Category Archives: short stories

“Raymond, before you ask, I know who they are, where they have been, and where they are going.  I know, perhaps, why you are all so happy, but I am puzzled as to why there’s so little dissention amongst you….I’ve been told things that amaze me, excite me and fill me with awe.”

Raymond smiled, put a hand upon my shoulder, and said “Yes, we’re all going, Joshua.  But you knew that.”  I fell silent, and he motioned for us to sit at a small table, the private corner.  

I related to him how Khostra had imbued my dreams.

Her people were of an antiquity that we cannot encompass.  One that even their own scribes fall short of in their stories, ending at a guess.  Their origin was in the star cluster we know as the Pleiades.  Over millions of years, their civilization grew in power and influence, and they began a push to explore their known universe.  Of their ancient homes, our Earth was one, until the great calamity of the Cretaceous period.  Their numbers were decimated, and those that remained fled in search of salvation.  Some had settled on the planet Mars.  The hearts of others desired a return to the lands of their peoples’ birth.

The Martian choice proved well for the new settlers, who prospered for millennia.  In the end, as we know, that planet became desolate after losing almost all of its atmosphere and water, and they had no natural protection against asteroid and meteor strikes.  Over hundreds of years, they prepared their great leaving, most heading across the void to the Pleiades.  Some few chose to return to Earth, found it to be habitable again, and stayed.  They became teachers of men when humanity sprang from the dust.  But their numbers eventually dwindled, and those that lived on became secretive, building underground bases that few had stumbled upon but had somehow forgotten.

And now, in this hour of Earth’s shame and destruction, they were leaving once again.
But not all.
Khostra and some of her hundreds would remain.  They had a plan.  I held a hope after these last lonely years.  I thought I had lost my brother in this time of our world’s chaos. In her magic, Khostra knew that this was not so.  She had more to tell me….

to be continued…..

Previous stories:

https://secret-lifeof.com/2018/09/27/paved-with-good-intentions/

My little Miss

Silver seeds

The yard

Don’t fence me in

The neighbours

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Her name, as near as I can make it, is Khostra, and she “spoke” to me in symbols, visions, and insinuative emotions.  I will liken it to a dream, where an unseen player wishes to impart something of great import to you.  Your mind clears of all the mundane.  You wait tensely, for you know this is a key.   The words are not remembered, lips do not move, a face is not seen.  Symbols appear, seemingly without meaning at first.  Wide vistas may come, in psychedelic vision.  The hissing of primal rains.  The tallest of growing things,
strobe lit in twilight thunder.  Movements in the deep.  Arrivals in the virgin desert.  The teachers come, and then… and then.  Building blocks.

As in dreams, I swam for the light.  What had been shown was shown.  My eyes were opened and the immediate world flowed in.  Khostra bowed her head once more and gently released me.  I was overcome by an insistent urge to lie down and sleep.  She put her hand on my shoulder and guided me through the sundering wall.  I looked once more into her face, and saw the smile within her eyes.  She and her companions then left us, in the full night, and Raymond took me to sleeping quarters in the mushroom house.
There was little talk, and no questions.

Most all of them knew, I suspect, what had transpired.  They were the initiates.
I was the new guy.  I slept, and had a dream of knitting.

to be continued…..

previous stories are:

Paved with good intentions
My little Miss
Silver seeds
The yard
Don’t fence me in

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They were tall and olive skinned, with startling eyes.
I had fallen asleep beside the peoples’ perimeter, and was awakened by the sound of Raymond’s voice.  “Look, Joshua.  They come.”

Five figures approached us in a glide-like walk, and stood before us in a V formation.  The shortest of them was some seven feet, and their stature was even more enhanced by the odd but beautiful headdresses they wore.  Their long arms and many-fingered hands, their silent dignity, their benign manner all gave me pause as to how to proceed.  I turned to Raymond, and he said “You will know”.

Their “spokesperson” stepped slightly forward, and performed what I can only describe as a curtsy, with a bow of the head.  I will call her She, as that is the impression I had.  She  held her strange hands in a praying position, then slowly opened them to me,  as a butterfly unfolds its wings.  Taking another half step, she extended these hands, palms up, as if to offer something.  I felt that what she desired was contact,
and so I timidly laid my hands upon hers.  She then raised her head from its bowing posture, and looked at me full face.

I could not, and would not, look away.  All of my surroundings faded, as if I were staring at the proverbial dot on the screen, and I tasted the flavor of her mind only. It must have looked odd to the bystanders, and the time it took was uncertain, but in that small space, with joined hands, and without speaking, she told me the story of their Years.
to be continued….

previous stories are
“Paved with good intentions” https://secret-lifeof.com/2018/09/27/paved-with-good-intentions/
“My little Miss” https://secret-lifeof.com/2018/10/18/my-little-miss/
“Silver seeds”   http://secret-lifeof.com/2019/01/10/silver-seeds/
and “The yard”   http://secret-lifeof.com/2019/01/14/the-yard/

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The children kept up their play, as children do.  As I approached the perimeter of the yard, the group at the table noticed me first.  They alerted some of the others, who walked curiously toward the grassy area I stood upon.  These were people with whom one could blend easily- a ragtag group at ease with themselves, seeming to have been lifted from any suburban neighbourhood.  A man clad in what once was a dress shirt and pants, now soiled and without a belt.  A Mexican woman with two shoeless toddlers tugging at her sun dress.  Some few who were surely couples.  All looked to be in good health, save for those who had telltale sores.

As I came closer, the man in the white shirt faced me and made a curious shushing motion, palms out and towards the ground.  I stopped short, and he began to speak.
“I am Raymond”, he said.  Then, jokingly, “Welcome to heaven!”  “I am Joshua”
said I.  Raymond laughed, but did not step onto the grass.  “It’s a biblical day, Joshua!”
Seeing my confusion, he said “Come join us, if you like.  Walk slowly, if you will.”
I shouldered my pack, and made to walk up and shake his hand, whereupon I ran face first into a solid (but soft) wall that was not there.  I fell backwards, more surprised and embarrassed than anything else, and, dusting myself off, I returned their smiles.

“We are held here, for a time” said Raymond.  “I think it is more for their protection than for any fear of our escaping.”  Seeing my questioning glance, he again spoke in riddles.  “We are, I think, part of the harvest of those remaining on this Earth.  We were picked up, rescued, or captured if you like, in our various states of misery, and brought here to this compound.” “The people of the ships- they have shown us that we are to prepare for a great Leaving in due time, as the world’s survivors are collected.  You will meet them soon…some will visit us at dusk, and you will join our numbers.”  Seeing my rough appearance, my burned and flaking skin, my unlaced boots and scraggly jeans, Raymond asked how long I had been on my own.  “Some years, I think.  It’s hard to tell.”  “We know”, he said, and asked me for my story.  I sat on my pack, and a group gathered ’round to listen as I told them of trials in the wild, desperation and despair, my meeting with only one speaking person in that time (the little girl), and of her death.  They gave me food and drink, tossing it through the invisible barrier, and I gratefully warmed up to them as the sun began its evening westering.

“We’ve not long to wait now” said Raymond, and I fell into an expectant silence.

to be continued….

The heaviest of the fog was burning off, as quickly as clouds in a time lapse.
The sun, westering towards zenith, cast a kaleidoscope of blinding beams on the silvered mirrors below.  I had no guide, no precedent, to tell me how to proceed.  Wary, at least, I must be.  In the glare, I could make out little, until presently a water-coloured cloudbank approached.

In the dun light, vision was sharpened, and the ships (for so I thought they were) took on a sepia tone and a strange air of unreality.  There were hundreds, in seeming shapes of domes and standing bullets.  All was still and silent, as the world here had been since yesterday.  The clearing in the valley was otherwise featureless, save for an oddly shaped structure which resembled a bisected mushroom head .

I was partly down the steep slope, keeping to the camouflage of brush, when I spied movement in the shade of the structure.  Figures.  People.  The first I had seen alive since my sojourn with little Miss.  Some were gathered in groups, talking, while others sat at a large round table.  I crept further downslope, and saw that they varied in description:  young and old, men and women, even small children.  The scene was peculiar in that they all kept to a semicircle of bare earth, about the size of a baseball infield, around which there was no visible fence or boundary.

I halted to consider what to do next, when my inhibitions were put to rest upon hearing some laughter from the group, and the sounds of happy children.

At this, I stepped out from the forest gloom, foolishly perhaps, and showed myself.

to be continued……….

….previous story is “Silver seeds”