Beneath
“I have to get it out!”
The thought screams in my mind as I run, egged on by the bracelet that grips my arm as though alive. The bracelet was the only thing that was left when I returned home that night; a strange symbol-emblazoned artifact that I had not seen before. My mother, my father, had never returned.
“I have to get it out!” The thought screeches again, followed by a piercing, searing pain between my shoulder blades. I had to find my mother, so that she could remove it. She was the only one that could. She, after all, had put it there.
“It” was my baby sibling–I don’t know whether a him or a her–barely incubated and not yet ready to be born. It was the future of our kind. My mother left it with me for safekeeping, slicing my back between my shoulders with the tip of her finger and nestling the embryo within muscle and flesh. Carefully, she resealed and smoothed the brown flesh of this body, chosen for its beauty and because it is ignored. She and my father had gone to the council to try and broker peace. Maybe she saw this coming.
It will not last long inside of me, and if it dies in me then I will die too. I run, feeling the bracelet tugging me forward. It is leading me; to my mother, I hope.
Pain rips through my body. I shriek and would have fallen to my knees, but Lueca grabs me.
“I’ve got you, AnCaela.” He says my name softly, throwing my arm around his shoulder and gripping my waist as we run on. He has been with me, through all the strange countrysides of this lonely planet. If not for him, I would be utterly alone.
The bracelet throbs, cinching tighter on my wrist.
“We’re closer, I think,” I say through teeth that are gritted against the pain. “Just ahead. Around the corner.”
We run forward, past the nondescript one- and two-story buildings that make up the main street of this small, anonymous town. Down to the end of the block we run and then turn.
There is nothing. No homes. No trees. No nothing. Barren, endless stretches of dry cracked ground as far as the eye could see. A mirage of death springing from nowhere.
“This is it,” I say. The bracelet glows.
“But there is nothing here.”
“This is the place,” I repeat with certainty. Looking across the vacant stretch of land, I know what we must do. We must go beneath.
Read the rest of the story
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Check out the other members of this Online Black History Month Event:
Winston Blakely, Artist/Writer– is a Fine Arts/Comic Book artist, having a career spanning 20 years, whose achievements have included working for Valiant Comics and Rich Buckler’s Visage Studios. He is also the creator of Little Miss Strange, the world’s first black alien sorceress and the all- genre anthology entitled – Immortal Fantasy. Both graphic albums are available at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and other online book store outlets. Visit him:
http://blakelyworks.blogspot.com/ or
http://blakelyworkstudio.weebly.com/
L. M. Davis, Author–began her love affair with fantasy in the second grade. Her first novel,
Interlopers: A Shifters Novel, was released in 2010, and the follow-up
Posers: A Shifters Novel will be released this spring. For more information visit her blog
http://shiftersseries.wordpress.com/ or her website
www.shiftersnovelseries.com.
Milton Davis, Author– Milton Davis is owner/publisher of MVmedia, LLC . As an author he specializes in science fiction and fantasy and is the author of Meji Book One, Meji Book Two and Changa’s Safari. Visit him:
http://www.mvmediaatl.com/Wagadu/ and
www.wagadu.ning.com.
Margaret Fieland, Author– lives and writes in the suburbs west of Boston, MA with her partner and five dogs. She is one of the Poetic Muselings. Their poetry anthology, Lifelines
http://tinyurl.com/LifelinesPoetry/ is available from Amazon.com Her book, “Relocated,” will be available from MuseItUp Publishing in July, 2012. The Angry Little Boy,” will be published by 4RV publishing in early 2013. You may visit her website,
http://www.margaretfieland.com.
Thaddeus Howze, Author – is a veteran of the IT and Communications industry with over 26 years of experience retooling computers to best serve human needs. Unknown to humanity, our computers have another agenda. Thaddeus recently released his first collection of short stories, Hayward Reach. In a coded format, he has secretly informed Humanity of the impending computerized apocalypse. You can read parts of the code here: http://ebonstorm.wordpress.com or http://ebonstorm.weebly.com
Alicia McCalla, Author—writes for both young adults and adults with her brand of multicultural science fiction, urban fantasy, and futurism. Her debut novel,
Breaking Free is available in print or immediate download on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and other booksellers. The Breaking Free
theme song created by Asante McCalla is available for immediate download on iTunes and Amazon. Visit her at:
www.aliciamccalla.com
Balogun Ojetade, Author—of the bestselling “Afrikan Martial Arts: Discovering the Warrior Within” (non-fiction), “Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman” (Steampunk) and the feature film, “A Single Link”. Visit him:
http://chroniclesofharriet.wordpress.com/
Rasheedah Phillips, Author–is the creator of
The AfroFuturist Affair in Philly. She plans to debut her first spec/sci-fic novel Recurrence Plot in Spring 2012. You may catch her ruminating from time to time on her blog,
AstroMythoLosophy.com.
Nicole Sconiers, Author-is also a screenwriter living in the sunny jungle of L.A. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she recently published
Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage. Visit her:
http://nicolesconiers.com/index.html
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