Nondead

It is worth noting to anyone who still has this zombie link in their RSS feeds that I have a shiny new website, with merch and everything, and have resumed the daily drabbles. You can follow them here. Okay bye again we are ded do not ask shh quiet please ded now goodbye

Justice for All

She found God at last.  He was hiding in the cupboard, up on the top shelf behind the soy sauce.  "There you are," she purred.  "Come on."

He flinched away from her reaching hand, but she was quicker and caught him by the scruff.  His bulging eyes goggled at her.

"You made this world," she told Him.  She gestured widely.  "All of this."

He nodded.

"You've got a lot to answer for."  Her grip tightened, slowly, and He wriggled, but in the end, it was surprisingly easy.  "Now," she said, wiping her hands on her jeans, "to get to work."

Walking Boots

One day, you may discover walking boots on your porch.  Walking boots are weather-beaten.  They are just your size.  You may have vague memories of buying them, but this is a lie.

The walking boots never tire and never slip.  They always take you where you need to be.  There may be magic; there will be wonder.

But walking boots never go home.  The walking boots do not sip tea and only grudgingly tolerate campfires.  The walking boots emphatically do not sit in comfortable chairs.

Whether you put the walking boots on is up to you. 

Keep an eye out.

Theory of Relativism

“I have a solution,” said Pigh.  “The Valiri Gem requires the sacrifice of the most powerful love in the universe in order to destroy it for good, right?

“Right.”

“Okay.  First, renounce all principles, beliefs, and personal ideals.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” 

“Uh, okay, sure.”

“Okay, now give me your shirt.  That one’s your favorite, right?”

“Pretty much.”

Pigh ripped it in two.

“Hey!”

The Valiri Gem sparked, flared, and cracked in half.

“As I suspected,” said Pigh smugly.  “In the presence of a moral vacuum, the gravity of the situation acts equally on each burden, regardless of relative weight.” 

Welcome Back

The mask had cut most of the smell since they’d left the ship.  Jev’s eyes started watering the moment she removed it.  Tral kept his on, the wheezing of his recycler the only sound, other than the distant hum of the roving swarms.  They weren’t a threat yet, but they moved fast.  Jev was wary.

From atop the rise, the brown and arid earth spread down and away, dipping into soupy dells and occasional tangles of hard and thorny weeds.

“What is this place?” Tral wanted to know.

Jev blinked, feeling the sting.  “It’s home, Tral.  We’ve made it home.”

"What We're Having" at Strange Horizons

My story "What We're Having" is up at Strange Horizons this week.

It's a quiet and (hopefully) charming little relationship story, centered on a time-traveling skillet.  Enjoy!

"Sticks and Stones" at PodCastle

My story "Sticks and Stones," originally published at Crossed Genres, is now up at PodCastle!  All hail the new overlords, Rachael and Graeme!

"The Sea of Wives" at PodCastle

My dark little selkie story is up now at PodCastle!  (First new publication to actually hit in like forever.)

Basically, I'm relatively fond of selkies as a concept anyway, and then I read an article about the culture and conditions surrounding Alaskan fishing trawlers and went "Hmm."

Dave Thompson had specifically requested I send it to him, and then I found out he was planning to leave the editorship of PodCastle, so this is sort of a farewell on several levels.  Best of luck, Dave!  We love you, man.

I hope everyone enjoys the story regardless.

- Nathan

Malfunctions

Timothy turned on the tap.

“The water isn’t working right,” said Betty.

And it wasn’t.  It flowed out of the tap and down to the sink, clear and cold to the touch, but it wouldn’t get anything wet.  He added coffee grounds to the filter holder and they just hovered in the middle of the fluid, undampened.

He glared at Betty, sipping blithely from her mug as she sat at the table.  “How did you get yours, then?”

Betty shrugged, then indicated the dark gouge in the wall behind her.  It dripped, glistening wet.  “The bricks aren’t working right, either.”

A House, Haunted

We spent the night in a haunted house.  We didn’t have to.  No one forced us.  We’re not sure now why we did.

There were no horrifying apparitions.  No blood dripped slowly from the ceiling.  Nothing moaned or whispered.  No fingers clutched or trailed softly down the soft hairs along our arms.  The house was musty and damp, and we slept fitfully, fearfully, expectantly.

Nothing at all happened.

Except when we opened the door to leave and found only another hallway stretching off into the dark and distance, smelling of age and mildew.

We spend nights in a haunted house.

---

Part of the Advent Ghosts annual event at I Saw Lightning Fall.

Morning After the Sun Did Not Rise

The bed hovered over the immeasurable void. Kinny and I hadn't worked up the courage to enter it yet. A chill wind blew up from beneath, and all around was blackness.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

“Pretty sure it’s your turn to let her out,” Kinny said.

“If our carpet rematerializes, I will clean any mess off of it with gusto and verve,” I assured her.

“I’m going to brave the unknown. How different is it from any other morning, really?”

I strained with all my might and manifested my pink fuzzy slippers.  "Hold on," I said.  "I'm coming with you."

The Squid of Despair

The Squid of Despair takes up most of the living room now. Its muddy, brown-­gray skin saps the brightness from the room, or perhaps simply highlights the lack already there. It rolls a dinner-plate­-sized eye at me as I step over its sprawled tentacles. I kick it. It does not respond.

“You should just get rid of that thing, man,” says Cal. The Hummingbird of Whimsy flits around his head, while the spiny Scorpion of Sarcasm lurks on his shoulder.

The Squid lifts one tentacle, then drops it, limply, on my lap. Because of this, I cannot kick Cal, too.

Hunting

He fills in the crossword while he waits. He does not skulk in bushes, not anymore, not since he learned about Starbucks; cafes; newspapers. He shaves often, especially during the week of the full moon. Hunting is a mental state as much as an action. He sips his coffee, wincing at the bitterness. He writes an answer in the little boxes: “TEETH.” He has filled in all of the answers this way. He likes teeth. He wonders when she will emerge from the building down the street.  He wonders what she will think of his teeth, when she sees them.

Purity

Count Darigon cackled as the Sword refused to budge. “I know you, King Amberion,” he rasped.  "You are a thoughtful leader and a complicated man. You are good. But the Sword can be wielded only by the pure of heart. Can you truly say that you have never sinned, never fallen short?”

Amberion’s grip on the hilt slackened perceptibly. Darigon grinned.  Behind Amberion, Kailen snorted. She strode forward, snatched up the Sword, and lopped Darigon’s head off.

“I’m not a good person,” she told his stunned expression as his head rolled on the ground. “But I know what I want.”

Quarter Reads

By the by, I remain interested/amused by Quarter Reads, where I have uploaded several stories.  The ten dollars is a bit of a high initial ask, but it's almost intoxicating flitting around the archives, picking out stories to buy for $0.25 each.  

Plus, now you can "favorite" an author and know when they've uploaded something new.  So... you all know what to do, I trust.  ;-)  Given the amount of flash I write, I'm sure to have some Quarter Reads exclusives sooner or later.  

Daylight Encounter

I saw something move in the garage of the house on the end, and I thought, “Deer,” because Dad says they’re like rats and get everywhere.  Then it lifted its head, and it didn’t have a snout, but the flat nose of a monkey and a big hairy beard at the end of a long neck like a snake. It met my eyes before it leapt away into the scrubby trees.

The sun felt cold, suddenly, like it was night and dark, instead of in my neighborhood with its sidewalks marked in chalk and birds chirping, and I was alone.

Amortized

The summoning booth has a line.  I scuff the leather on my loafers and check my phone.  I don't really have time, but without a PowerPoint demon to run my presentation, I don't have anything else to do.  I hope I won't be late.

The fat idiot inside can't work the latch.  I tug from the outside, and he breathes garlicky breath in my face as he flees, sweating.  He was calling a succubus.  I know the type.

Inside, I sweep the remnants of his salt circle into the disposal. Disgusting pig.  Push the button, the new circle falls down neatly from the dispensers.  One, two, three go the blood-treated iron coins. I get mine from Soul Survivors.  They do diversified holdings, no fewer than a thousand contributors per coin.  It's a decent risk, so long as you get out before the law of averages kicks in and you run the risk of tipping over the fifty percent mark on your contribution. I've got good information.  I researched the userbase and projected summoning habits thoroughly before I committed.

The demon appears in a flash of sulfur and heat.  You never get the same one twice, but I swear it looks familiar.  I open my mouth to tell it about the damned PowerPoint, but a rumble from overhead distracts me.  I look up and see the lances of light penetrating the overcast.  Wings and swords and trumpets, fire and smoke from beneath.

The demon smiles.

"Foreclosed," it says.  "All of you."

Excerpts from the Self-Guided Tour of the World Serpent Informational Center

The hallway is long and walled in tile and steel, but you will notice it does not echo.  The constant rush of saltwater and poison outside is an unending susurrus that swallows sound.  First-time visitors  often feel that the structure is pulsing faintly, the walls breathing with the motion.

This is an illusion.  The visitor's center is not near any of the lungs.

As you walk along, you may feel free to touch the walls or floor and  feel their warmth.  Jormungandr is a reptile and therefore cold-blooded, of course; the heat is the exothermic reaction of the  venom impregnated in its every muscle and bone with the exterior metals and ceramics.  The infrastructure requires constant repair by specialized teams.  Their mining equipment is tipped with diamond and  coated in cat's blood to neutralize the effects.  You need not fear; while collapses were common in the early days, the visitor's center has never suffered any lapses, whether structural or autoimmune in  nature.

The central columns contain the actual grid.  Please do not approach them.  Electricity flows along the grid through Jormungandr's nerves and bloodstream, piping information and power along its length and therefore throughout the world.  The Plague of Quakes in the late 1800s was eventually diagnosed as a degenerative seizure disorder; improved wire shielding and a decades-long corpus callosotomy at Jormungandr's skull in the Marianas Trench, completed in 1973, have resolved these problems.

Your tour will conclude at the door marked in purple.  The gift shop is open year-round.

Feeding Time

I woke to a soft weight on my shoulders and back, followed by a prickling as claws dug in, pressing through the fleece and the sheet.

“It’s like three a.m., cat,” I mumbled into my pillow.  “I’m not getting up to feed you.”

The claws dug in, and I heard him sniffing his way up toward my head.  I buried it under the blankets.

“You do not need any more food,” I said.  “You’re on a diet, mister kitty.  Vet’s orders.”

The snuffling reached my breathing hole and stopped.  Then I heard a plaintive meow.

From over in the doorway.

God in Your Pocket

Margie had to go  home for her wallet.  She still used cash.

“What?”  I laughed.  “How do you get anything done without a god?”

Margie’s face twisted.  “I just don’t see the point.”

“Here,” I pulled Chocorotan out of my pocket, “you can use mine.”   Chocorotan grimaced at me, but he’s carved that way.  “The commandments are easy.  I only have to brush my teeth clockwise and avoid alligators.”

“No.”

“But...”

“No!”  Maggie started walking again.  “I’ll catch you up at the theater.  Both of you, I guess.”

I watched her go.  “Women are weird, O Lord,” I told Chocorotan.