Kidneys kidneys everywhere and not one for mum.
Mum, don't make me an orphan. Don't die for want of an organ. I suppose if you did my name would fit, Little Orphan Annie. Except I wasn't so little, and I was 40 and grey as a Wizard. I watched mum breathing shallowly, her skin greenish, she'd need dialysis soon . I watched people walking around the hospital, watched their backs. Kidneys kidneys everywhere, but not a spare for mum. Not only that, there were fifteen wastes of space before her, don't tell me how I know they were wastes of space, I just know, I have intuition, I have powers. They would have burned me for a witch back in the day, and I would have deserved it.
Mum got her dialysis and we went home, she'd be okay for a day or two, before the green started coming back, It should be me that was green, a natural hue though, witch green. I'd be proud of mums deepest lime, if I could get that colour I'd file my teeth to points, just to complete the look. When we got home we drank tea and talked about nicer times. She was sweet my mother, she saw the little things in life, the budding trees, the droning bees. She saw the clouds fleet in wonder, and I couldn't understand. To me it was all a whoosh and the spinning world, spinning like my head, dark corners and cobwebs and fear and hate. Why had this fair lady given birth to a witch like me? She didn't deserve it, she deserved a loving son, or a version of her. A daughter that could sit still with her and sip tea and marvel at the little things.
When I got home, I went straight to my books. Black books, bound in leather. Gothic and smelling of night. Death spells, I wanted death spells. I needed 15, or at least 12. Throughout the night I gathered the information I needed, and in the morning I went into the countryside to find ingredients. I needed mandrake and juniper berries, hawthorne and hazel. The hedgerows provided for me, as they did my ancient sisters. Passer bys smiled and nodded, curious, respectful because they thought I was foraging for food, which was more than acceptable these days. It seemed it was okay to peel a rabbit off the road for dinner, something to do with cooking shows. I did scrape up a hedgehog, but not to eat. I nipped of sprigs of comfrey, I plucked white Bella Donna, into a jar I placed deep red yew berries. I got three types of mosses, six types of fungi and at dusk, I found the last thing I needed, the blood of a child. It is easy to trick a child, and when the little boy came to look at the squashed hedgehog I held out at him, I pierced the back of his hand with a quill, I didn't need much, just a drop and his suddenly watery eyes brightened when I told him it was the luckiest thing in the world to be spiked by a hedgehog.
I got back to my apartment and lay out the ingredients, all looked good, all looked evil, as a collection. In corners shadows scuttled and the lights flickered. From the deepest shadow my familiar padded, Mr Ruth, who slinked up to purr darkly. I quote scripture to my familiar :
" Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat [them] small, and shalt make the hills as chaff."
I laughed hysterically, raising my arms and stretching out my fingers like two solid branches ending in curved twigs. Mr Ruth recoiled slightly and I gleamed for a moment before saying "Come on cat, I've got work to do."
I laid out a dozen death spells, all missing the DNA of the target. Correction, I knew one of the targets, but he would not be my first choice, being family. Uncle Bert had a crap kidney but it was all his own fault. He admitted it with a toot and shake of the head, "the bottle dear, I always loved the bottle." Well die then, I always thought.
Uncle Bert it was. I easily got hold of his essence, for I cut his hair every other week.
"How's it going love? what's the news? Oh for a drop. How I wish I rationed out the drop. I could have got it just right, matching my last swig with the moment of death. Instead I have bludgeoned my kidneys."
"Oh Uncle Burt you will grow new Kidneys!"
"Not kidneys love, liver yes, but not my fucking kidneys. I'm on the list, just like your Ma." I shrugged hoping it looked sympathetic, then slipped a lock of his greying hair into my pocket. That night I made the first death spell. I did have a moment of fear for as the ingredients merged through hammer and salve, the shadows shuddered in their corners and Mr Ruth yowled, the front door banged open but I smiled, I knew whatever worked the door was going out, not in.
I had worked three other death spells before my mother asked me about Uncle Burt. "Poor Burt, he fell down dead. I saw it, it was like the door burst open and fingers reached in to snap his heart between thumb and forefinger. It was horrible."
"Heart attacks are Mum, poor Uncle Burt."
"No I mean, the door really did bang open." I looked at Mum, she knew I was odd and her expression was questioning. I had to shrug in that way I do, dismiss her as if she were a child and then say something.
"Up to number 11 in the list of kidneys mum! Wont it be great when you don't have to come in to hospital to have your blood cleaned!" She looked at me, looked at her hands, then looked back and said:
"Just as long as it's clean dear." I hated those words, they chided me.
"Kidney soon mum, kidney soon."
Number nine was a battle. Unbeknownst to me, she was also a witch. When I scratched her, pretending to be a clumsy nurse, her eyes flicked onto mine like magnets of green.
"What are you up to cunt?" Her teeth were showing as she breathed heavily. Her eyes, so green, flamed and her nostrils flared. "Do I know you?" I gave my shrug and she screamed in understanding. Real nurses bustled in and I backed out, feeling her skin under an index finger's nail. Shadows in corners cheered and recoiled in unison. I had to work quickly. The dying witch woman would want to cast spells too. I had to send her a powerful execution. I smeared a mixture of Yew Berry and Boys blood across a splinter of flint, then drove it under my thumb nail. The pain was terribly exquisite. My own blood and pain joined the concoction, and from my thumb burst a dark genie, he looked back at me with supreme confidence then smoked under the door and to my dark sister, kidney number nine.
With disregard to safety, I wanted to see the occurrence. I muttered a phrase, and a sparrow came. Within its soul I boarded, and we sped to the hospital on clever brown wings. The witch was gnashing her teeth, her hand clutching her side. She looked from left to right, she made shapes with her hands. She knew. The door did not bang open, under it came the spirit. He made smoke solid in the form of a Neanderthal, a kindly one that smiled as he closed her mouth with massive hands. He sat on her, and waited, a jowly grin that seemed to say he was doing her a favour. When she stilled, he fell apart, but not before he looked at the sparrow, suddenly frowning. Had I done something wrong? Was the frown a warning or was it displeasure at me for watching, was I being narcissistic? Who cared, I was down to just 8. Pleasure coursed through me at the prospect of more death spells, that was only slightly dented when I learned the next morning that number 1 on the list had got his donor kidney, someone had died in a car accident.
It is very taxing creating spells that dish out murder. The work the inner spirit must perform is immense, and at that coal face primeval couplings bat at each other like sea and land, forest and field. One swings one way, to be taken back by the next, to swing again like a pendulum of existence. I was laid up for many weeks and could perform no spells. Some darkness was being fought, perhaps the spirit of kidney number 9. When I felt the battle over, and my spirit bright again, I went straight to work but to my horror the spell were barren. I collected new ingredients and ruthlessly took the blood of a child by pushing one over and dabbing at the scraped knee . Nothing, no power in the spell. The ability had been robbed of me, and I was reminded of the genies displeasure at my voyeurism.
I was fucking furious. I had no time for my mother for which this was all about and with dreadful realisation I knew it was really all about me and my penchant for witchcraft. I had justified my murders by saying I was the champion of Mum. So what, I thought, I lied to myself, so what. Darkly, I went to the books. If Death Spells would not do, then there was something else, something much more awful, ancient and calamitous that I could call on, even if it ruined me. Shape Shifter.
The ingredients were laughingly banal and available in most refrigerators. It was like buttering bread, literally. With just one unusual topping. The animal I must become, would have to sniff it, reject it, then piss on it. But how? I bought a camera trap and placed the buttered bread on the back lawn. The bread was always eaten by a fox. I would love to become the fox, but, as I say, it always ate the bread. A hedgehog gave it a few bites but didn't urinate on it, and the rabbits had a nibble. Eventually, the animal I was to become slinked up through darkness, sniffed it, then sprayed a fine mist of piss all over the offered bread and butter. Of course, it was the cat.
That night, with the list of the last 8 on a table in front of me, I gobbled down the bread and butter cat piss sandwich and with disgust and nausea awaited developments. I looked at number 8. Catherine Tigerlilly, nice name, a woman in her twenties, poor minx, genetically bad kidneys. She lived in Purfleet, how appropriate I thought as the table suddenly towered over me. There was no pain in the transformation, just a sudden sense of danger. I wasn't a human sized cat, I was a cat! How on earth could a cat commit 8 murders., it would surely take all 9 lives.
By Andy Parker
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
He Will Provide
(Excerpts from Annie’s Reynolds journal)
27th June 2013
It’s been days since I found out and I can’t stop crying. Even now tears are blurring my vision and smudging these words. All my life I’ve heard people talk about heartache, I even thought I’d had it a few times, but this feeling, this horrific pain, couldn’t be summed up by such an innocuous sounding word. The pain in my heart is unrelenting. The only reprieve I get is when I wake in the morning and for just the briefest moment my mind is blank, the pain; absent. Then I remember and in the blink of an eye its back. I can’t fathom how such a perfectly healthy organ could be causing me so much pain.
I’m worried about how it will be at the end. I don’t think I can endure any more than this.
I’ve been trying to control my tears around Mum. She keeps saying I’m crying like she’s already dead. I just can’t get passed the fact that I believe she won’t survive. She’s fifteenth on that heart transplant list and she’s only been given six months to live. When I spoke to the nurse she said some people waited for years. This pain comes from the knowledge that she’s not going to make it. I’m sure of it. She will leave and my world will never be the same.
30th July 2013
Mum’s been on the list for thirty three days. During that time one person has come off, having received a donor heart, and one person has been added. Apparently they are a higher priority than mum so she remains in fifteenth place. I told the doctor this wasn’t fair. How was mum supposed to work her way up the list if people jumped the queue? Mum said, "It’s God’s will. If he wants me to live he will provide."
I’m having a hard time with the religious thing. I’ve always let her be with her beliefs before, assuming no harm could come of it. Now I know I was wrong with that approach. Instead of clinging to life (and me) with a positive fighting spirit, she is quietly accepting, trusting in some plan a fictional character has for her. It makes me want to tear my hair out. Yes I want to be a supportive daughter and I want her to be comforted but I am sick of sharing her heart with a myth.
4th July 2013
Went to visit mum today, her face is swollen from the meds and her skin has taken on a greyish hue. I faked a sore stomach and went and cried in the toilet. My mum is fading away and there is nothing I can do.
6th July 2013
It’s 3am and I still haven’t slept. I had a thought earlier and it won’t leave me alone. What if mum was further up the list? The people ahead of her are just as sick, if not sicker, than her, what if their hearts gave out? Mum had been warned to avoid exercise and undue excitement – what would it take to make a fragile heart stop? Is it considered murder if you scare someone to death? I don’t think it is.
7th July 2013
I got the list! I can’t bring myself to write down what I had to do to get it, but I got it. The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t hold as much sway these days as I hope it used to.
10th July 2013
Today the pain in my heart is almost bearable. There’s an excitement building in me that is masking it nicely. I’ve taken action and that has given me the illusion of control. I had a moment, as the envelopes left my hand and disappeared into the red post box, when I was assailed by doubt. The contents of those envelopes could mean the end of someone’s life. I knew this, that was my intention, but once those envelopes left my hand I began to think of my potential victims as people and not just names on a list. People with families that wanted them to live as desperately as I wanted mum to. I can’t think like this – yes, they are people but they are not important to me, all that is important is saving mum.
13th July 2013
I am becoming obsessed with the obits. I’m buying every newspaper out there and scanning for the names on the list. Today three of them appeared. I thought I’d be consumed with guilt but I wasn’t, I was thrilled - it was like seeing my numbers come up in the lotto. Still, as I read the sympathy messages an uneasy feeling settled in my gut. It helped to dehumanise them and think of them as the numbers they were on the list. They are just obstacles in my path. It helped even more when I realised that the fake scratch cards I’d sent were only responsible for two of the deaths; numbers twelve and four. Number twenty six had died in a car accident.
14th July 2013
Took mum for check up on her pacemaker today. Her Doctor told us she had moved up two places on the list. I said "Fantastic!" Mum said "God will provide."
How can she think that? If she believes in God’s will then surely he was the one that gave her the heart disease in the first place!
I want to tell her what I’m doing, how I’m providing for her, not God but of course I can’t.
15th July 2013
Today I paid two of the teens from the council flats down the road to dress in ‘Scream’ masks and target the list members in ground floor flats. They jumped out at them when they neared their windows. One of them had a retractable knife that he hit against the windows. I’m not sure how fruitful this action was, from where I was hiding I heard screams but none of them were followed up by ambulance sirens. I’ll have to wait to see what shows up in the obits.
17th July 2013
I’m concerned. Three more people have died from the list, though not in mum’s favour – numbers nineteen, twenty-three and twenty five. The obits sighted their causes of death to be car accidents. This just doesn’t feel right to me. Four people from the list have now died in car accidents. What if someone has had the same idea as me? If so, their loved one is lower on the list than mum which puts her in the firing line. I’m probably just being paranoid – Oh God, I don’t think I am!
20th July 2013
I’m scared. Number twenty four has died in a car accident. The funeral is tomorrow and it’s open so I’m going to attend and see what I can find out.
21st July 2013
I really don’t know what to do. I managed to talk to number twenty fours cousin and the police are suspicious of her death. She didn’t have a drivers licence but she’d been found dead in the driver’s seat of a stolen car; the apparent victim of a hit and run collision. The suspicion came from the traces of a substance around her mouth which may or may not have been chloroform. I’m now convinced someone is murdering these people but I can’t go to the police without exposing my own intentions with the list. I can’t just wait until they try to get at mum, I have to do something.
23rd July 2013
I think I’ve found him. The first victim was number twenty six on a list of thirty, leaving me three possible suspects. Number twenty eights brother was extremely over protective of her when I rang acting as a nurse from the hospital. He demanded to know what "we" were doing to save his sisters life and intimated he was the only one looking out for her interests. I’m going to go and talk to him. Maybe I can convince him to spare mum.
(Charing Cross Hospital 23rd July 2013)
Doctor Brown rushed into the consultation room where his patient was waiting. He knew she would be in shock, having had the news broken to her by policemen on her doorstep and then rushed over to the hospital. He noted her hands were shaking and he regretted he couldn’t give her time to deal with her grief but they were racing against the clock.
"Mrs Reynolds, I am sorry for your loss, but this gives us a great opportunity."
"I don’t understand." Mrs Reynolds cut in with a weak voice. "Annie couldn’t drive. She applied for her provisional years ago but she never learned. How could she have been driving that car?"
Doctor Brown cleared his throat, wishing he didn’t have to rush this fragile woman so much.
"I realise this is all a big shock for you but that’s what I wanted to talk to you about Mrs Reynolds. On Annie’s provisional license she left the organ donation check box clear. As her next of kin you can authorise the donation of her heart but we have to move fast."
Mrs Reynolds blinked at him and then smiled slightly. "No Doctor."
"No?" Doctor Brown frowned.
Again, that slight smile. "Doctor Brown, if God wants me to live I’ll move up that list of yours, I’ve already gone up two places. I’m not going to jump the queue. God will provide Doctor. Give that heart of my daughters to someone that needs it more. That’s what Annie would’ve wanted."
By Dayv Metcalfe
The List
It didn't matter that it was a heart.
It could have been a lung, or a liver. Anything, that without for some period of time, she could no longer survive and would slowly, or perhaps quickly die. But a heart made sense, was life itself and no-one could doubt its necessity. Some people can live without a liver can't they? For a while, and there's folks out there with only one lung.
Annie's mother needs a new heart. It's serious and Annie has been worried. Every day on her way to her mother's room in the hospital she walks down the stark corridors, dragging her feet on the tired linoleum and making syncopated squeaks with the toes of her sneakers. She glances through flapping doors into forbidden worlds of things that have gone wrong and the worried faces of those trying to put those things right again. Even where the babies are, there's always something to worry about.
Annie knows her mother won't see Thanksgiving. The doctors say this, but they offer hope in the form of a transplant from a suitable donor and Annie's mother is number fifteen on the list. Getting there seems an awfully long way off. Some distance point way beyond the time she has left to live Annie thinks.
In the room her mother is oddly free of foreign devices, tape and wires. As if, if she wished, she could sit up, swing her legs across the bed, slip to the floor and walk straight out of the hospital and hail a cab in the street to take her home.
But she is pale, and breathes with difficultly. Annie imagines her mother's tired and failing heart, wheezing and spluttering in her chest with every beat like an idling badly tuned lawnmower. She speaks to Annie quietly, with effort, and tells her stories of when she was younger, what a good girl she was and how she nearly didn't make it into the world because the cord got wrapped around her neck starving her of oxygen until a quick thinking nurse grabbed some scissors and cut it from around her neck and tossed it aside like a dangerous snake. Of how in the first few weeks she wouldn't feed, and this made Annie's mother feel helpless and worried. That her baby may die because then so young so new, it didn't know that it had to eat to survive and some reflex that should be there wasn't there. And unlike now with their immutable connection, their mother daughter bond, baby Annie couldn't understand her mother's desperate pleas.
Annie stroked the back of her mother's hand, taking care to not touch the green plastic butterfly where the intravenous cannula had been inserted. She ran a finger around the transparent edge of the plaster holding it in place and wished it didn't pinch her mother's skin so. Annie speaks to her mother and tells her all the things they will do when she is well.
They will fix things in the house and visit places they used to before this room became so unhappily familiar. Annie's mother's new heart will let her swim again, at Choke Canyon and in the gentle waves at Rockport beach. But it's so hard to imagine it now with her like this, shrunk and on hold, slighter than she really is. They imagine from whom her new heart will come, and they pray for someone young, and strong and please god Annie says, immortal.
Annie couldn't wait for fifteen other people on the list to be saved. Fifteen perfect arcs to occur before her mother can be promised a mere chance of life. Annie knew she must reduce the list but hadn't worked out the details of how. Not the chemistry or butchery or whatever it would take to see the heart, their heart cupped in a surgeon's hands ready to reanimate her dying mother. The task was daunting and irrevocable and it would take courage.
Annie's mother lived for another twelve years after the transplant. She ran eight marathons in that time and swam in the ocean every week in Rockport. She hadn't particularly wanted to blaze these trails preferring to perhaps tend her garden, read and take gentle day trips to the lakes. But she felt that she owed it to Annie to achieve something that would be extraordinary even for someone of her age who hadn't undergone such a life changing surgery. To know that Annie would be proud and had not acted in vain she couldn't rest, just exist to live an ordinary life.
She visited Annie almost every week, taking the three bus journey to the facility. They treated her differently to the other visitors. Subtle things, sometimes just a look but it wasn't a judgement, more of an acknowledgement of the terrible circumstances and of what she must be feeling for her daughter.
Annie killed nine of the people on the list before she was finally caught and incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville. Her mother was there when they gave Annie the lethal injection, saw her daughter's life taken because her own had been saved.
The press were there from every continent. The story was a sensation around the world, with its tragic Shakespearean plot exciting the public and eliciting much debate.
Someone made a movie about it. It did so-so at the box office.
By Darren Seeley
It could have been a lung, or a liver. Anything, that without for some period of time, she could no longer survive and would slowly, or perhaps quickly die. But a heart made sense, was life itself and no-one could doubt its necessity. Some people can live without a liver can't they? For a while, and there's folks out there with only one lung.
Annie's mother needs a new heart. It's serious and Annie has been worried. Every day on her way to her mother's room in the hospital she walks down the stark corridors, dragging her feet on the tired linoleum and making syncopated squeaks with the toes of her sneakers. She glances through flapping doors into forbidden worlds of things that have gone wrong and the worried faces of those trying to put those things right again. Even where the babies are, there's always something to worry about.
Annie knows her mother won't see Thanksgiving. The doctors say this, but they offer hope in the form of a transplant from a suitable donor and Annie's mother is number fifteen on the list. Getting there seems an awfully long way off. Some distance point way beyond the time she has left to live Annie thinks.
In the room her mother is oddly free of foreign devices, tape and wires. As if, if she wished, she could sit up, swing her legs across the bed, slip to the floor and walk straight out of the hospital and hail a cab in the street to take her home.
But she is pale, and breathes with difficultly. Annie imagines her mother's tired and failing heart, wheezing and spluttering in her chest with every beat like an idling badly tuned lawnmower. She speaks to Annie quietly, with effort, and tells her stories of when she was younger, what a good girl she was and how she nearly didn't make it into the world because the cord got wrapped around her neck starving her of oxygen until a quick thinking nurse grabbed some scissors and cut it from around her neck and tossed it aside like a dangerous snake. Of how in the first few weeks she wouldn't feed, and this made Annie's mother feel helpless and worried. That her baby may die because then so young so new, it didn't know that it had to eat to survive and some reflex that should be there wasn't there. And unlike now with their immutable connection, their mother daughter bond, baby Annie couldn't understand her mother's desperate pleas.
Annie stroked the back of her mother's hand, taking care to not touch the green plastic butterfly where the intravenous cannula had been inserted. She ran a finger around the transparent edge of the plaster holding it in place and wished it didn't pinch her mother's skin so. Annie speaks to her mother and tells her all the things they will do when she is well.
They will fix things in the house and visit places they used to before this room became so unhappily familiar. Annie's mother's new heart will let her swim again, at Choke Canyon and in the gentle waves at Rockport beach. But it's so hard to imagine it now with her like this, shrunk and on hold, slighter than she really is. They imagine from whom her new heart will come, and they pray for someone young, and strong and please god Annie says, immortal.
Annie couldn't wait for fifteen other people on the list to be saved. Fifteen perfect arcs to occur before her mother can be promised a mere chance of life. Annie knew she must reduce the list but hadn't worked out the details of how. Not the chemistry or butchery or whatever it would take to see the heart, their heart cupped in a surgeon's hands ready to reanimate her dying mother. The task was daunting and irrevocable and it would take courage.
Annie's mother lived for another twelve years after the transplant. She ran eight marathons in that time and swam in the ocean every week in Rockport. She hadn't particularly wanted to blaze these trails preferring to perhaps tend her garden, read and take gentle day trips to the lakes. But she felt that she owed it to Annie to achieve something that would be extraordinary even for someone of her age who hadn't undergone such a life changing surgery. To know that Annie would be proud and had not acted in vain she couldn't rest, just exist to live an ordinary life.
She visited Annie almost every week, taking the three bus journey to the facility. They treated her differently to the other visitors. Subtle things, sometimes just a look but it wasn't a judgement, more of an acknowledgement of the terrible circumstances and of what she must be feeling for her daughter.
Annie killed nine of the people on the list before she was finally caught and incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville. Her mother was there when they gave Annie the lethal injection, saw her daughter's life taken because her own had been saved.
The press were there from every continent. The story was a sensation around the world, with its tragic Shakespearean plot exciting the public and eliciting much debate.
Someone made a movie about it. It did so-so at the box office.
By Darren Seeley
Monday, September 2, 2013
Story Idea 9
Annie's mother is dying, but being 15th on the transplant list means she wont make it.
Something needs to be done to shorten the list....
The story should be no more than 4000 words.
AM
Something needs to be done to shorten the list....
The story should be no more than 4000 words.
Deadline: 29th September 2013
AM
Frank
Frank was an idiot. A brand spanking new Triumph Bonneville motorcycle straight off the boat from England, and he'd already rebored the carburetter and changed out the sprocket when I saw him.
'It's gonna end in tears Franky boy,' I said. All for a lousy twenty extra miles per hour. He was a speed demon. A real seat of the pants guy, made of the right stuff. That's why when he came back from the Jupiter 59 Mission, I knew it was big. A serious, serious businesss. And Frank was never gonna be the same.
****
We arrived at Edwards airforce base in March of nineteen fifty seven and there we all met for the first time. Me, Gordon, Scottie Carpenter, Neil, Bob and Frank. We were all test pilots, and came from the services as engineers. Frank and I worked together with the NASA guys on the development of the landing systems for Jupiter and after some frustrating problems we finally managed to crack it in the summer of the following year.
It's scary to think what we were working with then, the kind of hardware we relied on. Hell, there's more technology in my cellphone than what we used to put Neil on the moon, and Jupiter was ten years earlier.
Over the months, we all the became a pretty tight team though Bob left in the autumn and we never really knew why. He said he'd been seconded for some secret military mission, hush hush kinda thing. Gordy said it was Cuba but anyway he was replaced by Ed Irving.
We knew it would be one of us. I knew it would be Frank, and sure enough Christmas came early for him that year when in November Mr Glennan called to tell Frank he was going be the first man into space.
I couldn't say I wasn't a little disappointed. I suppose we all were really but Frank was the right choice and we all knew it.
There was a certain relief that came with the news of Frank's appointment and only when I knew the call had finally come did I realise I'd been waiting for it myself.
Gloria knew, she said for the past eighteen months when I was home, I wouldn't stray more than a few feet from the kitchen, from the telephone. It must have been a big deal for her too. She lived every day with the same danger as me and whilst I didn't say it, I knew that hurtling fifty miles above the Mojave desert in an X-15 at three and a half thousand miles an hour was different from right up there, in the dark, the unknown. She wouldn't see me at the end of a days work or get the Hi honey, I'm safe and well call I made after the routine test flights that's for sure. It would be a black car and two sombre men in regalia at the door reminding her of the amazing sacrifice I had made for my country.
Still it was down to Frank now, for him and his loved ones and for that at least, as funny as it sounds, I was glad it wasn't me.
The night of the call was a big celebration. We already had a reputation as hell raisers which in part was true it was fair to say, but we worked hard and needed to let off a little steam now and then.
Our little band had become celebrities. Joe public had a massive appetite for the 'Space Race,' and we received a lot of attention, not all good but it culminated in a sweet deal that saw access to us and our stories sold for a quarter of million dollars to Life magazine. Split between us it sure made the long days shorter and well, it was something nice for the girls. We spent money on the house and for Gloria, a whole new wardrobe. She said she felt like a movie star. It made her happy and I was glad.
Frank bought a motorcycle.
After the excitement about Frank died down it was back to the grind and even more intense training. This time against a deadline set by NASA. Two of us, me and Scottie, trained side by side with Frank.
At the end of April, Frank began to get really nervous. He confided in me quite a bit and I guess I could say I knew the real Frank, the man behind the bravado, the sleek hair and dangerous twinkle in his eye. Frank wasn't tall but he was magnetic, so the moment he walked into a room, everyone turned to hear what he might say. One night, over a couple of beers in the base bar Frank told me he was scared. I told him there wasn't a man on the planet, or any other planet for that matter, that wouldn't be frightened. We didn't talk percentages but the chances of him not coming back, or of not even making it out of the atmosphere alive were finely balanced. We weren't kidding ourselves, but what a thing to be the first. The first human into space, and beating the ruskies and all.
It was that conversation that I kept going back to after he came back. We'd spent a good couple of hours discussing every stage of the launch, boost and rentry with the aim of finding something that had been missed, a little detail that could be ironed out and would give Frank just a couple more ounzes of confidence. 'You're gonna be a hero Frankie,' I said. 'Come June, every man, woman and child's gonna be waving a flag for you.' He'd smiled I remember, and nodded his head just a little as he rolled the thought around.
If it was going to happen, it would be mechanical failure that got him, so once the tests and checks had been done and redone it would be in the lap of the gods. I was angry when he came back. They told us about the research into the human immune system in microgavity conditions and how Frank would have been highly susceptible to bacteria either in his environment or dormant inside his body. Whilst the training was designed to prepare us for the conditions we would encounter, as best they could be understood from earth, no one could know what really would happen to our bodies.
Some said we weren't meant to travel into space and that we inhabitat this planet for a reason. There were quite a few dissenters, those who weren't waving a flag on launch day, and when Frank came back I wanted them to know the truth but all they got was validation when it was announced that Frank had been rushed to the Holy Cross Centre for Disease Control.
They let me visit a couple of times and we spoke on the telephone through a plate glass wall. Two government agents were posted outside the door to his room and I guessed this was to keep any press at bay. Frank was big news.
He was hooked up to a dozen or so monitors and when he spoke, he was different, slow, as if something wasn't working right in his brain. They had told me strictly not to ask him any questions about the flight but I was burning to know. He said he hadn't seen anyone else really but that men in suits came daily and asked him a lot of questions. They didn't know what was wrong with him. When I asked the doctors, they answered curtly as if making Frank better wasn't a priority.
When I learned the truth, things like that made sense. I was approached by NASA shortly after Frank came back. They wanted me to head the next mission and launch date was set for less than six months. When I was called to the White House for the mission briefing, I knew something was happening. Frank wasn't ill and what they told me changed everything.
In a universe so unexplained, unknown and unexplored, man will always be overwhelmed by curiosity and his desire for knowledge will know no bounds. What we didn't know back then as we raced so hard to put man into space, was that we were already up there. The human species inhabited space and they'd been waiting for Frank for two thousand years.
I came to Mars in nineteen sixty four on board a transporter ship built by the first humans. I've been here with them now for forty eight years. It's taken that long for us, well the second humans, to get up to speed with the technology that had been developed since the first humans left the planet in a.d. thirty two but now the whole species live as one despite the obvious differences.
When they released Frank from Holy Cross he found a very large sum of money in his bank account. We laughed but knew they could have taken more permanent action to stop him talking rather that pumping him full of tranquilizers. He never did tell anyone and things came to light in the natural order of things, mainly when there was money to be made in leaving earth once again.
Frank died three years after Project Jupiter in the Mojave desert. A blowout on his motorcycle at one hundred and thirty eight miles an hour. They gave him a hero's send off, tickertape in Times Square kinda deal. The journey he took will remain in history for many reasons.
He may not have been the first man into space but he was my friend and I miss him.
***
By Darren Seeley
Directive 2.51
Do not get emotionally attached to patients. The sad fact was, sometimes they died.
The rule made a lot of sense and Daniel had always thought health professionals were foolish to ever choose to get emotionally attached to their patients. That was until he was grinning at his patient as he breathed the stale tasting air that circulated through his hazmat suit and realised choice didn’t come into it. Against his will he was well and truly emotionally attached. Like the rest of America he was fascinated by this man, this hero that had gone where no other man had. From the first moment he’d met him, almost a year previous, he’d been in awe of him. Now he was desperate to help him.
“Morning Frank, how are you feeling?” Daniel asked as he skim read the chart from the end of the hospital bed. Daniel had known Frank as a handsome man with an easy charm, the charm was still there but his face and neck were obscured by inflamed patches of skin with sporadic blisters and flakes that made him hard to look at.
“Itchy.” Frank answered with a rueful grin.
Daniel managed not to grimace as a dry patch of skin on his friends face split and thick plasma leaked out. Instead he swept his eyes to the small TV set and watched Lucy yelling comically at Ricky. The TV was the only piece of non-medical equipment in the room and he’d bought it from his home to entertain his chronically bored friend. Every other surface was clear as Get Well Soon cards and flowers were not permitted within the room, instead these offerings to the astronaut lined the perimeter that had been set up at the hospital entrance and there were thousands of them.
“You’re due another application of cream in twenty minutes, I’m sure that will help.” When he looked away from the TV he saw that Frank was staring at him.
“Do you really have to wear that thing around me? You don’t honestly think I’ve been infected by some space germs do you?”
“Yes I do and no I don’t. You appear to just have a severe case of eczema. What I can’t explain is why the treatment is not clearing it up.”
“I’m telling you Doc, it was the same when I was a kid. My Mum slathered me with cream for months; nothing. Then my Dad took us on a holiday to the coast and after a few days of playing in the surf my skin cleared up.”
Daniel could see that the salt water could have an exfoliating affect so he scribbled instructions for the assistant that had been security cleared to assist him with the astronauts care. “I’ll have a salt bath arranged for you.”
Frank grinned and more clear liquid oozed down his face. “Not quite the same as a surf beach is it Doc?”
“That salt bath is about as close as you are going to get right now.”
“You could sneak me out under cover of darkness.” Frank teased.
Daniel fixed him with an un-amused look.
“Alright, alright. But any chance of getting these off?” Frank raised his taped up hands. “I feel like a kid that can’t be trusted not to scratch his measles.”
Daniel caught one of his raised hands and worked the blood pressure belt up his arm. “Kids can’t be trusted not to scratch their measles and neither, my friend, can you.”
Frank rolled his eyes as Daniel inflated the cuff and then released it as he listened to his stethoscope.
“Are you still experiencing hunger?”
“Yes, I’m starving. This hospital’s food doesn’t cut the mustard.”
“Never had any complaints before.” Daniel consulted the chart again. “You ate two hours ago, how could you still be hungry?”
“Doc, you were the one that put me on that training regime that had me eating six times a day, guess my body is just used to that routine.”
“Okay.” Daniel clipped the chart back on the end of the bed. “I’ll see if I can’t scare you up a protein shake.”
“Steak would be better.”
Daniel laughed. “In your dreams.”
Behind him Frank groaned dramatically. “Doc, you’re killing me!”
19th June 1959 – Daniel was studying the latest skin scrapings from Frank under a microscope when two men in business suits burst into the lab without knocking. The first man, Jeremy Faulkner, he knew as the Director of NASA, a man he had worked with for years. The second he knew only from the T.V, he was President Eisenhower’s VP, Richard Nixon.
“Gentlemen?” Daniel queried with a frown.
“Dan, we have a problem.” Jeremy said as he closed the door and pulled at the tight knot of his tie. He was clearly unnerved by the man at his side.
“”A problem?” Richard interrupted. “Men, this is more than a problem, this is a catastrophe!” He shook his head as he spoke and Daniel was fascinated by the drooping jowls of his face that struggled to keep up with the action.
“Doctor you are out of time.” The VP asserted.
“I beg your pardon?” Daniel frowned and looked at Jeremy for clarification.
“It’s the public Dan, they want to know what’s happened to Frank – they are demanding to know.”
“And what do you think the public’s reaction is going to be when they see him? His skin is bright red and spontaneously splits? Do you think that is going to allay the nation’s fears of alien interaction? The look of eczema would be alarming to anyone who’d not seen the condition before but a case as severe as Frank’s? Even I’m finding it hard to look at him.” Daniel challenged.
“I agree with you completely.” Richard said with a nod as Jeremy tugged harder at his tie as though he couldn’t get enough air. He also was looking everywhere in the room except for at Daniel.
“What am I missing here?”
Jeremy started speaking in a rush but Nixon cut him off with a wave of his hand. His dark eyes fixed onto Daniels and for almost a minute the only sounds that could be heard in the room were their breathing and the steady humming of the refrigerator filled with blood samples.
“Doctor, I don’t need to tell you how important this race to space is do I? This whole nation wants, no damn it, they need us to win this race and the Republican’s will be the government to deliver that dream for them. Next year is an election year and this recession is already killing us – we need the public behind us on this or I’ll lose out to the Democrats. I need to produce a healthy Frank Bowman to the public to restore their faith in us and our commitment to this race.”
Daniel found himself losing patience with the man. “With all due respect Vice President Nixon, I am doing my best with Frank but he is not ready to meet the public. I’m sorry if that is hurting your campaign for presidency.”
Nixon narrowed his eyes at him but it was Jeremy that spoke. “Dan, we have a solution.” Still Jeremy couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “And it’s to employ Directive 2.51.”
Daniel gave a sigh of impatience. “Sorry Jeremy but I’m not fluent in NASA’s directives. Just tell me straight.”
Jeremy blew air between his teeth and then gave one final tug on his tie. “We are going to use Franks body double to appease the public.”
“His what?”
Nixon breathed out impatiently through his nose while Jeremy raised his hands in a placating manner towards Daniel. “With the importance of this mission being so great it was decided that should anything happen to Frank his double would step in to face the public.”
Daniel was aghast. “What?”
“Did you think Frank was chosen for his skill alone?” Jeremy laughed humourlessly. “We matched the facial features of the astronaut potentials to members of the Secret Service – Frank and his double were the closest. With Frank having no family and next to no close relationships, he was the perfect choice.”
Daniel leaned heavily back on the lab bench he’d been working on. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So Frank Bowman risked his life for this country and now some other guy gets to face the public and get all the glory while we wait for Frank to recover?”
Nixon fixed him with that look again. “Doctor, I don’t think you understand. Frank is now a risk to National Security. The meteor dust found on the hull of the spaceship would suggest he has been exposed to some contaminant and we cannot risk that contaminate infecting others.”
“Contaminant? He has eczema for God’s sake!”
“Doctor, your country thanks you for your efforts but we’ll take it from here.” Richard nodded curtly and left the room. Jeremy went to follow but Daniel grabbed him by the arm.
“What is he going to do to Frank?”
“You know what has to happen Dan. He could be contagious.”
Daniel wasn’t a violent man but he squeezed Jeremy’s arm harder. “If that were true, you would be able to look me in the eyes. Why is this the first I’m hearing about this meteor dust? I’ve done numerous studies on Frank and have been telling you the Hazmat suits were unnecessary. Are you really going to let them kill Frank just so that asshole can get elected next year?”
“Dan I have no control over this, we both have to go along with it. You’ve signed documents that agree with all directives put in place by NASA and the US government, if you make a fuss they’ll be forced to deal with you.” Jeremy yanked his arm free and strode to the door. “Start destroying the files on Frank.”
Daniel spun and smashed his fist against the lab table. The microscope toppled to the side and Frank’s perfectly normal skin sample fell to the floor.
20th June 1959 – Frank woke as Daniel was tearing off the tapings around his hands.
“What’s going on Doc?” He asked groggily as he raised his head off the bed. “Where’s your hazmat suit?”
“We’re going to the coast like you wanted.” Daniel tore away the last of the taping and pulled the bed sheet free. “Come on.”
“Doc, what’s going on?” Frank asked as he followed Daniel to the door, when Daniel turned he noticed new splits on Franks face.
“They’re going to kill you; they think something is wrong with you.”
Frank blinked in surprise and shook his head. “Is there something wrong with me?”
Daniel gave a fleeting smile. “Do you think I would be busting you out of here if there was?”
“Good point.”
“Follow me and stay quiet.”
Daniel led them along a darkened corridor. The entire ward had been sealed off for Frank and the silence that surrounded them made their footsteps seem inordinately loud. Once they reached the end of the corridor Daniel paused. Beyond the door was a short walk to the entrance of the private car park but they would have to pass the dispensary and the dispensary was very rarely unattended, even at 3am.
“Frank, I want you to walk beside me, act like everything’s normal. If anyone tries to stop us you let me do the talking – just stay quiet.”
“Roger that.”
They entered the main part of the hospital and walked briskly towards the car park door. As they approached the dispensary a nurse Daniel vaguely recognised left the office carrying a tray. She gasped when she saw Frank but the look of revulsion on her face suggested the reaction had nothing to do with her recognition of the astronaut. As she gasped Frank’s stomach gave off an ungodly growl that made the nurse’s step falter. Frank slowed in reaction and Daniel had to grasp his arm and speed him along. Frank grunted lightly and under Daniel’s hand he felt liquid seep into the sleeve of the hospital gown where he must have torn the skin.
“What the hell was that noise?” Daniel whispered as they put distance between themselves and the nurse.
“I’m hungry.”
They made the door to the car park un-accosted but as they passed through it Daniel noticed the nurse was still standing in the corridor staring at them. He hurried them through and shut the door.
“Almost there. There’s a private exit that leads around the back and down past the river for a couple of miles and then out onto the highway. We can sneak out and no one will know we are gone until it’s too late.”
Again Frank’s stomach growled, even louder than before.
Daniel thought he may have a chocolate bar in the glove box so he rushed forward to unlock the car but as he pulled the door open two moist hands fastened to the sides of his head. Before he could react his neck was jerked to the side savagely and his limp body fell to the ground.
Frank looked down at the lifeless body at his feet and knew he should be feeling something. He’d been friends with Daniel and now, not only was he dead, but he had died by his hands. Still he felt nothing except for the new strength that flowed through his limbs and the hunger.
The hunger wasn’t new, it had been with him since he’d first woken at the hospital and it was unrelenting. Nothing seemed to appease it, the more he ate, the more his body demanded. Another growl sounded from his stomach and with it a came a savage stomach cramp.
Frank knelt on the ground beside his friend’s body and pulled the man’s forearm to his mouth. The muscle was tough and very hard to bite through but the reward was worth the effort.
By Dayv Metcalfe
Frank's Tank
The World was ravenously ready to watch the drama. To hear the astronaut's first words after he was collected from a seething ocean. To watch open mouthed as Frank Bowman told them what it was like to look back at them, all together. Instead, as the recovery craft got close to the bobbing capsule, and Frank Bowman emerged, he tried to shout something as he waved his arms madly. The cameras stopped rolling. Pre prepared newspaper headlines, suppose to be full of quotes, data and feelings, were instead full of what? Where, and whys? Newly formed NASA (with a hovering military) said there had been a health problem, and that Frank had been rushed to hospital. One paper reported that he had gone to The Holy Cross, disease control, but quickly corrected the story, and suggested he had a collapsed lung.
A week passed. No Frank Bowman. Where was the hero, the people needed him, he had been built up so much, they positively desired him. People were getting twitchy. Eager for their man and the new stories he could tell. What exactly was wrong? He remained secluded in what had become known as 'Frank's Tank', rumours abounded, some humorous: -
"He has gone on holiday!"
"He has defected to the Reds!"
Some thought provoking:-
"He met God."
"He has seen us all at once and hates us."
Some ideas about his absenteeism were cleverly creative, and one in particular made Frank spit his pea and ham soup out.
"He hasn't been in space at all, he has been in a submarine and when he appeared in that capsule, he felt guilty and tried to tell us."
By Andy Parker
A week passed. No Frank Bowman. Where was the hero, the people needed him, he had been built up so much, they positively desired him. People were getting twitchy. Eager for their man and the new stories he could tell. What exactly was wrong? He remained secluded in what had become known as 'Frank's Tank', rumours abounded, some humorous: -
"He has gone on holiday!"
"He has defected to the Reds!"
Some thought provoking:-
"He met God."
"He has seen us all at once and hates us."
Some ideas about his absenteeism were cleverly creative, and one in particular made Frank spit his pea and ham soup out.
"He hasn't been in space at all, he has been in a submarine and when he appeared in that capsule, he felt guilty and tried to tell us."
By Andy Parker
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