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We’re Only Trying to Help You

by A.K. Sykora.

“Our children live in France,” plump Algernon volunteered.

Snug at her faux-marble desk, the heavy-shouldered director studied him. “Have they been notified?”

“Yes, I called the twins as soon as poor Mildred got certified.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t want to leave her,” he said blandly. “We’ve been married thirty-two years.” Hunched on the bench beside him, Mildred studied the ceiling’s lo-burn bulb, and her silvery mouthpatch twitched.

“You’re very generous, Mr. Shipley. Few adults arrive at the home attended. Mildred, you should be grateful.”

The gaunt, grey-haired prisoner made a choking noise.

Image from here.

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Programming Note

First off- Welcome to all new readers of this site!

Secondly- Thanks to all old and continuing readers. Things have changed a fair bit round here, with a new design and a new emphasis on an old direction, with still a change or two yet to come, and I thank you for sticking with me.

Today’s Programming Note concerns what you can expect on this site in the future. The main announcement is that Out of Ruins (outofruins.org) will now be featuring short stories (and possibly poems) from authors besides myself (MJG). I’ve long wanted to set up my own weird fiction e-zine, and now I have. Boom. I’ll still be posting my own stories up here, but will be  careful to delineate which are mine and which are from that week’s featured author. I’ve already had several submissions, and am in the process of accepting a few. They’re weird, and dark, and that’s awesome.

So, future programming, the schedule looks like this:

Mondays- New fiction from featured author.

Tuesdays- New ruins re-post featuring creative commons text and photos sourced from around the net, on cool ruins locations.

Wednesdays- Short fiction from MJG, if I have any.

Thursdays- New original ruins photos and text, from MJG.

I hope in the future to feature dark weird art on this site, as well as interviews with authors/photographers/explorers, and reviews.

All the best,

MJG.

The great machine hall of Taro mine

The derelict Taro mine lies at a generational crossing point- once a place where raw sulfides were dug from the earth, now it functions as a cosmic ray laboratory for a nearby University, capturing electrons from outer space in several large heavily wired pools. It was the first of four mines on our Iwate shopping list, ranked number 3 in all of East Japan.

Down on the Great Hall, from the third tier.

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The Squinching of Ricky Shay

When the orders came down that all the gold was to be digested by the end of the day, Efren couldn’t believe his ears, despite their unusual and rather floppy size.

“All the gold?” he asked his co-consumer Ricky Shay, the fattest stupidest pig in the sty. “I mean, that’s some heavy stuff right there.”

Ricky Shay ignored him, mostly. Ricky Shay was stupid, and didn’t understand English. He could grunt, and he could eat gold, and when it bust out through his system, it was, yes, it was thoroughly what it should be. But he didn’t speak a lick of English. Sometimes Efren felt he was working with an idiot.

“I mean,” said Efren, speaking in his piggy grunts. “That’s some heavy stuff.”

Ricky Shay said nothing. The orders stood. The gold before them stood, mounting up to the ceiling with nuggets as big as your fist. Efren, an optimist, shrugged his haunchy shoulders and tucked in.
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The 1937 Chevy at Bodie ghost town

Bodie is a ghost town east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States, about 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. It has been administered by California State Parks since becoming a state historic park in 1962, and receives about 200,000 visitors yearly.

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The mist-wreathed ruins of Matsuo mine

Matsuo mine in the north of Japan opened in 1914 and closed in 1969. In its heyday it was the biggest mine for sulfur in the Eastern world. It had a workforce of 4,000 and a wider population of 15,000, all of whom were accomodated in a make-shift city in the mountains of Hachimantai park. The city was known as the ‘paradise above the clouds’ for its comparatively luxurious apartment blocks and near-constant ebb and flow of mist. That same mist nearly prevented us from finding the place at all.

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