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hadows cast by the flickering firelight from a red brick hearth would no longer need to be the source of inspiration for Maelyn Hubert; her compendious tome awaited packaging for the revamped US Mail on the table by the cabin door. Maelyn now had time to savor a homemade crème liqueur brewed by her accommodating motel landlord. Choosing to be isolated while drawing the threads of her story together was a decision made based on instincts honed in war zones and during the riots of Earth's flip. Felix was a lesson too.

Leaning back in her rocking chair, she looked at the pictures on her desk of Inuit mothers in the 1960's with their monozygotic twins. Their expressions ranged from sad to extremely wary. The surviving mothers had told her informant, Felix, that it was very hard to carry twins in the traditional Inuit amauti, a coat with an enlarged hood designed to carry an infant to a young child. For a few years, nearly a quarter of area births had been identical twins, an astounding and unsurpassed record by any other area on Earth.

Felix was a government scientist who had stumbled upon the partially mummified body of a German Fascist uniformed scientist who had been stationed on site when the area was a U.S. Air Force Base, Crystal IV, in the 1940's. Unknown to most, Hitler's research in pheromones and hormones had carried on, by scientists recruited from his former staff but now paid by the U.S. government. While most professed no allegiance to Fascist ideology, the one found by Felix evidently adhered to that harsh totalitarianism.

Felix's research had determined that the mother's with identical twins had eaten igunat, meat of walrus or seal fermented in the beach sand below the base dump site. The area drainage pattern had leached the buried hormones into the meat which was then consumed by the mothers who became pregnant shortly afterwards, the hormones causing the mothers' eggs to split to form identical twins. The exact hormone mixture could only be speculated by Felix as the floods of Earth's flip had flushed through and mixed the sand. No one wanted to know as the Earth now had more than enough mouths to feed without stimulating twins.

However, the other area impacted was the snowshoe hare population, which continued to breed prolifically even after the devastation caused by Earth's flip, something that the Inuit had taken advantage of in providing sustenance, as contact with southern food supply had been violently disrupted. Even though no meat was fermented on the beach, twin births in the area were once again significantly higher than average. Touching a portrait of Felix with a plump, beringed hand, Maelyn mused on the irony of a community cut off by disaster from a tobacco or perfume supply still feeling the effects of hundred year old hormones.

She recalled another irony that she had noted in her exposé as she sipped liqueur and lifted another picture of Felix with a crate of over fifty empty cologne bottles excavated from the base dump (how could any group of men really need that much!) was that the destruction of the industrial and transportation infrastructure during and after the flip of the poles would mean that the Fascist’s that sought hegemony could no longer use perfume, tobacco and alcohol as catalysts for their drug concoctions.

As the communication system of internet, radio and television had been slowly rebuilt, Felix had been the first to coherently spread the warning. His credentials and data were impeccable and methodically presented to all. The attempted hacking of funds by unknown parties from financial institutions and companies during and after the trauma of Earth's flip added substance to his story.

Maelyn had been able to interview Felix on several occasions and had noted his pallor and listlessness growing with each interview. At the time, they had both ascribed this to eighteen hour plus days and seven day weeks pursuing research, but when Felix was found an apparent suicide after a fall from his fourth floor office, Maelyn took the hint and became more circumspect in her investigation. She now smiled down at her rotund figure, wrapped in comfortable old flannel pajamas and a long housecoat, warmth and comfort spreading from her stomach, certain that she had been successful where Felix had not.

Her book described detailed investigation of U.S. Air Force records, finding that while those of this particular northern Quebec base were officially listed as 'lost', cloning with a view to immortality was likely the primary goal of their research. Fascists have always had an unending obsession with immortality, a ludicrously juvenile pursuit when paired with their passion for fair complexions that would wrinkle long before those with more melanin. Maelyn smiled at her reflected olive visage with raven black hair in the mirror hung on the cabin door. She was proud to be of mixed race.

She painstakingly recorded the few documents that remained to show that what had probably been a secondary avenue of research for the Fascist scientists, that of sexual stimulation by hormones in perfumes and colognes, had become a primary use of the research that had and was still being used to break down the moral fiber of western democracy based society. This was transparently modeled on one of the primary causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, diminishing moral standards.

A well read student copy of 'The Prince', Machiavelli's timeless work of political obfuscation, had been found with other Fascist works in the library of one of the few convicted hate crime participants of Earth's flip. These hate mongers had not only methodically withheld aid of any kind from visible minorities; they had also executed many thousands with the same ruthless abandon as Hitler's Fascists of the 1940's. Felix had lost his fiancé, without redress, to members of those gangs.

This book copy also contained handwritten notes detailing the replication of the moral corruption of named military and political leaders, as well as the required encouragement of excessive violence in professional and amateur sport, specifically citing the Olympic Games as a target for the abuse of steroids. Other approaches were placed in electronic games that promoted killing of law enforcement members along with other excessively violent acts and the deliberate poisoning of the environment with chemical by-products and waste. With political power the desired goal, every substandard behavior was now highly moral to members of this group of bigots.

Maelyn had dedicated two chapters to Machiavelli and those notes. She had next penned a chapter on the musth of male elephants, with the speculation that this musth was the chemical basis for drugs given to child soldiers to drink before battle to increase their aggression and lower their regard for human life. Without those drugs and the sadistic indoctrination that accompanied them, normal children would hide from the violent conflicts that they had been forced to participate in.

While most child soldiers were found in Third World countries, Maelyn had then gone on to describe a four pronged assault on Western democratic society. Firstly was the assault on military and political elites by the introduction of extra alcohol to already alcoholic beverages, as well as the simultaneous introduction of sexually stimulating hormones to naturally aggressive individuals already sent beyond normal control by alcohol. Scandals like the Tailhook affair of 1991 and other Army and Air Force fiascos she speculated as having been stimulated by persons acting on this ulterior motive. A short list of suspicious political scandals was also detailed. She sipped and poured another finger of the delicious chocolate liqueur, swirling it in her glass.

Next described was the little that was currently known about the sex clubs that were probably modeled on the Indian subcontinent cult of Thuggee. These were well structured clubs based on the visible guise of morality as apparently upstanding civilians had been convicted as known members. Like Thuggee, some members would 'procure' victims by selecting those that were accessible and vulnerable. Others would keep watch for law enforcement surveillance, primarily those that were actually members of law enforcement segments. There were multiple participants in the actual assaults and murders, both physically present and by video.

Native American and other minority groups had been heavily targeted by these clubs, but there was insufficient clear proof of racial bias as opposed to the relative convenience of low profile targets. Narcotics and alcohol were tools frequently utilized by sex clubs and some clubs were also drug rings. These clubs used a thorough knowledge of human psychology both in selecting victims and members, giving these members a place to brag and be feted for horrible acts.

Maelyn curled her toes in the corner of the floor mat and wondered how her editor would feel about her failure to make a clear connection between those 'clubs' and any known Fascists. Neither group was what would be described as 'public' and without speculating on potential members and naming names, it would hardly be libel, she thought, to point out all of the parallels as she had.

The third prong was the assault on medical ethics, which was easily supported by the adoption of Fascist research from captured records and the integration of some of those doctors to the Western medical community. It had been easy to give a synopsis of the medical scientific world since the Theory of Evolution was proposed and point to its own evolution in cloning, stem cell research, organ procurement and other DNA issues, all of which were current ethical concerns after Earth's flip, and suggest the Fascist connection. Great was the current disgust with medical doctors.

The final prong, the assault on the law enforcement and judicial community, was also hard to absolutely prove. They had, after all, tried and convicted many sadists for their crimes against humanity. Asking how many had gone free to improper investigation, bad paperwork or graft when only two recent cases of corruption had been proven beyond a doubt, was license that Maelyn hoped that her editor would allow. Having just left the confinement of post-flip martial law, Maelyn strongly suspected heavy editing of this chapter.

Warmth spread from her stomach to her limbs and she yawned. Soon she would prepare a meal in her little kitchenette. The fish that she had put out earlier would be thawed shortly. She reviewed again mentally all of her information and stacked it against her speculation. It might not win any awards but it could be the fulcrum to bring the truth to light. Basking in the fire's glow and her inner triumph, Maelyn dozed off in her comfortable chair.

A gentle tapping at the door did not disturb her, nor did the quiet man who came in to look at her. Although certain that, with the effect of the drug in her liqueur, she would not awaken, he very quietly began to make a trail of her manuscript on the floor towards the fire. He placed the fish in the frying pan and draped a curtain over it before lighting the element. Finally, he laid the last of the manuscript to burn outside the grate and lit the trail of papers. Then he left and locked the door behind him.

L.L. Hill is an occasional writer, poet, illustrator and photographer. There are many areas of the world that she has been privileged to see and share in her work. She enjoys observing nature and capturing it in verse and word. Fantasy, science fiction and horror are her preferred genres. Find her at lauraleehill.com. L.L.'s short story The Polychrome Salvage appears in the October 2013 issue of HelloHorror and her short story Residual Elements appears in the October 2014 issue of HelloHorror.

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