No theme this month; just a pair of stories at opposite ends of the spectrum. The first is “A War of Cosmic Insignificance,” which originally appeared in the magazine Blood, Blade & Thruster in Winter 2007. This is a sci-fi tale, but of a style commonly known as a “Feghoot” (visit Wikipedia). When the fun and bad puns are over, what follows is an e-book reprint of my first short-story sale, “Hold Me Forever, Daddy”, which originally appeared in Brutarian #31 in 2000.

"A War of Cosmic Insignificance"
Sci-fi
by David M. Fitzpatrick

Many thousands of years ago, a random star in some distant cluster went supernova, taking out every planetary body in its own system and everything for a few billion miles' radius to boot.

The technologically advanced inhabitants of the star’s sixth planet had seen this coming for many centuries. Long before, they set about building a generation ship that was to carry their entire population to another inhabitable world. Shortly before their sun exploded, they set out across their galaxy. They should have started out earlier, for they were not quite out of range when the star gave up the ghost. The ghost met the generation ship, which was just outside the system, in the form of a near-lightspeed shock wave. Fortunately, they suffered no physical damage either to their bodies or their ship—at least not from the force of the wave.

Unfortunately, the wave carried with it a unique type of concentrated radiation, formed in a powerful, focused pulse. Of the passengers, nearly all got sick from extremely lethal doses of radiation and died, leaving the generation ship a galactic graveyard on course for a distant planet that no longer mattered.

However, some of them were killed instantly as the pulse passed through them—but the pulse caught their life forces. Like a celestial arrow, the pulse beelined across the universe, carrying those life forces with it.

* * *

It was far too late for the four opponents to continue their game, so they agreed to finish the competition the following evening. The Scrabble board sat, bathed in the silver moonlight that shined through the sliding glass doors in the dining room. The square-gridded board held numerous wooden tiles spelling out various intersecting words. The tiles were held firmly in place by little ridge walls, because this was the deluxe version; barring an attack of the house cats, the board should have remained undisturbed until the following night. Fate and the universe, however, had other plans.

* * *

After a million years spent traveling at the speed of light, the focused radiation pulse entered a star system. As if with conscious effort in mind—although, in truth, the trajectory and its ending point were simply the mathematical result of sheer, dumb luck—it rocketed straight toward the strong gravitational force of the star in this system. Fortunately, the ancient energy pulse, now weakened considerably since its birth from the supernova so long ago, was stopped by a blue planet blocking its path.

The pulse rippled through the atmosphere and streaked, straight and true, for the surface. As if it had always been on target, it fired down over an ocean, across a continent, low over a forest, and finally shot weakly through the glass of the patio door and into the dining room. The pulse hit the Scrabble board and met its end there. Too weak now to penetrate solid matter, it quietly settled down after its long journey.

The tiles began to move, and then they stood up on invisible feet, destroying words all over the board and making the game illegible. Certainly, the house cats would be blamed for the destruction. In the upside-down box top, facedown tiles turned their newborn letter-faces up to view the sights.

The souls of the only survivors of that doomed world, souls that had been caught in limbo for eons, were finally physical again. They were also not too happy about the whole situation, having been incorporeal for so long only to become Scrabble tiles. In fact, there was some dim understanding of the letters, the language, the nature of this planet—perhaps more of that than of their own original personalities. Some sort of cultural osmosis perhaps, but they didn’t understand it.

Primal instinct took over, and tiles immediately developed fierce attitudes to tiles around them. The first thing that happened was the consonants, in their primitive, barbaric ways, immediately attacked the vowels and began to wage war on them, pummeling them with their wooden bodies. All mayhem broke loose. The only vowels remaining off the board—an A, an E, and an I—leaped from the box to hide behind a Coke bottle. The other letters, screaming war cries, jumped onto the board and joined the fracas.

The Scrabble board was a battlefield. Although there was no blood, there were plenty of splinters shed as the vowels fell to the huge numbers of the consonants. The letter Q, realizing that it was really little use without the U, persuaded the singular oddballs of J, K, X, and Z to join it in a mad alliance with the vowels.

When the battle was over, and the board had stopped spinning on its deluxe turntable, the dust cleared. There were no vowels (save for the ones trembling with fear behind the bottle) left. The only consonant casualties were the vowel allies, an R, two L's, and a G. The tiles cheered for themselves but, before the celebration died, the harsh sounding letter V's began hollering in unison that the Y twins, a pair of tiles tiling around with each other, were really no better than vowels and certainly not true consonants. The combat-hungry tiles readily agreed, and the screeching Y's were slaughtered. The W duet tried to save them with many words, but this only led to the shock realization that the W was a soft pseudo-consonant as well. They fell as quickly.

More cheers erupted, and then they decided that they needed a leader. Almost immediately, someone nominated one of the M tiles, who eagerly accepted. His brother M objected, proclaiming himself a better choice. The brothers fought, and of course tiles took sides, and before anyone knew what was going on, civil war broke out amongst the consonants.

It was a worse battle this time. Tiles fell. The M brothers were killed instantly, being in the center of the onslaught. The three macho D's prepared to face the oncoming N's, R's, and T's, but their fourth brother D ran scared, diving off the board and hiding beneath. As it was, the rest of the D's died horribly.

In fact, everyone died horribly. Tiles dropped all over the board. While the hellish battle raged, two of the S triplets were literally tossed from the board and into the cardboard box. They were left for dead, which suited them just fine. One remaining R and a final T, duking it out in tile-to-tile combat, simply realized the foolishness of it all as they watched the B's and H's and P's and V's falling everywhere, mortally wounded. The R and the T fled together.

The final strike was the battle of titans: the mighty C's and F's, a G, and an L. These six had no allegiance to the other, and they fought it out blindly, until the final, most powerful letter G was left mentally gasping—the only psychic sound left in the still of the night. Then, even this sound was no more; he died, amidst the piles of splintered bodies.

Minutes passed before the vowels—the A, E, and I—ventured out from behind the safety of the bottle. The two S's came forth as well from the box, timidly, and the D, R and T presented themselves.

The eight letters stood, sadly surveying the devastating scene before them. They knew what could have been, how things could have gone had everyone not been so power-hungry and downright crazy. Even though they were a reborn race only minutes old, they understood the concept of cooperation, survival, and helping one another—doing unto tiles as you would have tiles do unto you.

They stood, alphabetically, the A, the D, the E, the I, the R, the two S's, and the T, and together they reasoned that they must work together to survive. They promised one another, perhaps the most sacred vow in all creation, and for all time, to be as one.

For, surely, they knew that by warring amongst themselves, they could only spell DISASTER.

"Hold Me Forever, Daddy"
Horror
by David M. Fitzpatrick

Last year for the January All Things Lit issue, I offered a PDF e-book of “Cone Zero, Sphere Zero” for download. It was well-received, so this year I’m offering a new PDF e-book. “Hold Me Forever, Daddy” was my first published story, and like CZSP is a lengthy bit (over 8,700 words).

Here are both e-books, available for download. Enjoy!