Nature Triumphs: A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Literature

Nature Triumphs

A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Fiction

Edited by Alison Armstrong and Pixie Bruner

Dark Moon Rising Publications | Virginia

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Rocky Mount, Virginia   24151

Tel: (540) 257-2861

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Copyright © 2024 by Dark Moon Rising Publications

ISBN: 978-1-945987-90-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Turning of the Tide by Andrew Bell

Save the Humans by Makena Metz

Don't Look Back in Anger by Edward Morris

Swarm of the Immune by J.C. Maçek III

The Weeping Walker byAkua Lezli Hope

Andromedan Spring by Akua Lezli Hope

Carnivora’s Spring by Akua Lezli Hope

Even Burning Tasty Bits to Scorch Their Food by Timons Esaias

3 Elemental Ends by Pixie Bruner

Deadly Toke by Kasey Hill

The Itch by Makena Metz

Alligator Tao by Sandra Lindow

Beauty’s Guide for the Compleat Gardener: by Sandra Lindow

In November by Sandra Lindow

Sex and the Theory of Everything by Sandra Lindow

Jenny’s Inlet: A Micro Guide by Em Starr

Blood Rose by Alison Armstrong

The Beekeeper’s Ghost by Sebastian Gray

Role Reversal byNorbert Góra

Out Of The Woods by Ramsey Campbell

I’m Not Strong, I’m Resilient by Makena Metz

Lake Tahoe’s Revenge by Linda Kay Hardie

Abstract Shapes by Alejandro Gonzales

Kroak by Megan Guilliams

A Virus Takes the Mike by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Forest World by Davic C. Kopaska-Merkel

Brothers Under the Skin by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Eel Week by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Mind's Eye by Kristi Hendricks

Last Call At The Garden Of Eden by Lamont A. Turner

The Agonized Silence of the Tree by Larry Hodges

A Reversal of Fortunes by JG Faherty

The Bees by Mawr Gorshin

Foreigner, Take Heed by Mary A. Turzillo

The Last Weed by Mary A. Turzillo

Tatiana by Mary A. Turzillo

Rain Goddess/Varshini, by Mary A. Turzillo

Lungs by Stephanie Ellis

The Candy-Coloured Apocalypse by Pixie Bruner

Whale Song by Elana Gomel

After the Global Warming by John C. Mannone

Black Bear in the Snow by John C. Mannone

An Ocean’s Lament by John C. Mannone

Fish by John C. Mannone

Fish in a Dream by John C. Mannone

Rancid Summer Days on an Unbearably Hot Exoplanet by Angela Acosta

Nothing We Can Do by Alison Armstrong

Throw It Back by Rebecca Cuthbert

How to Make Witchcraft Honey by Kasey Hill

Ode to the Bees by Kasey Hill

One Side Of A Conservation With Mother Nature by Kyle Heger

Boots by Julie Dron

THE THING(s) by Victor Malone

Wildvine by Brian U. Garrison

Graver Gravities by Brian U. Garrison

Late Nights Around the Fire Coral by Brian U. Garrison

A New Mom for the Bee Boy by Rob Tannahill

One in Splendor, One Fading by Lilse Asalt

Twilight Threat by Gordon Linzner

Spines by J. Rocky Colavito

Compost by Kris Nelson

Merly by Irena Barbara Nagler

Fever-twig by Irena Barbara Nagler

Give Me an S (for Spider) by M.G. Allen

So Bright It Burns by Katie Brunecz

Love Hertz by Tom Folske

Yard Work by Michael Errol Swaim

But With A Whisper by Kevin Sandefur

Author Bios

Note from the Editors

The  Nature Triumphs anthology arose as a creative, collaborative response to our concerns regarding the future of life on Earth. In it we share our nightmares of apocalyptic doom as well as our visions of Nature’s ultimate triumph over human devastation.

Although each contributor for the anthology has their own motivations for writing these eco-horror scenarios, I was inspired to begin this project because of my love for Nature, my despair over climate change, and my rage towards the people and corporations contributing to this ecological collapse. As a young child, I felt a strong affinity with the natural world, especially animals. I didn’t want to live in a world without wild creatures and sheltering, majestic trees, where everything was man-made, ugly and artificial, devoid of life, beauty, and soul. I often felt helpless to help prevent this destruction, for even though many people, including myself, did what we could to recycle, reuse, and reduce, there was always more production of plastic, more drilling for oil and gas, more deforestation. I still believe that we should all do what we can to diminish our complicity in the environment. However, I also believe we need to make the apathetic public and the perpetrators of pollution much more aware of human culpability and the deadly consequences of our planetary assault.  Humans, after all, are merely another life form on this planet, no more important than any other, but much more dangerous.

We hope that these stories and poems entertain and disturb readers , inspiring them to protect our planetary home for all species.

-Alison Armstrong August, 6, 2024

*

I’m a city girl. The world of brick, asphalt, concrete and steel. Where a dandelion in a sidewalk crack was a symbol of defiance and resilience. Skyscraper canyons with so little greenery. Small urban family that eventually moved to suburbia. I had a day trip to see a petting farm as a kid. I had no idea how people lived in the country.  The annual day trip to Linvilla Orchards was a huge deal as I picked apples and drank fresh cider from the imperfect fruit for the first time ever. 

My life was spent overlooking a tree zoo - known as Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia,  Feeding pigeons, writing under trees, petting other people's pets out on walks was a treat. A rare day on grass. Even our security-guarded gated fourth floor apartment of 11 stories twin buildings in suburbia had a 14 acre nature preserve-we were so lucky! It let them charge insane rents for a single trail around a manmade lake and some uncut untamed woods. It was considered upscale living if you had the opportunity to get attacked by raging Canadian geese. 

I’d spend my days deeper in those 14 precious acres of preserved woods walking over abandoned railroad bridges in the woods, observing nature, or writing poetry sitting on a runoff pipe going into a creek listening to Peter Gabriel’s Red Rain until sunset every summer day and weekend. 

In Atlanta and Philly, it’s an elite private school privilege to garden anything. Ecology is still an optional science elective. Community gardens are unavailable or neglected when they do occur in empty lots now as we try to change our ways. My first growing a food garden was in my 40’s! It was amazing and miraculous to me! I’ve never owned land. I had cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers and fresh food. I dream of someday having a garden and a yard. My balcony doesn’t let me grow food. Not enough sun.

We just heard aerosols killed ozone layer on 80’s news shows and lost hairspray and PFC’s and such. Many major cities do not provide recycling still.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was just being added to schools and curriculum when I graduated in 1990. 

My partner, who bikes to work all year-round, once brought home things… his pockets were full of these things. I didn’t know what they were. I let the cats play with the things. He had ridden his bike past a pecan tree and collected the nuts from the actual street sidewalk, alongside an elderly couple who was also harvesting the best pecans I’ve ever eaten! He just finds food being a country boy, somehow. I didn’t even know they were pecans and he saw me throwing away the cat toys and we ate dozens. These foraged pecans delighted me so much! We’ll hopefully join that couple together to forage free pecans this year.

We don’t get another home planet and have proven we cannot properly manage natural resources already, so we must change our ways. 

Nature Triumphs in these pages. It can only survive if humanity reduces, reuses, and recycles more. 

Our actions matter. Now I get upset if I can’t find one of my canvas bags to take to the market. I keep several in my car. We recycle. We make a mere single 30 gallon tall white trash bag of trash a week. We take public transportation whenever possible. We have embarrassingly confused black beans and coffee beans stored in reused pasta sauce jars  to soak and cook in the crockpot when on autopilot in the morning and grieved the food waste.

We cannot just run from our duty as planetary residents. We must live in harmony and have a mutually beneficial relationship with Nature. Conserve it for future survival. We humans are reckless, selfish, and we are  likely to  continue to do this to other worlds, raze, pillage, profiteer from, exploit, corrupt, and poison it until we can manage to save our home world. This is our only home. Let’s look after it.

Thank you, for a better tomorrow,

Pixie Bruner    August 6, 2024

Foreword

There are various movies and stories about the end of the world, and many of them come to the same conclusion. Unless humans change their ways of life, they will end up being the driving force behind the destruction of Earth. Within these pages, 44 authors and poets alike came together to share their own fantastically dark stories of what may happen in the future, whether it be close or far in the timeline of current events. Having chosen the Nature Conservancy group as the charity to donate proceeds, the authors came together in one group advocating for the same cause. This tome of stories, perfectly curated by Alison Armstrong and Pixie Bruner with Armstrong’s vision for an ecological-driven anthology, isn’t just meant to be fear-inducing, but it also asks humanity to make a decision: choose the Earth over your own selfish ways or else… we all will die.

Throughout the years, nature conservation has waxed and waned, much like the moon in the sky. In similar fashion to the moon, as its force pulls and pushes on the tides of the earth, nature conservation has pulled, pushed, and even tugged on the heartstrings of people worldwide. Running deep within our blood is the primitive call of our ancestors, who viewed nature in ways archeologists can’t even uncover. Nature was their way of life.

For some of us, thousands and millions of years later, we still feel and hear the same call deep within our bones, trying to lead us back to a nature-oriented life. Modern times are vastly different than ancient times. Skyscrapers around the world tower over the land of the living. Oil drilling rigs pump out the contents of our past to turn into gasoline and diesel fuel to power our cars, thereby releasing fumes into the air that combat the natural gases in the air. The waste of human living piles high in landfills and is toted on barges to dumping fields to try and reduce the trash buildup so humanity can continue in convenience while ignoring the growing problems we are creating.

However, the actions of modern living have and always have had a negative impact on nature. While growing up as a millennial child in the 90s, when conservation was of utmost importance, the call for change in human living echoes in my mind. Many of us still cut the holes in the plastic wrapping for aluminum can drinks so sea life won’t be harmed by it. Pictures of sea turtles, seals, dolphins, and other marine wildlife being harmed by our trash were shown to us and drilled into our minds. We participated in days like Arbor Day and Earth Day, where we planted trees and made personal testaments as to how we were going to contribute to nature conservancy that year. Volunteering to clean up trash, making sure we separated our recyclables, turning our waste into fertilizers for compost, the list goes on and on. We pledged to change the way we lived so nature wouldn’t be harmed more than necessary.

We were warned of the ozone layer being destroyed. I remember the stories saying there were holes so large over Australia and New Zealand that the residents couldn’t spend more than 20 minutes outside without risk of developing skin cancer. Humans made the necessary changes to fix the holes we had created, and the ozone layer healed completely. It was a small but huge victory for nature. However, small victories in the larger scope of needs are just a drop in the bucket. Taking a handful of people who do the things to help nature compared to the population of planet Earth doesn’t really change much in the grand scheme of things. Many of us try to live a life that coexists with nature while the rest of humanity continues to destroy it.

In China, the Three Gorges Dam has pumped and reserved so much water that it has been scientifically claimed to have disrupted the rotation of the Earth and slowed it down, even changing the shift of the Earth’s axis. However, it’s not solely the fault of China. Studies have emerged that humanity pumps so much groundwater that it has contributed to the gradual shift of the Earth’s axis. As ice caps melt and sea levels rise, the effects of Global Warming have also contributed to the thirty-three-foot shift of the natural tilt of the Earth’s axis. While it may not sound like a significant shift, it has raised concerns among environmentalists. The seasonal weather patterns have changed with this shift, along with the natural habitats of animals put at risk.

Extreme weather patterns and broader climate changes have disrupted nature to the point that animal biodomes and habitats are facing change or disappearance. Their migration patterns and food chains have been disrupted. Species that cannot migrate easily or adapt to their new environments face the risk of extinction. They also face a broad range of diseases as warmer air climates facilitate the travel of disease-carrying insects. Along with these extreme weather patterns, the destruction of their habitats and homes for farming, land expansions for human living, and tree removal for money have put species at further risk of extinction.

Consequently, it’s not just animals that have been put at risk but humans as well. Extinction of species puts human life at risk of extinction. Bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and many other species of animals are pollinators of the earth. Pollinators are what help the world go ‘round. Without pollinators, we wouldn’t have crops. Vegetables, grains, fruits, fruit trees, nuts, seeds, and any type of food we get from growth in soil would cease to exist. Animals rely on these types of vegetation to live. Domesticated animals used for meat would die because their main source of food is the grain and grasses we feed them. Animals we hunt in the wild would die as the vegetation slowly slipped away. Humans would die. It would be the same mass extinction the dinosaurs faced during the Major Impact event and the fatal winter fallout that followed, much like the Younger Dryas era in 10,800 BCE that caused many species to go extinct as well as pushing humanity to a similar fate. However, we survived.

Humans survive in this world through a symbiotic relationship with nature. We breathe in all of the natural gases of our atmosphere, and that breath gives us life, while our exhalation of carbon gives life to plant life everywhere. However, the destruction of nature and the continuous onslaught of plant life have been causing our way of living to directly affect the world as we know it. Plants use our exhaled breath of carbon dioxide as well as the natural gases in the air to live as well. Their leaves filter through all of the gases in the air and their exhalations are what help humans and animals alike to live as well, much like how artificial biodomes work. It’s the perfect ecological system, and we are slowly destroying it by destroying the rainforests of South America as well as the destruction of forests worldwide.

Mother Nature has been working over time, trying to right what humans have wronged. Extreme weather such as typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, and earthquakes are nature hard at work trying to heal. The slight over-tilt of the Earth’s natural tilt has disrupted the internal compass of Earth that keeps it rotating correctly. Plate tectonics have shifted, and earthquakes have been trying to right the axial shift by shifting the internal mechanisms of the Earth’s core. These earthquakes then send varying types of extreme weather throughout the world, such as tsunamis and typhoons. Even the atmospheric conditions can be changed by earthquakes and cause unusual weather patterns. While there isn’t a direct correlation between hurricanes and tornadoes to the patterns of earthquakes, the atmospheric conditions are altered and can lead to these extreme weather events. Combine all of the elements of what is happening currently in nature: global warming, the destruction of habitats and plant life, the shift of the earth’s axis, and nature trying to fix all of it, and you get Mother Nature in her desperate and havoc-driven form.

If we look at Mother Nature as a sentient being, she is devastated, and humans are the ones to blame, from our piles of trash and carbon emissions through burning fossil fuels to what we see as simple clearing of land to build our houses. We have devastated our home without remorse, and without correction of our actions, Her payback will be the destruction of humans. In 1971, Dr. Seuss released The Lorax, a whimsical yet foreboding story for children about a land spirit (The Lorax) warning humans about the destruction of Earth being cataclysmic to our living. The story focuses on a young boy wanting to learn what happened to the trees. He finds the Once-ler who tells him his story of being so driven by his own greedy nature to become an important person that he destroyed all of the trees in this story to make money. Pollution ravaged the land, and when he picked the last Trufella tree, the world fell into a pit of desolate waste. When the Lorax left, a single rock was left in his wake with the word UNLESS on it.

As a result of the cataclysmic devastation wrought by humans, we have gathered together a diverse range of writers to address the urgency of the planetary crisis. All proceeds made from sales will be donated to the Nature Conservancy as part of our mission to help preserve the world from further destruction and work at renewing the destruction we have already caused. Thank you for your purchase, and we all hope you thoroughly enjoy the stories we have written for you. These speculative stories and poems creatively imagine scenarios of disaster, some terrifying, some imbued with macabre humor. We hope they will entertain. Moreso, we hope they move you and open your eyes enough to see that change is needed to help better the world around you. Mother Nature is unpredictable, such as the stories depicted within these pages. The Earth can only survive if humanity reduces, reuses, and recycles more. Your actions matter. Every day, animal species, even those we have not discovered, are known to have gone extinct. Humans risk making this planet uninhabitable UNLESS we change our ways.

Kasey Hill, owner of Dark Moon Rising Publications

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. – Dr. Seuss

Turning of the Tide

Andrew Bell

The water had spread from room to room, like a living thing, searching. As it passed over thresholds and between gaps under doors, like sauce through a sieve, it left what was too large and cumbersome at the door, and when there was nothing to be had, returned whence it came, collecting the rotten corpses and shreds of flesh, carrying them along. Outside the attic bedroom door, it began to thicken, like a glue comprising the timber and skin collected over an age, forming some kind of humanoid being that was much too broad in the chest, too stout in height to call anything about it human. There, it embroidered a being blacker than the night.

It had found a young child.

Donny Jenkins curled into a foetal position, tucked his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around his legs with the grip of a drowning man. For over half an hour, he had watched the light move about the edges of the door frame, and despite the broken, erratic movements, all he heard was the slow, sloshing approach of its feet.

It had slipped up the stairs and waited beyond the room’s threshold, where it had sensed the creature, before returning to the rest of the water a floor below. Like a shadow thickened by time, it grew tall silently. Now, it looked down at the appendage hanging loosely by its side, and raised its arm, looking at the tiny, amoeba-like creatures swimming there. A severed head, eyes like puckered lips, neared and touched the frontier of its skin before it lost interest. With a flourish, it turned, hair like a flame in the liquid, and moved on. Soon, it was replaced by a man’s grizzled face. His cheekbones shone like silver through his flesh, and he was missing teeth. Not a hair moved on his scalp. His lips were ragged and stiff with the salty water.

It beat its fist against the door.

Donny held his breath with fright, eyes wide and bright, as he watched the door.

*

Simon slowly placed the receiver in the cradle, calmly, gentleman-like, but wanting so much to smash the plastic, then drive it through the kitchen table and onto the floor. There were small tracks on his sunken cheeks where he’d wiped at the tears, then thought hell with them and let them dry. He had aged over the past month and even had a full head of thinning, grey hair. Pretty tough going for a thirty-five-year-old.

‘We have no choice,’ he said quietly, cleared his throat, and turned his attention to the boxes dotted around the room.

Susan stopped wrapping her ornaments in newspaper. ‘What do you mean, we have no choice? You know we can’t do this-’

‘I know! Think I’m…Look, I’m sorry, okay,’ he shouted before lowering the volume of his voice. ‘We already signed the contract-’

‘But you know what we went through— still, we have to face it every day— NO, you get back on that phone and tell the bank that we can't, we just can’t!’ Susan ran into the hall and up the stairs, there she would find a place to cool down and breathe again.

*

Donny continued to put his toys into a box, alone in the crowded room, wishing he were made from plastic too. That way, he would feel no pain. Almost a month ago, to the day, the sea had claimed his brother, Toby. Living so close to the shore, Donny had gathered he’d simply wandered off into the North Sea or even lost his footing in the strong undertow. For it had been a very plausible way to disappear; getting swept out into the dark, steel-grey water was how some of the town dwellers of Hartley were known to have met their end. Either that or in their sleep, stepping naturally over the seamless, painless threshold of the dreaming world and into a very much different one. But Toby had been just twelve years old, and he was afraid of the sea. Donny sometimes wished that his brother had learned to swim at an organised pool or club. That way, he could have been taken care of. He didn’t deserve to be a part of the town’s history.

The pools should have been filled in with concrete a long time ago. He wished he’d never heard of them.

*

When the fists had grown tired, the sibling rivalry at an end for the day, it was time for the brothers to go to bed. Donny dived under his covers, looking over at Toby as he knelt at the foot of his bed.

‘I don’t understand you,’ Donny said, shaking his head. He waited for his brother to finish. Silence reigned, but only for a little while. When Toby made the sign of the cross on his chest, then pulled back the covers of his bed, Donny chuckled. ‘Unbelievable.’

Toby didn’t look over at his older brother, simply curled up beneath the cool duvet and issued a long, weary breath. The rain fell heavily against the windowpane, and they heard it gushing through the guttering outside.

‘Did you go out further than the skeleton pier?’ said Donny, staring at the dark swirls and funny shapes in the ceiling’s plaster. He brushed aside his lengthening brown hair with his hand.

After a while, Toby answered, his voice a little shaky. ‘I swam for a little, but…’ his words drifted off.

‘The pier’s not too bad,’ replied Donny, yawning loudly. He laced his fingers and cupped the back of his head in his hands. ‘Did you visit the old pools, like I said?’

Toby shook his head. ‘No…they remind me of the dream. You know, the one I had the other night.’

‘I told you,’ said Donny, nodding quietly yet exasperatedly, ‘It’s the only way you’ll get strong in the water. Staying in your comfort zone will do you no good…you know? Dreaming of drowning is kind of natural, I guess… I know- I know the pools are pretty creepy, but they are the only place to learn-’

‘I know-’

‘I think I learned to swim there. I think everyone and his dog learned to swim there. Probably the closest you’ll get to being in the sea. You know what?’

There was no sound. The question hung in the air.

‘How would you feel knowing you were the last to learn?’

‘How-’

‘The last to swim there,’ said Donny, yawning loudly.

‘I might go there tomorrow,’ Toby whispered, turning over in his bed to get more comfortable. Then he went quiet, his eyes open, staring at the wall.

Donny never saw his brother again.

*

The old housing complex had been a complete farce. It was a matter of when not how. The houses were going to rock the bank and look desirable, too, but all that glitters and all that. Taps didn’t work properly, the toilet flushed when it wanted to, and the pipes in the place moaned and groaned when the mood took them. When it came to building and planning, there was a right way and a wrong way, and the engineers, the guys with all the money behind the project, had done it the wrong way.

Upon the stone pools, they built the foundations. Which, in itself, had been a mistake. Despite almost a century, these pools had been the public swimming baths. Sea water had run in rivulets, channeling to these large pools, like tiny rivers to the ocean. Despite the water being quite dirty and salty, people would travel for miles around to swim there. Sometimes, there would be little groups from various clubs, a knitting class, or the local library club, and they would sit and read, not even stepping one foot into the water. There were bus trips advertised in the local newspapers. For as little as ten pence, one could swim for almost two hours, knowing they were taken care of by the local lifeguard. But that had all changed after the place was deemed unsafe. The day they made pay cuts and got rid of the lifeguard was the day death came in with the sea. Signs were erected, and everyone knew that they were now responsible for their own safety. At first, the whole place threatened to close, and the swimmers had found a better place, a safer place to go. Then the pools began to fill up again; gangs of youths hung out there, and provided you were careful, there was nothing to fear.

The first person claimed was a little girl by the name of Cheryl Robbins.

The father of the nine-year-old had turned his back for only a few seconds to pick up the two ice creams he had just bought from a van nearby. Not even Jake, the old lifeguard, would have had time to jump from his tall-standing seat and rush towards her kicking and screaming body in the pool. Jake had read the sad news in the local paper and cried.

Then, all went quiet for a while. Occasionally, somebody would disappear, only to be found in the waters, floating around as lifeless as a dead bird.

As almost a decade passed, a tradesman purchased the land there and started putting plans together. There would be a string of brand new two-to-four-bedroomed houses and even a small store, too. The possibilities were endless. 

*

Donny and Toby had known all along that they would have to share a room. When they were told about their new home, they envied the kids across the street, being able to choose from one of the four bedrooms they had. But Simon and Susan Jenkins didn’t have a magic tree that grew money and didn’t have those well-paying jobs, so a two-bedroomed house would have to suffice. Sometimes, Simon would have to catch a bus to work when the car played mind games. And a pay rise was way beyond their horizon. They would indeed live on jam and bread for a while until they got some cash behind them, but it was a step up on a ladder that they needed.

It was such a sought-after area, obviously way beyond their means, but they’d survive. The sun would shine and get trapped there in their small cul-de-sac, provided they had a summer, and what neighbours were there seemed friendly enough. Although the Jenkins family had yet to actually move in, they had already been invited to two barbeques in the coming months. Everything was exciting and even smelled brand new. The carpets, the new upholstery- the couch, the bedroom. The sea views sent shivers of electricity across Simon’s skin as he often looked out at the animal that neared and stepped back. The sea.

It was everything and more than what they wanted.

Now, it was the stuff of nightmares.

The sea could take many things but not the memories.

*

Simon turned, lifting his head off of the pillow, then thought before waking Susan, what the hell.

‘You hear that- I swear, I heard it.’ He spoke below a whisper, but Susan could hear the edge in his voice; it was fear.

‘Simon,’ she said, trying to keep her voice down. ‘The council has already checked the place with a fine-toothed comb. There’s nothing running under the house.’

‘You know, like,’ he clicked his fingers, trying to get the words off of the tip of his tongue, completely ignoring his wife. ‘It’s like listening to one of those shells, you know? There’s nothing in it, but