“April Showers”
Science fiction
By David M. Fitzpatrick

It was April back on Earth, but Hennessey’s home state of Maine didn’t have rain like this in April. The planet Tempus might as well have been named Waterfall.

The rains were steady even as mountains of snow and ice melted furiously. Hennessey’s lifeboat, which he’d taken from orbit, would at least keep him warm, dry, and afloat as the region flooded in the Tempusian spring.

For a punishment, the assignment had been a fascinating one. He was alone on a space station orbiting a planet whose core produced a magnetic field replete with tachyons. The whole world was bathed in a field of temporal particles, but surveying it for a year had not yielded answers. The planet seemed normal, but there had been no authorization for a ship to land on it. No one knew what this alien energy field might do to a person. Hennessey’s landing, of course, was out of no choice.

Tempus had been a punishment assignment. He’d pissed off the wrong admiral, and although he’d admitted responsibility, they still sent him off to a backwater planet that only saw a supply ship every three months. But what was it Admiral Jarrett had said to him?

“You screwed up, Hennessey,” he’d said, “but everyone deserves a second chance.”

As it turned out, Hennessey loved the assignment—except for being alone all the time, anyway. He’d loved every moment of scanning and collating data, monitoring the temporal waves, and sending out reports—until the stray meteor impacted the station. He’d barely escaped before the station entered the atmosphere. He’d spent two weeks in nonstop rain, floating in the seasonal lake. The lifeboat was stocked with plenty of supplies, so at least he wouldn’t starve before the next supply ship checked on him.

April was nonstop torrential downpours and melting snow and ice, and regular powerful thunderstorms. Through it all, he did scans, always watching for temporal anomalies. There were never any. Just as he’d seen from orbit, it seemed to be a normal world with normal time. It was something of a letdown, really.

A month into his marooning, his day was floating, observing, scanning, and eating. The only excitement came during rare breaks in the storms, when he’d tether himself to the lifeboat and take a cold dip to clean and reinvigorate himself.

Well, that and the injury. He was getting back into the lifeboat and took a tumble which both opened up a big gash in the back of his left hand and broke a plastic switch off a control panel. He was furious at first, but it was something new and exciting, so he actually enjoyed bandaging his hand and gluing the switch back together.

One day, as it rained, he opened the hatch for fresh air—and he saw it. Far across the seasonal lake, there was another lifeboat. It looked just like his. He was stunned. That couldn’t be! There was nobody else within three light years of Tempus!

He fired the lifeboat’s jets and steered for the other lifeboat. Its hatch was open, and he saw the ID number on the side: GPR-39374.

He looked down at his lifeboat: GPR-39374.

It was the same lifeboat. His heart pounded with excitement. Was this proof of the effects of the temporal field?

He tethered his lifeboat to the duplicate, climbed over, and peered inside.

Hennessey gasped.

The inside of that lifeboat was half-filled with water. On the bottom, mouth agape and blank eyes staring up, was… another Hennessey.

“What the hell is this?” Hennessey whispered to nobody through the rain. It was coming down harder now.

He backed away, toward his lifeboat. They were identical in every way; he could even see reentry scorching on both—same exact spots, same exact marks. Hennessey scurried back to his lifeboat, clambered inside, and looked around. His eyes settled on the switch—the one he’d broken and repaired, now a week before. He rushed to it and studied it closely. The plastic switch had broken in a particular pattern, angled and jagged, and he stared at it to commit it to memory. Then he hurried to the duplicate lifeboat and, trying not to look at his dead body, he leaned in above the water and found the switch.

It had been broken and glued together. The angle and jagged lines were identical.

He sucked in his breath and snapped his hand up. The wound had healed and the bandage was gone, but there was the scar from the incident.

Hennessey looked down at his dead body. He had to check. He descended on shaky legs into the cold water, reached for the other’s hand, and pulled it up.

An identical scar.

He sloshed back in terror. What the hell was happening?

He reached up with a sharp fingernail and grunted as he dug hard into his forehead until he felt the skin break and felt hot blood trickle down his face. And as he did, he saw a similar wound immediately appear on his dead self’s forehead. It was gaping and red, as if it hadn’t been properly healed before he’d died.

“This is madness,” he whispered.

He got himself out of the lifeboat and back to his. He sat there in the rain, trying to reason it through.

Somehow, it was the temporal field around the planet. Not a single thing out of whack, temporally speaking, since he’d landed, and now this? He was seeing his future: He’d die soon, apparently.

Admiral Jarrett had said that everyone deserved a second chance. Talk about the greatest example! He could avoid dying and then have his own dead body to present as proof of temporal weirdness going on!

Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed across the sky. The steady downpour abruptly intensified. Hennessey realized he needed to get inside before—

He turned to climb down into the lifeboat, and that’s when a lightning bolt struck the hull. He had a sensation of falling. His brain sizzled and his vision blurred, and he could feel the faint sensation of rain drizzling on him, splashing on the floor around him, and as he realized the lifeboat was going to fill up with water, and that this was how he’d died…

*     *     *

One day, as it rained, he opened the hatch for fresh air—and he saw it. Far across the seasonal lake, there was another lifeboat. It looked just like his. He was stunned. That couldn’t be! There was nobody else within three light years of Tempus!

He fired the lifeboat’s jets and steered for the other lifeboat. The hatches on both were open.

And he saw the ID number on the side of each: GPR-39374.

He looked down at his lifeboat: GPR-39374.

Curiouser and curiouser. He tethered himself to the lifeboat and prepared to investigate. If there were indeed second chances, perhaps he’d find a second chance with these bizarre duplicates…

“May Flowers”
Contemporary fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Stella headed out to her garden in May, carrying the jug of weed killer in one hand and the connected wand in the other. It was her ritual, which she did every spring, and usually a few more times through the summer. She loved her green lawn, perfectly sculpted and always carefully mowed. The only thing that interrupted the green perfection was the old stone well; she’d recently had a wooden canopy built for it, mostly to keep any animals from falling into the deep thing and stinking up her yard. The well hadn’t been used in a hundred years.

The well could stay, but all the weeds needed to go—ALL of them. Not just the sorts of things that clogged up garden vegetables; no, the bright colors of the flowers. Overrated. She hated the damn things. Whoever had had the property before she’d bought it seven years before had had sprawling flower gardens; despite coming out every year and soaking unwanted weeds with her weed killer, there always seemed to be something new trying to grow. Trying—because she never let them get big enough to succeed. Let the bees forage elsewhere!

She snapped the power on and heard the battery whir the motor up to speed. She pointed the wand ahead of her and fingered the trigger, ready to soak a stand of daffodils that had grown up in mere days and begun to bloom already. Nasty things.

“Please don’t,” came a voice behind her.

She spun about, surprised. Nobody visited her, and she hadn’t heard a car. And she saw no one; only her sprawling lawn was there, beautifully green and impeccably flat, broken up only by the old stone-walled well with the new wooden canopy. Her lawn was almost perfect, but she saw three dandelions that had popped up. That infuriated her; daffodils temporarily forgotten, she prepared to head to the dandelions to put them out of her misery.

“Don’t do it.”

She whirled back. Who was it?

And then she saw the movement, in the shadows of the big trees that lined her lawn. It was a person, moving toward her, and then stepping out onto the lawn…

Stella gasped when she saw it. It wasn’t a person.

It was a flower. A damn big one. A sunflower, but it had arms and legs, and in the middle of the brown center, surrounded by huge yellow petals, was a face.

“What is this?” she croaked.

“I’ve been given this form to communicate with you,” the giant flower-person said. “You’ve sprayed so much around here and killed so many flowers. We need you to stop. You have to let us grow.”

Stella laughed. “Not a chance. I hate you damn flowers. Everyone thinks you’re so beautiful, but you take too much backbreaking work to maintain, and you just get in the way of my wonderful lawn. Now, run along, before I spray YOU with this stuff.” She waved the wand at the flower-person, who backed away, nervous.

“Please reconsider,” it said. “We’ve endured your cruelty for so long, but we know that you didn’t understand that you’ve caused us pain. Now that you do, won’t you please stop? You must recognize that you’re killing us.”

She stepped forward, glaring, the wand extended. “Nobody tells me what to do in my garden. I don’t care that I’m hurting you. And I’m going to hurt you very badly—hurt all of you! Not a single flower will be left standing.”

The flower-person looked at her with shock on his flowery face. “How… how can anyone hate the beauty of flowers?”

“Easily, because I do it. Now, out of my way. I’m the one with the weed killer, and you’re the one who’s helpless.”

The flower-person sighed. “I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

He turned and headed back into the woods, and he called out, “Do it.”

“Do it?” Stella echoed. “Do what?”

High above, a shadow… something moving…

Stella looked up and screamed. Above her, the towering tree with the blossoms moved massive branches, and it grabbed her and lifted her in the air. She screamed in rage as she dropped her weed killer and its attached wand, cursing the tree and threatening to weed-kill every last plant on her property that wasn’t her grass…

Below, she saw the flower-person tipping the well canopy over onto her lawn, and the gaping, dark hole in the lawn yawned as it grew larger, as the tree dipped its entrapping branches down toward it…

Her screams of anger turned to terror, but she couldn’t fight the tree’s grip no matter how hard she struggled. When it let her go, she fell headfirst into the well.

She screamed all the way down, and when she plunged into the cold water, she knew right away that it was very deep, and the well was very far underground…

*     *     *

The flower-person tipped the well canopy back up and over the stone wall that surrounded the well. Already, he could only barely hear her faint cries far beneath the earth. He stood, listening with sadness, even as her they faded away to nothing.

“It’s too bad we had to do this,” it said.

He heard the tree reply in his mind: We had no choice. It was her… or us.

“I know.”

Come back to us, said the voice in his mind.

The flower-person closed its eyes and metamorphosed. His feet rooted into the ground as his face withdrew into the flower. The stalk shrunk, and all around where it was rooted, new flowers sprung up.

And across the green lawn, flowers exploded from the ground and rushed to bloom, and within minutes life and color had overrun the yard.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.