Nightmare Magazine, Issue 122 (November 2022) by Wendy N. Wagner

Author:Wendy N. Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adamant Press
Published: 2022-10-30T16:56:45+00:00

©2022 by Amanda Song.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Song is a writer by night, a product manager in tech by day, and a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2021. She grew up in Chicago and Beijing and now lives in Seattle with a vocal corgi. She is @amandasong0 on Twitter.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

For You Were Strangers in Egypt

Elizabeth R. McClellan | 1008 words

This poem is one in my @notaleptic series of poems where the Twitter bot of the same name provides the first line or lines. I wanted to put a Jewish hero into one of my “creepy off-planet work assignment” poems, with the help of a Jewish sensitivity reader. I’m very pleased with what resulted.

—ERM

after @notaleptic

a year on a desert planet

one contract, danger pay,

surrounded by people you don’t know,

talking in a language you don’t speak.

not for lack of trying. your vocal cords

won’t rasp quite right. you understand

but can’t muster answers. you work

for water and for words, stimulants,

vocabulary. you wonder why everyone

sounds afraid. the lightning doesn’t

strike that often. the quakes, sure.

you’ve never seen heavy labor

this spooked, and there aren’t

enough bots. maybe a third of

what you’re used to. but you can’t

ask questions past “is there a

problem?” no, no problem, but

some of these engineers don’t act

like engineers and some of these specs

don’t have symbols you recognize

even with the dim familiarity of the

written languages you can’t read.

you’ve never seen so many workers

leave a contract, here then gone,

probably paying fines out the nose

and no one is replacing them but

no shift bosses yelling about slowdown.

they all seem pleased. they smile

and you don’t like that, bosses shouldn’t

smile like that, they’re never satisfied

at the best of times. less workers means

more food, double rations, extras—

that’s suspicious too, they should be

holding back. you think about leaving,

remember the penalty clauses and

go back to shifting sand and grit.

you ask a bot when no one’s looking.

it speaks your language. it has

nothing useful to say. you feel silly.

it telling you no sorry bye is the last

time you hear your language spoken.

five mandated rests go by and

they stop work. The transport is coming.

That is what being massed like this

at the end of a big contract means,

but instead there is a black slab

like the dark of space if space

had teeth. The bosses are here.

Bosses are never here at the finish.

Bosses don’t take transport with you.

You feel the panic before you see it

break out, before the chanting, before

the guns. You do what you learned

from your parling who fought the endless

war, before it ended: fall down, play dead.

The floor is slick with blood, the noise

unbearable. You don’t dare look, but

with bullets ringing in your ears

the tearing sounds still make it through,

the light is unbearable but you

cannot let an eyelid twitch. You know

you must smell alive, all sweat and

piss, however much cooling blood.

The sounds are too big. The screams

fade, but the stomping and crunching

and shrieking goes on. You cannot look.

Inside your eyes the light makes

ominous patterns, color bursts and

sometimes a great shadow. You

can smell past the blood now,

bird, meat, rot.

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