90_Minutes_to_Live (37 page)

Hamlet was waiting for them. And he spoke to them nonstop for nearly three hours. About anything and everything they would need to know about the people and terrain of Earth, the planet they were about to invade. Everyone paid close attention as always, for they knew Hamlet disliked the idea that his speeches could be remotely considered a substitute for NyQuil—even if sometimes that actually was the case. The chief exceptions were the two larger-than-normal recruits plunked against the chamber walls. Those two had to be hissed at or violently coaxed into restoring their attention and senses when they began violently snoring in the midst of the oratory.

At the conclusion of the speech making, Hamlet and everyone else left the chamber. Save for those two.

“Boy!” Mack said as soon as they were gone and she had removed the helmet and glasses from her disguise. “What a windbag that Hamlet is, huh, Stretch? Stretch?”

Her companion was sound asleep; having been driven to that condition some time ago by Hamlet’s wandering words. Mack was forced to clout her on the head to get her to wake up, which immediately did the trick.

“You sure hit hard Mack!” Stretch observed, removing her helmet and glasses and rubbing a pained spot on her head. “Even with the helmet on I felt it!”

“Who do you think I learned how to do it from?” Mack asked rhetorically. “Look! There’s the thing with our magic in it!”

She had indeed spotted the sugar bowl-like container where Hamlet had contained the magical powers. The powers they had earned from long practice and skill development as witches, only to have him drain those powers from them and leave them helpless. But not for long.

Mack took the lid off the device and shined it in the direction of herself and Stretch, just as Hamlet had done earlier. Immediately their magical abilities—the skills that had made them qualified witches—were absorbed back into their bodies. As they did, Mack and Stretch found a renewed sense of vigor build inside of them.

“Have we got them back now?” Stretch asked.

“Only one way to find out. Let’s do the fire spell and see if it works.”

“Right,” said Stretch.

They each said a low oath and sent an arm in the direction of the area they wanted fire to be created. In an instant the room was ablaze and filling with smoke.

“We got it back all right!” Mack coughed. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

“I’m with you!” Stretch agreed. Hastily putting their helmets and glasses on again, they left.

XI.

They were cornered immediately by a superior officer. Fortunately, there was no time for questioning anyone about tardiness or where they had been, for the invasion had begun! Mack and Stretch were simply hustled—bodily—to a two-person spaceport in a shuttle bay. They were told to report immediately as soon as they arrived at the intended destination—Grand Forks, North Dakota— within ninety minutes. Or else they risked disciplinary actions—such as death. What they were
not
told, was how to operate said spaceport, so they were left looking at it for a minute and wondering what to do. At least Stretch was.

“Mack!” she whimpered finally. “What are we gonna do? They’re gonna destroy our hometown and we’re letting them get away with it!”

“No we’re not!” Mack growled in response. “Stop being a whiny little kid about this Stretch! We’re going to get out of here and stop them, and that’s that!”

“But how?” Stretch questioned. “We don’t know how to fly this thing…or drive anything else for that matter!”

“We don’t need to!” Mack said. “Get on!”

Once they were safely on board, Mack took the glove off of her right hand and waved it. A flash of light was directed at the spaceport’s instrument panel, a short explosion occurred. A mechanical voice asked what was required,
“Sir?”

“FLY!” Mack commanded. “To Grand Forks, North Dakota damn it and fast! And if you so much as
try
to drop us at Grand Forks, British Columbia, Stretch and I will take you apart and sell you for a considerable fortune in scrap metal! Got it?”

The message was received and understood.
“Sir”.
And abruptly, the pair found themselves hurtling through space….

XII.

The trip was fast and speedy and it was only through some of Mack’s additional spells that they managed to hold on to the device for the descent downwards to Earth and Grand Forks. However, they got there as soon as possible and without a scratch on them. Such would not be the case for the following assault on the Prosperians but, by this time, Mack and Stretch no longer cared. Newly re-empowered with their magical skills—which served the purpose of compensating their physical abilities—they were determined to rid themselves of the alien menace to Earth, once and for all.

Mack ordered the machine to stop flying after she spotted the Prosperian troops massing alongside the Red River, in Riverside Park. It dropped down behind one of the stone walls the city had erected to keep the river at bay following the Flood of 1997. The young sorceresses shed their outer disguises and made their way down to where Commander Hamlet was addressing the troops, as he had before. He did not notice them, until he turned around and spotted them standing right behind him, (although most of the soldiers had already seen them and started quaking in fear in response).

“Y
ou
!” he shouted angrily.

“Yeah!” Mack answered. “Us!”

“How did you escape…?” he began to demand, before Stretch cut him off by cuffing her hand around his neck.

“Shut up and listen!” Stretch growled. “We want you
out of here
…and not even in your precious
ninety minutes
either! We mean
now
!”

“You don’t even want to
know
what we’ll do to you if you don’t!” added Mack. She tossed a beam of light on the ground to get their attention while Stretch, harshly and in a most undignified manner, threw Hamlet on the ground. He convulsed with rage in response.

“
Macbeth
!” he demanded of his subordinate. “You were supposed to have
restrained
them, remember?”

“Yes sir,” said MacBeth. “But they escaped….”

“Escaped? How?”

“Like
this
!” said Stretch. She picked him up, punched him hard, and sent him flying into the nearest bush. He emerged even more disheveled than before and even more enraged.

“We
were
prepared to negotiate peacefully with your race, had you admitted the inadequacy of your firepower against ours,” screamed Hamlet. “But now,
to hell with that
! ATTACK THEM! And KILL THEM!”

“Just
try
it!” Mack and Stretch snarled in unison.

Immediately, they were surrounded by the grey bodied, red-eyed Prosperians, who outnumbered them five to one. The pair were, however, up for the challenge. Just as before, they punched, kicked, wrestled, tackled and mercilessly beat up any Prosperian in their path. And, for extra emphasis, they made them magically disappear once they had defeated them, which reduced the size of the force they were fighting almost immediately and made the edge increasingly within their grasp. Yet it was at that moment the tide began turning.

One alien soldier remembered how Stretch had been humbled by the chains of Prospero earlier. Sensing how to control her, he taunted her as she fought off several of his fellows at once. His taunts enraged her enough to get her to chase him and then tricked her into sticking her hands out so he could stick the chains on her arms. He tightened them and she was weak once again. As she struggled in vain to free herself, a fresh corps of recently landed Prosperian soldiers arrived and forcefully pushed her to the ground and began attacking her.

“MACK!” Stretch bellowed at this point. “HELP ME! They got the chains on me again!”

Mack, in the midst of fighting off a larger than average size Prosperian as big as her, turned in the direction of Stretch once she heard her companion’s cry. She ran to aid Stretch but her opponent, disregarding any rules of honor, on his or any other planet, literally stabbed her in the back!

“STRETCH!” Mack called out to her friend. “I’ve been HIT! I haven’t got long!”

“NO!” Stretch shouted. She tried to rise but too many Prosperians held her in check.

“Don’t worry!” Mack said. “I know what to do—the time reversal spell!”

“Are you
sure
?” asked Stretch. “That’s kind of dangerous…”

“WE DON’T HAVE A CHOICE!” said Mack.

With her last remaining breaths, Mack uttered a series of archaic Latin words as loudly as she could. Then the entire park was surrounded by a dense, inky-black fog….

XIII.

“So that’s it so far,” Mack said. “What do you think?”

They were in Mack’s room at home. She was seated at her desk as she read aloud the manuscript of her recently completed story to Stretch, who bent down by Mack’s shoulder as she read.

“It’s fine, by my standards anyway,” the taller girl admitted as she stood to her full height. “But what do I know about writing? You said in there that I was just a dumb jock!”

“I had to exaggerate a bit Stretch,” Mack admitted as she turned her chair around to face Stretch. “Our lives are
boring
. Publishers need things jazzed up if they’re gonna read it, let alone
publish
it!”

“Yeah, but I’m not that dumb!” said Stretch. “You know that. And plus, I’m not that strong either.”

“You can bench-press twice my weight! I saw you do that today!”

 “Sure, but I can’t punch my way through a wall. And you have me punching through a
metal
one, yet!”

“Like I said—exaggeration! That’s what sells stories Stretch. You just don’t understand the way the writing game works.”

“Well, you got some things right. Our appearances, my height, our friendship. Except that bit about us fighting each other—we’d never
really
do that, right?”

“Sure we wouldn’t. But the story needed conflict…”

“Never mind the writer jargon Mack—it only confuses me. I’m used to normal stories and magic and aliens and unbreakable chains and all that stuff you have us go through just isn’t normal.”

“Writers write what they know Stretch,” Mack insisted. “I know you and me and what we do. All I did was put us into a fairly fantastic setting and let us loose. No harm in that, right?”

“No,” Stretch admitted. “But just don’t push the fantasy bit too far.
Or
share this piece of whimsy with anybody who could use it against me. If I hear anybody start calling me “Stretch The Giant Killer,” I’ll come down here and beat you up
so hard
…”

“Okay Stretch!” Mack answered. “I’ll lay off on it for a bit. But it takes the stress off me, you know? Just like you on the court.”

“Yeah,” said Stretch. “Never thought of it like that,” she flexed one muscled arm for them both to see. “But still, my guns may be big but
nobody
is the kind of strong you made me in your little fairy tale. If I didn’t actually
have
a brain in my head, I might really believe that and I’d get myself into trouble.”

“That’s the last thing I wanted buddy,” Mack said as she and Stretch firmly embraced.

“Well, I gotta go,” Stretch said as she broke their clinch. “See you later Mack. And be careful about what you write about!”

“I will. So long Stretch.”

When her friend had left the room, Mack thoughtfully considered the manuscript she had written for a moment. Then she dropped it on the floor and waved her hands above it and toward her desk. In moments, the bottom drawer of the desk opened, the manuscript floated into it and then the drawer closed.

THE END

In the Shadow

of the Banyan Tree

(Honorable Mention)

By

Jennifer Phillips

Concentrating on an itch that cannot be scratched is a certain path to insanity.

Although my muscles are paralyzed, I can still feel everything. Some assume that the paralysis extends to my nerves but this is not the case. I can feel everything—every bedsore, every fly that walks upon my arm, every piercing jab of a mosquito and every tingle that becomes an itch. I feel it all; I just cannot do anything about it. The fly has free reign to march up and down my torso until he becomes bored and leaves. The mosquito feeds on me until sated, flying away heavy and full of my blood. The itching develops and builds. Like an orchestra settling into a movement, it starts and swells; it expands and reaches a crescendo before it finally passes. I say it again:
Concentrating on an itch that cannot be scratched is a certain path to insanity
.

Indonesia has been my home for many years but I have been in Denpasar for only three of those years. More precisely, three years, six months and four days, which means I have called this place—the Denpasar Nursing and Aging Care Facility—home for three years, six months and one day. It took three days for doctors to determine that although I was alive, no one was coming to claim me. I was far from my home and the company, scouting for locations. No one missed me and no one would ask for me. Others had been lost at sea with little notice; anonymity has its price.

Someone has left the television on and because no one has thought to set me upright today, I can only listen. My understanding of Bahasa, the official language of Indonesia, is enough that I can discern from the disembodied voices on the newscast I hear that I have ninety minutes left to live.

My name is Jonah Ripert but no one here knows this. When I was found on the beach, breathing but immobile, I carried no identification or any of my work permit papers per the unwritten and unspoken company policy for those who do my job.

My room is at the end of the ward and outside my window stands an ancient banyan tree. Twisted and dense, with contorted branches growing back, around, and down to the ground as though they are reaching for something unattainable, the tree occupies many of my days and many of my thoughts. Geckos and birds move in and out of the deep hollows created by the tree’s structure and at times the tree appears to move, so active are its residents. The massive tree is the living subject of the only picture in my room. The window that frames the picture is warped by heat and humidity has blistered and cracked the paint. This is the image that occupies my days when someone is kind enough to prop me upright.

Members of the staff say the tree is haunted. A small boy (his age, like much of time in Indonesia, is indeterminate—some say he was four, others say six) fell to his death after climbing the tree to get a better look at the ocean just beyond. He was trying to see if he could locate his father’s fishing boat but his foot became tangled in part of the trunk causing him to lose his balance. His spirit is said to inhabit the tree, and the branches that reach the ground and become part of the trunk are his arms, stretching to find his father. Local parents tell the story as a cautionary tale, suggesting to misbehaving offspring that the tree took the boy’s life and kept his spirit because he was not obedient.

I sometimes hear the staff conversing in Bahasa. They call me
orang asing,
foreigner, or sometimes
raksasa
, giant. These are the same words they use to describe the banyan tree. Yet it is the word
haunted
that describes me and the tree best.

I can smell the salt air that drifts through the open window, which means the wind is blowing directly off the sea. It mixes with the lingering scent of chemicals used to clean and disinfect the room, a nostril-burning mixture of lemon and ammonia. Rooms are cleaned every day with the same citrus solution, washing away the hints of death that are deposited slowly by the residents. The ward is largely silent; most of my neighbors are now gone. As soon as the warning sirens sounded some rickety busses, discovered too late to be too small, carted away those who retained the small dim light of cognizance. I have had no visitors and no inquiries since I arrived here and am therefore expendable. A few others are left behind. I can hear a woman screaming now, down the hall. She is crying for her mother but this is a trick of the madwoman’s imagination; her mother is long departed. I am the youngest person in this nursing home. It was the only place equipped to handle my condition.

My thoughts wander down the abandoned hallways of the place I have called home, rendering pictures of rooms and views of the center courtyard I can now see only through my mind’s eye. I see the kitchen, ill-equipped by Western standards but nonetheless capable of preparing spare but adequate meals for those who can still eat. Although my eating regimen consists of intravenous feedings, the smells from the kitchen help me create in my mind the island meals that once were part of my daily diet. My meals’ simplicity hid their daily magic—combinations of chili and garlic and
ketjap
, that evoked memories of its lesser descendant ketchup—combined with fish so fresh it twitched until it was cooked. What I would give for another dish of
bami goreng
, with its steaming stir-fried noodles, or a platter of
krupuks
, the addictive shrimp chips that if they ever caught on in America would give tasteless cardboard potato chips a run for their money.

I have much time to think as I lie here in Denpasar. The stroke that hit me as I was piloting a small boat, scouting new ocean locations for my employer, rendered me completely immobile. I do not recognize the medical terms the doctors and staff use. Medical terms in Bahasa are beyond my comprehension. In the chemically induced medical hazy days after I was rescued, there was but one phrase uttered in English for some inexplicable reason: locked-in syndrome. This phrase I understand. I can move my eyelids but that is all. When you cannot move and cannot communicate, you are left with your thoughts and sometimes being alone with your thoughts is the most painful torture of all. My thoughts skip and jump, like the small lizards called
chechucks
that defy gravity and run up the egg-yolk yellow walls throughout the ward. I think back to what brought me here: my divorce, the job, Indonesia, the smell and taste of food—here, there, jump jump jump, my mind tries to fill my days with thoughts, a thin substitute for human connection.

I will not say that our divorce was easy or painless; all divorces are painful in some way. But ours was not one of those bitter, protracted battles that pull all involved down in wave after wave of suffocating anger. What played out before us was not a battle but an evaporation, ending not with a grand flourish of attorneys and judges. Instead it dispelled, like the mist on a hot road following a summer rain. After a few hours in the midday sun the only evidence that the road had ever been wet is a few dank puddles of stagnant water. All that remained after the meager possessions and sizeable debt were divided was a thin file of fragile paper documents, one page noting the union, another sealing its dissolution. They are like the leaves on the banyan tree, easily rustled by the wind. Of the two events codified in the documents it is the divorce, not the marriage, which has proved to be as solid as the tree’s trunk. The banyan tree does not bend and neither do I.

Why did someone choose to paint these walls yellow? I have had time to reflect on this and it is my guess that this was an attempt to impart a sunny, cheerful air to the rooms. Instead they cast a jaundiced light on everyone, giving even the healthiest staff members a sickly pallor. The nursing home, painted attempts at cheer aside, is one of the saddest places in this town. It is an underfunded home for the destitute aging and those whose problems are beyond the capacity of their families to care for them emotionally or financially. It is a dumping ground for the crazy and ill—and, apparently, the best option for unidentifiable quadriplegic expatriates. Even my favorite nurse, a young woman named Siri whose hair smelled like lychees and fresh cream when she leaned over me to expertly make the bed with me still in it, had a sickly pallor in these rooms. Her smile and sunny disposition countered the effect of the yellow walls. She chattered away in a dialect I did not know and did not need to know. I wonder where she is now and hope that she is safe.

I can hear others moving in the hall now. We were left here in haste and some are wondering where their midday meals are. “
Nasi, nasi
;" a man calls out for rice. He begins to bang on the wall with a rhythmic beat, calling for food that has no chance of materializing. I envy the others who do not understand their fate; the end will come quickly and unexpectedly for them. I am alone in my understanding of what soon will happen. Many of them could escape if they knew. I know, but can do nothing.

I have tried to teach myself to shift my thoughts elsewhere.

When I shift my thoughts, I think of the ocean. The same water that is outside my window now was at one time my job. I worked for a chemical company in the States and after the divorce I wanted to leave, escape to somewhere else. The position in Jakarta had no U.S. equivalent but my transfer request was approved. I knew little about Indonesia. Some travel shows on Bali were the extent of my introduction to my new home. Everyone who describes arriving in a Third-World country seems to use the same phrase: “an assault on the senses.” The acrid smell of garbage hangs in the air, held in place by humidity so high it traps odors close, low to the ground. Roads have lanes helpfully painted but routinely ignored and instructions for the flow of traffic are considered little more than a quaint suggestion. Traffic consists of an improbable mix of cars, trucks, motorcycles and scooters, busses,
becaks
(modified bicycles with a driver on back and passengers in front) and the occasional donkey, all moving at the maximum possible speed that conditions allow, starting and stopping without warning. There is little that can prepare you for Jakarta traffic but I credit a series of successive summers at the local amusement park with considerable time dedicated to the thrill rides.

*   *   *

It did not take me long to love Indonesia. Living in Florida prepared me for the heat, humidity and the sudden afternoon showers that washed the streets and rooftops during the rainy season, leaving them wet and clean, if only for a short time. The people are wonderful. Small, smiling and patient, they surprised me with their warmth and acceptance. It made for a sharp contrast to my daily work life at the facility.

My first job was in the lab, a medium-sized detached building in the company’s complex, separated from the manufacturing area by a footpath lined with crushed shells. Entering the lab was another dose of culture shock. This was not the pristine and sterile image of a scientific lab shown in movies and on television. The lighting was adequate but flickered with the inconsistency characteristic of unreliable power backed up by generators. The desks and furniture were a mish-mash of what looked to be discarded office equipment from the mid-‘80s. Walls were lined with cages of animals, used to test responses to the chemicals the company was manufacturing. My job was to clean and dispose of the testing waste, verifying the volume against the day’s experimentation schedule and transporting this hazardous cargo to the incinerator. The cages contained a nightmare of balding and burned cats and dogs, skin blistered and peeling, with sores oozing red and yellow and green. Glass slides captured pus and blood for examination by detached and seemingly robotic scientists. After two days working in the lab, I turned to chemicals of a different sort. The local pharmacists asked no questions when I begged for something to help me sleep.

One day a gray kitten was brought in. After three days of testing he still showed no signs of any reaction to the chemicals they had pasted on a shaved spot on his left side. They painted the poisonous sludge on him with a cotton swab, demented artists working on a living canvas. Late that night, on the kitten’s third day, I was cleaning the lab when an earthquake rattled the building. It was enough to spring the latches on many of the cages but the tortured residents didn’t have the capacity to exploit their sudden fortune. I quickly tucked the gray kitten into an inside pocket of my shirt, well underneath the work-issued coveralls. He seemed to understand and signified his willing complicity in his kidnapping by remaining completely silent until I got him home. He lived with me for nine months. His fur grew back and he was a happy and playful cat, showing gratitude in the way that only rescued animals can convey. Late in his eighth month with me, he developed a cancerous tumor that grew with such ferocity I would have sworn I could see it pulsing and growing if I stared at him long enough. He did not suffer for long; the cancer moved very quickly. The tumor was on his left side.

Eventually I was reassigned to another part of the disposal process. After some reflection, I believe it was my size that condemned me to the reassignment.  I am six feet tall—not that large by American standards but I stand a full head above most of my Indonesian coworkers. My height provided the perfect leverage for the job at hand. The company was limited in the amount of waste that could be incinerated—not by the volume going in but by the emissions coming out. In some months the volume to be incinerated exceeded the allowed limits. My boss in Maintenance and Disposal was a stocky, red-faced Australian who looked like a hairy and unkempt version of the short balding guy from the television show
Seinfeld
. Jeremy Brechtel was vile in manner and he never met a rule he intended to follow. This disdain for rules and the reasons behind them is why I found myself on the deck of a boat, rolling heavy yellow drums of chemical waste into the ocean.