Meet Me in the Strange by Leander Watts

Author:Leander Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Meerkat Press, LLC
Published: 2018-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

FIFTY-ONE

I read in the evening paper that they’d be showing Frankenstein at the End of Time on the late show. We needed to see it, together. I was positive of that. It was a sign: they were showing an Apollonautic monster movie at midnight on our first full day together. So I snuck a small TV out of a room the maintenance guys had set up as a lounge. They’d complain to each other, but not to anyone above them. They’d taken the TV and weren’t about to protest their stolen goods being stolen.

A little before midnight, with a big plate of anise cakes I snagged from the kitchen, we wrapped ourselves in blankets to keep warm and sat down to see the show. It was a story that had the creature and the doctor, but in the world they moved through, there were no Gothic towers or craggy mountain peaks. This was more like a moonscape, with colonists in high-tech bubble cities. Beyond the bubble the world was empty, cold, and barren.

The best sequence was with the creature escaping from the bubble, out into the empty nowhere-land and the doctor following. The creature either needed no air or could breathe the vacuum. And with the lower gravity, he moved graceful as a dancer. The doctor had to wear a special suit, with a glass dome helmet and clunky boots. So as the doctor chased after the creature, it was like they’d been reversed. The one who was supposed to be a man looked like a clumsy monster, and the one who’d been monstrous glided across the moonscape like a beautiful vapor-trail ghost.

After it was over, we sat there a long time, looking out at the city: brightness and blackness perfectly combined. The Duce’s Dome might’ve been where travelers to this world had landed and set up their base. A spire beyond glowed in cool, pearly light. It was the great steeple on Our Lady, The Queen of Heaven. But it stood up like a rocket ship readying for takeoff.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.