Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Presidential assassination attempt foiled

BREAKING NEWS: A Gifted assassin is foiled after conjuring a weapon from his tablet.  Additional details forthcoming.

When Papa heard that the President was coming to Springfield, he decided we should go see him speak.  It was an election year, but the President was at the end of his second term, so his speeches were mostly about how to get through this worldwide event.  He still plugged his party, of course, but his main focus was reassuring people that the country would not fall apart.

Well, except for Texas, but they hadn’t actually seceded.  Some guy who could cause earthquakes travelled the border between Texas and its neighboring states and split Texas off from the rest of the country.  The tabloids, which were a real source of news now, said he had almost finished when a hungry dragon swooped down and stopped him.

Anyways, Papa called up a friend who was organizing local security and got us on the list for a pair of tickets.  He sent in our information for the background checks and told me that we’d have great seats. Since it was during summer vacation, we decided to arrive a day early and visit Lincoln’s New Salem, the Lincoln Museum, and Lincoln’s Home.  We were pretty wiped out by the time we got to the hotel that night, so we came straight back after dinner and went to sleep.

After breakfast, we walked over to the Convention Center and lined up with the people who had tickets after passing through the first security screening.  There were a lot of other people crowding around trying to catch a glimpse of the President when he arrived, but they didn’t need to go through security again.

We were almost to the second checkpoint when I heard a scuffle behind us.  As I turned, I saw several security guys hauling away a couple of people from between the two checkpoints.  I heard a lady behind me say “All clear,” which is when I realized there was a security person standing right near us.  She looked at Papa and smiled. “Good to see you again, Henry.” Papa smiled and waved slightly, then she turned away to watch the President’s car arriving.  People started to crowd in to get a better spot, pushing those of us in the line.

As the President stepped out of his car, a guy pushed between Papa and me.  He said “Excuse me” in a polite tone as he moved through, but I also heard “You’re blocking my shot,” and that was in an angry voice.  I looked up, puzzled because I couldn’t see a camera, but then I realized he was carrying an iPad.  ‘Of course,’ I thought, ‘he must be using the iPad’s camera.’ But as I watched, he reached his hand into the tablet.  

“Papa!” I yelled, and he turned to look as the guy pulled a pistol out of the iPad’s screen.  Papa reacted immediately, moving toward the assassin and shouting “Security! Gun!” I spun to look for Papa’s friend, who I saw pushing through people to get to us, and as I turned back I heard a gunshot.  Papa fell to the ground just before his friend and another security guard tackled the guy with the gun.

I rushed over to Papa and saw a lot of blood on the ground around him.  Another security guard called for a medic, but Papa looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, Evie, I’d stay if I could.”  He grasped my hand as I started to cry, and I shook my head at him, but couldn’t find anything to say. Papa’s friend came and sat on the ground by me as the medic worked to stop the bleeding, but Papa’s eyes glazed over and he stopped looking at me.

Everything around me seemed to slow down at that moment.  I saw the medic sit back with a defeated look on his face, and I heard his friend sob beside me, just once.  

And then Papa stood up.

Except he didn’t, really.  His body stayed on the ground, but a transparent version of Papa stood back up.  He knelt down in front of me, reaching out to touch my hair, but his hand passed right through me.  “Evie, I’m not ready to leave you.” His friend gasped and I knew I wasn’t the only one seeing him.

Aunt Mary came and picked us up.  Papa can’t drive anymore; he has to focus really hard to touch anything.  But he can walk through walls, and he can be completely invisible when he wants, so we figure it balances out.  He attended his own funeral, when we put his body into the ground by Momma’s, and he stood at my side when the President thanked us for stopping the assassin.  Papa tells anybody who will listen that I’m his Gift, and that he’s the luckiest father ever, dead or alive.

Godzilla terrorizes Greater St. Louis

A monster resembling Hollywood’s Godzilla attacked motorists in Illinois, damaging roads and structures, before disappearing into the Mississippi River just short of St. Louis.  Experts at Cahokia Mounds State Park are evaluating the damage Godzilla caused at this World Heritage Site.

Do you realize that there’s a novelization of almost every blockbuster movie to come out of Hollywood recently?  As it turns out, a few people in the area have abilities similar to those from InkHeart (a fabulous story, but please, don’t read it out loud unless you’re sure that’s not your Gift), and some of them were inclined to read out loud.  They’re less likely to do so now. People are also more cautious in using the phrase, “I wish…,” since for some people, that triggers their ability… even if they’re not the ones saying it!

But before we realized this, Edwardsville and its surrounding area had already seen Godzilla, Kat Kong (yes, really!  that guy who wrote all the Captain Underpants books wrote this one), and Puff the Magic Dragon.  That last one was pretty sweet, but even a friendly dragon is not suited for city living.  I gave him directions to Hanalei Bay; I hope he’s happy there.

Godzilla was anything but friendly.

It was the last week of school, so nobody was really paying attention in class anyways when the ground started shaking.  Thinking it was an earthquake – weird, but not unheard of here – our teachers rushed us outside. The ground kept shaking, but it was an on and off thing, kind of what you’d expect if a two hundred foot reptile (of sorts) is walking your way.

Everybody was looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, when somebody from another class shouted out, “Is that a dinosaur?”

It was still pretty far off at that point, but one of the teachers pulled out his camera with a zoom lens and got a better look just as we all heard a distant skreeeonk sound.  Everybody’s eyes opened wide at that sound, and the teacher with the camera said, in a fairly calm voice, “I think that’s Godzilla.”  What he really meant was, “Oh hell, that’s Godzilla!“, but he did try not to let that come through in his voice.

My teacher, Mrs. Parson, had her cell phone out as soon as he said it and called 911.  The local dispatch had the teachers take us back into the classroom to hide. We heard police sirens in the distance as we rushed back into the building, and then the tornado siren sounded, covering most noises other than the occasional skreeeeonk.  We stayed there, listening anxiously to a collection of sirens, explosions, and eventually a furious roar before the earth finally stopped shaking.

I learned later that the police had cobbled together a hasty barricade and buzzed Godzilla with crop dusters to distract him until military planes arrived.  The barricade only worked through a combination of Gifts – several telekinetics helped lift trucks and construction material to make it taller, and some people, including Moira Anderson, extended their shields around it as a group until help arrived.  Even the Air Force fighters didn’t hurt him much, but they did turn him away from Edwardsville. He lumbered over towards St. Louis, causing quite the panic there before disappearing into the river instead.

Kat Kong showed up a few days later, but wasn’t nearly as scary when you compared the two.  For starters, he’s way smaller than Godzilla. And by then, Papa knew which local people had Gifts and he called up a conjurer as soon as he heard about Kat Kong.  A conjurer is someone who can summon something, either by reading it from a book, or wishing for it, or even by pulling it out of a computer. (We didn’t know about that last one at the time.)  Jimmy Mitchell could read items out of books and he brought his World Records book with him when Papa called. They went out together with a couple other squad cars to find Kat Kong, and Jimmy pulled the world’s largest ball of yarn out of his record book.  One of the telekinetics moved it around to keep the giant cat entertained until the army guys got out here to capture it.

Yeah, I said capture.  Not only were there animal rights groups protesting when creatures of any type were killed, but the government had started running tests on any abnormal life forms that were generated with Gifts.  I sure hope Puff made it to Hawaii without getting captured.

At dinner the night that Kat Kong was captured, Aunt Mary looked at Papa for quite a while, and then finally said, “Goodness, Henry, I’m surprised you haven’t shown a Gift yet, what with all the crises you’re dealing with.”

“Nonsense, Mary, there are plenty of Gifted who are helping,” he said, “and Evie has always been my Gift.”

My heart melted, just a little, and I rushed over to hug him.

Paranormal fights reported across the world

Reports have been trickling in from across the globe about fights involving super-human abilities.  Governments are struggling to address the situation while their representatives discuss it at an emergency United Nations session.

We were one of the lucky cities.  Preacher Markham’s sermon was the only deliberate violence we saw as people’s abilities became apparent.  He spent a few days at the hospital recovering; the officer outside his door had a bucket of water and a Super Soaker in addition to his normal gear.  When he recovered, physically that is, he was escorted to the town line in his car and reminded that Preacher Anderson’s decision not to press charges was conditional on him never returning to our town.  

After the fire had been handled, I was one of several people who provided statements to the police.  My statement detailed what we all saw and heard, and reminded the officer that our church is unquestionably a no cell phone zone.  Preacher Anderson is steadfast in her belief that cell phones play no meaningful part in our worship and must remain at home or in the car.  At the time, nobody in town had manifested any telepathic abilities, much less over a distance, so my run to the station was appreciated.

When our fight came, it was political.  While the world governments debated a course of action, Papa and the mayor scheduled an emergency city meeting with three days notice.  Everybody in town was invited, so it was held at City Park instead of trying to squeeze everybody into one building or another. Fortunately, the weather cooperated.

By that point, I had told Papa what I left out of my official statement, how I heard extra meaning to what the preacher had said.  We decided that I would sit near the front at the city meeting and listen to everybody who spoke. I took notes and would nod or shake my head so Papa could see whether they meant what they were saying.  By the end of the night, Papa and Mayor Bramley had the city convinced that we needed to work with these abilities as Gifts and adjust our day-to-day behavior to include them. We even adjusted our class schedules at school to include practice time for anybody who needed it for their Gifts.  It took the nearby college campus a bit longer to do that, which may be what caused some of our other problems. But I’ll get to that shortly.

This was all at the local level, of course.  The state government waffled, and then let the federal government start a registration process for Gifts.  Papa and the mayor fought that all the way up to the Supreme Court. They won in the end, though a few years after the Registration Rules were passed, with the registration process being declared unconstitutional.  It helped, of course, that half the justices were known to have special abilities; some of the others may have had more subtle ones, like mine.

Our peaceful existence was rare; many cities had fighting not just because of the gifted, but between people who sought any excuse to fight.  The police couldn’t keep up in the bigger cities, and people started fleeing to what they called the ‘more rustic’ living. As if their cell phones and internet access didn’t work here just as well.  When new people moved into town, Papa and I would welcome them with a plate of Aunt Mary’s cookies and a conversation. Papa didn’t really care if people lied about why they moved to town, as long as they had good intentions, so mostly they settled in happily.

And then the monsters arrived.

Visiting preacher sets church on fire

A visiting preacher in the Midwest set the church on fire during his sermon, landing himself and five others in the hospital.

Sunday started out like most others.  While Papa was frying up some bacon and eggs, Aunt Mary stepped out to check on the garden like she did every morning in growing season.  This was the only gardening she didn’t wear her gloves for, checking the dirt to see if we needed to water each morning. If the dirt was dry, we’d pull a bucket of water from the rain barrel or hose, and water each planting spot, marked neatly by a popsicle stick that had the seed name written with green Sharpie.

I stood by as Aunt Mary set her hand down on the dirt like she did every other day, ready to fill the bucket since it hadn’t rained in a few days.  Aunt Mary touched the ground without really looking, and turned to nod at me, signaling to me that we needed water. As I watched, seeds that we had planted just the day before started to sprout and I gasped, dropping the bucket to point at the bed she was touching.  Aunt Mary looked down and recoiled and we could actually see the moment when the sprouts stopped growing.

“Well, I’ll be darned!”  That’s the closest Aunt Mary ever comes to swearing, and even that doesn’t happen often.  “Step over here, Evie, let’s see what happens when you touch it.”

I did as she said, leaving the bucket where I’d dropped it, and reached down into the garden bed.  Nothing happened. She set her hand back on and the sprouts expanded as we watched. When she pulled her hand away, they stopped.

“Henry,” she called through the open window, “I think you should see this!”

Papa rushed right out from the kitchen to see, and watched the plants growing as Aunt Mary touched the dirt, then stopped again as she pulled her hand away.  He scratched his hair, which he does sometimes when he’s thinking. “I’ve never seen anything like it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had those seeds in the ground two weeks ago.”

We just stood there for a few minutes looking at our garden until Papa said we’d better get through breakfast before church time.  Papa was actually going to work, but Aunt Mary would drop me off at Momma’s church before heading to the Catholic church nearby. Momma had worked in the church office until she got really sick, and she still found the energy to go to that church every Sunday until the end, so the people there were like family to me.  Aunt Mary said that suited her just fine, as it gave her some alone time with God at her church.

I sat with my friend Charlotte and her parents at just the right spot in church.  We weren’t too far forward, so Preacher Markham, who was visiting, didn’t have clear eye contact with us.  But we weren’t too far back either, where Preacher Anderson sat on the rare occasion that she turned her pulpit to a visitor.  She was sweet as could be outside of worship, but heaven forbid she spot you talking during a guest’s sermon. “It reflects poorly on our community,” she’d say the next week, at the start of her sermon.  “We’re more polite than that.”

I wasn’t really listening at the beginning of his sermon, just enough to note that he had planned one sermon, but was talking about something different.  I was thinking about the garden and Aunt Mary, but Preacher Markham was getting louder as he spoke, sounding very upset. I tuned in as he opened the Bible and read, “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars….”  He paused and looked around the church.  “Did we not see these very signs two nights ago?  The powers of the heavens will be shaken.“

There were some murmurs running through the church, and when I looked back, Preacher Anderson was standing, but still hesitating to interrupt her guest.  I wondered what I had missed in his sermon so far.

“And what of these powers people suddenly claim to have?”  He flipped quickly through the Bible, perhaps a bit careless in his haste, as he searched for another passage.  “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  These are surely the end of days, we must not let ourselves be led astray by these works of Satan!”

Then I heard, for the first time, an underlying speech.  The real meaning to his words, if you want to call it that.  I zoned out on the preacher’s words for a minute and listened as he spoke instead about his fear and confusion, in a state just short of panic.  I was pulled back to reality as Preacher Anderson strode to the front, her calming voice attempting to override the panic he was creating with the words everybody else was hearing.

And then a laugh rang through the church.  Bobby Anderson, our preacher’s nephew, stepped into the aisle toward his aunt.  As he stumbled on his unsteady feet, three paper butterflies, in colors remarkably similar to our church bulletin, fluttered around his head, swooping in and out of his reach.

Preacher Markham gasped, pointed at little Bobby and proclaimed, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”  And again I heard a second sentence, simultaneously emerging from the preacher, this time shrieking, “Burn the witch!”

I started to moved towards Bobby as flames leapt from Preacher Markham’s hand toward him.  Bobby’s mother, Moira, threw herself in front of the flames, which bounced off of her and ignited the paper butterflies.  They spun out of control, each one landing on books or paper and spreading fire from there.

I heard a crash as some of the men from town tackled the visiting preacher, stopping the stream of flames spewing from his hand.  Preacher Anderson turned to me and said, “Evie, your father!” I heard the underlying, “Get help!” in her exclamation, though I didn’t need it to understand her meaning.  I bolted for the door and out toward Main Street, shedding my fancy Sunday shoes as I ran, making record time to the nearby police station. As I crashed through the door, I shouted out, “Church!  On fire!” while I gasped for breath.

Back in 2015 (how is that 4 years ago already?), a story came together at the right time to submit it to WindyCon’s short story competition.  I was pleasantly surprised when I received an honorable mention in the contest, more so when I realize there were over twenty stories competing.  Because of the length, the story will be split across multiple posts.  Enjoy! 

Monster has retreated to its lair

The flying snake seen near Custer, South Dakota has retreated into the caves at Wind Cave National Park following a fight with National Guard forces.  Wind Cave National Park is closed until further notice.

I was just a kid getting by until a couple days after The Rupture.  When I lost my mother the year before, she told me “Evie, you’ve got to believe.  I’m ready to go.  I hate to leave you, but believe, please, that I am going to a better place.”

“I believe, Momma, but I don’t understand.”

Yeah, that’s what I said.  Not a sappy, “I love you,” or “you’ll always be with me.”  I said, “I don’t understand.” 

I still don’t understand why she died, why cancer picks one person but not another.  But I do understand many other things.  Some I wish I didn’t.  Because when you speak, I hear what you say.  But I hear what you don’t say as well, the meaning behind your words.  And that, beyond so many other Gifts, made me useful.

It put me in a position to be involved in the early days of our local situation.  Papa and I have travelled in the nearby states since things settled down, at least in the areas where it’s safe.  I’m collecting stories from everybody I can, combining what they said and what they really meant.  Papa and I have agreed that we’ll do a road trip before college, so we can travel farther and talk to more people.  I’ll post on my blog as I travel, trying to get a feel for how different areas of the country were affected. 

But let me back up to the beginning, to the night of The Rupture.  It was a Friday night in the middle of May, and I was home with Aunt Mary.  Papa worked most Friday nights so we could have Saturdays together.  I’d finished what little homework I had for the weekend and was helping Aunt Mary get some seeds into the ground.  She called what we were doing subsistence gardening; I called it future pumpkin pies.  She wore dainty gardening gloves to protect her nail polish, handing me the seeds to place in the ground.  I opened a hole by poking a pencil into the ground, dropped the seed in, then shoved the dirt over it with my bare hands.  Nail polish had no business on my fingers, and the dirt would wash off soon enough.

We were about halfway through planting our summer squash and pumpkins when the sky darkened abruptly.  Not your usual storm rolling in darkening, this was light one minute and dark the next.  Aunt Mary grabbed her seeds and I shoved the pencil in my back pocket as we rushed for the porch, thinking a tornado was about to hit or the skies were about to open up on us. 

And they did open up, but not with rain.  All around the world, a crack appeared in the sky, like lightning flashing when it stretches across the horizon, but this lightning was purple, then blue, and finally a bright flash of red.  And it happened everywhere on Earth at the exact same time, as we found out over the next few days.

Not surprisingly, it was the headline on the evening news, which Aunt Mary still watched, and for most news sites the next morning.  Some news writer called it a “rupture in space,” and the name stuck.  Scientists were puzzled and photographers entranced. 

Things got weird pretty quickly after that.  The headlines on most news sites looked like those tabloids you read when you’re bored in line at the grocery store.  (Aunt Mary always picked the longest line so she could read all of the headlines.)  Monster sightings went well beyond the Bigfoot tales at the checkout lane, with photos and videos as proof, especially that flying snake that landed on Mount Rushmore with hundreds of tourists watching.  Those were mixed in with tales of people suddenly having strange abilities, like a kid seen levitating a few feet before walking away as his bicycle was crushed by a car, and a mother claiming her kid was turning into a cat to hide from her.

But Aunt Mary and I were busy on Saturday, finishing up the interrupted planting and harvesting some early veggies, like spinach and radishes, so we could replant those spots.  While we planted, Papa turned the compost piles, then took me to see a movie while Aunt Mary sat on the porch and sipped iced tea.  It was the proper way to spend a Saturday afternoon, she said, waiting for her friends to visit instead of hiding inside on a beautiful day.

We didn’t hear about anything weird until Aunt Mary turned on the evening news, and it wasn’t until Sunday morning that we saw any signs of these changes here in Edwardsville.