Category: fiction
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The Guest in 22b
The motel on the corner of Cedar and Broadway had been a decent stopping point between Memphis and Tulsa on Route 66. Once there had been a fresh coat of paint and nights when the blinking “No Vacancy” sign lit up the neighborhood. But now the salmon pink exterior was nothing but an eyesore and…
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Hollow Needle — Tap and Die 002
The Hollow Needle did not rise above the horizon, but sank into the great peak of Weststool, steam and smoke heralding it in a great circular halo. One of five new taps in Gergia, the opposite of towers, it drilled down into a too-wide hole. Seven carriage bridges—long stone pathways lit by gas lamps—led from…
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Honorifics — Tap and Die 001
The driver looked cockeyed at Black Jack Dawes’s half-frozen hands that held the other reins. The driver took kings and nobles all over the Ivrian side of the world, not crusty old tradesmen in khaki dusters, range hats, knee-high boots slathered in mud, and that black cloak with those unfixed stars on it. And no…
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Nebula Award Winners
Nebula Award winners are a bit difficult to find gathered all in one post on the SFWA site, no offense to them. If you go to the SFWA site — for whom I remain obviously grateful — it’s several extra clicks to get to the proper year, which makes it rather difficult to search by author. I…
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The Way the Birds Call
It was the early morning after a big snow and the sun had just come out from the clouds. Even still, the ground had kept its heat from earlier, hot spring days. Instead of sticking and freezing, it had turned the road into deep mud. Just another day of that familiar thick clay Ed was…
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Tiger Caves and Temple Monkeys
Previously published in The Best Asian Short Stories (2021), Kitaab, Singapore. The hills are dipped in pastel shades of gold and indigo. The wind surrounds me in playful whistles, beating my clothes in sudden outbursts and drying off the sweat on my neck. Joint-aches had troubled me a bit when I climbed up this rock,…
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Borrowed Time
Come sit with me, granddaughter of mine. I want to tell you a story about when I was a young man living in Connecticut in the fifties. As all good stories start, this one begins with once upon a time, but really, it was once upon two times. When I was in my twenties, television…
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Experiments in Time and Place
I wake up as a hair. I wake up as a tree frog. I wake up as a vintage postcard. I wake up as underpants. My waistband is too tight for her—I dig into her hips. I sit in the washing machine all day and all night. I prefer being on than being off.…
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Late Summer
Saxton jammed the butt of his rifle into his shoulder and aimed it at the flash of movement. He kept the front sight trained on a slim form as it moved down the steep slope of a hill his pa, long dead from typhoid, had nicknamed Baldy Knob. His higher position on an…
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Labor of Love
Thomas heard the knock on the door right as he was sitting down with a cold beer for a break. He was both annoyed at the sound of the knock and felt a sense of guilt since he had no real excuse to leave the door unanswered. He let out a sigh as…
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Bleed Till the Last Drop
He watches her with sorrow. Watches his friend, his confidant, give all that she can, and then let the people she serves tear her open for more. He watches her bleed for her people – their people – as if it doesn’t hurt. As if she’s not giving everything that she is to them and…
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Call
What do you do when the burglar winding in your window at night bellows, Call, call the police? There were knives in the kitchen, sticks along the wall, a screw gun and the OED. Mother Earth sang a Capella when she cloned it ten. It could have been more. Then came the report: sleeper lurches…