Ben LeBlanc

“The Back of the Van” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #280

“Are we here?” Mary looked at the face in the rearview mirror with expectant eyes.“Well, we about to be. This is the new city, remember? I told you that’s where we going.”“Right, I just didn’t think it would be so…”“Small?”“Well, yes.” “Hmm.” As Mary peered through the windshield the city was still just a faint smudge on the gray horizon. They had driven across miles of desert to get here, and now that they were here Mary felt her pulse quicken. She wiped her hand across her forehead and then ran it across her mouth and siphon...

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“Tumna ” by Ben LeBlanc

Tumna looked out over the Valley of Salt and saw his village smoking in a great ruin. His spear clattered to the ground and he leapt down the mountainside with the abandon of a goat, heedless of slicing tree branches and prickling tufts of pine. At a sheer stone overlook, only three tree-heights above the valley, he collapsed to his knees. He was sucking air through his bared teeth, his long hair tangled in dirty brown dreadlocks, his eyes glimmering with pain. Below him law the windswept plain of the valley, a place of dirt and rocks and sp...

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“Rocket Woman” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #278

Outside of the domed canopy of glass the martian dusk was gray and bleak, almost as gray and bleak as Mrs. Johnston felt, lying on a bed in Intensive Care, waiting to die. Earlier in the day a 4.5 magnitude marsquake had rattled the base camp, leaving one bathroom module destroyed and her room out of power, save for the backup oxygen filtration system, exhaling life into the room with a cool, watery hiss. She was reminded of her dead husband, the father of the martian O2 Filtration System. Her latter years had been a trial beyond descri...

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“The Yellow Bullet” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #252

The man’s dog was dying. It had been lying in the pink dog bed in the corner for five days. The vet had uttered his diagnosis with quiet finality: liver failure. The dog was only supposed to have two weeks to live, but was still managing to get up long enough to dust off the fleas and sunbathe in the backyard after two weeks and five days.She was a good girl.A sleek, slender yellow lab with long, twiggy legs, in better days, she could run like an antelope–down forest trails, across open fields–like when he used to take her to the s...

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“Authorial Intent” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #239

Matt Parker was seated in his study writing his latest novel on a cold December night. The novel was to be completed the following week by command of his publisher, who was threatening to retract his services if he postponed yet another week. Matt Parker was a frenetic worker. Always had been. Since the time he was young he had thought of nothing but becoming the Next Great American Novelist. Now, his passion had turned into something darker. The clacking of computer keys was the only thing that distracted him from his depression, which...

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“Signifying Everything ” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #231

The scared camo-clad woman shuddered in her foxhole as enemy lasers screamed overhead.Even as she closed her eyes behind her thick military-issue goggles, the reflected glare of the lasers burned through her eyelids in a bright red haze. She thought: so this is what Moses saw when God hid him in the rock.Except, this time, she would not come down the mountain with her face blazing with reflected glory. Any blaze in connection with her face would result in horrible disfigurement, if not death. The pictures of soldiers who’d been “fried” flash...

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“To the American Republic of Mars” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #230

GOVERNMENT DISPATCH: TOP SECRETFile No. 14575Coded messageEnter safe key...decoding....Subject: State of the United States of AmericaTo: The Leaders of the American Republic of Mars Today marks one week since the United States fell to the invaders. Yesterday, the former President of the United States opened the airlock without a spacesuit. As Chief Expert of the Republic (I built this place) I will take the oath of office tomorrow. All my supporters are invited.Rest assured, my administration is actively exploring ways to respond to the...

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“Safety Off” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #230

Mark was on the way to history class when it happened. As the four notes of the fourth period bell sounded over the PA system, the halls of Pioneer Valley Public School came alive with the bustle of students migrating between classes; the squeak of sneakered feet on linoleum, frenzied chatter, the random prepubertal yell or feminine squeal. Mark sighed, and the low-grade anxiety began to flutter back into his chest. He hated crowds. To him, people were merely obstacles to get around, beings whose continued existence held only the p...

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“Donuts” by Ben LeBlanc

Benjamin Parr had been in the Gameplex for the past eight weeks.Slaving away every day just to feed his family, and none of it was real.Presently, he picked himself up off the floor, located his dagger, and turned up just in time to catch the wolf bearing down on him with a well-placed stab to the chest. Fur and blood and one short yelp. Black blood on his dagger. He looked at the scoreboard. They were tied.Another one coming.This time, he tried something different.The wolf bounded toward him with reckless abandon, the ridge of its back bobb...

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“Mr. T” by Ben LeBlanc

Pulling into the gas station, he wondered how far behind the police were.The man was thirty-two years old. Medium height, slim, compact frame packed tight with muscle. Dark brown skin, like roasted espresso beans. A wide face with dark, intelligent eyes--almond shaped with a touch of epicanthic fold; pleasantly full lips; and a light, black scruff to match his close cropped hair.He walked into the gas station with fifty dollars to his name. He had withdrawn the money before the bank could freeze his account. It was a Sheetz gas station, nati...

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“The Director ” by Ben LeBlanc

Submitted to Contest #207

“Cut!”I stared down at the script in front of me. Another episode finished. The actor and actress, each dressed in flesh colored bodysuits, got out of the bed where they were pretending to have sex. stagehands with towels rushed forward to relieve them. Another episode done in the style of the HBO prestige drama. The likable antihero who is too virile for his own good. Big-budget spectacle, with violence turned up to the max. And, of course, the multilayered plot which served to justify the vice. “Hey, Don, you wanna take anot...

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