#ShortStorySaturday: “Angels Don’t Fear Heights” by H.E. Roulo, an Excerpt from KILL SWITCH

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Our friends over HorrorAddicts.net Press asked if we’d like to participate in their blog tour promoting their latest anthology, Kill Switch. We said, “Definitely! We can post it for Short Story Saturday!”

And so that’s what we’re doing. Please enjoy this excerpt from Kill Switch.

Angels Don’t Fear Heights
By H.E. Roulo

In the end, Grandfather emptied his bedroom of medical equipment and asked me to sit with him. It was my job to watch over Grandfather’s body, still and thin between the sheets. I stayed with him for almost a day, hovering like the angel-of-death. He’d have hated for me to hold his hand. I did it anyway.

He choked. I wasn’t big enough to lift him, but I didn’t need to. The end came easily. A clock ticked away seconds. Could he be gone, just like that? After watching me all my life? It felt like he watched me still, but he’d never believed in the afterlife. He’d fought so long and hard, I couldn’t believe he’d let himself slip away. My world would never be the same.

Tears slid down my cheeks.

I shook myself to action. Despite my fears, I knew nothing could be done for him and it kept me calm while I called the cryogenic team to pick him up.

In all the fuss, I snuck into the ambulance. I had to watch and be sure. It didn’t feel over, yet. Wearing the white dress he preferred, with puffed sleeves and ruffled skirts like a doll, I blended with the medical scrubs of the ambulance crew.

I was small enough to slide into a corner and watch. They hooked wires to his subdermal implants. Sticky tape held their leads to the sides of his neck near his brain stem, sensing the filigree running through him like veins and arteries. Although there was nothing visible on the outside, their readouts showed the changes to his body were shockingly extensive. He’d been battling death with experimental technology for longer than I’d realized. Like a car at the mechanic’s, they deciphered the readouts.

Dead, dead, dead.

*

We arrived at a downtown skyscraper where Grandfather’s body would be held in cryogenic storage. I recognized it as the building that also held his lawyer’s office. The crew lowered the gurney and I scrambled after. I ran alongside, my hand up to touch the sheet. I couldn’t see over the edge of the gurney, but I would feel if he stirred. He was reassuringly still.

A big man in a silver three-piece suit met the gurney at the elevator. “I have the paperwork for Mr. Dominguez.”

“You’re his lawyer?” I asked.

He peered down at me. “I am. He’s your grandfather?”

“I’m Gabriella. He’s my father,” I said. He’d preferred I call him Grandfather. He’d always wanted to seem venerable, and it fit our apparent age difference. No need to remind the world I was a forty-year-old woman in a nine-year-old’s body.

The silent medics slid the gurney into the elevator. It was hard to understand the rush. Grandfather was dead. Maybe it was for my benefit? They needn’t have bothered.

No one believed cryogenics would save him, not even Grandfather, but he liked to think long-term and take long-shot gambles. Grandfather loved to plan.

The lawyer flipped through his papers and signed with a flourish.

“Do you need me to sign anything?” I asked.

“No,” the lawyer entered the elevator. It was plain I wasn’t welcome. “You don’t need to sign anything.”

The doors slid shut and like that, I was free of responsibility.

I was free.

*

At the funeral, I wore white and pulled my blonde hair into a tight bun. Despite my best efforts, the style didn’t look sophisticated, but Grandfather would have hated it, so I kept it. At least it added extra height.

Mourners told me how Grandfather used to call me his angel. Actually, it was worse. He called me Cherub. I just stared at their belts and pretended to cry so they’d go away.

The following day, I went to meet Grandfather’s lawyer. Grandfather hadn’t been close to anyone. It would be a private reading.

Returning to the building where we’d delivered Grandfather’s body gave me a shiver. Thankfully, the elevator to the lawyer’s office was different from the one that took up bodies. How practical to have the law office on the floor above the cryogenic storage business. Grandfather loved being practical.

I opened the heavy wooden door, inscribed with the name of Grandfather’s lawyer. Mr. Barnhardt, Esq. greeted me. I had barely perched on the heavy leather seat before Mr. Barnhardt had a manila envelope open. I grabbed the wooden arms of the chair and scooted it forward, although it weighed as much as I did. Being small kept me weak and made Grandfather feel safe. He let me stay close when no one else could. Grandfather always said I’d disappear between the cracks in his wooden floor if I wasn’t careful.

But he’d been swallowed first.

“Gabriella…” Mr. Barnhardt watched me duck-walking the chair toward his heavy wooden desk and rose. Rather than come around, he grabbed the arms and yanked me closer, knocking my knees out from under me. I felt like a kid scooting up to the dinner table of angry red file folders.

My lips parted and I hoped I didn’t look too hungry.

“How much?” I asked.

He frowned, mouth pursing as he flipped papers forward, then back.

“Well…it appears there were recent changes to Mr. Dominguez’s will.”

What happens next? Find out by getting your copy of Kill Switch today!

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About Kill Switch

As technology takes over more of our lives, what will it mean to be human, and will we fear what we’ve created? What horrors will our technological hubris bring us in the future?

Join us as we walk the line between progressive convenience and the nightmares these advancements can breed. From faulty medical nanos and AI gone berserk to ghost-attracting audio-tech and one very ambitious Mow-Bot, we bring you tech horror that will keep you up at night. Will you reach the Kill Switch in time?

EDITED BY:
DAN SHAURETTE
& EMERIAN RICH

STORIES BY:
H.E. ROULO, TIM O’NEAL, JERRY J. DAVIS, EMERIAN RICH, BILL DAVIDSON,
DANA HAMMER, NACHING T. KASSA, GARRETT ROWLAN, DAPHNE STRASERT
PHILLIP T. STEVENS, LAUREL ANNE HILL, CHANTAL BOUDREAU, GARTH VON BUCHHOLZ

Available now on Amazon!