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The Future Hat

Joe Vanderhyde

Kansas State University

“Life only makes sense backwards, but we have to live it forward.”
Søren Kierkegaard

Sixteen years ago, I woke up, and Daisy had dematerialized, and without her there I didn’t want to put on The Future Hat and try to discover how the world would end anymore.

We had been chosen for the beauty of our hippocampuses.  And out of the two of us Daisy had been the one who had not wanted to know the most.  Daisy, paper-thin and pillow-soft with skin the color of bleached bed sheets—whenever she was in the room with me, with anybody, she was always leaking something yellowy or salty or thick.  I tried to keep a Drying Cloth within close proximity so that I could keep her cheeks dry, as any fluid on the outer surface of the skin tended to dampen the reception of The Future Hat, making things blur into something that they were never supposed to be: yesterdays turning into tomorrows, already-finisheds turning into never-starteds, widows becoming non-widows as the dead transmutated into the living, bottom-less holes becoming so filled up that nothing could ever empty them again.

After these Future misconfigurations would arise and the sirens would flash red throughout the Control Room, Daisy would always be restrained and dragged by armed-guard off to the Lashing Room where she would be strapped into the Lashing Chair...

...with the worn-down heavy metal of The Future Hat still resting on my soft soft skull as the Fuel Cell Generator thump, thump, thumped forward.  It looked like the world had ended for me already and that The Reverse Big Bang was more idiosyncratic than anything else.  I didn’t know what to do, so I kept doing what I had always done—I kept looking forward.

Last week, while looking at Future Me, the red alarms of the Future Future Room went off, and Future Me sat up straight, pressed the Future Future Hat closer to his right ear, like he could hear something, and so I tried harder than I had ever tried in a long time to reach closer, to see what had caught Future Me’s attention.  And I could hear something like a whisper coming through Future Me’s earphone. No don’t worry about it.

“Mm hmm” was all that Future Me could mutter his tongue restrained by his Tongue Immobilizer. Don’t worry about it everything’s fine.  My moonbeam, my piecrust, my 2+2=4.

“Dayzzzee? Nz Zt Uu?” Something melted away from the outside of me when I heard her name like all the pores on my skin had opened up at once.

Shhh—You don’t need make sound now.  Just open your ears...

Prompt One

WEST-MIDWEST | Second Round

Unaccustomed Shape

Kirsten Rue

University of Washington

The heat settles on me out here like grease, full of smells, full of distance, full of bodies.  It has nothing of the heat my sister and I know—heat cracking brown, sapping long grass, drying the hair and skin.  This heat belches up from metal grates I cross suspiciously and smells oddly—sickly—sweet.

“It’s almost pervy, you know,” Melinda says, describing it. She’s right.  Ever since we got here I’ve felt an inkling of defilement, or like someone being whittled down into a smaller shape, still hidden beneath the curvature of accustomed skin.  It’s like that riding the subway, too: the kiss and hiss of doors, the change in pressure, sucked into what feels like an even tighter craw than the cement station.  Ka-thunk, ka-thunk.  The trains veer headlong past and rather than feel hopeful, sure that in a city this vast and teeming, other kindred souls flicker past, I feel nothing but my own anonymity.  For I am neither particularly smart, nor beautiful, nor good, nor charming.  At least, not here.  Here I am just one more footfall on the street.  How, I wonder, can these people find others to love them? ...

...When her phone rings, I wrench it from her hand and answer it immediately, slightly breathless.

“Hello?”

The line crackles and then I hear a male voice.  “Mel?  You sound weird.” My lungs give way, just a little: a sudden loss of pressure.

“Oh, hey.  It’s her sister.”

“She was all upset earlier.  Is she there?”

I hand the phone to Mel and she takes it out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her.  I wonder when she even had time to call him out of my earshot.  Perhaps when I stood across the street from the office building, watching the doors keep swinging, now bereft of people.  It is an odd thing, to eavesdrop on Melinda; I press my ear to the wall.

“No, it’s okay now.  She snapped out of it, I think.  But it was weird.  No, really, I said it’s okay.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine.”

The sound of a siren drowns out the rest.  These sirens—after awhile, they whittle you down.

Prompt One, West-Midwest, Round 2.

"Unaccustomed Shape" by Rue [55.7%]

"The Future Hat" by Vanderhyde [44.3%]

Go to Prompt 1 Finals