Garrett Cook here. Yeah, that’s two fish people in a row. To quote Marge Simpson, “I just think they’re neat”. Matthew Gleason is also neat. Matthew has a gleeful nihilism, a strong hustle, and a passion for everything grotesque that makes them one to watch.
False Hopes by Matthew J. Gleason
It was only a handful of years ago that the egg arrived and I came to this place… this
planet. I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I should tell you about the worms. They showed up
without so much as a hint of warning. To tell it true they had always been there, waiting deep
beneath the ground. One day, they awoke. Their bodies were as long as horizontal skyscrapers
and as thick as school buses. They were coated in inky black fur. The worms ripped through the
Earth with fury and hunger. They gnawed away at everything we had built, everything there was.
I watched as countless people died. I couldn’t do anything to stop the meaningless suffering.
In the end, I climbed naked into a wet, muddy hole in the ground. I covered myself with a
tattered blanket. Everything was shaking. The sky was black. I closed my eyes and waited for
oblivion. For a long time there was nothing but the vast, seemingly infinite noise of destruction.
Then out of nowhere came what sounded to me to be the ringing of a large bell. I opened my eyes
one at a time. At the entrance to the hole sat what looked like an Easter egg. It was painted with
colorful pictures of bunnies and butterflies. It looked just like any ordinary hen’s egg a kid might
have painted, except it was the size of a large man. I approached it. I was sure I was hallucinating.
I reached out and placed the palm of my right hand on the egg. The shell cracked. It fell away, leaving nothing but an empty doorway in space. I looked through it. On the other side was a
beach with green sand and a deep purple sea, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Where I stood the
world was still falling apart. Without thinking, I stepped into the gateway the egg had left behind.
I was on the beach. I felt the warm sand between my toes. The portal, which I had stepped
through, was nowhere to be seen. In time, I would discover that this world was called Morfi.
This was the place where the last member of each species of people in the universe were gathered to
live out the remainder of their lives. I’ve met nine-eyed aliens from distant galaxies. I’ve met
gods and goddesses, an elf, a manticore named Mantikeith, a giant, and beings made entirely of
thoughts. Of all the people I have come to know, the most amazing is the last of the mermaids.
Her name is Isabella, and she is more beautiful than any person I have ever known. Beyond that, her soul has an elegance and a grace that is indescribable. We married beneath the light of the
planet’s three moons.
We made love on the beach as the waves rolled over us. Soon she was with child. I
watched as her belly grew large. I held her as we talked about names and the hopes we had for
our baby. The pregnancy went fast. In weeks, our little girl was born. Only her body wasn’t built
right. I’d wondered what a half-mermaid half half-human would look like, but this was not what I’d
imagined. Our beautiful little girl was twisted and misshapen. She had a singular leg fused to a
thin flesh-covered fin. She had gills like her mother, but they were in the place where her mouth
should have been. To describe her further would be needlessly cruel. She could not eat. She couldn’t swim and would clearly never have been able to walk. She struggled to breathe on both land and in the water. Within hours, our child was dead. The name I carved into her gravestone was Jane.
Isabella and I clung close to one another as we wept. We comforted each other as best we
could. In time, our love burned with passion again. We made love. She became pregnant again.
We hoped that things would be different. When our son Christopher was born, he was even more
physically twisted than his big sister. He had a singular milky white fishy eye, which seemed to
be blind. He lived only minutes.
I suppose we should have given up then, but something told us to keep on hoping… to
keep on trying. My wife and I have twelve children, all resting beneath the green sand. The
newest was born this morning. Her name was Lily. She was just a head with a fish tail. The
ironic thing is her head was perfect in every way. She could have been a baby model if only she
had a body, if only she had lived. I will always love her, and she will forever occupy my
nightmares. Tonight, as I hold Isabella and kiss at her forehead, I fear that all which keeps us
together is false hope. We are the last of our kinds. Our Eden is poisoned.
“I love you.” I whisper to my mermaid wife as we stare up at an endlessness of stars.
“I know.” she says. There is a coldness in her voice.
Matthew J. Gleason grew up in Huntington, WV and now lives in the space between realities. Matthew was born in July of 1998; therefore could not have been in any way responsible for the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. They’ve been writing most of their life. Their books When Vampires Attack!, Strange Phenomena volumes 1-3, and NSFW: Not Safe for
World and Other Stories are available on Amazon as well as Godless. Their novelette/novella Cannibal Sluts 4 as well as their collection Eat Cat Food are coming later this year.
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