SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

When Nate reached the edge of the interior wall, he saw the entry point of the invading beast. The incredibly lengthy probe stemmed from a misty floor vent.

He stopped and peeked around the wall to see if there were any other uninvited guests waiting for them. There weren’t. Their way to the door was clear.

Nate turned back to the three, tilted his head to the entrance, and mouthed, “Let’s go.”

His head wasn’t fully back forward when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Raj drop his shiny waxed apple. Nate’s face must’ve been telltale because he saw his horror reflected in Terry’s. She spun in time for both to see Henry’s fingers lunging, clutching for Raj’s pack as the out of sorts man bent toward the desk for the rolling apple.

And then Raj bumped the desk.

The response of the tentacle was immediate.

Henry spun left and dropped down to avoid the recoil of the three meters of whip bearing toward him, the butcher knife blocking his face.

Raj was too late to react. By the time he screamed he was thrashed above Nate and Terry and slammed in between the ceiling above and desks below. The scream ceased on impact.

In the instant the beast had sprung to life Nate had pushed his back into the wall. What had been Raj was a pasted jelly. Nate’s eyes darted the length of the tentacle. The root of the arm near the vent undulated in a short arc. If he acted, he could get close. If he didn’t, they were next.

With one liquid motion he launched himself from the end of the wall and thrust his paper cutter blade down through the crimson flesh of the beast.

A thunderous shriek echoed up through the floor as both ends of cut tentacle began to spout fountains of blood.

The tentacle was cut but there were four meters of length to the vent. Nate began hacking wildly, working to move closer to the source.

From the vent the tip of another tentacle began to creep through. Nate wanted to get closer but his fight with the wounded limb kept him at bay.

Then to his left flew a chair, and then another. He looked over to see Terry franticly throwing whatever furniture she could lift. They were on the offensive.

Invigorated, he swung the blade down harder, hitting his mark and hacking two feet off at a time, making his way toward the second tentacle.

Then he saw Henry.

Using a flat panel monitor as a shield, he rolled up to the vent and with one slash, severed the two limbs clean at the grate.

Nate rushed over to help Henry flip a table upside down on the vent. Then they slid the nearby copy machine to the table and pushed the heavy box on its side.

His arms, shirt, and Men’s Wearhouse khakis were coated in blood. And so were Henry’s. Terry somehow escaped the worst of the fount.

“What now?” Terry asked.

“Well,” Nate said, “we’ll find a floor with running water. Clean up.”

She nodded and brought the back of her hand across the bridge of her nose. “That’ll be good.”

“First though, I think we should eat. I haven’t had meat in weeks.”

Henry grinned. “I’ll get the Sterno.”

It took another week to find a floor with running water. It was, of course, one of the floors where physics didn’t matter. The floor had an executive gym, which meant showers, and showers with enough force to propel water down, so even with objects floating and suspended the three of them reveled in properly cleaning themselves and their clothes.

Nate finished and dressed before the others. The changing area reminded him of places he’d only seen in movies. The lockers were hardwood, not metal, and mosaic tile covered the walls. It was a comforting place and he decided he’d rather wait there than out on the odd floor. He sat at the end of the dark lacquered wooden bench with his back to the wall, one arm on his knees, one hand playing with a suspending piece of glass, twirling the jagged shard midair. On a bench next to him was a Sony Walkman, not an iPod or an mp3 player or even a Discman, but an old Walkman, plugged into a wall charger. He grinned and picked up the old tape player to examine it, but the cord wasn’t long enough to pull over so he reached to unplug it. That’s when he saw that the green light of the charger was on.

He looked up at the nonfunctioning lights and began to question how the outlet could work and then remembered that objects floated here. This was an odd floor.

He slid the old headphones onto his head and hit the eject button to spy the cassette—a no brand mixed tape. He slapped the tape back in, pushed play, and watched it through the small plastic window. The tape began to turn on its spindle. At first there was only the fizzy sound of static and he thought the antique was a piece a junk. Then, with a breath of new life, the ostinato of Zeppelin’s Kashmir burst into his brain. A grin crept across his face as he stood and clipped the silver plastic box to his waist. With a swagger, he set out to patrol the echoing halls of suspended glass, rolling his shoulders to the beat, the two-foot paper cutter blade tapping the side of his leg as he walked.

As he exited the gym a thirty-foot tentacle struck out of the mist with lighting ferocity.

Instinctively, so did he.

Originally published by Holt Smith ltd

When Sebastian led them into the second floor dining room, Tia was immediately taken with the dark mahogany paneling. Even with her rare access to the most exclusive resorts, she had never seen a structure so flamboyantly resourced, for so few. Full wooden structures such as the pine log lodges of Aspen were rare. Wood paneling was a flex of wealth of the type that her father and his friends frowned upon. Her family was fortunate to have survived times when wealth was dangerous. It was better to be subtle. That was one of the reasons her father loved the sailboat, “An excuse to be surrounded by wood,” he said, “without flaunting.”

But the paneling was not the only thing special in the room. The far wall to her right, and the arched ceiling above, were paned with the same durable glass-like transparency as the greenhouse walls of the university’s botanical garden. The thickness of the panes and the darkness of the night hid the weather beyond in a black void. If not for the heavy rivulets running down the frames and the remote flash of electric cyan that filled the sky when they entered, she would have thought the storm had passed. Wide palm fronds sprung from tall corner vases and were positioned high in such a way that they appeared to hold up the ceiling. The centerpiece of the room was the dining table. Though not unique, it was impressive, a long table, mahogany like the paneling, surrounded by a dozen brown high back leather chairs, and in them, their waiting hosts.

Kay leaned into Tia’s ear. “It’s The Dining Room .”

“What?”

“ The Dining Room ,” she repeated. “It’s from another story.”

“No, no. I know what—”

“I present Miss Tia and Miss Kay,” Sebastian said.

Four men and six women rose from their seats at the table to face the two women. Bill was standing across the table, in the middle. Only he and the silver-haired woman at the far head of the table to the right offered anything close to a smile. The others held expressions that ranged from inquisitive to objectively observant to downright bothered.

A gaunt, grey-haired man raised a cloth napkin to his mouth in a poor attempt to hide his whispers to the younger woman next to him. The woman wore an aubergine hijab over her head. She was one of the group peering at the two girls with a bothered stare. Tia was sure the comment was about her and Kay’s appearance. Everyone at the table was dressed for dinner. Tia and Kay were in light blouses and capris. Except for a long-sleeved thermal and some undergarments, that’s all they’d bothered to pack. Tia slid her right foot behind her left. She wanted to drop her gaze toward the floor. Etiquette stopped her.