Fiction - Short Stories

I knelt at my father's coffin. Finishing the Lord's Prayer, I crossed myself and stood. My father's white hair had a tuft of scarlet above his left ear. The coffin began to wobble. I jumped back, tripping on the carpet. The coffin crashed to the floor, barely missing my legs. His body tumbled out, rigid, ice-cold, and smelling of formaldehyde. I could see the white thread the mortician used to sew my father's lips together, the red tuft of hair, wet with fresh blood. His eyes opened, the whites dry, the irises blackened and vacant.

I sunk into my overstuffed leather recliner, slipping off my Italian loafers. I swirled the cognac in the snifter and sipped. The gentle tick of the grandfather clock was the only sound I heard. I brought the glass to my lips; BANG! BANG! BANG!

PD4T entered the courtroom and placed the environmental chamber behind his desk. His biphasic feedback loops were hyperactive, creating micro-tremors in his tentacle grippers. Judge 24601 entered and positioned itself behind his brushed steel bench and reviewed the court documents. Three cameras floated and circled the courtroom, red blinking lights signaling that they were recording and transmitting live data to the network.

I remember dying. My heart seized during my pre-transfer physical. If you ever suffer a heart attack, I suggest having one in a fully equipped medical facility with three attending physicians surrounding you. As one doctor pounced on my chest, another injected a blue fluid into my arm, and another placed a transparent mask on my face. After a few breaths of sickeningly sweet gas, my chest pain receded. Then, a blurred face appeared in front of me, yelling, “We're taking you to transfer; you're going to be fine." I relaxed, closing my eyes, hoping she was right as my life faded to black.

Tom had been pinning away to visit the stars for a decade. Riding the elevator to the spacecraft’s crew hatch, his stomach quivered. He found his seat; he was the first one to arrive. Departure was in one hour. His hands shook, buckling his chair’s safety harness.