Archive for the ‘Fiction -2nd Place’ Category

By Cassandra Frank
Carberry, MB
Illustrated by Asma Khaliq

I realized a moment too late the event we had overlooked in our haste; an eclipse. The deafening footsteps could be heard coming from every direction. I turned my head to gaze at my sweet Alexis, curled into my arm, and tears staining her cheeks. I was supposed to be her protector, but looking into her hazel eyes, we both knew there was no surviving this. How had it come to this?

I knew my eyes were open, but the world was blurry. For the brief time I was conscious, I recognized the familiar motion of a car, but the darkness quickly consumed me again. I awoke on a small bed in a dimly lit room, its concrete walls daunting. How long had I been here, hours, days, weeks? I groaned, realizing how terribly my body ached. Read the rest of this entry »

By: Samantha Reid

Illustrated by Jenny Smart

Nuuisha watched closely as the colony held steady. Drifter colonies were a common sight since Earth disappeared, and unless you owned a ship you lived on one. That is, if you were human. All she knew about Earth were stories and pictures passed down from generation to generation. Nuuisha had long ago abandoned hope of having a permanent home. Now she simply existed.

Standing outside of her quarters, held within her own atmospheric dome, she watched the stars. They were the only constant thing in her life as the colony drifted and pilots landed day after day to trade and barter. The stars never changed. They always watched her no matter what system they floated to. Months hardly differed, days passed without cause, but life moved on. Most people had abandoned the old Earth calendar and adopted the ways of the Others. After all, now they were part of their world. Homo-Sapiens were the invaders. The Others were the masters now.

Nuuisha returned to her room with a sigh and sat down on her bed. Life was a complexity to which she did not know the answers yet still the questions plagued her. She’d been on the colony for all of her eighteen years but now all she wanted was freedom.

The knock on her door was one she had come to expect. She knew what she would find when she opened her door because every day it was the same thing. She went to the door, disabled the locking mechanisms, and pulled on the heavy iron door. The hinges creaked in protest and the metal scraped on the floor but it opened. He came storming in, as always, with a complaint already on his lips. Joachim was an Other. An alien, as the humans of old Earth had called them.

“You will never guess what Numian did to me this time,” he exclaimed and threw his lanky body down on her bed.

“I’m sure I never will,” she replied sarcastically as she regarded him in her usual disinterested manner.

Joachim didn’t look much different than she did. He had two arms and two legs and all of the other usual body parts. He was abnormally tall, at seven feet, with long black hair. The only indication that he was an Other was his blue skin. It was no different from her skin besides its rich, aqua-blue colouring.

“Oh, come on, Nu, you have to guess. Indulge my whining yet again, please.” He looked up at her with pleading red eyes that were part of his blue-skinned nature.

“Fine.” She dropped down on the bed, almost on top of him, which wasn’t hard considering he took up nearly the entire bed. “Did he slime on you again?”

“Yes, but that’s not today’s misdemeanour.” Numian was a Blob-Other. He had the basic outline of a human form but had the consistency of primordial slime. He had one eye and favoured anchovies when he could get them. Numian was the foreman for the colony construction and repair sector, which Joachim worked for.

“Oh, sorry, please do tell what he did to you today.” She smiled because Numian always did something that sent Joachim for a loop. The entire outplay was one of the few forms of entertainment she had.

“He made me go out there.” He pointed dramatically out the porthole in her quarters toward the stars.

She followed his gaze and sighed. “Joachim, you go out ‘there’ every day. That’s your job.” Her voice was slightly condescending but she talked to him as she always did – like she was talking to a child.

“You don’t understand, Nu, there was something out there.”

Her attention piqued at that and she shifted so that she could look at his blue face. “What do you mean there was something out there?”

“I mean, that there was something out there.” He rolled his red eyes at her ignorance and lack of understanding. “Come on, I will show you.”

She didn’t resist as he pulled her to her feet and dragged her through the colony. She observed the other inhabitants, both human and Others. They varied in size, shape, colour, and language but they lived in a harmony…sort of. Nuuisha’s eyes caught something else as she was being dragged. A ship that was in port at the moment. She recognized it and felt her heart race a little but she didn’t have time to ponder it as Joachim dragged her down a few levels to the construction sector’s supplies bay.

She spotted it immediately. It was a small pod, one that was used by most ships as a lifeboat of sorts. However, she did not recognize the model that sat in the bay surrounded by Others. Its markings were in no language she knew and she could read every language native to the colony. Joachim released her and made his way toward the crowd gathered around it. Nuuisha listened closely to their conversation as she approached the pod.

“Any clue what’s in it?” Joachim asked, speaking the language of the Insect-Others.

“None at all,” replied the Other he’d been addressing.

Nuuisha wandered around the pod and the Others paid her no mind. After all, she was only human and of no concern to them. She had just about deciphered the markings when she heard a familiar voice. She tried to ignore it but the owner was coming closer.

“I heard you had one of my pods?”

Nuuisha looked at the man in surprise. She didn’t catch the Other’s response as she stared at the captain of the ship she’d seen in port. Captain Gonzalez stood just outside of the circle because he was human and because he knew his place. Also because he had noticed her.

“Your pod?” Nuuisha questioned placing her hands on her hips.

He ignored her and looked back at the Other he had spoken to originally. “Can I claim it or are you going to withhold my property? If so, you know that’s a violation of the treaty and I will not think twice about calling you on it.”

The Other mumbled something that sounded like “damn humans” but Nuuisha didn’t catch it, then he turned and hopped away. The rest of them followed suit. Joachim hesitated for a moment, torn, then followed them leaving Nuuisha alone with the Captain.

“Since when do your pods carry these markings?” she demanded once the Others were out of earshot. She knew better than to question the Captain in front of them. They may be advanced in nature but they were medieval in tradition. Women had their place, and it was not equal to a man’s.

“They don’t,” the Captain replied simply, with a sly smile. “I got word that this floater had landed here and wanted to see if it was true.”

“Floater?” She looked at him curiously. She had not seen him in nearly a year and she found it strange that he had changed so little. “Are you saying there really is something in there and not just supplies?”

“That would be right, now if you don’t mind I’d like to take my property and put this dirt pit in my jet stream.”

“Not until I see what’s in it.” She stood firmly in his path and crossed her arms. He stood a good foot taller than her 5’2” but she wasn’t planning on moving.

“Nu, if you want to see what’s in the pod you’ll have to come aboard my ship, and since I know you won’t do that I guess we’re at a crossroads.” He sighed in frustration. “Why do you stay here? I know you don’t like it.”

“What’s in the pod, Captain?” She met his green eyes with her grey ones.

“It’s a Changeling-Other.”

“Are they actually real? I mean I’ve heard stories…”

“Oh, they’re real but you’d never know it. The minute they see something they change into it. They could be anyone or anything and you wouldn’t know it. I need to get this pod on my ship before your drifter colony buddies take it and destroy it.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Do you really have to ask?” He stared at her. “Do you understand what kind of power having one of these gives the owner?”

“Then that’s why do you want it so much?” She raised an eyebrow in question.

“I want to save it, that’s all. Now move or I will move you.”

Nuuisha took a step to the left and reluctantly let him by. A real Changeling-Other and she would never get to see it. She wouldn’t get to see it because she was too stubborn to take his offer. She’d been refusing it for five years because she didn’t want his charity but now things were different. She listened to him radio his ship to come to the construction sector’s bay. It took her two seconds to make up her mind.

“How are you going to watch this floater and pilot a ship?”

He glanced back at her. “Pardon?”

“You’re going to need someone to take care of the Changeling. Hire me on and I’ll do it but you have to hire me. I will not take charity; I want to earn my place.”

“You mean after five years you’re actually going to stop being a drifter and go somewhere?” He blinked then shook his head. “You’re hired…now let’s get this thing out of here.”

Nuuisha nodded and stopped thinking about anything else. She would miss Joachim, certainly, but he had never really been her friend, not the way she had wanted. Their differences had kept them apart and her stubbornness had kept her from others like her. She was taking a leap of faith now. She was jumping into space with no safety net. She was running away with a man she hardly knew, to do a job she didn’t even know how to do.

She heard them come before he did, and knew that they had little to no time left to get the pod and get out. She glanced at Captain Gonzalez and knew that he had come to the same realization. “Go,” she told him, “I’ll distract them.”

Nuuisha walked towards the construction crew and plastered on a smile. They were a group of Reptilian-Others which basically meant they resembled the alligators of old Earth but stood on two legs. They were scaly, dirty, and probably the worst company anyone could keep. “Merhaba, what might you be looking for?”

One extremely tall Reptilian-Other sent her a glance but the others ignored her. “The pod that Joachim was sent to retrieve,” he said to her in his language.

“Sorry, that pod is being claimed.” She waved her arm in the direction of the pod, which was currently disappearing behind the loading door of Captain Gonzalez’s ship. “You’re out of luck.”

The problem with that phrase was that it was never a good idea to make a Reptilian-Other mad. Now Nuuisha was alone in front of six of them, all with tempers boiling. It didn’t take them long to get to that state and once they were there they were lethal. She saw that as her cue to leave, and leave at a run. Luckily for her, Reptilian-Others were not known for their speed.

She reached the landing bays well ahead of her pursuers and glanced over the docked ships. She didn’t see the captain’s anywhere. Had he left without her? Had he taken his cargo and done what he had said he would…put the colony in his jet stream? She looked behind her to see her pursuers getting closer and that was when she saw it. The ship was coming into port and fast. She ran down the loading tunnel to the captain.

“Come on, Nu!” He glanced behind her at the approaching gang, helping her through the door then slamming it behind her. “You okay?”

“You know they’ll come after you now.”

“Well then, isn’t this going to be fun?”

Nuuisha smiled as a shiver ran down her spine. If this is what freedom felt like she thought she might just come to enjoy it.