STORIES:
" The Watley Man and the Green-Eyed Girl"   Eileen Kernaghan
"The Accordionist" Vivian Zenari
"In the Belly of the Cat" Keith Scott
"Transit" Gerald L. Truscott
"The Neck of the Hourglass" Shane Dix
"Sahgora" Catherine MacLeod
"The Diarist" Gemma Files
"The Dream Virus" (aka "Skins Out") Chris Bell

POEMS:
"Safe Return" Gerald Upton
"Sacrificing What You Love" Corrine DeWinter
"Tripping" Kurt Newton "Overheard" Mici Gold
"Time Wind" Catherine Mintz
"Avalanche" and "Ungrounded" Nancy Bennett
"Station" Lawrence Greenberg
"Popeye's Arms" Dietmar Trommeshauser

ILLOS by GAK, Lorri McMullen, Carolyn Shipley,Rick LeBlanc & DLSproule

Excerpts from Issue#7:

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Excerpt from "The Accordionist" by Vivian Zenari

A mass of people suddenly exploded around their table. Someone pushed a small, white concertina into Garofan's lap. Garofan laughed when he saw it, but he picked it up and began to play a quick folksy song. People cheered. Some began to dance, kicking their heels and swirling around their arms in a mock peasant square dance. Wine bottles were tossed on the table. Renato picked one up and drank.

After an hour, events stopped coming clearly to him. He could grasp only a wash of details: Nick's extravagant introduction of Garofan, the whistling of the crowd, the spray of beer on his arm, the wine-scented breeze on his face, the clipped chords of the accordion, then Garofan's smooth, lilting voice and the crowd's gleeful chorus, all crescendoing and decrescendoing like a rush of waves on a shore. Under the bar's neon sign the faces around the table shone bright orange into the dark, and Garofan's eyes glowed like a cat's.

Renato felt sick. His ears were ringing. He rose from the table, and no one seemed to notice. Woozy and weak, he stumbled down the street away from the table, from those brutish, loud Italians, from Garofan.

The sounds from the bar diminished to a buzz as he walked. His feet dragged on the street as if he were treading on wet concrete. He was escaping, finally. It was just for today, but maybe every little escape would one day lead to the one that would take him away forever.

Suddenly Renato felt a hand on his shoulder. He lurched around and found himself facing Garofan.

"I don't think you should try going home by yourself, Renato."

"I can make it." Renato stepped away from Garofan's hand, tripping over his feet a little.

"Are you going to leave Rosie there alone?"

"You'll be there. That's what you want."

"I don't think so."

"You don't think so. Piss off."

"Let me walk you home."

"No. Go back to your party."

"I think you're angry with me."

"No, I'm not angry," Renato said. "It's just that I hate you. You and the rest of them. So get lost."

"Why do you hate us?"

"You're all the same." He didn't quite know how to explain it. "You all think you're something special, but you're greasy and slimy and stupid."

"Me too?"

Renato thought, yes, especially you, but that wasn't right, that wasn't exactly what he felt.

"I think I understand," Garofan whispered. He reached out to touch Renato's arm. "Your soul is in the dark, my friend."

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Excerpt from "In the Belly of the Cat" by Keith Scott

Illustration by DLSroule

A white-coated man appears beside me as I slide back out of the belly of the cat. He is the radiologist and his round face is earnest and sincere behind his glasses.

"We're going to try a needle biopsy on that nodule," he says, "using the CAT scan to guide us. Trouble is, it's only the size of a pea. Hard to hit."

I swallow and nod.

"Another problem," he adds. "Air tends to leak out of the lung when we re-position the guide needle. If I stay in too long you get a pneumothorax."

"Pneumo--?"

"A collapsed lung," he says. "I'd say . . . maybe there's a fifty percent chance we'll get one."

Oh great! I slip into another of my cinematic recalls.

Captain Ahab, a.k.a. Gregory Peck, on the side of Moby Dick awash in the Great Southern Sea, thrusts his harpoon deep into the chest of the great white whale, searching out that nodule.

Then it hits me. Fifty percent! I routinely turn down ninety-nine percent sure things. I'm just not genetically geared for derring-do.

Yet I hear myself, cool and hip, saying to the radiologist, "We've come this far, doctor. Might as well go for it." Insanity, Woody mutters thickly into my ear as we slide back into the cat to recheck coordinates.

I can't remember when I first developed my dislike for cats, but I have to say that Mal holds a special place in my disinclination toward members of his persuasion. As I said earlier, Mal--and I'm utterly convinced his name should be short for malevolent--came with Ella. Actually it's short for Malcolm, a one-time boyfriend of Ella's, and I think Mal is the only earthly being upon whom Ella bestowed a vengeful act. Shortly after Malcolm left her, she had Mal the cat neutered.

My feelings for Mal spring from some primal source deep within me. Since he is an albino, his sight and hearing are limited. I disliked him far less in his limited state, but when Ella outfitted him with contact lenses and a hearing aid, the picture changed completely. Now the creature treats every sight and sound of me with profound disgust. A clear case of technology overplaying its hand. All of which leads up to the pivotal happening in our three way relationship--Ella, Mal and me.

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Excerpt from "Transit" by Gerald L. Truscott

I float in the transit room, hardwired to the ship. I am ready to take us home. The captain signals green. So now I clear my mind, empty it of thought, abandon this place. . . .

We float in nothingness. The crew saw the lights go out, saw blackness swallow the stars, the planets. Some of them think this blackness is a tunnel passing through solid space; some think the blackness itself is solid and we are fixed in it; some believe God has closed His eyes. The scientists have data to show that we are in another dimension. But I know the truth. I saw light, pure and formless, fill the space between the stars and engulf our ship. I saw the light dissolve to black, to nothingness.

We have found a way to reach the centre of everything, the point from which everything rises, everything converges, but nothing exists. No space, matter or time. It is the intersection of infinite possibilities.

I have looked out of the portholes and seen my soul reflected in the blackness. I do not fear this place. With each transit I become part of it. It is my flawless, present awareness, empty, naked and awake. When I stared too long, I felt the urge to go out . . .

. . . to stay here. I don't look out any more but stay in the transit room, which has no windows, because only I can take us back to the universe we know. So now I direct my thoughts to home.

Looking inward, to the emptiness in my mind, I construct the space we wish to occupy with all its matter and time organized around us. I imagine the universe from where we want to be, building it in layers, storing each in digital memory and then adding another. The planets and solid debris in their orbits, the stars, the glowing gases, all things take their places.

And we are there.

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Excerpt from "The Neck of the Hourglass" by Shane Dix

Something was happening. He could feel it. The space he occupied was contracting, drawing in closer those intangible wisps of colour, movement and emotion that had for so long been a constant feature in the ever-shifting white light. Now they were finally moving, changing. And as they changed, so too did he.

It was as if parts of him had been dispersed throughout the light and, as everything closed around him, those parts were gradually returning, his body reforming. There was no pain involved. In fact, there was no sensation of any kind. The only thing he was aware of was a mild apprehension.

All he had known was the light. He had existed within it, had been a part of it, and was reluctant to leave its warmth. But as his world continued to contract, the light began to fade, and he watched helplessly as walls, furniture and assorted apparatus gathered around him.

Eventually the light greyed and became shadows, while the wisps distorted and layered the room with subtle nuances. One wisp he had recognized as movement became a fly which darted by, disappearing quickly into the darkness. A myriad of others flickered briefly before becoming sound: a distant siren, the bark of a dog, laughter beyond the closed window.

Another wisp he knew to be anger dissolved and became a woman's voice:

"Who the hell has been messing with the temporal plates?"

His thoughts quickly collected into memories and dispelled some of his confusion. Everything was suddenly all so familiar: the room, that voice...

He stepped up to the doorway and into the light of the adjoining room--a light much harsher than the one he had been accustomed to--and saw the woman. She was sitting behind a cluttered desk, her hands busy within the metallic black box in front of her.

"Sally?"

She sat back with a start, cursing loudly. Then, seeing him standing there, her face whitened.

"Michael." She stood slowly, uncertainly, then moved over towards him. Her hand reached out to touch his arms, his hair, his face. "You've come back."

He frowned. Although he knew where he was, he was still unsure as to where he had been. "Back?"

"You don't remember?" Michael shook his head numbly. "We sent you forward, Michael. Into the future."

Her words triggered vague recollections of their work together. It had been in tachyon displacement -- though he couldn't recall the actual experiment which had sent him forward. No matter how hard he tried to remember, he found himself distracted by the gentle breeze blowing through the room. It was strange, but somehow it seemed to be causing everything around him to blur, distort.

"Do you remember?" she said after a few moments.

"Yes," he said, sitting down. "But what happened?"

"We're not sure. You were only meant to go forward a couple of days. But something went wrong and you just never showed up."

She shrugged. "That was almost ten years ago."

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Excerpt from "Sahgora" by Catherine MacLeod

This place is Maggy's, a coffeeshop near my street. Tonight I realized that instinct is the way to go. I trust it when I'm tracking, and food or the messenger, the hunt is the hunt.

Maggy's patrons are of medium height, moderate weight, average everything -- the generic displaced. Most look as if they're trying to remember something, and even this late conversation flows -- a sure sign of answers being sought.

It seems a likely place to find a messenger. The shop has ten tables: there are three and four people sitting at nine of them. I sit alone until the door bangs open and a bundle of warm clothes blows in.

She says, "Do you mind?" as she sits. "How are you?"

"Fine. And you?"

"Okay I guess. Got a match?"

"No, I don't."

She takes her cigarette off in search of a light and returns with coffee, breathing fire. "My name's Carol. What's yours?"

Interesting. Do I have a name?

"Carol."

"Really? Hey! Have you seen _The Bell Murder_? No? I just came from the late show. It's about this guy who kills his boss. I love a good mystery."

Then she's in good company. I'm a mystery even to myself, and for a moment she is too. Then the vibration caused by the child's photo becomes a soft buzz. There's a _smell_ about her.

"Are you pregnant?" I blurt.

She stops in mid-sentence. "Uh. . .yeah. Couple of months. How'd you know?"

Another question for which I have no answer. A man at the next table talks too loudly. I watch him too long.

Carol says, "Don't be embarrassed about asking. It's no big deal. We don't even have to mention it again."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Really. We can talk about something else. Um, you wanna hear a joke?

"Okay."

"This Irishman goes into a bar --"

The scent of her pregnancy's heady and rich. Does no one else smell it?

"And the Irishman says, "Fath and begorra--" hey, are you all right?"

AaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"Snap out of it! God. Is it a seizure or something?"

"No." People are looking. No one must remember me.

"Headache?"

Nearer the truth. The revelation was a shock. "Yes."

"Migraine? My mother used to get them. Maybe you should get some sleep."

"I think so. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

_Someone will tell you what you need to know._

I can stop looking for the messenger. I need to know _begorra_.

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Excerpt from "The Diarist" by Gemma Files

Day One. Starting small. I went to your driveway, just before dawn, and picked out eighteen uneven white stones from the area falling under your car's shadow. One for every letter of your full name. Took them home, made the sign of the cross reversed on their dusty skins in stolen gasoline--my own personal brand of Unholy water. With eyes, lips, flesh between nail and finger, back of my throat all burning, breathing out fresh curse with each inverse word: Thee baptize I. Holy ghost and son, father, of name the in.

The water was already boiling when I dropped them in. No salt necessary.

When it was all gone, I wrapped the stones in a clean dishcloth, put them back in my purse and walked six blocks down to the nearest sewage drain, which I was pretty sure would count as a river. Assuming the original recipe allowed at least some metaphoric leeway for we poor, unfortunate, city-dwelling practitioners of the Craft.

Then I went home again, and wrote this down. Calling you. Calling you back. Leaving messages. Waiting for replies to said messages, replies that never come. Doing research, in between dialing; the same facts, mainly, barring some slight referential variances.

My books list at least thirty different methods of extracting payment from people who break their promises. At the rate I'm going, I probably could do two a day. Maybe more.

The next time you don't answer the phone, I'm going to make sure it's because you can't.

Detail of Illustration
by Carolyn Shipley

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Excerpt from "The Dream Virus" by Chris Bell

Behind the desk sat a Rep dressed in brown smoking a Cuban cigar.

The room was lit by a chink in the blackout. It was sparsely furnished, the only large objects a table and two chairs. The floorboards were layered with dust, cigar ash and spent processor chips.

From the road came the rhythmic clatter of a Skin work party, clearing the carriageway for tanks and armoured vehicles.

The Rep's victim was pale, lean and barefooted. His long Crombie coat was stained, his hair singed and sooty black, his fingers beaten ragged.

The interrogation was short.

"You see what the Dreaming brings you? Death. Extermination. But you won't stop it. Your comments, Nox?"

It was too tiring for the prisoner, who had no answers. His form began to blend in with the uncomfortable chair.

Before long, another Rep in combat greens and carrying a stun-cane entered the room. He dragged the prisoner away. The Rep with the cigar stood up, brushed ash from his polyexo and pulled open the curtain. He watched the prisoner stumble through puddles in the courtyard towards the Neural Feedback shed. The Rep official had never delivered a not-guilty verdict. All suspects had been taken to the same shed.

He took little notice as the prisoner was levered into the hut with abundant use of the stun-cane.

He was watching the latest transport of Skins roll in from the Lion City.

On to Issue #8/9

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