He held the FridgePak plastic bag close up to his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything special. He saw no spark of life, no memory of love, nor any trace of meaning. He just saw the pulp of a heart. Liquidized. Red and purple, twisted through with fragments of yellow fat, white sinew, the strings and cords that held the organ together. Floating in the melted mushy blur. He squeezed the bag. He felt the texture of ground meat, some gristly chunks remaining. He felt the fluid rush of blood, filling the bag’s vacuum, the indentations of his fingers, his …
Sir Clowdishley and the Sea
His name was Sir Clowdishley. He was once a royalty man, an astronomer to the king. He surveyed great kingdoms of heaven and charted the progress of the stars. He named whole galaxies after his two children and wife, but his family were now all dead, outlived by their celestial counterparts, lost to the sea. He stalked the ocean, walking the shores of England’s beaches, from Land’s End in the north to John O’Groats in the south. He lived off tubers and seaweed, jellyfish he found rotting on the sand, husks of old cod half-desiccated in the salty winds. He …
Sky Painter
The Sky Painter lived on the mountain and painted the sky. He painted it blue for blue skies, and white and grey for clouds. At night he painted it black, with white for all the stars. When the sun rose he dashed its arcing yellow lines across the heavens, and as it sank he brushed it orange and gold over the horizon. He knew he had to paint the sky. If he didn’t paint the sky, who would? Nobody would. He knew that. So he stayed, and he painted the sky. He lived on the mountaintop alone. Sometimes it was …
My Kids
“It happened 2 years ago,” he says. “What did?” Silence. “You don’t remember?” “Did I ever know?” Silence. Reflection. “I don’t think you ever did.” “Then that’s good.” “Yes. It is.” Image from here.
Alegria’s Hair
The first time Tarragon Ray saw the giant Alegria, he was a baby. He was lying in his father’s arms, staring goggle-eyed up at the clouds and the big blue sky. He could hear the comforting crack of his father’s whip, and the low braying of their humpback pony as it strained against its hauliers. He could feel the joggle of their Sheckler’s wagon over the ramshackle red dust road, and the gentle motion of his father around him. “She’s a big girl,” said his father, but Tarragon didn’t understand. He saw his father’s face leaning over him, smiling, and …
Killin Jack the Malakite @ Aoiffe’s Kiss
This is the second time Killin’ Jack has been published, such that any of my longer-term readers have probably already read it. Its publication came as quite a surprise in the latest Aoiffe’s Kiss- I sent it in to them about 18 months ago, in January 2008. In February 2008 it sold to the online zine AtomJack for $10, and I was pleased. I did the proper thing and sent a follow-up email to samsdotpublishing (who print Aoiffe’s Kiss) to withdraw it from consideration. I heard nothing back, but then that wasn’t unusual. And now, in the past several months, …
Mandragora’s Laws
It was a bright spring morning when Mandragora came upon the sweet little cottage with the two dead bodies hanging from its eaves. “What’s all this then?” he asked his skulls, rattling out behind him on their 100 leather tethers. “Looks like a violation,” they called, bobbing and jostling to see. “A clear violation. Bodies from the eaves, what else could that be?” Mandragora walked over and studied the bodies. One was a man and he had his skin intact, though one of his legs was gone, and the other was a woman but it wasn’t easy to tell because …
Bathsheba
(Advisory- this is a graphic story, X-rated really.) Mad Noah can’t give me what I want. No. Mad Noah stands in his tent and shouts at me in the doorway- “Incubus of Satan! If you had SEEN the holy holy holy as I have, if you had SEEN!” And I leave. Mad Noah comes to me at night and between his whisperings of a world gone mad he slips his fingers between my thighs, and while he tells the story of the one eyed fox that learnt to fly above the second flood, he strokes me, and I do what? …
Freya 13
Delathon Rent, a 28 year old technician on the Freya 13 space station, sits slumped in the Outer rim command pod with a gas hatch sealed behind him, video-phone in his lap, waiting for it to ring. He’s been waiting for about 10 minutes now, after intermittently placing calls himself to the Freya Commune for the last hour. He has an awkward itch in the corner of his right eye. He wants to scratch it with the machined tip of his blue biro, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid to even touch his eyes. Instead, he taps the pen against the …
Emhoola’s Gibbet
Emhoola peddled magic. He sold it by the cartload, and everywhere he went it was bought with self-deceiving gusto. He sold it in cheap brass compasses that no longer worked, in the shriveled corpses of pack donkeys whose heads lolled flea-bitten against the sales-rack strappings of his wagon, in straw dolls and dried frogs and mosquito paste and all variety of herbs and medicinal fungi. He was a collector of all things collectible, and he purveyed these wares with a rag and bone man’s pitch few could resist. ?Freedom,” he’d call out, as he strode the dusty main streets of …