A Literary Life

“This is my library,” Yvor said, gesturing expansively with his pipe. 

“Grand, though it seems you've not yet completed it,” I said, noting the half-empty shelves.

Suddenly, there came the sound of a book appearing from nothing; a most unusual noise.

“That is the book of what would have happened had I decided not to reveal my secret,” Yvor laughed.  “You see, here the stories of all possible Yvors appear after the chance that might create them has passed.”

“How terrible!” I said.  “To know always what might have been...”

Yvor smiled serenely.  “I see you are not a reader.” 

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na

“The criminals haunt this city like ghosts,” the Commissioner said.  “We’re trapped in this maze, and we just run around and around and never get anywhere.”

“But sir!  Do we really need to call... him?”  The young constable swallowed heavily.  “He’s... outside the law.  They say he can’t die.  They say... they say he eats...”

“Silence!”  The Commissioner snapped.  “This ends tonight.  I won’t follow the dotted lines any longer.  That will be his job now.”

He switched the light on, sending the golden disc up onto the clouds.  The yellow circle with one sixth missing, like an open mouth...

We

Hello!  Hello!  We are teeth!  We are smell!  Hello!  Who are you?  Hello!  Bigteeth bigsmell hello!  Who am I?

Cold there is.  Hello!  Cold outside.  Air is nosecold.  Bloodwarm smell is.

Hello!  Road there is.  Road in cold.  We are.  Hello, hello!  We are teeth!   We are run!  Running teeth running cold running air is cold is bloodwarm smell hello!

Colddark smell.  Wind smell.  Hello!  Hello!  Found you!  We found you!  Hello!

We are teeth!  Hello!  We are taste!  Good!  Good! 

Gone now.  Hello!  Back now.  Hello, hello!  Teeth now.  Smell now.  You are we!  Who am I?

We are.

The Time Traveler

He doesn't fit.  That's the first thing everyone notices, and the only detail they remember.  They saw a little old man, and he didn't fit.

It isn't his fault.  Not directly.  He has a place, of course - everything does, sooner or later - but he can no longer find it.  It is lost, and he squeezes into cracks as best he can, dreaming of home.

Home doesn't exist.  Home is another causality, a different spacetime.

Home is dead.  He killed it.

It was necessary.  This fact occasionally comforts him.

But he is the only one who remembers, and so he must dream.

Devoutly to Be Wished

He lights a match, holds it, lets it burn.

It is a consummation, he says.  The wood is fuel, swollen with promise.  The chemicals on the tip are nothing but a combustion in potentia, the lightest, faintest shove away from an orgy of wanton electron exchange.

He flicks the spent splinter away, gnarled and blackened.  He lights another.

Every flame is unique, he says.  Is it better to live in a watertight box, nestled among sleeping siblings, or to burn in furious, idiosyncratic glory, however brief?

Everything wants so badly to happen, he says, and his eyes flash as he smiles.

Glistening Like Pearls in the Dark

The contest, such as it was, is over!  Congratulations, Heidi, on your shiny new doorstop book!  

I encourage everyone to at least sign up for Daily Science Fiction's e-mail feed; free stories delivered to you every day is about as good as it gets, and they're proving themselves to be a solid contributor to the genre markets as well. 

---

The waters of fourth grade were perilous, all sharks and hidden reefs.  But here they were, Suze and Kayden, proof positive that Trudy wasn't the least popular girl in the school.  It was a triumph, the result of months of research and careful planning.

"You have a dollhouse?" Suze asked, prodding the offending object with one precociously painted fingernail.

"It's from when I was smaller," said Trudy.  "I outgrew it."

"Oughtta dump it," said Kayden.  Suze nodded emphatically.

Trudy looked down, appropriately shamed.  They didn't need to know that Trudy's sisters would need the house, too... when they finally hatched.

The Towers of Haran

The towers of Haran pierce the sky, great looping swirls of translucent glass.  We admired them from afar, up in the north, before we became Haran, long before we ever thought to come to this land in the first place.  At first they appear colorless, transparent, but then the first rays of the sun leap across the horizon and set the world afire, and the thousand subtle shades become apparent.  It is a tracery of frost that spreads from the highest slopes of Yttrin Mountain all the way down to the wall at the furthest reaches of the burbling Sal'Vikanti, where it runs through the valley and out to the sea.  

Beneath His Notice

It's echoes, man.  Resonances.  Nested versions inside nested versions.

Look.  You know how they discovered penicillin, right?  They were studying some crazy germs and had a bunch of old petri dishes, but they had to leave unexpectedly and when they came back, everything was moldy.  Only in some of the dishes, the mold was killing the bacteria.

Right, so that's us.  The mold.  The scientist is distracted - he's looking out the window and contemplating the blue infinity or whatever - and we're growing where he can't see.  But we don't kill germs, do we?  No, we squeeze out shit like war and hate and goddamned idiocy.  What do you think he's going to do when he finally sees us?  We ain't a miracle drug, I tell you that much.

And this is the bit that kills me: people are calling out to him, trying to get his attention.  That's dangerous.  He's not physical; the physical universie is just his little lab, his testing ground, his fucking petri dish.  Flesh ties down thoughts.  But if you think thoughts hard enough, you make an echo.  If enough echos match up, you make resonance. 

You make it loud enough, enough voices together, and he just might notice.

He might turn around...

Just Then, Coincidentally, the Lights Went Out

"It's a matter of equipment," said Edgar.  "We live in analog.  Time flows fast, it flows slow, but it always flows.  Ghosts aren't moving forward anymore, so they're stuck in digital.  Binary: zero or one, on or off."

"And so you're... throwing them a party?" Bertha asked, eyeing the strobe lights.

Edgar huffed.  "I'm going to isolate a series of discrete temporal instances and analyze them for spectral content."

"You're taking pictures of flashing lights."

"Whatever."

"So... if you make an analog version of a digital being, aren't you bringing it back into the timestream with us?  What happens then?"

Devourer

The kitchen was a welter of steam and sound.  Reggie had to shout as he introduced Thom's new coworkers.

"And that's Fenris," Reggie said, pointing to a shaggy wolf in an apron.  "He's from out of state."

"I dwell in the dark behind the sun," the wolf growled.

"Technically we're violating some health codes, but Lordy-Lord, there is just not a hairnet big enough.  Show him your trick, Fenny."

The wolf's eyes glittered dangerously.  Reggie, grinning, held out a can of condensed stock.  Slowly, hatefully, the wolf opened its bone-crushing jaws and delicately sheared the top off.

"Handy!" Reggie crowed.

October 31

"Would you take off that stupid mask?  Honestly, it's barely breakfast."

"No."  Leo's voice was muffled under the hideous rubbery face.  "I like it."

Cynthia shuddered and gathered up her dishes.  "It gives me the creeps."  She paused over the sink.  "I know what this is.  I've seen movies.  You're going to take the mask off and it'll be the same monster face underneath."

"Oh, fine," Leo tugged the mask off, revealing his tousled brown hair.  "See?"  He coughed, and his voice dropped to a strangled buzz.  "Besides, it's like chicken pox.  Once it's happened to you one time..."

Surrounded by Miles of the Dead

It doesn’t control minds or eat flesh or any of those lurid B-movie boogums.  It isn’t immune to fire or uprooting.  It does spread fairly quickly, like any weed.  A bit faster than dandelions.

But it isn’t from here, and everything knows it.  Animals don’t eat it.  Insects won’t parasitize it.  Even bacteria don’t touch it; it never decays.  Normally, dead trees fall to fungus, microbes, and even other plants, rotting back to dirt and keeping the engine turning over. 

What it takes is gone for good.  Tiny bites – the individual plants aren’t large – but it... accumulates.  Immaculate.  Untouchable. 

Sacred?

---

Don't forget the Daily Science Fiction giveaway!

"The Woman Made of Flowers" at the Drabblecast

Norm keeps forgetting to tell me when these things appear.  :-/  :-)

At any rate, my drabble "The Woman Made of Flowers" appeared in Episode 259 of the Drabblecast.  If you're not listening to that podcast, you should be.  :-D

The Dribblecast

You may not know about The Dribblecast.  (You may even not know about The Drabblecast, though since you're reading the writing blog of the Drabblecast's Submissions Editor, that's a little weirder.)  At any rate, it's a fan-run, fan-produced site where fans read other fans works out loud and distribute them for free.  Any drabbles posted in the Drabblecast forums might get a PM from someone asking if it's okay to "dribble" the story.  There's pretty much no downside to this thing.

And they have very good taste.


(Psst... the Daily Science Fiction giveaway is still open for posting!)

New Giveaway: Daily Science Fiction Year One: Not Just Rockets and Robots

I've got a great honking brick of a book here in front of me: the first yearly collection of Daily Science Fiction.  Over 850 pages of speculative fiction; 260 separate stories.  

And two of them feature my fifth or sixth favorite author: Me!  Also Ken Liu, Cat Rambo, Tim Pratt, Lavie Tidhar... There's some good stuff in here, is my point.

I am giving away this beast for absolutely nothing, y'all.  Free book!  Free really heavy book!  Just post in the comments to enter yourself in the drawing (and include a means of contact so I can ping you privily for mailing info.)

For this one... well, since this is a yearly summary of (most of) 2011, how about y'all tell me the best book you read this past year?  Recommend me some reading material, guys!

Waste of Time

The alarm shattered the morning, startling Briony awake.  Briony drank her lukewarm coffee while reading the paper as she sat up blinking in bed while the shower steamed she narrowly missed a bicycle while pulling out of her driveway-

"Crap," she muttered.  "It's gotten all jumbled."

She fiddled with the shards, shooing away Fluffster, her long-dead childhood dog.  He loved seeing her again, and dogs never had much respect for causality.

"Ouch!"  She'd cut herself on a seven-minute splinter.  Sevens were always the sharpest.  "Screw it," she said, leaving the minutes where they'd fallen.  "I'll just be late this morning."

Interrogation Room 113

"You're right, of course," said Detective Voutar.  "We can't do anything to you.  It wouldn't be right."

The door creaked open, and something hunched and dark crawled in.  Thick, corded muscles bunched and flexed as moon-pale claws left faint gouges in the concrete floor.  It had either one too many or one too few limbs.

"I think I hear someone calling me.  Out in the hall."  Voutar waved and shut the door gently behind him.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said to no one in particular as the noises began.  "It's good to be the good guys."

Guard It with Your Life

“Are we ready?”

Violet tied the bandana around her head, her eyes mere glints through the holes she’d cut.  “Are you really going to wear the cape?”

“We’re superheroes, right?”  Ethan smirked.

“Yeah, but this is real.  This is serious.  This is- Gerald, what the hell are you wearing?”

One pair of tights – neither matching the other in color or pattern – adorned his legs.  He had shorts, a spandex unitard, a military jacket, and a trenchcoat, along with four bandoliers, a hood, a domino mask, and a tricorn hat.

“Secret identities are important,” Gerald said.  “I wanted to be sure.”

Inner Strength

It doesn't matter, they told me on my first day, what you look like, or even what you can do or where you come from.

They said it’s about what’s inside.  That’s what’s important.

And I believe that.  I really do.  I may still doubt myself – that’s normal, they said, and will pass – and I may still suspect that some doink born with a ten-million-dollar silver spoon in his mouth probably - being honest - has an easier time of it, but I believe that what’s inside is what really matters.

At night, when I’m falling asleep, I can feel it moving.

Dragonslayer at IGMS

"Dragonslayer" is in the current issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show!  (You gotta pay, I'm afraid, but it's a pretty good 'zine.)

Cult Cargo Pants (TM)

“It’s great!  I’ve got a pocket for my phone, for my wallet, my keys, my palmtop, my ciggies, and even some beef jerky.”  Kell stretched out one leg and then the other, displaying the wonders of his new pants.

“You’re a little too excited about those,” said Gav.

From overhead came the drone of a propeller plane, flying low.  A shadow swept across them, followed by a thump as a large wooden box buried itself in the sand.  It broke open, spilling dozens of pairs of trousers.  Kell and Gave blinked at each other.

“What’s brand were those pants again?”

Hopalong B'ar

It was a good life in Sawyerville; clean air, peace and quiet, friendly people.  The only downside, Griff reflected, was its proximity to the university, which led to periodic infestations of bros.

“Reckon it’s ‘bout time y’all three hopped along,” he said, approaching his current crop of overloud teenagers.  “Y’all had more’n enuff t’drank.”

“What’ll you do if we don’t, Gramps?” asked the largest one.  “Call the sheriff?”

“Naw,” Griff said.  “I got someone better.  “Hey, Hopalong!”

A furry mountain grumbled as it rose.  The bros paled and huddled together. 

“What’d y’all think that ‘postrophe was fer?” Griff asked, grinning.

Steel is No Comfort When Winter Comes

The massive figure loomed over the sales counter, clad in blood-red armor and wearing a horned helm.  Nearby, two hitherto polite middle-aged ladies erupted into a vicious screaming match, struggling over a clearance sweater.

Something thudded to the countertop: a fleece-lined winter coat.  A mailed hand tapped the garment, then slammed into the steel-plated chest.

"Fitting rooms are th-th-there," Beth stammered, pointing. 

The figure stomped away.

"Was that War?" asked Vicki.

"Can't be," said John.  "War... war never changes."

There was a rustle from the fitting rooms, then a contented sigh.

"It must be War," said Beth.  "He was cold..."

The Departure

“This is something I’ve needed to do for a long time,” she says.  Her hair is already growing out, shading to black.   Her voice shifts timbres like a pennywhistle for a moment.  “I would say that it’s not you, but I want to be honest about it.  I can’t…”  She pauses as she adds several inches of height, one foot out the door.  There’s a hint of a mustache for a moment, but it fades. 

“I don’t like who I am when I’m with you,” she says. 

As she walks away, I think I see the first hint of wings.

Appointment Calendar

“We’re running behind today,” the receptionist told me.  “The doctor will be with you as soon as he can.  You can wait over there.”  She gestured in the vague direction of the faux-leather couches and the elderly magazines.  I settled in the wooden chair, as the couch was occupied by a nine-hundred-pound grizzly bear, who was gnawing the armrest philosophically.

“So, what are you in for?” I asked jovially.

“He’s eating the doctor at two-thirty,” the receptionist interjected.

“But my appointment is for three,” I protested.

“Tough cookies,” she snapped.  “We can reschedule if you like.”

“Gnarrr,” said the bear.

"White as a Bedroom Door" at Pseudopod

My second full-length appearance at Pseudopod, the horror podcast, is "White as a Bedroom Door."  

Give it a listen, if you like.  

The Weight of What Has Gone Before

The chains had gotten a lot thicker since the birth, both of them shuffling with links thick as baseball bats around their ankles.  Suze, in particular, had a nasty iron padlock hanging from her neck that left her forever leaning forward.

“We knew going in it was going to be hard,” said Reg.  He rattled the chains on his wrist.  “I wouldn’t undo these even if I could.”

In the bassinet, the infant slumbered.  He’d opened his eyes, at least, and decided to stay in the world; I could see the first hair-fine chain dangling from around his tender neck.

Exploring the Known Words

The aphoristic engines flared as they penetrated the final barrier, emerging in a flash of non-light into a space that was not a space.

“We’ve made it!” cried Doctor Geisteskrank.  “We’ve abstracted ourselves!  We’re in the realm of pure logic.  Now to locate a suitable base camp.”

“What about that?” asked Bertram, pointing to a distant planetoid.  “It must be enormous, given the distance.”

“That one’s no good,” said Doctor Geisteskrank.  “It’s a falsehood.”

“How can you tell?”

“Lies have their own gravity.  It pulls things in.  The truth, on the other hand, sleets through the cosmos untouched and untouchable.”

Chasing Tails

“Once, sailing ships had major problems with rodents, and cats were a great way to deal with that.  I get that, and I understand tradition, but every ounce of fuel counts right now.  Why are we bringing that?”  Bik pointed to the small gray tabby, who groomed her tail dismissively.

“You know we’re testing the Keppler drive, right?  Experimental?”

“Yeah.”

“Did anyone tell you what it is?”

Bik shook his head.

“It’s a warp drive.  Space-twister.  Time-bender.  You know how cats chase things that aren’t there?  We need her because she’s the only one who can see where we’re going.”

A Hold Full of Sugar Cube

Once again, don't forget the Morning After giveaway.  Free anthology, people!  Who doesn't like free?

---

The black-sailed ship was perhaps twelve inches long.  It drifted to a stop on the kitchen table, where Bev was enjoying a cup of coffee in the quiet hours of the morning.  A minute man with a puffball of black beard around his head emerged onto the foredeck, waving a cutlass the size of a mouse’s whisker.

“Yar!” he said.

“What?”  Bev glanced around, unsure how to address a tiny pirate.

“Yar.  I am a pirate.  I’m here to pillage you.”

“You’re pretty small for a pirate.  I could drown you in my coffee.”

“I pillage very small things.  Yar.”

Testimony

Going experimental today.  :-P  It's longer than usual because phooey.

---

Look here & see Theodore Bartlett, a mid-level pharmaceuticals rep & businessperson.  He is not in himself particularly interesting yet is brought to your attention, here on the sidewalk as he walks to work to the subway station to the city because Theodore Bartlett is about to experience a miracle. 

The nature of the miracle will not be revealed; this would spoil the suspense.

It might be a pillar of fire or a booming voice, but might as easily be something else, something perhaps easily mistaken for happenstance and/or coincidence and/or Al Qaeda.  I myself once had a miraculous pimple.  It was small/red/in all ways unremarkable, and it burst after a week and faded thence from the memory of mankind, yet it was miraculous nonetheless, the hand of God acting directly in all of our lives, and that knowledge has changed me forever because, understanding as I do now and did not then the nature of the miraculous and the implications &c I am able to see Theodore Bartlett and show him unto thee that thou also might see and anticipate what it will be when he finds/encounters/becomes the miraculous and how it might change everything for him and me and all of us.  Please do not forget Theodore Bartlett as the doors hiss closed and separate the smell of rat pee from body odor and whisk him to his job where he will find a miracle and may or may not recognize it for what it is & keep him in your prayers because his miracle might be only a jar of mustard that he thought was empty having one more serving & he will never know, live and never know, die and never know.  Theodore Bartlett I wish you well Godspeed sir be safe and mind the gap.

The Floor of the Ocean

I think we're going to have to officially go to a "whenever I can" update schedule.  Between the day shift and the baby, my time to sit and write is sporadic and often interrupted.  Mirrorshards isn't going away, but it probably won't ever be back on a daily update until Archie is in school.  :-/

I sat beside the ambassador as he took his evening soak, the brackish water hauled at some expense up the mountain to soothe his amphibian's skin.  We looked out over the valley kingdoms and talked of their fractious politics.

"Of course," he said, "all this was ours once, and perhaps will be again."

"Surely you can't mean your people intend to make war?" I asked, half in jest. (Only half, for the magic of the water shamans is deep and subtle.)

His laughter made bubbly froth.  "Where oceans sink, they may one day rise.  My people remember, and can wait."

"Gastrophidia" at Ideomancer

My story, "Gastrophidia," is live in the September issue of Ideomancer.  It is the story of a man with a snake inside him.  I'm quite pleased with it overall (and the long-suffering editorial staff at the magazine help get the ending into a solid place), and getting into this venue has been a long-term project of mine.  (We're talking since about 2009.  I have modest goals, but at least I take a long time accomplishing them.)

Check it out; it's free.  Leave a comment.  Enjoy the magazine.  (I generally enjoy the stories there, and respect their editorial taste even when I don't care for a piece.)

ttfn
Nathan

Playing to Win

The robed man sighed and pushed one of his tiles into attack position.  "Not that it will do much good.  I think you've got this game sewn up, Lum."

The portly shape on the other side of the board grinned widely and took a swig from his ever-present jug.  "Yeah?  How about this?"  He slammed a tile to the board hard enough to rattle the other pieces in their places. 

The man peered down.  "That... but you could have locked me down.  I can take your key position and threaten a win now."

"Exactly," said Lum.  "Now it's interesting again."

The Time Traveller's Strife

Don't forget the book giveaway!  I was missing in action this past week, so the deadline will now be September 8 to post a comment and get in the drawing.

I meddle.  It's a bad habit, like biting your fingernails or chewing your beard, and I do both of those, too.

Oh, I'm not worried about temporal paradox or ending the universe or some such.  Time is pretty robust, and it's hard to shift much of anything.  What I can do is make splinters, send past versions of myself off into different trails of possibility. 

Mostly I tell them, "For God's sake, call her back."  Sometimes I add, "You idiot."

The more I tinker with these things, though, the more I wonder when one day I'm going to look up and see myself, older, more battered, climbing through a portal and glaring down at me, sadly shaking my head.

Masterpiece

Val turned the canvas around with a flourish.  "Ta-da!"

"What is it?"

"It's a picture of you, silly!"

"But it's blank."

"See, I started out by putting in what I like about you, and then I thought about what I don't like so much, and then some symbolism stuff, plus things that aren't like you at all but in interesting ways, and then you know how light when you add it all up it's white?  Like that."

"I think some nouveau guy did a blank canvas already..."

"Well," said Val, blinking slowly, "he can't see what I see in it."

Triangulation: Morning After

Parsec Ink's Triangulation: Morning After is out on August 27, featuring, among others, my story "All Unlooked For."  This is the second year running I've been in this anthology.  (Last year it was with "Boll Weevil," which later got picked up at the Drabblecast.)

Kindle and paperbacks will be available at Amazon.  I haven't gotten a chance to read my contributor's copy yet, so I can't really give my opinions on the rest of it.  

But!

I have an *extra* copy.

That means it's giveaway time!

Post your very worst pun below to be entered in the drawing.  I would say the most appalling pun wins it, but all puns are appalling, so I'll just pick someone with a random number generator.

Be sure to include a way for me to contact you and get mailing info in case you win.

The Dance

The piles of books were teetering precariously on the edge of his desk, threatening to spill over into the waiting piles on the floor.  He pored over one of the largest, age-yellowed and crumbling, his normally impeccable hair standing in sweat-darkened spikes.

"You've been working for hours, m'Lord," she said, drifting nearer.  "What problem vexes you so?"

"It's the land-grant case," he mumbled around a quill pen.

"But look!" she cried.  "That very tome holds your answer; the law is clearly with you in this."

"Yes," he said, smiling ruefully.  "I am trying to find a way to lose.  Gracefully."

Anything Worth Doing

The statue stood on the bluff near the house, a rough-hewn image of a man staring into the valley below.  After a week, the grass had grown noticeably around its platter-sized feet, where the caretaker couldn't trim it easily.  Birds built a nest on one shoulder.

Jefferson trekked to it each morning to watch the sunrise.  On the eighth day, the stone head turned to him.  "Yes," it said.

"Pardon?"

"You asked if we should invite the Tyrant's men to participate.  I agree.  It will be symbolically important."

"That was a week ago!"

"I wished to give it due consideration."

All's Fair

It's about persistence.  You can't give up; you gotta keep going.  No matter how bleak your chances, you gotta find a reason to push on.  Like if you're in a fight, and you can't get through in a frontal assault, you maybe duck to the side, or fall back and make 'em overextend.  You trick 'em, you know?  Whatever it takes, that's what you have to do to win.

That's what I believe.  That's how I live.

And that's why I know you'll love me one day.  I'll find a way.  Your defenses can't hold me out forever.

Nothing can.

Wyrd

I could escape.  Know that, whatever else may come.  If I say the word, I could have wings and be gone.

That is what he will not understand.  He will call it weakness, foolishness, a waste.  And perhaps he is right; I have never claimed great wisdom, for all that it is imputed to me.

I stand here, now, in the dark.  In the morning, I will face a dragon.  I harbor few illusions regarding the outcome.

But in the morning, I will still be here, and I did not have to be.

Remember me for that, if nothing else.

Edgewalker

She lurches to the side of the ring, leaking blood from her mouth, both nostrils, and – disturbingly – one ear. 

"You've got to call it," I tell her.  "You're taking two hits for every one you give.  You both look like you've been run over by trucks."

It's true.  Her opponent's in bad shape, but I'd be hard-pressed to say who was winning.  The word doesn't seem to have any meaning here.

Hawking a crimson glob to the floor, she leans over.  "I'm staying in."

"Why?  What do you think you're doing out there?"

She grins.  "Winning."

And she is gone.

The Focus

He closed his eyes and inhaled.  "Empty-mind," he reminded himself.

With a high-pitched hum, a mosquito landed on his nose.  "Whatcha doin'?"

He ignored it.

"Mind if I take a meal, then?  Just shake your head." 

The muscles of his face twitched as the mosquito's proboscis sunk in, but he said nothing.

 "This is great.  You're a lot easier to catch than a deer."  The mosquito clambered onto an eyebrow, looking for another likely spot.

His resolve broke.  "Please leave," he said.  "I don't want to squash you, but..."

The mosquito laughed merrily.  "Without me, what are you even accomplishing?"

The Time of Gods

"We have arrived," said the Wisest Stone.

Taku slid to the ground and stretched.  He looked around.  "You said you were to show me the murder of a god."

"And so I have.  You see that jagged stone protrusion?  How it approaches the cliff on the far side of the valley?  That is the spear of Ngatka, who murders his wife and mother, Blessed Istinu of the Soil."

"This is a fable, then?  Of things that happened long ago?"

"No," said the Wisest Stone.  "It is happening now.  Perhaps one day it will finish."  He paused.  "Best not to linger."

Welcome Wagon

The new neighbors were grinning on the couch. They couldn't not grin; their desiccated skin had pulled away from their mouths. They'd been dead for sixteen years. "We appreciate your hospitality," said one of them. He (or she?) lifted a cup to his exposed teeth and poured the tea in. It trickled visibly down the exposed ribs below. "Such a nice house. We want you to know that we're not prejudiced." "Oh?" I said, trying to breathe through my mouth. "You can't help what you are, dear. We know that." "Besides," said the other, "you'll be like us eventually. Everyone is."

Evening the Odds

Dan paused at the body scanner. There was a gorilla perched at the TSA agent's desk. Its nostrils flared, and it turned its deep-set eyes toward Dan. "Why is there a gorilla?" Dan asked. The guard glanced up. "Every hundredth passenger or so, he goes berserk and tears them to pieces. It's a new program." "How does this make anyone safer?" "Oh, it's not about safety. Cars kill dozens of times as many people as airplane crashes. We just figured we'd try to get some of that PR going for us." The gorilla snorted. It was almost smiling at Dan.

Unseen

"Consider," said the spider, climbing up on the doorjamb so it could look down on us. "A lot of people have some quite dangerous creatures in their homes without even knowing. Scorpions, black widows, brown recluses. They hide in dark corners and wait. Nobody's bothered; they keep themselves to themselves. You see?" "I follow you," I said, glancing at the web that still blocked the front door. We could push past it, but it would cling and tangle us. "But I don't see your point." "What might happen - and this is hypothetical - but what might happen if that forbearance were to suddenly... end?"

Pain Management

"After long enough, the pain becomes almost a separate being." Blount gestured, taking in his twisted leg and the layers of scar tissue that ran down his cheek and disappeared under his loose shirt. "Like an animal. I picture it as a cross between a monkey and a parrot, with clever hands and a jagged, hooked beak. Whimsical, no? I make it a pet; I teach it tricks. 'Go to sleep, wait a while.' It is persistent, unruly – like a puppy – but I manage. I reach... an accommodation. One learns to live with agony, eventually. What one cannot live with, what becomes intolerable, is the knowledge that it could have been different." He hitched himself up on his chair, meeting Kantas' eyes. "You meant it for the Dean, I know. You couldn't know that I'd borrow his car after your... tampering. But I hate you for it regardless. And what I hate, I teach it to hate, too." He gestured, and the ingrained strain lines on his face eased fractionally. He straightened like a man relieved of a load. Kantas felt something unseen land heavily on his back. Something with clever hands and a sharp, sharp beak...