Read Online Forever Shores by Peter McNamara - Free Book Online Page B

dreams.
    â€˜Go on, go on,’ I said, ‘climb out through the window and fly away on your magic broomsticks.’
    â€˜We have to—’
    â€˜Yes, I know.’ How would they explain away the window without its glass, the burn marks in the paint? Maybe they’d come back while I slept and fix those as well. ‘Well, get your nasty amnesia ray over with and let me catch some sleep, I’ve been on the road since six this morning.’
    Lune looked at me, and took the tube from her companion. Maybelline wasted no time; she was out the window and gone. The beautiful woman stepped close to me, pulled down my head to her red mouth. I waited for her to bite me. A vampire element, perfect. ‘The Drama doesn’t have a tight script, August,’ she said very softly in my ear. ‘I’ll come back and look in on you. Who knows?’ To my amazement, she turned my face and kissed me. ‘Goodbye.’
    She stepped away, touched the tube at two points. I was flooded with emerald light. It was cold; I tingled with mild shock, and the room faded into dream. I swayed on my stockinged feet, saw her climb carefully through the gaping window frame. Lune seemed to hang in the dark outside, breasts half-shadowed. She did something that might have been a recalibration of the instrument, and blue light painted the window; it was as it had been, glazed, painted.
    I waited for blackness, loss, amnesia. What I felt, instead, was pins and needles torturing my flesh. I stumped haltingly to the basin, flung cold water in my face. I could remember it all quite clearly. True, what I remembered was absurd, laughable, impossible. I dragged off my clothes as the water gushed into the bath, steam rising to fill the room. No fan. I sat in the wonderful hot water, rubbing fragrant Pears soap into my armpits and other stinky places. I propped my right foot out of the foamy water, turned it so I could examine the silver carven hieroglyphs on my sole. Pretty much the same as Lune’s.
    I towelled myself ferociously as the bath drained, wanting sleep so badly it was like hunger. I picked up my clothes and my boots and trotted on the cold boards in the dark to my bedroom. The window was already open, screened against insects, and through the wire mesh the sky was clear and very black, no moon, no broomsticks, no UFOs, no high-hanging Truman Show spotlights. Stars shone, and the smell of fresh soil and leaves came in from the garden on a cool breeze. Why had they slipped up? Surely their Records must show one Actor missing from duty, one Character in their bloody great Drama lost in the sea of humans when his parents died tragically? I gave the sky the bird, finger quivering. Not so smart, then. They’d lost me for close to two decades, I’d stay lost until I found the bastards on my own.
    The pillow was warm. Lune. Her beautiful nakedness. The burning of her lips. Beyond the window the world was huge and dark. There were doorways out of it. I slept.

Rain Season
Leanne Frahm
    Garth Lorgan clutched the receiver to his ear, absorbed in the words of Lennie Bedlow’s CEO, Jonathon. He stared sightlessly through the third-storey office window at the fading light of the city.
    â€˜We want you to have this opportunity, Garth,’ Jonathon was saying in his dry whispery voice, ‘because Mr Bedlow believes that big companies can be too big, lose sight of the big picture, you understand?’
    Garth nodded intently. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. You’ll find we’re the right size, compact but a real team, just the size Mr Bedlow is looking for.’
    â€˜Yes.’ There was a pause, Garth could almost hear Jonathon thinking. A clap of thunder sounded faintly in the distance.
    â€˜Yes. Friday then? We’ll get together on the site first, with Mr Bedlow. To give you exactly the scenario, before we get down to the basics,