Magical Realism - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Beyond This Mess Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

BEYOND THIS MESS

The small engine zipped and buzzed behind Officer Rand as he cut through the gentle green-blue waves. In the distance stood ancient sheds and toppled girder towers. Closer, a rowboat floated. He veered toward the rowboat. Nine children, all in a similar level of filthy, stared at him with sunburnt gazes.

Seeing them gave him a headache.

Rand held out a hand, and killed his engine.

The rowers ceased movement.

“What’s happening, kiddies?”

A girl in loose draping artifacts put her chin down. “Nothing much, sir.”

“Nothing much, huh? What were you doing over there?”

The rest put their heads down as well, the girl, the leader, answered, “Micky’s going to Mars, sir.”

“Micky’s going to Mars, huh? Who is Micky and how is he doing that?”

“We found a rocket. Shelley wrote a program. Godric set a trajectory. Micky’s going to Mars, sir.”

Rand had taken the call about a boat—parked right there, at the island. The caller described the boat. The incident repeated. And again. Rand began to see it as an issue, though one of minor importance. Probably just some kids, what kind of harm could they do?

It wasn’t until the call came seven straight days and an old man reminded Rand of what used to go on out there that worry began to fester. How could any of them say with certainty that there weren’t explosives in those old sheds? The government had lost control so quickly and the changes came on fast.

Orange lifejacket, tattered and discolored, over his ratty blue uniform, Rand took the hand-me-down department boat across the river toward the island. Once a peninsula, it had disconnected during the first global nuclear skirmish—labeled a skirmish since all sides knew they could do worse, if provoked—that had triggered a year of quakes. In the before times, that place was important. Somewhere aweing.

The nuclear skirmishes consumed all available funding for any sciences unrelated to weapons manufacturing or protecting against attack. NASA was an unnecessary expense. The island became a ghost town. The last crew on MIR, two Russians, one Canadian, and one Chinese, committed suicide via spacewalk, stepping out into the great unknown once they ran out of food and Earth had become too busy to send a care package. 

Hard truths in times of war. Yet, so many years later, the calls came and there was that rowboat tied to a makeshift dock. The once glorious, green-grassed showpiece on Florida’s coast was yellow and grey. Rand recalled his youth, plunked down before the computer screen, videos of take-offs were commonplace, so much so that they’d become boring. The elders had glorified the act when it was new; they’d watched in fascination, imagined worlds that never ended, envisioned people and places of alien design.

Then nuclear play had melted 62% of the world’s population.

The overcast greys of the fallout clung and chilled the atmosphere. People moved and amassed into the areas best suited for life. Warm and green-ish, Florida was a hot destination. Endless rows of condos awaited folks to come along and clear away the wrinkled corpses of the radiation-poisoned dead. The elderly and the especially young, anyone with a respiratory issue, plus those out of shape, died. The heartbroken followed; dead masses giving up what they had to give in exchange for no longer dealing with the new world.

Rand patted the sputtering engine of the old boat, wishing he didn’t have to go at all. He should’ve taken the first call seriously. Things had changed; kids screwing around in the now weren’t the same as kids screwing around as it was in the then.

Schools were different. The arts were the first to go and English classes ceased once students could read the instructions in their math classes and science classes and weapons classes. Every child had at least a basic training in nuclear power and explosives. The world had hardened all the survivors, leaving nothing to see in the future beyond a button pusher’s war.

“Going to Mars?” Rand mulled this over. When he was a kid, if another kid said they were headed to Mars it usually meant in a cardboard box or in a treehouse. In the modern world, in the world of nuclear training from the age of four, Micky was probably going to blow himself to bits with old explosives.

“That’s right, sir.” The girl had lifted her gaze, even smiled some.

“Where, where? How long until…takeoff?” Rand fought to modulate his voice.

The girl checked her watch. “Twenty-nine minutes and four seconds, three, two—”

“Where?” Rand yelled the question. It startled the girl’s chin upward again.

“Uh, the big pad. The one with the steel tower thing that isn’t all bungled up. The rocket was already on the mover. It’s sound, ready to go, sir.” She spoke with a proud, quiet tone.

“Get away and stay away!” The engine coughed as he yanked the plastic handle on the recoil rope.

It was work, an extra chore, dangerous and stupid. He resented those children, resented Micky especially, though he’d never even seen the boy. That Micky put him in a spot. He glanced back and the children headed for the mainland. He checked his watch every few minutes as he crossed the inlet.

Just as the children had, he tied the department boat to a makeshift dock. The echo and pat from his steps was the only sound on the island; it had been a long time since coastal birds showed in numbers how they once had. Only big birds that spent more than half their time on the ground remained—ducks, geese, chickens. He rounded a shed and saw it, then he heard it; what he assumed to be the pre-amble of a rocket. The watch on his wrist said he had two minutes. Smoke began pouring out from around the tower. Tepid billows of cloud. A warm-up, getting amped for…what?

Probably a bad scene.

Rand climbed the steel steps to the short rocket’s door. All the while he weighed the value of his life versus this mysterious Micky’s life. He wondered if he just let the kid take off if he’d make it. It was a passenger rocket after all. It was possible to get somewhere.

Would it be so bad?

Would it be so bad even if he does blow himself to bits?

The world was a hard place.

The world had become hopeless.

The world was a nuclear playground.

Rand felt around the edges of the smooth door, looked through a window, saw a boy and his dog look back. The dog appeared to yip, a frisky Jack Russell.

“Open up!” Rand screamed, not hearing himself over the din from the rocket.

The boy heard enough, probably only his dog, and then hit the button. The door opened and the officer’s body fell inward. The door whooshed up behind him. It was quieter inside. The boy looked over to the empty seat.

“Don’t do this.”

The boy turned his attention to his lap. Rand circled him and peered at the box of toggles, a keyboard, and one big button.

“You have to stop this!”

The boy lowered his head and shook it gently.

“You have to!”

Tears slipped from Micky’s eyes and he passed the box. Just a boy, too damned young to die, too young to blow himself up or blow himself to space. Rand looked at the box and closed his eyes. A breath wheezed from his lips.

Children were smarter in scary areas, but they were still only kids. The toggles were cosmetic, the superficial keyboard was glued in place, and the screen had a countdown moving steadily toward zero from twenty.

Those were seconds. Twenty seconds.

Rand hit the red button, nothing. Over and over, franticly, he fingered that button. The acid in his throat brimmed and seared. He dropped the box and fell into one of the chairs. He looked at the boy and his mutt. If they climbed out and ran…

fifteen-fourteen

…would they make it far enough away?

thirteen-twelve-eleven

Rand imagined the shrapnel and the burns.

ten-nine

Only one option remained: to strap in and hope for the best. Around him the panels appeared dead, there were no lights anywhere. Behind the chairs were a stack of dehydrated food packets and three large containers of water. He glanced down to the control box that controlled nothing at all.

five

Rand thought he should’ve stayed…

four

…home, called in sick, took that…

three

…job his cousin Larry had...

two

...told him about.

one

Both Rand and the boy snapped their eyes shut. The dog had forced his head under Micky’s armpit. The raucous volume—though comparatively quiet—of the cabin met a brain rattling blast. Rand felt his ears sink. His eyes opened and slammed shut, the light had too much force.

The world shook for what seemed a lifetime for every second. Compounding sensory inputs assaulted. Rand shut down.

—

“Hey, mister, mister, wake up. We made it to space...I think.”

The mutt yipped. Rand opened his eyes. It was dark out every window, the lights on the panel aglow, green or yellow, no reds. He wondered if there was any way someone taught this kid to pilot the craft back to earth.

“Can you get us home?” Rand asked. It seemed as good as any other point to begin on.

“We’re going to Mars. If you didn’t want to come, you should’ve stayed outside. I’ll have to ration, but we should have enough food to make it to the colony.”

In 2045, thirty years earlier, Earth had lost contact with the colonizers. The assumption was that they’d all died. There was a plan to revisit Mars, but the skirmishes began and history changed course.

“They’re dead.”

“Nobody knows that for sure. They’re alive. I know it. Plus we can’t make it more than a few weeks with what we have.” The boy’s head dropped.

“Kid, I think you’ve killed us.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m Micky, and that’s Gagarin.”

Again. “Kid, I think you’ve killed us.” Rand rubbed his throat, the headache gone, thankfully. In fact, physically, he felt better than he had in years.

“This is the right rocket for the job, trust me.” The boy petted his dog in silence for thirty seconds, and then said, “Look outside. Space is different than all those old videos. It’s so much better. It’s like magic out there.”

Rand stood and stepped to a porthole window, the shuttle buzzed along, the deflector shield sending small space debris aside. Every star, every rock, every spec streamed with a beautiful shimmer, a rainbow tail, shifting from hued gold to hued silver. Diamonds and rubies and emeralds of bursting color.

Any resentment poured away and Rand couldn’t help himself. “Incredible, kid. I mean, Micky.”

Earth was already a spot in the past. Who could ever go back after seeing what they’d seen? Space was alive with color, solids swimming in a black sea of possibility. Rand understood the meaning of life, tears streamed from his cheeks. His body felt cradled in the arms of hope and possibility, coddled and loved in a way he’d never known.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Micky stood next to Rand and they gazed out the window together.

“Thank you, Micky.”

“Welcome, mister.”

“It’s Rufus Rand, by the way.” He unclipped his lifejacket, eyes glued to the iridescent beauty beyond the glass.

—

“Something went wrong,” the girl said, half a bloodied lifejacket in hand.

The children cried into palms. Mickey was dead. Mickey’s dog was dead. That cop was dead, too.

It was a mess, blood and body parts streamed from the center of the blast like canned beans on a campfire. Something went wrong all right, but they could learn. They’d heard of another rocket, and no matter the cost, they’d try again knowing there had to be something better than the world around them.

XX