| abstract
| - Hello? is a collection of fictional short stories by the Lovian politician and author Edward Hannis. It was published in November of 2010. It is the first major work of short stories in Lovia, and was well-acclaimed upon release. Every short story, along with the story itself, also has a short commentary by the author on what he thinks of the story, how it came to mind, or anything else worth mentioning. The book has been well-received, with four stars given from Nova Times. Mind Games Click. Something just happened. I... I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I was on the bus, and this man, he was sitting behind me. He had these headphones on, but the music was really loud. I don't know... it was extremely irritating. As if it were scratching at the inside of my brains. I got angry. I couldn't hold it in. I suddenly felt like I wanted the guy to suffer. I honestly wanted him to have pain. And it happened. I don't know what to say. W-when I was thinking about that, when I was hoping for pain, something clicked in my brain. I heard his headphones go from its groaning music to an ear-shattering screech. It hurt my ears, it was so loud. I turned around, and I saw him there, headphones thrown off, in utter pain. His ears were bleeding. I got off the bus, and I ran home. Here I am. I know I was the cause of that. There's no other way. I don't know how, but I did it. I have some sort of ability. Click. Click. I brought the recorder to work today, just in case. I think it just happened again. I was in line at the cafeteria, and this man spilled some water on me. He didn't even apologize. I got angry again. I glared at the back of his head, and I could feel that pulsing anger in blood again. I let it take over for a second. He tripped over thin air, and flew headfirst into a bench. I tried to walk away unnoticed as people were calling for help. I overheard that he had broken a few bones. I know I did it. I'm sure of it. Oh, god. I have a problem. Click. Click. I tried to experiment with it today. I was in the park, and there was this man sitting at the bench beside me. He was sniffling. It was in the middle of summer, at sweltering temperatures, and this man was sniffling. It got annoying. I wanted to see if I could do it on my own decision. I imagined him suffering, his veins throbbing with pain. Gruesome images. It happened. I heard the sniffling stop. He took a huge gasp in, and I saw him there, crying, holding onto his chest. I could see his eyes staring at me in pity, calling out to me in surrender mixed with hopelessness. He fell forward, still looking at me in horrid pain. In a few seconds, he stopped moving. His white knuckles loosened their grasp on his coat, his head fell flat on the concrete, his muscles freed of their final tensions. I don't know what to do. I... I just killed a man. With my thoughts. I took a man's life, brought a horrendous death forth at a whim, a miserable thought. And that isn't even the worst part. I liked it. Click. Mind Games was an idea I got from watching some low-budget superhero movie. I wondered what would happened if someone had telepathic powers, and were sadist. The idea scared me a little, so I wrote it. Like a lot of my stories, I still think the only worthwhile part of this was the last line. As for the idea of doing it as if it were being tape-recorded, I did that to maybe better expose his emotions without wasting too much time describing it. Final Exam “Webb, Michael,” the doctor called out through the door. A young man's pair of eyes looked up at him. The doctor nodded to him, unable to find his words. He closed his eyes deeply, then said, “Come with me.” The young man followed the doctor into the room. It was tall, with windows at the very top the only source of light. Other than that, no windows, just bare walls. A desk, a patient's chair, and dozens of little medical contraptions. The doctor brushed away a few tears. “Everythin' all right, doc?” the young man asked. “Just... something in my eye,” he answered. The vast room was again filled with a vacuum of silence. “Sit down,” he said, trying to keep his cool. The young man did as he was told. The doctor got to work, sitting beside him, placing a few instruments on him. “What're you doin', doc?” the patient finally found the courage to ask. “Making sure you're in good shape,” the doctor said, not even looking up. “State gets angry if we put a prisoner back on the streets in bad health.” “Pretty fucked up world we live in, huh?” he laughed. “You have no idea,” the doctor replied. He got up, grabbed a little tube, pushed it into the patient's skin. “Ouch.” “Last one. I promise.” The doctor got up, and walked over to one of the walls. He closed his eyes. The moment of truth. A small blue button was on the blank wall. The small blue button. He pressed it. A dreadful click, a few neverending seconds of terrible silence. He found the courage to turn around at the young man. There he was, hunched over, lifeless, killed instantly by a miserable lethargic button. You're doing the right thing, he told himself. He's a criminal. If you didn't stop him, he would do it again. He's a murderer, after all. Bullshit, he thought. I kill more people in a single day than he could ever do in a lifetime. The fact that the state tells you to kill someone doesn't make it any less evil. He got the idea out of his mind, and toppled the body over the chair into the trash chute in the corner. He caught himself crying. He didn't stop the tears this time. On his way back to the door, he picked up the clipboard on the desk. He crossed off another name. He looked down to patient 27, and opened to door. “Fraser, Richard,” the doctor called out through the door. I've always liked Final Exam for some reason. The idea was that in some society in the future, people convicted of murder or anything like that are put to death without their knowing. When I first told that to someone, they thought it was a very civilized thing to do. I think that my outlook on this is a little more grim, and definitively more realistic. I'm realizing few people catch the dark joke when the doctor says, "Last one. I promise." Buyer Beware The sun was noon-high on that Saturday. Birds sang to their hearts' desire, flowers pranced about in the cool breeze, butterflies hopped from flower to flower. A perfect day for grave-shopping. George Poe was a ghastly sight to see. His eyes were pale, his body was bony, and he was tall enough to have to duck underneath church doors. Not that any church would let him in anyways. In counterpart to him was Josephine Poe, a short woman with a constant smile that had engraved marks into her cheeks. She wore all bright neon pink, enough to make her look colorblind, or at least make you go blind. This bizarre couple was walking around in a park filled to the brim with tombstones. All nameless. George clearly didn't care, nor did Josephine, but she, determined to find the perfect tombstone, looked around with determination that was matched with confusion. “What do you judge a tombstone by?” she asked her husband. “I dunno...” George answered blandly. “Something... sad.” She looked at him with disgust. “Sad? Would you want people to be sad at your funeral?” “You'd prefer they be happy?” And she shut up, defeated again. She looked around some more, trying to find the best tomb. “I'm stuck between the gray one and the brown one,” she said. “You can't make a basic decision like that?” he asked, irritated. He sighed. “Which one do like better?” “I don't know... well, the gray one conveys a 'you were a great person' type of thing,” she suggested, clearly at a lack of words. “Then pick the gray one,” he suggested with a sigh. “...but the brown one suggests 'the world was better thanks to you', or something like that,” she continued. “Then pick the brown one,” he moaned. “But you just told me to take the gray one! You're not much a help, mister. Why don't you pick one, mister high-and-mighty?” she shouted, as if that would change anything. Without a word, George pulled out a quarter from his wallet, flipped it, and let it land on his open palm. Heads. “The gray one,” he said. “Okay, the gray one,” Josephine answered, glad to have that over with. She looked over to the little office in the corner of the park. She called over the manager. They both stood there, looking down at the tombstone. Josephine tried to find a way to break the walls of silence between them. “I think it's good that we have these moments together,” she said, eager to start a conversation. “I think we bond a little each time.” “You're suggesting we go buy tombs at every possibility?” he answered dubiously. “You know what I mean,” she said with a smile. “I really don't,” he sighed. “I really don't.” And they were silent again, staring down at the gray tombstone. The manager arrived with a few pots of flowers. Josephine motioned to the gray one, and the manager put the flowers down on it. “You see? With the flowers and everything, it's really great,” she smiled warmly. “You like it?” he asked. “I love it,” she answered. “Good. It's for you.” Buyer Beware is one of those stories where I only like a few aspects of it. I think the story's a bit worthless if not for the last line, but I really like the title, it's a bit dark the second time you think about it. I'm still surprised that people think it's supposed to be terror; it's more of a short comedic story with a dark note, and though I can see how you could treat it like terror, it's by no means anything like my better ones like Power Desire. Temporary Exhibit There wasn't a speck of blue in the sky that Saturday afternoon. Rain pummeled against Earl's windshield, like a hundred hundred fingers tapping a massive timpani that was his car. Though the windshield wipers swung madly at the water clinging onto its glassy surface, Earl had to squint to see through the windshield. It was days like these that he could savor a bad mood. He pulled up to his hotel: the Greenfield Inn. Greenfield Inn was a lonely hotel; wallpaper sagged off the walls, lights took a few seconds to flicker to life when you hit the switch, the carpet was beginning to break apart. Earl was a grim sight to see when he checked in to Room 5. Earl's pale eyes and face lazily looked around his puny room. One window, didn't open. No TV, no radio, no functional electrical outlets remaining. A sink, a plane-class bathroom, and an oversized icebox they claimed to be a refrigerator. None of that mattered, though. What caught his eye was a painting. An oil painting of a woman. She sat on a chair, smiling as she looked at him. Her blonde hair brushing across her face, her deep blue eyes piercing through to him, the smooth curve of her lips. He was transfixed. Earl, an emotionless, bland man, felt something deep inside of him, something almost foreign. He longed to reach out to her, caress her soft cheeks. He looked at her name on the little plaque beneath it: Jane. He stood there for what must have been an hour, if not more, gazing at her, her perfect smile, her elegant look in her eyes, the way her hands folded across her lap so perfectly. He was mesmerized, caught by her. The night rolled in, and Earl's eyes became heavy, his body slowing down, yearning for sleep. He went to bed. He woke up in the middle of the night. A screeching sound filled his ears. Nails on a chalkboard. He heard a voice. A woman. He couldn't make out the words. Then an evil cackle, a malicious snicker. He quickly got out of bed, covering his ears as he looked for the source of the god-awful sound. He traced it back to the living room; it was getting louder now, but he couldn't find where it was; it was in the pitch of night. An ominous light glowed from where the sound was coming for. He took in a sharp breath, his eyes wide open in a mix of disbelief and sheer horror at the source of the terrifying sounds. It was Jane. But she was different now. Her eyes were vicious, her mouth wide open, a deep black abyss, like a massive unhealed wound. It was inhumanly large, her teeth enormous and sharp. Her hands were clenched, fingers now fangs. She stared at him. As he pulled back, things began to move, tables fall, walls shake. He could feel her power, he wrath, expanding, taking over. And then came the worse; she began to move. She moved like a drunken man's marionette, arms thrashing about in impossible angles, legs kicking out of the canvas. Her eyes were locked onto him, her pitch-black mouth draining dark-crimson blood. She was free now, unrestrained by the canvas that had caged her against the wall. Her pupils shrunk into pinpoints in her milk-white eyes, whipping about within her seizing eyeballs. Earl felt her power in the air, within himself. It crawled inside of him, grasping his muscles, immobilizing him, locking him in place as she approached him in a slow, dreadful pace. Her power took him over, taking him over, slowing his racing heartbeat to an inhumanly slow pace. His lungs stopped altogether, his muscles locked into place. She stood over him now as he suffocated, his eyes staring at her in utter despair. The blood draining from her trickled over his paralyzed body. Her eyes froze, beady little specks glaring at him. She swung down for the kill. The next day, the maid came to clean up the tidy little room, looking over at the painting on the wall of a curious-looking man. A little plaque read: Earl. I had some mixed feelings from people who read this the first time. Temporary Exhibit was the first time I had someone truly blown away when reading. I think it's safe to say that I like all of it. The original idea did not have the part where he becomes the painting at the end; I was planning just to kill him. Approaching that point, however, I realized that I could make him take her place, and then the title came to to mind. As for what the story means to me, people doubt that I'm perfectly fine since I've finished this. Birds On those bright summer days, you could feel the energy of life in the air. Cool breezes made your hair flow in the wind. The sun's bright light bathed in your skin, its heat comforted you like a warm woolen sweater. Jack would go up to the roof to appreciate this every day. He wanted to be secluded, to have nothing above him but the blue sky as he lay in solitude on the warm concrete of his office building's roof. He looked at the clouds as they drifted along the heavens. And the birds. He loved the birds, envied them. They were free from everything. Free of goals and limitations, not limited by the heavy shackles of society. They lived their lives freely, upon their own decisions, independent of their fellows. They were even free of gravity, broken from the constraints of life on Earth. How he loved the birds. And when he thought of the birds, he thought of himself. He thought of how in contrast to them, he was stuck in a cage, living life as a repetition of the same day every day. Going to work in a miniscule cubicle smaller than a prison cell, his mind ripped apart by the hundreds of distractions at the office; the never-ending playlist of songs the neighbor had, the constant attempts to flirt with the receptionist from men all over the floor, the immeasurable amount of announcements the boss had to make. He was the one stuck, he was the fool. The birds, they, blissfully ignorant of what humanity named progress was free of the agonies that society brought forth. He wanted to be free like they are, to leave everything behind, to fly like they did, fly and leave all his troubles behind him. An idea came to him. He realized the simplicity of the solution, the ease at which he could simply break apart the chains that held him back, the bars that limited him from what he could be. He got up, and looked out at the city below him. He saw the little people walking by, couples and the elderly, all passing across the sidewalk, little ants inside an anthill, ignorant of the freedoms that people had inflicted upon them. He breathed in a fresh cool breath of air, and stepped forward into the emptiness. The ground below accelerated towards him. His whole life amounting to a single short moment of bliss, an epiphany of freedom as he, like a bird, soared away from his troubles. Free at last. Birds is one of the more basic things I have, but I think it has a more lasting impression than I oftentimes gave it credit for. All I was doing was seeing if it could find a justification for why people suicide. I wrote this at the point that my stories were regularly in the high school newspaper, not yet published locally (the local paper did not have an appropriate section yet; you could say that there were no good authors where I'm from), and as a result of its appearance to the entire school (making me have just about a thousand readers, more or less), I did end up with a consultation with a school psychologist. Turns out I'm fine. Power Desire Tony was approaching victory, but his enemy wasn't ready to give in. The mountain winds whipped against his face, the cold sinking its teeth into his tired hands. Rock edges sharp, cutting into his scraped flesh. It knew he was close. He hated the rock. He hated how it, in its great majesty, could win easily, its massive size deterring him, defeating him effortlessly. It held his life in the balance, could kill him at a whim. But the mountain was better than that; it kept him alive, letting him suffer through, enjoying his doomed attempt to find its summit. But he was close, the top was near sight. Its proximity was agonizing, surpassing the pain he'd already endured getting there. Soon enough, he'd be victorious, defeating his immovable foe. He didn't dare look down, instead reaching out into his enemy's cracks, its imperfections, pushing himself up with them. But he knew that all it would take was a small nudge, and he'd be free. Free falling, that is. And in a few minutes, he was there. Summit. The winds, which had been whipping against him for hours, subsided. His muscles relaxed, his pulse slowed. The mountain had been defeated, tamed by man once again. It was calm now. It's always calm before the storm. Below him was his companion. Tony secured their rope to a rock, allowing the man below him, still fighting, to ascend. He looked down at him, and a thought passed his mind. An epiphany. He turned back to the rope, tight under the weight of the climber. He thought again of the mountain, its power. And in that moment, he wanted that power, the control it had. He had a desire for its omnipotence, its influence over life, to be able to end it a mildest whim, a mild flicker of wish. It started small, a small tug at his mind, but soon enough it amplified, desire, like a virus, spread through his mind, infecting his every wish, taking him over. He was power-hungry, a craving eating at him, ripping at his muscles like a rabid dog. It was unstoppable now. He reached inside his pocket, and felt his Swiss knife. He wanted it. He had to have it. It was all he could think about. Tony pulled out his knife, letting it glisten in the sun's basking light. He shuddered in its amazing might. In his own might. He swung the knife down. The power, almost God-like, swirled through him, its warm feeling pulsing through his veins, filling him with strength. The tight rope slacked, its tension dispelled in an instant of release. Below, he heard the powerless scream of his comrade, fading into the distance. When people ask to see what I've written, I generally give them Power Desire. I think, and most agree, that it's my best story. The idea is obscure but effective: what if someone wanted to be as powerful as a mountain? When I first pitched the idea, people asked me what the hell that meant. I guess they couldn't see what I meant by the power a mountain has. Now they do. The name of the character, Tony, is a reference to Toni Kurz, a brave man who, along with 3 other great climbers, attempted to climb the Nordwand, the north face of the Eiger. When I read their story, I felt that more people should know about them. This is how I did it.
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