Author Archives: James Pyles

Spectacular in Flaming Gold

New Year's Eve San Diego

San Diego – New Year’s Eve fireworks – Found at NineByNine.us

Mila’s gown sparkled in effervescent gold as she entered the ballroom that was hosting the midnight gala. She held a glass of champagne in her hand as if she were royalty. From somewhere to her left, a flautist and guitarist were playing Schubert’s Ständchen. It was one of her favorites so he must have arranged it.

She watched Marcelo descend the stairway and then stop at the bottom, his eyes were enchanting like the invitation for a kiss. Mila finished her wine and nonchalantly placed it on the tray of a passing server. She approached him as one approaches a dream or fantasy.

“I knew you would be here waiting for me, Marcelo.”

“Naturally. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come. You hate these garish affairs.”

“But you love them.”

“I love spectacle and this one will be my greatest.”

“Our greatest, my dear. Is your car waiting outside?”

“Of course, angel. I just called for it to be brought to the door.”

“Then it’s time to leave, Marcelo.”

“I quite agree, Mila.”

She took his arm and he guided her way through the crowd and out of the main doors of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. A valet was just stepping out of the driver’s side of an ebony Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta with crimson trim. Marcelo reached inside his tuxedo jacket and extracting his wallet, tipped the young man more than he could hope to earn in three months.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Happy New Year.”

Ignoring the grateful valet, Marcelo opened the passenger door for Mila and once she had secured herself, he got in behind the wheel and slowly drove away.

In the first minutes of the New Year, they were racing north on Interstate 5 near La Jolla, a gigantic celebratory fireworks display illuminating the sky behind them, when a brilliant and devastating explosion reduced the Bayfront Hilton to flaming, iridescent rubble and debris. Nearly six-hundred people were killed in just a few moments. Marcelo and Mila would watch the golden spectacle he had created later on the news. This was the first of their astounding mass murders but certainly not their last.

I wrote this for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie “Bonus” Wordle for “New Years”. The idea is to use at least ten of the twelve words posted, or some variation of them, in the body of a poem or story. I used eleven only omitting Chanel No. 5. Click the link above to find the full list and to see if anyone else responded to the prompt.

A few things. I did a Google search for “Largest New Years Gala” and quite a few came up in the results. I picked San Diego because it was high on the list and for no other reason.

I chose a flautist and guitarist duet because that was who provided the music for my wife’s and my wedding over thirty years ago and I found it quite beautiful. I don’t remember what specific pieces they played and selected Schubert’s Ständchen because it’s what came up in another Google search.

Marcelo must be exceptionally wealthy because his Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta costs $2.2 million. I thought I’d give him an extravagant getaway car.

Yes, I suppose I could have written a more optimistic “Happy New Year” story, but I’m sure just about everyone else will be or has already done that, so I chose a more sinister theme. At least it’s not vampires this time.

Happy New Year. No, seriously. I mean it this time.

The Chimera Problem

windmills

© Jules Paige

The first settlement on Hansen’s Planet was zealous about shifting totally from nuclear energy to renewable, sustainable, “green” energy within the first twenty-five years after arrival.

The problem was no matter what they tried, the indigenous bird-like creatures they called “Chimera” seemed just as zealous about committing mass suicide using their “green” technology.

“Various solar panel designs didn’t work because they’d fly into the concentrated light and burn or smash into the photocells, Bill.”

“Anita, I was hoping your Wind Turbine design would discourage them, but they’re flying right into them through the inhibiting air currents they generate.”

Bill Anghal was the Colony Planner and Anita Kahn was Chief Engineer, but they and the design team couldn’t develop a “Chimera-proof” power generation system.

“What are we missing, Bill?”

“I’ve got it!” They turned and saw Rolf Ingram running up. The eclectic scientist had been studying the “suicides” for months.

He arrived out of breath. “Look,” he wheezed. Deaths…not random…bodies form…patterns.”

“What?” Bill and Anita both grabbed at his iPad.

“Damn. The patterns formed by the Chimera corpses…” Anita let her voice trail off.

“Right,” Rolf leaned over her shoulder. “It’s a language. The Chimera are intelligent. They’re trying to communicate.”

I wrote this story for the Sunday Photo Fiction Challenge of December 31st 2017. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for writing a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 200.

The image immediately made me think of all of those wind turbine farms, and then I thought about the problem they pose to birds and bats. I did a small amount of research looking at articles such as Will Wind Turbines Ever Be Safe For Birds? and Wind farms are hardly the bird slayers they’re made out to be—here’s why as well as Solar Farms Threaten Birds and Why Solar Power Is Good for Birds. Like it or not, there is no such thing as a 100% safe form of energy generation for the environment and wildlife.

So what happens on another planet when the first established colony settlement wants to go totally green avoiding the mistakes of people on their mother planet only to discover that a native life form insists on exterminating itself using your best efforts at sustainable power production?

The story’s conclusion was one idea I had for an answer. An intelligent alien race that couldn’t think of any other way to communicate except by how they arranged their deaths.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The Outside-In World

pellucidar 1

Pellucidar artwork by J. Allen St. John

“Dani?” Eight-year-old Landon’s brain figuratively froze at the thought that his two-and-a-half-year-old sister could wake up over ten years older than she went to sleep. Further, she was dressed in animal skins like what Grandpa might call a “refugee from an old Tarzan movie,” whoever “Tarzan” was.

“I know this is a shock Landon, but I’m the only one who can help accomplish your mission and put the evil spirit back where it belongs.”

Landon just blinked and stared, unable to process the fact that his sister was now older than he was by about five or six years.

“Sorry about the shock old boy,” Gerlilanum added. “I guess I should have given you some warning, but I wasn’t sure the spell would work.”

“Spell?”

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Incendiary

empty room

Found at ClickOnDetroit.com

“…I’m living in an empty room, with all the windows smashed…”

The Sixth Chapter in the Undead Life of Sean Becker

It was still an hour before dawn. There would have been a time when he’d already be on his way into work from the East Bay. The population of San Francisco increases by nearly 300,000 people Monday through Friday due to workers commuting into the City. Sean tried for forget that he used to be one of them.

He knew that the two floors of the warehouse above Antonie’s lair were occupied by a highly dubious and most likely illegal population of artists and “undocumented immigrants,” but he had never thought to visit them before. He stood in the doorway. Normally he would take the set of stairs leading downward but he was distracted by a familiar voice.

“Why not see how the other half lives, Sean?”

He looked ahead and he recognized her but couldn’t remember where from.

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Sheltering Night

talnakh

© Google – October 2016

“Anton Vladimirescu Naga. I haven’t seen you since I was a little boy. Why are you here in Talnakh?”

“I am called Antonie now. It was kind of you to invite me into your home, Gennadi. Your generosity is like your father’s.”

“So is my stupidity for staying in this frozen hell, but the pay is good for mining engineers. Come back for old time’s sake, Antonie?”

“The climate.”

“Climate or the fact that the sun won’t rise here until the end of January? Yes, my father told me what you were when I became a man. You feasted on the denizens of the Norilsk Gulag every winter from before I was born until Khrushchev died.”

“Your Father was my friend. I hope you are too. I need a place to hide.”

“The hunter is now the hunted. Fear not. The Kosygin family has long been allies with the undead.”

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to take a Google maps image and location and use it as the inspiration for writing a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today the Pegman takes us to Talnakh, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The Wikipedia entry for Talnakh is fairly sparse but it is only 16 miles (25 kilometers) north of Norilsk which has a broader history, both in terms of mining and as a former Gulag labor camp.

I’m obviously leveraging one of the characters from my Sean Becker Undead series, which I’ve done previously for a different flash fiction challenge. However, it is set in the present day, January 2018 to be exact, but referencing Antonie’s previous visits to the area during the winters between 1946 and 1964.

The sun doesn’t rise at all there from mid-December to the end of January so a perfect place for a vampire to hide, especially one being hunted by vampire slayers.

I wasn’t planning on writing another vampire-related tale, but the characteristics and history of the location lended themselves to such a story very nicely. To find out how Antonie got into this mess, read Incendiary.

To read other missives based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Extravagance, Thy Name Is Humanity

mars

Scientists have revealed a provocative new theory of moving planets like Mars, pictured, into an orbit that would create habitable conditions through such methods as using a satellite’s gravitational pull. (NASA/GODDARD)

The plans were extravagant in the extreme. For centuries, the thought of creating a Dyson Sphere, that is, manufacturing an immense hollow ball around the Sun with the inner edge of the shell positioned at One AU or the exact distance of Earth’s orbit from its star was thought to be the absolute cure-all for every problem introduced on the mother planet by human beings. The inner surface area would capture one hundred percent of all generated solar energy, providing an all but inexhaustible amount of power and living space, so humanity would run out of neither.

One of the biggest drawbacks was that you’d have to cannibalize every other object in the solar system just for the raw materials, plus you would have to find a way to create the energy necessary for the manufacturing process. However, the engineering genius even to design such a fantastic structure didn’t exist among Earth’s best and brightest and probably never would.

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My Semi-Controlled Nightmare

nightmare

Nightmare wallpaper

“Can you tell me why you did that, Latisha?”

Ron Fielding was sitting in the Elementary School Principal’s office in a chair opposite the six-year-old girl. She had wanted the Principal to sit with them during the interview which was fine, but he hated the idea that his partner Lauri Marin and two uniformed police officers were also crammed into the room with them. He knew the case was likely to go to criminal court so the cops had to be there, but he didn’t think it wouldn’t make it easy for a little girl to tell a roomful of strangers why she lifted up her dress, pulled down her underwear, bent over, and told her classmate Timothy to put his penis in her butt.

“I do it all the time at home when Daddy turns on the camera.”

“What do you mean?”

Ron already knew about the videos. When the janitor caught Latisha and Timothy undressed in the girl’s bathroom during recess, he took them to Principal Kate Barrows and Latisha calmly told her all about how Daddy made movies of her with other grown ups and children. When Barrows called the local P.D., they’d notified State Police, the FBI and of course Child Protective Services, which was how Ron and Lauri became involved. The State and the Feds were actively searching the web for child pornography sites using an algorithm to match the little girl’s school photo with any of those videos. They had also put together a task force ready to raid Latisha’s parents’ home right after this interview.

Latisha wouldn’t be going home after school.

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The Woman in Blue

blue light

© Sue Vincent

Obe was tending the fire on the shore by the bay. The sun had set to his right hours ago and most of the clan slept. Their tiny settlement was young and night predators hunted nearby so he kept watch, though the fire and the scent of the men should keep them away.

The moon shone blue through the clouds illuminating the water before him and the island beyond. Other clans of their tribe occupied the land across the bay to the south and east, but Nakuma’s people hoped to make the northlands their home.

Like most young men, waiting alone bored him and with the passing minutes, he became drowsy. He wrapped his blanket, woven by his sisters, tighter around him and with the fire, he felt warm. If his father found him sleeping, he would be struck and shamed in front of the other hunters, so he forced his eyes open. He heard her before he actually could see her.

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The Troublesome Princess

princess in a tree

Created by Warwick Goble (1862-1943)

“I will not marry you, Prince Abo. Go away.”

“You cannot stay in your tree forever, Princess Yasuko. You are of age now and our parents betrothed us to each other in our seventh year.”

“I don’t care. You are a pig. I will stay in the Empress Tree until I die if you don’t go away.”

“Oh my dear Yasuko. I have called the wood-cutter. Look, he approaches.”

It was true. Tradition required that once they were bonded by the arrangement of both their parents, Yasuko must marry Abo upon reaching her eighteenth year. She had been dreading this day since her Mother the Queen gave her the news eleven years ago.

She had grown up with Abo and knew him all too well. He was pampered and spoiled, demanded that his every whim be catered to immediately. Worse, he was cruel to animals, catching birds only to deprive them of their feathers and then freeing them in the courtyard as helpless prey for the cats.

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You’re Too Early

soldier hitler group

Hitler (far right, seated) with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914–18) – Found at Wikipedia

“Confess, Adolphus. We know you’re an anti-Semite. We know what horrors you are going to commit.”

“Please, Fräulein. I’m blind. I’m supposed to be in hospital. Who are you? Where have you brought me? I’ve done nothing. I’m just a wounded soldier.”

“Rivkah. Leave him in his cell. I need to speak with you.”

She stood suddenly and spun away from the shoddy bed with the terrified soldier upon it.

“In a minute, Barak. I’m busy.”

“Now, Rivkah. We’ve made a terrible mistake and you’re about to make another.”

“Fräulein, who is that with you? What language are you speaking?”

“Fine.” She scowled at her older brother and stormed toward the open door to the dilapidated prison. Barak slammed the door and then secured the rusty lock.

“Wait,” the young Austrian called through the door. “Don’t leave me.”

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