Underground Rivers Read Online Free PDF Page A

hard outer shell similar to their own but it was shiny like the sun reflecting off water. Weirdest of all where the children would have expected it to have eyes and a mouth it only had more lights with patterns, ever changing, moving up its head.
    The creature seemed to be unsure of itself, flexing its various parts and bending here and there, until suddenly the light on its head changed and steadied a little.
    It stepped out of the mess and moved slowly towards them.
    Shockingly it had only four limbs and used just two of them to scuttle, if you could call it that. It was more a way of wobbling from one limb to the other.
    The children drew back. Out of the creature came the most horrible sounds and its head light flickered.
    â€œHello, valued customer. My name is Stephen Repurposed0606049. I see you are having trouble updating your device, would you like some assistance?”
    The children began to screech and scuttled back to the rest of the Brood as fast as they could.
    â€œZZSSTTCSSSZSZCSSZT!” they cried to the siblings as they reached the space still filled with dust. The Brood stopped their play fighting and turned to their returned siblings.
    â€œSszt?” asked one of them.
    â€œZZZSSTZSZ,” came the reply.
    Failing to heed the warning, thinking it only a game, the majority of the Brood clicked their mandibles at their siblings in jest then returned to their dust fighting.
    The siblings who had seen the Shiny Beast grew angry and hurried for the exit. They looked back as they left at their stupid siblings still playing. Something glinted in the dust cloud.
    â€œYOU HAVE DAMAGED LIBRARY PROPERTY. YOUR ACCOUNTS WILL BE CHARGED... ACCOUNTS NOT FOUND...”
    The Brood stopped playing and stared into the dust at the source of the noise. As the dust cleared they saw what had entered the space and began to panic. The creature’s face was spinning with symbols.
    â€œSEARCHING FOR ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT SCHEME ... FILES CORRUPTED ...”
    The Brood all scuttled wildly towards the entrance, climbing over one another to try to reach the tunnel. The first one there began squeezing up the tunnel followed by its sibling. Over their heads a hot light appeared and the tunnel wall crumbled around them, crushing them before they could reach the far end.
    Screeching and scuttling back and forth the few children who didn’t reach the tunnel perished one by one as the shiny creature’s arm blasted out waves of hot light turning them to crisp smouldering shells. Some tried to climb up the wood structures or hide in the piles of dust blocks but the creature relentlessly kept after them until soon there was only silence and the settling of dust.
    The few children that escaped came home to the ‘Soft’ with little notice paid to their arrival. They joined their couple of thousand or so more sensible siblings and elders who had been working all cycle long and climbed into the burrow. As they readied to curl up to past the light time, one of the children thought of the siblings they had lost, before quickly being distracted by a million or so other members of its extended family cramming into the burrow. Come the next dark time they would join in with the rest of the workers as they should have that dark time. Their lost siblings would never be thought of again.

Deeply Red
    by Jean Mutch
    For a moment it all feels like a slow motion sequence from a Hollywood film I once saw. The bouquet leaves my hands and soars towards the cloudless, sapphire sky. Charlie’s on my left, suited and slicked. His steel-blue eyes glinting with laughter as he turns to me. Mum and Dad a little further off to the right. Dad’s chest puffed to match his stomach. The veins visible through the thin moisture on his forehead. Mum still with the deepening line between her eyebrows she says was never there before I was born. No need to worry now, though. I’ve got Charlie. His hand finds mine as we watch the bouquet