The Monster

To give you a taste of my book, “Sex War One,” I’ve been posting segments of my award-winning short story, “The Monster,” which serves also as the basis for this book.

Sex War One – a dystopian, Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful Sex War One – my dystopian Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful characterization,” said the Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World. Kindle Edition & Smashwords Edition (for iTunes, Kobo, B&N & more.) For further details please check my books page.

Here then is the twenty-seventh segment:

The sun was about to disappear behind the red mountains, far on the other side of the valley. Her last golden rays were filling the dark cave with light, hitting D.L.’s eyes directly. He opened them, discovering he was covered with cold sweat. He had difficulty comprehending where he was, at first, so terrifying was his dream.

He looked at Z.Z., lying peacefully beside him, her mouth slightly opened. A ringlet of hair had fallen over her forehead and eyes, moving slightly to the rhythm of her breathing. Her skin was smooth and delicate, her chest going up and down in perfect rhythm, without skipping a beat. She was so beautiful.

He remembered everything at once, and therefore felt better. It was just a dream, after all. Why had he never dreamed like that before? Normally, just like the other colony-citizens, he hadn’t dreamed much, or maybe dreamed but remembered almost nothing afterwards. Their lives in the colony streamed so smoothly and steadily without dreams. There was no need for dreams; life in the colony was a dream.

And as he was thinking of the colony, he realized that he had to return there. If he didn’t, they would come looking for him. He was sure of that, as he would have done the same thing, had it been someone else outside, not him. Even more so: he wished suddenly to be back in the safety of his room, behind its closed door. Z.Z. and her force-of-nature – the force-of-nature that had created her, probably, to begin with – frightened him now. He wished to be his old self again: D.L., the Secretary of Underground-Colony B/365; D.L., the cold and calculated colony-citizen; D.L., an advanced creature of science and technology; D.L., the Birth-Laboratory chief scientist.

He got off the ground, careful not to wake Z.Z. up. He put on his trip-suit, with the unused radiation-gun in one big pocket, and Z.Z.’s nylon dress in the other. He looked at her for the last time and a thought flashed through his mind: How easy, painless even, would it be to exterminate her now. Lying on the ground so deep in her sleep. She would never know.

It was a troubling idea, which he quickly rejected. He wanted her to live, and she deserved to live – even here in the cave – though the reason behind his thinking was not entirely clear to him just yet. Nonetheless, he covered her with the blanket and hurried to leave the darkening cave. He was unaware that his last act of kindness had woken her up, and that those beautiful, deep brown eyes he had left behind were now open, looking at his vanishing figure. An image she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Short or long as it might be.