“You have arrived at your destination.”

I looked at my GPS and I concluded that I had reached the spooky Darkwood Mansion. The derelict mansion had been owned by a distant relative, at least according to the suspicious-looking email I received. “Mr Orchard. Your distant relative Vlad Bogdan died and left you a manor in the Hunter Valley region. Please contact us for information on how to secure your inheritance. Best Regards F & Raud Lawyers”

I know what you are thinking; what kind of idiot would fall for such an obvious scam? I am normally not that stupid, but on this occasion, the email enticed me to further investigate. I found out that Darkwood Mansion existed and that it was only a few hours away from Sydney, so it was a perfect road trip for the weekend.

“I don’t like this place. Can we go back to our hotel?” My partner Elaine whined.

“No, I got to check it out. Let’s walk around the premises and see if we can find any clues.” I replied. “No, I don’t want to.” Elaine stated.

“You could have told me about that three hours ago.” I said, exited the car, and walked to the front gate of the mansion.

As I walked to the door, I concluded that if I against the odds had inherited this mansion, I would sell it. The place was run-down, and the repairs would cost an absolute fortune.

A blood-stained pitchfork came into my view and interrupted me from thinking about my hypothetical finances. “Nope, nope, nope.”  I thought and turned around to walk back to my car.

I gasped in shock when I turned around and saw a creepy old man who held a lit oil lamp in front of my eyes. “Welcome to the late Vlad Bogdan’s mansion, Mr Orchard. I am Igor, Vlad’s loyal servant.” Igor greeted.

“Hold on, how do you know my name?” I asked.

“We have been expecting you,” Igor replied.

Igor’s statement reaffirmed the importance of leaving this place as soon as possible. Not only was the place creepy as hell, but the caretaker had also spied on me and knew about my identity.

“Hmm, my partner told me she felt tired and needed to go back to our hotel.” I said and walked towards the car.

Much to my dismay, I noticed that Elaine was conversing with an old lady next to the car. She approached me and spoke: “Great news, Martin. Loretta has invited us to enjoy her authentic Romanian cuisine. Let’s join her inside.”

“But you wanted to go back to our hotel five minutes ago.” I protested and held back my impulse to pull my hair in frustration that we yet again clashed about something.

“Yes, but have you ever tried authentic Romanian cuisine before? This will be great.” Elaine enthused.

I stared in disbelief at Elaine. Like a certain cartoon dog, she forgot about danger as soon as there was a promise of food. I grudgingly agreed to come with Elaine to the dining hall of the mansion. I would have described the dining hall as “north-facing and rustic, with an aura of bygone times” if I was a real estate agent. I am not, so I’d describe it as creepy and gloomy.

During our dining experience at Darkwood Mansion, Igor and Loretta served us Romanian blood sausage, blood pudding and red wine. I would rate the meal one out of five. Not only did the iron content of the food overpower all the other flavours, but the meal was also spiked with sedatives.

After finishing a few bites of the rancid meal, I passed out and everything turned black.

***

“Good morning, Master Orchard. I have some great news. You passed the trial, and you are now the proprietor of Darkwood Mansion.” A suit-wearing man told me.

I stared at the blurry man and slurred: “Who are you? What is going on?”

“I am Frank Raud from F & Raud Lawyers. I have been looking for the heir to Darkwood Mansion, and it seems like you and your partner fit the requirements.” The lawyer Frank said.

“So, why did Igor drug me?” I asked.

“It’s part of the process. To be the heir to Darkwood Mansion, one must form a symbiosis with the blood-borne parasite, which was present in the late Vlad Bogdan’s blood. Igor injected you with the parasite and your body bonded with it.” Frank revealed.

“So, what does this mean?” I asked.

“It means you are the proprietor of Darkwood Mansion and the surrounding vineyards. You have also turned into a vampire. Please use this script to collect blood bags at Singleton Pharmacy. If you resort to nightly killing sprees, Igor will put you down with his pitchfork.” Frank explained.

“I understand.” I replied.

Frank nodded and left the bedroom.

I got up from the bed and I studied my reflection. It pleased me that my vampirism infection didn’t make me invisible. What didn’t please me was the way I looked. My skin was as white as a bleached bedsheet and I assumed that I would be as UV-sensitive as a Scottish ginger. My fangs were unsightly and useless for anything except murdering people and scaring children at Halloween parties. On the flipside, I was now the proprietor of a large estate with an endless supply of fine wines. With my new-found wealth, I could focus on writing short stories of questionable quality.

The end.

“New Orders have been received.”

After receiving this message, the Martian rebel Keila Eisenstein tapped a control on her portable hologram communication device. The portable communicator’s AI showcased a hologram of Keila’s mother Susanna and utilised her sweet motherly voice as text-to-voice narration.

Keila took cover behind a tall rock, and faced away from the wind. The freezing desert wind was blowing on her beautiful face, and even while equipped with the re-breathers, it was hard breathing in enough oxygen to stay there for long. In the desert, no-one was able to pump the atmosphere full of oxygen and provide with extra heating, even with the help of space orbital mirrors.

The hologram of Susanna spoke:

- We have a new objective for you, Keila. Lieutenant Johannes Muller will be meeting with some Salomethamine smugglers in the Argyle Basin in three days. The smuggler’s camp is located nineteen kilometres from the northern edge of the basin. We need you to intercept the illegal drug trade and kill Johannes. We cannot allow House Muller to spread this new drug on Mars. (Message from Hellas Petrakis)

Keila turned off the hologram. She threw a tirade of curses at her mother. After ranting towards a hologram of her mother, Keila felt a sense of guilt. Her mother hadn’t given the order, her mother was only the interface she used for the AI’s voice.

Keila closed her eyes and waited for a guiding vision to come into her mind. She saw the face of a wise old deity who spoke to her:

- I can guide you on your path, if you choose to stop the Salomethamine smugglers.

Keila:

- Thank you, Master Brahma.

Keila opened her eyes. The problem was that she had to make a choice then and there. She didn’t want to be the lapdog of Hellas Petrakis pursuing towards his ambition to secretly weaken House Muller overlords. But what else could she do? Her actions had caused her to be the most wanted person in the solar system, and the entire Terran Council was looking for her. Besides, Salomethamine was a terrible drug, Keila knew this from her own experience.

A few months earlier, Keila had been the sex slave of the sadistic drug-using sociopath Rear Admiral Bjorn Muller from the Terran Council. Of all the atrocities he had carried out towards her, feeding her Salomethamine was the worst. The drug Salomethamine was designed to make the Martian race to be obedient slaves, desperate to get their fix. Bjorn had injected Keila with the drug, and the withdrawal was the worst thing she had ever experienced. Her withdrawal from Salomethamine was the purest form of physical and mental agony, and there had been only one thing she wanted more than dying for it to end. That one thing was another hit of the drug.

Seeing Keila in her weakened state, Bjorn had become careless and he had himself taken a dose of the drug in front of her while forcing her to give him fellatio. This was when Master Brahma had reached Keila’s mind and given her the resolve to fight back. Keila had bit off Bjorn’s ***** to retaliate against his sadomasochistic controlling behaviour, and through her guiding premonitions, she had found her way to an emergency shuttle that took her back to her planet Mars.

President Hellas Petrakis of the Olympus Republic had found Keila wounded, and he had manipulated her into killing the Terran Council leader, Hans Muller. Keila had gained access to the elderly Hans Muller’s palace in Mars while posing as a **********, and she had ended his reign of terror with a poisoned needle.

President Petrakis had fooled her. Ending the life of Chairman Hans Muller hadn’t succeeded in ending the Terran oppression of the Martian population. Instead, the Terran Council had started another war against the planet's impoverished inhabitants.

Keila’s mind returned to the present. No matter how she felt about Hellas Petrakis, she had to stop Johannes Muller and his Salomethamine smuggling operation. When confronted by bad options, she had to stick with the lesser evil. Keila set her built-in GPS to the Salomethamine smugglers camp’s location. If she walked fast, she would arrive in two days, on the 12th of January 2869. Keila put down her communication device and started walking. She would need to walk fast to reach the smuggler’s camp on time. Besides, walking fast was the only way to keep warm in this freezing wasteland.

***

“Targets acquired.”

Keila overlooked the smuggler’s camp through the AI-enhanced visor in her battle armour helmet. There were five Martians Salomethamine smugglers in the camp, accompanied by Johannes Muller. There were also a few chained-up Martian women sitting in the corner of the camp.

Keila turned off her visor activation mode. She would not allow the AI in her helmet to guide her movements this time. She knew that her enemies also had AI-enhanced weaponries, so if she followed the AI prompts, the fight would most definitely be determined by whoever had the best AI.

Keila closed her eyes and whispered:

- Please fill me with your spirit and guide me on my true path, Master Brahma.

The ancient Zetan deity didn’t reply, but Keila felt a rush of energy surging through her body, which showed that Brahma had granted her request. Filled with determination, Keila snuck towards the camp.

***

Johannes Muller was looking at the sickly and drugged-up Martian female slaves that the smugglers had brought to him as sex toys. They were filthy, reeking, and their Martian looks repelled his desire to fornicate. Did he really need to **** these wenches to assert his Terran dominion?

Being a semi-prominent member of House Muller, which was the ruling faction in the Terran Council, Johannes had regular meetings with the genetically-engineered stunning women working in the Lustmädchen department. Those artificially engineered women had idealised Germanic looks and an elevated sex drive, which made them the ultimate sexual partners. The Martian prisoners in front of him were not at all seductive, and besides, they were full of radiation-infested skin blisters, drugged up on Salomethamine.

“I must do this in order to assert superiority.” Johannes said to himself and switched on the visual recording device to initiate his holographic video shoot. He would film a video where he asserted his dominance over these Martian sex slaves as a military protocol. That was his duty as a House Muller officer, at least according to his second-cousin and commanding officer, Rear Admiral Bjorn Muller.

Having made up his mind, Johannes snorted some sexual enhancement drugs Phlextasy, got himself undressed, and started masturbating while shouting Terran slogans to work himself into a frenzy.

***

“Not so fast, Johannes.”

Johannes Muller was about to penetrate one of the chained-up sex slaves, when the sharp and confident voice of Keila Eisenstein caught his attention. She aimed a pistol at him.

Johannes:

- You must be Keila Eisenstein. The entire Terran Council is looking for you.

Keila:

- I know. Yet here I am. It looks like I caught you with your pants down.

Johannes:

- It’s not up to me. Rear Admiral Bjorn Muller forced me to do this.

Keila:

- You had a choice. You chose to drug and rape these women. I guess the rigged visual recording device is there so you can send evidence of your despicable actions to Bjorn.

Johannes:

- My father is wealthy. If you let me live, I’ll give you whatever you want.

Keila:

- That’s a tempting offer. There is only one problem.

Johannes:

- What is that?

Keila:

- What I want is to kill you.

Having said this, Keila shot Johannes between the eyes with two rapid shots. After this, she grabbed Johannes' visual recording device and the keys, and she unlocked the chains that bound the drugged-up women. She hesitated for a bit. The only way she could leave the camp with these captured Martian women was if she got them onto a hovercraft. But if she did, she risked the detection of the eye in the sky.

Keila made up her mind. She had been in the same situation as these captured women, and knowing the pain they had to endure, she wouldn’t leave them behind. The only way for her and the Martian Humanist Alliance to rise against the Terran Council was to show compassion towards those who are suffering.

“Come with me!” Keila urged and the women rushed towards the hovercraft. Before she left the camp, she set some explosives to blow up the camp and the huge stash of Salomethamine.

Keila smiled to herself, as she left the scene of the burning Salomethamine camp. She had won this battle, but the real war was yet to come. She would free her people from oppression, and Bjorn Muller would pay for his crimes.

The end

‘New shoes traded in return for your old shoes.’

I read the sign in bewilderment as I walked along the coast in a small town in southern New South Wales. ‘There must be a catch,’ I thought, and yet I could not help myself but to enter the shop and find out what the catch was.

I looked around in the shop and I found it peculiar that none of the shoes had any price tags on them. I thought about asking the shopkeeper, but I was too shy to ask. Instead, I observed how a man walked up to the till and exchanged a pair of old smelly shoes, for a pair of new premium label sports shoes.

“Thank you, James. I hope you’ll enjoy your new shoes.” The shopkeeper exclaimed with a jovial voice and a big smile.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer, so I approached the shopkeeper and spoke. “I don’t understand the concept of this store. Can you please explain it to me?”

The shopkeeper smiled and replied. “The concept is pretty clear. You pick a pair of shoes from the shelves like you would in a normal store. But instead of paying with money, you pay with your old shoes.”

“But how do you run a business if you don’t charge your customers?” I asked.

“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘To walk in someone else’s shoes’?” The man asked.

“Of course.” I replied.

“Then come with me to the office and I’ll explain.” The man said and put a hand on my shoulder.

I felt very confused, but I followed the man to the back office. Once we were in the office, he showed me a picture of him and a woman, who were posing in the desert.

The man spoke: “This was me and Marissa nineteen years ago before we found oil on our lands. I thought that finding oil would make us happy but instead, it drove us apart. Upon seeing the environmental destruction that the oilfields caused, Marissa killed herself. While I was now wealthy, I lost what mattered the most, the love of my life.”

“That’s sad, but I still don’t understand the connection to the store policy.” I said.

“I realised that if I had walked in Marissa’s shoes before she died, I could have saved her life. I was only concerned with my needs to become wealthy, and I never considered her needs. Now I can walk in other people’s shoes to learn more about their path.” The man revealed.

“But surely you would collect more shoes than you can ever wear?” I argued.

“Yes, but my method stops people from hoarding shoes. By forcing them to give up a pair to get a pair, they will only take the shoes they need.” The man revealed.

“I understand.” I replied.

“So, would you like to come with me and pick your pair of shoes?” The man asked.

“I would be honoured to, sir.” I replied.

The man smiled and together with the man, I tried and picked a pair of new black running shoes. I took off my old shoes and walked I up to the till to complete the purchase.

***

“That will be $99,”

The female cashier at the shoe shop stared at me in awe as I slurred. “Oh, I thought I could swap my old shoes for new ones.”

“Is this a joke? How many drugs have you had? Leave immediately, or I’ll call the police.” The woman exclaimed.

I sighed, put on my old shoes, and left the store. I had consumed too many mushrooms the night before, and apparently, some things never happen in the real world.

The end