Snails From Space – Marianne Bouchard

“They don’t believe me; none of them. But I saw those THINGS eat? Absorb? Tommy and Sam.”

“Yes, now tell me more, Missy.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I told you I would listen.”

“But you have to believe me.”

“Tell me the whole story from the beginning.”

“It was a beautiful summer’s evening; Tommy and I met Sam at the corner store and Tommy drove us out to Lookout Point. The sun was nearly set. You could see it between the trees and reflecting off the lake. It was twilight behind us. I don’t know why I looked behind us.”

“Go on.”

“All of a sudden, I see a flash. Like when a jet liner or a satellite catches the sun just right. But it wasn’t. IT WAS THEM.”

“Calm down dear, now you didn’t know it was them, did you?”

“Not right then, no… So it starts toward where we were laying on top of the car hood, one of those 70’s boat-like cars, I forget what kind.”

“Doesn’t matter, now please continue.”

“Well, it passes over us and over the edge of the point. It was silent, round and hovering in front of us right beyond the edge.”

“Cold, dear?”

“No, just remembering what happened next.”

“Tell me, dear.”

Do you think she knows where she is?

No, the vapors make these forget

Will we find out why these don’t mature (?) into those we digest?

I am coming to the settled opinion that these are not like the ones we had before

So, we’ll have to go to another [unintelligible]

Ever onward for our race to live

Why can’t we find more cooperative and robust food?

“What was that dear?”

“I said, so we were transported, er, we just appeared aboard the craft.”

“What happened next, dear?”

New Title in the Works

Now that Ms. Smith’s work is done and in production, we at Mandated Memoranda Publishing LLC are taking on a new fiction book. This is a collection of short stories with the tentative title: “Horrors of the Heart”. Adolphus Writer will again explore how we deal justly or unjustly with the experiences we are dealt in this life. He has a stable of contributors that are composing horror and science fiction stories plus specific essays on this theme. The authors will post excerpts from their stories and essays over the next few months. Please read them and comment. Thank you.

Nomi Smith Finishes Novella

A status update from Adolphus Writer – Ms Smith finished the first draft of Tiānmìng, Mandate of Heaven, a memoir of our once and future Republic. We are on track for a late spring or early summer publication. The novella chronicles the rise of the United States after befalling a “natural” cataclysm. Ms. Smith takes a tough look at us as Americans and us as citizens of the world. She asks us to look at ourselves through the lens of the story and ponder what we would do in these circumstances. Through it, we are asked to consider what we are doing right now and whether it makes a difference for good. I urge you to take her message to heart, especially during this crucial election season. The liberty and wellbeing of our posterity is at stake.

An excerpt from Tiānmìng, Mandate of Heaven – the future President of the United States, Moses Orestes, says in his famous speech:

…Our scientists aver that we face a geologic crisis of calamitous proportions. I say that we, as a nation, have felt the ground shifting beneath our feet for too many decades. We have sold our birthright for mean porridge and left nothing but the empty bowl for our posterity to clean after us. That will stop today. We will face our moral and spiritual crisis as we combat the physical one. We establish plans today that will secure those promised blessings of liberty for our posterity. We dedicate ourselves today to return to the attitudes and actions of our forefathers who established this Republic.”