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.

Anything But

Penny had a not-a-dog.  It wasn't exactly invisible, but it was an absence rather than a presence.  You could pet it, but it wasn't warm or solid, and it was not fuzzy at all.  It stared at her without devotion or loyalty as she fed it something that was nothing like kibble.  After dinner, Penny let it outside to excrete unfamiliar substances and make noises that were not barks.  Over red wine, we discussed her new lack of a pet.

“Did you consider a cat?” I asked.

“They tried that,” she said.  “No one was sure which one wasn't it.”

Post-Rapture

“They just seem so taken aback by the whole thing,” said Martha, letting the curtain drop.  The mob had sort of organized into an impromptu prayer service, but five different preachers were all trying to take command.  “It even said right in there that none would know the day or the hour.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the unspoken caveat to every religious protestation about the ineffable and inscrutable nature of God,” Laura responded from the couch, not opening her eyes.  “What’s driving them nuts is that they have to confront it head-on now.”

“What caveat?”

“God is unknowable... 'except to us'.”

"Columbidae" at Flash Fiction Online

October is apparently when everything is dropping.  "Columbidae" is up, marking my second appearance at Flash Fiction Online under as many different editors. ;-)

Go read the story that has Anna Yeatts writing in capslock.  I'll guarantee that it's one of the best stories about crazy naked human pigeons you will read for the first time this week.

Morning Eve

The shower always took a while to warm up in the mornings.  Bonnie winced as she stepped in.  Better than wasting water.

“Have you thought about it?” asked the serpent, wrapped around the shower head.

“Yes,” said Bonnie, lathering.

“Is that your answer, then, or...”

“No.  No apples.”

The snake pouted.  “But power overwhelming...”

Bonnie squinted her eyes shut and rinsed.  “You said you’d leave, after.”

The snake rearranged its coils.  “See, the thing with that is-“

“You lied.”

“Technically, I was prevaricating, but-“

Bonnie shut off the tap.  “You could at least pony up for some of the rent.”

"And All the Tribes of the Earth Shall Mourn" at Mythic Delirium

Mythic Delirium returns with, among many others, my story "And All the Tribes of the Earth Shall Mourn," in which a man fails to understand other people's religious ecstasy, and also McDonald's.

UFO 3 Out Now!

The grand and hopefully long-standing traditional annual UFO anthology is out early!  My story, "Why I Bought Satan Two Cokes on the Day I Graduated High School," can be read there, along with a lot of other very funny stories by people more famous and better at writing than I am.

You can buy it at Amazon or (eventually, I presume) from the UFO Publishing page.

Smuggling Dragons

The 7-11 parking lot was empty except for the rust-eaten white Buick.  The guy standing beside it looked like low turnout at the casting call for Suspicious Character #5.

“You got the money?” he greeted me.

I stared at him levelly and indicated the junker.

“Money first.”

The roll was all hundreds.  We’re thorough.

“All right.”  He popped the trunk and cracked it.  A gout of flame nearly took his hand off.  I saw a glimpse of a golden, slit-pupiled eye.  “Satisfied?” he asked.

“I’ve seen enough,” I agreed.  I pulled out my badge.  Fish and Wildlife.  “You’re under arrest.”

Bean Sidhe

The banshee’s wail heralds the death of a loved one.  The popular imagination has imbued the shriek itself as ill-omened or deathly, but in truth, it is not so.  It is only sorrow for the death that comes to us all.  Being fae spirits, they sense the death as or even before it happens, and their cries honor the fallen, eerie and upsetting as mortals might find it.

The world is broader, now.  Faster.  More connected.  Moment by moment, now, they fall, and moment by moment the banshee sings them to sleep.

Play them off, Keyboard Cat.  Play them off.

Hand-made, Locally Grown, Artisanal

Emily looked over the makeshift table, lips pursed.  The nightmare peddler swayed, ugly face indifferent.

“This one?” Emily asked, pointing to an angular silver one.

“Cut you,” the man grunted.

“And these?”  Two distressed yarn balls.

“Spiders.  Spiders everywhere.”

“Not very creative,” Emily sniffed.

“Scare you,” the man gasped, “to death.”

Emily raised an eyebrow and smirked.  “We’re done here,” she told me.

We’d crunched three steps across the gravel when the nightmare man spoke again.  “No,” he said.

The opening of his tent was dark behind him.  “Please,” he said again, straining to focus his eyes.

We kept walking.

Contributions to the War Effort

It’s Donation Day, and we line up outside the cafeteria.  Afternoon classes are canceled, which would be good except today is Art day.  I like Art class.

I line up with the others.  One by one we pass by the open warhead and add our hatred of the enemy to the seethe.  When I make the sign and spit, only a few dribbles emerge.  The soldier doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s recording it all.  Too many under-donations and my whole family will get marked as Unpolitical, maybe even Seditious.

I can’t even feel very upset about that anymore.

Rush

The Beast passes by, and we must jump.  I jump well and catch hold of the thick fur along his flank.  My sister Mia does not jump so well, and she falls.  I wish that I could have caught her.  I wish that anyone could.

The Wall looms ahead.  How many of us, clinging to his hair and skin, will be shaken off by the impact?  And even then, what will we find on the other side but more Beasts, huge and terrible and indifferent?  It is no way to live.

But I will live.

The Beast is gathering speed.

GISHWHES 2014

So apparently there is a thing called the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, and one of the items on this year's list is to get a "published SF author" to write a 140-word story with the phrases "Misha," "Queen of England," and "Elopus" in it.

Well, shoot, son.  Y'all have come to the right place, I tell you what.

Hit me up on Twitter @scattercat or here in the comments; I get e-mails either way.  Drop a few dollars in my hat over there to the right and you'll have your story ASAP.  :-)