiring horror film directors. It
shows how a little elbow-grease and a
creative mind can make a movie great.
screen gems
17
WAYLINES
Everyone is familiar with cult movie classics. Often we scratch our
head trying to think why they are so popular. Best Worst Movie
portrays the phenomenon by documenting the revival of the
film voted worst film of all time -- Troll 2. By following a genuine
good human being (the star of the original film) as he watches
the hype build into a frenzy, one can see how such a horrible film
could come in to existence in the first place, how it could be so
entertaining, and how so many have
grown to love it. If you are looking for
a doc that will have you feeling good
and smiling, this is the film for you!
For better or for worse, midnight movies have changed modern
day society. Sexual ambiguity. Flesh eating zombies. Taboo humor.
Anything that pushes the limits. All of these have become mainstream
ideas and even, dare I say it, boring in many circles. They did all
have a start, however, and most of them came from trashy little
films made by the ‘rejects’ of society (it’s ironic how society is usually
changed by those it shuns). Midnight Movie Madness takes a look
at six of these films, bringing their histories to life by interviewing their
creators and seeing how the midnight
movie phenomenon started and
grew. A very interesting documentary
for those interested in film history.
18
Screen Gems
january 2013
It’s no wonder this film was nominated for an academy award. It’s funny, it’s effective, and
it will stick with you. Maybe that is because it’s a simple story – a soldier wakes up in heaven
and soon realizes what the afterlife is truly like (no matter which one you end up in). And while
the animation may look a little dated by today’s slick 2013 standards, it holds up remarkably
well. That is because it’s done so well. And guess what, it was all
done by one man – Ruairi Robinson. With his first feature currently in
production, he’s one film maker to remember. For now, go find this film!
Twisted. Disturbing. Memorable. These don’t even begin to describe Little Quentin. Part Ren &
Stimpy, part Toy Story, LQ follows the deranged story of a detective, his bunny pal, and the evil
deed he has done. The animation is done really well (in a dementedcartoony-way), the scenes are effective and funny, and the ending is
memorable and twisted. That’s exactly how you make a brilliant short.
It’s amazing what a single person can do with a computer nowadays. He/she can make a
complete film all by themself AND make it look just as good as those made with Hollywood’s
multi-million dollar muscles. R’ha is the latest viral short film made by a single film maker to do
just that. Following the interrogation of an alien by a robotic inquisitor, the film grips you from
the getgo. And with effective shots and some intricate designs, it’s hard to imagine this was
made by a single person. But Lechowski did. And a mighty fine job he has done here visually.
Story-wise, it starts off well but treads on some very clichéd territory.
By the end, things seem to peter out, ending on a very soft note that
at least left me thinking, “wait! It’s finished?” Nonetheless, this is an
impressive first film and Lechowski is someone to keep your eye on.
screen gems
19
Despite the bitter autumn chill, Jonah's kiss warmed Allison's lips and sent unaccustomed
heat swirling through her belly. Gravity didn't weigh her steps as she hopped up to the front
porch. He had kissed her. He had held her hand and kissed her. Allison squealed and spun in a
dizzying circle.
Feet away, the walls of her house shuddered. Something heavy smacked against the inner
window, unseen behind the thick cover of nailed plywood. In that instant, the heat from the
kiss evaporated and reality grounded her like an anvil.
Grandma.
Allison flung open the screen and fumbled with the key to unlock the doorknob and both
deadbolts. She jumped inside. Glass squealed and crunched beneath her flats.
"Shut the door!" screamed Mom.
Allison kicked the door shut and slammed the locks in place. Grandma's solid weight
impacted against Allison's back, sending a gush of air from her lungs. The doorknob gouged
her gut. Grandma's knobby fingers inched up her arms towards her neck. The buzzing sound
20
An Echo in the shell
january 2013
grew louder; the earthy, indefinable odor more potent.
Then Mom was there. With a sharp squeal, Grandma released her hold. Allison slipped around
just in time to catch Grandma as she slumped to the ground. Mom stood there, panting, her
hair electrocution-wild. A syringe gleamed in her hand.
"She took an extra long nap and was too quiet when she woke up and then I couldn't catch
her." Mom blew stray hair from her lips, tears filling her eyes. "Her first Kafka rage."
"So how long were you chasing her--oh." As Allison heaved Grandma onto the couch, she finally
had a good look at the room. Broken glass littered the floor. Two side-tables lay broken, one leg
embedded in the wall like a spear. Through the arched doorway to the dining room, she saw
more overturned chairs and the light of the gaping refrigerator door. Grandma had broken
things before or tried to bust out, run towards lights outside, but nothing like this.
The rage. The next symptoms... no.
"Oh, Grandma." Allison stroked Grandma's shorn scalp.
"Looks like she has some cuts and bruises. I need to take pictures of her and the room and then I
can sweep up this glass."
"You should have called me," Allison said.
"Like I had a chance," Mom snapped. "But no, you had to go on your little date. I hope you
enjoyed it, because you aren't having another one for a long time. She always seems to
respond best to you." Mom gnawed at her inner cheek as she stared at Grandma.
"Mom! That's not fair!"
"Life's not fair. You're sixteen, Allison. You'll have plenty of time for boys and all that nonsense
later on. Go grab the digital camera for me."
Glass crunched underfoot as Allison stalked towards the hall. Like Mom had any place talking
to her about boys, seeing how Dad left, seeing how Mom hadn't even attempted a date since
Y2K.
But maybe Mom was right, too. Maybe Grandma had missed Allison. Maybe that was why she
flipped out. Maybe this wasn't "the rage" doctors talked about. Maybe it was something... weird.
A tantrum. That's all.
She made a slight detour to shut the fridge and reset the childproof latch. The office door
was open, which meant Mom must have been working when Grandma's rampage started.
No surprise there. Mom tried to squeeze in freelancing whenever she could. The monitor was
darkened in screensaver mode, the green light beneath blinking like a heartbeat. Allison
grabbed the camera from its dock.
She took pictures as she walked through the house. A new hole in the wall. She stopped in the
doorway to the living room and took in an empty spot on a high bookshelf. That broken glass
used to be her great-great grandmother's vase. The one that used to be Grandma's favorite.
It was just a vase.
beth cato
21
WAYLINES
There were no curtains over the board-covered windows. A Plexiglas shield covered the TV,
and that was frosted and scratched. Any shelves were bolted to the walls, cupboards secured
with childproofing snaps and locks. Mom leaned against an open cabinet beside the TV, set
something inside, and shut the door. A shot of whiskey, probably. As if Allison didn't know. Mom
would probably finish off the bottle when Allison was in bed and bury the evidence at the
bottom of the recycling bin, as usual.
Grandma sat up on the couch. Her eyelids blinked as she stared dully into space. Her crudelyshorn hair lay flat against her skull, dull metal grey against pasty skin. Her shadow cast against
the front door revealed the truth. Long antennae curved from her head and arced a foot in
height. Two mandibles protruded from her face and worked at the air. From her shoulders,
diaphanous wings clung to her back and stretched the length of her body and through the
couch itself. None of that was visible to the human eye, of course. Not yet. Light revealed the
strengthening curse, that Grandma's body had become the husk of a soul-stealing bug.
That was the proof that Grandma suffered from Kafka Syndrome.
Grandma used to be Loretta Christiansen. Retired letter carrier for the United States Postal
Service. Sunday school teacher for thirty-five years. Widow of Johann Christiansen. Mother of
one. Grandmother of one. Game show junkie.
Really, when Allison thought of her grandma and who she truly was, her game shows were the
first thing that came to mind.
"Come on, you banana brain," Grandma would yell at the TV. "The answer's the Mississippi River!
The Amazon isn't even on this continent." Grandma had declared that Alex Trebek was dead to
her after he shaved off his mustache.
Funny and old game shows were the best of all. Checkered bell bottom pants and big hair
were standard issue, along with cheesy orange studio sets. Allison was crestfallen at age ten
when she realized no other kids knew about Match Game 75 and Charles Nelson Reilly or the
hilarity of the Whammies on Press Your Luck.
Oh, how Grandma would laugh as she watched, light and feminine and free, and descend into
giggles and wheezes.
One day as Grandma and Allison walked the two blocks from school, Allison saw Grandma's
shadow. The horns were mere nubs then, the wings like little fists from her shoulders.
Allison wasn't scared. She reached for Grandma's hand and squeezed, and stood close enough
so that the shadow couldn't be seen.
The curse had been on Grandma and others for decades and the victims never even knew.
Back in the early '70s, some group of animal rights radicals laid a sleeper curse on laboratory
workers in five states. Their goal: make the workers become their own test subjects. By the time
the illness manifested in shadows decades later, there was nothing magic or medical science
could do.
22
An Echo in the shell
january 2013
Grandma had delivered mail to all the labs within the complex. For some reason, the Asian
cockroach room's curse was the one that clung to her soul. Ate it away.
But Allison swore that sometimes a flash of clarity returned to Grandma's eyes. Sure, she might not
be able to talk anymore, or laugh. She ate with her fingers gathered like pincers. Sometimes she
hissed when surprised. And at dusk, she fixated on the lights outside, especially the ones reflecting
on the lake behind the house--so they boarded up the windows. That attraction made the Asian
cockroach different from other kinds. They hungered for light.
They were also supposed to be really strong flyers.
Allison refused to think about that final stage. It was a long ways off. But there were only some five
thousand people under the curse, a few hundred with the Kafka variant. No one knew the exact
timeline. Doctors said that most would die during that final physical transition, anyway.
Until then, Allison had Grandma to love and care for, and that was all that mattered.
The next morning, the house looked normal again. Spartan. The sharp stink of fresh paint made
Allison's nose run.
With the phone to her ear, Mom paced along the bay window in the dining room. "I know you're
still building the Kafka wing, but this was her first big incident of the rage. Yes, I read the report-no, we aren't sending her to that lab. The whole point of that curse was to force her to be some
lab animal, damn it!" She took in a deep breath. "Sorry. Sorry. She signed a living will before--uh
huh. I'm sorry. Last night was just really rough and..."
Oh. Mom was talking with the people at that special home for National Lab curse patients.
It was down near the University of Washington. A really nice place. They were building it for
compatibility with a dozen different curses-in-progress.
Mom's voice slurred. Maybe the person on the phone wouldn't notice. Allison's stomach
clenched in a knot. She hated mornings now.
Mom trailed a hand down her face. "Yes. Yes. Thank you." She pressed a button on her phone
and set it down on the table, staring at it between her fingers.
"No progress?" Allison asked.
Mom's lips worked for a second and she shook her head. "They can't build it any faster. Other
than that, they said we can sedate her more if necessary. I just..." She looked away, blinking, her
head bobbing slightly. "Hey, don't you have that biology test today?"
"That was last week. But all of my homework is done. I had everything taken care of before my
date, remember?"
"Oh yes. Your date. That's right, it's Monday morning." Mom stared at where the calendar used to
hang. Now only a few gouges from tacks marked the spot. "I'm losing my mind."
beth cato
23
WAYLINES
"You could drink less." Allison tried to keep her voice light.
"That's none of your business." Mom made no such attempt at levity.
"It is if I hear you slurring like this first thing in the morning."
Mom sucked in a sharp breath, the sound so like Grandma's cockroach hiss that it sent a rush
of cold along Allison's spine. "How dare you. I'm an adult. I'm in complete control of how much I
drink. It helps me sleep. Last night I needed all the help I could get, after that."
Allison grabbed an apple from the fridge and made a quick retreat towards the front door. She
couldn't bear to even look at Mom.
Grandma was still asleep on the couch, her jaw gaped open. Asleep, she looked so normal.
"Hey Grandma," Allison whispered, her throat hot with tension. "I've gotta go to school. I'll miss
you. Maybe this afternoon we can hang out?" Without waiting for an answer, she planted a kiss
on Grandma's forehead. It was a shame the game show channel had changed their whole lineup a few months before. All their old shows were shuffled around.
"Allison. She's gone. This is just a shell--"
"Don't say it. I'm sick of you saying that."
"Reality's going to crash down hard on you when it comes, Allison. You can't be in denial
forever."
"Denial? I know Grandma's sick--"
"She's not sick, damn it, she's gone! Dead! That's not her on the couch, get it?"
It was the whiskey, it was that stupid whiskey that made Mom all awful every morning. Allison
backed up to the front door, her nails digging into flesh of the apple in her palm. She swung her
backpack onto one shoulder and fled. She hit the sidewalk running fast enough that the tears
tipped from her eyes and flew away without touching her cheeks.
"Come on, Grandma. It's time to get ready for bed."
With her hand curled beneath Grandma's armpit, Allison walked her down the hall. They
staggered together, Grandma's steps small and shuffling. She fitted Grandma in fresh disposable
underwear and a pink paisley nightgown that snapped up the sides. Then she guided Grandma
to her room. Mattresses sat on a bare concrete floor. Scratches gouged the walls. Allison tried
not to see it, tried not to compare the room to how it used to be with its dense '70s wood
furniture and Currier & Ives prints on the walls.
She tucked in the old woman, taking care to layer the blankets and cover her wrinkled feet.
24
An Echo in the shell
january 2013
Allison laid a hand against Grandma's cheek. By Mom's account, it had been an okay day.
Nothing good, nothing bad. Allison's day--well.
"Jonah asked me to go out with him on Friday," Allison whispered. "I didn't say no, not straight
out. I mean... I know how he'd react. He's a cool guy, really. But..." She could only say "no" so
many times. Most of her old friends had moved on for that very reason, or were content with just
hanging out at school, never mentioning the possibility of anything after.
"It's hard sometimes, you know? But I know Mom won't let me go."
Grandma's teeth bared in a grimace. If her shadow had been visible, no doubt those pincers
would be working as if they could bite. But there was no shadow. Just Grandma.
"Good night, Grandma. I love you." She planted a kiss on her forehead.
Allison shut the door and bolted it on the outside.
Mom was holed up in her office, working frantically on her work backlog. Probably would be
until late. Allison disgorged her backpack's contents onto the couch and turned on the TV. She
had already gotten a decent start on her homework by staying late after school--not like she
was in a rush to get home for more quality time with Mom--but the terrors of algebra awaited.
Out of habit, she picked up the remote and flicked it to the game show channel.
"--Match Game Marathon!" boomed an overly-pleasant announcer.
Allison's head jerked up.
A Match Game Marathon this Friday. Twenty-four solid hours of bell-bottoms and orange-shag
goodness. Grandma would love this!
From the office, the chatter of computer keys continued, punctuated by dark, indecipherable
mutters.
Mom wouldn't agree. Mom would say it was pointless, that Grandma wasn't in there, that it was
all just a waste of time. She would yell and rant and do everything she could to make sure the
TV stayed off. Allison's hand clenched the remote as if she could strangle the plastic. Grandma
would love this marathon. If anything could coax her out of her shell, this would be it. Mom had
even said Grandma responded best to her.
Mom needed to be out of the house that night.
Grinning, she reached for the phone and dialed up Mom's best friend, a friend who'd already
pestered Mom for months to cut loose and relax for sanity's sake. "Hey, Shayna?" she said.
"Allison here. Mom's really needing a break. You think we can tag team her?"
A few minutes later, she hung up. A devious plot was already underway. Shayna knew how to
score tickets for some overnight bed and breakfast deal over in Leavenworth this Friday night.
If Shayna had already shelled out the money, Mom would be more likely to cave in and go.
It'd still take a few days to wear her down, but Allison knew it would work. On some level, Mom
knew she needed a break, too. This was the excuse.
Allison finished up her homework as the TV droned in the background. For the first time in ages,
she hummed aloud, a smile on her lips. This Friday was going to be the awesomest night ever,
beth cato
25
WAYLINES
for all of them.
When Allison crawled into bed, she was still smiling. An incessant buzzing sound shivered through
the wall. Grandma slept one room over, her breathing like a mob of a thousand mosquitoes.
Down the hallway, the door clicked open. From the living room came the soft thud of the
opening liquor cabinet and the clink of glass. Mom was getting ready for bed, then.
Allison stared at the blackness of the ceiling. Her happiness dwindled away as a sick knot
resumed its normal place in her stomach. Mom was the one who was really gone, not
Grandma.
The terrible susurrus continued from next door, from Grandma. "It's just buzzing," Allison
whispered, as if saying it aloud made it true.
She drifted to sleep, and the buzzing droned on.
"I shouldn't go." Mom clutched her suitcase handle and paced the living room. "You know what
happened on Sunday—"
"She's been fine all week. If it gets to be too much, I'll call 9-1-1," Allison said. "Now go. If Shayna
has to shut off her car to come get you, the neighbors might call 9-1-1 before you even leave."
Mom laughed, the sound abrupt and nervous. "Yeah. Riding tied up in the trunk might look
suspicious."
"Go." Allison held open the door and pointed to the sidewalk.
Mom ducked her head like a chastised child, casting glances over her shoulder as she walked
halfway along the path. "If you need me—"
"I'll call. Go!"
Allison bolted the door and stood there, shivering. It was going to be awful cold tonight.
Through the peephole, she watched the car drive away. Mom was probably crying now,
apologizing to Shayna, saying she shouldn't go. Shayna would keep driving.
"Well, Grandma, this is our big night," said Allison. Grandma sat on the couch with a slack jaw.
Her dead eyes stared ahead at the television.
"That's right, it's TV time! We've already missed some twelve hours of the marathon. We're
slacking." She powered on the television and squealed as she sat down beside Grandma. "Look
at Charles Nelson Reilly in that snazzy red suit! Geez, I think I saw Brett Somer's dress on sale at
the mall last week. And you said the '70s would never come back in fashion."
Grandma buzzed softly. Allison leaned against her knees and giggled as she watched. "Oh,
gosh. I'm surprised that comment made it past the censors then. That was awfully double-
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An Echo in the shell
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edged, even for now." Rain drummed a soft rhythm above their heads. Another episode came
on, then another.
"That was a cop-out answer. That could have been smarter or funnier." Allison shot a furtive
glance at Grandma, in search of agreement.
"Charles Nelson Reilly! Best player ever! Remember when I showed you the song Weird Al made
all about him? Wasn't it awesome?"
"That hair. Crazy. Did she stick her finger in a light socket or what?"
Buzzing answered. Only buzzing.
Two hours passed; three.
Grandma's laughter wasn't there. Grandma wasn't there.
Allison turned off the television. She stared at the black screen. Through the marred protective
glass, she could see their reflections. Grandma's expression never changed.
Grandma was really gone.
The realization was quiet. Cold. Back when the diagnosis first came, Allison had tried to joke
that the curse wasn't real until Grandma had wings. Now she understood. It wasn't about how
Grandma looked, or even her shadow. It was about... Grandma.
She stood. In the blank screen, she saw Grandma stand as well. Grandma pivoted, hunchbacked, and dove at the taped-together lamp on the end table. It crashed to the carpet, and
in a blink, the room was cast into darkness.
"Grandma?" No. This wasn't Grandma, not really. It wore her skin, but soon, it wouldn't even
wear that. Mom had injected Grandma before she left--her regular dose with a little extra.
It wasn't enough to quell the rage.
There was a long, cockroach hiss and the shuffling of feet and Grandma was there, those
hands scratching at Allison's neck.
She sidestepped. Grandma grunted, swinging towards her. Allison retreated towards the TV.
Lamp shards skittered and crunched underfoot. Pain pierced the sole of her right foot, followed
by the intense warmth of blood.
In scant grey light, Grandma advanced, her feet wide like a sumo wrestler. Her mouth gaped,
glare reflecting from her teeth. Her gaze--empty. No hatred. No malice. Allison was just... a
thing. A target. Prey?
Grandma was gone. Dead. She was dead. She wasn't in that body anymore.
Anger rippled through Allison and clogged her throat. Anger at the hippies and their curse,
anger at Mom and her alcohol and her work, anger at doctors for doing nothing. Anger at
Grandma.
"You were supposed to fight this!" Allison yelled. "You're supposed to still be in... there!"
beth cato
27
WAYLINES
Grandma launched herself forward. Allison slipped aside, her bloodied foot tacky on the
carpet, and Grandma plowed into the liquor cabinet. It rattled, glass tinkling and liquid jostling.
Allison hated that cabinet. Hated it. She turned, throwing her shoulder into the cabinet. It
rocked against the wall, unable to fall because of the straps securing it in place. She hugged it
with both arms and yanked with all of her body weight. The cabinet pulled from the wall. Then
Grandma was there, tackling her. Allison met the next wall with a grunt. The cabinet crashed
into the carpet at Grandma's heels.
Mom could buy more alcohol. She undoubtedly would. But there was something amazing
about hearing those bottles shatter. There was just enough light to see a gush of dark fluid seep
through to the floor, as if the cabinet itself bled.
"You should have laughed during Match Game," Allison whispered. "You would have laughed."
How long would the curse drag on? How many months, years? How long would this thing wear
Grandma's skin? How long until--that Asian cockroach emerged? The wings. The antennae. The
shadow come to life. And Mom--how would Mom change? What facade would she wear?
Nausea punched her in the stomach. Suddenly it was all real. All too real. Grandma hissed, and
Allison stepped back. Her bare feet kicked through more pieces of the lamp. Pain zinged all the
way up her leg and caused her to gasp. If she made it across the room to the switch, Grandma
would go for the light instead. That would distract her until...
Light. Outside, the light would be on down at the dock. A light that attracted clouds of bugs.
The awfulness of the thought froze her for a moment. Then the fumes of weeping liquor stung at
her nostrils, and she knew what she would do.
She glanced at the door to the back patio. The story poured into her head: she would say
she heard that old tom cat on the porch, that she opened her door to check. That Grandma
attacked her. It was close to the truth. That they had fought throughout the room and then
ended up back at the door. The door that lead to the stairs and the lake and the light and the
cold, rainy night.
Allison staggered across the room and towards the door. Grandma's nails gouged at her neck.
An earring ripped free from Allison's lobe. She worked the locks as Grandma's body dragged
from her arm. The door swung free, iciness a wave over her skin.
Grandma hissed, grabbing Allison's neck with both hands, and shoved. Allison's head met the
hardness of the doorjamb. Stars danced in the middle of the room as she fell to her knees. The
loosened snaps of Grandma's gown clacked at Allison's head level.
"You're free," Allison whispered. "Go."
Then, the old woman was out the door, her bare feet smacking on wet cement. Allison forced
her head to turn.
Rain fell in wavering sheets. Out on the nearby lake dock, a single yellow light stood as a
sentinel. Grandma, hunched, was like a gray shadow in the blackness as she scurried away.
The unsnapped gown trailed behind her like wings. Then she met the stairs. She tumbled, feet
over head. Allison listened to the rasps of her own breaths. Grandma's head was visible again,
barely. She still worked towards that brightness below, just like the Asian cockroach she was.
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An Echo in the shell
january 2013
Allison could have screamed for help. She would have, if Grandma had been somewhere
within that frail shell.
A slow ooze of blood coursed Allison's cheek. She lowered herself to the frigid linoleum before
the door. The gallop of her heart was louder than the buzzing had ever been. She quivered
as she heard a distant splash, and clenched her eyes shut. The light from the dock still burned
through the blackness, and as the minutes passed and the chill sank in, the relentless rhythm
of the rain soothed her like a lullaby.
© 2013 Beth Cato
beth cato
29
Beth Cato is an active member of the Science Fiction &
Fantasy Writers of America, with stories in Flash Fiction Online,
Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories, and many other
publications. She’s originally from Hanford, California, but
now resides in Buckeye, Arizona, with her husband and son.
Despite how often her husband’s co-workers beg, she will
not quit writing to bake cookies all day long. Information
regarding current projects can always be found at http://www.
bethcato.com. Sometimes those projects do include cookies.
How did you come up with
“Echo in the Shell?” What stages
did you go through in the process of getting the idea down?
I created the story in response to a
contest at Codex Writers. I was given
the prompt, “the noise of bugs,”
and struggled to come up with
a good story. After wrestling with
ideas for a few weeks, I was reading
Reader’s Digest and came across
a very moving article about how
people cope with their parents with
Alzheimer’s--and how some can’t
cope. There was a reference to
hollowness, and suddenly the story
idea clicked for me: that void being
filled with the terrible noise of bugs.
In the revision process, the most
difficult thing for me was deciding
what Allison really wanted. It took
me several drafts to hone in on
the fact that the story revolves
around Grandma but is really
about Allison and her mom.
Allison and her mother struggle with both their own feelings about Grandma, and also
the way those feelings clash
30
Inside the Wayline
with each other. How did you
go about creating this sense
of an adult/child response
to what was happening to
Grandma? Did you view it as
pragmatism versus idealism?
Not consciously, no. For me, it
came down to desperate hope on
Allison’s part. She and her mom exist
at total extremes as they simply try
to survive day to day. I based their
interactions on that typical parent/
teenager dynamic, but I made
Allison the slightly more healthy one-the adult of the relationship, really.
Of course, in the end that delicate
balance is lost in a devastating
way. I should add that just because
I ended the story this way, that
doesn’t mean I endorse Allison’s
actions. In that situation, though,
there really is no right choice.
“Echo in the Shell” deals with
the theme of change, of having to make a decision that will
affect your entire future. It also
highlights the pain of families
that deal with family members who have debilitating
illnesses such as Alzheimers,
dementia etc. What other
themes interest you personally in your writing or reading?
I’ve actually written a number
of short stories on the theme of
grandmothers and granddaughters
(and realized this theme only in
hindsight!), though “Echo in the
Shell” is by far the most somber of
the lot; my more positive published
stories on the subject are “Blue Tag
Sale” and “Toilet Gnomes at War.”
I’ve been very close to my maternal
grandmother my whole life and
she’s nearing ninety, and I only get
to see her once or twice a year
because I live out of state. I think
I’ve been writing these stories as I
prepare for that inevitable, awful
loss. I definitely prescribe to the
attitude of Allison as she is at the
beginning of the story, though, and
try to ignore that whole issue of death
january 2013
as I focus on happy things when I
talk with my grandma. We seize
every moment we have together.
Why write? Surely there are
so many other, far easier,
things you could be doing?
Certainly, there are many easier
things to do. A writer’s life is filled
with revisions, rejections, and
trunked stories. At this point,
however, writing has become
something of an addiction. If I don’t
write, I get increasingly agitated
and unpleasant, so it’s really best
for my household that I keep
writing. I like being married and all.
Besides, if I didn’t write, I’d have to
clean house, and goodness knows
I don’t want to resort to THAT.
What are you working on at
the moment? Where can our
readers find more Beth Cato?
more--and writing speculative
poetry. Readers can find more of
my work through my website, http://
www.bethcato.com/, and quite a
bit can be read online for free. They
can also feel free to drop by my blog
and say hi. On Wednesdays I post
recipes, and I love sweets. I may
be evil in my fiction, but my cookies
will steal your soul--and waistline.
I’m continuing to work on short
stories--at least one a month, often
inside the wayline
31
All things considered, it was not the most uplifting of times for Nicholas. In fact, one might
even say that Nicholas's life on sunny Pulau Ubin was the very opposite of uplifting: it was
depressing. Bloody damn depressing, despite the tropical climate. Not an uplift to be seen for
miles.
And then he met the brindlefarbs.
Nicholas hesitated by the postbox, holding the envelope in his hand. It was sealed and
stamped, creased sharply where he had stuffed it in his sweaty pocket on the walk over from
the hotel. On the front, scrawled in his cramped handwriting, were the words "TAN TOCK
SENG GENERAL HOSPITAL ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE DEPT."
A single check languished in the envelope's interior, and written on the check was something
like a compromise. It was a dollar amount slightly too large for Nicholas's comfort and slightly
too small for the recipient's. A compromise.
32
Fleep
january 2013
Nicholas took a deep breath. Somewhere back on the mainland, Po Po needed this money.
Chemo treatments didn't grow on trees, after all. Nicholas, well, Nicholas needed it too. But
was he a good grandson or was he not?
The air was warm in the hours before evening, the rainforest's earthy sog combining with
the sharp, boiled-crab stench of the ocean. Salty waves lapped at the ferry pier to his
right. Farther out, Nicholas could see rafts and bumboats, black tires clinging to them like
overworked monkeys.
Times were hard for everyone, it seemed, since the great Human-Alien financial crisis of 2024.
But he hadn't thought it'd be this hard.
He lifted the cover of the postbox and flicked the envelope in, listening for the soft tap it
made when it hit the bottom.
He had to go over the numbers again with Boon, but he was fairly sure this month was
going to be tight. They had the Malay couple here for the next few days, but after that, no
prospects. No reservations for almost four weeks--meaning that the thousand-odd dollars
that he still owed for Po Po's chemo treatments was going to remain unpaid for yet another
month. The hotel business was tough this time of year. Their little two-room hotel wasn't nearly
as popular as he and Boon had envisioned.
His footsteps crunched on the gravel path. A pair of chickens casually ignored him, making
only the most grudging of attempts to get out of his way before resuming their hunt-andpeck.
He was so engrossed in his calculations that he almost didn't notice the flying saucer hovering
in the air above the hotel.
The saucer stretched roughly twenty meters from rim to rim, the sleek, modern black of an
iPhone 16. It hung motionless over the rainforest canopy, blinking green lights marking its
circumference.
A thin blue line emerged from the bottom of the saucer and etched a path, ruler-straight, to
the ground in front of the hotel. A shape bloomed at the bottom. Blue light bathed the world
for a moment, then faded.
Four aliens materialized in the clearing. One big, three small. They wobbled as they moved,
their body shape definitely falling into the "eyeballs on legs" category. Two stringy legs
extended from a bulbous body, where one large eye blinked pensively. As Nicholas watched,
the big one took a careful step in Earth gravity while one of the little ones tumbled to the
grass-flecked mud, letting out a squeak of surprise. Their skin was blue and leathery. They had
no arms, hands, head, mouth, or nose.
Nicholas frowned. Why would aliens want to come here? Maybe they had lost their way. On
behalf of his species, he was almost embarrassed that they had ended up here. If they were
looking for a luxurious vacation in sunny Singapore, they were certainly peering up the wrong
part. Pulau Ubin was a dump, frankly; a place that seemed to exist solely to remind the tiny
jeremy sim
33
WAYLINES
nation of Singapore that there was always an island even more miniscule and insignificant.
It was a place for weekend getaways, for locals to take a ferry over from the mainland, rent
rusty cycles, and walk on the rocky beach. In the six months they had been in this business, he
and Boon had found themselves hosting mostly bird enthusiasts, adulterous couples and offduty police officers doing what he and Boon called WALI: Walking Around Looking Important.
Not real tourists.
"Fleep," said the largest brindlefarb when Nicholas came closer. The three smaller farbs
clustered behind it, peeping out at him like blue ducklings.
"Eh," he said. "You lost is it?"
It stared at him.
Right. Of course--they wouldn't be used to any dialect but Hollywood. He tried again, in
American. "Arr you lawst? Singaporr is that way."
It stared at him.
Oh well. If they didn't even understand American English, it was probably safe to assume they
weren't here to chat. He turned and went through the lobby doors.
The lobby, with its pale green tile and old red sofas, was hardly five-star. It had a faint Chinese
medicine-y smell to it, like burnt orange mixed with cat urine. Nicholas slid onto the stool
behind the counter, tossing the 'Be Right Back' sign into a drawer.
The brindlefarbs had followed him inside.
Nicholas looked them up and down. "Dun tell me you want to rent a room," he said.
"Fleep."
"Say what?"
"Fleep."
"Okay," he said, playing along. "We got one room available, very nice one. Platinum Suite.
Seven hundred per night."
The brindlefarb's eye did not widen. "Fleep." It lifted one leg and fished a credit card out of
a sort of fanny pack that was strapped around its other leg. Its legs were long and flexible,
jointless like spaghetti, with three stubby digits at the end.
The card clattered to the counter. VISA. The name embossed on the card read 'MR KHSSYY'G
MRGLGRGL.'
Nicholas narrowed his eyes.
"Uh. How many nights you want?"
It lifted the same leg again, holding up all its digits. Then it put its foot down and lifted its other
leg, showing two digits.
34
Fleep
january 2013
"Five nights?"
"Fleep."
Nicholas picked up the credit card by its edges, his heart thumping. He'd actually blurted out
seven hundred as a joke--they usually rented their rooms at thirty-five or forty bucks per night.
Fifty if they looked rich, or foreign. The Malay couple in the Diamond Suite were paying thirtyfive. Seven hundred was...
Suddenly, it all sunk in. Five nights at seven hundred was three thousand five hundred dollars!
Three thousand alone would pay off his thousand-dollar debt to the hospital and cover Po Po's
medical costs for the final four months of chemo, not to mention the rent and the hotel license
fees they still owed from last month.
It was too good to be true. Nicholas fingered the edges of the credit card, running his thumb
over the embossed letters. Then he casually swiped the card and punched in the numbers.
Five nights. Seven hundred. Add standard fifteen percent 'law'. He and Boon called it the law
because that's what they said when concerned guests pointed it out on the bill. "It's the law,"
they said, shrugging.
He stared at the total that appeared. Four thousand and twenty-five dollars exactly.
His heart hammered as he tore off the receipt. The brindlefarb took the offered pen and
signed it, with impressive dexterity.
Nicholas heard little cash sounds going off in his brain. He felt a little bad for cheating the poor
creature, but it was business as usual, wasn't it? They always charged more for rich foreigners.
This one just happened to be richer and foreign-er than most. Sometimes he even suspected
that foreigners enjoyed paying more for their rooms. Helped them appreciate things more.
He took the receipt and pushed it through the receipt spike. After months and months of losing
money, it looked like things were about to take a turn for the better.
"Boon! Eh, Boon!" Nicholas walked swiftly back across the lobby, towards a door that said
'Employee Only.'
He had tried to make conversation with the brindlefarbs on the way to their two-story chalet
out back. Just to show them the fastest way to the beach and where to buy food; the
usual things. The alien only responded with "Fleep." Fleep fleep fleep. It could probably get
annoying.
He leaned on the door. "Oei, Boon! You wun believe what happened."
Boon sat at his little computer desk, earphones cupping his head. He had on a white singlet
and shorts, his long hair half-concealing his eyes. The fan whirred overhead.
"Oei," said Nicholas. "Boon."
"Congratulations," said Boon to himself, in a weird accent.
jeremy sim
35
WAYLINES
"What?"
"Congratulations."
"Oei! Boon!"
"Congratulations. Congratulations."
"Oh my God," said Nicholas, crossing the room in three steps and plucking the headphones
from his head.
"Congratu-- eh!" He turned to look at Nicholas. "Wah piang eh. You scared me, Nicholas." He
always pronounced it like it rhymed with 'dickless.'
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Huh? Just practicing what. I'm making an advert. For the hotel."
"An advert?"
"Ya lor. This type of advert cannot fail one. People browse to some websites, okay, and they
see a bright color advert and hear 'Congratulations! You have won a free trip.' Then they click
through and get our booking site lor."
Nicholas stared at him. "Um. Whatever lah. But you wun believe what just happened. I just
booked our empty room to a alien family. Seven hundred bloody dollars per night!"
Boon jumped up from his stool and gripped Nicholas's hands like a dying sword master in a
Mandarin drama. "You better not be shitting me."
Nicholas laughed. "For five nights okay!"
Boon danced around the room. "Yeah!! I knew my Nigeria email campaign would pay off.
We're rich, Nicholas! Rich!!"
Nicholas smiled. He thought of that envelope, sitting at the bottom of the postbox, and
suddenly he realized: Maybe we can do it. Maybe Po Po, Boon and I can come through this in
one piece.
Brindlefarbs, read the Wikipedia entry. The name given to the group of sentient oculopods
originating from the planet Brin, in the Forssa sector. Adult brindlefarbs range from 75-125cm in
radius, and are full thermivores.
Nicholas clicked through to thermivores and skimmed the article, which had a lot of long bio
words in it. It said, if he was reading it correctly, brindlefarbs didn't eat meat or veggies. They
ate heat. Because of that they didn't even have mouths--they spoke through tiny orifices on
their knees that were only capable of a simple range of sounds.
Heat eaters? Did that mean they didn't even need to provide free breakfast, then? This was
36
Fleep
january 2013
getting better and better. And maybe it meant they wouldn't run the air con all day like the
Malays.
When Nicholas woke up the next day and went to man the counter, the three little farbs were
jumping on the lobby sofa, bouncing off the old red pleather like a trio of clownless juggling
pins.
"Ah, morning," he said. "Where's your father? Mr--" He squinted at the name on the receipt.
Khssyy'g. "Kosong? Where is Kosong?"
"Farb!" said the middle farb. "Farb! Farb!" The others joined in. Their voices were high pitched,
like toddlers on helium.
Nicholas got out his phone and swiped his finger across the screen. He snapped a picture of
the three farbs, suspended in the air in an inverted 'V'. Excitement shone from all three eyes.
He smiled, and settled in his seat. It was nice to have kids playing in the lobby. It felt more lively.
There was a pause in the pounding of sofa springs, and Nicholas looked up.
Something seemed wrong with one of the little farbs, the one on the right. Instead of bouncing,
it sat on the sofa with a dazed look. It shut its eyelid tightly, like it was about to be sick.
"Oei, you okay not?" Nicholas got up from his seat.
He had only taken half a step when there was a change in the air, a slight pop, and the farb
opened its eye again, bright and cheery. But part of the sofa had changed. The pleather had
turned almost completely white, frosted over with tiny ice crystals that glittered like snow.
"Farb!" burped the farb, and resumed jumping.
Nicholas frowned. Was this... breakfast?
"Alamak," said Boon softly when Nicholas showed him the room. They were wearing yellow
rubber gloves; Boon held a rag and a bottle of cleaning fluid in one hand. Usually they split
up and cleaned one room each: Nicholas the upper floor, Boon the lower. But today was
different.
The room was completely iced over. The two twin beds were a glossy, cloudy white, like ice
trays that had been left in the freezer too long. The rumpled piles of blankets were frozen solid,
cold white vapor rising off them. Icicles hung from the ceiling fan. The bathroom slippers were
suspended in neat little ice cubes. The table lamps looked more like icebergs--both of them
were still on, actually, creating a neat Christmassy effect. The only thing left unfrozen in the
room was the inside of the insulated ice bucket, which held 10cm of tepid water.
Outside, palm trees waved.
"Yep," said Nicholas.
jeremy sim
37
WAYLINES
Boon stared glumly at it for a good minute. "Just leave it like this? Can or not?"
"Cannot lah. Run hotel must clean room one."
"But... wun they be more comfortable like this?"
"Doesn't matter lah. Come on. Get the hair dryer."
It took the entire day. They thawed the bathroom slippers and strung them up on bamboo
poles outside to dry. They broke off chunks of ice from the bed and tossed them off the balcony
into the grass below. Nicholas held up a bucket while Boon ran the hair dryer on the ceiling fan
and lamps. They changed the sheets, wiped the tables, mopped the floor. Finally, as the sun
glowed orange over the horizon, Nicholas brought up a brand new bucket of ice cubes and
placed it in the middle of the table.
"Wah piang eh," said Boon, leaning on the mop. "This is harder than secondary school."
"Dun complain lah." Nicholas swiped a droplet of water off the wall.
Boon gathered up the buckets and rags. Nicholas hadn't seen Boon look so discouraged since
National Service, where their commanding officer had mistaken Boon's sluggishness in the
mornings as an insatiable desire to do pushups.
"Come on lah. Let's go get satay. My treat."
They walked out to the hawker center together, enjoying the warm evening air. Nicholas's
hands were raw and painful from cold. A monkey rustled in a tree by the side of the path. The
air around the hawker center smelled like banana leaves and barbecue, and the tin roofs
overhanging the multitude of food and drink stalls made the whole place look like a kind of
rusty futuristic beehive.
As usual, the place was packed. Cigarette smoke wafted around them, mixing with the aroma
of smoky meat.
"You know ah, Nicholas," said Boon suddenly, as they scouted for an open table. "I know we
need three thousand of the brindlefarb money for your Po Po's payments, but if we still have a
bit left over afterwards, like five hundred or so, maybe..."
Nicholas slid into a seat, swiped clean by an auntie's damp cloth moments before. "Maybe
what?"
For a moment, Boon looked almost wistful. "Aiyah. Nevermind lah. I was thinking we should take
a vacation ourselves. To Bali or somewhere else nice. Just for a few days. It would be like our
stupid business plan finally became a success. But nevermind lah. Let's faster eat and go back."
Nicholas smiled. "Okay."
By night, the island seemed quieter. The gritty heat of daytime faded to a kind of humid
darkness that pressed against the orange bustle of the hawker center from all sides. Cicadas
38
Fleep
january 2013
shrieked from the bushes, their cries mixing with the clatter of plates and forks, beer glasses and
laughter. Across the strait, the bright lights and tall buildings of Singapore stood like a distant,
vague reminder.
Boon raised his beer glass. "To the fleeps," he announced.
Nicholas clinked his glass against Boon's. "To the fleeps."
On the way back, they heard the shouting even before they reached the hotel. Nicholas and
Boon glanced at each other, then sprinted to the door as fast as they could.
The Malay couple, Mr. and Mrs. Abdul, were standing in the lobby across from the biggest
brindlefarb, Kosong. Mr. Abdul and Kosong were staring daggers at each other. Mrs. Abdul
and the three little farbs stood off to one side, looking anxious. One of the little farbs sported an
awkward pair of flippers on its feet--a trail of wet sand traced its way in from the front door. The
littlest one had a sheet of ice frozen around its waist in a ring, like a tutu.
"Bloody hell man," said Mr. Abdul, who had his back to Nicholas and Boon. He was slightly
overweight, with a thick moustache and short black hair that curled tightly on his head. His face
shone red. "Is this why it was so bloody cold last night? My wife has cough you know. We were
shivering like mad. You creatures have no conscientiousness!"
"Fleep!" said the brindlefarb angrily.
"Ahmad," said Mrs. Abdul in a pleading tone. She was a slender woman with a pretty face,
gentle but lined. She noticed Nicholas and Boon and went over to grab her husband's arm.
"Let's go. Please?"
Mr. Abdul turned, noticing Nicholas and Boon. "You! You also, you bloody bastards. How can
you do this with a clear conscience? My wife has cough you know!"
"That's enough, Ahmad." Mrs. Abdul pulled her husband across the lobby, towards the back
door.
"This is ridiculous!" he announced once more, before storming out of the lobby.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The ring of ice around the littest farb continued melting, the only sound in the
room.
"Fleep!" said Kosong angrily, glaring at Nicholas. He spun suddenly on one leg, whirling in three
full circles. "Fleep!"
The air grew cold. A low, moaning sound emanated from Kosong, vibrating the air and
increasing in intensity until Nicholas had to cover his ears.
"Fleep!" he said again, and this time two light bulbs on the ceiling shattered, showering the
darkened floor with tiny ice chips.
Kosong turned and marched out the back door towards his room. The three farbs traded
jeremy sim
39
WAYLINES
worried glances, then hurried after him.
"Wah lan eh," said Boon, when they were gone. "So intense."
Nicholas's face burned. He stepped over the trail of wet sand on the lobby floor and sat down
on the sofa. It was wet.
Boon sat down at the counter and looked at the ceiling. "Too cold. Really? First time I ever
heard that here."
Nicholas nodded.
"They even leave their air con on all day."
"I know."
Boon sighed. "This not good, hor."
"Not good lah."
Boon sucked in his breath. "Nicholas. What if they leave? They could just pack up and go
overnight. Without paying." A stomachache of a look passed over his face.
"I know."
Boon stood up. "Maybe I can swap rooms with the Malays tonight. Since we only got the two
rooms at the bungalow, maybe they can stay in my room and I can stay in theirs. I dun mind
cold."
"Are you kidding? You sleep on a 5cm mattress in a tiny computer room."
"How about your room?"
"My room is the same size as their toilet room."
"Oh." Boon sat back down and fiddled with the 'Be Right Back' sign.
Nicholas felt the icy water seep through his shorts.
"Eh, Nicholas. If we have to choose, I say we get rid of the Malays, right or not?"
"What?"
"The Malays. We can move them to another hotel. Sucks lah, but if we lose the aliens..."
"I know, I know. I thought of that already."
"So? We can call up Desmond Chia, see if he got any vacancy or not." He picked up the
phone. "I just call to check-check first ah?"
Nicholas frowned. "Wait."
"Wait what wait?"
40
Fleep
january 2013
"Let me think."
Boon put the phone back down. "Think think think. You always want to think only."
But Nicholas didn't answer. He was piecing together the beginnings of an idea.
At 10:35pm that night, the Abduls heard a knock at the door. When they opened it, they found
a large basket containing three hot water bottles and two extra sets of towels, blankets and
pillows, overlaid with a spray of purple bougainvilleas and a handwritten note. The note said:
"Please accept our sincerest apology apologies. We wish you and your wife good health and a
comfortable night. Live long and prosper. Signed, Your Upstairs Neighbors."
At 10:39pm, Mr. Khssyy'g Mrglgrgl opened the door to find a large basket stacked high with
hot water bottles, overlaid with a note and three novelty ice cube trays, in which water would
freeze in the shapes of animals, numbers, and vehicles. The note said:
"We are sorry for our outburst earlier. Please accept this gift for your children. We apologize, and
hope someday to be as gracious, handsome, and financially giving as you. Selamat datang.
Signed, Your Downstairs Neighbors."
Nicholas slept well that night.
They mopped the lobby at least twice a day. They blow-dried and sponged off the sofa. For two
and a half hours each day, they cleaned the brindlefarbs' room together. They boiled water
to refill the hot water bottles, froze water to fill the ice buckets, washed sheets and hung them
up to dry in the sun. At night, they ate satay, smoked cigarettes, and slapped at mosquitoes by
the ferry pier. The 'Employee Only' room remained empty, except for one day when Nicholas
followed some strange sounds and found the littlest brindlefarb locked in fierce competition with
Boon's computer.
"Fleep!" said the farb, glaring intensely at the monitor.
"Congratulations."
"FLEEP!"
"Congratulations."
"FLEEP!!"
Nicholas shut off the computer and herded the little eyeball out of the room.
jeremy sim
41
WAYLINES
He went through their finances one afternoon, line by line. Boon was right. If they survived this
ordeal, they would have five hundred and forty left over at the end just for them. Enough for a
trip to Bali and forty dollars in the savings account. A break would be nice, thought Nicholas. For
once in their lives, they could be the ones leaving messes and making unreasonable demands.
They defused another disaster on the third day, when the little farbs accidentally trapped the
Abduls in their room by freezing the lawn into shards of razor-sharp ice. Boon raced out to the
Indian mama store, bought a $25 rug, sliced it into long pieces and laid out a red carpet for the
Abduls when they emerged in a cloud of steam, sleepy-eyed and hungry for breakfast.
Whenever he saw the Abduls and the brindlefarbs together, Nicholas's heart threatened to seize
up. He and Boon scrambled to keep the stream of mutual gifts flowing each night--five dollars
here, two ninety-nine there. A matching pair of blue-and-pink earmuffs for the Malays one night,
one giant sunmonocle for Kosong on the next.
The earmuffs, surprisingly, were the harder item to come by.
Nicholas awoke one morning to the sound of Boon banging on his door.
"Nicholas! Eh, Nicholas!"
He leapt out of bed and opened the door.
"What? What happen?"
Boon had a slightly manic look. "We did it! They all checking out today!"
Nicholas felt a slow grin spread across his face. It had been the longest five days of his life, but
he had done it. They had done it. Nicholas washed his face, brushed his teeth, combed his hair
and was sitting at the counter before 9am. Check-out time was 11.
At 10:59, Kosong and Mr. Abdul came marching up through the back door. Nicholas put his
phone away and straightened up.
They did not look pleased.
Mr. Abdul's face was so red it was almost purple. Kosong's gaze could have melted Superman.
"Now listen here," said Mr. Abdul when he saw Nicholas. "You bloody hoaxster." He pointed an
accusing finger, holding up his hotel receipt with his other hand.
Kosong held up his receipt too, balancing on one leg.
"How do you explain this price discrepancy?"
Nicholas squeezed his eyes shut. No. No no no no.
"Huh!? How? Speak, man!"
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Fleep
january 2013
He opened his mouth. "Ahh--"
"And what is this ridiculous surcharge? Fifteen percent? What rubbish is this?"
Nicholas swallowed. Boon had come running once he'd heard shouting--he stood at the front
door, his weight resting on the door frame. His eyes reflected everything Nicholas felt.
"Bloody rubbish," said Mr. Abdul.
"Fleep."
"You can say that again."
"Fleep."
In the end, there was no choice. After Mr. Abdul started dancing around, threatening to call
the police and saying that there would be disastrous consequences, they gave Kosong the
thirty-five dollar rate for all five nights of his stay, plus a fifteen dollar per night de-icing fee. The
Adbuls agreed to pay the fifteen percent law when they heard that it was, indeed, the law. In
total the brindlefarbs were refunded three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five dollars.
Mr. Abdul, Mrs. Abdul, Kosong and his three little farbs stormed off with their luggage, giving
Nicholas dark looks.
Room cleaning felt especially long that day.
That afternoon, Nicholas and Boon sat on the beach, in the shade of an overhanging palm. To
Nicholas it felt like there was an empty patch in the sky, where the brindlefarbs' flying saucer
should have been. They had decided to take the rest of the day off.
Nicholas scrolled through his phone absentmindedly. One browser window still showed the
Wikipedia article he had been reading, about brindlefarbs. Brindlefarbs, it now read. These
bloody lan cheow dirty ang mohs cheat ur money only lah!!!
Nicholas choked back a laugh. The article went on for several incoherent paragraphs. No
wonder Boon had seemed so self-satisfied earlier.
He sighed and pulled up the picture of the three little farbs, their little blue bodies suspended in
mid-air, spaghetti legs trailing out under them. They looked so happy. And after all, wasn't the
hotel business all about making people happy? In the end it wasn't seven hundred a night, but
he and Boon had still gotten a decent rate from them. With a little bit of saving and a few more
guests this month, they'd still be able to pay the rent and the minimum on Po Po's fees.
"Still worth it lah," he said, flicking his phone off.
They sat for a while. Nicholas let the hot sand run through his fingers, squinting out at the fishing
boats and cruise liners.
jeremy sim
43
WAYLINES
"Let's go back lah, hor."
"Okay." Boon stood up and brushed sand off his shorts.
They walked back together, not saying much.
At the front door to their hotel, peering in the locked front door, was someone new. A short,
slightly chubby Chinese man.
"Who's that?" said Boon.
"Dunno. Excuse me," Nicholas called.
The Chinese man turned and looked relieved to see them. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt
and pleated pants. "Oei. Are you two the owners of this hotel?"
"Yes."
"Ah, good good. Got any vacancies now or not?"
"Got. Two rooms."
"Ah, damn good. Is three weeks too long to rent both rooms? I'm taking my whole family on
holiday until Chinese New Year. I tell you ah, I had the strangest luck this morning--an alien came
into my convenience store and paid $10,000 for a bottle of Sprite!"
Nicholas started to smile.
"At first I thought you were closed lah--we almost went to the other hotel down the road. But my
daughter says this is the best hotel on Pulau Ubin. She stayed here last time. Very hardworking,
she said. Good people."
A wave of happiness rose in his chest. "Ah-- we try our best lor."
"Good good." The man put his hands together. "How much per room per night ah?"
Nicholas looked the man up and down. He had shiny leather shoes, pressed pants and carefully
combed hair. A large Rolex gleamed on his wrist.
"Sixty is our usual rate," said Nicholas.
© 2013 Jeremy Sim
44
Fleep
Jeremy Sim was recently boxed up and mailed to Germany,
where he lives with his girlfriend Celine and a cute dog named
Rico. He loves video games.
How did you come up with
“Fleep?” What stages did you
go through in the process
of getting the idea down?
I’m not sure myself! This was an
experimental story for me in a
few ways: it was my first attempt
at writing humor, and the first
time I’ve written Singaporean
characters speaking somewhat like
Singaporeans would: using ‘Singlish.’
I wrote the first version of the story
at Clarion West, where we had
to write a new, complete short
story every week. That week, our
instructor Minister Faust suggested
that everyone try writing humor,
and prompted me personally
to write a story about cooking.
So I was trying my best over the
space of a weekend to mash
together cooking, sci-fi, and
comedy. The cooking part got
lost along the way, and I guess
this is what I ended up with.
Nicholas and Boon are two of
the funniest characters we’ve
read about in some time.
They mix a sense of slapstick with a significant degree of pathos we can easily empathize with. Are they
based on anyone you know?
How did you come to realize
their characters in the story?
They’re not based on anyone I
know, although one of my friends
is named Boon Leong and we
call him Boon. He doesn’t know
I stole part of his name to use,
though.
(Thanks/sorry
Boon!)
The characters themselves are the
result of many revisions and a lot of
good feedback. I hardly ever know
what my characters are going to
be like when I start writing them, so
in the end I often have to tweak
them a lot to fit their roles in the story.
One of the themes of Fleep
is that of cultural misunderstanding. What other themes
interest you personally in
your writing or reading?
I didn’t set out to address any
theme specifically, but I grew up
hopping back and forth between
countries, and I do think cultural
misunderstandings are something
that should be addressed more
in our media. I just moved to
Germany in August, and the
culture shock is unexpectedly...
shocking. We’re all people, but
we see the world so differently. We
should compare notes more often!
Why write? Surely there are
so many other, far easier,
things you could be doing?
Books were a huge part of my
childhood. I really enjoyed growing
up with them, always having new
worlds and characters to ponder.
I want to pay that back if I can, to
write great stories that people can
lose themselves in. It’s not the easiest
profession, but I think it’s important.
Also, you wouldn’t want me to be
your doctor. Or your bus driver.
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WAYLINES
What are you working on at the moment? Where can our readers find more Jeremy Sim?
Incredibly, two of my other Clarion West stories are also being published this year. One will appear
in an anthology edited by Nisi Shawl called Bloodchildren. It’s about a middle-aged MMORPG
player who finds himself unexpectedly metamorphosing into a dog. Another will be published in
CICADA magazine--it’s about two brothers who live in a city besieged by flying crow demons.
I don’t have the exact publication dates yet, but I’ll update on my website (www.
jeremysim.com) when I get more information. Also, I have to make my website first.
46
inside the wayline
Ankti Remsi stared at the droplet marring the smooth surface of her shuttle's console. It looked
like ordinary condensation. Any other cargo pilot would have wiped it with a sleeve and been
done. But Ankti Remsi overthought things.
She wouldn't have said that two days ago. Two days ago she'd still thought of herself as a clever
pilot with a solid head on her shoulders. A pilot who'd outlived a dozen colleagues who moved
too quickly, went to work without thinking, and got themselves asphyxiated or irradiated or
blown to kingdom come. Two days ago she'd been right to think first and act second.
But the world had shifted since then.
Erwin Glastrip had married.
She'd heard the news yesterday in a stopover bar on Erseti. Most of the faces in the bar were
familiar: old classmates, pilots who'd come to her for help with repairs, the usual regulars she
saw in every pilots' hangout across the Gorsan system. She ordered a drink at the bar and took
one of the empty tables near the center, surrounding herself with camaraderie. She listened to
the voices at the neighboring tables, hearing what had changed in their owners' lives. She liked
hearing about their lives.
Then someone at a table behind her said he'd attended Erwin Glastrip's wedding. A ball of pain
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WAYLINES
punched her hard, right in the middle of her chest. The illusion of camaraderie vanished and
she was outside her body, looking down at herself alone. Always alone. She knew what the
people around her liked and loathed and wanted, and they didn't even see her. Their lives
went on whether she was there to listen or not. She wasn't part of anything. She was invisible, a
ghost walking through the world of the living.
In that instant, Ankti knew she would die a lonely death after a lonely life. Even worse, she
knew what her older brother Berend would say. Venture it, Ankti.
Easy for a natural conversationalist like him. Impossible for her.
The droplet on her console had grown since she first noticed it. Soon it might compromise
console functionality. She could afford to lose nav for a few hours, but she had to have it back
online by twenty-one hundred--she was still keeping eastern Erseti time--to fire a precisely
calculated subset of the shuttle's thruster array and keep herself on course for Gorsa Prime
within fuel limits.
Ankti released herself from her seat webbing and pushed off with the precise force to bring her
to a gentle landing at the water recovery unit. No error codes, nothing in the red. Humidity was
at a normal forty-six percent; the reservoir was not yet full.
She closed the panel and pushed off back-first toward the console in the center of the cabin,
counted to two, then reached a practiced arm behind her and pulled herself in.
Her fingers toyed absently with the bracelet around her wrist as she thought. Why had the tiny
half-sphere attached itself there, beside the docking controls? Why on the console at all?
Nothing inside it could produce the kind of temperature differential required for condensation.
The droplet couldn't be water. So what was it?
Haven't you done enough thinking? Just wipe the damned thing off and move on.
She sat there, her arm tensed but unmoving, nauseated by the thought of taking action
before she knew what she was dealing with. The mystery dot was small, and it wasn't going
anywhere; she still had time to think things through.
But that’s exactly what you thought about Erwin Glastrip.
Berend repeatedly surfaced in her thoughts as she methodically checked every system. She
saw her brother’s smile as he pulled his gangly teenage frame into the jungle gym to whisper
in her ear. Venture it. Her six-year-old self had only watched the laughing children whirl in their
circle game. Ankti remembered the need to decipher their rules that had kept her fingers tight
around the cool metal of the blue and red bars.
48
the message between the words
january 2013
Will they like me? She had asked Berend a variant of this question a thousand times, and every
time her brother had cupped her cheek or kissed her forehead and said, There's only one way
to find out.
Venture it.
But she had been terrified to say the wrong thing, and there had been plenty of time, then.
An older Berend, pulling cinnamon buns from the ovens at their parents' bakery, called out to
her as the door chimes rang in the boy from two flats above. Venture it. She had never even
smiled at the boy. During his daily visit she busied herself with the lemon cakes and apple tarts
in the display case, safely invisible as her mother took the boy's order. There was time enough to
figure out the right thing to say. He would be back tomorrow.
She had never discovered the words to use with that boy because there were none to find.
He was not her future, as the children on the playground had not been. Then she went to the
academy on Rixon, where Erwin Glastrip called on her to answer a question, and a galaxy of
words welled up and flowed into the classroom between them. They spent hours in his office
talking about fuel systems and thruster efficiency, their words weaving around each other and
sometimes coinciding, both of them struck by the beauty of a new insight.
But away from the science, Ankti could find no words for him. No; she found a thousand words,
but none of them cut true. She could afford no layer of debris to cloud her meaning, so she did
not say hello when they passed in shops and cafés--she didn't even look at him. The words so
crucial would not be hurried.
Ankti closed the last panel in her systems check and pushed against the shuttle wall to return to
the console. Her fingers hooked empty air as her palm made contact with the top of the seat.
She recovered quickly, bending her hand into a claw to catch the webbing before she grazed
past it, then pulled herself in more awkwardly than she'd done in years.
What just happened?
Ankti eased back out of the webbing and pushed herself to the wall behind her chair; it took
her a fraction longer than it should have. But she might be imagining that, now; she might be
thinking too hard, seeing ghosts where there were none.
Slowly, to avoid imparting thrust to herself, she let go and counted to ten.
She opened her eyes and saw the wall receding. She was halfway to the console and picking
up speed. This startled her so badly she lost seconds of reaction time; she impacted the top of
the chair with the small of her back, propelling her into a backward flip that sent her legs arcing
over the console. She grabbed the seat's front webbing with both hands and jerked her legs
in before she could touch the droplet; the movement spun her back over the chair. She hung
there awkwardly, short of breath and disoriented and feeling a relief so primal it was almost
happiness.
Something had changed. Something that affected the speed with which she moved through
the cabin. Just a little; just enough to put her a few centimeters farther than she'd expected to
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WAYLINES
be.
Her engines were off, and when she got herself strapped in, the system told her she was
traveling at the same 125 thousand kilometers per hour she had been traveling since the last
burn. No acceleration to explain what just happened. No malfunctioning systems.
Only the growing droplet on her console.
Other women in her year had fancied their young instructor; she knew of two who'd made a
pass. He said no to both. In the restroom between classes, one of them decided Erwin Glastrip
must not like women. No, said the other, he's maintaining professional distance. Ankti had
known the truth: they had spoken before they were ready, filling the connection with junk,
closing off opportunity because they were unwilling to wait.
Ankti would wait. There was no rush; she had two more years at the academy, six hundred and
twenty tomorrows. Time enough to find the perfect words.
Ankti reached a slow hand toward the droplet. Her fingers began to tingle, and the ganatite in
her bracelet grew warm. Vindicated relief flooded her belly. She would have blown herself to
kingdom come if she'd tried to wipe this droplet away.
Her shuttle had picked up a Kleisterman node.
It wasn't unheard of. There were six recorded cases. The first was how they'd discovered the
exotic matter. Forty years later, Johannes Kleisterman succeeded in using a captive infant node
to send a bit of information across spacetime at speeds faster than light. Then two bits, ten bits,
twenty.
But outside Kleisterman’s controlled conditions, the nodes were unstable; four cargo vessels
were blown to bits before engineers figured out how to reliably contain older nodes in the wild.
The fifth and sixth ships survived, and despite the nodes’ relative rarity, the reduction protocol
became required academy fare. Ankti had learned it in her fourth year. Again, that sense of
vindication: she was probably the only of her classmates to have taken the training seriously,
and now it was going to save her life.
Yet she made no move toward the reductor unit. Her mind sifted instead through lectures
past, old textbooks, scrawled inkboard equations. The great physicist had installed his thirdgeneration decoder at the academy, and Ankti had gone to view the tests almost every day,
watching as the operator on duty parsed out the bits coming in. She had been there when
the first message from the future arrived. Kleisterman had sussed it out a year later; his past self
recognized it immediately.
If she had an encoder, she could send a message to her past self.
50
the message between the words
january 2013
The idea was born of the pain she was feeling, maudlin and without technical merit. She knew
she could build an encoder; but the enc-dec pair was a matched resonance. She'd have to
have phase-tuned a decoder back then and carried the matching encoder with her ever
since. There was no point in thinking about how to cannibalize her ship to build one.
Think of it as closure. As saying goodbye. I still have time for that.
One by one, the days had passed, and then her four years at the academy on Rixon had
ended.
"Here," Berend said as he hugged her. "Your graduation present." It was a smoothly woven
band of silver and ganatite. It fit her wrist perfectly.
"It's beautiful," she said. It was also clever: somehow Berend had talked a jeweler into using
ganatite, a metal known primarily for its use in Kleisterman’s decoders and shuttle node
reductors.
“I thought you’d like it.” Berend grinned. “Who knows, maybe you’ll start picking up messages
now. Read what it says."
Ankti brought the bracelet close to her face. Venture it, in tiny woven strands of Ersetian gold.
She looked over at Erwin Glastrip in his formal robes, momentarily alone by the punch table.
"You're graduating," Berend said, following her gaze. "What have you got to lose?"
The webbing bit into Ankti and her neck ached with the effort of keeping her head aligned
with her body. Several wall panels had come unlatched and were standing at attention. Before
her, clamped to the half-dismembered console with padded cargo ties, lay her graduation
bracelet, mangled, stuck through with a grid of shuttle entrails. One longer wire snaked into the
node; a second lay pinched between insulated pliers in her hand.
It had taken her longer than she'd wanted, longer than she had. Each second had led
to another, each step a step closer to making it work. She'd lost track of time; then she'd
deliberately ignored its passage. The node was too large to reduct now.
It frightened her less than she expected. Erwin Glastrip's marriage had put her endless supply
of time to the guillotine and wiped clean her window to the world. She had misunderstood,
deeply, vastly, terribly. There were no pellucid syllables to wait for. The message happened
between the words, and there was never a moment of silence.
She had been speaking to him all the time. To everyone. And every second had screamed I
don't want you.
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She would have reached out to someone, now she knew what waiting had cost her. But she
wanted to reach out to him. She wanted to know: could he have loved her? She wanted to
erase the failure that would ride her back for the rest of her life, no matter what she did.
If her past self understood the bits of her hardcoded message, maybe she wouldn't be here to
die. If not... well, her choice was made. The Ankti here, now, was gone either way.
Holding the pliers between her teeth, she clawed her way grip by grip to the PDU access hatch.
The wire sparked when she touched it to the bus. Her message was on its way.
Ankti looked over at Erwin Glastrip in his formal robes, momentarily alone by the punch table.
"You're graduating," Berend said, following her gaze. "What have you got to lose?"
A searing pain made her cry out.
"You okay?"
She nodded and pulled at her new bracelet; it must have caught a hair. She lifted her arm to
look. Her wrist was peppered with dots. Was she allergic to ganatite? Silver? Gold? She stared
at the dots, trying to discern which metal strands they matched. Then she saw it: the dots
formed two lines, one high, one low.
The Kleisterman code for the word NOW.
Ankti brought her arm closer and studied the bracelet intently. The fine metal strands had
melted and fused at the places where her wrist was burned. This wasn’t pulled hairs or an
allergic reaction; this was a message. A message sent, not through the academy decoder, but
through her own bracelet. A bracelet she'd had for less than five minutes.
A message from the future, then. Sent by herself to this precise moment. And the message she
had sent herself was NOW.
She looked at Erwin Glastrip, then at Berend, terror bright in her eyes.
NOW.
She pulled air deep into her lungs and held it there, feeling the staccato beat of her heart in
her temples. Anything she said to him would be meaningless debris. She had to wait. The words
might come on her first cargo run between Rixon and Erseti, encouraged by solitude and
weightlessness.
NOW.
Her future self was telling her not to wait. To say the wrong words. To ignore her understanding
of the world and act in a way destined to fail.
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the message between the words
january 2013
NOW.
Her future self was telling her everything she understood was wrong. The air rushed out of Ankti's
lungs and she reached out to touch her brother.
"Ankti?" Berend frowned and put an arm on her waist. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she said. "No." Tears ran down the sides of her nose and pooled between her lips. She
wiped them away.
"Do you want to sit down?"
She looked at Erwin Glastrip. He was no longer alone at the punch table.
"No." She shook her head. "I need to leave. I need to think."
Berend's hand pulled gently on her waist. "Don't you think you've done enough thinking?
Venture it, Ankti. Venture it."
"I need to think," she said, more loudly than she intended. Several people turned to look at her.
Ankti pulled away from her brother and ran out the door.
The air in the lobby was cooler, but she was beyond help. She vomited in the bathroom stall,
heaving long after her stomach had emptied.
The wait for words was a lie. A lie her mind had been telling her heart since childhood. She had
long decided he did not want her. Because if he had, he would have reached out to her.
And what if he had decided the same?
What if, all her life, people had been waiting for her to reach out?
Ankti rinsed her mouth and washed her face, then stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
NOW. Her future self had sent her the only word that mattered.
He was still in conversation when she walked up behind him. She stopped awkwardly, unsure
whether to tap him on the shoulder or clear her throat. Then he turned, and her heart flipped
over.
"Ankti," he said, and she heard surprise lift his voice.
A hundred tiny movements played across his face, resolving into a smile she had seen many
times in his office. Now she saw what it meant: he was glad to see her. He always had been.
For the first time since she had met him, Ankti let herself smile back. Then she took a deep
breath and spoke. “Hi. Erwin. I just… I wanted to say hello.”
© 2013 Grayson Bray Morris
grayson bray morris
53
Grayson Bray Morris was born and raised in eastern North Carolina.
Since 2002 she has lived in the Netherlands with her husband and
three children. She earned a BS in mathematics in 1989, then
went on to study the technical side of computer graphics before
leaving academia to program assembly on parallel digital signal
processors. For the last ten years she has worked as a freelance
translator. Visit her on the web at www.graysonbraymorris.com. How did you come up with
the story? What stages did
you go through in the process
of getting the idea down?
I wanted to try a ‘harder’ science
fiction story for my next entry into
the Writers of the Future contest,
where I was having only middling
luck. So I started with ‘spaceship,
out in space, nuts and bolts and
PHYSICS, something happens!’
and let my mind wander while I
folded laundry, showered, made
dinner, and so on. The first draft
incorporated a lot of relativistic
ideas, and drew heavily on closed
timelike curves, Wheeler’s “it from
bit” idea, and Everett’s ‘many
universes’ interpretation of quantum
mechanics. So a lot of the initial
draft was me explaining all that to
myself and the reader in the guise
of a classroom conversation. Yawn,
eh? I also wasn’t happy with the
original ending, which involved the
actual physical transfer of Ankti’s
atoms back in time—something I
don’t believe in. But the contest
deadline loomed, so I sent it in (it
didn’t win). Then I got feedback
from other writers and redrafted
it into essentially its current form.
54
Inside the wayline
How did your background
in computer programming
prepare you for tackling the
concepts in the story? How
has this background impacted upon you as a writer?
Well, I think my mathematics and
physics background was more
useful for this particular story. I still
did a lot of reading and researching
for the first version, but the basic
concepts of relativity and so on
were familiar to me, so I didn’t have
to bend my brain around those first.
In general, my scientific background
has made me very, very wary of
writing ‘hard’ science fiction. I
can’t finish stories that get existing
science wrong, and the science
of the universe is so broad and so
complex that I don’t for a moment
believe I’d get it all right. Fortunately,
I am much more naturally a ‘social’
sf reader and writer; nuts-andbolts stories tend to make me
yawn, despite my love for science.
Despite my original intentions, I
wouldn’t call this story hard sf,
in fact, because I don’t think
meaningful communication from
future to past is possible. So, in
that sense, it’s a fantasy story.
“The
Message
Between
the Words” deals with the
themes of regret, of choices, and the courage to make
tough and timely decisions,
among others. What other
themes interest you personally in your writing or reading?
I’m a big fan of Ursula Le Guin and
Octavia Butler, both of whom write
(wrote, sadly, in Butler’s case) about
diversity, tolerance, and prejudice.
Those subjects fascinate me. You
can’t grow up in the American
South in the 1960s and 70s without
being indelibly branded by those
january 2013
things. When I was younger I
loved the “nondescript farm boy is
actually heir to the throne” type of
story, but as I’ve aged, I’ve become
much more intrigued by the
“ordinary people in extraordinary
circumstances” story—such as Lilith
Iyapo in Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy,
and Genly Ai in Le Guin’s Left Hand
of Darkness. That said, I also have
a very fond spot for Ender Wiggin.
Why write? Surely there are
so many other, far easier,
things you could be doing?
I don’t think easy has ever been one
of my aspirations. Writing exhilarates
me. I didn’t grow up planning to be
a writer, but I have always written
little stories and snippets. It was
always just a side thing I did now
and then, and I’d think, maybe
after the kids leave home and I’m
retired, I’ll see what I can make of
this writing thing. After my eldest
daughter died from brain cancer
at 16, I reevaluated that timeline.
at the end of 2013. It’s set in a
very recessional America, with a
protagonist who’s searching for
the meaning of life amid recurring
outbreaks of some strange infection.
Other short stories of mine are
available in anthologies, which you
can find on my Amazon author
pages (yes, I have two, vexingly,
because not every editor has
used the triple-whammy version
What are you working on of my name). There’s also a story
at the moment? Where you can read online for free in
the Daily Science Fiction archives.
can our readers find more
I blog extremely sporadically
Grayson
Bray
Morris? at
midnightkisa.blogspot.
com, and my author website is
I’m working on my first novel, w w w . g r a y s o n b r a y m o r r i s . c o m .
which is scheduled to come out
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