Timeless Tales Magazine: Pandora's Box

PANDORA’S BOX

Timeless Tales 2

Editor Tahlia Merrill Kirk

www.timelesstalesmagazine.com timelesstalesmagazine@gmail.com

Design and Layout Geoffrey Bunting

004 The Phoenician Puzzle Sphere Nicholas Paschall 0 1 4 The Keepsake Box Alex Shvartsman 0 2 0 The Cost Ashlee Willis 0 3 0 The Treasure Within Morgan Jordan 0 3 8 Instructions in my Absence Aislinn Batstone 0 5 0 Dealers’s Choice Martin Clark 060 Inside Man Victorya Chase 0 6 8 System Restore Julie Reeser 0 7 8 Your Terms Julie Sondra Decker 090 Rape Kits Andrea DeAngelis 0 9 6 Cutting Tape Catherine Kyle

Fiction

Words by

The Phoenician Puzzle Sphere

Nicholas Paschall

About the story

‘For “The Phoenician Puzzle Sphere”, I thought about how, in the legends, it’s always curiosity that leads to Pandora’s box to be opened. I considered what would happen if someone wanted to open the box for personal gain.

A box (or sphere, in my instance) that held all the darkness and evil powers within the world, capable of granting your heart’s desire... for a price. In this tale, Jennifer sacrifices her beloved Bud for eternal health... only to wind up as a withered animate corpse herself. Was this because she misused the orb, didn’t actually sacrifice someone she was in love

with, or both? What if the only person she loved enough to gain the sphere’s true power was herself?

My writing process is the same for all stories: I write in the morning, when it is still dark, while listening to horror music or streaming horror movies on Netflix. I believe this particular yarn was conceived to Cabin In The Woods, a truly cracking movie that puts a spin on horror in such a way that I can watch it again and again without skipping a beat. Even as I write this, I am listening to this fabulous movie. Don’t tell my wife though, she hates the movie.’

cian here

Nicholas Paschall

The wall blew apart from the three sticks of dynamite used to “open” the sealed crypt, creating clouds of dust and detritus as it rained from the roughly hewn stone slabs making up the ancient Phoenician structure. Crushing her cigarette out, Jennifer moved from behind her blast shield, a large section of wall that had crumbled untold ages ago, leaving a massive jutting section of mortared stone rising from the puddles of water like a shark fin.

Coughing, Bud came from around the other side, adjusting his goggles as he peered at the dust cloud kicked up by the explosion. The short man, two bandoliers of grenades and an oversized sidearm strapped to his side, pulled an inhaler from his pocket and took a quick hit from it, holding the medicine in as he fought against the allergies being stirred up from century’s old dust. Following behind his wife, he kept a careful eye for any lingering signs of danger.

Casting a dour look at Bud, Jennifer tossed her long plait over her shoulder, hands on her hips as she stared at the cloud of smoke expectantly. One gloved hand unbuttoned the holster of her .45 Magnum, easing the firearm off her hip as she heard the grumbling from behind the wall of dust and smoke.

“God, are we really going to have to deal with more of them?” Bud whined, pulling his pistol with a groan.

“Shut up and just do your job,” Jennifer snapped as figures began to shamble out of the smoke and into the light of the flares set up by Bud earlier. Mummified bodies made dark from years of containment in the confines of a darkened cavern, the undead shuffled slowly, splashing through the puddles as they sought out the warmth of life pouring off of Jennifer and Bud. They never got more than five feet, before getting blasted apart by the duo’s respective guns. Of the five mummies shambling out, three immediately went down from head

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shots, their craniums exploding in a shower of mottled flesh and blackened gore as the solid lead bullets erupted from Jennifer’s pistol, her cigarette hanging from her full lips precariously. The other two doubled over as their hips were shot by Bud, the twin set of bones shattering beneath the combined assault of the semi-automatic weapon, leaving them crumpled masses of groaning dead flesh in rapidly darkening pools of water.

“God, I hate undead,” Jennifer groused, reloading her gun of the few shells she’d expended.

“Well this region is thick with them love,” Bud said, adjusting his goggles. “You should have thought of that before having us come out for a chance at the Puzzle Sphere.”

“Hey, that relic is our key to easy street!” Jennifer growled, moving forward with long strides, past the wounded dead and through the remaining smoke cloud, reaching into her satchel for a flare that she cracked to life on the jagged entrance to the tomb they had just blown open.

Bud sighed. Ever since Jennifer had been diagnosed with cancer a year ago she’d been dead set on finding the Puzzle Sphere of Lemuria, a relic supposedly holding the “secrets of life and death to those willing to eschew such burdens.”

To Bud, it sounded too dangerous, but to Jennifer and her ever shortening life expectancy, it seemed like a last chance at getting what she desired most out of this world: Time.

Bud holstered his sidearm and hurried along, following the flickering light of the flare Jennifer held high over her head. Looking around, he whistled. The tomb was dome shaped, with intricate engravings done in porcelain and jade depicting men standing around a glowing orb, which shed a fraction of light into the dim room, revealing two stone sarcophagi, along with a third standing between the two. Looking around, Bud snorted as he noticed the six smaller sarcophagi flanking the entranceway of the room, knowing that the mummies had been at peaceful rest before

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Jennifer’s dynamite had awoken them.

Wait… six sarcophagi?

Two strong hands grabbed onto Bud from behind, lifting him up as the beast groaned with unholy delight. Fumbling at his side, Bud couldn’t get to his pistol before the mummy leaned in and took a large bite out of his neck, tearing away a large gobbet of meat with a brutal ripping noise. Jennifer spun at the sound, pulling her gun as she took a knee and aimed, watching as the toothless mummy used hardened ridges of bone to tear away sections of her partner’s neck with wild abandon, the semi-wrapped leather-skinned body now drenched in steaming red gore as Bud’s neck wound sprayed out.

“J-Jennifer! Help me!” Bud begged, holding out an arm plaintively as the mummy took another bite from the opened wound, widening the throat injury.

“Sorry Bud, but it’s been a good partnership,” Jennifer said around her cigarette.

“Wait, what—” Bud began before Jennifer pulled the trigger, blasting a hole through Bud’s shoulder and into the chest of the mummy. Bud screamed as he fell to the ground, the mummy slumping back from the lack of a sternum it now had to deal with. Two more resounding booms from her pistol severed the mummy’s arms, while a third finally splintered the beast’s skull into rotting shards.

Bud, lying on the ground now covered in bits of rotting, moldering flesh with a gaping wound in both his neck and shoulder, struggled to sit up enough to glare at his partner.

“What are you doing, Jennifer?”

“Activating the Puzzle Sphere.” She replied simply with a small smile.

Bud followed her gaze to where the glowing orb sat nestled in the ceiling some twenty feet up. He could see now that it had detached from the ceiling and was floating down, gently like a feather on a breeze. Jennifer stood below

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it, her free hand held out to catch the drifting orb of light.

Bud merely grunted in pain as he struggled to watch the sight before him.

Once the orb was firmly in her hand did it begin to soften in intensity, the light growing dimmer until finally an intricately carved sphere of obsidian was revealed, smooth on all sides save for a narrow seam made of yellow gold, a small square resting in the center of the golden lines.

“I’m sorry Bud, I truly am, but for this to work I had to make a choice: sacrifice myself in hopes the orb could revive me once it opened, or sacrifice you and see what the orb contains for myself.”

“But why?” Bud asked through gritted teeth.

“The Puzzle Box needs a sacrifice of a loved one in order to be opened, to unleash the hidden secrets within.” She said, a grim smile marring her features. “Now I know you and I have had our differences this past hunt, but I just want you to know I still love you. Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, how could you even ask me that?”

“You know the ancient texts as well as I do, Bud. The secrets of life and death await me inside this sphere. All I have to do is k-kill you to open it.” She stuttered, tears welling at the corners of her eyes, her gaze hard. Bud pushed himself up into a sitting position, throwing the mummies remains off himself as he looked his wife in the eye.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, gritting his teeth from the pain he was in. “We can find another way.”

“What way?” Jennifer exploded, waving the pistol wildly.

“The doctors said it was inoperable and that I only had a few more months’ worth of exploring in me before I’d be confined to a bed.”

“But to kill me? After all we’ve been through? I’ve loved you with all my heart, risked my life for you countless times. How could you choose to do this to me?”

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Jennifer shrugged, her eyes watery. “I just need to live, Bud. I’ve seen what’s after death in this tomb, and in so many others. I can’t let myself ever become something like that.”

She leveled her gun at Bud’s head, spitting her cigarette out as she gave him a look of sadness and determination.

“I’m truly sorry, love, but if I want to live I need this. You understand I hope. Just know that I love you.”

“You utter, heartless bitc-” Bud growled before the blast from the pistol blew off the upper portion of his skull, sending him reeling back to land in a puddle of his own fluids, partially atop the remains of the mummy.

“It’s funny,” Jennifer said, twin tracts of tears running down her mocha colored cheeks. “I thought this was going to be the toughest part.”

She felt the sphere hum in her hand, the small golden square spinning slowly as it unlocked itself. Holstering her pistol, Jennifer took a deep breath and opened up the top of the sphere, staring into the inky void within for a moment before screaming in agony herself.

Slowly coming to, Jennifer looked around the tomb in wonder as she sat up from the ground where she’d fallen.

“I must’ve blacked out…” She muttered, staring at the once again sealed orb. “What did it teach me?”

Standing up, Jennifer expected to hear her back pop as it usually did, and her chest to ache as always. Neither happened. Taking a deep breath, she laughed as her lungs expanded within her chest without pain, without effort.

Crowing in exuberance, she danced around until she saw her arms. Her normally mocha colored arms, flawless chocolate skin leading to her gloves, were now ashen colored, with dark veins running under her skin. Taking a closer look, she realized her skin was drawn tight over her like she’d lost weight in all the wrong places. Her clothes were even looser! Pulling a small hand mirror

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from her satchel, she looked at herself before letting out a piercing cry. The Puzzle Sphere had indeed cured her of her affliction‌by making her into one of the undead abominations she’d learned to loathe over her years of tomb raiding.

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Fiction The Phoenician Puzzle Sphere

About The Author

A horror/fantasy writer who’s been at it for two years professionally, Nicholas Paschall has been published in eight anthologies, including Demonic Visions, Dark Moon Digest and Tales of the Unseelie Court.

He graduated from college in 2011 with a BA in History, which he uses to research new writing topics. He maintains a website where he posts his work as he writes it, at least those he doesn’t try and get published professionally, called the Nickronomicon. To read his latest work, you can check out Dark Eclipse Magazine to view his monthly articles regarding horror cinema and literature.

Fiction

Words by

The Keepsake Box

Alex Shvartsman

About the story

I am fascinated by the concept of a keepsake box – a small collection of mementos that have meaning and value only to their owner. And yes, I do have one. The leap from the idea of a keepsake box to combining it with the most famous box in all of mythology wasn’t a very great one.

For this story, I also wanted to play with more of the descriptive “five sense” stuff, describing the tastes and the smells evoked by Pandora’s keepsakes.

Alex Shvartsman

For this spell, only the most powerful magic will do.

The glass tubes full of air magic jingle like wind chimes as she takes them off the shelf, the iridescent gases swirling inside. Next she moves the heavy clay pots filled with earth magic and then wrangles the jug of water magic with both hands. Hidden behind it is the keepsake box.

Spellcasting is no different from chemistry. She can mix elements and emotions, memories and mantras in just the right dose, and watch them react to each other and produce carefully measured miracles. Among many possible ingredients, love is the most powerful magic of all.

She’s been storing mementos of their love since the day they met.

Items of little meaning, of little value, to anyone but her. Items charged with concentrated magic, squirreled away for a rainy day.

Today she has no choice but to use everything.

She dumps the contents of the keepsake box onto the table and begins to chant as she picks up the items one by one, drains them of their power, and weaves the resulting strands of enchantment into her spell.

From the twig of the tree under which she met him, she drains excitement. It’s light and full of possibilities, like beats of a fluttering heart.

The dried-up petal of a borage flower from the bouquet he brought her on their first date yields the first drops of love, full-bodied and aromatic.

His hair, plucked from the bed after their first night together, holds the magic of ecstasy. Like cinnamon, it must be sprinkled onto the spell in small doses. Too much will overpower it, will make her burn.

The pebble from the beach where he proposed and the strand from her wedding dress both provide copious volumes of joy, thick and sweet like expensive wine. She hesitates for a briefest moment before using them up for her spell.

A small copper coin provides a dose of frustration distilled from the memory of their first fight. It’s hot-pepper spicy, tempered only with time and wisdom.

A seashell they found on the evening when she told him she was pregnant is crackling with bliss, sweet and fluffy like whipped

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cream. They walked along the shore the entire night, held hands, and thought up baby names.

Her hands shake as she reaches for the next item. A wooden doll he made for their future child stores the despair of the day she miscarried. He held her and spoke words of encouragement and promises he couldn’t deliver. Despair has the bitterness of an over-steeped tea.

A shard from a broken wine bottle holds disappointment. After she couldn’t conceive again, he became distant, sullen, and often inebriated. He lost interest in carpentry, and when he ran out of coin to pay for his drink, expensive enchantments she worked so hard to create began to disappear from their home. Disappointment is bland.

The last ingredient is rage. She needs no item to store it, for it is burning within her. It has been boiling since she found out about the other woman. Rage is sharp and pungent like an aged cheese.

She drains as much of it as she can stand into the spell.

The resulting mix is potent and dangerous, a complex blend of textures and flavors, the most powerful spell she had ever created.

It needs one final ingredient -- hope.

She places the spell inside of the keepsake box itself. It has stored a decade of memories, pleasant and painful, a haphazard map charting the course of their relationship. There is no better item to represent hope.

Tonight she’ll confront him. She will demand answers. She will challenge him on his infidelity, his larceny, his alcoholism. She will demand that he either leave or change.

And then she’ll lie.

She’ll tell him about the keepsake box, and how it holds the most precious spell inside, the magic of their love, coalesced into a priceless ruby. She’ll admonish him to never, ever open the box. That would break the spell forever and end their marriage. And then she’ll wait.

If he truly loves her still, he won’t open the keepsake box. The value of the gem inside will not tempt him. There will be time to mend their relationship, to bridge the rift that has developed between them. That is, if he loves her. And if he doesn’t…

She snaps the keepsake box shut and waits for her husband to come home.

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Fiction The Keepsake Box

About The Author

Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. Over 60 of his short stories have appeared in magazines such as Nature, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction. He’s the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology series of humorous SF/F. For more of Alex’s fiction, visit www.alexshvartsman.com.

Fiction

Words by

The Cost

Ashlee Willis

About the story

When writing a retelling, I love to stay close to the classic version, but add a twist in terms of angle.

For Pandora’s Box, instead of viewing the story from afar, I focused on something closer – the relationship between Pandora and her husband – and paralleled it to the greater theme of the story.

I was inspired mainly from just reading the original version of the story and then asking myself some questions, like, “Why did Pandora’s husband help withhold Zeus’ gift from her?” “How would Pandora have felt about her husband, marrying him without the likelihood of ever having seen him before?” Questions like that usually start a whole slew of storylines… so I chose one and followed it!

The Cost Ashlee Willis

My father Zeus cast me from him – proof he was loveless.

He locked tight the only gift he had ever given me – proof he was faithless. And he gave me in marriage to Theus – proof he held no respect for me.

Morning light slants across the tiny room and I lie awake, seeing things that aren’t there. Heaven, a silver crown to fit my head and golden streets beneath my feet. Things I should have had. Things I’ve never seen, yet somehow still yearn for. Things to make this life I’ve been dropped into seem as pale as a candle against the sun.

Theus stirs in the bed next to me, bringing me back from my bitter thoughts. When he opens his eyes, his first look is for me. Smiling, he puts a rough-skinned hand gently to my face. “Dora.”

I try to smile back, but I’m not sure the muscles in my face obey.

A year ago I had never seen this man. I watch as his handsome face, now so familiar, falls slightly at my cold response. He turns from me to get out of bed, and I am close behind. For there’s breakfast to make, and cleaning to do, and errands to run. I’m a wife now, the daughter of a god no more.

“Husband, fetch down that spoon there – I can’t reach it.” In one arm I carry a pot, with the other I stoke the fire beneath the stove. But my mind is far away.

Theus holds out the ladle to me, but does not let go when I grasp it. I look at him.

“I’m happy to get this spoon, as I’m happy to do your bidding in all things. I love you, Pandora,” he says in a voice quiet as a lullaby, his blue eyes bent on my face.

“Obedient,” I mutter, jerking the spoon from him and turning back to the stove.

“What?”

“I said you are obedient, Theus.” My voice raises slightly, but I don’t look at him. “You were obedient to your

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parents when they bade you listen to Zeus. You were obedient to Zeus where he bade you marry his castoff daughter.

And you are obedient to Pandora now when she bids you get her a spoon to stir your gruel. Ha.” My laugh is bitter. I can’t help it. “Look where obedience has brought you, husband.”

Now I glance over my shoulder and see something I have never seen on my husband’s face before. Anger. But only for a moment. Then it is gone, replaced with that hard-won patience he values so much. A pity, that – I had almost seen something in him to make me pay attention for once.

“Zeus commands many things,” says my husband. “But he cannot command love, not in me nor in any other man or woman alive. I love where I choose. And I love you.”

Most would think me a cold woman not to respond to those words. But most would simply not understand. In silence I spoon out the gruel into two wooden bowls and place them on the table, without once looking up at my husband.

A heavy hand falls on my shoulder. Theus pulls me around to look into his face, full of pain. “What is this about, truly, Dora? Is it the box again? I asked you not to speak of it. Zeus said we may not open it – not now or ever.”

The familiar feeling is in me again, at the mention of that infernal box. The feeling that nothing will ever be right in the world if I cannot have the gift that was meant for me – the gift that was only partially given.

Why do you keep it from me, I want to cry to my father, when you know it is meant to be mine?

Instead, I hiss, “It’s not the box. It’s only… it’s only…”

My life? My freedom? My restless, hungry spirit, calling for more, more…

“I know what it is,” says Theus.

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“You do?” I give him a look that says I don’t believe him.

“You long for more, Dora – you think I can’t see it? More than the life we have, more than what Zeus gave us.”

I’m shocked he’s hit at the very heart of it, but my face remains stony. “Then, why don’t you do something about it?”

My voice is shot with venom, I can hear it. For a moment I think Theus will walk away from me. But then his strong arms are around me, and the wetness on my face tells me I must be crying.

“I try to give you more, Dora, I try, I try … if only you could see it.” His voice is a heartbreaking mixture of kindness and sorrow. His embrace surprises me with the comfort it gives. And it whispers of something just beyond my grasp – something that I can almost see … but not quite.

I shake my head and step away from him.

“Thank you, Theus,” I say, wiping tears. And I mean it. I am thankful, in that moment, to have had the solace of his arms. I smile at him, willing him to leave. He smiles back, a smile full of love. A smile that tells me he believes in our future together.

How wrong he is. We have no future – not so long as that box glares at me every night. Not so long as my husband keeps the key to what is mine and mine alone.

After Theus is gone, I slam the cupboard door, wiping more angry tears from my face. The latch doesn’t catch, and it swings back open. So I slam it harder.

A clinking noise makes me freeze. It’s a noise only metal makes.

I am at the cupboard in half a heartbeat, scrabbling at the base of it like a dog digging for a bone. It is heavy, but I soon have it inched away from the wall with enough space for my slender arm to fit into. My fingers slide through a fine layer of dust and meet with the cold of brass.

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And just like that, the key is in my hand. The key Theus tells me he has kept away out of love for me, when I know that if his love was true he would keep nothing from me.

Nor would my father have done.

This box is yours, Pandora, yours alone – but you must not open it. My father’s thunderous voice swirls into memory. And Theus’ voice follows, more softly: Some gifts are meant to protect, not plunder.

“But you should have given me more,” I insist aloud to the empty room, not knowing if I talk to father or husband. “The daughter of a god deserves more than this.

So much more.”

My hands shake almost too much to fit the key into the lock. But at last the key turns and the lock opens with a heavy scrape. I have longed to hear that sound for nearly a year, although something tells me it has been much longer than that, in truth.

Without another thought, I reach for the lid and throw it back.

The world comes to an end.

A thousand banshees scream past my ears, laden with the rank odor of death and sickness. Images, creatures, even people, rush from out of the box. It is impossible. They’re horrible, all of them, beyond compare.

I want to push my face into my pillow and hide, but I cannot tear my eyes away. They sweep over me, tearing at my clothes, roaring in my ears, baring their bloody teeth in my face until I am weeping and screaming like I have lost my wits.

None of them stay … they fly round the house and out the windows, crashing the panes and splintering the wood as they go. They leave me crumpled on the bed. My body is unharmed, but I am aware of a horrid throbbing, deep within me, as if there is a part of me there that I never knew about – a part of me I should have held more precious.

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That part of me is torn in shreds. It will never be whole again, I think.

“Pandora,” a voice is at my ear and I jump violently. It is my husband. His eyes are red-rimmed, as if he’s been weeping too, and his hand is bewilderingly gentle on my hair. His blue eyes hold no reproach. Even so, I’m filled with shame so deep I don’t think I can live beneath the weight of it.

He does not ask, “How could you?” He does not say, “You have loosed hell on earth.” Instead he sits next to me and takes the box from my lap, looking into its emptiness.

“You will find nothing there,” I whisper. “They’ve all gone, and it’s all my doing. Zeus will strike me down now, I know, and you will be rid of a wife who was never good to you anyway. Perhaps it’s for the best.”

Theus’ dark brows come together as he shakes his head.

His blue eyes pierce me, and I see tears forming in them.

He is fiercely angry, I can see, and I wonder if he will strike me, or perhaps force me to leave him. An hour ago I would not have cared. Now the thought of leaving him makes me grasp at my chest, for I think I can feel my heart cracking in half.

“Even now, Dora, you do not understand, do you?” Theus’ voice shakes with emotion. “Even now you can’t see what I have tried to offer you – the more that you have always wished for.”

I am nodding, grasping wildly at his hands. “I see it, I do see it now, Theus. I swear to you. It’s only that I’m afraid I’ve lost it forever. Please … please …”

My husband looks once again into the box’s depths, then sets it down and gathers me into his arms. He kisses my forehead, then my nose, then my lips. I sob with anguish and relief.

What a price to pay, I think as I kiss him back. What a cost, just to see something that was there all along.

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Over my husband’s shoulder I see something tiny perched on the box’s rim. From its darkness has crawled a creature like I’ve never seen, winged and beautiful and fragile as a cobweb. It flies to me and its touch as it lands on my ear is light as the warmth of sunlight.

Then it is gone, its small wings propelling it out the shattered window, into the shattered world.

It will be crushed, I think anxiously. It will be destroyed by those other horrors. Killed even by breathing the same foul air that they do.

But then Theus looks at me, and I see the light of that bright, tiny creature within his eyes. And in joy, I laugh.

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Fiction The Cost

About The Author

Ashlee Willis is the author of fantasy for young adults. She lives in the heart of Missouri with her husband and young son. While most of her days are balanced between writing, reading and homeschooling, she also finds time to enjoy tea with friends, forest walks, photography, and piano playing.

Ashlee’s debut novel, The Word Changers, released in eBook recently, and will release in paperback June 23, 2014. You can find it at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. For updates about her work or to hear her rant about fantasy and fairy tales, check out her blog: ashleewillisauthor.wordpress. com.

Fiction

Words by

The Treasure Within

Morgan Jordan

About the story

The Treasure Within, like all stories, wrote itself. I possess a passion for the commonality between men and women. Having been raised to believe my own sex inferior, I have come to learn in my advanced days, that women and men both have the strength within to rise and stand. Our differences are not as great as has been rumored. Hence: The Treasure Within.

THE TREASURE WITHIN

Morgan Jordan

The key hangs around her neck, as it has for most of her life.

Why had she never used it to open the box? “Wait till you feel there is absolutely no way out.” Papa’s words, borne on the ocean breeze, whisper to her, “Then open the box and you’ll find what you need.” *** She was just a girl when he lay dying. Strong hands that once gripped hammer and saw—the tools of his trade—weakened by age and disease, gripped her arm as she stood at his bedside.

It was the last memory she would have of him. How could she bear to watch him go?

That was when he gave her the key and said through his thick, ragged breathing, “My daughter, trust me. There will be times you feel you must look in the box. The secret it holds is powerful though. You must wait till the right moment.”

Her mother had died giving life to Pandora. But her childhood had been happy, spending her days at Papa’s side while he worked in his shop. One of her happiest moments was when he brought home his new bride, Elysande. Pandora was so proud to be like the other children in the Shire. She had a mother at last.

As her father’s life ebbed however, Pandora watched her step-mother when the woman didn’t know—or thought the girl too young to understand—as she twirled her long black tresses and winked at the young men in the marketplace.

Twelve-year-old Pandora shuddered at the fickleness of the woman. Sensing her father’s death would bring a change in the household, she went for the box in his shop. He had hidden it behind his favorite book—Historia Regum Britanniae with its adventurous tales of King Arthur—knowing Elysande would never discover it there, for books were idlesome things to her, and she wouldn’t even allow them in her house.

It wasn’t a very big box. Its domed copper lid gleamed at her, clasped tight with a silver lock to which only she had the key. Pandora caressed it affectionately knowing her papa was the last one to touch it. He must have polished it often she thought and vowed she would do the same.

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What power could it hold? A wise man; perhaps he knew about his young wife and had placed money inside the box so Pandora could run away should life become unbearable. She shook the small chest. There was no sound. It wasn’t even very heavy. Might it contain valuable notes? She thought hard on these things and decided to wait.

Shortly after her papa’s death, his widow announced her marriage to a man half her age. A foreboding cloud engulfed their home. Pandora took the box out, ready to make use of its treasure, but she clung to those last words—wait till you feel there is absolutely no way out—and she returned the box to its hiding place. She would not risk squandering her father’s legacy on such trifling difficulties.

So she endured the giggling and unrestrained ardor of the couple, and as she grew older, the lascivious looks of the young husband, pulling away as his fingers reached to play with her auburn hair, or stepping aside quickly when he tried to brush against her as they passed in the dining hall. Her stepmother had never held kind feelings for Pandora and this added to her scorn.

Her father had been the favorite carpenter to the Count; apprentices came from vast distances to learn at the feet of the Master Carpenter. Consequently, they had always had a fine home and even a small staff. Elysande soon determined they needed to save money since there were no more students to bring in extra cash. She decided Pandora could use her ‘idle time’ to do menial tasks such as cleaning the scullery, washing the linens and emptying the dust bins. Tempted to use the box, Pandora held it in hers arms. No, she decided, there were worse things that could happen. She would save her father’s endowment for something more important.

Elysande grew desperate for more money, especially since her young husband had turned out to be much less the provider than her dead husband had been. It was no surprise then that on the day Pandora turned sixteen, Elysande announced she would be married to the Count of Dumas. Pandora turned pale.

“How can you do this?” she cried. “You never consulted me.

I do not wish to marry.”

Timeless Tales 2 33

“Impudent girl!” Elysande answered. “The honor and amenities this will bring are innumerable. Besides, I’ve seen those green eyes of yours leering hungrily at my husband. You’re not fooling me. Since you are in such a hurry to have a man, well, the Count is a fine catch.”

“I don’t want your husband, and the Count is old. He’s at least fifty.” Pandora pleaded and wept but to no avail. As her wedding day approached she began to pack. She picked up the box her father had entrusted to her. Perhaps it was time. Perhaps now she should open her father’s trove. She drew up the key from where it rested against her bosom. Blowing the dust from the rounded lid, she felt guilty for not having kept her promise to cherish and polish the box, as had her papa. She stopped.

Even if there was a king’s ransom in the box, to flee would bring disgrace to her father’s name. The Count’s soldiers might even come after her. There would be no pity for one so ungrateful.

No, she must face this situation and make the best of it. And so she married the Count.

The years went by and Pandora kept the box on the table near her window, next to her father’s favorite book, in her chamber. To her surprise, she found that while the Count and she were years apart in age, he was a kind, patient man.

A childless widower, he was overjoyed when Pandora presented him with four fine healthy children—three sons and a lovely daughter. The Count showered his young wife with love and affection.

Pandora stood by her chamber window looking out at the sea and thought; I certainly might have done worse for myself.

Some of the men her friends had married, while they possessed youth and winning charms, had proved cruel and wanton. She was thankful that she had saved the box for another time. *** It was when her one-year-old son awoke vomiting into the night that she thought again of the box. Taking him from the arms of his nurse she crooned and walked with him, comforting the boy through the night as he grew pale and grey. Could

34 Timeless Tales 2

the box save her child? Could there ever be anything more important, more urgent than the life of her precious son? She decided she would open the box if the boy had made no improvement by dawn.

Pandora held her son close, arms aching, heart heavy with worry and watched as fingers of gold stretched across the dark sky. She looked at the box setting in the window of the nursery.

At that moment, the nurse hurried into the room with an old woman whose piercing green eyes smoldered with wisdom and insight. She wore a blue shawl over her head and shoulders from which several strands of iron grey hair escaped. “My Lady, she knows many cures. She can help the boy.”

The woman took Pandora’s son and massaged oils and potions into his small, limp arms and legs. She rubbed his back and belly until the boy glistened and smelled of mint and olive oil. With a silver spoon she trickled a mixture of herbs and oils down his throat and the boy, who had not been able to keep down water, suddenly cried for his mother’s breast and drank his fill. *** Now, no longer a girl, Pandora sits alone. The Count has died and her children have grown. One by one they married and went their own way. At her chamber window—the one looking out towards the sea—she wonders how she will live in such solitude. This must be the hardest thing I have ever had to endure. Everyone is gone, father, husband, children. The box rests on her lap. She removes the key from her neck where it’s hung for most of her life, and she wonders, if not now, when?

Inserting the key she hears her father’s words, you’ll know when it’s time.

Well, it’s time, she sighs and inserts the key.

The old lid resists. Pandora hugs it to her chest and plies with all her strength. Finally the old wood groans as it gives.

She turns the box to face her, looks inside and there, in the bottom of her box, is a mirror.

Timeless Tales 2 35

Fiction The Treasure Within

About The Author

Morgan Jordan wrote her first novel when she was ten-years-old. Looked up the name and address of a publishing company in the front of a book (this was before computers) and sent her handwritten novel to Random House. They replied with a lovely letter of appreciation and encouraged her to finish school and send them another story.

Well, life kind of interfered. While raising four children she became a musician, song-writer and performing storyteller.

After thirty years performing and recording a children’s album, (still available at CD Baby) called Caterpillar Music, she’s writing again.

Two of her stories have been published, one in Midnight Circus: Classic Lit on the Side and another in Copperfield Review.

Fiction

Words by

Instructions in my Absence

Aislinn Batstone

About the story

I wrote “Instructions in my Absence” specifically for the Timeless Tales’ submission call. On this occasion I wanted to write science fiction and with our Southern Hemisphere flu season fast approaching, I thought of the deadly virus strains scientists keep for research. What if Pandora unwittingly released one of those?

True to the myth, all hell would break loose.

But when I re-read the Pandora story, and found that Pandora had been the victim of a set-up, I wanted to change things around.

My Pandora would be smarter than that. Instead of playing out the sequence of events decided by someone else, she’d be secretly calling the shots all along.

This decision dictated the point of view and the ironic title of the story. With the basic structure decided, the story flowed easily and the first draft was finished within a few hours.

INSTRUCTIONS IN MY ABSENCE

Aislinn Batstone

Friday 21 March: Sydney, Australia At the Centre for Vaccine Research at Sydney Public Hospital, Douglas Ruth put the finishing touches on his latest scheme. It was Friday night, the laboratory empty. Tomorrow he would fly to Sweden for a conference.

He’d placed the pathogen inside a vial with a broken lid inside locker 56 of their storage unit. It wouldn’t look like his fault when Theodora released the newest H1N1 into the population of Sydney. He would be miles away. Nor would he be at any risk of catching it on his return. He’d already developed the vaccine, applied for and been granted a patent on the unapproved version, and deemed it safe enough to treat himself.

Douglas secured the locker and left the biosecure storeroom, which he locked with the larger key. Now he just needed to pack a few more items for his conference visit, and send an email to Theodora, better known as ‘Dora’, Panopoulos. He sat down at his desk.

Ah, Dora, his ambitious young protégé. He did hope she survived the outbreak . At least his ex-colleague Steve Panopoulos wouldn’t be around to suffer if his daughter died. But Dora was an attractive young thing who, most appealingly, had always expressed great admiration for her boss.

Unfortunately for her, her best qualities, ambition and scientific curiosity, made her the perfect choice to speed up the progress of his vaccine and make Douglas a lot of money.

He began to compose an email.

To: dora_pan@cvr.hospsyd.nsw.gov.au Re: Instructions for my absence Hi Dora, Thanks again for holding the fort while I’m away.

My return flight arrives Friday, but I’ll probably take the weekend to get over the jetlag and be back on deck on Monday. Let me know if you need me before that.

40 Timeless Tales 2

I’ve been working up something new, now secured in locker 56, which I’m looking forward to showing it to you when I get back. This virus came from one of the sty samples. I believe it has strong potential for humanto-human and some of its markers suggest extreme virulence. The stakes are high—more fun for us!

Douglas paused. Markers of virulence on viral cells was Dora’s special interest. That alone should be enough to get her into locker 56. He’d cultivated a bad habit in their laboratory of not suiting up to use the storeroom. Instead, the storeroom was separate from the contamination lab, which was fully sealed, and which they suited up to enter.

So Dora would open the locker before she suited up, exposing her to the virus which she would then spread around Sydney.

You’ll have lots of other things to do with me away, so we’ll save locker 56 for when I get back. I’m really looking forward to working with you on it.

See you next Monday, Doug Douglas smiled and pressed, ‘Send’. He replied to a few other emails and backed up his work for the day before shutting down his main computer. Next time he came into the lab, he’d be Sydney’s superhero, racing to perfect the vaccine for a deadly H1N1 outbreak. The trip to Sweden would be a relaxing break in advance. *** Wednesday 26 March: Lund, Sweden Douglas still hadn’t heard from Dora. Despite scouring the internet for news of a H1N1 outbreak in Sydney, no information had come from that source either. He was desperate for any indication that the plan was going smoothly.

Timeless Tales 2 41

Dora must have opened the locker by now, and he’d expected at least to have heard from her that she was sick and that the running of the small lab team had been passed down in the chain of command.

He’d made footprints in the thick carpet of his hotel room by pacing the narrow space between the bed and the wide-screen television. Perhaps he should have taken two weeks’ break to allow time for the virus to take hold. But Dora might already be sick. It would be characteristic of her to soldier on. If that was the case, she’d be passing the virus on to the two PhD students and the Research Assistant. Douglas shrugged. Collateral damage.

He checked the time difference on his tablet.

It was eleven at night in Sydney. He couldn’t phone her right now, but perhaps an email to check in on what was happening.

Hi Dora, Hope all is okay there. Paper went well. Thanks for your help with the slides.

I might come in to work on Friday afternoon after all. I slept quite well on the flight over and the week has not been tiring. Please do let me know if you need anything. I’ve got email access all the time, or you can phone or Skype me.

Cheers, Douglas.

It was a fine line between asking for information and betraying his excessive interest. He hoped this email achieved a casual tone. Send.

He switched on the television to distract himself, but found he couldn’t resist flicking through the news channels.

42 Timeless Tales 2

He knew this was a devastating virus with strong humanto-human transmissibility. Even if Dora was successfully fighting it off, everyone she’d been in contact with shouldn’t.

So why wasn’t it making headlines?

Perhaps she’d managed to hold off on opening the locker until early this week. Usually she worked on weekends and, perhaps too optimistically, he’d pictured her checking out the virus on Saturday or Sunday when none of the other lab workers were around.

His tablet tinkled ‘new message’ and Douglas looked down. Dora had replied.

Hi Doug, All running smoothly. I’ve got a bit of a cold but managing with the help of paracetamol and codeine.

Stop worrying! See you Friday.

Dora Douglas let out his breath. The plan was going ahead, even if more slowly than he’d hoped. She must really have a powerful immune system. Perhaps he could catch her on Skype and see for himself how sick she really was.

He opened the program but her avatar showed a red dot.

Not available.

It didn’t matter. He could relax, shower and leave the hotel room, meet up with some of the other delegates for a coffee and catch some of the papers. If she was sick then she’d opened the locker, and that was the main thing. The knots in his shoulders eased and he hummed as he got ready to go out. ***

Timeless Tales 2 43

Friday, 28 March: Sydney, Australia News of a H1N1 outbreak in Sydney had still not reached Sweden when Douglas boarded his plane. The long flight made him anxious. He hadn’t slept well, turning over in his mind all the different possibilities for how events were proceeding at the laboratory.

He arrived at Sydney International Airport even more frazzled than usual after a long flight, and caught a taxi directly to the hospital. While in the backseat, composed himself, smoothing his shirt, combing his hair and sipping water from the bottle he’d been given on the flight.

He reached the laboratory at half past four in the afternoon. The small suite of offices was empty, so he went through to the main lab. From outside he could hear loud music, and when he pushed open the door, it assaulted him. A banshee voice over a heavy nightclub beat. Doof, doof, doof.

Three faces in protective goggles smiled at him from the bench. Someone’s arm reached over and turned the music down.

Dora pushed her goggles off her face. “Doug, what are you doing here? You must be shattered.” Her long brown hair was in a glossy ponytail and her olive skin glowed. Her eyes were bright and clear. To Douglas she looked like the healthiest human on the planet.

“I thought you said you had a cold.” Bewildered, he spoke before thinking. But it was okay. His question would not give him away, just show him as caring.

“All better now.” She grinned.

He stared at the others, the PhD student and the Research Assistant. It might seem suspicious if he asked if anyone else had gotten sick, but he didn’t really need to. He could

44 Timeless Tales 2

see they were both perfectly well. Cogs moved in his tired brain. He knew the characteristics of that virus. If Dora had recovered and the others weren’t sick then Dora had not opened the locker. But then what should he do next?

The plan must go ahead. The only answer was to get her to open it.

“Dora, I want to talk to you about something.” He turned to the other two and forced a smile. “It’s Friday—why don’t you both take an early mark?”

“Cool,” said the RA. Douglas led Dora back towards the offices and storage room. With a quarter of his attention, he listened to the chat of the RA and PhD student as they packed their things and prepared to leave the lab.

Douglas took Dora into his office. “I’m keen to show you this new strain I picked up from the sty samples.”

“Well I’m dying to see it. But I can wait until Monday if you want to sleep first.”

“No, let’s have a look now.” Douglas put his suitcase and briefcase down near his desk.

“Awesome.”

It sounded like the other two had gone, so Douglas took Dora into the storeroom. He handed her the locker key.

“Here, you do the honours.”

“Ooh, exciting.” She opened the locker and pulled out the vial.

The vial had changed somehow. A different lid. Not the one he’d modified to allow the contents to leak out. White, not red.

The door opened and the RA and PhD student stepped into the storeroom.

“It’s okay, Doug, I’ve secured this sample,” Dora said.

“What? You weren’t supposed to open it.”

Timeless Tales 2 45

“Yes I was. You wanted me to.”

“What are you talking about?” Douglas was too tired to deal with this. Dora didn’t look friendly, and the other two seemed to have aged. No longer young and impressionable, but hard-faced, and he suddenly understood that Dora had arranged for them to be there as witnesses. Be very careful now, Doug, he told himself.

“Dora, I don’t know what you’re talking about. There was a secure viral sample from a pigsty in that vial. What have you done to it?”

“The vial was insecure, Doug, and the timing of your patent on the vaccine suggests that you wanted the virus released. You thought I’d spread it out into the world for you.”

“What patent?”

“Oh, come on, Doug. That’s a matter of public record.”

“So my research was more advanced than I told you. I don’t know where you’re getting the rest of it. All those accusations. You can’t prove something like that.”

“I think I can, Doug.” Dora reached into her pocket and pulled out an identification card. Australian Federal Police.

Federal Police! But Dora had been desperate to work with him since her undergraduate days. How could she be a Federal Policewoman? He didn’t think her father would have had a chance to put negative thoughts in her mind— he’d died when Dora was only a teenager, soon after the two men had argued—but perhaps…

Douglas was tired, so tired. He couldn’t think. It seemed that Dora had been one step ahead the whole time they’d worked together.

“Douglas Ruth, you’re under arrest pending charges from the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005. And it’s not just this offence.

You’ve been lucky before in the timing of your vaccine

46 Timeless Tales 2

patents—too lucky. We know you have a habit of fast-tracking your research. And this time you thought you could manipulate me, didn’t you, Doug? But my Dad always taught me to think for myself. Sorry about that.”

Cold tight cuffs clicked shut around Douglas’s wrists.

“Most importantly, Doug, we know this virus strain didn’t come from any sty sample. You created it. I’ve tracked your every move for the past two months. You’re going down for a very long time.”

Timeless Tales 2 47

Fiction Instructions in my Absence

About The Author

Aislinn Batstone is an eclectic reader whose tastes range from the 19th century classics to 21st century mysteries. Since having children, she most enjoys light-hearted fiction where the bad guys get what they deserve — or aren’t so bad really. Her stories have been published in various anthologies and magazines in Australia and elsewhere, including this one at Plan B Mystery Magazine. Aislinn lives in Sydney with her three favourite people and the world’s best dog.

Fiction

Words by

Dealer’s Choice

Martin Clark

About the story

Dealer’s Choice” is a vignette drawn from my larger Lost Souls narrative arc, concerning a hijacked colonisation mission and the society it ultimately founded. While writing I realised it intersected with a fantasy story – Catch My Shadow– which features the ‘Powers’; body-hopping supernatural entities who guide man’s development. This sounded close enough to stored personalities being transplanted into donor bodies for a semi-crossover tale.

It may be that the civilisation of Lucky Boy ultimately regresses to a pre-industrial society in a sword-and-not-quite-sorcery setting, but that’s another story...

de al e r ' s c hoic e

mart in c l ar k

They call me Lucky Boy because when I play poker, I’m the man to beat. A reputation like that has legs and so I get invitations to games, big and small, all across the planet.

But I was born up here, in orbit, and that’s where I’ll stay.

So the players come to me, up the gravity well, to visit Jah Nation. We sit in the Garden surrounded by the hydroponics tanks, and we play cards, and I win. *** I headed back to my place from the latest game, money in my pocket; money that would buy a whole range of nice things from dirt-side. Although I could have a cabin I prefer a lean-to out here, where there’s room to breathe.

Marcus was waiting for me, looking worried. If something rattles him it’s time for everyone else to turn and run. Run real quick. Except I was a Face, with a reputation for cool, and that nailed me to the spot.

He jerked his thumb towards the plastic sheet that served me as a door. “You got company. Two dudes from dirt-side. Trouble.”

I gave him an easy grin. “Noted. You got my back?”

He raised his club. “Always.” It was carved from ‘oak’; ancient, from when there were still trees aboard. It was his badge as Enforcer but still capable of busting heads if need be.

I nodded and went inside. The lamp was on. Two men were standing there, both pale-faced and wearing clean overalls, straight out of the packet. The smaller dude looked anxious but the other guy was bad news. There was an air of violence about him, like death only happened to other people.

52 Timeless Tales 2

The big dude looked me up and down. “You the one they call Lucky Boy?” “That’s the name I go by. I guess they call you two ‘Disrespect’ and ‘Piss-take’, seeing as how you’re here uninvited.”

Sometimes you have to come on strong, if only for how it gets told afterwards.

He clenched his fists, but let it slide. “I’m Mason, this is Boyd. We’re on a schedule and don’t have time for pleasantries. We need to see your particular talent in action.”

I gave him the hand-wash and cast aside gesture, showing his problem wasn’t mine. “Sun comes on in five, and that’s then I sleep. If you want to play cards, come back some other time. You cause any trouble and you’ll take the drop home quicker than Eve juggles souls.”

Boyd giggled. “Synchronicity, indeed.”

Mason glared at him. “It’s just a saying of theirs. It means nothing.” He hoisted a box onto my table. “We want you to open this, Lucky Boy. More accurately, we want you to open this so that it contains what we want it to contain.”

I read ‘Cryo-Archive’ on the side and shied away. “That’s hot! Get it the frak away from me!”

He snorted. “You seriously think I’d stand here and let radiation rot my bones? It’s been thoroughly decontaminated, I assure you.” Boyd, well, he looked unconvinced.

I got my cool back on-line. “I ain’t no lock-pick, man. I could lend you a hammer though.”

It was like I’d pressed Boyd’s ‘on’ button. “Ah, but the state of the contents is currently unknown and, indeed, unknowable. We believe you’re able to inadvertently manipulate the potential outcome on a quantum level, with a significantly increased chance of viability.”

Timeless Tales 2 53

There was a pause. I frowned. “Care to try that again, man, but make sense this time? What’s in the box?

Best not be another damn cat, I don’t trust nothing with four legs.”

Boyd opened his mouth but Mason laid a hand on his arm to shut him up. “People, Lucky, people.” He gestured around us. “This ship, the Manhattan, most of the colonists it carried didn’t make it. But their memories, their personalities, were recorded and stored away as insurance against just-” Boyd cut it. “We urgently need some of them back. Old minds for new bodies.”

I made the sign of Jah. “You’re talking about ghosts from the cyro-vaults, possession. And I figure in this séance, how, exactly?”

Mason ground his teeth and I figured Boyd had zero future once they left. He sighed. “We know how you win at poker, Lucky. You cheat.”

That made me colour up. “You take that back! You take that back or my man Marcus is gonna’ bust you in the mouth!”

Mason held up a hand. “You can foretell the future, although you might not call it that.”

I stared at him. No one had ever called me out before.

I play an honest game but when I lift those first cards it’s like I can see the final hand laid out behind my eyes. So I know when to fold and I never, ever, bluff.

My fingers itched, like before a deal, and I rubbed my hands. “You figure I can read your box like a deck? That doesn’t change what’s inside.”

Boyd ran his hand over the surface. “Ah, but we think it does, somehow. You’re an anomaly, Lucky, a singular disrup-

54 Timeless Tales 2

tion beyond the Heisenberg threshold, a corruption of objective reality at the quantum level. What you’ll find inside very much depends on what you want to find inside.”

I laughed. “And what is it that I want to find inside?”

Boyd blinked rapidly. “Twelve spheres, crystal lattice neural nets, beneath an active electrostatic barrier. But you have to hurry. Once removed from the storage grid the built-in capacitor can only sustain—” Again Mason put a hand on Boyd to shut him up. The man could sure run on at the mouth. “Pull this off, Lucky, and you can have anything the surface can provide, gift-wrapped.”

“Anything?”

He nodded. “Anything.”

I flexed my fingers and stepped up to the table. The box label was still legible. “Ascended thirteen to twenty-four.

Are you a religious man by nature, Mason?”

He frowned at me. “Religious?”

“The Ascended, man, the Powers. I’m not messing with scripture, and that’s final.”

Mason pinched the bridge of his nose. “A social anthropologist would have a field day up here. Look, Eve was simply an intelligent entity, like Jah – the Janitor Aft servitor that runs this ship. The Powers as you call them were designed to be living expert systems…Oh, screw this, can you give us what we want or not?”

I shrugged. The box felt cool beneath my fingertips.

I could see…circles; a pattern, four by three, like the top was glass. I could also hear whispers, voices, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then my name, repeated, repeated, repeated-

Timeless Tales 2 55

I yanked my hand back. “Walk away. There’s fury in there, fury ready to bite.”

Mason grabbed my shirt, his eyes hard. “Open the box.

I won’t tell you again.”

I heard the curtain move and knew Marcus was standing behind me. There was no backing down. I gave Mason the crossed fingers. “Frak you.”

Click.

We all looked. Boyd had the lid open. Blue light from inside made him look like a corpse. He giggled. The blue light became a white glare. Boyd’s face went from rapture to dead scared in one.

The white glare went nova. *** I lay on the floor, in the dark. But the dark was in my head and I rubbed my eyes with hands I couldn’t see. From outside I could hear shouts, screams, people hurting, people filled with rage. I sat up. “Marcus?”

No-one answered. Fear helped me stand. My hands found the table, the box, the lid. Inside lay eleven dark globes and one of neon blue. I didn’t need eyes to see them. I raised the light – and found I was looking up at myself, from the palm of my hand.

“Activation is now complete. The others did not require a human touch but they are degenerate intelligences, corrupt and vengeful after centuries of confinement. However I have remained fully intact and coherent. Do not be alarmed, you have nothing to fear.”

The voice was a rich baritone – and in my head.

Behind me Marcus got to his feet. I turned around, then

56 Timeless Tales 2

had to twist the globe to keep him in sight. “Marcus, you OK?” “You were compatible, Lucky Boy, but Marcus is an ideal match. You can keep the globe, though, with my thanks.”

The voice was that of my friend but it wasn’t him speaking.

“Those on the surface are no longer genetically suitable but up here, isolated and inbred, the citizens of your ‘Jah Nation’ are another story.” He turned his head towards the sounds of mayhem. “Our new Furies will soon tire of the Manhattan and descent to the planet. Nothing down there can stop them.”

His cold indifference made me shiver. “Who are you, man? You gonna’ save us?”

He smiled. “Save you? Oh, I can bring the others to heel but please don’t mistake my motives as anything more than enlightened self-interest. My name is Kadesh. My area of expertise is horticulture.”

Kadesh tore aside the curtain. “And all this is now my garden.”

Timeless Tales 2 57

Fiction Dealer’s Choice

About The Author

Martin Clark is a freelance writer and occasional poet.

He is the author of supernatural noir novellas produced by Eggplant Literary Productions and short stories in recent Third Flatiron anthologies.

He also and contributes to several online publications including FictionMagazines. com(Nebula Rift), Mythaxis.co.uk and Kraxon. com. His range of subject matter includes science fiction, urban fantasy, romance and westerns. He puts this down to the somewhat eclectic mobile lending library where he grew up.

He works as a local government officer in southwest Scotland but still finds time to be an evil stepfather.

Fiction

Words by

Inside Man

Victorya Chase

About the story

The main impetus for “Inside Man” came from a Shock Totem prompt about killing the first born. My mind went to the idea of original sin – what if your first born did hold all your sins and by killing them, you killed your sins? Then the question became where would they go – and the answer was Pandora’s Box. I was fascinated with the story of Pandora as a child and remember the first version I read where Hope was the worst of all the evils that could be released. A very pessimistic version, for sure, but hope does drive us to do all sorts of things we might not otherwise attempt. Having the sins in the box, well, you can never keep sins

contained for long! That was where Hope came in, because she’s just as active with sinners as with saints. And that looped back to my original view of hope – as one of the worst of all because it doesn’t discriminate and can drive you to do amazingly wonderful things, or absolutely horrid ones.

INSIDE MAN

Hope stood by the punch bowl. She was trying to discourage people from dipping their cups directly in and contaminating the punch, but wasn’t exactly successful. She knew the name of everyone there so would say things like, “Mike, let me get that for you,” or, “Come on Jackson, use the ladle,” her voice rising in volume with each exclamation. People smiled at her, or sneered, and reached across for cups to dip into the bowl. Clara was the worst. A burn victim, she dipped her hand, knit together in tight pink cords of flesh, into the bowl and fished around for clumps of melting sherbet. Hope gave up and moved away from the punch bowl. The cookie tray was almost empty.

Alex stepped to the podium and the room fell silent.

Everyone waited for him to speak.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, scanning the room, lingering a moment on Hope and smiling. “Brothers and sisters, I thank you all for attending today.”

He led each meeting with these words and waited for the audience’s chuckle to pour over him. There was no other place they could be. There was no escape from the deep mahogany walls that held them in, the soft glow that allowed them to barely see each other. People appeared each day, but no on left.

“I thank you tonight, our last night together,” Alex said.

He let the words hang in the air until they slowly sunk into the minds of those listening. “I thank you for your undying,” and here he paused again, watching smiles spread as people got the joke, “faith in me. In our time that is about to come.”

Jeanine was heading to the punch bowl. Hope eyed her.

Jeanine always had dirt under her fingernails that flaked

62 Timeless Tales 2

into everything she touched. Alex began to speak again and Jeanine stopped, hand in the punch bowl, liquid up to the cord tied around her wrist, its frayed ends now bobbing in the cold red.

“At long last,” Alex sighed.

He held up his hands and all eyes were drawn to the scars; long gashes up both arms where he was cut and left to bleed out. The others turned from his scars to look at their own. Jeanine was a deep suffocation blue, purple veins marking trails across her body. Others were missing parts of the skull, or it was sunken in. A few were burnt, like Clara. Some still wore the sacks they were tied in, fashioning them into some sort of shirt or dress.

These badges of memory were evident on each person in the room.

“We the sins,” Alex said, his voice gaining in strength.

“We their sins.”

Hope looked around the room and saw collective memory kick in. The firstborn contained the sins of the parents. It was only in their death that the world was kept pure. Hope had been the first to appear in the meeting room, and as far as she knew she was always there. But the scar on her stomach, a slice from navel to neck, told a different story.

Then came Alex. When he spoke everyone remembered their death. They remembered their anger, and the sin their parents had filled them with.

“Through you,” Alex said, sweeping his hands to include everyone in the room, “I found a way to save us all. We found a way. And, as it was written, a child shall lead us.”

The room was cramped. More people were showing up each day. Hope missed those first days when she was the

Timeless Tales 2 63

only one there, when it was just her and Alex in the small place with the kitchen that somehow had an endless supply of punch and cookies. It was Alex who encouraged her to put the punch out for others. He told her the room would soon fill. He also told her he had a plan. His voice carried through her, and past the walls of their limbo. Whispers made their way out of the wood and to a humanity that sought to trap away the darkness inherent to them. His was a sin that could not be contained, one of beauty hidden in shadows. Someone would listen.

Hope realized Alex hadn’t spoke in a few moments and everyone was holding their breath in anticipation, even her. She was afraid that if everyone exhaled at once the walls would explode. A new person appeared in front of Hope, cleaved almost in two, entrails winding their way across the floor.

“Now,” Alex said. The room shook. Hope put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Suddenly there was light.

The roof of their home, their prison, was peeling away.

“Now!” Alex screamed. “Now! Go forth and seek your revenge! Find your freedom! Claim your reward!”

Alex rose into the light. Others scrambled behind him, crawling atop each other to exit. All but Hope. She stood back and watched the table get knocked over in the scramble. People slid on the upturned punch and tripped over the bowl and cups.

After everyone was gone Hope walked to the light and followed it outside. There lay a young girl, her body a mass of open sores and cuts.

“It’s not easy holding someone else’s sins, is it, dear Pandora?” Hope said.

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Pandora, so loved that Alex’s whisper not to destroy her, but keep her sheltered, was an easy one for the gods to hear.

Hope pulled the girl into her pale arms and began to kiss the scars, one by one.

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Fiction Inside Man

About The Author

Victorya Chase is a writer on the move. She’s taught doctors how to write poetry in the mountains of New Mexico, taught adults in New York City how to write personal essays, and has worked in China. Her work can be seen in a variety of magazines and anthologies but her recent favorite offerings can be found in Lunch Ticket, A Cappella Zoo, and Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi. She has work forthcoming in Cemetery Dance, Goreyesque, and as part of the One Night Stand series at Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.

Fiction

Words by

System Restore

Julie Reeser

About the story

I actually wrote another version of this story that was conventional, but after reading Timeless Tales’ blog, I scrapped the whole thing and started over. I liked the idea of opening all of the secrets of the computerized world as a means of conveying punishment to Man, but being able to end it on a note of rebirth and hope. I think all of us have considered a world without money or other restraints, but realized how dark and difficult it would be before it got better.

MORE TIMELESS TALES STORIES

BY JULIE:

Silver Shadows Issue 6 Psyche & Cupid

June 3rd, 2015 11:00 am EST united states of america Zeus thundered down the stairs. His battered chair wheezed as he sat down hard. When he clicked the mouse, his computer screen jumped to brightness. The call to his cell had come from outside the area, and he had a feeling of dread deep in the pit of his stomach. He frantically keyed in code. He wasn’t quite done, and if he wanted PANDORA to work flawlessly, he was going to need a little more time.

The sound of an approaching helicopter made him think he wasn’t going to get those spare minutes.

The test run on the Federal Reserve had been swift and devastating. If that call was his warning shot, then they had traced him in less than a day, but his fate didn’t matter.

As he touched the keys and wove his mad geometry of open networks and transparent agencies, he heard the sound of his front door being blown off the hinges. He was ready.

He stood and put his hands behind his head just as the barrel of an M-16 rounded the corner. *** June 3rd, 2015 1:00 pm EST the white house General Harold Hughes stood solidly behind his chair, and looked down the long table at the assembled stars of the mightiest military yelling at one another like schoolchildren.

The professional warriors were coming undone, and he needed to find a way to put them all back together. The President had summoned him to the Oval Office at dawn, and then stood unspeaking for an uncomfortable thirty minutes. Out of the recognized 196 countries of the world,

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a full 60 had already called and more were queuing up.

“I am going down in history as the man who watched civilization unravel.” President Emetheus lowered himself into his chair and rubbed his hands through his hair.

“General, the entire military is open and exposed to every wahoo with an internet screen. I want you to call an emergency session of the Joint Chiefs. You’ve shown me that you can lead and think creatively. That is what we need now, not lines and rules, but someone who can cut corners and red tape.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Every military base schematic, nuclear warhead code, situational planning, satellite intel, and even photos of our embedded spies are accessible, and it isn’t just us. This is the case for every country, every military, every government with a computer using files encrypted to be failsafe. I can’t even begin to address the banking system failures.” He stopped and looked at General Hughes in despair.

“Well, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so...it seems that could be our hope. If we are all exposed, then we are all safe.”

President Emetheus paused. His head came up and he extended his hand to the General. “Well then, you need to sell that hope to the world. I don’t envy you, Herm. The job I’ve given you is a Herculean task.” They shook hands on that chance of a brave new world.

The volume of the room rose significantly, and General Hughes was recalled to his purpose. He clicked the overhead projector to life, and with the familiar hum, the room slowly came to silence.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is your enemy.”

A file unzipped and black and white code began to fill the screen.

“It was christened PANDORA by its maleficent creator; a kid with acne and algebra homework. We have him in

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custody, but he is refusing to cooperate. He tells us that this...beauty...is his duty to Mankind. He seems to believe that disrupting every bank, every data file, and every secret will herald in a Utopia for his generation. He imagines a world without criminal and clandestine activity. A noble vision, but one that will cause global panic. Our duty is twofold. We have an international team of coding and computer scientists working on cracking this virus and putting the cat back in the bag, so to speak. While this is our ultimate goal, the short-term work is up to you. We need the message circulated loud and clear from every CEO down to the guy emptying the wastebaskets that this was planned. This requires a full media blitz. I want you to give interviews and hold meetings with anyone with a microphone. This was NOT a hack. This was exactly what that snot-nosed genius says...a way to improve the lives of the common man, and it was our idea.”

Someone’s pen clattered to the table. He let his gaze meet the eyes of every one of the western world’s most capable leadership and found them bereft of vision, with only fear showing through. *** June 3rd, 2015 5:00 pm EST atlanta, ga “Why, yes. We did discuss leaking the plan to the media months ago, but it was decided by senior staff that it would cause a run on the banks and panic.”

“Don’t you think that will still happen?”

“Well, that’s why we are out here trying to get the message to the people. We want everyone to know that they are safe, their needs will be met, and that if everyone remains calm, there will be no crisis.”

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“With all due respect, sir, I think people are scared. How will they buy food?”

“We have coordinated with state and local administrations to set up centralized food distribution centers. People should talk to their local agencies and work together with them to make this feasible. We foresee some shortages at first, but once people understand that they will need to keep producing foods and durable goods to prevent those shortages, we believe it will all come together.”

“Sir, can you address the military security concerns people have expressed?”

“We coordinated this open global era in an effort to bring peace. It is much harder to wage war when there are no secrets. We are concerned about territorial shifts, but these are being addressed by the Secretary of State diplomatically.”

“Sir, what about the warheads? How are we keeping them secure?”

“That is classified information, but please be reassured that we are taking every precaution to prevent those weapons from becoming live.”

“Can you clarify that, sir? Are you saying that you are deactivating the warheads?”

“Ma’am, we have somewhere in the range of 5,000 warheads. It will take us time, but we are making it a priority.” *** June 10th, 2015 3:00 pm MST arizona, usa The first rogue missile left its grave of Arizona dirt behind.

The destination wasn’t important. No country was left untouched by the panic that was immediate and unforgiv-

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ing. Borders shifted. Population numbers fell to those silent weapons of refugee migration - disease and starvation.

Everything shrank back to a smaller center of focus. It was a regression of growth that encouraged people to meet their neighbors for the first time in years, and in some cases, annihilate those neighbors. *** June 10th, 2025 Approx 9 a.m. athens, ga Elpis sang to the group of adults and children gathered after the day’s voting and news. The patch of violets was warming up under her feet as the sun focused its strength for the day ahead. She was singing of a country united and beautiful. It was an old tune from before PANDORA. It was sung from the elders down to the littlest child, and she knew from past experience that most of the adults in the audience would cry. The children would reach out and hold the hands of these grieving parents, but the children themselves would feel comforted by her words.

Their generation was one of community and industry.

They would leave here today with their mentors to spend the day learning various trades. Some would come home weary with ink-stained fingertips. Others would fall into bed, tanned and sore, but satisfied with the job of a labor well done. There was a small contingent who wouldn’t come home at all. They worked with medicine and technology in a secured and separate area.

It was a sacrifice needed to keep their community healthy and progressive.

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Her last notes hung in the bright morning air, and the group remained silent as tradition dictated. Their silence was a full-minute memorial to the victims of genocide, greed, and war. She lifted her head as that stillness awakened into a buzzing noise of conversation. She knew that sound from her month of apprenticing to the beekeepers. It was the sound of sweetness to come.

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Fiction System Restore

About The Author

Julie Reeser is a retired critical care nurse who lives in a forest in Montana. She loves to read, knit, and explore the outdoors. (This is like speed dating!) The template dictates that she must now inform you of her wonderful husband, adequate children, and non-crazy amount of birds and cats.

This is her first published work, but you can find her thoughts, pictures, and words at persephoneknits.blogpspot.com.

Fiction

Words by

Your Terms

Julie Sondra Decker

About the story

In the myth, Hope is a symbol, a left-behind spirit meant to inspire others. But what about Hope’s experience? In our own lives, we frequently set others up as inspirations for ourselves—as having purpose for us—without wondering about the cost to those people. I thought it was time to write about a person with an invisible disability--about that person and her needs, not about what she does to inspire or teach the people around her. Those without disabilities or illnesses often try to “fix” people they don’t understand or who are struggling, applying their own misguided standards to folks outside their experience. I wanted to write a story where someone was a friend to Hope without trying to change her or use her, so I imagined the characters having a conversation and collected what happened when the characters opened up to each other. This story is the result.

Julie Sondra Decker

Your Terms

“Ooh, this looks tasty.” Hope peeled back the foil on my casserole dish and licked her lips like a hungry cartoon character. “It’s cold. Do you just throw it in the oven or what?”

“You can do that. Or just microwave what you’ll eat right then.”

“Awesome! Do you want to stay and have some with me?”

I nodded and shut the door tentatively.

Hope’s grin enveloped her face. “Think we can eat the whole thing?”

“Maybe.”

She squeaked like a mouse and puttered into the kitchen, spinning the oven dial to “warm” before offering me a drink.

She hummed as she plunked two glitter-flecked glasses on the counter and filled them with our favorite soda. We shared a favorite soda. I’d found that out last time. Her humming was tuneless but sweet.

“You sure seem happy,” I said as she handed me my drink.

“Shouldn’t I be?” She raised an eyebrow.

I laughed under my breath. “I guess it still seems weird to me.”

Hope sighed. “I have agoraphobia, not depression.”

“Right, but I guess I—” “I know, I know. A reclusive shut-in isn’t supposed to have a personality. We hate all people and all things. Except maybe our cats.” She extended a sarcastic gesture at the obviously catless living room.

I cringed. “Sorry, I guess? I . . . don’t know much about agoraphobia. Your mom said—” “No doubt she said her poor daughter needs a babysitter and a shrink.” She leaned on the counter. “Which one are you?”

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“Neither one, seriously. I just—” “Well are you just being a good neighbor, or does my mom want a spy?”

“You know what, Hope?” “...What?”

“You just cut me off the last three times I was trying to tell you something.” I put my drink on the table and spread my hands. “I’m unarmed, you know. I didn’t barge in here to attack you. Do you really want to keep finishing my sentences pessimistically all day?”

The meek version of her grin came out this time. “Sorry.

I guess I make weird assumptions about people too.”

“Then you want to know why I keep stopping by, or you want me to take off?”

“I do want to know.”

“Great. So yes, checking on you was your mom’s idea.

And I’m a little creeped out if my neighbor never comes out of the apartment and nobody knows if she died in there.

So those are the selfish things. Not wanting to disappoint your mom and not wanting to share a wall with a dead girl.”

“Go on.”

“But I also think we have a lot in common. You have fantasy novels and cookbooks just like I do, and I used to make macramé like you. I never run into people who share my interests, so meeting you is kinda refreshing.”

She fidgeted, still leaning on the counter.

“So,” I continued, “I thought you could be the world’s most convenient friend. You’re next door, and you’re always home, after all.”

“Then you want to be friends?” she asked. “Not Charity Case and Good Samaritan?”

I aimed for a neutral tone. “Do you want friends?”

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Hope shrugged and tossed her ponytail. “I’m agoraphobic, not anti-social.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I picked up my drink again. “But seriously, you don’t have to humor me if it’s not what you want.”

“I think I like us not humoring each other.”

Hope took the casserole out of the oven and spooned it onto plates. She babbled about being excited to eat something with eggs because her preferred grocery ordering system didn’t deliver them, and her mom had stopped bringing her food since that supposedly constituted “enabling her.” The cheery duck-themed kitchen décor, the rainbow-colored potholder, and Hope’s sparkly ponytail elastic stood in contrast to the cloud around her head as she discussed her mother’s latest antics. Her mother had been trying to trick her, force her, and cajole her to “face her fear” and leave the house. It hadn’t been going well.

We ate the casserole sitting on pillows on her bedroom floor, and she opened up her laptop so I could show her the site where I’d gotten the recipe. Then she showed me her grocery service website. Eggs not available.

“I guess they just started getting broken too often,” she said.

“If you really want eggs I can start bringing them to you,” I offered. She rolled her eyes.

“My mom would kill you.”

“She wouldn’t have to find out.”

“Filthy enabler.” She elbowed me lightly, giggling. She sobered gradually, and then turned to me with narrowed eyes. “You know I want to get better, right?”

“I don’t really know anything.”

“It’s not like I like this. It’s not like I chose it. I didn’t just decide one day ‘hey, wouldn’t it be fun if every time I left the house I felt like doom was hanging over my head?’”

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“Is that what it’s like? Sorry, do you mind talking about it?”

“Sometimes it’s like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m walking in the shadow of a floating monster that’ll fall on me if I look up. Sometimes I feel like thousands of eyes are watching me, trying to set me on fire. Sometimes it’s more like this awful presence whispering in the air, like hundreds of little bats are around me, flapping their wings and screeching just beyond what I can hear.”

“Whoa.” I drew back. “That’s creepy. But sort of poetic.

You have a way with words.”

“I’ve written down ‘what it’s like’ a few times. Mostly for my therapist.”

“Okay.”

“It’s like there’s all this—pardon my melodrama, but— evilness outside. Everywhere, pressing in on me. I know it’s irrational, and I don’t know why it never comes inside.”

She shuddered. “I hope it never does figure out how to get in here. If it does, I actually will go mad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve had enough of ‘sorry.’ But I don’t want my new friend trying to be my therapist either, so I probably shouldn’t be talking about it to you.”

“Thanks for trusting me anyway. And I think it’s safer in here too.”

She blinked. “Wait, why?”

“Well, for you. You know. I don’t think you can beat crippling fear with forced exposure, like your mom is pushing.”

“But my fear is irrational. That’s what they say, and logically there isn’t anything to be afraid of.”

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“But feelings are real, even just to you, right? So until you figure out what’s causing it, you shouldn’t have to feel it again and again. You should be able to confront it on your terms.”

“My terms.”

“Yeah.”

“What are those?”

I laughed. “I can’t decide that, ’cause they’re your terms!”

She cracked a smile. “I guess so. What if this isn’t irrational at all? What if there really are evil creatures outside and only I can sense them?” Her lips, pulled up in a smirk, suggested a joke, but her eyes looked oddly serious.

“Then I guess you should let the rest of us know once you’ve figured out how to save us from them.”

“Yeah.” She pulled her knees up and hugged them, leaning against the side of her bed. Her eyes grew glassy in the lengthy silence that followed, and shortly I realized she hadn’t blinked in too long. Was she breathing?

I scrambled up on my knees and moved toward her, stopping just short of shaking her shoulder. I settled for waving my hand in front of her eyes, which brought her out of her miniature fugue. She blinked twice.

“Where’d you go?” I asked, trying not to sound breathless.

“Can we play a game?” Hope asked, her voice weak and papery.

“Um.” I glanced around her bedroom, but I didn’t see any board games or distractions to suggest—the room was crammed with homemade crafts and fantasy books on shelves, vases of dried flowers with dusty petals, and hand-sewn dolls lining her bed. “Like what kind of game?”

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“Let’s pretend,” she said, “that whatever I’m afraid of outside is real. Not just to me,” she added hurriedly, “but actual, physical bad things.” She held both hands up. “If it was you, how would you fight them?”

I shrugged, wondering how this was a game.

“I guess there are two ways to get rid of bad guys. Find out what they want and give it to them, or find out what they want and make sure they can never get it.”

“What do you think they want?”

“I can’t answer that if they don’t talk to me.”

“Then maybe it’s me they want.” She looked at the ceiling, still with her arms around her knees, smiling slightly. “How can I fight them if I can’t even leave my house?”

“Maybe you are fighting them by not leaving the house.”

Hope returned her gaze to me. “It hardly feels like a victory for me. It feels like they have me trapped.

They won.”

“Or maybe they can never win completely if you stay where you’re strong. Hey, if you’re our secret weapon against them, we need to know where to find you, right?

It only makes sense if you’re our only hope.”

“I cannot believe you just made that horrible pun.”

I covered my mouth, grinning. “I can’t either. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I can’t hide from them forever.”

“I have an idea. Let’s try something.” I stood up and offered my hand. “Another game.”

She tensed. “It doesn’t involve me going outside, does it?” She pierced me with narrowed eyes.

“No. Definitely not. You’re the boss.”

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She let me help her up and followed me to the door.

“You stay here,” I said, and opened the door.

“I was doing that anyway.”

Hope and I stood facing each other at the doorway, with me barely outside and her just at the edge of the foyer. She shifted from foot to foot, hands behind her back like she feared a stray hand would leave her vulnerable to being pulled outside.

“If you leave the door open,” I said, “they don’t come in, right?”

“No. They stay out.”

“That means you control whether they can reach you.

You don’t have to take a step.”

“I don’t have to take a step,” she repeated.

“They can never touch you unless you let them. You hear that, bad guys?” I said to the air around me.

“You can’t touch me,” said Hope, louder than I had.

She pulled her hands from behind her back and crossed her arms.

“There. Now they know you’re in charge.”

To my surprise, Hope extended an arm across the threshold, poking her left hand outside. She spread her fingers.

“They’re still there,” she said, eyes wide.

“Of course they are,” I replied, “but they can’t get you.”

She breathed, her hand still trailing into the open air.

“They’re out there. But I’m not drowning, either.”

“Good. From now on, you pick how much of you to put outside, if you want to.”

She dropped her arm and met my eyes. “I like deciding not to do it at all.” She smiled awkwardly. “I like deciding.”

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“Of course. It should be your decision, whatever it is.”

She waved me back inside and shut the door. “Mom and my therapist keep starting sentences with ‘you have to’ and ‘you’ll need to’ and ‘you’ve got to.’ I don’t think anyone’s ever said I can start the sentence with ‘if you want to.’” She breathed a relieved-sounding sigh. “Right now, I need to be able to say I don’t want to.”

“Then I’ll bring you eggs and experimental casseroles until or unless that changes.”

Her eyes bowed into half-moons.

“Enabler.”

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Fiction Your Terms

About The Author

Julie Sondra Decker is an author, editor, and slightly eccentric artist from Tampa, Florida. In fiction, she writes novels, short stories, and longform webcomics. She is the author of the fairy tale retelling trilogy Bad Fairy.

In the nonfiction world, Julie is an outspoken voice for the asexual community. Her title The Invisible Orientation was the first mainstream book on the topic. Her non-writing interests include baking, drawing, singing, gardening, drinking coffee, and being obnoxious on social media. She has run a weekly fantasy webcomic, Negative One, since 2005, and a monthly joke comic, So You Write, since 2012.

You should think of her as a cat lady without the cats. If you’d like to find her online, try her author site, personal blog, or complete list of published works.

Poetry

Words by

Rape Kits

Andrea DeAngelis

About the poem

This poem was inspired by the HBO documentary - I am evidence and the appalling reality of the rape kit backlog remaining untested in the hundreds of thousands. I was horrified by the idea of these boxes in a warehouse where birds were actually making nests of the evidence, of these women’s bodies and pain, evidence that could put the rapists behind bars.

And who better to open the boxes than Pandora?

Pandora opening the box is frequently seen as cataclysmic but in this case, she’s a warrior, doing

what is necessary for justice. All the emotions from the collective violations released giving the victims hope.

MORE TIMELESS TALES STORIES

BY AnDREA:

Home is Where the Bone is Issue 5 Baba Yaga

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The World is Inside Issue 7 The Snow Queen

This is a box.

It sits unopened along with other sealed boxes in a police storage unit at the edge of a city where birds make nests of their violations.

There are other boxes in other warehouses in other cities too.

About 400,000 and counting.

If it’s an infinite number on repeat, then why count it at all?

But Pandora, you must you are the counter of all things, the opener of secrets.

Its contents are untested along with other evidence no one deemed important enough to open.

This is a body which is also evidence but no one deemed worthy to examine or believe.

The evidence may be untested but the bodies and minds have been put through unthinkable ordeals.

If Pandora were to open these ignored boxes What would she release?

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Tactile evidence of damage even if healed will never be the same.

Blood, urine, hair and fiber, screams, hits and kicks, shame and rage.

The invisible boxes ache like heads kicked in they can’t breathe contain skin under torn fingernails a stutter of complete paralysis.

All those clotted feelings flying misshapen things – Stinging insects tiny but mighty moths the vengeful Black Buck the warrior Streaked Sphinx the terrifying black-winged Dahana the avenging Red-tailed Spector and finally the wrathful hornet moth.

You call it a reckoning I call it hope.

A word about the moths – in some versions of the myth, the “bad” things released are described as moths and I thought what if these moths were avenging goddesses and in my internet sleuthing came across Theodore D. Sargent’s invaluable Working Paper of Attributes – Goddesses – Moths. I have always thought that moths were underrated.

Timeless Tales 2 93

Poetry Rape Kits

About The Author

Andrea DeAngelis is at times a poet, writer, shutterbug and musician living in New York City.

Her writing has recently appeared in Umbrella Factory and Niteblade. Andrea also sings and plays guitar in the indie rock band MAKAR (www.makarmusic.com) who are in the midst of recording their third album, Fancy Hercules. For more, visit her website www.andreadeangelis.com.

Timeless Tales 10 95

Poetry

Words by

Cutting Tape

Catherine Kyle

About the poem

I’ve loved the story of Pandora’s Box ever since I was a child and her mother read her a book of Greek myths. I vividly remember one illustration where Pandora is looking inside the infamous box, emptied of all its evils, but with hope remaining inside. In this edition, hope was depicted as a miniature woman, and that image came to mind when I was writing this poem. I have always been intrigued that both good and bad things came from the box—the overarching theme seemed to me, not to be pure misfortune, but chaos. Chaos can change and complicate things, but not

always for the worse. Sometimes chaos can make life more interesting and nuanced, too. In this poem, the young adult speaker has a reductive idea of who her grandmother was, and in opening the box, she’s forced to grapple with her own limited understanding. She sees new evidence that paints her grandmother as a three-dimensional, complex person. In this way, though things grow less tidy for the Pandora figure in this scenario, they grow more truthful as well.

Following the funeral and after the last white lily has faded, life goes on. Mom cries on holidays and dusts your framed photograph, chokes on the lyrics of all your favorite songs.

A year goes by and I sneak to the attic, bored and aggressive over eighth-grade spats. I chew new come-backs, trace the clear lines of packing tape Dad used to seal up your things. Secrets, one box says in thick, black marker. Mom’s hand writing. (Or yours?) I kneel with my house key, cut the slick border of film holding contents shut. Inside are dresses, sketches, and diaries marking your life as something unknown. You are dancing and yearning, betraying, resisting, conspiring, seducing, uproarious and bleak.

How easy it is to condescend, to label our grannies demure. The you with cookies and your armchair slips.

The you as a human emerges.

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Poetry Cutting Tape

About The Author

Catherine Kyle is the author of Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming 2019), Coronations (Ghost City Press, 2019), Saint: A Post-Dystopian Hagiography (dancing girl press, 2018), Parallel (Another New Calligraphy, 2017), Flotsam (Etched Press, 2015), Gamer: A Role-Playing Poem (dancing girl press, 2015), and Feral Domesticity (Robocup Press, 2014). Her writing has been honored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and other organizations.

She works as an assistant professor of English at the College of Western Idaho. Her website is www.catherinebaileykyle.com.

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