Description

Story Pair: 6BC and MITS

This “bonus pack” has two short stories. Each could stand alone, but are best enjoyed in the order given. Both are cryptozoological-mystical tales with nonfiction accompaniments. Each tale is preceded by a research piece, but 6BC has a second nonfiction at its conclusion so as to preserve a surprise! “Monster in the Sand” (MITS, 2,700 words) and “Six Birds and a Cat” (6BC, 10,800 words) differ profoundly from each other. And, yet, these connect through a medical discovery…and through attachment to evil or virtue. MITS (unreliable narrator) reveals a monster in descent, while 6BC (3rd person omniscient) is a quest for family unity, asking whether a genetics/medical discovery can be a mystical intercession. Plot summaries follow.

MITS: Mitch traces his history of brutality through his current status of descending into…well sand can be pretty mucky. Reader must infer; it’s more literary than most horror/speculative fictions. Fired from employment as a soldier of fortune, his next gig finds him bounty hunting a drug lord into the wilds of northern California where he is attacked by another type of monster and a competing bounty hunter. But, with a soul like Mitch, you’ve just got to infer the truth, as he cannot accept what thrusts itself upon him…in more ways than one.

6BC: Keith is a tough, but loving black Marine Corps hero and failed Baltimore businessman. His prays in vein for the recovery of his brain damaged son, all the while ridiculed by jaded, skeptic-daughter Liz. Is he a failed father of four? Reader contemplates this as he recruits his explorer-scientist brother, Bart, to locate prodigal daughter Maive in the wilds of Queensland, AU. Maive lives (lived?) out-of-wedlock with a white scientist who is in charge of researching the newly discovered remnants of Thylacoleo carnifex, pack-hunting and arboreal-ambushing marsupial lions. Police have given up the search for the lovers, but Keith and brother Bart scour the facility for clues–and poignant memories–and set off into the bush. They barely survive to find and join the two trapped in a disguised observation cave beside the Thylacoleo cave; they cannot exit without certain death, and food is exhausted. What could be worse than a pride of thylacoleos waiting outside your cramped observation tunnel? Yes, the Thylacs would have left daily to hunt, enabling escape, but have something to fear themselves and that is why they stay at the cave, giving no escape opportunity. And what they fear comes closer to both the animals and humans. But Keith has a plan, desperate, daring. he is the bait, running along the cliff base to reach a path to the plateau above. Alone, unable to signal for help and, yet he is soon no longer alone; his wife has rented a helicopter with an experienced pilot and locates the cave and Keith. The family strains to pull all up to the top, dodging the melee between Thylacs and “the visitor”. As the c’copter takes off, the denizen leaps to eat Keith in one bite. But a Thylac rips its way to bite Keith first: his spinal cord is partially severed in a razor-gash as the Thylac is beaten away and the group flies to a hospital, a hundred miles southeast. At the hospital, the press already presses in and Keith is near death. But his cure and that of his brain damaged son are the same. A new technology mentioned in the nonfiction accompaniment to MITS. But, even Liz can see that there is more than science involved.