The World Outside

T H E

W O R L D

O U TS I D E

stories

by

ELAD HABER

Underland Press

For my fathers.

Table of Contents

Foreword

i.

Ophelia and The Beast

A Beauty, Sleeping

Rapunzel Goes Mad

Doll Parts

ii.

Number One Hit

Do What You Desire

The Conductor Sighs

Time Keep

iii.

It Only Rains at Night

D

Bee Mine

Stay in Your Homes

iv.

But My Heart Keeps Watching

Halfway Down the Hole

Never Stop Moving

The Dying Disease

Young Man, Are You Lost?

v.

Life in a Glasshouse

The Remembrance Engine

All My Memories Are You

A Fiery Lull

Acknowledgments

Foreword

The assembled stories mark twenty years of publishing fiction, highlighted here with eighteen of my publications in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and literary fiction markets as well as three unpublished stories. The published stories were featured in various print and online magazines from 2003 to 2023. I have realized in my writing that I often return to similar themes: homes and homelessness, grief, music, and narcotics. I have grouped the stories in this collection into thematic quartets and octets to further explore these throughlines in my work.

A couple of days before my high school’s graduation in 1998, I boarded a plane from New York City to East Lansing, Michigan, to attend the Clarion East Writer’s Workshop. I was one of two eighteen-year-olds in the class. There were a few college age people, but most of the group was older. It was an incredible six weeks where I made life long friendships and my progress as a young writer was accelerated beyond just craft and technique. Most of the class published immediately, both short stories and novels. But not me.

I remained unpublished throughout my years in college, despite many attempts. And this was back when you couldn’t just email a submission. The allusive Acceptance seemed ever more like a fantasy.

It was only when I moved back to the East Coast and took the Magical Jewish Train that whisks New Yorkers to Miami like a Star Trek teleporter that I started to publish. In the early days of online magazines, I was able to place a few stories at pindelyboz.com, an early progenitor of what has become a huge online marketplace.

But I was burnt out. My mountain of rejections and so many discarded manuscripts took a world-weary toll and I needed time away. I didn’t write anything for years.

But then I married my best friend, my amazing wife, Shawn, and she settled me down and helped me get over so many personal losses and disappointments, that I felt like I could get back into writing. To find my creative outlet and try to use it to entertain and enlighten readers.

One of the first stories I wrote when I returned to writing is the centerpiece of this collection, Number One Hit, which was my also first professional sale. It is the story of a world after this one, where relics like art and music are stolen with often violent means in a post apocalyptic Las Vegas.

Elsewhere in these stories, there is my science fiction take on the haunted house trope, a story about a superhero that lives on the moon, a global spanning stargazing journey, a near future retelling of Adam and Eve, twisted versions of fairytales and ghost stories, a story of a girl so broken hearted by the loss of her dad, that she would do anything to get a piece of him back and a future so hot, it’s deadly to be outside.

Enjoy the journey.

Ophelia and the Beast

Hark! Hear the maiden’s cry as she drowns herself. A gurgle on the face of the water. A single splash. An asphyxiated sound, cut off mid-choke. Engulfing darkness. The sound of rushing water.

The river rumbles with anger at the intrusion. The pressure presses on her, squeezes her body, grips her lungs like a God crushing a mortal.

Death, a whisper. So, this is what it feels like.

She dies . . . She dies with a look of shock: an open mouthed gape, raised eyebrows, cheeks pulled in, about to yell. As if any of this is a surprise.

*

Her body, flotsam, glides along Moses-like, half-submerged. A head or arm or leg roll and show themselves, only to get smacked by a rock, or tangled in seaweed and capsized again. Relaxed-looking fish circle and dodge her, laughing and biting at the dead human.

Ha, ha, ha, says the Fish.

*

She floats and floats. For how long? Who knows? Centuries, maybe. Through realities and mythologies and minds and hearts and . . .

*

Finally, she comes aground, on a small, lonely shore, surrounded in all directions by forest, dense and dark.

A form rushes out of the wilderness and towards the maiden. It is huge, blocking out the moon at times. (A bear?) It runs on four legs and emits a nasty scent-of-a-thousand-men smell. The beast sniffs at the dead girl, tries to nudge her awake. He uses a furry paw to push aside a stalk of wet hair, like a thin, dead leech, stuck to her face.

Little bites and scratches cover her skin, the color of the river, blue-green. Her eyes, large, brown, but vacant, retain some essence of who she was. Intelligence, compassion in those eyes, sadness too. The creature stares at her for a long time.

Then, as sudden as a miracle, the beast scoops her up in two arms and runs back into the forest. On two legs!

*

A mansion hidden in the woods. All the fixings of royalty: crests and halls lined with portraiture, banners and frescos depicting family trees; all the makings of civilization: kitchens, bedrooms, indoor-bathrooms, closets full of clothes, carpeting everywhere; but with all the life of a desert in the harshest heat of summer. Take a step, it’ll echo for a week. Touch a wall, the print will stick like glue.

The front door is smacked open and the Beast, carrying the girl, scamper inside. He drops her, rushing water pouring out of his fur and her body and making a waterfall for her to fall into.

The Beast, his shoulders wide as the base of a tree, falls to his knees beside the girl and begins a crude CPR on her: breathing into her lungs without the help of any chest-pumps. How he knows the technique, we’ll never know for certain; ask him and he’ll say, Knowledge is as timeless as I am.

The girl, thoroughly dead, makes no response to his efforts, but the Beast continues in his steady work. A faint glow emanates from his chest, centered on his heart. It glows and pulses, changing shape and gaining volume, resembling an animated fractal pattern. The Beast continues his work, unabated, huffing. The ball of light passes from the Beast into the girl, encapsulates her in faint light. Her body changes color, violent reds and blues first, then returns to its pinkish roots. The scratches and bites foam and disappear; her hair dries, takes shape and color and texture. She coughs, once, twice, then opens her eyes.

A gasp from both parties.

Upon seeing the creature above her, the maiden screams as loud as she can. It echoes for a month.

*

Ophelia, says the Beast, speaking emphatically to a wooden door. Won’t you come out? Won’t you let me talk to you, help you? You’re grieving, I understand. You’re grieving for him... for Hamlet, but you have to realize, you have to understand...

The double doors shudder in response and are flung open. Ophelia, dressed in a black gown, her raven hair tied back in a ponytail, her puffy eyes spilling black makeup all over her cheeks.

"Don’t you speak his name! she shouts, malice in her vowels. You don’t have the right . . . Creature!"

She slams the doors. (Echo, echo, echo.)

*

Once, long ago, there may have been servants.

Now, there is dust everywhere. On the countertops and the statues, the chairs and even the fireplace. Footprints, paw-shaped, are ghost-like on the floors. And that smell. Oldness. Death. Inactivity.

Activity, now: the Beast in the kitchen, assembling lunch for the lady of the house. He’s slow and methodical in his work, huge shoulders hunched over as he concentrates on cutting a piece of cheese with a knife designed for a human. He fumbles and slices a gash into his palm, right beside the echo of another. His growl is quick, annoyance not anger.

He doesn’t mind cooking.

When he brings the dish up to Ophelia’s room, he pauses in front of the door and, as usual, waits. Sometimes he takes the dish off the meal and lets the smell of roasted lamb or fresh fruit linger in the air, through the gaps in the doorframe. Hoping, all the while.

It’s been two months. They’ve spoken only a paragraph to each other. And a short one, at that.

When Ophelia doesn’t come out to greet him (which is not once, yet), the Beast lays the platter on the floor, picks up the empty dish from breakfast, and walks away.

*

Three months. Agonizingly long. Living with someone and not talking is perplexing, unnatural, destructive. The air so thick with silence, Ophelia’s moans and cries echo and intensify... to the Beast, sitting alone in his library-sanctuary. More and more often, lately, the Beast has spent whole nights in the surrounding woods, hunting for food for himself and Ophelia. For the first time in his long, long life, he feels uncomfortable in his own mansion.

In his usual chair he sits, now. Besides a rain-speckled window, he reads by candlelight from a hundred scattered candelabra across the wide room. The shadows cast by a thousand individual flames play hide-and-seek on the bookshelves, the muraled ceiling, the decorative carpeting.

The Beast looks up from his book, sniffs. A hesitant knock sounds at his door. At the second, louder knock, the Beast springs up and dashes to it in a flash. (You would have had no idea he could move so fast.)

He grabs two lion-head-shaped doorknobs in his paws and opens the double doors. She stands in the center, framed Venus-like, in a white gown, familiar to the Beast.

Ophelia curtsies and says, Gracious Host, I want to thank you for all you’ve done . . . for me.

The Beast’s heart is pumping, (can’t you hear it?) In his gruff voice, louder than even the pounding of his heart, he asks, Would you like to come in, sit down?

She nods, smiles.

They walk into the firelight-soaked den. Ophelia takes it all in like Cinderella at the Ball. The Beast gestures towards his large reading chair. Ophelia curtsies again and sits in the chair; she resembles a child-Queen on the throne of an adult-King.

The Beast sits cross-legged beside her, resting his large arms on his even larger legs. Their eyes and faces are on the same level and they stare at each other, wordlessly, until the Beast is forced to look away, at the window, then at the dress, the white, dry, clean, dress. He’d washed it himself, to get the smell of river and seaweed off it, then hung it to dry for weeks in the hot basement. It shrunk a little, but was still beautiful, half-transparent like a wedding dress.

Finally, the Beast stutters and then says, "I . . . I didn’t know. He looks her in the eye. I’m sorry."

Ophelia turns away from him. Her fingers trace patterns on her dress, H and A and M shapes. You acted out of the kindness of your heart. For that reason, you are a good... soul. She traces an L up her thigh. You found a dead girl and brought her back to life. Quickly, cursive-like she draws an E and then stops. Her entire body freezes. How were you supposed to know she wanted to die?

Silence. Thunderclap, in the distance.

And now, says the Beast, do you still want to die?

No, she says, followed by a pause. "Not that I want to live either... but I do not want to go back there. Not yet anyway." She wipes a tear from her cheek.

My Hamlet is dead, killed by my brother. I don’t know if I can ever recover. She looks up at the Beast, a hopeful glint in hopeless eyes. You have magic... Magic to resurrect the dead. Do you have a spell to make me forget this pain? A healing spell for the heart?

The Beast shakes his head, ponders his own body for a moment, and says, There are some things even magic can’t cure.

*

Like a broken heart, he should have said. Or grief. Or shattered faith.

Ophelia never recovered. But she stayed with the Beast and they lived happily, like cousins, or close friends, for the rest of her life.

Forty-two years and four months after drowning herself, Ophelia died, again, of natural causes, in her bed, in a black dress. When the Beast found her the next day, the sheets, the dress, and Ophelia herself were soaking wet.

A Beauty, Sleeping

Imagine this:

A framework of red roses, with red stems, twined together like red-faced lovers. Vertically aligned beds of chrysanthemums and lilacs and American beauties in the background; a Pollock of reds and whites and yellows. In the foreground, on a star field-sprinkled sheet, a glass case, like a huge block of ice caught in time. And inside, a woman, a beauty, sleeping. Sheathed like a mummy (sans head) in white satin pulled taut over her narrow body, stretch-pant-style. Layer after layer in a latticework pattern reminiscent of East Asian quilt-paintings. Above her shoulders, she was free of it. Her long, shining, golden hair reached her pelvis in her horizontal state. It was curly and therefore wavy: an ocean for her face to swim in. Pretty features, in any century, locked in juvenile radiance. With her eyes closed, her mouth trapped in a somnambulant scowl, she looked sad.

*

Stepping back, you realize there are lights around the set. Huge, expensive-looking contraptions on metal stands, supported by sandbags, leaking wires, creating shadows where before there were none, lighting the glass coffin from four different directions. Crew wander around with bundles of wire on their shoulders or hang out next to the craft service table and guffaw.

The photographer circles Beauty like a jungle predator toying with wounded prey. He snaps shots quick and violently: a junkie, shooting up. More, more, more, more . . . Then, he stops. There’s a snap and an angry sigh; the roll ends. The photographer, European, gay, well-dressed, shouts, OUT! as loud as he can.

Beauty is oblivious.

*

In actuality, she is old. Ancient, actually. They found her in the seventies, in some corner of the Scottish mountains, nestled between a T-Rex fossil and half a Mammoth. It took only a few days before they carbon-dated her glass coffin: Centuries old, from a time before Grimm or Anderson or even Straparola.

The Real McCoy. The original. The inspiration.

*

She’s a legend, alright, says a roadie near the set. He leans against one of the studio’s massive walls. "You know how many people she’s made millionaires? Billionaires? I’m talkin’ journalists, photographers, lecturers, filmmakers, talk show hosts. Actresses playing her in the story of her life. There’s a musical version in New York, updated with all the facts, of course. Whole companies, Advertising corps., jewelry makers!, banking on her, putting her ads and on products. You know what she is?" He smiles, takes a long drag off his cigarette, lets you ponder for a moment.

She’s a golden goose, he says. "Money."

*

She’s been passed around like a high school whore on the first overnight trip of the year. Museums, talk shows, news magazines, art galleries, endless photographers and filmmakers, the occasional Millionaire’s party, even widely advertised concert venue appearances.

COME SEE THE REAL SLEEPING BEAUTY!

Live at the Fillmore. Live at the MET. Not really alive, though.

*

It’s not a very interesting show.

First, there’s the history lesson. Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away, there was a young princess . . . Then, the dramatic unveiling. The lights go dim, the drum rolls begin, then, curtains of various dark hews of purple reveal Beauty, herself. The glass case, now on a velvet couch and inside, the star of the show, silent as a corpse.

There are multiple cameras on her and tight shots of her face fill up dozens of screens around the stage. Blonde hair everywhere.

Finally, the upclose viewing, a precession of bodies like at a funeral, come to give final respects. Again, it’s nothing too extraordinary. She looks the same up close as she did in the countless photos in the countless magazines you’ve got at home.

Maybe you’re hoping she’ll wake up, just then, just for you, (lucky you). But then you remember she’s dead. She’s a million years old. She has to be dead.

Right?

*

The photographer shouts again, this time for a cigarette. Cigarettaaaa! he shrieks. Some young kid wakes up from a nap and then rushes forward, pulling something from his back pocket and tripping on a loose cable.

Thousand-dollar lights buckle and shake and start to fall. A crash, and a lightning-flash of electricity ignites the long black sheet. A fire flares up around the red roses, the painted stems, the wall of color.

People are shouting. Sparks and sudden flares appear everywhere. Rage-filled flames surround Beauty’s glass case, a funeral pyre worthy of a legend.

The photographer, suddenly chivalrous, attempts a run at Beauty, to try to save her or . . . something. His crew holds him back, wrestles him outside. They shout curses at each other or at you or at God.

*

Whose fault was it, then?

*

Nighttime.

Fire trucks are lined up in two columns, half a dozen, spraying their multi-colored lights, a drug-induced-CGI-Technicolor-dream. The crew stands apart from a mob of journalists behind barricades. The press is inexplicably silent.

The moment lasts a long time. Then, slowly, firemen start to file out of the still-smoking studio, their eyes downcast, their shoulders slumped.

The European photographer, a ball of anxious energy, runs up to one of them.

Well? he shouts between pants. "What. Happened. To. Her?"

The fireman nearest him pauses, looks up. There are slashes of red on his face. (Paint? or . . .) The thousands of shards of glass on the cement floor reflect the lights on his yellow uniform back into his face. Dead, he says, barely audible over the sound of flames. She’s dead. Cut-up when the glass exploded.

Wait! someone, maybe you, shouts from the huddle of journalists. "You mean, she was alive? Until . . . this? And no one bothered to check . . . all this time?"

Another endless, empty moment. No one answers.

Then, someone in the crowd, a young man in a suit-and-tie, wipes a tear from his lip and whispers, That would have ruined it.

Rapunzel Goes Mad

Her name was Llewellyn.

An ornamental name for an ornamental