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A Bootleg Christmas

*Author Note: This is a prequel/Christmas Short Story to the story: The Invasion of Allegra which is in Kindle Vella*

Watchtower XXIV, Deep Space

25 December, 2283 – 00.04

“Fahy!” Vansen whispers through the door that she had just barely cracked open.

Yawning, Fahy rolls onto his side and looks at the light that is streaming in through the crack from the bright hallway outside of his cabin. Rubbing his eyes, he asks, “Yeah?”

“Can we come in?” Vansen requests, “It’s just Boris, Fagan, and I.”

Nodding slowly, Fahy thinks about what Vansen was asking. A few beats pass and he can’t come up with any ideas. Confused, he finally says, “Yeah. Why?”

The door slides the rest of the way open, and Vansen, Fagan, and Boris slip in silently. Once they’re both in, Vansen taps on the console beside the door, and it whooshes shut. She taps in a few things on the console before she smiles and excitedly says, “It’s Christmas!”

“Christmas?” Fahy rubs his eyes tiredly, “Already?”

“Yes already!” Vansen sounds happily as she quietly claps her hands.

“She’s a little too happy about all this,” Boris chuckles.

Vansen gives Boris a playful scowl before she responds, “It’s a bit of a big deal!”

“We know,” Fagan smiles, “We all know.”

“Well, it’s a bit of a bummer since we’re not allowed to celebrate right,” Vansen sighs.

Fagan shrugs, “Doesn’t matter what’s allowed or not so long as we’ve got each other.”

Vansen smiles and nods at Fagan, “Exactly!”

“So, how are we celebrating?” Fahy asks as he swings his legs out of his bed and straightens out a few things that are in reach.

“Well…” Vansen slowly looks around before she answers, “I sort of smuggled in some gifts for all of us. I made a few things too.”

“I made a few things too,” Fagan smiles, “Been sneaking down to the maintenance area to get a chance to make things.”

“Me too,” Boris smiles. Chuckling, he adds, “Fagan and I had to hide our projects from one another.”

“D—did you get something?” Vansen asks after a few beats.

Smiling, Fahy pulls out a few small boxes. In them, there are the things that he had been slaving away at for the past few months for his team.

“I thought you’d remember!” Vansen squeals happily as she grabs the box with her name on it.

Smiling, Fahy hands out the other two boxes as he asks Vansen, “How’d you manage to smuggle in gifts?”

A twinkle in her eye, Vansen answers, “I have my ways.”

“Mysterious as always,” Fagan chuckles, “From what I heard, there were some people who owed her some favors.”

Vansen lets out a loud laugh, “That makes it sound so much easier than it was. You’ve got no idea.”

Nodding, Fahy chimes in, “I’m sure it was hard—there’s a reason why none of us were able to smuggle anything in!”

“It really was,” Vansen nods along slowly, “Well, are we ready to start opening them?”

“Let’s,” Fagan smiles, “Who first?”

“Oh, we’re taking turns?” Boris asks, his first present already halfway unwrapped.

Vansen chuckles, “Of course, we are civilized, after all!”

Smirking, Fagan says, “Well, Christmas is here to celebrate Jesus and he said whoever is first will be last so… Boris, I guess you’re up!”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Boris lets out a very sarcastic laugh before he turns his attention back to his gift from Fahy. A few moments later and Boris is poking at the small machine that Fahy had made for him.

“It’s a little farmer!” Fahy explains as he points out the small mechanism which is working slowly, “See how it’s using that thing like a hoe on the dirt? I thought it’d remind you of home!”

Boris chuckles and smiles slightly, “It does, that’s super neat. Thanks.”

“Alright, now I’m curious!” Vansen blurts out as she rips open her gift from Fahy. Once it’s open, she examines it and smiles, “It’s a cow!”

“Just like the ones on your ranch, right?” Fahy asks, his heart in his throat as he hopes that she likes it.

Vansen looks up from the cow after a few beats and assures him, “It’s awesome, thank you, Fahy!”

“Good, I’m glad you like it,” Fahy smiles back as he lets out a very quiet sigh.

Everyone else opens their various gifts and each gift is very well received. After a long while, Fahy is holding the very last gift.

“Well, you’re finishing things off, Fahy,” Vansen notes, “Hope you like it.”

Looking at the gift, Fahy briefly wonders what Vansen was able to make and what she could have smuggled all the way out to their Watchtower. The small, wrapped box isn’t large, but Fahy had suspected that it was impossible to smuggle anything larger than that out here.

“Well, are you going to open it?” Boris asks.

Nodding slowly, Fahy proceeds to begin unwrapping the gift. When he finishes, he sees that there are two boxes.

When Fahy hesitates, Vansen speaks up again, “The one on top is what I smuggled in, the one on the bottom is the one I made.”

Letting out a long sigh, Fahy stops and says, “Thank you all for this. As much as I’d like to be back at home with my family for Christmas, you all made this Christmas something special.”

“Oh, you can’t go and say that before you open your present!” Vansen laughs, “And besides, we haven’t even finished the party! Things are just getting started.”

Smiling slightly, Fahy presses his point, “All the same, you guys are the best. I hope we can keep doing this when this is all over—”

“You mean when we’re not in the middle of a deathly cold vacuum that could kill us and that the only thing keeping us alive is this little tin can?” Boris cuts in.

Fahy chuckles, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I don’t know if I’d like to stick around with you weirdos if I don’t have to,” Boris says sarcastically.

Vansen elbows Boris and then looks around. Smiling, she lets her head lull to the side slightly and she sighs, “I’d like that. You all are something else, and I think my family would love you all too.”

“Mine too,” Fagan chirps.

“Same here,” Fahy smiles, “Let’s just hope that we can get home sooner rather than later so we don’t have to spend another Christmas way out here.”

“And so I don’t have to go through so many hoops trying to get you all gifts!” Vansen adds with a laugh, “I mean, you guys are great and all, but sheesh!”

“And so I can just buy you guys your gifts,” Boris teases. Holding up a hand, he points out a few burns, “You have no idea how much of a struggle it was to make all your things.”

Fahy laughs and nods, “I think it would all be a lot easier back home. A lot less people to try and sneak things by that way too.”

Shaking her head, Vansen scoffs, “You guys don’t even understand how much of a struggle it was to make it through all the trainings and whatnot they forced me through to become an officer. If I stuck to the rules like I’m supposed to, we’d all be stuck in the brig for this.”

“And we’d be dead not long after that,” Fahy adds the grim caveat that they all knew was the truth.

“And we’d be dead,” Vansen echoes in agreement.

“Well, open your thing already, Fahy!” Boris urges, “I’m ready for our Christmas dinner!”

“Christmas dinner?” Fahy asks, his ears perking up.

“Oh, unwrap it already!” Vansen laughs, “Stop getting distracted.”

Chuckling, Fahy shrugs, admitting defeat at long last. He was, in fact, stalling and he knew it.

Turning his attention back to the present, he gently unwraps the bottom box.

“It’s a miner!” Vansen tells him, “I know it’s just a figurine and can’t move like yours do, but—”

“It’s awesome,” Fahy cuts Vansen off, “I love it.”

Fahy is slowly turning the piece over in his hand as he admires Vansen’s work. Sure enough, the figurine is a very well done miner and they are in the middle of swinging a pickaxe. Fahy knew full well that Vansen likely spent just as long as he did, if not longer, making this present. He also knew that she must have spent a lot of time coming up with something that would be the perfect gift for someone like him who spent so much of his life belowground working the various mines around his home on Allegra.

“The second gift—the one I smuggled in—is the other part to this one,” Vansen explains, “Go on, open it!”

Nodding obediently, Fahy opens up the next gift and is greeted by the sight of a chunk of iron pyrite.

“It’s fool’s gold!” Vansen pipes up.

Chuckling, Fahy rolls the piece of metal between his fingers as he recalls the story that Vansen had likely used as inspiration for this gift. That story, as Fahy had told it, had taken place maybe ten years before. Fahy had been working an abandoned part of one of the mines he worked in an effort to find something worthwhile to make a name for himself and hopefully breathe some new life into his town’s mine which had been struggling as the ore dried up. As he had been digging, he found some iron pyrite and was convinced it was gold. After running through town and making a complete fool of himself, Fahy had been informed that his discovery was nothing more than fool’s gold and that he was the fool.

“Just like your story,” Vansen continues, confirming Fahy’s suspicion.

Smiling, Fahy looks up at Vansen and says, “Thanks, Vansen, this is great.”

Vansen takes the two gifts from Fahy and then puts them together so that the miner figure is preparing to strike the lump of fool’s gold instead of empty space. Handing it back, she smiles and nods, “I’m glad you like it.”

“Well, with that out of thee way, that means it’s time for some chow!” Boris announces as he sets his presents aside and pulls out his bag.

“I guess it is,” Vansen nods as she pulls her own bag out and starts laying out small bags of food, “I had to pull some strings for these too.”

Smiling, Fahy takes a bag that Vansen hands him and he does his best to help finish laying out their little Christmas meal.

When the meal is all set up, Vansen looks out the window behind Fahy and sighs, “Despite everything else, we sure have a lot to be thankful for too. I mean, just look at that view.”

Turning, Fahy sees that they are looking over the whole of the Milky Way.

“Yeah, that’s a view alright,” Boris nods, “Makes me think about how small everything is in the grand scheme of things.”

“Come on, guys, let’s eat,” Vansen says after a few moments.

Turning back to Vansen, Fahy smiles and nods in agreement, “Let’s.”

“Prayers first,” Vansen reminds everyone as she stretches out her hands.

Taking Vansen’s hand, Fahy nods, “Prayers first.”

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Caleb Fast

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The World Beneath

The Black Forest, Allegra

“Listen, Horton, I don’t have all day,” Hreve snaps as he scowls at his companion. Horton had been stammering through the same complaint for the past three minutes and wasn’t showing any sign of finishing.

Horton huffs before he weakly says, “Well, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t wander all the way back here alone!”

Hreve ignores Horton and he continues deeper into the cave system that they had claimed as their apocalypse bunker upon the news of the alien invasion. Hreve didn’t know if the claims of the alien invasion were true or not, but he didn’t care. He was more than ready to fall off the grid and cease to exist as far as any governing officials were concerned. For that matter, he didn’t care if anyone else from the Thessalonian Shipbuilding Company knew if he was alive either.

In short, he needed a break. Any sort of excuse would do to get him out of Thessalonia.

Hreve chuckles as he thinks, And to believe it took an alien invasion to get me out of there. I wonder if it’s even legitimate, or if it’s even still going on…

Glancing back at Horton, Hreve’s brow furrows and he can’t help but ask, “How long have we been up here anyways?”

“Well over three weeks, I’d say.”

“Think they’ve beat back those aliens yet?”

“I still don’t know if the stories were true.”

“Well, I was hearing a few scattered words from someone on the radio we brought up here… whatever the story, there are other people up here too.”

“We could just be picking up some transmissions from somewhere else.”

“Not with the magnetic field around here.”

“What? Why?”

“Magnetic fields mess with radio waves, don’t they teach you framers anything?”

“They teach us to weld and rivet, that’s all you need to know to build a ship.”

Hreve shakes his head and sighs. I can’t believe they put idiots like Horton in charge of building my designs, he thinks in disgust, All it takes is one mistake on Horton’s side of things and I could be out of a job. Everyone at the shipyards could be!

Taking a few more steps, Hreve stops suddenly, and he shines his flashlight ahead. As was common in this network of caves, the tunnel splits off into a few different directions. That was nothing new, and Hreve had been following the ‘right-hand rule’ for most of this exploration trip.

What stood out this time, however, was that one of the tunnels was made of a different kind of material. Rather than be a dull grey, tan, or brown, this particular tunnel was almost black. In many ways, it reminded Hreve of an oxidized obsidian, just with a hint of green to its matted color.

Behind Hreve, Horton gasps, “I’ve never seen anything like that,”

That would be why I stopped, Hreve thinks with a slight chuckle. Something that he had always enjoyed about Horton’s company was how the man would voice his every thought. Sure, it could get annoying, but it would be funny more often than not. In this instance, Hreve managed to see the humor in things.

“It doesn’t look natural, how do you think it got here?” Hreve asks Horton. He didn’t expect an answer, but he was open to whatever idea the other man might offer. He approaches the odd tunnel and stops just a meter away from the nearest chunk of the greenish-black stone it was made of.

“Someone must have put it down here,”

Hreve nods in agreement, happy that Horton was thinking the same thing he was. Problem was, no one should have even been in this cave before them. It wasn’t on any maps—not even the bootlegged maps that Allegrian natives made of parts of the Black Forest. The mouth of the cave appeared to have been sealed off for centuries and was completely overgrown. A recent rockslide was the only reason Hreve had even been able to locate the tiny breach that he cleared away to allow everyone into the cave.

Reaching out, Hreve runs his finger along the cold stone face. It was several degrees cooler than the surrounding country rock, which he found strange. Just to confirm, he reaches out with his other hand and touches a piece of the natural grey stone that he was used to. He frowns when he notes that his initial impression was correct. Looking back once more, he asks, “But why would they go through all the work of building something down here?”

“There must’ve been something important down here.”

“Either that, or they wanted their own apocalypse bunker,”

“I don’t know… this doesn’t look like anything anyone we know would build. It looks…”

“Alien, I know.”

“But Allegra was uninhabited when it was settled,”

“That’s what they say.”

“You think that was a lie?”

“It could have been, or the alien race that lived here was extinct. Maybe they moved on when the water started drying up. I mean, if they were advanced enough to build with whatever this stuff is, then I’d guess they knew what to expect from a planet that was drying up.”

“Why not work to save the planet? That’s what the colonists did when they found Allegra.”

Hreve shrugs, “I don’t know, Horton. All I know is that we have to check this out.”

“I don’t know…”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to discover a lost race of aliens and be remembered forever for the discovery? We could be famous!”

“But you said you didn’t want anyone knowing about us,”

“That’s because we were nobodies back at home. With a discovery like this, we could be somebodies! You know what the Coalition does for somebodies?”

Horton’s stomach growls as if on cue, “I’d guess that they feed you at the very least.”

Hreve yearningly looks at the tunnel and smirks as his mind races with images of splendor and riches. He knew full well that this could just be the opportunity that got him and his family off this planet once and for all. With a find like this, he could get some cushy job in an office making records of this find for the rest of his life. No more risking his life to do something as monotonous as approving and improving the same old ship designs day in and day out. With a job like the one he was imagining; he could finally see the galaxy and not just the same few streets between his home and the shipyard.

Smiling wistfully, Hreve lets his friend in on his thoughts, “There would be a whole lot more than just food waiting for us… We could get out of the shipyards once and for all.”

“You know, some of us like our jobs.”

Chuckling, Hreve reminds Horton of their conversation yesterday, “You called your job a premature cancer ward and you said you were happy that you got away from it all.”

“Well, it’s fun when you’re not breathing in the welding fumes… Or cleaning up after someone’s mistakes… or—alright, I guess you’re right. I could use a new job.”

“Just imagine what they’d have us do after this…”

“Well… I think we’d spend a lot more time in caves. I don’t really like the sound of that.”

Hreve shrugs and he takes his first step into the darkened tunnel. When the world doesn’t suddenly explode or anything like that, he continues walking deeper into the cave. Turning back, he calls out, “Come on, let’s check this out. If you don’t like the job they offer you, then you don’t have to take it. All I know is that I’d rather explore caves and see something new every day than be stuck in that stuffy office at the shipyard.”

Horton hesitantly follows.

Hreve can’t help but notice that the dark, matted walls of the cave seemed to absorb all the light from his flashlight. While he still had enough light to continue deeper, he found himself squinting in an effort to see further. The limited light situation fortunately didn’t seem to phase Horton, either that or the man didn’t notice the change. Either way, Hreve was happy that Horton had stopped complaining.

At that, Hreve momentarily wonders if he might have lost Horton. He quickly looks back and sees that the man is in fact still behind him, and he continues ahead.

After a hundred meters or so, the tunnel begins dipping downward at a much sharper angle than it had been. Rather than be a five-degree slope like much of the cave, it is now dropping at about a thirty-degree slope, which makes it harder to stop and makes Hreve’s ankles ache. After maybe a hundred meters of that, the ground levels off and feels almost perfectly level, which Hreve finds odd. He is about to mention it but opts against it when Horton fails to say anything.

“It looks like the cave opens up ahead,” Horton notes as his faint flashlight beam shines ahead further than it had been.

Hreve nods slowly in response and he quickens his pace. He wanted to see if what he and Horton were seeing was true, something about the dark walls of the cave had made everything seem so tight that the thought of it opening up was both a surprise and a relief.

Stepping into a much wider section of the cave, Hreve stops once more, and he looks all around. This large cavern is about twenty meters tall and is easily three times that in length. As far as Hreve can tell, its ceiling is also a near-perfect semicircle, which he finds odd. In addition to being odd, it confirms his suspicions that the structure was in fact man-made—or more accurately, alien-made.

The walls of this cavern are made of the same dark material, but this stuff seems to have a slight glow, a glow that really highlights the geometric crystalline structure of whatever the walls were made of. Just to be sure, Hreve approaches the nearest bit of glowing wall, and he turns off his light. Horton seems to pick up on the idea and turns his off as well. A few moments pass before Hreve’s eyes adjust and he sees that the walls are in fact glowing ever so slightly.

“Weird,” Horton whispers.

“Yeah, very weird. I wish I brought our Geiger counter along, it’d be interesting to see if this stuff is radioactive.”

“Are we going to die? I mean, if all that smoke from welding didn’t get me, will this?”

“I don’t know… I wouldn’t think so though.”

“Why not? Doesn’t radioactive stuff glow?”

“Some does… but I don’t think this stuff is dangerous. The aliens wouldn’t have built with it if it was.”

“But they could have gone extinct from it.”

“That’s a possibility, but I don’t think it’s the case here.”

“I… I think I like it. It’s pretty.”

“I like it too,” Hreve agrees.

“I saw another tunnel at the far end of this room.”

Hreve nods slowly as he asks, “Think we should check it out?”

“We’ve come this far,” Horton answers.

Nodding still, Hreve grabs his flashlight and warns, “Lights on!”

Flicking on his light, Hreve squints against the bright light and he waits for his eyes to adjust. A few seconds pass before he feels confident enough to trudge on ahead to the far side of the cave.

“I was thinking,” Horton announces as they walk.

“What?”

“Do you think that these structures could be what’s causing the magnetic fields? Like, they’re weird anomalies, so they’d have to be made by something weird, right?”

“I don’t see why not,”

“Well, what are we going to call the aliens that made this thing then? I think it should have something to do with magnet in their name.”

“I don’t know about that—”

“How about Magnet-heads?”

“We don’t even know what their heads look like.”

“Field Layers? Magnet-ites? The Polarity?”

“The Polarity sounds pretty cool. A bit ominous, but cool.”

“I liked that one too.”

Hreve stops yet again, this time at the end of the large cavern that they had been in. He is looking through the cave ahead of them and he blinks a few times to confirm that he was in fact seeing what he thought he was. When that doesn’t help or change what he was seeing, he flicks his light off once again and Horton follows his lead.

Ahead of them, a faint light is shining from further down the tunnel.

“That can’t be daylight, right?” Horton asks after a few seconds.

“No… We’re way too far underground.”

“And we couldn’t have walked all the way under the mountain range… right?”

“Right…”

“Then… could it be lava?”

“It could be, I’ve never seen the stuff before though. Shouldn’t it be warmer in here if it was lava?”

“I don’t know… maybe these rocks don’t let heat move the same way.”

Hreve finds himself nodding uselessly in the dark and he also notices that his jaw had dropped. He quickly clamps his mouth back closed and he begins walking toward the light, this time without the aid of this flashlight. The light ahead of him and Horton appears to be almost aqua in color, which isn’t too unlike the sunlight on the surface, however, there still remained the issue of how far underground they were. There was no way that the light could be coming from the surface.

“I’m nervous,” Horton mumbles.

Again, Hreve just finds himself nodding along. His original thoughts of grand appearances and notoriety were gone now. All he could think about was just what could be ahead of him. He didn’t know if it was dangerous, if it was alive, or if it was nothing at all. All he knew was that it was something and that he had to find out what.

“I was thinking it could be some sort of light,” Horton rambles on, “Like, we’ve got our flashlights, maybe these aliens had lights too. Those glowing walls probably didn’t keep things bright enough for them, after all.”

“But how could it still be going all these years later?” Hreve asks, knowing that Horton wouldn’t know the answer.

“Alien tech. They’ve always got stuff we don’t. Just think about all the stuff that the Toaz had that we made use of—these aliens are bound to know some stuff too.”

Again, all Hreve can do is nod.

Horton continues babbling about everything that pops into his head for several minutes and Hreve allows it. There were better things to do than bicker, and on top of that, Hreve couldn’t muster his voice to say anything anyway.

Turning a corner, Hreve gasps when he sees a door that is being silhouetted by the aqua-colored light that is seeping through on all sides of it. Something about the presence of a door makes the entire situation seem somewhat normal and it makes the aliens—the Polarity as Horton named them—seem more human. No more were they some wispy civilization that may or may not exist, they were concrete and real—just like the door that is only a few meters away. In a way, Hreve thought that the presence of a door was funny, out of all technologies to find that humanity and the Polarity had in common, a door was not something that Hreve would have put on the list.

“Think it opens?” Horton asks suddenly.

“It’s got to,” Hreve answers as he boldly approaches the door. Stopping just in front of it, he begins feeling around for a door handle or a console beside the door or any other way to open it. He does so for a good minute before stepping back.

“Maybe it’s more simple than we’re thinking,” Horton offers as he steps forward for his own turn.

Hreve watches as Horton puts forth both his hands and rests his palms flat on the face of the door. Horton then takes a few deep breaths, the light from the door casting strange and eerie shadows off Horton’s body as he does so.

Then Horton suddenly presses on the door and it gives way, but not in the way Hreve expected.

Rather than swing one way or the other on some sort of hinge, the door glides into the area beyond in the same direction that Horton had pushed it. For a moment, Hreve is awestruck and confused, but his brain quickly catches up to the present and he realizes that the door was utilizing some sort of magnetism to work, a fact he found quite odd.

Horton stops pushing and he examines the door. Planting his hands on his hips, he happily exclaims, “Magnets!”

Hreve lets out a short laugh as he takes in Horton’s happiness, but he cuts his joy short when he realizes that he and Horton are both being bathed in the bright light that they had been pursuing. His eyes snap upward, toward the source of the light and he is greeted with what he can only describe as a massive screen at the top of the cavern he is in. The screen is at least a hundred meters above him and, if he isn’t mistaken, it appears to only be about fifty meters or so wide, which he found surprising. His eyes drop so he can take in the size of the cave that the screen is so easily illuminating when his heart skips a beat.

This was no empty cave.

It wasn’t filled with stalactites, or trash, or ruins, or anything that he had been expecting.

The floor of the massive cave is made up of gently rolling hills and a handful of valleys, all of which are spread across the huge five or so kilometer circle that the screen above Hreve is keeping bright. Scattered haphazardly along the hills and in the valleys are mostly small structures, buildings Hreve could only describe as hovels or huts.

However, those buildings were anything but primitive, like that description would imply. Rather than be built out of mud or brick, these structures are all built out of the same crystalline blackish stone. Roads made of the same material weave their way through the landscape, connecting all the buildings to each other and to the small assortment of larger structures.

“It’s like… it’s like some sort of vacation destination from the commercials!” Horton calls out joyously.

“Don’t!” Hreve grabs Horton’s shirt and stops the man from racing toward the nearest structure.

“And why not?” Horton demands, “This right here is everything we could have hoped to get from a discovery like this, and we can have it right now!”

Hreve shakes his head slowly. He isn’t sure why, but something didn’t seem right about all of this. As he shakes his head, he continues scanning the scene before him, and he begins noting the rusting hulks that are on the roads and scattered elsewhere as well. He sees that the pieces of machinery are more plentiful closer to one of the large structures, and he examines it more closely. After a few moments, he realizes that the structure appeared to be some sort of barracks.

Taking in a sharp breath, Hreve finally says, “I think this is some kind of military base.”

“Military? No way! Look at that over there! They’ve got a lake! There’s no way—”

“No! Look at those things out there! The ones with the rust. Those look like some kind of futuristic tanks to me! And look at these buildings here!” Hreve points at the nearby structures that seem like they would funnel anyone going through the door they had just entered through right to, “Tell me they don’t look like a checkpoint for people to check in before being let in.”

“But it’s so pretty!”

“Maybe that’s just how the Polarity builds their military bases.”

“But… why all the way down here?”

“I don’t know… maybe it was a bunker or something.”

“But aren’t bunkers supposed to house tons of people? This whole place,” Horton makes a big point of waving his hands around, “That’s a lot of work to just house a hundred or so houses!”

“I really don’t know,” Hreve sighs, “But I don’t like it. I know that much.”

“Well, are we going to look around at least?”

Nodding slowly, Hreve agrees, and he allows Horton to take the lead for a while.

Hreve and Horton make their way through the abandoned checkpoint, and Hreve can’t help but look inside. He stops long enough to poke his head through the open window and he takes in the sight of everything inside. He can see what appears to be a filing system of sorts for square, green crystalline plates. He can see what is clearly a chair sitting before what he believes is a computer, and beside that is something that he immediately recognizes as a rifle-like weapon.

Hreve makes a point of pointing out the rifle to Horton who simply shrugs and nods at the discovery before marching ahead.

Exiting the checkpoint area, Hreve immediately notes the green and red plants that make up the ground cover of the cave. The plants remind him of both moss and clovers at the same time, and he can’t help but wonder how the plant life hadn’t taken over the entire cave in the years since the area had been abandoned. Sure, there were some places where the plants encroached on the black road a bit, but they had yet to cover it completely.

Hreve continues following Horton for quite some time and he stops at the first of the rusting hulks that he is now certain are war machines. Horton continues on ahead, somehow unfazed by the machine.

Unwilling to part with the tank-like machine just yet, Hreve lets Horton leave and he begins circling around the machine. The machine is largely made up of the same blackish material that the alien race seemed oh so fond of, but there are parts of it that are made of what Hreve assumes is some sort of steel. The steel is where all the rust is coming from, and that rust has stained parts of the black material over the many years.

There aren’t any wheels or treads on this tank, and Hreve ascertains that it must use some sort of levitation to move along. The lower half of the tank appears to be just an armored carrier for whatever moved the machine, much like the tanks Hreve was accustomed to seeing the Coalition use. The upper half, much like a normal tank, was clearly the weapons platform where weapons that were a lot like the one in the checkpoint were pointing out every which way. There didn’t appear to be any front or rear to the upper portion of the tank, which just made it appear even more fearsome.

“Horton, I think we need to leave this place,” Hreve calls out to his traveling buddy as he quickly retreats from the tank. Something about all of the guns pointing out of it made it seem threatening and scary, even if it appeared to be very much dead.

“You can leave, I’m on vacation!” Horton calls back.

“Something happened here, man!” Hreve shouts, “I don’t think we should stay!”

“Whatever it is, it’s gone now,”

“You can’t know that.”

“It’s been forever since anything living was here.”

“We don’t know that,” Hreve starts. He is about to say more as he walks toward Horton, but he stops dead in his tracks. At his feet is something that he can only describe as a footprint. The print is easily a meter long and a little under half a meter wide and it appears to have been left behind by some sort of mechanization, based upon the sharp edges of the print. Not too far away, there is another print and then another and another. Judging by the state of the plants that had been crushed, the steps were not too terribly old.

“Horton…” Hreve says in a shaky voice, “I’m leaving right now, and you should too.”

“Just go already!” Horton snaps, “I’ll take all the credit for discovering the Polarity for myself!”

Hreve looks over to Horton and he feels a pang of anger, fear, and sadness as his friend threatens to cheat him. After so many years of working together and getting to know each other, Hreve expected more of the man. He had had Horton and his wife over several times over the years to have dinner with his own family, and here the man was threatening to throw all of that away.

Shaking his head, Hreve immediately thinks about what his father always said about how power always corrupts. People, no matter how good they once were, they always had a propensity to do horrible things in the name of gaining or maintaining power. That was one of the reasons why the Coalition had gotten so bad, or at least that’s what Hreve’s father said.

Before he can say anything else to Horton, Hreve sees something move on the crest of a hill in the distance.

A split second later, there is a flash and a beam of light.

Hreve’s eyes follow the beam and his heart stops for a moment when he sees a smoldering section of the green and red grass where Horton had been standing not long before. All that remained of the man is a few small scraps of clothing.

Somehow remembering the emergency drills from the shipyard, Hreve’s body immediately drops to the ground, just like he was trained to do in the event of explosions. While there hadn’t been an explosion, Hreve somehow instinctively knew that dropping to the ground would be his sole means of survival.

After a few seconds that seem to take hours, Hreve allows himself to look toward the distant hill where the flash had come from.

To his terror, there is something coming his way from that hill. It is walking in a soulless disjointed way that tells Hreve everything that he needed to know—the thing that killed Horton was a robot. Whatever it was, it had to of played some sort of role in this military bunker. It was a resident of this horrid underworld beneath the Black Forest.

Realizing that the machine hadn’t fired until it had a direct line of sight with Horton, Hreve concocts a plan: he would make his way back to the door he had come through whenever the machine was out of view.

Hreve immediately laughs at his plan, but he cuts his laughter short because he feared the robot would shoot at him if it saw his movement. A few seconds pass and Hreve’s thoughts return to the absurdity of his plan when he reasons that the robot hadn’t seen him. I’m literally about to play some psychotic version of red light green light to save my life, Hreve thinks, the craziness of it all bringing him far too close to laughing once more.

Before he can rethink his plan, the robot slips beneath the crest of another hill and out of sight. Without giving the order, Hreve’s body leaps up and begins sprinting back up the road. He was on autopilot, and he knew that his instincts were the only thing keeping him alive.

As he runs, Hreve looks back every few steps to ensure that the robot cannot see him. He gets a good three minutes of running in before he sees the glint of metal that the robot is made of, and he dives to the ground amidst some of the roadside plants.

The war machine is still stumbling along closer and closer to where Horton had been murdered. Whatever its agenda, the robot seemed intent on investigating the scene of the killing it had conducted.

Several painfully long minutes pass as the robot works its way down the hill and toward Horton and Hreve. As he waits for his next chance to run, Hreve realizes that he has to pee and a few tears stream down his face as he wills his body to ignore the urge for just a little while longer.

Before he has a chance to wet himself, the robot slips back out of sight, this time behind a building, and Hreve races closer to the door he and Horton had entered through an eternity ago. He gets to the checkpoint in time to see the robot emerging from the building that had come between it and Hreve, and Hreve dives through the open window into the room he had examined earlier.

Inside the building, Hreve takes several dozen unsteady breaths before he steadies his breathing to the point that he can calm down and think once more. As he thinks, his brain immediately jumps to the idea that there would be questions if he were to return without Horton. People could think that he murdered the man. He needed some sort of proof of what happened.

And at that, Hreve realizes that he jumped into the perfect place to take his proof. He reaches for the green plates, but he stops when he remembers just how badly he had to pee. Not wanting to risk his life to respond to the call of nature, he opts to pee inside of the checkpoint room he is in.

Finished with that, he then grabs a plate and the strange rifle as well. These two prizes in hand, he peeks out of the window just far enough to check on the robot. It is now standing over the charred earth where Horton had been standing not long before. Every now and then the machine takes an awkward step or two, but it seems like it has no idea what to do next.

And then it begins marching back the way it had come, just as suddenly as its showing up in the first place.

Hreve briefly considers making a run for it while the killing machine’s back is turned, but he can’t bring himself to risk it. He knew that he’d have a better opportunity as soon as it crested a hill.

He keeps repeating this line of thought for several minutes until the robot is finally out of sight. At that, he crawls back through the window, grabs his artifacts, and runs. He is several steps past the door he had entered through before he stops himself. He can’t help but feel like he had to shut the door. That he had to put the lip back onto Pandora’s box.

But, at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel like doing so would get himself killed.

Letting out a shaky, emotional groan that he is happy no one is around to hear, Hreve retreats, and he races away from the door, from the false paradise, and the killing mechanization. He doesn’t stop running until he steps out of the blackened tunnel and feels the familiar natural, cool stone underfoot.

Finally back on familiar ground, Hreve drops to his knees and he sets down the two pieces that he had taken as proof of what had occurred. With his hands now free, he drops down further, bowing to nothing in particular as he allows his emotions and thoughts to catch back up to him.

The terror that he had felt upon seeing the robot that killed Horton causes him to shake uncontrollably and he feels like his bones have been replaced with ice as the fear somehow reaches that deep into his being. The adrenaline that had kept him alive is easing up, and it is filling him with a pain that he can only describe as broken glass that is cutting at his insides. The excitement that he had originally felt is there as well, but it feels foreign and like it is an abomination. Any level of excitement right now felt like it was spitting on the grave of Horton.

Hreve isn’t sure just how long he had been sobbing on the ground by the time that he wakes up.

The ground beneath him is wet from his tears, and he can see several small streams of moisture that had found their way downhill from his face. As he looks at the wetted streambeds, he momentarily wonders how he could see in the dark. A moment later, his eyes find that he had somehow managed to bring his flashlight along and he had left it on as he sobbed and eventually fell asleep.

Swallowing, Hreve realizes that he hadn’t drunk anything for quite some time. He reaches for where his water had been but finds nothing. That is when he remembers that Horton had borrowed his canteen and had been carrying it when he was killed.

Swallowing once more, Hreve rises to his feet shakily. Bending down, he grabs the plate, the rifle, and his flashlight and he begins shuffling back toward where his family is near the mouth of the cave.

He didn’t know what he would do when he got back to them. He didn’t know what he could tell them. He didn’t know how to explain what happened.

All Hreve knew was that he had to get all of them out of this cave. Anywhere else would do. Even the open air would do. Better yet, Hreve thinks, Better yet, we can just get out of the Black Forest! Get away from all of this. Surely the alien invasion is over by now. Surely things are looking up out there.

Nodding resolutely, Hreve commits to the plan. He was going to get Horton and his families both out of here and far from that horrible cave.

Whatever the race of alien was that built that cave, they must have had no interest other than making war.

5
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Rated 5 out of 5
October 9, 2021

Interesting concept, well worth expanding.

Mike Blake

Caleb Fast

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At the Edge of the World

Tina watched the waves crash over her bare feet and let the words leave her lips. “He’s dead.”

“Yeah.” Johnny kept his distance. He always did. How the man could be so comforting yet so detached from reality was beyond Tina. But she wished she could be detached, too. Numb. Empty. Why was it hard for her and easy for the others?

“Did you see it?” she asked softly. The cool breeze bit her cheeks and the smell of salt burned her nostrils.

“Yeah.”

Tina fought tears. “Did he…” Apologize? Mention her? Did he die fast or slow? No one had said. It was as if the apocalypse had erased all sense of moral decency from people’s minds. Didn’t death matter to anyone but her?

Johnny stepped closer and grabbed Tina’s shoulder, his grip gentle. “He wanted me to tell you he was sorry for what he did.”

Tina closed her eyes. Johnny could be lying. He’d lied to make people feel better before.

So what if he was? Would it hurt her to believe a lie? Just once?

Tina dug her toes into the wet sand. “I’m leaving the crew.”

“Yeah.” Johnny released her arm. “I think… I think that’d be best.”

“Are you?” She forced.

Johnny sighed and watched the tumultuous waves, then met her gaze. “Will you stay with the camp?”

“For now.” It was better than the group of nomads who’d left her brother for dead.

“Then yeah. I’ll stay.” Johnny looked away. “I made him a promise. I plan on keeping it.”

Tina licked her chapped lips and let the tears roll down her face. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”

Johnny didn’t answer. They stood at the edge of the world as they knew it and let the shrill, panicked wind speak for them.

###

Tina didn’t sleep that night. She tried to. They wouldn’t leave till morning, after Johnny spoke with the leader, Hendrix. But she got up—her phone read 1:13 AM—and packed up what few possessions she had left.

She’d run. She’d leave the death behind.

She’d start something new, with Johnny on her side, they could fix… Something.

Couldn’t they?

Or was the apocalypse hopeless? The Infected were numerous, taking over the country slowly but surely. Maybe Tina should give up. Peter was dead. Nothing would bring him back.

But what if something could have?

That tiny flame of hope burned in her chest. She tried smothering it out. It didn’t yield.

What if something could stop this virus?

If something could be found, she could save someone. Couldn’t she? No one would have to die again.

It was a stupid dream. A vain hope.

Still, it burned within her.

Peter wanted her to survive. He’d said so. He might’ve been rude, and obnoxious, and cold-hearted at times, but he’d protected her.

She owed him. And the best way to repay him would be to keep fighting and save as many people as she could. Right?

Tina zipped her military grade backpack shut. The other girls slept soundly in the bunkroom and Tina sucked in a breath. A few more hours, and she’d be heading into a broken world with a guy who she didn’t know well, but she trusted Johnny with her life. Could they survive? Could they make a difference?

If she had to fight Infected alone, she’d do so. If she faced a thousand more deaths and broke each time, she’d do so. Nothing mattered but using what Peter had given her—her life.

5
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5 out of 5 stars (based on 2 reviews)
Rated 5 out of 5
April 30, 2021

Good intro for a full-length story.

Janne
Rated 5 out of 5
April 7, 2021

Attention-grabbing from the start! Great prose and a compelling little story.

Michaela Bush

Angela R. Watts

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A Man Travels Light When He Has Nothing Left

One

Gage Homestead, Markham

“I always knew that Tuesdays weren’t my day,” Howard Gage tells himself with a chuckle. Looking afar off, he slowly counts a few of the stars near the horizon. There was such an otherworldly majesty to those pinpricks of light that always made Howard feel small—but in a good way.

Shaking his head, Howard leans against the flimsy rail on his worn-out porch. Years ago, the porch had been beautiful, and the rail held firm. That was back when his grandfather—the man who started the homestead—had built it.

That was the only thing that Howard’s grandfather got to do on this piece of land. Just a week after he finished building it and invited the rest of his family to move in, he was dead.

As far as anyone could tell, some odd group of brigands came in and shot him. They stole everything that was loose, and they left. Howard had been the one who found his grandfather’s body out behind the house. The man had been dragged out there and shot in the back of the head. The sole things left on his body were his trousers and the Bible that was still clenched in his cold hands.

Believe it or not, that had happened on a Tuesday as well.

And now Howard had another tale to add to his repertoire of sadness. His barn was afire.

By the time Howard finally woke up to the smell of smoke it was already too late to save it. It was too late to even consider racing into the flames in order to save anything.

Not that it would matter anyway.

It was already too late in the season to replant anything. Howard had just finished bringing in his modest harvest the week before, a harvest that is now burning before his eyes. Not only that, all his equipment and his meager host of livestock was also in that old barn.

A soft coo sounds and Howard can just barely hear it over the fire. Looking to his right, he can’t help but laugh again. Smiling, he thinks, “Well, I guess I didn’t lose all of them.”

Staring back at Howard, his favorite chicken, Hanna, is nestled at the foot of the porch. This particular hen had a way of escaping any enclosure, she also stopped laying quite some time ago. To Howard, Hanna was his sole means of entertainment on most days, because of this, he couldn’t bring himself to end the hen’s life. Without her daring escapes, life would be unbearably monotonous. Today, that tendency to fly to coop saved Hanna’s life.

Turning back to the fire, Howard sighs. He knew that he was just about as good as dead now if he stayed. If he survived until next month on whatever he could scrounge up, the Coalition government would kill him. Why? Because he would have failed to produce the year’s quota and a farmer who can’t produce is of no use to the Coalition’s collection officers.

Looking up to the stars, Howard wonders what it might be like back on his homeworld. There was never a lot of food, but the idea of starving to death wasn’t the main concern.

Shaking his head once more, Howard slips back into the house and packs his bag. As he does so, he picks up his grandfather’s bloodstained Bible. Slipping it into his belt, Howard marches out the front door and picks up Hanna.

He didn’t have anything left here.

If the weather held out, he would be able to make it to the nearest town that occasionally saw some traffic from passing starships. Looking up to the heavens, Howard silently begs God for someone to be kind enough to give him a ride. He was willing to go anywhere, even a space station would be satisfactory at this point—so long as they let him keep little old Hanna.

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Caleb Fast

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Ellendawn: The City of Lights

One

Ellendawn, Gad

“To think that they used to say that we were the weird ones,” Aleph laughs as he and his brother look out to the city that they grew up in.

Stretched out in front of them is the city of Ellendawn, a city better known as ‘the City of Lights.’ According to the stories, the town first got its name from the breathtaking sunrises that once graced the landscape. There was supposedly a natural eternally rose gold hue to the light that was, as rumor had it, quite lovely.

But that was years ago, long before the meek colony swelled into a massive city. As the city grew, the ambient light from the countless structures began overpowering the beautiful lights that the world once boasted. In time, clouds rolled in and it was rare that anyone could see any rays of sunlight through the thick cloud cover after that.

Thanks to the clouds, the cityscape became very dark, so people started using even more lights. After several years someone got the bright idea to install some rose gold lights across the city to replace the romantic lighting that the local star once offered for free.

“Well, I still think you’re weird,” Feivel shrugs before he lets out a stifled laugh.

“That’s fair,” Aleph chuckles as he tears his eyes away from their hometown—he hoped for the last time. Spinning around on his heels, the gravel path crunches and grinds underfoot. Taking a deep breath, Aleph announces, “Let’s go.”

“So, where are we going?” Feivel asks nervously as Aleph marches away from town.

“East,” Aleph answer simply as he fixes his eyes ahead. He didn’t dare to turn back around and risk seeing the home that he was leaving again. Part of him feared that he might turn to a pillar of salt if he did. If that happened, he would then be stuck on this planet forever. A more reasonable part of him feared that he would lose his nerve and decide to go back to the familiar home he knew, even if there was nothing left for him there.

Just a week earlier the Coalition had killed his parents. They tried to convince Feivel and Aleph that their parents were caught in some sort of accident, but Aleph knew. He knew because it was all his fault. Not only that, but he saw it. He saw everything.

Just a few hours before his parents were killed, Aleph asked his teacher what it meant to be part of a Resistance. Aleph had wondered what his parents had been talking about for years and there was one word that came up time and time again. Resistance. He didn’t know what it really meant, nor did he know what his parents might be resisting. As far as he knew, at the time, life was good.

But now he knew.

His parents were hoping to strike back at the Coalition government, one known for its harsh treatment of its people.

Unfortunately for him, Aleph didn’t know any of this at the time. Instead, he foolishly trusted those who assured him that they had his well-being in mind. Following that childish thought pattern, he went to a person he trusted to give him all the answers he needed because they had in the past. It only seemed reasonable that a teacher would be prepared to answer a seemingly random and harmless question.

Aleph chokes as emotions rise up into his throat. The sensation feels a lot like his shellfish allergy that made his throat constrict as it swelled shut. Coughing lightly, he tries to play it off like he is simply choking on the dust from the underused road. For his brother’s sake, he would maintain a strong front.

“How long are we going to be gone?” Feivel asks weakly from behind Aleph.

Shaking his head, Aleph answers, “We’re not going back. We can’t. Not now, not ever.”

“But what about our home?”

“Forget about our apartment, it’s gone.”

“What do you mean? I can still see it.”

“It doesn’t matter, we can’t go back.”

“But why?”

“Because the people in charge killed mom and dad.”

“But… they told us that there was an accident and that’s what happened.”

“They lied,”

“How do you know?”

Images of the events that led up to Aleph’s parents getting killed flash before his eyes and a lone tear breaks away from the confines of his eye where he had been trying to keep it. Swallowing what feels like a large grape, Aleph tries to find the words to answer his brother.

Aleph had been hiding in the bushes outside of the ground floor of his apartment building doing what anyone his age would be doing—killing bugs. He had tried to convince Feivel to join him in his efforts against the tiny invaders that would always end up sneaking into their home and stealing what little food they had sitting around. It was all part of his noble mission. Despite these efforts, Feivel was more interested in watching some program on the Holo-Port. Feeling like his brother had disgraced the family name, Aleph marched out to quell the invaders on his own.

Aleph spent a good hour killing the ants outside when his parents finally returned from work. They always came home at the same time on the same bus. Aleph was about to jump out of the bushes to surprise them when a large black truck pulled up beside his parents. Confused, Aleph resigned himself to watch what was happening. He had never seen such a scary looking car in his life, and he wanted to see if his father could vanquish the massive metal beast.

As he watched, several people in black outfits and masks hopped out of the vehicle and started asking his parents some questions. The outfits were all solid black except for a large red Coalition insignia on their backs and a smaller one on their shoulders.

It wasn’t long before his father must have answered one of the questions wrong because the people in black started shouting. That scared Aleph’s mom who tried running away from the scary people to get in the house.

And then they shot her.

Horrified, Aleph remembers the look on his mother’s face when she was shot. She was right in front of him when she was hit, so Aleph could easily recall every little detail. As soon as the gun fired, her face shown in surprise and her jaw dropped as her eyes went wide. That lasted for the briefest moment before a look of pain corrupted her face—the very face that Aleph had planned on getting his mother to make when he would have jumped out to surprise her.

Instead of a smile that would have followed her recognition of her son scaring her, Aleph’s mother’s face turned into one of terror and pain. Watching her face change was enough to send Aleph backpedaling further into the bush.

Once Aleph had his back planted firmly against the foundation of his apartment complex his focus shifted back to the scene before him. Laying on the ground in front of him was his mother who was lying in a growing pool of blood. Her eyes were fixed on the small tunnel that led into the bush where Aleph was hiding, and he had briefly wondered if she was about to tell him something.

The thought was cut short when his father started yelling. He had never heard his father raise his voice before, much less yell. Aleph remembered how he had covered his ears and resolved to remain absolutely silent. He couldn’t scream because he knew that he would be next if he did. They shot his mom when she screamed, so he feared that might be what got them mad. He wondered why his father was yelling because Aleph thought that his dad would know not to yell, if he yelled then he would be shot too. Sure enough, there were a few more gunshots and Aleph watched as his dad fell to the ground.

That was when the scary people decided to pick up his parents’ bodies and put them inside of their mean looking car. After just a few seconds his parents were gone.

It wasn’t until later that Aleph realized that the yelling had nothing to do with it. His parents were shot because his teacher told his secret to the scary people in black. This truth really became evident when he recalled how the people who shot his parents had mentioned the word ‘resistance’ as they shoved his parents into the car.

“Allie, how do you know?” Feivel repeats, using his nickname for his brother.

His lips quivering, Aleph stops and begins to tremble. Dropping to a crouch, he sobs, “I… I saw it! I—I saw everything.”

“You saw what?”

“I s—saw them k—kill mom and d—dad! It—It’s all m—my fault!” By now, Aleph knew that he couldn’t keep his cool anymore. It was all too much. After shoving every emotion down for nearly a week to keep anyone from suspecting anything, Aleph finally broke.

“You saw it? How was it your fault? What did you do?”

“I a—asked m—my teacher what the Resist—Resistance was… That’s what this was all about!”

“What’s a resist… resist dance?”

“I d—don’t know for sure,” Aleph coughs as his snot runs over his mouth, “But my t—teacher said that they are the bad guys.”

“Mom and dad were bad guys?”

“No, we knew them! They had to be good.”

“But how are the resist dance people bad then?”

“The Resistance,” Aleph corrects his little brother. Taking a shaky breath, he then fills his brother in on everything that he knew. As he explains everything, Aleph stands up and begins following the trail out of town once more. Once he is sure that he had said everything, Aleph announces, “And that’s why we are going to find the Resistance.”

“Why are they all the way out here?”

“Because I think they are weird like us. There’s no way they could live in Ellendawn if they were that different. We would have seen them by now if they were.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, all I do know is that they’ll take care of us because they knew mom and dad.”

Aleph and Feivel travel in silence for several minutes before Feivel weakly whines, “I’m hungry,”

“I know, I am too,” Aleph nods as he continues leading his brother away from the City of Lights. There were a lot of things that Aleph didn’t know right now, but he did know that he would never see his hometown again.

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Caleb Fast

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Bad News

Alright, I have bad new. 🙁 If you’re seeing this, then there aren’t enough stories in the genre you want to check out! I know, it’s sad. But, there’s good news. What is it? YOU can write a story! Yes, you! Everyone has a story in them. No, we might not be the best at first, but we’re humans and we’re made to learn. Made to adapt. Made to create.

If I was able to convince you, then please be sure to check out the page Write With Us and start going through the stories you’ve already written! 😀

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