Dangerous Illusions Read online

  Dangerous Illusions

  Collected Short Stories

  +Volume Two+

  25 Tales of Imagination

  by

  David Sakmyster

  Dangerous Illusions

  © 2019 David Sakmyster. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: [email protected]

  Visit David Sakmyster at:

  www.sakmyster.com

  Cover design by Beautebook.com

  Also By david sakmyster

  The Morpheus Initiative Series

  The Pharos Objective

  The Mongol Objective

  The Cydonia Objective

  The Tesla Objective

  OTHER NOVELS / COLLECTIONS

  Jurassic Dead (three novels)

  Blindspots

  Escape Plans (collection)

  Final Solstice

  N.D.E.

  Crescent Lake

  Silver and Gold

  Twilight of the Fifth Sun

  Deadspawn

  Second Coming

  Introduction

  My first collection of short stories, Escape Plans, published in 2016, contained everything I had sold and published up to that point. I included one of those neat bibliographies with an entry for every tale and made sure to thank all the editors who graciously chose said story for their anthology or magazine. It was a literal road map of what I thought of as ‘success’ at the time.

  But that term took on a different meaning for me after my focus shifted to novels and screenplays. Then, ‘success’ in terms of actually placing a story I might have had sitting around in my to-be-published folder took on less significance. The industry had changed and consolidated, and just as a by-product of life, my focus changed. Kid, relationships and a full time job while carving out time for creative new ventures didn’t leave a lot of time to spend on the very time-consuming act of submitting stories. Every writer knows the work of researching markets, contacting editors, submitting and waiting (always the waiting); then the tracking, editing and follow-ups. All sometimes for very little payout and even less recognition. Time was unfortunately better spent elsewhere.

  But… But I loved writing these stories. And now I saw them as orphans who hadn’t yet found homes, for whatever reason. Some admittedly needed a few touchups. Others just exceeded the word count for any current viable markets. Still, I loved each and every one of these orphans. I had poured out a lot of my heart, soul, time and energy into their creation. I passed up a lot of my own life in order to breathe life into these characters. So I decided that I didn’t want that work to go in vain; I wanted at least one more volume stuffed with these little gems to complement the ones (compiled in Escape Plans) that had found homes.

  I came up with a new title, as opposed to adding a ‘Volume 2’ to the former. Commissioned a cover that reflected the inherent ideas of a great many of these stories, and set to work updating, reformatting and touching up the best of the tales I had lingering about, not only in that pesky computer folder, but always in the back of my mind, crying out for attention.

  So here they are. Twenty-five creations from the last twenty-five plus years of my life. For me, re-reading these stories was like visiting old childhood friends. I relished the memories they brought back and marveled at what we had been able to accomplish together, once upon a time. For you, I just hope you enjoy them even just a little. And I thank you for coming along once again, as I peel back the curtain and let you inside my mind…

  To all the authors of my childhood and beyond. To the memories of all those dusty books discovered on my father’s shelves or located magically in the nearest library. To all the dreams they fostered and the imagination they inspired.

  Table of Contents

  A Little Slice of Heaven

  Support Group

  Lucidity

  Wish Fulfillment

  Berkely Pit

  Isolation

  The Pharmacist

  In Mint Condition

  Sinneater

  Sales Pitch

  Rescue Shelter

  Chain Letter

  Experimental Data

  Dust to Dust

  Conjuration

  Thaw

  Leadership Role

  The Invited

  Concussion

  Re-Enactment

  Stowaway

  A Remembrance of Aerial Forms

  Stronger than Memory

  The Case of Samantha Ward

  Prometheus Found

  A Little Slice Of Heaven

  One of my favorite stories for its matter-of-fact surrealistic sense of awe and melancholy rolled into one. And of course, for some serious father-daughter bonding.

  On Tuesday morning, when a section of the sky ripped open like a pair of old pants finally splitting at the seams, Roddy Lightfoot was at his usual post in Shanktooth’s Bar, killing time until he had to pick up his daughter.

  “See that?” Roddy asked, sipping from his fourth beer and staring with his one good eye at the TV above the register. He had long hair, graying at the sides and pulled back in a pony tail; and beneath the black patch over his left eye trailed a ragged, unsightly scar, a decade-old trophy from a casino fight with a couple Hatotha punks.

  Behind the bar, Al Shanktooth scratched at the back of his bald head, just below the eagle tattoo and water markings of his tribe, while on rickety bar stools two other men casually sipped at their beers. And no one flinched when outside, a blue Ford Pickup slammed into the side of the Delmar SuperMart. The driver tumbled out, forehead bloodied from a dozen cuts and a shattered nose; he gaped up at the sky and screamed like a badger with its hind leg caught in a steel trap.

  “Yep,” Shanktooth said, motioning to the screen. “Reckon the riots’ll be startin’ any sec now.”

  “Just great.” Roddy proceeded to chug the rest of his beer and then slammed down the empty glass. “One more.”

  Shanktooth frowned at him. “You know, I promised Waneta…”

  “Don’t care what you promised her.” With his fingertips Roddy nudged the empty glass toward the tap. “You know what I need.”

  “You need to sober up and take care of your kid, man,” Shanktooth said, but then grabbed the glass before Roddy pushed it over the edge. “And stop comin’ in here every morning. That’s what Waneta wanted, that’s what she…”

  Roddy fixed him with a one-eyed stare as empty as his heart. “Just pour.”

  Shanktooth sighed, looking up at the grease-stained ceiling. “Sorry Waneta, your man’s givin’ up the fight.”

  “Heart was never in it,” Roddy muttered as he snatched up the offered beer, spilling some of it onto the bar.

  The others raised their glasses and both said at once: “To givin’ up the fight.”

  Something shattered and they turned to see the waitress, Mandy Wilkins, her tray clattering on the floor among the broken shards from a dropped pitcher. She backed away, turned to the windows, bent down, looked up—and screamed. Crossing herself, she ran into the back room and slammed the door.

  Roddy took a big gulp of his beer. “Check on her?”

  “Nah,” said Shanktooth as he resumed staring at the TV. “No sharp instruments back there.”

  On CNN, a trembling camera-viewpoint aimed at th
e damaged section of the sky, went out of focus as if refusing to accept what it saw, then resolved on the wind-blown, shredded flaps hanging below the tear.

  Akira Greenway, the grey-bearded man at the end of the bar, leaned forward. “Did they just call it The Gouge?”

  “Yep,” said Shanktooth.

  “Good a name as any,” Roddy declared, squinting and rubbing his throbbing temples.

  Now the image refocused again, zooming in on the frayed material, stringy threads and ripped fabric, then up and through the torn portion to reveal rusty screws and bolts, corroded tubing and sparking electrical equipment. As they watched, something resembling a giant spring wriggled loose and then exploded from its slot, bouncing like a pinball off a section of ductwork and then blasting through the hole and down to earth.

  Roddy nearly spat out his beer. Jesus, the sky’s actually falling! He covered his mouth but couldn’t suppress the laughter escaping past his choking coughs. Muffled at first, the giggles spread like a forest-fire doused with accelerant and by the time he wrestled himself back into control, the others were staring at him with that Oh-God-he’s-had-too-much-already look.

  “Sorry,” Roddy said when he could breathe again. “I just thought of something Waneta used to say. When she tried to cheer me up, break through my… you know… my moods.”

  “We know,” Shanktooth and Greenway groaned together.

  “Usually right before I was about to hit the bottle hard, she…” Roddy’s one eye, as green and as hard as a jade stone found in some Mayan tomb, stared off into space as his tears of laughter quickly dried. “She’d just shake her head and say: ‘It’s not like the sky’s falling.’”

  Shanktooth chewed his lower lip for a moment, then smiled and wiped his eyes. “We all miss her, man.”

  Greenway agreed. “Without a doubt, your better half.”

  “The only half worth lookin’ at,” Shanktooth added.

  All four men raised their glasses in a silent toast, then turned their attention back to the news.

  “So, you think it’s some kind of trick?” asked Marcus Willowman, the man next to Roddy. A tax lawyer on an extended lunch break, Willowman’s tie had been stuck to a spill on the bar for the better part of an hour. “Special effects, CGI or some shit like that?”

  “Maybe,” Roddy said, taking another swig.

  “Or mass-hysteria,” offered Shanktooth, washing some glasses, preparing for the increasingly doubtful happy hour rush. “Who knows?”

  “But they got it on camera,” Willowman argued. “Lots of cameras. And Google, and I bet all those kids and their damned cell phones are sending insta-snap-whatever messages to everybody.”

  “Still could be a hoax,” Shanktooth said.

  Roddy stood, looking at his watch. “Whatever it is, I doubt it’s going to magically sew itself up before school lets out, so…”

  “Hang on,” said Shanktooth, pointing to the screen. “You might be too late.”

  ***

  Shanktooth locked the front doors, but they could still see the row of houses burning up on Morris Ridge and nothing could dull the random screams and gunshots heard out on the street. “People actin’ like headless chickens out there.”

  “Everywhere,” Greenway added, pointing the remote at the screen before he switched from a scene of rioting and looting in Chicago. “Hey look, NASA’s got some boobs talking on CNN. Those guys sure don’t seem too confident.”

  “Dead meat,” Willowman said. “They’ve gotta explain how they’ve been stealing billions of dollars to do nothin’ but fake pretty pictures and shit for years, and…” His eyes brightened all of a sudden, “…the BET! You guys remember the bet?”

  “Oh shit,” Shanktooth said, holding his head. “Here we go.”

  “Ten years ago, if I recall.” Willowman stood up. “I was here on this very stool, and you three—you all laughed at me when I suggested we never went to the moon, that I read somewhere it was all filmed on a sound stage in Nevada, and…”

  “All right, all right,” Greenway snapped. “We remember already.”

  “Congratulations,” Shanktooth said.

  Willowman beamed. “You all owe me a round.”

  Greenway grunted. “NASA bastards just cost me a drink. Now listen to ‘em, still insisting we really went to space and sent probes to Mars.”

  Roddy nodded. “And what about all them satellites that are supposedly up there? How’re they gonna explain that?”

  “Hey,” said Greenway, playing with the remote again. “John Glenn’s on MSNBC!” The former astronaut looked like death and proclaimed by God he didn’t see any way he could have been duped.

  Then the mathematicians came out with their computer models, insisting that everyone from Copernicus to Hawking couldn’t have been wrong, that all available evidence (up until this morning) proved that the Earth was round and circled the sun, which was just one of countless stars in an infinite universe.

  But, asked one haggard reporter with a bruised face, what about The Gouge? The puncture in the facade, the broken set piece, the classic man-behind-the-curtain?

  Returning to his post, Shanktooth slapped his palm against the bar. “Yeah Mr. Egghead, what do you call that thing up there?”

  It’s width spanned twenty degrees of the sky and now, as the afternoon approached its midpoint, the Gouge could be seen clearly out the main window, a gaping wound stretching from the smoldering rooftops of the Fairview Indian Casino—where Roddy currently worked nights as a blackjack dealer—almost to the center of the sky. Behind the ruptured material, past the cracks in the framework, nothing was visible but a nondescript gray, not unlike a palette of drywall.

  Assurances came, more assertions that no, this wasn’t some massive conspiracy by all the world powers to collectively pull the wool over our eyes. No, as far as they knew (again, until this morning), the sky wasn’t fake, and the world—

  “Tell us it’s not fake too,” Willowman whispered, drinking the first of his free beers, “that it’s not all a lie.” But the reporter didn’t ask this vital question, and everyone in Shanktooth’s bar breathed a sigh of relief.

  The channel changed again. More scenes of mass carnage: burning landmarks: the Capitol in flames, the Kremlin demolished, entire countries in disarray. Churches were targeted—somewhat surprisingly, since Roddy would have thought that a literal Biblical interpretation might have supported or at least explained some of what was happening; but it seemed that violence had been indiscriminately unleashed upon any institution that had previously claimed to dictate the false truth.

  Another channel change, and some other ‘specialists’ were being asked about the Moon. Is it real or just another prop that’s going to fall off a string at any moment and come crashing down on our homes? And what about the stars? Did the classic philosophers have it right and there’s some kind of dome around us with suspended lights and simulated planets, and everything moved according to some giant clockwork mechanism?

  Roddy groaned. “I’ve had enough of this bullshit.” He glanced at his watch, then at the bottom of his beer; he opened and contemplated the three dollars left in his wallet but then closed it and stood up, wobbling slightly.

  “Gotta get my daughter,” he started, just as Greenway changed the channel again and they all watched as four F-14’s streaked toward the void inside The Gouge. Roddy could hear the sonic booms outside, right outside, almost on top of them. He watched and watched, but after three minutes, the mission was called off. Apparently the hole was too far away, up so far in the atmosphere that the planes couldn’t reach it.

  Roddy belched. “All right, I’m outta here.”

  “Hang on” Shanktooth said. He bent below the bar and stood up, tossing a double-barreled shotgun Roddy’s way. “A little protection for the road.”

  Roddy caught it with one hand. “Thanks.”

  “You headin’ to work later?” Greenway asked.

  Roddy shrugged. “If the casino’s still in one
piece, not on fire.”

  “Could be a hell of a night,” Shanktooth said absently.

  “House always wins,” Willowman stated, grinning as if he had just plucked the saying from a fortune cookie.

  Roddy waited for Shanktooth to unlock the doors, and then he took a deep breath and stepped out into the chaos reigning under a false sky.

  ***

  Roddy frowned at his car—what remained of it, shattered back window, slashed tires. He wrinkled his nose. Did some asshole piss in the front seat?

  “Goddamnit.” He glanced to the east, saw some kids throwing rocks at a police car (was that deputy Norwich behind the wheel?), and watched in disassociated horror as a big rock smashed through the driver’s side window; the tires locked and the cruiser went careening into two of the Mobil station’s four gas pumps. Roddy turned away from the surge of heat as the cruiser and the station vanished in a massive orange ball of flame. When the smoke and the flying debris settled, the kids were fleeing in terror, one of them with his back on fire.

  “Goddamnit,” Roddy said again as he cocked the shotgun and started jogging north toward Angie’s school. Not more than ten minutes later, a school bus appeared over the ridge, weaving from side to side. The screams of children preceded it as the driver’s face loomed—insane and hopeless—with eyes locked on The Gouge instead the road.

  The bus bore down on Roddy, maybe doing fifty. No time to dodge it. He had only a moment to react, and one choice to make: shoot the tires or driver?

  He sighted for the driver, but then thought, neither, and lowered the shotgun. He spread his arms. I’m coming, Waneta. He took a deep breath, thinking only of Angie, but then the bus made a little hitch as if it had just hit a huge pothole; it swerved slowly—almost too slowly, still heading for Roddy before angling to the right, tilting, then slamming onto its side and gliding three hundred feet into a grassy embankment.