Challenges: SciFi Short Stories

Monday

Monday evening

Bathed in golden sun, suburb for miles, white aircon units, rooted on every same old faded out houses windows, expel an atmospheric white noise, similar to teeth grinding under stress, that chokes all voices besides the arriving worker shuttle.

The tan mark on the chin emphases the routine of every day sun gaze burning the skin. The neck is locked in pain, torso straight, unable to look right or left, he moves like a Moaï statue, avoiding the armrests along the narrow aisle, towards the exit of the shuttle.

"See you tomorrow Starface!", says the driver, eyes locked on the road.

Starface grumbles on his way, "Told you many times. Stop. Just stop calling me like that".

"Yeah, yeah, tomorrow.", answers the driver with disregard.

The shuttle's engine starts abruptly, to squeal the tires in front of the next house, and repeats the process to the horizon.

In front of his door, he turns the golden handle and enters. The house comprises a long hallway, with a door on the left wall leading to the kitchen, another at the end to a bedroom containing a French window onto a garden, and the right wall invaded by small screens above a long counter at hand reach.

A yellowish paper note is pinned to the counter, with the swift handwritten words 'be right back'.

Upon reading the note, he starts grumbling.

"'be right back', right back. Yeah, but when? It started with more details, where she went, with who, or at which hours she will be back. Now all is undefined and infinite. I waited for you all my life, and now we are together, I keep waiting, like nothing never started."

He passes near the kitchen, at a glance sees the neat cleanliness of the untouched room, continues to the bedroom, undresses himself, throws the work clothes on the floor, and slowly lays down on the bed, rasping in pain on each head and back movements, while the drone sharply swallows the dirty laundry on the floor and disappears as fast as it appeared behind a hole in the wall.

Time passes, sun goes down, while he sweats profusely on the bed.

Door opens, the wife arrives exhausted, her orange skin burnt by the sun, the head spinning, she rushes to the bedroom like a kayak madly rushing down rapids, hits all the walls and goods on the way, and crashes on the bed.

"Sorry did i wake you up?", she giggles and sighs in pain as her burning skin rubs on the sweat-soaked bed.

"House! Change temperature to cold."

"Please! Don't change to cold, you know i work at IceIcy, I hate it when its cold."

"So you want me to burn alive?"

"No", he answers hesitantly, assembling his tough for a few seconds, "But you know, we don't see each other as often, nor eats together that much, maybe we should—"

"You are wrong. Let me sleep. We saw it all. Again, and again, and again... Please... Let me sleep."

With his tongue tied, he lets out a final grumbles. "I can let you sleep, but can't let you go."

Tuesday

Yet another scorching sun knocks on the window. A putrid smells engulfs his nose, while the ceiling reflects the blinking of his wife's smartwatch. Panicked, he sits up, oblivious to his back and neck, screams and swarms like a pathetic seal in his wife direction, to put his hand over her mouth. No breathing, she is dead in her night soil. In an attempt to keep his sanity, he tries to recall her by pressing his lips on hers, but a taste of cold iron surges, he retracts and touches his lips looking for blood but only find saliva. Approaching delicately her face, he opens her mouth and finds a golden key engraved with lyrical ornaments. Once he grabs the key, he is violently stricken, like hurled into a fever dream, walls warp and the key melts in his hand, he falls on the french window and fissures it, before getting on his knees. He tries to weep, but the coldness dries it all as the screens on the counter call him to work and the squeal of the shuttle's tires grows louder by the minute.