Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories

By Kris Maze and Krissy Knoxx

Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories is a collection of short fiction intended to mystify and frighten readers to their delight. Written under the pen names Kris Maze and Krissy Knoxx, these stories span the speculative subgenres of science fiction and light horror.  Includes award-winning stories and a preview of a YA science fiction series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maze Publications
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781957944012

Book preview

BLUE FOOT

BY KRIS MAZE

Blue Foot—Chapter 1

Ernestina Après stood before the Tribunal, her shoulders wrenched firmly back into their sockets and her chin aligned parallel to the stony ground. She felt certain of her banishment from the Dome, her only home and the place where she raised her family—at least what remained of them after the latest brutal tragedy.

The Tribunal consisted of members of the Council with whom she had spent her whole life. This made her sentence even more bitter to acknowledge. The Tribunal could only accept a guilty plea from her, even though she was hardly responsible for the accident. Even though their shared history bound them together in this tightly woven community, she would be forced to take the punishment. Exiled, even though she held the keys to the community’s survival.

Ernestina studied the face of the central figure, Etienne Monteneige. Her eyes bore into him, and she willed for him to remember her place in the Cercle Bleu, to soften his position, and to have mercy.

As children, they had skipped stones across the same silver streams. They had celebrated each other’s weddings and new births. They had also mourned the untimely death of her husband Philippe, and even though she had held a leadership role in the Council for years, someone had to be held accountable. Accountability, they said. But I know that getting rid of me solves their bigger problems, too. I never really had a choice. Somehow, it’s my fault my son slipped from the barn’s rafters and fell onto an unfortunately placed pitchfork.

The Tribunal heard the workers’ testimony and felt benevolent, giving her an option of who would take the punishment. Who would reduce their population problem? Ernestina could decide which of her family members would face banishment.

The choice itself was a joke, a twisted reaction to her reports that the Council couldn’t provide for the citizens of Cercle Bleu. She had already suffered many losses, but other Council members always averted harm and discomfort. Members who failed to acknowledge their part in the Dome’s downfall. Failing to acknowledge the downfall at all. The Council, in her opinion, had a bigger responsibility that they hid from the community. Someone should hold them accountable too, for their negligence, their inability to act, their complacency in their comfortable standing in Cercle Bleu.

The vision of Byron, her son, tall, lean, with a flawlessly blue muscular back, haunted her. She couldn’t focus as the memory intruded, of him falling, landing with a thud that sounded like a knife slicing soundly through clay. She had rushed to his side to hold him, his turned head, with an open mouth and eyes strained and popping with pain. Shouting to the workers to fetch the medic, she held his shoulders to raise his listless body from the tines of the pitchfork. Four trails of dark, sticky blood poured from the sharp edges that ran through her son’s chest.

The Tribunal had a hush-hush meeting at her home to go over her wishes before her public trial. My wishes. How considerate. They wanted to assure her they would provide for her grandson.

Etienne, the head Tribunal member, spoke first. While he talked, she could only think of their time in grade school. Her stomach twisted, a sour taste reached her soft palate, and she felt a rising ball of anger churning slowly below her rib cage.

As an orphan, he could receive the best care and education, he said.

She wanted to gag but resisted, pushing back the nausea, and leaning into the tops of her thighs, Do you remember taking spice-cakes from my mother’s window? She used to cool them off there and never reported the missing cakes to your parents. It flattered her you waited for more each week. She said you were just some hungry boy, and she wished you would come to the door and ask.

Your mother was an excellent cook. And I always appreciated her kindness. He folded his hands and examined them.

Is there any other way?

This is the way. He stood. And if your reports are correct, we will not have enough food and water within a couple of years.

Then do something about it! She stood and walked around the chair and clenched a fist at the top of it.

I wish we could do something about it faster. But we need time. And tradition holds our society together. You, of all people, understand this. His voice was too-loud-too-quick, the loud that you let out by accident, the kind that gives away your own anxiety.

And your solution for Ozzie is to make him an orphan? To give him a great education and feed him from what remains of the food? She leaned into both palms on top of the chair facing him. I expect more from you.

This is extremely difficult for everyone. Especially after the recent death of Byron. We all appreciated his good sense of humor and attention to detail. He coughed, clearing his throat, and checking the door behind him for the other Tribunal member.

Damn you. He’s the reason you are sending me away. Sending me out there. As sure a death sentence as there ever was. She was gripping the chair now, her nails digging into the soft finish of the wood, her anger unleashed, ramping up her chest and shaking her shoulders as she shouted, Damn your condolences and platitudes. Damn you that you are destroying my family, my reputation, my life. Damn you, Etienne Monteneige.

He rose from the seat he had taken at the table and straightened out his silver, embroidered blue cassock with a flick of his wrist. I assure you that Ozzie will be my personal apprentice and will always have the best care and resources.

Damn you. You’re sending me to the Outer Lands to cover up your ineptitudes. You’ve just sent the whole Dome to destruction.

The words he said next still floated between her ears, I’m deeply sorry, Ernestina, but there’s no one else to take your place for this atonement, and no one can undo the gruesome accident. I recommend you accept your fate.

Blue Foot—Chapter 2

That was yesterday. And three days since they composted her son’s busted and bloody body. The days had been exhausting, void of tears after sleepless evenings of planning, a hopeless exercise of emotions. She envisioned various scenarios to devise a way to stay with her grandson, a way to save the people in the Dome. Without success.

Ernestina had overseen the harvest for years and understood that the Dome faced unprecedented problems. Once again, we didn’t reap enough to sustain our growing population. My son’s accident gave the Council an excuse to send me away before I shared terrible, but true news that the Dome was doomed. They blamed the poor harvest on her, and the Silver Spirits that fated the tragedy. And the Spirits needed to be appeased.

It was the way of keeping order in Cercle Bleu, but the Council’s sudden lack of compassion with the timing of writing her report couldn’t be a correlational coincidence. The streams were over-fished, drained by feeding into too many irrigation plots, and contaminant-ridden runoff that leached into their water. "Let’s not share this report with the community and cause a public panic. We’ll handle it with urgency and fix the problem."

Today, the Dome’s residents stood dotted around a compacted circle of earth for her trial, her small platform faced the Tribunal, which was seated on stone slabs. Their long silver dreadlocks hung with authority, the length of their hair representing the length of their rule over this land. Etienne Monteneige, sitting on the most central stone, rose to address the crowd of their neighbors, their friends.

Ernestina, you have been a Dome resident since birth. As a respected member of our society, you oversaw the storage of crops into the harvest barn, assuring us that the equipment was in good repair. But under your watch, your son, Byron Après, slipped from the rafters to his death. He paused, coughing with a slight airy snort, as if to clear away his words and find others that agreed better with his mind. He stroked the strands of hair falling to his mid-chest and continued, As is our tradition, there must be a sacrifice to the Outer Lands.

He walked the perimeter of the townspeople, looking into individuals’ strained faces and watery blue eyes before standing directly in front of Ernestina. Your carelessness in oversight has caused a disruption for our peaceful community, and we must atone for an imbalance and unrest among the Silver Spirits. He folded his hands behind his back. Ernestina, I celebrate your long-standing contribution to our domed society and wish there was another way. But we have a careful balance under the Dome and the slightest change of equilibrium can destroy us all.

Ernestina didn’t even try to hold back her scoff.

Etienne Monteneige spun to address the crowd, ignoring her. Who remembers the droughts of the 1800s? The chestnut trees that stopped producing? Or the blight to our soy that nearly brought our staple food source to a halt? One young man raised his hand. His mother glared at him. Or the low fish count, which we discovered just last week, shows our food source is dwindling.

He glanced sideways at Ernestina, who kept her eyes forward, and walked in a small circle looking at the translucent Dome above. It reflected light from outside with a soft, dim glow at the brightest. The balance has been teetering for months and we must make an atonement, or we will all suffer the consequences.

Ernestina watched her grandson as he wiggled, seated on a stone on the far edge and wearing an ornate blue smock with silver trim. Poor Ozzie. He lost his father and grandmother in one week.

Ernestina, are you in sound mind?

She huffed, inhaled, and blinked several times to push back the memories of her once happy family, and agreed with a nod.

What plea do you enter before the citizens of the Cercle Bleu? He wrapped his arm in an arc, pointing around the crowd. A woman whimpered from the back.

Ernestina shifted her weight and glanced at her bare feet. They used the simple corded restraint since she wasn’t a violent criminal. It jingled slightly above her confined blue heels. She folded her hands and peered into the faces of her elders, most the same age as herself, a futile search for compassion. She looked back to Ozzie, now playing with a flower poorly hidden in the front pocket of his smock. There had to be another way.

But she knew the facts as well as the Tribunal. She had attended each meeting of the Council. The colony numbers were near the capacity of the Dome, and her banishment aided the Counsel’s elimination decisions later that season. Her departure would keep others from having the same fate of removal. Others, including Ozzie, would be safe. If only for a short while.

Her words tumbled like pebbles falling from her mouth to the dry ground around her. I say that I agree with the Tribunal.

Ernestina faced forward, refusing an ounce of emotion, although her hands trembled, and her chin betrayed her with a quiver. She had heard stories of the terrors beyond the Dome. Throwing one’s fate on the mercy of the court may work for the younger ones, but not for her. She was expendable, dangerous even, and grieving the death of her adult son, a disturbance to the Dome’s delicate balance. Compliance and her agreement with the Tribunal was her only chance. They could still change their minds. They need me to oversee the harvest. Maybe I got through to Etienne after all.

The elders convened, nodding over whispers, while she waited. Ozzie sat at the edge of his stone, swinging his sandaled feet as he waved at her. He showed her the flowers from his pocket, oblivious and delighted to be what he thought was the center of attention.

The boy was not on trial, but his fate to become a ward of the Cercle Blue loomed over her heart. Will they honor their promise? Or abandon him too once I’m gone? She stared, memorizing the expression of his face, twinkling blue pupils within his pale-blue eyes, a pudgy baby-fat face, a dimpled chin. Ozzie shifted in his seat, trying to overhear the Tribunal members speaking. She noticed he guarded another concealed plant beneath his tunic. Something medicinal she kept near the side of their home. He always loved the striking yellow petals.

Etienne Monteneige pushed back his shoulders to address the crowd and returned to the circle. He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at the frail version of Ernestina in front of him. He picked up his long dreadlock and placed it ceremoniously over his heart.

The Tribunal declares Ernestina Après is guilty of endangerment and negligence. The Cercle citizens reacted with gasps, and hushed exclamations buzzed, echoing around the Dome. Heads of households quickly silenced mumblings and outbursts, afraid that their families could be next.

Remove her from the Dome immediately. May peace follow her soul. The elder winced as the crowd responded with weak, obligatory applause. Two guards encroached on her and removed the thin shackles from her feet and wrists. They pointed her toward the only functioning exit from the Dome, sealed for all their protection, and ushered her to the anteroom.

Blue Foot—Chapter 3

Ernestina, once the door opens and seals behind you, we cannot open it again. Thank you for your contribution to Cercle Bleu. We honor you with this pack of food and a copy of the sacred agreements.

Ernestina dropped the bag to the ground. Sacred Agreements? What good will those do me in the Outer Lands? She pushed out, an airy, shaky breath. Keep the food. You’ll all need it. She looked over her shoulder at her grandson’s face once more, wanting the memory of his smile, of him playing with a flower from her home. That was more