At Mo*Con, we like to highlight up and coming writers as well as spotlight local artists. This year was no different. From the Afrosurrealist mind of Rae Parker comes this image which guests at Mo*Con were encouraged to write a flash piece about. Here are the winners!
Rae earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts, and is an Art educator, curator, & inspiration to the youth. Rae has worked with organizations from Asante Art Institute, Garfield Park, Murphy Arts Building, Pattern Magazine to the Stutz Building. Their work can be seen all around Indianapolis and have been shown in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Rae’s artwork has been based on two factors: Awareness and Empowerment. The awareness is shown through pieces that represent women of color, masculine women, social, political injustice, and community based conflicts. Recently Rae’s work has been featured in an exhibit for Herron and Parsons School of Design. Artists such as Kara Walker, Sonya Clark and Mary Sibande were among that list. Having a piece in Newfields as well has been a huge dream achievement for Rae. “Never give up on following your dreams and always stay true to yourself.”
The winning piece is featured below:
Ready for Battle
by Madisen Ray
Yasuke zipped himself together.
His adoptive countrymen favored more permanent assembly – rivets or welds – but Yasuke preferred flexibility. He’d seen too many fellow soldiers cut down because they lost their gun-arm or wakizashi mount with no recourse. Their seams wrenched open, brittle and bent.
Yasuke remained fluid. Sword-arm dislocated? Swap in a heavy munition. Tanto ripped away? Darts. His brethren admonished the giant pack he hauled into battle, but it had saved him more times than he could count. Many of his critics didn’t live to see the next skirmish.
He wrapped himself in gold and red and started to lock in his steel oni mask. He paused. In the back of his locker hung a new mask he’d been forging for weeks. An homage to a half-remembered home.
Artillery fire was picking up outside. He’d be needed soon.
Yasuke sheared the oni mask in half and grabbed the ancestral mask. He outlined the crooked tear on the new mask and cut it to fit. Yasuke soldered the halves together into a fierce self-amalgamation and latched it into place. Last, he switched his wakizashi-arm for a shield mount with a free hand – an almost taboo combination with a katana – and strode from his tent.
A hush preceded him. Yasuke’s comrades stepped back from the force of his presence. The ancestral mask glinted in the hazy sunshine, an exclamation and a warning. Overclocking his power output by a couple percentage points to contribute to the overall effect didn’t hurt, either.
His enemies cowered.
Minutes or days later, the churned battlefield smelled of oil and blood and smoke. No helicopters flew overhead. The silence screeched.
Yasuke’s sword-arm had long been replaced by a spear-arm, but his dented shield remained solid. He began the process of disarming as he reached his tent.
“Tampering with military-issued equipment can come with a court-martial, brother.” Koji sat on Yasuke’s cot holding the discarded mask halves. “Hopefully they cut you some slack now that rumors of their commander fainting at your mere presence are running up the ranks.”
“Actually, he pissed himself,” Yasuke replied as he removed his bloodied mask. He snapped it along its soldered seam and set the halves on his workbench.
“Welds will make that stronger.”
But Yasuke was already uncoiling heavy lengths of zipper chain.
The court-martial was a formality. As long as Yasuke wore both halves of the oni mask in official ceremonies or diplomatic endeavors, he could use his ancestral mask when confronting the enemy or for personal reasons. They strongly suggested he not mix the two again.
Koji flagged Yasuke down afterward. They walked across the base to the staccato of rifles and the ring of steel on steel. The mess hall’s lights flickered as always when they sat down with clear broth for dinner. No one bothered to ask what it was made of anymore.
Yasuke unzipped his gloves and held his bare palms over the steaming soup. He was grateful for the parts of his body he could still feel.
“Careful, you’ll rust,” Koji said.
They ate in silence until Koji broke it. “How long until you wear the two masks together again?”
Yasuke sipped his broth.
“I’m always wearing them together.”
Madisen L. Ray graduated from Ball State University with a degree in English Literature. Today she works in communications in Indianapolis and craves stories told in every medium, especially video games. You can find her published short stories in Dream of Rust and Glass, Bright Flash Literary Review, and forthcoming from HauntedMTL.
The runner-up piece is featured below:
I Left My Heart in the Timeline
by Amanda Cook
Rose didn’t catch me stepping from the time bridge, which let me take in all of her: her dress, the glow of her brown skin, her perfectly curled hair. Her skirt rippled around her legs in the breeze from cars zooming past, the white satin tinted sunset pink, transforming her from beauty to angel. I couldn’t believe all those drivers passing her without a second thought.
Forget-me-nots picked from the nearby field sagged in one of her gloved hands as she pressed a hankie to her eyes with the other. She was utterly alone, the perfect time for me to intervene. The newspaper clipping in the archives had said there were only a few hours left before this was her last sunset.
The time bridge sealed behind me, and I checked my brooch watch for the bridge’s scheduled reopening. I couldn’t be late again, or a demotion would be in my future—or my past. Time stepping was confusing sometimes. I wandered from the maple grove to where she stood gazing at the failing light, making sure my yellow hat stayed firmly pinned to my immaculately set hair and my green dress was wrinkle free. I had to look the era as much as possible for this to work.
“Do you need any help, Sister?”
She turned from the cornfields, and her face was an exact copy of the digital image on my tablet, though in the flesh, she was more beautiful than any pixels on a screen.
“I’m fine,” she sniffed, smoothing out her skirt to hide her red-rimmed eyes. “Just taking in the night air.”
“This far from town?”
“I like to walk.” She lifted her chin, daring me to question her again, and I left well enough alone, even though her pristine pumps told a different story. Trust needed to be built before I could help her save herself.
I nodded, instead. “It is a fine evening for a walk. I enjoy it myself from time to time. Seeing as it’s getting so late, would you like to walk back with me?”
She glanced at the purpling sky, then back at me, suspicion and doubt needling her thoughts. After a moment’s hesitation, she agreed. We faced the city’s emerging lights together and strolled the five miles back along the shoulder. Five miles with the occasional car passing by and not once stopping to ask if we needed any assistance. I had to remind myself it was truly the 1950’s, because it didn’t feel much different from a century and a half later.
She started chatting to fill the silence, slowly opening herself up like a flower in the morning. Her name was Rose. She had a cat she loved and a brother she loved more. Their parents had both gone to Heaven, so she felt it her duty to take care of him when she could. She was newly married and had no children yet. She wasn’t sure she wanted any. She loved to sing and dreamed of becoming the next Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald.
“I really didn’t walk all this way,” she admitted as the lights of town grew brighter. “My husband and I were on our way home from a club, and we had an argument. He doesn’t want me to sign with this record company. Thinks I’m getting too uppity. He left me back there to think about my attitude.”
I didn’t say anything. Just let her talk.
“He’s not all that bad, really,” she continued, picking at a loose thread on one of her cotton gloves. “He just has a temper sometimes.”
We were almost to the outskirts, and I knew if I didn’t nudge her in the right direction, her death would show up in the next day’s paper. But there were rules to follow and too many marks against me already.
During a pause, she glanced over at me with those big, brown eyes soft as rain and smiled that shy smile of hers, and Universe help me, I threw all the rules out the proverbial time bridge.
Resting a gentle hand on her elbow, I stopped her in her tracks.
“Do you really want to go back to him?”
Her eyes grew sad and lovelier, and in the silence, I knew her answer like the beating of my own heart.
“I know someone you can stay with while you figure things out, then.”
Rose nodded and followed me to a small, wood shingled house outside town where an ancestor of mine lived. Becky was used to me dropping by unannounced with new friends needing the support of another new friend, and she was always willing to help with an open heart and a spare bed. I thanked the Universe for gifting me with such an empathic family line.
Once Rose got settled in, I headed toward the door, conscious of my time running out. Rose followed me to the front porch. She was about to say goodbye, but instead, she took me by the shoulders and kissed me softly on the cheek.
“Will I see you again?” she asked, those brown eyes bright with hope.
“My life is difficult.” Which was the truth. There was no room left for anything but my work. “I have others waiting for me.”
Tears leaped to her eyes, but she nodded, understanding how difficult life could be for both of us.
“Do me a favor, though.” I cleared my throat to keep my voice from cracking. “If another woman comes here looking for help, be there for her, will you?”
“I will.”
I turned away from Becky’s house and walked the five miles back as fewer and fewer cars me passed in the night. The time bridge was open and waiting in the trees. With one last look at the glittering stars, I stepped through to HQ, leaving a bit of my heart behind like I always did.
Amanda Cook lives in the middle of a Southern Indiana woods with her spouse, kids, and one small, clingy dog. Her work has been published or is forthcoming at Etherea Magazine, Apparition Literary Magazine, Flame Tree Press, and Wyngraf. Her climate fiction novel, WHEN WE WERE FORGOTTEN, won the 2018 Bronze Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror E-book. She can be found musing about writing, parenting, cosplay, and life in general at acooksbooks.com.
