May 24, 2010

From “Sunset Horizons” by Marina Paal

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“I was in a park at sunset, and…it was amazing. This pillar of clouds, towering over everything…lit in orange, purple, and red with the waxing moon above. It was like something from the cover of a fantasy novel, only I was really seeing it,” said Koay. “The clouds moved and shifted as I watched–I think they might have been thunderheads for a far-off rainstorm–so that by the time the last rays of light were fading it looked like an enormous art deco locomotive, steaming on a celestial track. I was breathless, speechless.”

“Very moving,” said Detective Haines. “But I don’t follow.”

“Do you know what? No one else noticed. They were all absorbed in their little worlds, looking down at the path or listening to their clamshells–insulated from the reality around them.”

“Now that I can believe,” said Haines.

“Yes!” Koay continued. She’d grown flushed while speaking. “It made me realize that we’ve stopped seeing things, stopped noticing–if I hadn’t been there, looking up when I was supposed to be looking down, that glorious display might have gone unseen!”

“Meaning what, exactly?” Haines wasn’t quite sure what Koay was getting at, but the light in her eyes gave him pause.

“I guess that’s when I decided that I need to make people wake up. To make them notice.”

“At any cost?” Haines said warily.

“Maybe so…maybe so.”

 

May 23, 2010

From “A Killing Word” by Jamie C. Dougal

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“Knock it off with the potty mouth, Cassidy,” she said. “I believe that, whenever we speak, we bring worlds and concepts into existence, somewhere, somehow.”

“So?” said Cassidy.

“The reverse is also true. Every time you drop an f-bomb, somewhere, somehow, it annihilates a civilization of puppies and rainbows. Every time you hyphenate a body part with another word, someone has their very own model infected with a flesh eating virus. And every time you say ‘that’s what she said,’ some she does in fact say it, bringing brutal recrimination down upon her and hers.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m saying, Cassidy, that you’re destroying the universe with your coarse and loutish tongue. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

 

May 21, 2010

From “Frigid Indifference” by Percius Snivelbottom

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A biting, bitter cold consumes me.

Colder than darkest space or the gaze of a forsaken love, it tears at my windbreaker and whistles through my hair. It is as if all the frigid indifferences and icy words of the world have coalesced into a crystal-clear diamond-hard point and rammed themselves deep into my chest. It’s hard to breath; the air steals every breath I take, scattering across the snow as a thin gray vapor. I can see others out here too, struggling through ankle-deep powder towards destinations long forgotten or unknown.

I smile as we pass, but the cold stiffness of my mouth makes more of a grimace, though my amicable wave still shows my intent. No reply; the other figures, stark against the snow, are either too frozen or too absorbed in their own worlds to touch another across the gaps that separate us all.

Perhaps, in their worlds, this is a better circumstance.

A place of business closed, with an entire sun cycle to waste. Or exposure to climes colder still, making the tundra I see no more than a powdered-sugar frost. I eventually get where I’m going, and so do they. The ice in the air will eventually coalesce into the pattering of April raindrops. But for now, frozen in time as well as being, we simply pass each other by and vanish into the mists from whence we came.

 

May 20, 2010

From “Avatar of Aquerna” by P. Elizabeth Smalley

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The “Nature’s Bounty” feast, put on by the Callahan Country Students for a Happy Earth, had generated a lot of leftovers, which they had promptly abandoned to biodegrade. Gaines Park maintenance volunteers had been called in to deal with the issue; Isaac cannily observed that the CCSHE’s reasoning had been sound, and that a biodegredation site away from picnic tabletops was the only missing piece.

Gabe confronted Isaac as he was packing away his gear. “There’s a pile of miscellaneous nuts sitting on top of that flagstone,” he said. “We were supposed to clean them up.”

“It’s a shrine to Aquerna, the Norse goddess of squirrels. She’ll take them if she wants them.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” Gabe said.

“Believe what you want. I’m not cleaning it up.”

Defeated, Gabe left Isaac to rake leaves in the vicinity of the “shrine,” which he went about with characteristic sloth and lack of attention to detail. Returning from a long, leisurely stroll to deposit a bunch of leaves in a bag, Isaac noticed that the pile of nuts had disappeared from the flagstone. He also noticed a short brunette girl in the bushes nearby who seemed to be wearing nothing but her birthday suit.

As much as Isaac appreciated the aesthetics of the human form, Callahan County and Gaines Park had strict statutes in place to keep nude sunbathers from the nearby college at bay, and volunteers were often put upon to summon the authorities or chase them down.

“Hey, earth child!” Isaac yelled. “It’s too early, and you’re too pasty, for sunbathing to do anything! Get lost!”

She turned and regarded him with wide eyes.”Hello. I am the Avatar of Aquerna.”

“W-what?” Isaac felt his heart stutter; no one should have known about that save Gabe. “I made that up! It was just empty snarkiness!”

“By invoking the name and attaching it to a site, you designated a site,” the girl said. “By refusing to recant when confronted, you expressed a belief. Ethereal beings need human belief to exist, and a site to manifest. You have provided Aquerna with the first of each in over one thousand years, and her avatar is before you now in gratitude.”

 

May 11, 2010

From “To Nowhere” by A. A. C. Devine

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The tiny car shuddered, and Lowell could feel the accelerator begin to go limp.

“No!” he cried. Lowell pressed the pedal to the floor, and systematically pumped it., as beads of sweat dripped down his pallid features. If he could only get over the crest of the next hill . . . But gravity wasn’t cooperating, and neither was the car. With a final spasm, the engine fell silent, and the car began to roll backwards. Lowell guided it onto what passed for the shoulder and threw the parking brake.

“What’s the matter?” Deacon asked from the passenger seat. His tiny glasses were fogged from the lack of air conditioning, and perspiration plastered his sandy hair to his head.

His only reply was a stream of inventive invectives, as Lowell hammered at the steering wheel.

Some time later, Lowell looked up. “We’re out of gas.” he said, as if Deacon had just asked.

“What?” Deacon glanced at the dashboard. “It says we’re half full!”

“It always says that.” Lowell muttered, opening his door and stepping out.

“Then look at the odometer!” Deacon cried.

“It doesn’t work either.” was the reply. “I just have to guess.”

Deacon flung his door open and leapt out, just as Lowell popped the trunk.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“I’ve got a gas can in the trunk.” Lowell said.

“Thank God.”

Lowell slammed his hands down on the trunk’s rubber seal and swore. “An empty gas can.”

“Empty?”

“It’s like a game of chicken–either I lose and fill the tank, or the car loses and stops.” Lowell said, holding up the empty can. “I used this the last time I won.”

Deacon gave the car a halfhearted kick. “What now?”

“We walk.”

 

May 3, 2010

From “Deep Midnight” by John Sullivan

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In a dark and windswept place, the Lady and the Fighter met. A cool wind was blowing, making the Lady’s silvery cloak and the Fighter’s long black coat as things alive, writhing and twisting.

“What about…him?” the Fighter said. “If he returns, he’ll crush us. I can’t win against him–none of us can.”

‘”He is lost,” crowed the Lady, each word accentuated by a cloud of mist from her lips. “Swallowed by the darkness he created. There’s no more than an echo left, a pathetic little thing.”

“Let me kill him,” the Fighter said. “I’ll make it slow, so when I finally crush his skull, he’ll know…”

“No. You will leave the echo He is already broken. The echo is powerless to act, and is no threat to us. But, more than that, I want him to see our triumph. He sought to destroy us–now he will see us triumphant and simply fade away.” The Lady laughed, silver bells smothered in indigo velvet.

“I still think we’re making a mistake,” said the Fighter.

“Of course. Attacking, grappling, feeling the sour breath of your adversary in your face: that’s you. Far better to act with a subtler touch.” the Lady said. She made a sweeping gesture and rose off the ground, riding the wind like a gossamer thread. “Great things have been set in motion; go and do your part.” She wafted upward, and vanished among the clouds.

“And you do yours,” the Fighter muttered. The ground at his feet became tacky and malleable, and he sank into it. The precipice where the conspirators had met was left barren, as it had always been.

A small figure appeared at the edge, emerging from nothingness as a fuzzy outline before congealing into the form of a small child with dark hair. He stood for a moment, sadly regarding the desolate scene, and then vanished, fading away like a dream upon awakening.

 

May 2, 2010

From “Last of the Turtle Gods” by Jenny Nguyen Shepherd

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You find yourself breaking away from the group, returning to Hoan Kiem in the center of town, gazing at passersby or the glass-smooth surface of the lake from a park bench.

The legends you hear from the locals speak of Emperor Lê Lợi, who the Golden Turtle God had given a magic sword to defeat the Chinese. After his victory, they say, a large turtle confronted the Emperor while he was boating and took the sword back until such time as it is needed again. That is why they call it Hoan Kiem, “Returned Sword Lake,” and descendants of that turtle supposedly still remain.

Like so many things, people said the turtles were only legend…at least until they made themselves known. One came ashore to die during the war, the year before Tet; you see it on display in the temple, a leathery giant over five feet long with no company in its gilded display case save a dehumidifier. People videotape other turtles when they appear, but none have been seen in years. You read an inset in your travel guide which claims that there may only be a single turtle left. Their kind lives to an advanced age; one may very well linger on, the last of its kind. Even if there were more, the lake’s edge is all hard cement, enveloped by the city of Hanoi.

There is nowhere for a mother turtle to bury her eggs.

 

April 28, 2010

From “The Ulam Spiral” by Douglas Jerineth

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83.

The number, along with its cousins 183, 283, 383, and so forth, have regularly occurred in your life, across time and circumstance too vast to be coincidental.

83 miles to your grandparents’ house. 183 inches around the outside of your childhood bedroom. 283 applications for the position your firm offered. Flight 383 from San Francisco to Newark.

You asked a mathematician about it once; she responded with jargon about frequency and primes. Your co-worker said the pattern was based on obsessive compulsion on your part, a mind for minute details that came in handy during working hours but played strange tricks outside them. Friends came to groan when you pointed out fresh examples of 83, or things that boiled down to 83. One of your lovers even left you after a tiff brought on by an “inspected by 83” tag.

However, when a promotion led you to an inspection tour of number 8383 Industrial Way South, you knew that something more than mere coincidence was behind it.

 

April 20, 2010

From “Shardborn” by Tath Scumber

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When he awoke, the doctor was nowhere in sight. But clearly someone had been by, since there was a folded piece of notebook paper in his lap.

“…a poem?”

Let me tell you the story of one Etaoin Shrdlu
Not a normal man like me or a normal man like you.
He was only present as a mistake some people made
Until it happened once too much and Etaoin up and stayed.
The printer was astonished and dropped his coffee cup
When Etaoin walked right in and asked him what was up.

It was signed, or perhaps titled, simply Shardborn.

 

April 9, 2010

From “Star of Infinity” by Michelle Fields El-Harash

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Flying…

Ben was touching the sky.

He soared high over the lands below, crashing through flocks of birds, tearing through clouds, skimming low over lakes and rivers. An irrepressible grin was plastered across Ben’s face, and an incredible rush of life surged through his body.

Nothing could slow him down.

In the back of his mind, though, two darker thoughts churned beneath the exhilaration, the raw life force: a nagging suspicion that he was dreaming again, and Terrie’s face, contorted with shock and disbelief.

 

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