The driver said, “ID.”
I passed him my card.
He scanned it, passed it back. I could see him calculating. Shoot me now, through the head, or have a little fun, let me run and get me in the back…?
“You work at Macready’s landfill?”
“That’s right, sir.”
He said to his buddy, “We ain’t stiffed no one from the ’fill in years, have we?”
“Don’t think we have at that,” Gene said.
He passed me my ID. “Off you go, boy.”
I turned, shaking, and began walking. I thought of Kelly, making dinner at home. I thought of Ed, and the girl he’d been seeing lately…
I tensed myself for the bullet. Just make it quick, I thought. In the head…
The cop car started up. Caught up with me and drove alongside. The driver laughed. “Your lucky day, boy! You thank your fuckin’ god I ain’t in the mood.”
They drove off, laughing, and it was all I could do to stop myself yelling obscenities after the bastards.
Ed was thirteen when he came home one day and said, “Dad, it’s unfair.”
I shrugged. “Life is unfair, Ed.”
“But why…?”
“The country’s overpopulated, Ed. The cops need to meet their quota.”
“I suppose I meant… why me? Why us?”
I didn’t like the whine in his voice. I shrugged again. “Why not? Life’s a lottery. You take the good with the bad. It’s no good complaining.”
“But...”
“There’s nothing you can do,” I said. “End of. Learn to live with it. Do you hear your mom complain? Me?”
“I just wish...”
I sighed. “Try not to wish, Ed,” I said. “Just accept.”
Life wasn’t that bad. We had the apartment. It was warm in winter, cool in summer. I had the job, my friends down the bar. Every month, I took Ed to a game. I felt safe in the crowd. I had Kelly, a woman who loved me, and a son who was growing into big, kind, bright young man.
I watched the news, but didn’t take much notice. There was nothing I could do to make anything better. The way I looked at it, the world had always been going to hell in a handcart – so why worry? Just accept.
Ed left school and got a job at Safeway. He walked in every morning with Kelly, and came back with her at six. The extra income bought us a few luxuries: takeaways at the Thai place that had just opened along the block, and a subscription to one of the big cable channels
I was fifty, and I’d never been happier in my life.
One day, Kelly and Ed were late back from work.
I tried not to worry, but they were never late.
I called Kelly’s cell phone. No reply. The same with Ed’s.
Six-thirty came and went, then seven. I tried calling them again.
I turned on the three-dee, tried to watch a documentary about the Arctic.
Jesus... Eight o’clock.
They’ll be fine, I told myself. Kelly’s just got herself some overtime, that’s all, and Ed’s helping her, and they’re so damned busy they haven’t had time to call.
Then the image of the Arctic faded.
I stared at the guy in the black suit, my heart racing.
He stared back at me. I told myself he was just a virtual construct, not a real person with feelings. But that didn’t stop me hating the bastard.
“I regret to inform you...”
I interrupted.
“Who?” I said. “Kelly, or Ed?”
Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories, and his novel Helix Wars was shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K. Dick award. His latest novel is Murder Take Three. He writes a regular science fiction review column for the Guardian newspaper and lives in Cockburnspath, Scotland. His website can be found at: www.ericbrown.co.uk
SF Caledonia:
Chris Kelso
Our SF Caledonia editor Monica Burns is taking a break to allow her to concentrate on her Masters at the University of Dundee. This gives me a chance to introduce you to an up-and-coming Scottish writer, Chris Kelso.
Chris is a writer, a poet, an editor, a musician. He sold his first story at the age of 23 – he is now 29 – to the Evergreen Review. His works skitter around the edges of the definition of science fiction, often tending towards the weird and with a definite nod to the New Wave science fiction of the 60s and 70s. He does horror too. He is always experimenting with form, structure and flow, but always with characters you’d like to meet – or rather not, in lots of instances.
Chris is a busy man: he has five novels: The Black Dog Eats the City, The Dissolving Zinc Theatre, Unger House Radicals and the upcoming Shrapnel Apartments and I Dream of Mirrors.He has eight novellas: A Message from the Slave State, Moosejaw Frontier, Transmatic, Last Exit to Interzone, Rattled by the Rush, Wire & Spittle, The Folger Variation, and The Church of Latter Day Eugenics (jointly written with Tom Bradley). There are two short story collections: Schadenfreude and Terence, Mephisto and Viscera Eyes. Chris has also edited a few anthologies: Terror Scribes, Caledonia Dreaming (edited with Hal Duncan, Slave Stories and This is NOT an Anthology, which featured previously unpublished work by William Burroughs, Gerard Malanga and art by Clay S Wilson.
The Black Dog Eats the City was listed in Weird Fiction Review’s best of 2014 and Unger House Radicals won the Ginger Nuts of Horror Novel of the Year award 2016
Most of Chris’ work is published by American and Canadian publishers, something which Shoreline of Infinity is sorting: we have published the digital edition of The Folger Variation and Other Lies, and we will be publishing I Dream of Mirrors at some point in the near future. Most of Chris’ works are available through online booksellers.
I met Chris at a Speculative Bookshop event in Glasgow last year, where he placed a copy of The Folger Variation and Other Lies into my hands. When I finally reached that point in my to-read pile, I was immediately sucked in and held captive by the freshness of his writing and the apparent ease with which he draws his characters and settings. Chris gives them a twist of reality which brings them screaming into life and imprints them firmly into your brain. I swear I know Pancake Patterson from the Folger Variation.
I have since met Chris a few times, and got to know him a little. He’s calmly energetic, quietly modest, and a pleasure to talk to. He looks so young – far younger than his often worldly-wise stories would lend you to believe. If I ever go to his house, I will not venture to look for paintings in his attic.
As a way for you to meet him, we exchanged emails, and here is a result of that. We’ve included an abridged extract from The Folger Variation and Other Lies.
