Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #11 by Iulian Ionescu

Author:Iulian Ionescu [Ionescu, Iulian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC028000, FIC009000, FIC015000, FIC003000, dark fantasy, fantasy, fantasy magazine, magazine, novelette, science fiction, science fiction magazine, short stories, short story
ISBN: 978-0-9968891-2-4
Publisher: Fantasy Scroll Press, LLC
Published: 2016-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

© 2011 by Ian Creasey

First published in First Contact anthology, edited by Jessi Hoffman (June 2011).

Reprinted by permission of the author.

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Ian Creasey was born in 1969 and lives in Yorkshire, England. He began writing when rock & roll stardom failed to return his calls. So far he has sold fifty-odd short stories to various magazines and anthologies. His debut collection, Maps of the Edge, was published in 2011.

The Great Excuse

Jacob Michael King

I wish I had died without seeing those things. Then it would've been simple: there I'd be, just another homeless drunk, stiff in some alley somewhere. I could handle the dull remorse in those last moments, and the knowledge that I had wasted my life.

The tragedy would've been a local one. Long forgotten by whatever family remained, my passing would make the most marginal of ripples. The bums of Los Angeles (those who weren't mad or fried beyond coherence) would mutter about it almost as a footnote, then head to the library or the streets with their cardboard signs and their cups. We die all the time, and that's the procedure.

There would be Rosie, of course-assuming she outlived me. I hope she'd cry at least a time or two; I hope she'd sleep alone for at least a couple nights in our ramshackle tent beneath the Silver Lake Boulevard exit on the 101. But then she'd get loaded and fall asleep. Maybe it would hit her when she woke up with the needle still in her arm. No matter how drunk I was, I always used to take the needle out; I didn't want her rolling over and breaking it off.

But these are just idle speculations, footsteps echoing down the path I did not take. I am witness to a horror. It has wrenched me from my stupor (decades-long) of apathy and selfishness. I can't be silent. I'm compelled to sound some note of warning before mankind is swallowed up.

And maybe it's for nothing. I'm not a competent man: I can't tell you what to do, only what I've seen. Maybe someone unlike me (someone strong, whose hope hasn't atrophied) could find some means to stay the coming darkness. Then again, maybe not. At least I said something-I can die without that on my conscience.

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