Released on the first day of every month, this anthology is a collection of short stories featuring multiple genres ranging from fantasy to sci-fi with a dash of adventure and darkness. Check in to Tapas, Wattpad, Webnovel, or read on my website to...
What a relief, Siamu thought sarcastically. If it had been toxic, at this level of concentration he was sure he would have already been dead. He stuffed the analyzer back into his bag and pulled the mask over his nose once more. The sensation of his nose being jabbed reduced enough to allow him to concentrate once more upon his task. A quick check of the time showed that he was fast approaching the two-hour mark. There were only twenty more minutes before he needed to head back up to the surface.
Nothing interesting had turned up yet so the P.I. used his nose instead of the map to guide him. A result was a result and perhaps the source of the smell could be sampled and sold to the right person. Consumers liked the oddest smells for perfumes or air fresheners. His nose led him through a maze of corridors and several open doors. That struck him as unusual, the open doors that is. Almost every other door in the place had been closed if not locked, but these were open? A jauntiness from anticipation crept into his walk as the smell grew steadily stronger.
At last a light broke into the dimness. It outlined a door which was only partially ajar and Siamu felt it beckoning him to enter. His heart sped up and he stowed the holotablet before aiming the scanner directly at the glowing crack. There was something inside, but the scanner couldn't identify it as organic or non-organic. The lines on the graph fluctuated even as he watched, refusing to settle down to a single result. Deeming the scanner useless, he steeled himself and slowly pushed the door open.
His first thought was that the normal lighting hadn't been shut off in this room. The smooth polished gray walls bounced the light around so much that it took him several minutes to find the source after his eyes adjusted. And that was when the bottom dropped out his stomach. Floating in the middle of the room hung a glowing...thing. The light was too bright for him to make out any details, but the general outline of it constantly morphed into new shapes. Whatever this thing was, it had no fixed form. Occasionally it cast off tendrils of light, as a star sends out flares, and light would crackle and dance over the surface of whatever it touched in the room. It was almost like electricity but softer and more liquid.
Before Siamu realized it, he found himself inside the room, the door wide open, with a tendril of light reaching out towards him. Hurriedly, he stepped back trying to avoid contact, but his left arm also swung up in front of him in a vain gesture to ward it off. These conflicting motions resulted in his body being untouched, but the tendril of light wrapped lightly around his left hand instead.
Light flashed in his eyes and he saw the room filled with figures made from light. The vision was of the same room, and people in lab coats darted around in fast forward. Silently they yelled and tried to stop some kind of chain reaction in a test, but they failed and all were consumed in the resultant blinding flash of light. All that remained after the flash was a tiny ball of liquid light no bigger than a child's fist which pulsed like a heart.
Then the room returned to normal and the tendril of light wrapped around his hand faded. He felt no different aside from a sudden chill due to sweat. Hastily he checked his scanner once again. It still could not produce a conclusive result. Then he backed out of the room and closed the door all the way. He made it all the way back to the turn in the corridor before he looked back.
The door was slightly ajar once more. He ran.
Later, Siamu had no idea how he'd gotten back to the room he rented for his office. He didn't even know if he'd locked the door again with the proper codes. It didn't matter. He was not going back there ever again. Let the government agents deal with whatever the blazes that was in there. He would have to write up some kind of report for his client later, but even he knew to keep that...thing out of it. He prided himself on not being stupid after all.
Once he calmed down enough to move his mind onto thinking about his other assignments, Siamu brought up the particulars on his holotablet. He would spend a few hours planning what to do next before getting some much needed sleep to dispel the shock from that evening's misadventure.
Before starting, he hauled himself out of his chair and rooted around for materials to make coffee with. The light in his "refreshment cabinet", as he liked to call it, flicked on and then off again as it was notorious for doing, so he couldn't quite see which jar had the coffee he wanted. He rooted around in the cabinet with both hands for a while without success and suddenly his left hand hurt. Quickly, he withdrew his hand and shook it.
Ouch. Must have stubbed it on something.
Another sharp shake and he went back to hunting for the coffee jar. It wasn't so hard to find now that the light was working again. He pulled the jar out, and then promptly dropped it on the floor.
The tip of his left index finger was glowing.
END
Author's Note:
I tried to get another story done in time for this month, but it needed lots more work so you get a story I wrote for a magazine submission back in May. I think I'll polish it up some more before I submit it to another magazine though. Would you like to see more of the glowing PI Siamu in future stories? Let me know in the comments below!
Comments, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below!
As always, you can find more about me and my writing at https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower and https://annamittower.blogspot.com/.
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