Free Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales by Simon Strantzas

limbs, too many to count. He took another step back into the wall of the pit, and the shock jarred the flashlight from his hand. As it hit the soft ground there was the glint of something lunging toward him, and his gun was in his hand and firing before the utter darkness swallowed him whole. Six flashes in the dark, then no more. At some point he dropped Emily’s pendant.
    Morning light shone in Harvey’s eye through the hide canopy. He coughed blood. From a muted distance he heard voices yelling at him, shadows moving frantically above. He could see enough to know where he was, what condition he was in. There was blood over his hands and deep scratches on his misshapen arms and legs. One of his eyes stuck as he blinked, and a raised hand revealed half his face numb. He was alive; he wished he weren’t. He stared up at the hide canopy, the protesters moving across the opening torn far wider than before, and he wondered why he was not dead when he so deserved to be. As though in response, Emily appeared beside him, her broken face now mirroring his own, and he remembered. He remembered how hurt she had been, how the grief had overwhelmed him. His only happiness fading away, replaced as he watched by a hunk of breathing meat. Harvey swallowed, his throat dry and caked with blood, remembering that thing that was no longer her lying on the hospital bed, fading away, holding her down. He shook his head, not wanting to remember, but the apparition forged of his guilt would not let him forget. He did what any father would do for the child he loved; he waited until the doctor was gone and he set her free. He unplugged her respirator and waited for death to take her.
    But to his horror, death didn’t come.
    And the ground at the Douglas Creek lot rumbled once more.
    Harvey silently apologized to Emily as she stood before him, tears streaming from his only working eye. He had watched her brain-dead body continue to breathe, felt her heart continue to beat, even while her broken face was as pale as the dead. Bound to the world, unable to move on and unable to return, Harvey’s grief consumed what remained of him at the bottom of that dirt hole, six feet deep.
    He remembered little of it. The pillow from under her head in his hand. Leaning down on her crushed face, bones popping softly until she no longer moved, until the hospital machines emitted a single sustained tone. He dropped the pillow in his daze and for the first time saw Emily standing there, staring into his watering eyes, and he knew with cold rationality that he’d made a grievous error. It was not only her anchor with the world he had severed.
    But facing her in that pit he felt a calm. The creature that the Six Nations of the Grand River had brought forth to serve their vengeance had found its first victim, and it fed until it was full, sparing the lives of those at Henco who knew no better. They weren’t free of blame; it was only that he had so much more to offer. He laughed, and the action made him cough again. Blood fell to the vibrating ground. He looked up with his one good eye and saw through the torn canopy a large arm of orange metal, and he knew he was right. The scoop lifted above him, blocking out the rising sun, and he turned his head to see Emily standing there beside him, a smile finally on her broken doll’s face. He smiled too, as best he could, and tried to reach his arm out to take her tiny hand, but he was buried by earth before he reached her.

Strong as a Rock

    Garrison did not want to go rock climbing, but Rex assured him it was a good idea.
    “You’ll have fun, Gar. Trust me. It’ll take your mind off Mom.”
    But Garrison didn’t think anything would take his mind off her. The sight of her in that hospital bed, hooked up to wires and tubes, so thin and pale . . . no, he could not forget her. He still missed her every day.
    But Rex was right. He needed to start his life again. Emerge from his darkened basement into the world. He