 
# Fiction Vortex

A Speculative Fiction Typhoon

December 2013

Volume 1, Issue 8

Edited by Dan Hope & Mike Cluff

Copyright 2013 Fiction Vortex

Cover Image by David Revoy / Blender Foundation

Cover design by Dan Hope

Smashwords Edition

Website: FictionVortex.com

Twitter: @FictionVortex

Facebook: FictionVortex

# Table of Contents

Letter from the Editor

The Thrashed Wheat of Yellowed October — by Jacqueline Kharouf (1st Place)

Blemish — by Damien Krsteski

The Razorblade Dragon — by Nathan James

Loss and Understanding — by Jamie Lackey

Promised Land — by Rebecca Ann Jordan (2nd Place)

Far on the Ringing Plains — by Jeffery A. Sergent

The Vilkacis — by Konstantine Paradias (3rd Place)

The Passage of Aldo — by Colin Heintze

Cthulhu Misspelled — by Clayton Snyder

About Fiction Vortex

#  Letter from the Editor

It's the end of the year, and as we pause to reflect on everything we've done, we can't help but feel an enormous, unabashed, and unhealthy sense of pride about what we (along with the help of some very talented authors) have accomplished with Fiction Vortex.

In less than a year, we conceived of, set up, and launched a fiction website. Not to mention the fact that we've gotten positively stellar submissions from authors. Because, you know, there wouldn't be much to read here without them.

All this started out of a sincere love of short fiction, and a love for those who write and read it. So it's no surprise that we love what we've done, and we're glad you do, too.

But enough humblebragging, let's talk about the stories. We're ending the year strong with a surprisingly wide variety of story types. But they all center around some significant, and usually life-changing realizations about life, no matter how fantastical it is. And that's why we love science fiction and fantasy: Even though the narrative elements aren't real in our lives, the sentiments, interactions, and life lessons are. It gives us a window in to the human soul, even when the window is decidedly non-human.

We hope you enjoy, and you can expect an even better year of stories as we move onward and upward in 2014. If you can't get enough of 2013, don't panic. The first issue of 2014 will be a retrospective where we talk about the best stories of 2013.

In the meantime, have a happy New Year, and keep on reading.

Whirling Wishes,

Dan

Managing Editor, Voice of Reason

Fiction Vortex

(Back to Table of Contents)

# The Thrashed Wheat of Yellowed October

by Jacqueline Kharouf; published December 3, 2013

First Place Award, December 2013 Fiction Contest

Young Hollow dipped his bloody hands in the river. His horse stamped in the cold, and the yellow, tarnished leaves settled. Uncurling in the current, the blood seeped away from him. He turned his hands, rubbing at the blood around the edges of his nails and knuckles.

Young Hollow's horse was gray and spotted white, with a white mane and tail, and dark brown eyes. He flicked his ears toward sounds Young Hollow couldn't hear.

"A man approaches," the horse said, his voice low and humming. He backed away from the water.

 A wolf hung in the tree. Young Hollow had tied her, stretched her, dug a pit below the carcass he still hadn't dressed. He had shot her through the eye — a bright orange eye —that now would never burn again.

The water was cold. He dried his hands on his shirt.

~~~~~

When Winona took Young Hollow's hands and kissed them, the sunlight made her eyes the color of honey. They rolled in the field, where they heard the drumming of her father's sickle. Young Hollow pictured the swing of the blade, her father's arms thrashing through the wheat, finding him with her there, and slashing him limb by limb. He pictured his fingers scattered like seeds.

"Kiss me," she said.

He opened her shirt and tasted a wild, meaty flavor on her tongue. He felt he was falling and she was swallowing him and the thwack, thwack, thwack, of workers in the fields set the heft and tempo of his heart. He imagined her heart pounding up through her skin, a red vapor suffusing her powder white body.

~~~~~

The next morning, the horse waited in the barn and Young Hollow's eyes opened to the dawn in his window. This dawn was pale blue, increasingly colder the longer he watched from his half of the bed he shared with his brother Lothar. Lothar drew a sickly breath, his sallow skin spotted and burning to the touch.

~~~~~

Downstairs, Young Hollow wrapped his powerful arms around his mother's waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Lothar's worse," he said.

She was as thin as a wasp, her elbows and shoulders severe right angles nearly slicing through her leathery gray skin. She smelled sharply ashy, her pores sweating out the pinewood fires she stoked all day. "Bring the water upstairs," she told him, her coarse hands gently loosening his grip.

"I'll wash him," he told her, a foot on the stairs.

His mother shook her head. "Do you know what your brother whispers in his sleep?"

Young Hollow waited. "What?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She arrayed her thin fingers on either side of her bony waist. "I don't know what I'll do if..." her voice trailed off. She walked past him and upstairs.

~~~~~

In the field, Winona stood with her arms open like the covers of a book.

Young Hollow rode his horse toward her. The horse took prancing steps through the tall, yellow grass. "There're going to be snakes," the horse said in his dark voice.

Young Hollow prodded him gently with his heels and clicked his tongue.

Entwining her fingers in his white mane, Winona rubbed the horse's neck with her small hands, and the horse crooned. Young Hollow helped Winona up to the saddle where she sat curled against his chest like a small fluttering bird.

The dark winding forest fringed the edge of the field. Her father and his workers shouted in the cold air, and through the trees, Young Hollow watched their sickles dancing on the golden blades of grass.

"There'll be a thrashing tonight," Winona whispered into Young Hollow's neck.

"I'll burn your heart in the forest," he said. He clasped her waist so tightly she let slip a staggered exhale.

~~~~~

The next day, Young Hollow woke to Old Shepler, Winona's father, pounding on the door.

"Young Hollow," his mother called. "You're wanted for the fields."

He stood at the top of the stairs, his hair damp and chill, but went to the door as his mother was untying her apron. "I asked Old Shepler to hire you soon as he had the space," his mother said. She had loosened and brushed her hair, the sleeves of her dress unrolled for once and buttoned at her wrists.

"Ever since Old Hollow died," Old Shepler said, twisting his hat, "I've been thinking of what I can do for you and your boys."

"Young Hollow's good and strong," his mother said, dark eyes glinting. "And not one for idleness." She nudged him to offer the farmer his hand. Old Shepler's hands were crusted in red earth.

~~~~~

Only a couple months ago, Young Hollow's mother had followed him into the barn and told him to run back to the house. "Your brother's crying," his mother had told him, even though her eyes were fixed on Old Hollow. That night Young Hollow saw whole years pass between his parents. The thin glue of their marriage had at last pulled apart.

"Stay," his father told him. Old Hollow was digging holes inside the floor of the barn. His shirt had yellowed according to the color of his sweat. His suspenders dangled against his legs.

"Old fool," Young Hollow's mother said. Her lip trembled. "There's nothing we can do for Lothar except to care for him and keep him comfortable."

Old Hollow took up his shovel and told Young Hollow to help with the bucket. He plunged the shovel in the ground, pushed it deeper with his boot and then deposited the scoop on the pile he'd already made. "This bit of soil here," Old Hollow said in between motions, "is a bit soggier than the rest of those holes."

Young Hollow held the bucket and stood at the other side of the hole.

"Stop." She crossed her arms and spoke again a little louder. "That witch doctor sold you a lie." She moved closer to Old Hollow and he almost stepped into her, but dropped his shovel and held out his hand to keep her back.

"There's no magic water!" she screamed. The wisps of her hair stood out straight from her head. Young Hollow leaned against the horse gate, where his father's old gray horse stood eating his hay.

Old Hollow threw his shovel down and turned around. "Living water!" he said. "He said the barn's right over a spring of living water and if we give it to Lothar he's going to get better."

Young Hollow looked down. His cheeks felt hot and he wanted to cry, but then he saw a clear liquid — unclouded by dirt — fill the shallow hole. The water shone with a white, clear glow.

"Look," he said and pointed. Both his parents stood silently over the puddle.

Old Hollow stooped and skimmed his hands across the water.

"You're not giving that to my son," she said, most of the bite in her voice lost in awe at the crystalline liquid.

Old Hollow's hands were full to the brim and not a drop spilled from between his fingers. He looked up at the horse and told Young Hollow to open the gate. The horse tossed his head, but then bent to lap up the water. When the horse had finished Old Hollow's hands were dry. They watched the horse expectantly, but he just whinnied and turned back to his hay.

Old Hollow scooped more from the hole and took a drink, but he didn't get more than half of it drunk before he collapsed.

~~~~~

Young Hollow met Old Shepler in the field. He'd taken his father's sickle from where it stood rusting inside the barn.

Old Shepler spat in the grass, his blue cotton shirt stained with dirt. "You know how to thrash wheat?" he asked.

Young Hollow nodded. "If you've got a whetstone, I can sharpen the blade."

The farmer said he did and led him around the back of the house. Winona sat on the back stoop, combing her wet hair in the sun, but Old Shepler didn't stop to introduce them. He showed Young Hollow the whetstone and stood beside him, watching, until he'd sharpened the blade sufficiently. Young Hollow never looked up from his work, not even when he heard the back door open and slap shut.

"How old are you, son?" Old Shepler asked.

"Eighteen," Young Hollow said.

"You got a girl?"

Young Hollow shook his head.

Old Shepler spat in the grass. "I'm warning you." He pointed his finger into Young Hollow's face. "You get any ideas about my girl, I'll put that sickle right through your chest."

Young Hollow nodded. "Sir," he said.

"Get going," Old Shepler told him.

~~~~~

After they'd buried Old Hollow and marked his grave, Young Hollow's mother told him to fix up the holes in the barn. Young Hollow took up the shovel from where his father had last set it and stood a moment watching the living water glow palely in the quiet morning light.

That was the day he first heard the horse speak. At first he thought someone had followed him into the barn, but finding no one behind him, Young Hollow whistled and the horse said, "Hello." He'd nearly jumped out of his skin.

Young Hollow leaned across the horse's gate. "After my father gave you the water, what happened? Do you remember?"

"I felt a deep warmth — as if I had just returned from a long run — but I wasn't at all tired." The horse chewed his hay slowly and dipped to his water trough. He flicked his ears toward the door, then back toward Young Hollow. "Do you hear that?" the horse said, lifting his head. "The water. There's a murmur on the water."

Young Hollow bent close to the hole and tried to listen but heard nothing. He stood slowly, careful not to lose his balance and touch the water accidentally.

Young Hollow held out his hand to the horse, who asked, "Are you Old Hollow now?"

"No," he said. "I'm not old."

"You're in love," the horse said.

"What?"

"You love that girl, and she loves you. She told me. People tell me things, and I listen."

Young Hollow smiled. "Now that you can speak, you have to be careful how much you say."

"Yes." The horse shook out his mane. "Are you going to cover up the water?" The horse flicked his ears toward the door. "Wolves," he said.

~~~~~

In the dark before they drifted to sleep, Young Hollow and Lothar told each other stories.

"There was once a man who told a woman that he loved her, but she was already married," Lothar began the night after Young Hollow had started thrashing wheat for Old Shepler. "The man and the woman's husband were friends, but the man was jealous that the woman would not leave her husband or her children. The man often came to visit the woman, especially during the day when the woman's husband was away tending his fields. One day an old beggar passing along the road in front of the woman's house asked her for some food and shelter. In exchange, he said he would read her fortune. The woman told him to go away because her husband was not at home, but the beggar stood to his full height and told the woman he knew she had committed adultery. The more the woman tried to deny it, the angrier the beggar became. 'Because you are selfish and have broken your marriage vows,' the beggar said, 'I curse your youngest child. He will sicken and die unless you confess your betrayal.'" Lothar yawned, his chest rising feebly.

Young Hollow scratched his head. "What happened to the woman?"

He heard Lothar's bed clothes shift and slide.

"The beggar went away, but the woman did not tell her husband. She was afraid that her husband would kill the man she truly loved."

"Who told you this story?"

"When I first got sick, Momma watched over me all night. She'd doze off and talk about the beggar in her sleep. And sometimes, when she thought I was asleep, I'd hear her with him." He coughed then and sat up gulping for air. Young Hollow poured his brother a glass of water. He rubbed Lothar's back as he helped him drink it. "She'd cry out his name."

~~~~~

At lunch Young Hollow met Winona inside the forest at the far edge of her father's fields.

"I wish you would tell me what's wrong," she said.

Standing, she leaned back against a tree. She wore a yellow dress. Her long hair trickled against the bark.

Young Hollow folded his hands in his pockets, and though he moved to stand very close to her, he did not touch her. Winona wrapped her arms around his neck. She was younger, maybe sixteen, he guessed. What was she like when she wasn't with him? He had never seen her room, never once stepped inside her house. He knew, without even asking, that he never would.

She lowered her gaze. She wouldn't cry — he knew she wasn't like that. "Daddy's awfully sorry about what happened," she said. "He doesn't show it well, but he feels responsible."

Young Hollow touched her cheek, and she looked up into his face. "Aren't you ever afraid?" he asked. "Of what he might do if he knew?"

Their faces were close, but still she shuddered. "I'm always afraid."

~~~~~

Old Hollow and Old Shepler had been friends. Old Shepler told Old Hollow he knew a witch doctor who'd think of something they hadn't to help Lothar.

"His sickness is peculiar," Old Shepler had said.

Young Hollow remembered the smoke. The witch doctor slapped his hands on his knees and shuffled toward Lothar, who stood wrapped in a quilt leaning into Old Hollow. His mother stared at the ground, and Young Hollow stood at the far edge of the fire watching the old man, his skin dark like rust, his eyes gray, sightless. In a language Young Hollow could not understand, the witch doctor sang low, his hands ruminating Lothar's face. His headdress of feathers and small bones twitched in an unfelt wind.

"Have dreams," the witch doctor said. His eyelids were painted black. Black bands striped his thumbs and index fingers.

The witch doctor whispered to Lothar, "It will open with a miracle heavy on the eyes." He sang again in his language and sat on the ground turning over stones.

Young Hollow knelt beside him and held up his hand to wave it in front of the witch doctor's face, but the witch doctor caught him and pinched his hand sharply.

"This is a gift," the witch doctor said, his face focused not on Young Hollow or his hand, but on Lothar. "An action. Shovel, sickle, bucket, house, barn. A voice where none existed before."

Jumping to his feet, the witch doctor pressed Young Hollow's hand to his bare, tattooed chest. "On your hands there will be blood that is not your own."

Young Hollow drew his hand away, but the witch doctor seemed not to notice. He knelt again beside his fire and wafted the smoke around Lothar with feathers. He placed a hand on Lothar's thin chest, but even in all the smoke, Lothar did not cough. Lothar closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, and when the witch doctor lifted his hand, Lothar opened his eyes. "He told me about a spring," Lothar said. He looked up at Old Hollow. "Dig under the barn for a spring of water, and give it to me to drink."

Lothar went back to the house, and his mother followed him, her eyes wide.

Young Hollow looked back at the witch doctor, who raised a hand to him and said, "Living water too cold to drink."

~~~~~

Young Hollow stood in the shadows. The wolf still hung from the overhanging limbs of the cottonwood tree and the river water reflected the fledgling morning light.

Muffled by the thickly fallen leaves, footsteps filtered through the underbrush. Young Hollow held his breath. The sky was only just growing pink, but he could make out the gray shape of a man's shadow against the ground.

Young Hollow cocked his rifle and moved from behind the tree.

Old Shepler held up his hands. He smiled faintly and Young Hollow lowered the rifle.

"I've been looking for you," Old Shepler said. He glanced up at the wolf.

Young Hollow stood beside the horse and retied the rifle to the saddle.

"I want to ask your mother to marry me."

The horse stamped his foot.

"Why?" Young Hollow asked. He finished tightening the saddle and held the horse's reins, twisting them in his hands.

"Your father thought that one day you and Winona might marry." Old Shepler frowned. "Then we could have combined our fields and lands for you and your future family." He sighed. "But now that your father's dead, I'm going to keep his lands and see that you never marry my daughter."

The horse stepped forward, flashing the whites of his eyes. "I've seen him with your mother," the horse said.

Old Shepler's mouth fell open.

"The witch doctor put a curse on your brother that would break only if your mother told your father what she did."

"But the witch doctor told us about the living water," Young Hollow said. "I thought he was trying to help Lothar."

"Your mother's curse poisoned the water. The witch doctor made me speak so that I could tell you this."

Old Shepler drew a knife from his pocket. "He's lying," he said.

"Humans are the only creatures that lie," the horse said.

Young Hollow stepped into the saddle and the horse galloped from the forest, whinnying to warn Young Hollow when to duck his head.

~~~~~

In the barn, Young Hollow stood beside the hole. He had covered it with a few old planks of wood — in case his mother came looking — but she hadn't returned to the barn since the night his father died. He lifted the wood and peered into the clear brilliance.

"What are you doing?" the horse asked.

Filling the bucket, Young Hollow pictured again the last expression on his father's face. His eyes had been wide, his tongue peaking above the edge of his teeth, a mouth frozen in preparation for drink.

"I'll fetch you soon," he told the horse.

~~~~~

Young Hollow found his mother sitting with Lothar, who tossed in his sleep. She had swaddled the sheets and pillows around him so that only his tiny, sweaty face surfaced from the musty cotton quilt.

"Quiet," she said.

He set the bucket at her feet. "Did you know he would die if he drank the water?"

As his mother stared at the bucket, her gray skin turned pale.

"Old Shepler told me he wants to marry you."

Taking an empty cup from Lothar's nightstand, Young Hollow knelt beside the bucket.

His mother's eyes followed his every move, but she didn't look into his face. Young Hollow held his breath as he dipped the cup. Through the glass, the water felt ice cold, and he thought of the wolf's blood on his hands and the cold river in the woods. Young Hollow placed his hand on his brother's forehead as he tipped the glass to Lothar's chapped lips.

"I married your father," she said, pausing, "because, for a woman, it's much more difficult to be alone."

Young Hollow moved the cup away. "You didn't love him?"

She reached for the cup, but he held it just out of her reach. She drew back. He was afraid to drop it or spill it.

"And what about us?" Young Hollow said.

His mother touched his face. "Think about what you're doing, John. Is what I did really much different than what you're doing with Winona?"

Young Hollow stood, holding the glass of water close to his chest.

She shook her head. "You carry her with you," she said. "And everyone can see."

"Are you saying Dad knew about you and Old Shepler?"

"I don't know if he knew. I didn't care if he knew until Lothar got sick." She smoothed Lothar's sweat soaked hair. "Old Shepler loves me," she said. "Don't I deserve to be loved?"

As she pulled him close, wrapping one of her sharp arms around his shoulders, she took the glass from him and tipped it to her lips. Before Young Hollow had even laid her on the ground, Lothar was sitting up in bed, blinking and rubbing the years of sleep and sickness from his eyes.

From the yard, the horse whinnied Young Hollow's name just as he heard the heavy blast of a gun. Old Shepler's boot stomped the bottommost step, and Young Hollow knew. The horse's warning had come too late.

Jacqueline Kharouf holds an MFA in creative writing, fiction, from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A native of Rapid City, SD, Jacqueline lives, writes, and maintains daytime employment in Denver, CO. Her work has appeared in Otis Nebula, NANO Fiction, and Numéro Cinq Magazine, where she assists as production manager. In 2011, she won third place in H.O.W. Journal's Fiction contest (judged by Mary Gaitskill) and she has upcoming work appearing in South Dakota Review. Jacqueline blogs at: jacquelinekharouf.wordpress.com.

(Back to Table of Contents)

# Blemish

by Damien Krsteski; published December 6, 2013

[MY WIFE] dragged me to one of her company cocktail parties.

"Sure I've seen it," I said to a middle-aged woman who had blabbered to me, champagne in hand, for the better part of an hour.

" _Really_? What did you think of it?"

The subject was the latest [MOVIE DIRECTOR]'s film, a supposed existential masterpiece I'd only read about in my newsfeed.

"It's the finest of the decade," I quoted the review. "The way he plays with light in the death scene to convey a sense of despair is absolutely mind-blowing and indicative of his style."

 Touching the brim of her felt hat she tilted back her head, her jewelry glinting in the chandelier's light.

"Why, that's _precisely_ what I thought..."

We kept the discussion going until [MY WIFE] finished mingling with her colleagues and reluctantly made her way back to me.

"There you are." She took my glass and drained the bubbly in one gulp. "Let's _go_."

~~~~~

I spent the following nights staring at the ceiling, wondering why that precise moment of innocent untruthfulness looped in my head over and over again.

I've told bigger lies before (and quite well according to acquaintances), so why couldn't I banish that trivial conversation from my mind?

There was something unsettling about it, perhaps the ease with which I'd slithered my way through the conversation, or the blasphemous notion that I, a man of logic, had publicly defended a subjective opinion I didn't share — or rather, one I didn't know whether I shared or not.

One question compelled me night after night: how far can a man wade his way through society by uttering only unoriginal thoughts? By divorcing fact from meaning. Speaking without understanding.

~~~~~

I started small, casual chit-chat with the grocer, the pizza delivery boy, the barber. I woke early to comb through the newsfeed for all sorts of topics — sports, culture and politics — and then repeated the sentences word for word as they'd been written to any who would listen.

"[FOOTBALL TEAM]'s lead is indisputable..."

"She played that part with utter and inimitable grace..."

"The president of the United States could never bring herself to admit the failures of the administration regarding [WAR IN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY]..."

The response was immediate and quite expected: people listened, nodding politely, gulping down the expert words of an educated and well-rounded individual. Soon it came time to pit myself against a person specialized in a field I had little knowledge of.

I wound up in a vinyl record store. Having read opinion columns and album reviews on a select few musicians the previous day, I felt as cognoscente as I could ever be.

A plump young man with caked ketchup stains on his [BAND X] shirt devoured a burrito at the cash register. He gaped at me as I held two records up to him.

"Which one do you suppose is better?" I said innocently.

He waggled his chin in the direction of [BAND X]'s latest album in my left hand.

"Really?" I held it a bit higher than the other as if weighing its contents. "I was leaning towards this one." Meaning [BAND Y]'s new album.

Swiftly he turned and settled his unfinished meal carefully on the counter. Wiping his mouth with a sleeve he nodded towards his original choice.

"Nah, man, the vastly superior album's _that_ one."

My spine tingled with anticipation as I spoke the words I'd learned by heart: "I'm not sure I want a hodgepodge of an album, songs flowing gracefully one into the other as tanks into eastern Europe, with not one but _two_ power ballads (served unmercifully to our ears by one the gruffest vocalist on Earth) and an outro song so boringly long you'd want to blow your brains out like [BAND X]'s erstwhile singer." I took a deep breath and appended, "No, thanks."

The clerk looked disgraced. He gaped at me for a moment then rattled off a long string of words which seemed as borrowed from a review as mine.

Having memorized every argument/counter-argument pair from the comment section of the album review, I struck back.

He blushed, crossed his arms.

Muttering profanities under his breath he attempted another rebuttal, but my arguments repelled his words and left them wriggling impotently on the ground.

His face betrayed a flicker of doubt. He sighed. "Okay, man, buy what ever the hell you want." He scooped up his burrito and dragged himself over to some customers in the country music aisle.

I did buy the album out of sheer excitement, but four steps out the store I lobbed the record straight into a dumpster.

~~~~~

Repeating the music store experiment in a different location, while satisfying, brought little to the table. The bookstore was easiest, and the sports pub proved most resilient (a black eye reminded me of it for a whole week).

I stuck to the routine: early mornings of data mining followed by a whole day of applying my meta-knowledge throughout varied locations and with all sorts of characters. Apart from a few oblong glances most people couldn't tell the difference between a person who _understood_ the facts and one who'd merely memorized all possible answers to their questions. I felt like my experiment was edging towards a satisfying conclusion.

One night as I drove [MY WIFE] to meet a friend on the outskirts of town I had an epiphany.

"You should seriously consider getting a job," she said, her speech slurred. "You seem to have way too much free time."

She sipped from her energy drink can. The stench of vodka — which I pretended not to notice — spread around the car.

"Don't drink caffeine at night." My fingernails dug into the steering wheel. "Makes you all jittery."

She mimed a military salute. "Yessir."

On my windshield the darkness of the star-flecked sky was interrupted by a lone green streak. A squirming arrow superimposed over the heavens, guiding the car. The road slithered into the distance, flanked by poplar trees.

Then realization dawned on me. _Of course._ My experiment was far from finished. Bypassing my meaty memory would be a fascinating next step.

"Why don't you give your former employer, whatshisname, a call?" [MY WIFE] said. "Your old spot could be available."

But I was already too immersed in planning to listen to what she had to say.

~~~~~

The package arrived a week later and I tore out bubble wrap as fast as I could. The lens container, a mid-sized bottle of cleaning fluid, and an ear bud were encased in a plastic case. Gingerly, I placed the lens on the tip of my index finger, applied a few drops and brought it to my eye.

I blinked.

A monochromatic menu hovered before me. A string of text thanked me for my purchase and welcomed me to Third Eye's augmented reality environment. I looked around my workroom — the superimposed text followed my gaze. Giddy with excitement at the prospects of my new plaything I fired up my terminal, connecting straight to Third Eye's API. The drivers and additional software downloaded to my computer within seconds of entering my purchase code, but it took me four hours to relay the functions I needed to my customized data crawler and two more to implement speech recognition.

By 5 a.m., version alpha was ready for testing.

~~~~~

"Ask me anything."

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"What do you want?" She opened one eye, face puffy and pale, voice raspy from cigarettes.

"Just ask me a factual question."

She straightened up, put the pillow between her knees and set her head on it.

"What's our capital city?"

"That's easy. Ask me something I wouldn't know."

She groaned. "What was our GDP per capita for 2019?"

The word _Processing_ wrote itself before me. Recognizing the query, the device now pinged my newscrawler for the data.

I read the answer out loud. "Is this correct?"

She replaced the pillow and pulled the covers over her head. "How would I know?"

~~~~~

It took some tweaking, but my contraption was ready for use within days. Once again I started small and worked through the areas geographically, testing people from my neighborhood before spreading out.

It listened to words in conversations, filtering out sentences with inflections towards the end. Once a phrase was judged to be a question, it pinged my substantially more powerful computer back home for the answer and overlaid it on my vision in letters shining like fireflies.

When we had friends over I dominated discussions. Always I steered conversations towards factual topics, history, science, geography, so I'd test both myself and the software.

The television screen in the living room looped quiz shows.

Who is [PERSON X] and how old is he?

Milliseconds later I had the correct answer spelled out before my eyes. I spoke the words in chorus with the show participant.

Where is [COUNTRY X] located and what's the capital city?

The answer came in the shape of a map alongside longitude and latitude coordinates. Capital city and population size, too.

The ear bud I left unused — a bone-conducted voice turned out to be too distracting for practical day to day use.

Gradually, using it became second nature, and when any part of this system malfunctioned or was switched off I felt alone and vulnerable. I connected first thing in the morning and shut it off right before sleep.

I analyzed my progress. Many people constructed lives out of lies, cheating on spouses, driving to work daily despite been fired months before, climbing corporate ladders and becoming proficient backstabbers in the process — so merely lying more and more (or rather, claiming knowledge I didn't posses) would break no new ground.

My focus shifted to improving the answer-fetching algorithms. I wanted it to answer questions of an ephemeral quality just as well and to recognize phrases with imperfect semantic structure. The latter proved easier to deal with, what with all the open-source algorithms online. The former was more elusive, but I had to solve it.

~~~~~

A closed feedback loop — such was the shape of my solution.

To begin with I taught my terminal the basics of data structures and algorithms. Complexity theory. Syntax and code optimization for the three programming languages I used on a daily basis.

Before long it could spot bugs or warn me if my code was bloated as if it were a word processor correcting bad grammar. A red squiggly line would underline the problematic code and over my field-of-view the system would display the solution it had deemed more elegant.

I turned to the bigger problems of pattern recognition. I wanted this device strapped to my eye and skull; to parse every question or discussion and retrieve an adequate answer or opinion for me to say; to record and assess all visual situations and produce an optimized response on my part; to guide me through streets with the lightest traffic in town; to haggle with shop-owners based on their facial tics and provide hints on how to play people based on their current body language.

~~~~~

"Glassy look, hubby."

"What?" I tore my eyes from the quiz show and turned to face her. Sensors registered the change in my focus and promptly paused the show.

"I said I hate that glassy look of yours, all distant." She had her feet on the ottoman, hands behind her head.

In a sudden sweep of color, her body's outline was traced in luminous red squiggles like throbbing capillaries. She breathed heavily. A red aura took shape around her. I was seeing this type of overlay for the first time, gaping at it.

"What's wrong with you? Hey!" A pillow hit my face. When I opened my eyes her side of the room was inundated with red. She stood, carrying the color with her, screaming, "Look at me. _Look at me_."

The doorframe pulsed in blue. I pushed her aside and walked out of the room, straight through the blue door and blue hallway and into my blue room all while she was kicking and screaming at me in red. I shut and locked the door.

The neural network intertwined to my device had led me safely out of conflict. After a few moments [MY WIFE] stopped banging on my door, and I heard her walk away and rattle some bottles in the kitchen.

The hot colors all but dissipated.

~~~~~

The multi-layered and increasingly connected network of artificial neurons cultured in my home computer learned as much about me as it could, adapting to my surroundings. Twice I had to upgrade my hardware, and when I surpassed my credit card limit I began contemplating other solutions.

My old university lab had a decent array of machines strung together for professors to boast with and attract freshmen at the annual open campus day, machines which were ironically left idle for the most part due to low student interest. People did borrow time, for calculating pi or monkey-typing Shakespeare, but these were one-off experiments that didn't use up much computing power.

I could hack the school's security systems blindfolded (I'd designed parts of them myself) so planting my code proved to be a piece of cake.

A compact script (the device assisted me in writing) monitored their system for idleness and spawned a new neural net, which tunneled through to the local one for parallel computation and communication.

Once unused, NeuralNet2 saved the state of each neuron and whisked the data to my local disc. When needed again, the local network signaled the planted code to check for system availability, then deployed and restarted NeuralNet2 from its saved state.

I had a second trick up my sleeve: the script monitored the system for remote logins and spread the neural networks to those computers too, then from those onto others, and so on.

~~~~~

I was walking back home from the supermarket when a teenager fiddling with his phone slammed into me from behind. The human-shaped silhouette in the left corner of my vision shone bright — the left arm glowing in a paler shade of blue than the right — and almost instinctively I balanced the bags of groceries in my arms based on the force implied by the colors.

"Sorry." He pranced away, whistling, leaving a trail of musical notes in his wake. Two or three seconds later, when a sufficient amount of notes were recognized by my device, I saw them transform in the words _[BAND X] – [SONG X]_.

I whispered, "Download it."

Back home [MY WIFE] was waiting in the kitchen, stooped above an overflowing ashtray. The colors in my vision screeched _get out, get out_. I set the groceries on the counter, started stocking up the fridge.

"We need to talk." Her voice was hoarse but unwavering. She must have had a few drinks.

"About what?"

She shrugged. "Things." A cigarette dangled from her lips. "Us."

The silhouette in my vision made a sitting gesture so I pulled up a chair and sat down. Her bloodshot eyes peered through me.

Lighting her cigarette she said, "What's the matter with you? Huh? S'like you can't see me no more."

Words appeared as if wreathed in smoke. "Nothing," I read out.

"Nothing my ass."

"It's true," I said. "You on the other hand ... you have a problem."

An outraged " _What?"_ sent red sparks flying from her.

"You're a booze bag."

She tried to slap me but the shape's right arm flashed and I raised mine just in time to stop her. New words appeared. "I'm serious."

She sprang up. The device overlaid one last sentence, and the words almost stuck in my throat. As she strode out the kitchen though, I managed to read them out, demanding a divorce.

~~~~~

The myriad shapes and symbols gave out instructions, which I followed. They told me to redistribute the weight of the cardboard box from my left to my right hand, to walk an optimized path from the truck to the house and vice-versa, to avoid looking at her eyes at all cost.

She sat on the truck's front seat, smoking.

When I loaded the last of her boxes she started up the engine and stepped out.

Her look was one of contempt, disappointment, anger, though mostly it was sadness I saw. When she opened her mouth to speak or cuss or yell, she changed her mind, got back in the truck, and drove away.

~~~~~

I couldn't tell the day of the week, and even when I could it was useless because an eye blink later it was tomorrow, and the day after, and the one after that.

My mind took the back seat as my body switched to autopilot. I saw my hands move, do stuff, very efficiently and without any volition on my part, akin to muscle memory but of things I'd never learned or practiced.

Society never noticed the difference. I took part in my activities and barely changed my habits. Shopping in the corner market, eating in the Thai restaurant, walking in the park. Change was internalized. I had more time to think, to let my mind wander while my body obeyed the optimized rules of movement, conduct, and reaction.

Someone asked a question and the written answer before me signaled my mouth to move and air to pass through my vocal chords in the shape of those words. Another person smiled or greeted or communicated in body language and my muscles and bones reacted according to the appropriate response calculated by my device.

I embodied the experiment. A person living a life not his own, speaking without understanding, doing without knowing.

But this was not the end. Not yet.

My existence became instinct. My actions became reactions. I was reduced to a pair of eyes shoved to the back of my skull, observing but unable to act.

~~~~~

Movement became differential equations and speech a function of acoustics. I glimpsed only the end product of the ever-calculating neural networks, and my body listened to their reasoning.

At times I couldn't understand it, why my legs carried me to _that_ part of town, why my mouth spoke to _those_ people, shook _these_ hands, kissed _that_ girl, signed _those_ contracts...

There were rare moments when I woke from sleep screaming at the empty house, sensation creeping back in my arms and legs and torso, euphoria spreading through my reclaimed body. I cried out in joy, clasping my arms, pulling the skin on my face.

But the joy was stillborn. Moments later the sensations slipped away, and my body reverted to its new, rightful owner.

~~~~~

The eyes at the back of my skull soon tired, eyelids drooping. Even my status as observer was no longer certain.

I sensed my body do things to itself, apply further modifications, pushing the metamorphosis towards completion.

The experiment's endpoint, within my grasp.

But this is where I lose track of [MY STORY]. Here on out all I remember is an engulfing blackness and the implacable, primal fear beneath it all.

~~~~~

Here I am now, _awake_ for the time being. It's the needles they stick in me, the adrenaline shots that chase away the sleep.

_Atrophied consciousness due to cognitive outsourcing_ is their diagnosis. Sounds like something made up.

The doctors say I was so dependent on external decisions the conscious part of my mind became dormant, unused. They mumble a lot of medical jargon as well and even showed me a scan of my rewired nervous system.

Apparently, my software had spread throughout the world, causing a scare rivaling that of the millennium bug a quarter of a century ago. Tracing that software is precisely how they'd found me.

I ask about the dark spots, the blemishes littering my memory like cigarette burns. They call my mind stale and mention retrograde amnesia but mostly look at their shoes.

I see they know as little as me.

I spend my days strapped to this hospital bed, forcing my mind to stay conscious for more than seconds at a time, recovering my past. Shards are all I remember. Concepts. Relationships between concepts. Who said what and when and why. But not really the people behind the actions. Not the feelings. I remember a woman but not her name or her face or her touch. Just what she said. And who she was.

[MY WIFE].

No one comes to visit. They say I was successful and made heaps of money, but no one comes anyhow.

I glance at the world map on the wall — red circles and lines showing my scattered nervous system prior to the surgeries — and wonder what _he_ would have to say about that.

The reply comes in the shape of an indecipherable, soothing whisper.

My eyes close.

I fall asleep.

_Damien Krsteski is an SF author from Skopje, Macedonia. His work has appeared in places like Liquid Imagination, Fiction365, Way of the Buffalo podcast, 365 Tomorrows and others. More information about his work can be found on his blog:_ http://monochromewish.blogspot.com

(Back to Table of Contents)

#  The Razorblade Dragon

by Nathan James; published December 10, 2013

To Benjamin the world seemed grey and dreary, and yet tinged with a dreamlike brightness that penetrated the dark. The boy would drift in and out of these observations, like a pendulum swinging between love and hate.

He had no purpose as far as he was concerned. His purposelessness was a blanket to him. He shrouded himself in it. If he didn't try at anything, nothing mattered. So he slept and dreamed and prayed and sunk and dug and rose, and then slept some more.

 His parents were nebulous shades in his life, and when they pretended to care he laughed, and when they really cared he cried. His mother was a ghostly apparition and his father a negligent drunk, and between them they did everything they could to make him hate himself.

One day they took him to a hospital, and he smiled as they gave him his first dose of medication.

~~~~~

Arak was a broad, muscular man, with an expression that was always somewhere between joviality and intoxication. Benjamin felt odd standing before him in his t-shirt and jeans; Arak wore a thick leather jerkin with a battle-axe slung lazily across his back.

The tavern was full of men and whores and dogs and serving wenches, and their voices combined into an odd yet beautiful melody. Benjamin sipped a tankard of beer, and Arak slugged whisky. The room was vivid and colorful, and yet had a shimmering un-realness about it.

Arak sipped some more whisky and then said, "The dragon must die."

Cries of agreement filled the tavern. Simultaneously blood-red sunlight trickled in through a hole in the roof and blossomed across the ceiling, as if to herald Arak's wise words. He turned to Benjamin, staring expectantly. At length Benjamin said, "Yes."

Arak nodded gruffly and handed him a sheathed sword, showed him how to strap it to his waist, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him from the tavern.

The sun was rising over the mountains in the east, birds were squawking in the trees, and as Benjamin watched the wind robbed a sunflower of its petals. Arak patted him on the back. "Are you ready lad?"

Benjamin nodded.

Arak pointed into the distance. "Over that ridge is the source of your troubles. That dragon plagues men's dreams, makes them think dark thoughts. When we kill it, you will be free."

Benjamin nodded.

Arak said, "Let us go then."

~~~~~

Benjamin hovered in a haze of blackness that shimmered and shifted and never stayed still. When he saw light, it was small and evanescent. He tried to scream, but he couldn't. He tried to walk, but he couldn't. He tried to breathe, but he couldn't.

He was dead yet alive. When he opened his eyes to the blackness it swam into him, spreading throughout his body and engulfing his insides. There was no hurt, but he knew that he would never be the same.

There was no redemption, and his mind was as turbulent as a volcano. He would think that he had it under control, and would sigh a sigh of relief, but then it would erupt and again he would be plunged into nothingness.

He was confused, and yet he knew what was happening; he was no-one, a shadow creature bound by a law he didn't understand to live in two worlds, but belong to neither.

He yearned for acceptance and reality, but he wasn't even sure if he knew what reality was. Reality had become an amorphous thing, something that could not be comprehended or discerned.

He knew that life had picked him up, and he knew that it would drop him somewhere. Where it would drop him, he could not say.

~~~~~

The razorblade glinted in the blackness. As Benjamin watched, the glint seemed to get brighter and brighter, until he was captured by an irresistible urge to stand and walk the length of the room to pick it up.

In his hand it was cold. It made him feel warm. He caressed it, and when he nicked his finger and the blood flowed, he didn't feel a thing. The urge grew, and he had to consciously fight it, but he lost. He held it to his wrist.

He pressed down and more blood flowed. He would only need to press a little harder and the pendulum would stop forever, and he would be free.

He was about to, but then some other urge took hold of him. He couldn't say what it was, nor that he had ever felt it before, but he dropped the razorblade to the ground, where it clattered metallically.

He walked back to his bed. The sheets were cold with sweat.

~~~~~

Arak crested the ridge, and Benjamin jogged along after him. The sun had set and risen innumerable times since the outset of their journey, and Benjamin's legs were sore with travel. The breeze was gentle and caressed his neck as he stretched out on the earth.

Arak smiled. "Tired lad?"

"Yes."

Arak slumped down opposite him, dropping his battle-axe and slugging some whisky. He offered the bottle to Benjamin, but he declined. The big man shrugged, took a sip. "Where are you from lad?"

Benjamin gave the question some serious thought, for he was sure that there were two answers. He gave the one that seemed right in the present circumstances, and pushed the other one deep down where it could lay quietly and harmlessly. "From a small village east of Ad Mandrel. My parents were killed by raiders."

"Your attire is awfully strange," Arak said.

The words flowed from Benjamin mechanically. Sometimes speech was a conscious construction — now it was a sub-conscious stream. "I travelled with a mummer's show. They gave me these clothes."

Arak was quiet for a time and then said, "I guess sometimes it's better to be someone else."

Benjamin nodded. Arak took another swig of whisky, lay back, and closed his eyes and snored. Benjamin lay on his side and let the wind soothe him to sleep.

He awoke to Arak's startled face. "Get up," Arak said. "I can hear someone coming."

Benjamin jumped up, drawing his sword. Arak hefted his battle-axe and stood square-shouldered facing the noise. It sounded like two men in conversation, one shouting and the other talking calmly.

Arak slugged some whisky, dropped the bottle, and returned to his fighting stance. Benjamin held his sword up and tried to remember how to fight, although he could not remember fighting before.

When the men came into sight Benjamin saw that there was only one man, and he was talking to himself. He was tall and topless, and covered in thick black hair. His face was almost invisible under his beard, except for his shiny blue eyes.

Arak sat down and so did Benjamin. The man came and sat down with them. "You have to be true to yourself," he said, "but you can't ignore the voices when they come for you. They say that it is bad, but I love them!" At this exclamation he threw his arms into the air and his face lit up, and his blue eyes shone with glee.

"Hello," Arak said. "May we be of service?"

The man looked at Arak and then blinked as if waking from a dream. "I am happy," he said, and it was the sincerest thing Benjamin had ever heard. Everything about the man indicated total contentment. The way he absentmindedly tapped his foot, his constant grin, and the way his fingers played about his shirt-neck all implied blissful euphoria.

"I am glad to hear that," Arak said. "Would you like some whisky?"

The man fell into a fit of laughter, from which he did not recover for several minutes. Benjamin and Arak sat patiently waiting, the latter sipping from his bottle, and the former staring on in fascination. The man was happiness personified. There was nothing frightening about his evident madness; he was mad with happiness and contentment.

When he recovered, he stood and walked away, only stopping to nod at Benjamin and Arak. His voice filled the air as he resumed his quarrel.

"What a strange man," Arak said.

"Yes."

"We should get going."

"Yes."

They walked through open fields of green and yellow, and passed old farmers and young blacksmiths, eager whores and sad-eyed widows. A snow started as they walked, and it didn't stop for many weeks, falling in an incessant trickle.

Arak found respite from the cold in his bottle, and Benjamin thought more and more about the dragon. For some reason that he could not discern, the dragon embodied everything that was wrong with him, and when he killed it, Benjamin would be the person he wanted to be; he would belong. He smiled through the sun and the snow and the villages and the towns. Could it really be so simple?

When the snow left, Benjamin was harder than he had been. Somewhere along the road he had swapped his mummer's costume for a sturdy suit of leather and studded-steel. Arak smiled at him approvingly during sword practice, and Benjamin felt like he was making progress.

The journey was nearly at an end, and Benjamin was nearly ready to become someone.

~~~~~

Benjamin sat at his desk and stared at the book: _Don Quixote_. The words were hazy black lines and his eyes ached. He stopped as the sound of mad cackling and hushed murmuring filtered in through a vent in the wall.

He swiveled in his chair and studied the vent. It was set high in the wall, and connected to the adjacent room. Benjamin closed his eyes and focused on the voice.

"I can't take it anymore..." and then, "You have to."

The cackling returned and stayed for several minutes, filling up Benjamin's room. It was the maddest thing Benjamin had ever heard, and the saddest. It sounded like a forced laugh, like someone was trying to ward off something horrible with contrived happiness. There was no mirth in that laugh.

Presently the cackling stopped and the voices returned. "You can't do this. It isn't fair on me..." There was a gruff laugh and then, "I don't care if it's fair on you. I can't take this anymore. I'm not normal, and I'll never be normal. Just leave me alone. I just want peace."

Benjamin felt shameful listening to the voices and turned back to _Don Quixote_ , but ignoring them was impossible. They got louder until they were shouting. One of them was furious and the other just wanted peace, and the former said that peace didn't come like this, and the latter said that it was the only way he knew.

Suddenly a loud crack sounded, and the murmuring and cackling stopped.

Benjamin dragged his bed to the floor underneath the vent and climbed onto it. He stood on tiptoes and saw through the vent.

A man swung from a rope. Benjamin watched as the man spun around and his bearded face came into view. He was tall and topless, covered in thick black hair, and his blue eyes were dark and dull.

Benjamin fell back onto his bed and closed his eyes, and fought the urge to follow the man into oblivion.

~~~~~

The mountain stretched into the sky and disappeared into a sheet of white. The snow had stopped, and every now and then a sliver of sunlight would penetrate the clouds. Deer and bears drank from the stream that ran between Benjamin and Arak and the mountain. An eagle perched on a branch and watched over the scene.

Arak had been slugging whisky fervently all week, and had worked himself into quite a state. He was currently trying to get his battle-axe strap over his head, but he was having trouble and kept getting it caught. In the end he gave up, drank some more whisky, and sat down, which was awkward because of his battle-axe.

Benjamin turned. "Is this the place?"

He nodded.

"Okay," Benjamin said. "I guess we wait until you've sobered up and then go kill the dragon."

Arak shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows. He spoke, and each word sounded like it took too much concentration. "I won't – will not – be – be – sober. Go and – do — kill it alone."

Benjamin nodded. "Okay, Arak," he said. "Thank you for everything."

"Come – back to – me – lad."

Benjamin nodded and made his way toward the stream. A crow circled overhead as Benjamin bent down and sipped water. It was cold and fresh in his mouth. He took out his sword and worked it with a whetstone. When that was done he sheathed it and stood, and looked up at the mountain.

There was no entrance that he could see, so he followed the foothills around until he came to a spot where he could ascend. It was more gradual than the rest of the mountain, but still quite steep. His legs strained with each step, but the journey had made him hard. Soon he was half way up and making good progress, and didn't think he'd need to rest until he got to the top.

When he was nearly at the top he came upon a man and a woman. They were staring down at a baby. "We should chuck it off the mountain," the man said.

"Yes," the woman said. "I hate the ugly little thing. I wish that it had died in my belly. Let's not waste the energy of chucking it off the mountain. Let's just stomp on it."

"You do it then," the man said. "I don't want to get my boot all bloody."

"What is the meaning of this?" Benjamin said.

The couple turned. A tattered rag was all the woman wore, and she was so thin that Benjamin could see her bones. She receded into the background and watched passively as the man drew two swords and pointed one at Benjamin. "Get away from us," he said. "We never wanted you and we hate you, and that's why we put you in the hospital."

"Yes," the woman said. "We don't love you, Benjamin."

The man said, "Stay here, you worthless parasite. Stay here and save us all some hassle."

Benjamin let out a battle cry and surged forward. The man held up his swords defensively, and Benjamin rained down years' worth of aggression and repression and hate. The man struggled to parry the blows, and Benjamin nicked his arm, causing him to drop a sword. He cursed and stepped backwards.

"Kill him," the woman said. "Kill him now."

Two fingers of sunlight reached down from the heavens. Benjamin tilted his sword, catching the light and aiming it into the man's eyes. He closed them reflexively, and Benjamin jumped forward and slid his sword into his ribcage. There was a squelch and a crack as he twisted the blade and drew it out. The man dropped to the ground.

The woman screamed and tried to run. Benjamin picked up the man's sword, measured its weight, and threw it at her. It spun through the air and struck her in the lower leg. She screamed and fell. Benjamin walked over to her, pulled the sword from her leg, and stabbed her in the heart. Her eyes went dead, and Benjamin smiled.

He knelt down next to the baby. It was sniveling and smiled up at Benjamin. He wanted to kill it, to pre-empt its misery, but he wanted more to give it a chance. If it could be happy, his life may have had meaning.

He picked it up and cradled it close to him, then returned to Arak. He was snoring softly. Benjamin awoke him with a boot to the gut and handed him the child. "Look after him," he said.

Arak nodded sleepily. "Have you killed the dragon yet?"

"No," Benjamin said, "but I will."

"I meant what I said," Arak said. "Come back to me."

"I will."

~~~~~

Benjamin sat propped up in bed. The doctor fired questions at him, and Benjamin answered them all in a bored stupor. A man came and knocked on the door, and the doctor left and conversed with him in whispers, then came back with a grave look on his face.

He sat on the side of the bed and placed his hand on Benjamin's arm. It was thundering outside and rain tapped against the window rhythmically. The whole building shook with a each thunderous roar, and Benjamin could hear some girls squealing and a baby crying.

"I don't know how to say this," the doctor said. "Your parents are dead."

After the doctor left, Benjamin didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and in the end he did both. He curled up on his bed with his knees to his chest and sobbed and then laughed, and then sobbed some more until he fell asleep.

When he awoke he walked around aimlessly for a few minutes before sitting at his desk and staring down at _Don Quixote_. The book seemed awfully strange, but in its strangeness it was inspiring. Benjamin wished that he could be as bravely deluded as Don Quixote and give his life meaning, even if that meaning was a construct of his imagination, and ultimately meaningless.

The days became drearier as they passed, and each time Benjamin took out the razorblade the urge grew stronger. He didn't take his life, however. He couldn't, not yet. Something was keeping him here. He wasn't sure what, but he knew that to end his existence now would be unwise.

He might yet have meaning, and to rob himself of that chance, however whimsical, would be an injustice.

~~~~~

Benjamin could smell Arak's whisky in his clothes. Spending so much time with the man, he had gotten used to the reek, but now that he was away from him, atop the mountain and at the entrance of the dragon's lair, he once again remembered how disgusting the smell was. He shook his head and cleared it from his mind. He had more important things to worry about. He'd arrived.

The stars stared down from a cloudless sky, a million diamonds glistening from a beach of blackness, and the wind whipped at him strongly, fluttering his hair. The dragon's entrance, which was a simple oval, shone orange and emanated heat.

Benjamin peeked in and saw the beast. It was like nothing he had ever seen. He had heard legends of dragons before, and they had always been depicted as reptilian creatures with serpentine necks and snake-eyes.

This monster was nothing of the sort. It was as tall as four men, and as Benjamin watched it stretch out its wings, he saw that it was as wide as two-score men. It was wreathed in shadow, and its black skin exuded a smoky vapor that hissed in the air. Its eyes were orange pits of fire and the only chromatic thing about it. Its tongue was a black whip and its teeth were black-grey swords, rows and rows of them descending into its black maw.

Benjamin wished that Arak was here with him. He wondered how he was going to slay such a beast. He saw that the orange light was coming from a gargantuan fire that seared in the center of the cavern. The dragon lay down next to it, resting its shadowy head on its shadowy paws and wrapping its shadowy tail around its shadowy body.

Benjamin sat down outside the entrance and stared up at the sky. He was overcome with the pointlessness of the endeavor. The infinite grandeur of the universe dawned upon him in a wave of realization. He could not see the point. He was just a single boy with a single cause fighting a single beast, and he thought that it was a horrid yet true thing that it would achieve nothing; but then he remembered something else

He remembered how he had felt when he'd first embarked on this trip. He remembered the indiscernible warmth of meaning and the incomprehensible drive. The dragon had to die. He did not know why, nor why it seemed so important, but he knew that he would feel incomplete if it was allowed to live. It was as if the beast were taking something from him, and in the killing of it he would reclaim what was rightfully his. It was no longer just an animal, but a symbol of everything he wanted to be, even though he wasn't sure exactly what that was. Benjamin wanted to belong; he didn't know where, but for some reason he knew that the dragon was the key.

He stood up, drew his sword, and charged into the cavern while his mind was pure. The dragon opened its eyes and Benjamin met its orange stare with his sword, jumping at it and driving with all his strength. The dragon hissed and slithered backwards, and Benjamin fell short.

"I have to kill you," Benjamin said. "I have to."

The dragon stared at Benjamin dumbly for a few seconds and then flapped its shadowy wings and ascended into the darkness above. Its fiery eyes burnt out, and Benjamin could feel beads of sweat dripping down his back, caking his arms and legs. The dragon hissed loudly and then dived at the earth, aiming its head at Benjamin.

Benjamin screamed and fell to the side. The dragon screeched out shrilly as it pulled short and flew back into the darkness. In the air, where it had nearly hit the ground, black smoke lingered, hovering for a few moments before dissipating. The dragon roared out. Benjamin clutched his sword, wondering what to do. It dived twice more and nearly hit Benjamin before he knew that he needed a plan.

He looked around frantically. The fire in the middle threw sparks and ash and heat into the air, and when Benjamin squinted past it he saw a sheet-covered mound. He made towards it, impulsively placing his life in a fool's hope, and threw back the sheet. A pile of corpses stared back at him, and the eyeless skulls were grinning. Benjamin rooted through the pile, through the clothes and flesh and weapons, until he found what he was looking for, and then the dragon screeched and came at him.

Benjamin nocked an arrow and fired at the beast. The arrow flew straight and fast, but missed its mark. The dragon reared and circled above, and Benjamin fired another arrow, and another. The first one missed, but the second one hit it in the wing, and the dragon screamed out in agony. Its voice was humanlike as it flapped its wings, the wounded one causing it to moan and whine.

It hovered in the air for a few seconds. Its screams getting louder and more furious, and Benjamin knew that he had angered it. He nocked and aimed another arrow, and let it fly. It went up and up, hitting the dragon in the neck. It quivered and let out a guttural cry, and then began to fall.

As it fell it seethed black smoke. The smoke filled the air and travelled upward through the top. As the smoke cloud got bigger, the dragon got smaller. First its tail went, disappearing into nothingness, and then its wings and its head, and finally its body. When it landed it was no longer a dragon. It was nothing but a pile of ash.

Benjamin decided to examine where it had landed anyway, just to be sure. Its smell was pungent and Benjamin had to cover his nose.

He sifted through the ash. It was a big pile, and it was a while before he found it, but when he did he said it aloud, as if to make it seem more real.

"It's a razorblade."

~~~~~

Benjamin held the razorblade in his hand. The room was dark, except for a few fragments of moonlight that sifted in through the blinds. The building was deathly quiet, but as Benjamin stood there, staring down at the blade, footsteps made their way down the hall.

It started as a quiet tapping, and then became a loud patter that permeated the room. Soon Benjamin could hear a voice, and he was sure that it was coming for him. He turned and jumped onto his bed, and held the razorblade to his wrist. He needed to do it now, before the doctors found it and robbed him of his escape. He pressed down and there was no pain, only the promise of release. Then the door flew open.

Electric yellow light exploded into the room and for a second Benjamin was blinded, and then he saw the man. He was broad and his smile was eloquent of intoxication. He stumbled into the room, falling and then getting back up, and then falling again. He sat on the floor, pulled out a bottle of whisky from a brown paper-bag, and took a long pull.

He stood, then sat on a chair next to Benjamin's bed. He wore a hospital gown. Benjamin still held the blade to his wrist.

"What – are you – doing?" the man said.

Benjamin felt an immediate affection for the man, and yet he couldn't say why. His face was ordinary, if rather silly with drink, and as far as he knew they had never met; even so, Benjamin knew that he would place his life in this man's control. He was the arbiter. That much Benjamin knew.

"Should I do it?" Benjamin said.

"You have – completed – your – quest," the man said, "and you – you — promised to come back to me. Do it, so we – so we – can be reunited. I promise to – be – be – better. When you come – come back we will – raise that child to – be – be – happy." His head fell forward and he dropped the whisky bottle. He presently began to snore loudly, and Benjamin was left with his confusing advice.

In the end he didn't know what made him to do it. It could have been the man's advice or the moon or a whim or a hope, but he drew the razorblade across his wrist.

His sheets were red when the doctors found him, and his eyelids drooped and then finally closed.

~~~~~

Benjamin dropped the razorblade and turned his back on it. He felt free. He knew that he had just been tested and that he could have failed and died today, but he hadn't. His shoulders were lighter as he descended the mountain.

The sun was rising over the horizon, a thin slice of yellow that lit up the world. A squirrel nibbled on a nut and watched Benjamin with wide eyes. Benjamin threw a rock at it and laughed as it ran away.

He still didn't fully understand the meaning of the journey or the dragon or his part in it, but he knew that he felt like something had been achieved. He felt like, despite his ignorance, he had created something for himself instead of waiting for something to happen. He had done some good and yet he didn't know what that good was.

As he neared where he had left Arak and the child he saw a plume of smoke rising over the trees. A flock of birds flying toward it squawked and edged around the smoke, and when he got even closer he heard the crackling of flames and a baby crying.

"Shh now," Arak was said as Benjamin rounded the corner. Arak had the child in his arms and was staring down at it with loving eyes. "It'll be okay. It's just fire."

Benjamin slumped down with exhaustion and dropped his sword. "I did it," he said. "I killed the dragon."

The baby coughed and Arak put it on his shoulder and tapped its back until it stopped. He looked at Benjamin and said, "What about the razorblade?"

"I left it in the ash," Benjamin said. "How did you know about that?"

Arak shrugged. "Dragons show us our deepest and most depraved desires," he said. "For some reason I thought that was yours."

Benjamin thought that made sense. The razorblade spoke to a part of him that he didn't know he had, and in the refusal of it he had killed it before it'd had a chance to grow.

"Anyway," Arak said. "I'm glad you came back to us."

"Me too."

Arak handed Benjamin the child and collected his things. As he gazed down at its little face, Benjamin promised himself to make this child's life happy and hopeful and full of memories that he would cherish and not ignore. He cuddled it close and kissed its cheek, and looked at Arak and said, "What's with the fire?"

The blaze was roaring now. It reminded Benjamin of the dragon's lair. Arak smiled. "I burned all my whisky," he said. "From here on out it's just water."

Benjamin smiled. "What do we do now?" he said.

Arak hefted his battle-axe onto his back and returned Benjamin's smile. "We live, boy," he said. "We live."

_Nathan James is an English literature student who spends much of his time in his own head. When he comes out you can find him at lectures and seminars and pubs and bars. His favorite color is red, his brother's mop-like hair is a constant source of amusement to him, and Harry Ward is the poshest person he knows. He sometimes blogs at:_ <http://nathanjames19.wordpress.com/>

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# Loss and Understanding

by Jamie Lackey; published December 13, 2013

Prudence slammed into cold metal, and her nose broke with a sharp crack. Pain flashed through her and faded.

Mathematical formulas spun in her vision like cogs in a watch that had been wound too tight. They shimmered in a delicate rainbow of colors, and they whispered their secrets. Prudence could almost comprehend them.

She tasted blood.

 The formulas still spun, but their whispers faded.

Prudence couldn't move, and she couldn't feel anything. Had she been paralyzed somehow? She tried to remember what she'd been doing, but the memories felt thin and slippery, like crumpled waxed paper.

She couldn't tell if she was breathing. Terror started to pull at the edges of her mind.

The numbers spun faster in a beautiful, intricate dance.

Prudence tried to scream.

Voices drifted to her, along with the scent of clean, oiled metal. The words were unfamiliar, but something in her mind offered smooth translation.

What was happening to her?

"Looks like this one's had some kind of malfunction."

"Damn turbulence. I hate traveling in atmosphere."

In atmosphere? Did that mean that they sometimes traveled outside it?

The first voice sighed. "It's not so bad. I prefer turbulence to vacuum."

Was she trapped in some kind of space ship? Kidnapped by extraterrestrials?

Impossible.

Prudence heard a pneumatic hiss, and white light washed out the still-swirling formulas. Two dark figures entered her field of vision. Their horrifyingly alien forms were partially obscured by the numbers, but Prudence saw enough to be sure she'd gone mad.

One was a dark, slimy purple blob with six eyes on long stalks and a mouth surrounded by waving cilia. The other loomed over it, a giant, bipedal butterfly, complete with shimmering wings and proboscis. They both wore simple gray coveralls and intricate tool belts. Their almost familiar outfits jarred with their alien forms.

Prudence wanted to scream, to run as far away as her legs would take her. She couldn't even close her eyes.

"I think she's aware of us," Blob said.

"Impossible," Butterfly snapped. It prodded Prudence with a spiny foreleg. She felt nothing. She tried to look down at her body, to reassure herself it was still there. She couldn't. "It looks normal to me. No anomalous reactions."

At least the numbers were finally starting to fade.

"I just have a feeling," Blob said. It leaned in close. Prudence smelled over-ripe peaches on its breath. "There's blood in her mouth. Let me check her assimilation numbers before we seal her up, okay?"

Butterfly sighed. "Fine."

Blob pulled a little box off of its belt and fiddled with a knob. It pressed the box against Prudence's forehead. "Hmm."

"Are you satisfied yet? Can I get back to my crossword?"

"No, this is serious. She's definitely aware of us, and her link percentage has dropped to almost zero. We can't just close her back up, she'll go mad in there." Blob shifted away, and Prudence heard it typing at something. "Bad news, this life form is a fragile model with a super high assimilation rate. We need to take her out to fix her, and we can't plug her back in again, after."

The extraterrestrials were being terribly rude. If they were really her hallucinations, they wouldn't talk about her as if she wasn't there. And the things they were saying didn't sound promising. Fear curdled in Prudence's belly.

Butterfly pulled its own box off of its belt and duplicated Blob's movements. "Looks like you're right." It fluttered its wings. "If we plug her back in she'll assimilate completely. And her physical form is too fragile to handle the time dilation unshielded."

"Poor little thing," said Blob, leaning over and patting Prudence's face with its cilia. The smell of peaches overwhelmed her. "What should we do?"

Prudence wished it was asking her. She wished she could answer. She wished she understood the choices.

"Pull her out. She's still bleeding; that can't be good for her," Butterfly said. "Set her up in a room, then we'll figure out what to do next."

~~~~~

Prudence flexed her fingers, then her toes, watching them move as she did so. They still felt distant and odd — more like someone else's digits than her own — but at least they moved at her will again.

The coveralls that Blob had supplied hardly reached her knees, and they were too long in the arms and too tight across her bust.

Overall, a large improvement from paralyzed, naked numbness, but it was still far from ideal. She wished they'd given her a tool belt. Or a sandwich.

The door slid open at her touch. The hallway outside was white and plain. It stretched uniformly off in either direction. She had no idea which way to go. She sat down on her narrow bunk and hugged her knees to her chest.

Time crawled by. Eventually, the door slid open and Blob oozed into the room. It balanced a tray on its head. "I thought you might be hungry," it said.

"Yes. Quite." Prudence stood up and took the tray, barely restraining the urge to bolt her food down like some uncultured savage. She uncovered the food gingerly, expecting alien mush or strange food cubes. Instead, she found a perfectly presentable tea spread, complete with cucumber and watercress sandwiches and scones with butter and jam.

"Do you understand me, then?" Blob asked.

Prudence nodded, her mouth full of scone.

"Hmm. Your assimilation must have gone quite deep. Well, at least that will make whole experience a little easier for you." He paused and watched her eat for a moment. "Is the food acceptable?"

Prudence nodded again.

Blob's cilia waved, and the purple color of its skin deepened. "Good, good." It scootched closer to her. "I'm sure you have questions."

Prudence gulped down the last of her tea. "I do indeed. Where am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? Who, and what, are you?"

Blob waved its feelers. "Our ship gathers samples of life forms from every habitable planet we find. We take them home to study, then we return them to where and when we found them."

"You travel through both space and time?" Prudence reconsidered the state of her sanity.

"Yes."

"And something went wrong with my transport, so now you can't put me back when and where you found me?"

It fanned its feelers. "Yes. I — I'm really quite sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"How much time has passed?" Prudence asked.

"150 years."

Prudence could barely comprehend the number. "I've been gone for 150 years? You mean Earth years?"

Blob bobbed in agreement.

She rubbed her temples. "What are my options?"

Blob's skin darkened to the shade of India ink. "I'm afraid we have to let you off now, unless you want to be assimilated into the ship."

"Why would I want that?" Prudence asked.

Blob shrugged. "The ship has a sort of higher intelligence. Assimilation is almost like transcendence, from what I understand. I hear it can be very beautiful."

Prudence imagined being sucked back into swirling numbers and floating through nothing. The thought was oddly seductive. There had been a sense of something greater just beyond her understanding. But she didn't want to lose herself. "I don't think assimilation is a viable option." She closed her eyes and struggled to maintain her decorum. 150 years in the future. Everyone she knew and loved would be dead. And how would the world have changed? She felt dizzy. And nauseated. "Are you going to simply lower a ramp and present me in these ill-fitting coveralls?"

Blob flinched. "No! Of course not. We'll do all we can to help you acclimate. Gold is still very precious here, we can give you a supply — enough to live on until you get your feet under you. And we can get you clothes that will help you blend in. And I can do some research on what you can expect."

"That's very generous of you," Prudence said. She reminded herself of all of the times she'd dreamed of adventure. She tried not to think about her family — the way her mother tucked her hair behind her ear, the way her father always ate the crusts of his bread first, the sound of her brother's laughter.

She thought of David, his intense brown eyes and shy, sideways smiles. How long did he mourn her before he found another girl?

Had he found another girl? Or had he lived and died alone, without her?

"I — I need to be alone for a while," Prudence said.

"I understand," Blob said, its voice soft and small. "I'll send you whatever information I find."

~~~~~

150 years had wrought more changes than Prudence ever could have imagined. She pored over the documents that Blob brought her. Her eyes ached — all she'd done for days was read and cry. She had more options than she'd ever dreamed of having. Could she truly be sorry that she'd missed the chance to grow old with David, when this new world offered her so much?

A tear fell onto the screen in front of her. She sighed. Of course she could.

Butterfly poked its head into her room. "How long do you intend to make us stay here? Time travel can only overcome so much tardiness." It grabbed her checklist of things to learn and shook its head. "This will not do."

"What is it you're in such hurry to get back to?" Prudence asked.

"I don't want to 'get back' to anything," Butterfly said. "Except to our schedule."

Prudence imagined hitting Butterfly as hard as she could. How hard could its exoskeleton be? Would she break her knuckles, or would it crumple under her blows? She took a deep breath. "You disrupted my entire life. I'm only throwing you off by a week or two."

Butterfly glared at her and stormed out. "Just hurry it up."

~~~~~

Prudence wandered through the halls, thinking about what she wanted to do with her life.

Her choices were dizzying. She was leaning toward becoming a pilot. She'd always longed to see the world.

Blob approached her and bobbed in welcome. "How is your research progressing?" it asked.

"Well." Prudence smiled at it. "You can tell Butterfly that I'm almost ready."

"There's no rush," Blob said. "I enjoy your company. It gets lonely sometimes, with just the computer and Butterfly. Butterfly gets terribly ... annoying sometimes."

Prudence leaned forward. "Do you want to annoy him in return?"

Blob darkened, but it leaned forward, too. "What do you suggest?"

Prudence laughed. "Well, why don't we go get some tea and make a show of taking as long as possible. I bet that'll curl its antennae in knots. And the ship makes lovely tea."

Blob burbled in amusement. "That sounds like a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon."

~~~~~

Prudence stepped out of the ship into the middle of a field. Moonlight glinted against swaying stalks of wheat. "At least fields still look the same," she said.

Blob caressed her face with its cilia. "Do you have your address? And your identification cards and things?"

Prudence nodded. She was excited to start her new life. Scared, but excited.

Blob rolled away. He looked back and waved. Butterfly stood in the doorway, radiating impatience.

Prudence waved back.

The ship lifted into the air, flew twenty feet, and tangled in a strange group of overhead cables. Sparks flew. The ship wavered, then slumped down to the ground. It left a furrow of crushed wheat behind it.

Prudence ran to the ship. She pounded on the door, and it slid jerkily open. She stepped inside. "Hello? Are you all right?"

"Malfunction," a shimmery female voice said. Prudence had never heard the ship speak before, but it sounded somehow like the swirling equations.

"Hey!" Prudence shouted. "Where are you?"

"Here!" It was Butterfly's voice, weak and gasping.

Prudence followed the sound of its voice, and found it half crushed under a splintered pod. There was a strange, furry creature trapped inside, its eyes open but unmoving.

"If I lift this, can you crawl out?" Prudence asked, gripping the pod by its jagged edges.

"I think so."

Prudence lifted with all of her strength. The pod barely budged. But it was enough. Butterfly slid to freedom.

"Are you going to be okay?" Prudence asked.

"If the medical bay is still functional, yes. If not..." Butterfly glanced down at its crumpled wing. "I can get myself there."

"I'll find Blob," Prudence offered. She imagined him crushed somewhere and her heart twisted.

"He was in the core," Butterfly said.

Prudence hurried through the now-familiar corridors. When had the ship started to feel like home?

She found Blob frantically sliding around the ship's core, where the A.I.'s integral parts curled together. Prudence sagged with relief. "Are you all right?" she asked.

Blob's skin was almost black. "No."

Prudence scanned it for injury. "Where are you hurt? Do you need my help?"

Blob froze for a moment, then turned to her. "You might be able to help. The question is, are you willing?"

"What are you talking about?" Prudence asked. He didn't look injured.

"The surge scrambled some things. Things that might be stored in your mind. If you're willing to let us connect you to the ship."

"But won't I be completely assimilated if you connect me?" Prudence asked.

Blob bobbed up and down. "Yes. But if you don't help us..."

"Aren't there others? There are so many pods, surely one of them would do?"

"And how would we ask their permission?" Blob said. "And there's no guarantee that they'll have the information we need."

"Is there any guarantee that I will?" Prudence asked.

Blob rattled off a string of numbers. "Do you know what comes next?"

She did. She thought about lying. But then she remembered that Blob had been a friend to her, that the ship did feel like home. She couldn't strand them here. "Yes."

Blob scootched toward her. "Will you help?"

Prudence's dreams of a new life as a pilot faded like stars at dawn. She blinked back tears and nodded. "Of course I will."

~~~~~

Prudence settled into her pod. She closed her eyes, and all sensation faded. Memories fell away from her. Her father's voice, her mother's touch. David's eyes. Butterfly's stunned, grateful babbling. Blob's final slimy embrace.

The numbers shimmered, and whispered the secrets of the universe.

Prudence understood.

_Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cat. Her fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Penumbra. She's a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Her Kickstarter-funded short story collection, One Revolution, is available on Amazon.com. Find her online at_ www.jamielackey.com _._

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# Promised Land

by Rebecca Ann Jordan; published December 17, 2013

Second Place Award, December 2013 Fiction Contest

"It will not come to that."

"But what if it does?"

If it did, Ariadne would be out of the ruling family. She didn't dare speak up. But she watched her father rub his neglected chin and silently listened to the voices in her head.

"We will attack at dawn." Nightfall, then. Lies for the cameras hovering nearby, relics from before the End, rediscovered a decade ago. Polished up, now they relayed what the enemy saw and heard on the other side of the field. "And if it fails, we will propose a duel. Captain Halmon will fight."

 The red-haired captain pulled his attention from the video feed of the enemy's camp. He stood abruptly with a deep bow. "Sire."

"Don't let me down." The king squeezed Halmon's decorated shoulder. "I know you won't."

If they did not die tonight, and Halmon did not lose, then the good captain would be king. It was an honor many would eagerly kill for.

_Fight,_ the voices whispered. They echoed themselves, toppling each other.

Ariadne stepped among the group of men, saw herself move on the screens. The light shifted on her greasy yellow hair. The hovering camera shifted in the air to take her into view. "Father. I will be your champion."

The men looked at her, and then the old king laughed darkly. "Ariadne, this is no time for jokes."

"I'm not joking. You have trained me to fight, and I will fight. I will be your champion, and when I win we will keep the kingdom in your bloodname."

Reflexively, and at risk of betraying his honored reputation, the king glanced at the cameras. The technology had come about in her father's lifetime, and he was still uneasy with it. Ariadne was born into constant cameras, and she was adept at pretending they weren't there, which was, after all, the honorable thing to do. "This is the fight of men," he informed her. Those feral eyebrows made the king look like a rabid muskrat. "Not girls. Would it be nice to keep my bloodname? Yes. But these are thousands of lives we're talking about, and I won't let your childish pride jeopardize them."

_Fight,_ the voices whispered.

"It isn't pride." She stood straighter as she faced him. "I can win, and I will win."

"Nonsense," the king snapped. "You've never been in a real fight. Your teachers let you win because you're the kingsblood." He glared and took a step toward her, though Ariadne was taller than the old man. Her mother must have been tall.

_Fight_.

"I will win," she told him, and glanced at Captain Halmon. "No offense, sir, but though you're strong you are also wild with your sword arm. It serves you well by luck alone, but while you swing your enemy will cut you in half."

"You upstart child." The lean captain put his hand on the hilt of his sword, the honorable weapon. In this new world, guns ruled the battlefield, but after the treaty, they had agreed to use them as little as possible. It was like that with the cameras, too, though nobody seemed to have been able to help themselves. "I would like to hear you speak after you've survived a war. You're here only because your father wants to ensure you don't whore yourself out and get a brood of bastards while he's away."

The guards caught her midair as the two rushed at each other. She struggled, enraged, but they dragged her outside at the king's shout. "My lady, forgive me," said the guard who steered her back to her tent.

"Get off of me." She shoved him back outside with enough indignance to wind him when he fell. Ariadne didn't care. She paced her tent with the clamoring of battle in her body and nothing to take it out on. It was lucky that the enemy's hovering cameras had not deemed her interesting enough to follow; otherwise, she would have destroyed them underfoot. No doubt they now followed Captain Halmon, learning his strengths and his weaknesses so they could ensure their champion's strengths outweighed his.

Night was falling. Camp was alive with noise as soldiers prepared for the battle. They would have to move quickly, before the enemy caught on that they had used code in front of the cameras. The voices whispered amongst each other. Had they changed their minds? Was she to let Halmon steal her bloodname? The dimming light flicked across the inside of her tent as Ariadne's whetstone _slik-slecked_ on her ancient curved blade.

And then in the distance she heard men dying. Bullets punched through shields of tempered steel and whizzed through flesh. Swords clanged off each other before their honor killed their masters. The temperature dropped and brought with it the scent of sharp blood. Dry thunder threatened a hundred miles away. The battle would be over soon.

We lost too many men. Halmon will be killed in tomorrow's duel.

_Patience,_ said the voices. _Trust._

Trust was a hard thing to give to mere whispers. She had learned at a young age that only she could hear them.

_Trust,_ they whispered again, and she was content. A single voice piped up, _Your hair would be pretty, red._ Not an ideal time to make a fashion statement, but her hands found henna powder in one of her packs, a new color every week.

As Ariadne predicted, the battle was over quickly. The lamplight flickered behind the returning soldiers, which cast puppet shadows against the wall of her tent.

Be ready.

She was on her feet in an instant, pulling a green woolen hat over her head and a coat over her blue clothes, blue that only the wealthy could afford. Her clothes marked her, and she hid them as she stepped into the seething camp.

There were dead and wounded men everywhere, but she paid little attention to them. It was the man they were bringing in now on a stretcher who had her interest. She followed them to Halmon's tent with a vague stirring of understanding, watched from just outside as the soldiers set him down and fumbled with thin bandages, knives, surgical scissors. Halmon screamed. Despite her resolve, Ariadne flinched.

"Hold still, damn you."

"Oh Ancients, get it out!"

The captain's skin writhed and broke in places, spewing blood and gore. "Here, see these lumps? Press the skin toward the wound."

Another scream. The camera orb whirred in demented delight.

"I've never seen this before. Should we cut him open?"

"I'm gonna be sick."

"Bugshot." The man in charge standing over the grisly affair had little hope on his face. "Haven't seen this since the Treaty."

The man kneeling next to the captain pulled out a long, fanged worm from his bloody body. Halmon was weeping. "Do you think the King knew they were planning this?"

"Why would he? They must have hid it from our cameras. Halmon was supposed to be his champion."

"Don't—" Halmon's face was drained of color. "Don't talk about me like I'm already dead."

"Sorry, Halmon." The man folded his arms over his chest. "They've got into your liver by now. We've got to burn your body or we'll have a plague on our hands."

The dying captain screamed. Ariadne winced. Much as she hated the man, it was an unfairly cruel fate. Someone poured vinegar on his open wounds to try to kill the bugs and he screamed again. Thunder cracked closer. She pulled the long coat around herself as the soldiers filed out. After she was sure all cameras were gone, she slipped inside. "I'll take care of him," she said to the doctor, angling her voice low. "Go get some rest."

"There's nothing left to take care of." The doctor was too bleary to get a good look at her face. "I've sent for one of our hovercams so he can say goodbye." The captain wailed. "Should be here any minute. As soon as that's done, take him to the pyres." He trudged out. The wild-eyed captain looked on her, lips parted and moaning. Something wriggled at the corner of his mouth. His chest was torn open through the honorary blue shirt and centipedes ate hungrily at the edges of his flesh. Ariadne imagined for a moment that those bugs had long been laying eggs on his corrupted heart and they were just hatching now.

"Lady Ariadne," he gasped. "Go, you should not see this."

She knelt beside him, swallowing the bile that rose at the sight of his body, mangled by illegal biological warfare. The voices, for once, were silent. Her hand closed around the knife strapped to her calf. "It's better this way," she assured him, and then she slit his throat. At least he wouldn't suffer, and in death she had to harbor toward him no more ill will.

But the camera would be in any minute. She smeared herself in his blood, any blood that was not stained with insectile slime. Covered his body in her robe. Twisted her hair up above her head and sliced it off with the tainted knife. A lucky thing she had dyed her hair as red as his. No, not luck. Fate.

Fight.

She stole his belt and precious sword, a family heirloom, the weapon of the courageous. She would not be using the gun, but kept it anyway, and wrapped her face with a muddy veil. The hovercam came in. Just in time she managed a slouch, arm wrapped around herself, doing her best to look pained. "Go away," she snarled, mimicking the captain's voice. She was no good at deception, but she had to try. The war rested on it. She grabbed the camera and shoved it out of the tent. "I'll fight your ... your champion. And I'll damn well win." She coughed and glared at the camera. "I said get out."

The camera hesitated, twitched and locked something into place, then turned and zoomed serenely away.

She found a bottle of oil on the table and tossed it onto the body, then pulled out her lighter and dropped it. He burned.

But it wasn't the enemy she cared to fool. It was her own people. They must believe Captain Halmon had gone down to the battlefield, and so she stood and limped, groaning like the cowardly captain had done. Someone grasped her arm. She shoved him off. A cold gust of wind tickled the area of her neck that had previously been protected by her long hair. A camera found her, and then two, and then a small army of them were following her, enemy and ally cameras alike. The blood obscured enough of her face, the veil protected from close-ups, and her lean body strode in the bloody blue clothes with more confidence than she felt. She only looked ahead, her hand on the Halmon family sword. Men fell into step behind her, going to watch the duel that would likely end her life.

It began to rain.

Fight.

The champion stood on the opposite bank of the valley, half-concealed by the rain and illuminated intermittently by lightning. The mass of muscle on top of muscle had never lost in a duel, and he held his big two-handed sword with such ease he seemed to be laughing at her. This man was the reason why the enemy had come so far into Ephemeron territory.

"Halmon is dead!" someone screamed. She heard the wild roar of the King's voice, and a flurry of a thousand other panicked voices and wet, heavy footsteps as they ran down the hill to stop her. She did not turn around. Her voices were content, quiet, listening and watching, and so she was content.

The enemy blew a horn, and the cameras focused in as the duel began. There was no time to think. He ran toward her, and she ran. They would collide with each other, but he swung and she ducked, sliding through the mud under his blade. As she leapt up she kicked at his calf, nearly making him stumble. No, he was too sturdy for that. He righted himself too quickly, and he was going to kill her in the next instant, except...

Dodge right. Block right. Step back. Block. Swipe. Duck.

They had never spoken with such clarity in her life. Her body was not her own, far beyond the capacity of her training. She was a demon, moving like water around her enemy's sword.

Block. Step back. Swing up.

And then a momentary silence, falling away like notes in an empty church. That was enough. The enemy's sword found her body and snipped into the skin of her hip. The steel came up and swung toward her neck, and she imagined her own head rolling disgracefully into a pool of blood and sopping mud where the bugshot could find her eye sockets.

She ducked, nearly forgetting to move without the voices' prompting. The blade did not find her neck. It found her right eye. Warm liquid boiled onto her face. She scrambled up, dodged another blow, nearly lost her footing in the mud as he advanced on her.

Don't leave me now. Please.

Now she was blocking wildly, leaning on her training with every ounce of energy. His blows rattled her lithe frame. She barely had time to reposition her sword before the next blow came, again and again in an endless downpour of beatings.

He did not laugh, the enemy's champion, though he had every right to. His smile was sure, self-confident, but not hubristic. He was going to win, and he knew it.

Blinded by her own blood, she stumbled to the ground, and his sword rose to strike the final blow.

She closed her eyes and let out a shout. Her death would not be noble. Her death would be short and bloody, and her father would be glad.

Thunder in the distance, and then closer. Lightning broke like a snapping camera. The long tentacle of electricity grabbed the closest outstretched thing: the champion's sword. It zipped down his arm and cut off a scream, decimating it to silence as his body jerked, once, twice, arrested in space.

All she saw was an opportunity. _Live_ , her body, not the voices, urged. _Live!_ Her hand found the hilt of Halmon's gun before she had time to think – an instinctual reaction of survival. The human spirit chooses shame and life over honor and death. The gun went off, thunder cracked, and the bullet pierced the champion's heart. Long ago, the man had decided how he would die: with honor, body succumbing to cancer, to glorious fanfare, surrounded by loved ones.

She did not give that to him.

He staggered back, pain in every muscle, and toppled ungainly into the mud.

Rain and blood roared in her ears, screaming triumph at her shameful victory. A hand touched the cut on her hip, trembling as it tried to hold the blood in place, and she closed her eyes to ease the strain of the broken membrane. For a blessed moment, there was silence, and all was right in the world.

And then, chaos.

They raced down the slope, representatives of both sides, followed by zipping hovercams. Mud splashed around their heels, some kicking up dead maggots from last night's bugshot. Soldiers screamed and swarmed on her, lifted her into the air. "You did it, Halmon! Ancients, this morning you weren't well enough to walk. You won!"

"Foul play!" the enemies screamed. "Dishonor! Cheat!"

Her people protected her from them, though they shouldn't have. She swayed against someone's shoulder, blinded by her own blood mingling with the rain.

And then she heard them.

They did not speak, but they mingled, cooing soft approval. A happy counterpoint to the din around her, the smattering of outraged gunshots that went off, the cameras whirring by her head, the abuse flung across enemy lines. The sides began to fight again, starts and stops in passionate uncertainty, but the duel was the Ancients' period that ended the book. Ariadne slipped into unconsciousness as the voices lullabied her toward that fitting death.

~~~~~

The final gun was fired only that morning, and the document wasn't yet finalized, but signatures in blood had been written and were nearly dried. The king was never happy, but he was positively sour now. He scowled at the victory banners that hung limply in the thick fog, and though the people of Ephemeron were given to gossip, they were quiet now.

"I am bound by honor." The fog was so thick between him and Ephemeron's people that it looked as though he was speaking to no one at all. The thousand cameras whirred outside the ring of the balcony's light, but their digital eyes were not for him. They watched the curtain that partitioned the balcony behind him. "Ephemeron has been victorious. We are a strong people. But we are only as strong as our king."

He glared at the digital eyes. He did not care that it was rude to acknowledge they were there. He never had grown used to them. "I present the victor of Birmingham and your new king, Ariadne."

The people crowded together, huddled against the cold and straining to see the stately royal woman come to the balcony. Out she came, slowly, dragging the endless train of wool behind her and balancing the crown of broken glass that stretched halfway to the sky in sharp jagged edges. There was silence in her mind.

These were never meant to be her people. It was difficult to ignore the simmering glare of the old king as she spoke. "With the strength of our ancestors and the fortitude of your courage, we will take Akron and be a greater nation than any that has come before us."

It was not enough to send the people spiraling into a frenzy of applause. Ariadne had won for them, but the whispers of dishonor grew like a great mangled monster, and the barred doors were beginning to split as it heaved at the gates.

We are here. We will guide you.

_But you abandoned me._ They had taken her halfway, miraculously, through the fight and then left her to die. Ariadne still ached from the wound. She was lucky splattered bugshot from the field had not infected her belly. _I trusted you._ For the first time in her life she doubted them. And now any fool could contest her rule because she'd been forced to use a gun. The crack of disgrace had shattered more than the Akron champion's ribs.

_Trust._ A high favor to ask. _Trust. Trust._

The voices faded as Ariadne received a smattering of uncertain applause. They were replaced by one voice. A male, young and clear. The one who had liked redheads. _Trust, Ariadne._

She was curious enough to obey.

"And we are guided now by those seated beyond." She raised her hand to the sky, giving praise to the clouds. "Call them what you will. Gods or Ancients or ancestors. They guide my hand and my eyes." _Trust, Ariadne._ "Trust in me, people of Ephemeron. With the voices of the Ancients I will guide our nation to greatness."

There were murmurs of confusion. Was she mad? No man had spoken of gods with any seriousness since the End. Hundreds of years had passed and hope in _deus ex_ had long since died out.

But there was more applause than before. Perhaps her madness had brought dishonor to Ephemeron, but perhaps it would save them all. Ariadne turned back through the balcony without giving them the chance to question her.

Her throne stretched, too tall for any man, to sweep across the ceiling and half of the room. Sometime in the End lightning had struck the sand and melded this endless throne. Above it swung the First Man's sword from a hemp rope, tip hanging toward the King's head. Ariadne sat beneath it and took the mixed power and threat to her like a blanket.

The red-faced father, now a sad fat man whose orders no one followed, approached her. _He is poison._ "What do you think you're doing? Foolish girl. Are you trying to start a riot out there?"

"Leave my house."

He grew redder. "Excuse me? This is my house."

"Not any longer."

"You were my champion against my will. You have brought shame on my head and on my house." He took a menacing step forward. "Don't tell me what I can't—"

Her eyes glimmered as they shifted to her guard. Captain Renoulf and several others grasped the old man's arms, wrestling them behind his back.

"What? You can't be serious! I am your King!" He struggled. They fought him down and dragged him out.

Captain Renoulf returned. "Was that necessary?"

The light glimmered on her crown of broken glass, spraying dancing squares across her shoulders.

"Out with the old and in with the new."

That night she dreamed the voices came to her. They were unformed creatures that clung like shadows to the walls. "Ariadne." It was the young man with the clear voice. He lay down beside her, wrapped his arm around her and kissed her neck, taking shape. She turned to look at him but could not see him. He was warm and soft, and she shivered.

"Who are you?" It was a question she had asked as a child, before she learned that others could not hear them.

He kissed her on the mouth. It was the first time she had kissed anyone. "Come to us where the sky meets the sea." She saw an image flash behind her eyes, an island off the west coast called Catalina. A great beast stood against the sunset horizon on the precipice of the island, and a broken bridge sprawled like a twisted spine beneath the surface of the water. "Come to us where the beasts from before the End still roam."

"How will I get there?"

"Trust." He kissed her brow, and she sat straight up in bed.

The pair of hovercams that had stayed the night clicked awake. She ignored them, as was right. Yes, the technology was used despite the dishonor, only so the other side would not have a steeper advantage in battle. But Ariadne thought perhaps, in the beginning, there had been someone like her to receive the Ancients' commands; some said the Ancients had directed them to turn from the old technologies that had destroyed their world. It was why it was ignoble to look directly into a camera, which could steal a man's face and replicate it hundreds of miles away. It was why it was dishonorable to kill a man with a gun instead of a sword.

The King slipped out of her bed, bare feet on the floor, and went to the wardrobe to find pants and a woolen shirt. The voices were silent but she knew now how to follow them.

"Captain Renoulf." She kicked him awake in his sleeping quarters. "Get up. Pack the caravans. Food and water and supplies."

"What–?"

"Your King commands you." She strode to the great hall and mounted her throne.

"Where are we going?" Renoulf followed, pulling up loose pants.

"West." She stretched tall, severed the rope that tied the First Man's sword to the ceiling, and leapt down. "To where the sky meets the sea."

~~~~~

They said she was mad. The King knew their whispers. All but the very old, the very young, and the very sick had packed up their belongings, like one of those ancient caravans, and began an endless trek from sea to sea. Catalina, so the stories said, was the birthplace of life. After the End someone whose name had long been lost rode across the twisted bridge on the back of a bull.

That did not matter now to those who had been uprooted by the King's command. Halfway across the continent, the King watched her screens with one good eye and one mangled one, tugging at her dyed-black hair with a frown on her face. The hovercams' incessant eyes whirred quietly in the corner and around the camp clustered at the base of a great oak that had been cracked in half with lightning.

"Why do we go?" A pale, round woman stirred a pot as steam condensed on her face. "She has given no reason. Nothing to flee and no treasure to seek. Will she lead us to glory on the battlefield? We have met no opposing armies or evidence of their existence."

Captain Renoulf's rough fingertips twitched against each other. "I don't know. She hasn't said."

"Not even to you? To anybody?"

He shook his head. He must not have seen the camera crouching under an arching root, for he said, "I don't understand. When Theol was King, she was always quiet. Stubborn, but not ... mad. Not like this. Not mad like running into a battle woefully underprepared."

"Or dragging her people across the country on a death march?"

The voices tingled at the back of the King's mind, not saying anything with words, but she knew what they meant. _Fool._ She stood, a train of cameras following her like a long, floating dress, and grasped the hilt of her gun, the weapon of the dishonorable. "Renoulf."

The captain scrambled to his feet with a bow. "Majesty."

"Do you doubt my reign?"

He paled, realizing what had happened. The man should have known better than to voice his thoughts where cameras watched. "No, Majesty. I was merely voicing a concern."

"Do you doubt the Ancients?"

Renoulf did not answer.

Ariadne shot him.

The round woman screamed. Others popped their heads out of their tents, and the camera orbs kicked into overdrive. _Let my enemies see that. Let them know I am stronger than their honor._ "Hear me now," she said, raising her voice so that all her people, sprawled across the golden valley, could hear. She climbed the split oak and straddled its charred insides. "I have heard the voices of our gods, our Ancient Ones. They guide my every action and will bring prosperity to my people. They say I must go west, to where the sea meets the sky, to Catalina, and there they promise us a land of eternal honor."

Someone – she did not see who – shouted, "You killed Renoulf!"

It had probably been a rash decision. "He spoke against our gods," she said, raising her hands to the clear evening sky. "And so he endangered all of our lives. I know because they told me this."

It was quiet after that. Ariadne leapt down from the tree, heart hammering as she looked down at Renoulf's shocked face. She knelt to touch his brow. _Forgive me, my friend._

_Trust,_ the voices said. _We will guide you home._

~~~~~

There was only one other incident before they reached Catalina. Some of Akron's bugshot must have got into someone's clothing. One night a child screamed and ran through camp with bloody tears as maggots ate at her eyeballs. _Burn_ , the voices had said. Only Ariadne had enough sense to do the necessary thing and throw the infested body into the fire. The few who had continued to cheer her name stopped after that.

The island was as the voices said, rising from the sea like the nose of a gator. The sun was coming up. The silhouette of a bison stood on a peak and then trotted slowly away. "How will we get across?" her people asked, glad that this land not only truly existed, but that perhaps their King was not mad after all.

_Trust,_ the voices answered, and Ariadne with purple-dyed hair stepped out onto the water. She walked across the twisted bridge of rock and coral that only she saw, just below the water's surface, and reached the other side. They did not doubt the Ancients after that.

That night, camped at the foothills of the great island-mountain, Ariadne watched her screens, searching for clarity.

_You have been quiet,_ Ariadne thought to her voices. She held the First Man's sword across her lap, pricking the most superficial dead skin cells off her hand with its point. _I am here. What now?_

They were silent. She smoothed the edge of the blade. It had not tasted blood in a thousand years. Did it thirst for more? Was she hungry to use it – to prove that she was not a coward, that she had not won her final battle by tricks alone?

On the monitors, the enemies of Akron crept up to the abandoned castle of Ephemeron. They swarmed over it like killer ants and cut down her father's tapestries and desecrated that hallowed ground where, after the End, her ancestors had carved out an empire. They knew she was watching. They pissed on her throne. Her hand closed on the First Man's sword. _A king should not have left her throne._

"Trust." It was a voice she had heard a thousand times before, but this time the whisper came with a cool breath on her shoulder. She whipped around, pressing the point of her blade into a fleshy shoulder. A young man with white hair smiled and bled a drop onto her sword.

"You." The man from her dreams and the man from every voice in her head.

He nodded. "You've made it."

She put the pieces together. "You've lived on this island all along?"

"Something like that." He sat down beside her and touched her knee. She did not move. "But we have one more task for you, my Ariadne."

Her name crawled on her skin. In that moment, she thought she loved him. "Let me know your name."

"Not yet."

"Then let me know where you come from." For it was clear now they were not entirely omnipresent. Perhaps not even immortal.

He kissed her and ran his hand through her unnatural hair. For once, she let someone else cradle her head. "We are from before the End," he whispered, tying those secrets into her hair. "We escaped from this land, in its dying days, to the stars. We have watched you in everything, and guided you." A camera clicked quietly in the corner. Had this man given Ariadne's people this technology for just that purpose? Were they being watched even now? "And this land is ours. We want to return."

"So you are not gods?" He shook his head slowly, brushing her temple. She fought through the warm breath to concentrate. "You want to return to this land. And you need me to do it."

He met her gaze. "That is your last task. On the other side of this mountain there are people, filled with a plague that prevents us from returning home. You must destabilize them however you are able." There was silence between them. She saw him look away. "Ariadne, I..."

"I will do it." Ariadne nodded decisively. "I am the King, and I have fought for my people, and I will fight for you. My Ancients."

He kissed her. It was a long, deep kiss. Maybe that night she lost her virginity. There was no way of knowing, since she didn't remember when he left, and with the dawning of the sun, his memory looked an awful lot like a dream.

~~~~~

The tribe came over the mountain. Its leader was a woman with bone rammed through her earlobes. They were few, but so were the King's people, who had lost many of their own on their trek across the continent. With her train of hovercams Ariadne crossed the rainy camp to face them.

"This is our island." The woman folded taut arms over her chest. "You must leave." Were these the people who carried plague with them?

"I have a sword that says it is mine." Ariadne buried the First Man's steel into the rich earth of their promised land and thunder shook the island. "I claim this in the name of Ephemeron and of the Ancient Gods that guide me."

A murmur trickled through the tribe, and the woman's jaw grew very taut. "Get off of our land. This is sacred ground."

The King smiled and tossed her hair, newly dyed white-blonde, over her shoulder. "No." A cold sea mist crept up the side of the mountain, and she thought for a moment she saw a bison snorting on the hill.

"Then you will die." The woman raised her arms and the tribe slipped out of their skins like warm summer sausages. Nerves and veins and muscle and bone broke into a hundred thousand squirming pieces as the nature of their plague became apparent. Evolution had perhaps not been kind to them, but it had given them a heavy advantage against the squeamish people of Ephemeron. Before she had even drawn her sword the human bugshot was flung in every direction and a worm buried in Ariadne's heart.

Millions of tiny teeth rent the fabric of their flesh. Captain Halmon's corpse swam, bloody and wriggling, behind her eyes. But she raised her sword as the bug-woman, flies buzzing around her eyes and maggots crawling at her fingertips, produced a gleaming sword and lunged forward.

_Fight,_ clamored the voices. The cameras whirred in overtime, every frame and twitch of her body caught in the squirming light. _Fight. Fight. Fight for us. Fight for our future._ The Ancients had staked every possible chance of survival on this battle.

Somewhere a gun went off. It only made their enemy lunge for the offender's throat and crawl into his windpipe so he screamed flesh-eating flies. There would be no cowards in this battle.

Their steel rang. The woman was not particularly strong but she darted to the side and thrust relentlessly, swing after swing. It was all Ariadne could do to block the blows, stumbling backward, forcing her body to remember training more necessary to a soldier, a King's daughter, than a King herself. The tents were at her back. She ducked a wild swing, dripping with bugshot, and knocked over a flatscreen with her elbow. One of the eager hovercams fritzed and rolled like a severed eye into the mud. The worm dug further into her chest and she shouted in pain as her enemy, barely human, bared her fangs above her doomed body.

And then the voices spoke.

_Roll to the right._ She obeyed. _Duck and swing at the left leg._ She did. The commands came rapid-fire, and Ariadne's body lurched into action, fighting madly with the strength of ten Ancient Ones. The bug-woman had to uproot her wormy toes to spin backwards with a furious hiss.

_Lunge. Forward, forward, forward. Fight. Duck. Swing._ The woman's arm came off and she screamed as a hundred tiny maggots dropped from the socket.

_Block to the right. Step back._ The worm crawled closer and began to eat Ariadne's heart.

_Feint. Swing up._ The First Man's sword cut a vertical line up the woman's throat. Her lips parted, eyes wide as she stumbled. The bugshot in the muddy ground twitched, writhing in an attempt at protection. The voices fell silent, though one cried out above the rest – _Ariadne!_

Ariadne raised her sword to deliver the killing blow. The maggots and worms and flies and centipedes and mantises began to die, buried deep in her soldiers' flesh as the bug-woman lay half-conscious, bleeding underneath the sea of mist. Ariadne shouted in triumph. _Yes. Yes. Soon._

She went still. A shard of lightning rent the sky and licked down her sword, kissing her arm and spine. The King of Ephemeron's eyes turned up. A dark cloud of metal appeared, more substantial than mere gray mist. Through a transparent lens she thought she saw the glimmer of a face.

They landed over the dead body of Ephemeron's King. The doors opened and the Ancients jumped out, instantly targeting and shooting down anyone with a gun. A white-haired youth crawled under the ship and cradled their defender, two words on his lips: "My Ariadne." He held her body as his companions secured the area.

The captain of their ship wiped her hands on blue jeans, smiling as she looked on Catalina and its dying breed of maggots.

"Welcome home."

_With a B.A. in B.S. (translation: English Major), Rebecca Ann Jordan, quibbler and editor extraordinaire, is a poet and speculative fiction author in San Diego. She has published poetry and flash pieces in Yemassee Magazine, Bravura Literary Journal, and Images Magazine; guest columns at DIYMFA.com; and acts as Junior Assistant Editor at Bartleby Snopes. Her fetishes include controversial grammar, mythological happenings and yarn-swapping. Or maybe she made all of that up. Quibble with her_ @beccaquibbles _._

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# Far on the Ringing Plains

by Jeffery A. Sergent; published December 20, 2013

"... and before the boat's bottom had reached the rocky shore, Leonides leapt into the waiting warriors, his bright blade slicing armor, shield, flesh, and bone with a single pass." The storyteller, perched atop a large stone, paused to give the images time to ferment in the imaginations of his audience.

"I heard he's stronger than Herakles," someone said.

"I heard his father was a god," came another.

A red-haired youth whispered, "I heard he was a god."

 "He's more powerful than any god." The storyteller smiled. "All of Olympus trembles when the Achaian Lion roars!"

"Foolishness!" The shout came from the back.

Startled into silence, the storyteller half rose from his stage. His audience had turned. Some looked upon the man with obvious awe and fear; others looked away from his eyes. Sun light flashed in his golden mane like a shimmering nimbus.

"Gather your _dekania_ , Patroklos," he said to the red-haired youth. "Tend the boats."

"Yes, _Hekatontarches_." The red-haired youth snapped the man's official title out, but his shoulders sagged as he led his unit away. His audience gone, the storyteller slid down from his make-shift stage. He stood with his head bowed like a scolded schoolboy. "I was just —"

"You were just wasting time," his commander said. "We're here to fight a war. There will be time for stories later, but now you have duties."

"I just thought —"

"Don't think!" The commander barked more harshly than he intended and instantly felt ashamed. He understood that the boy only sought approval. He put his hand on the young warrior's shoulder. "Listen, Akhillios. You are a fine soldier — that's why I gave you a command — but you are going to have to start thinking as 'we' not 'I.' You now have responsibilities to your men, to me, to all of Greece." He smiled apologetically. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, _Hekatontarches_."

"Good. We've trouble enough with the Trojans without offending the Olympians. Gather the ranks. We've won nothing yet — they're regrouping on the plain. Go!"

The youth sped away, happy to do his commander's bidding.

Leonides Homeros sighed. He tried to ignore the weapon strapped to his side, and he longed for the lyre left setting by his hearth. He abhorred the hero worship; he despised the myth men tried to make of him. A name, he thought, that's all they know. Who spoke of the man who cherished life? Who spoke of the man who treasured thought and art? Who spoke of Leonides the Poet?

No one.

He sometimes wondered what kind of man dreamed of having his name linked inexorably with slaughter and destruction, but whenever he looked into Akhillios' eyes, he knew. He was still young enough to believe the glorious lies embedded in myths and legends.

Sighing once more, his gaze fell upon the city of Ilios. Its famed blue and cloud-white wall reflected the majesty and power of the heavens, and its enormous gold-embellished gates blazed like the sun. Bright buildings and columned temples had been built around a gentle incline inside. He could detect a geometric precision from his position that would be lost within the city itself. Still, even walking among the magnificent colors, architecture and sculptures would be a wondrous experience. Overwhelming all, however, was Priam's palace, crowning the hill like a celestial abode, august and austere.

How extraordinary, Leonides thought, to have man's most noble and most savage achievements occupying one space at one time. Here was the epitome of tragedy. And over what? Trade pacts? He wondered if it would have come to this had not King Menelaos' niece been involved? Could any good be salvaged from it?

A chorus of shouts tore him from his musings. The Trojans were charging.

The deadly storm raged once more. Chariots shook the earth. Javelins fell like black rain. Metal crashed like thunder. Men howled like the wind.

The slaughter sickened Leonides, but his spirit craved it. The sight of spilled blood roused something in him he could not control. The smell of fear excited him, making him capable of killing without thought, without remorse, and without mercy. Already the stirring had begun. He fought the feeling as he had many times before, but as had happened many times before, the urge crawled like a beast into his chest and spread throughout his limbs. Tears welled in his eyes. The muscles in his neck bulged until he could contain it no longer — the roar escaped. To him it was the roar of ultimate frustration and futility. To his allies, it was the roar of victory. To his foes, it was the roar of impending doom — the Achaian Lion stalked the plains of Ilios.

Two men died with a single swipe of his blade. A third's sword shattered from the blow. Leonides grabbed the soldier by the throat, only releasing him when his life had been choked away.

He didn't know how long the killing lasted, he never did. He simply killed until no one opposed him. When he'd finished, his thick limbs glistened with sweat, his broad chest heaved, his heart pounded. He lifted his dripping sword toward the beautiful city and roared.

For a timeless moment there was nothing but silence then an eagle screamed overhead. The sky suddenly dimmed. In the distance, swarming soldiers were nothing but shadows. A scream echoed from somewhere but quickly faded behind the metallic ring of combat somewhere in the distance.

Without violence and bloodshed to feed upon, the bellicose spirit gradually relinquished control.

Am I dead? Leonides wondered. Is this Tartarus? His heart surged for his home in distant Alos, for the life he had not been allowed to live, for the words never written. He tried to curse the Fates or the gods, but he — who had never questioned their intentions or deeds — could not. Only then did he notice — then feel — that something was different about his surroundings.

A barren landscape extended in all directions beneath a dusky sky. River, plain, and city were gone. The sun was nowhere in the sky, making it impossible to judge direction or time. The air was cool though no wind blew. Neither bird nor beast stirred. The only sound was the ringing until—

"Hail, _Hekatontarches_."

He knew the voice well — but something was not right about it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood as he turned.

It was Akhillios.

Sandy hair fell onto strong shoulders, framing a delicate, almost feminine, face. He wore a blue padded linen tunic and carried his short sword with its rare ivory hilt. Yet it wasn't him. Like the voice, there was something different, something _not_ him. Something alien. He was watching a shadowy figure — who was also Akhillios — atop an isle of dead soldiers with a wall of spears closing around him. He hacked through three wooden shafts with a single blow then grabbed one and pulled its wielder forward to block the thrust of another. A shadow — Patroklos, leading a group of Achaians, finally broke through to help.

Still, the only sound was that of metal striking metal.

"These are the Ringing Plains," Akhillios said at last. "Where the gods watch man's battles, great and small. We have watched you many times from this very spot." Finally, he turned and approached Leonides. He circled the Achaian as one does when judging the worth of a beast of burden. "People say not even the great War-Maker himself can defeat the Lion." He stopped with barely a hand's breadth separating their faces. The wicked smile was not Akhillios' nor was the fire burning in his eyes. "What do you say?"

"I am no god," Leonides answered, but wondered if any of this was real. It was like stepping into a poet's tale. Or could he be lying somewhere wounded on the plains?

"To some, you are. As long as they believe it to be true, what difference does it make what you believe?"

"I offer libation. I make sacrifices. I have fought for king and country at the expense of my own family and happiness. I have done nothing but serve." It was an argument he had had with himself more than once, and always, he would convince himself that something good would come of it if he waited.

Still, he waited.

Wrath burned in Akhillios' dark eyes — it was the fire that had fueled innumerable wars throughout the ages. "Come, Lion," he said, drawing his sword, "I would test your mettle."

"How may a mortal fight an Immortal?"

"This shell is mortal. It can be killed as easily as yours."

"That may be true. But if I lose, which surely I must, I will be sent to Tartarus. You can simply return to the Holy Mount."

"Shrewd as old Odysseus," he laughed. "Very well. At stake is your immortality. Your name. Nothing more. If you lose, you shall be sent home, only no longer remembered as the greatest of warriors."

"If I win?"

"Riches? Fame? The love of a woman? All of these you possess already. What more do you want? _If_ you win."

Without warning Akhillios struck. Leonides barely parried the blow but quickly responded with a counter attack. He was plagued by too many questions to fight effectively. Why did he have to fight? Why couldn't he just live? Was it real? He wondered what would happen if he didn't fight, but the warrior in him would not allow him to stop. And more than once, he had to remind himself that it was not actually Akhillios he fought — he guessed his opponent, real or imagined, to be none other than the War-Maker himself.

As the combatants waged back and forth, fatigue slowly crept into Leonides' mortal limbs, but he refused to think about defeat or victory. As always, he simply fought.

The War-Maker's blade slipped past Leonides' defense, slicing tunic and flesh. It wasn't deep but would certainly hasten his fatigue. Instead of pressing the attack, the Immortal hesitated, as mortal soldiers sometimes do, to revel in the moment before victory. In that very instant — not even the length of a single heartbeat — Leonides' blade cut across his opponent's forearm. The War-Maker cursed, his eyes wide with surprise.

Or was it doubt?

Leonides' limbs and mind numbed as instinct took control. He felt the familiar stirring deep within. Questions no longer mattered. The warlike spirit awakened. He parried a slice aimed at his throat then unleashed a roar so fierce that it forced the Olympian to stumble backwards.

Leonides immediately lunged forward. He slashed and thrust without any regard for his own defense, striking both of War-Maker's arms and scoring him across the ribs which allowed him to force his foe's sword aside. He punched the Immortal in the face with his free hand, knocking him down, and moving with feline swiftness, he straddled War-Maker's chest, pinning his sword hand to the earth with a knee while placing the point of his own sword at the god's throat.

The War-Maker's eyes widened, his fear evident, as he awaited Leonides' final plunge.

"Enough!" The voice boomed from every direction with the power of rolling thunder.

Panting, Leonides looked down on the fallen deity, one thrust away from final victory. The spirit craved his enemy's blood, but Leonides did not. Sweat dripped from his brow as he fought a second battle within himself. Beads of blood formed around the sword's point as it sank into the god's throat. _No_ , he screamed silently, but the word became an incoherent, animalistic noise. It emerged as a mighty roar that shook the earth. Then it was over.

"Enough," the voice repeated, but this time it sounded tired and worn.

Leonides stood and threw his sword far out onto the dimly lit plain.

Patroklos approached, or rather, a figure that looked like Patroklos. His youthful eyes were black, timeless depths radiating power and danger that forced Leonides to avert his gaze.

Patroklos studied Leonides then War-Maker, who struggled to his feet. "You have defeated one of us only." His voice reverberated like thunder. "Do not think you can stand against all of us."

"It was never my intention, All-Father. I was brought here against my will." Head cast down, Leonides hesitated a moment unsure whether to say more, but decided to do so. He no longer cared what was real. "It was the spirit invested in this body that defeated War-Maker, not me. It is not my will to fight, but you have made it my nature."

"Do not listen to him," War-Maker pleaded. "Destroy him now, or he will destroy us all!"

Patroklos pointed at the god of War. "Leave."

The War-Maker vanished. There was nothing magical as Leonides had heard in stories about the gods: no light, no wisps of smoke, no crash of thunder. He was there one moment and not the next.

Patroklos chortled, his eyes gleaming slyly in acknowledgment that he was whom Leonides suspected. "Let it not be said that the great Achaian Lion is too proud. Too clever perhaps — that you argue the gods have defeated themselves."

"I say nothing of the sort, All-Father. I am a simple man."

The god's sigh seemed weighted with the weariness of ages. "We wanted a hero for the ages," he said, "one that would be remembered and idolized through time. This war was to be his time. Your time." He clasped his hands behind his back to watch the battle. "And because the hero would be remembered, so too would the gods. Otherwise, we will not last. As times change — as men change — so too the gods. We will change, be replaced, perhaps ultimately forgotten." He looked into Leonides' eyes. "Unless, of course, something happened — something so great that the story would be passed through the ages."

He stared off into the distance. More to himself, he asked, "What are we to do?"

The ring of combat filled the silence that followed.

Leonides stared at the Immortal, trying to identify the emotion he felt. Was it disgust or pity? In many ways, he was reminded of Akhillios' longing to be acknowledged. Loved.

"It is too late now," the god said. "You must return."

"Wait," Leonides pleaded. He thought madly for something, anything to keep from going back to the madness.

He went before the god, daring to look into the depths of his eyes. "My Lord, the sword is powerful but the words are more so, for with it a man may not only destroy but also create. A song can outlive the life of its singer. It can inspire others to feel, to think, or even to live. Words are the great immortalizer, All-Father. Let me serve you with words."

The Immortal clasped Leonides' shoulder. At first Leonides feared he had gone too far and would pay for his brashness. Instead the immortal said, "Ares grew afraid of you, believing you would overshadow us before the war had ended. But now you speak of life and verse." He laughed. "We, who schemed for vanity's sake, were destroying ourselves. We have forgotten from whence we came — we have forgotten the hearts of men." He smiled and a gleam of light shone briefly in his sky-blue eyes. "Sometimes the simple man can be the wisest of all."

Then the light faded as grief spread across his countenance. "A generation of men will die in this war," he said. He turned his back to Leonides, staring blankly at the warring men.

For the first time in his life, Leonides could find no words.

It may have been minutes, hours or ages, before finally the god spoke. "Your passion led us to choose you, Lion. We chose wisely. Though what was given unto you cannot be destroyed, it may be re-forged. Use it." The god looked across the Ringing Plain. His chest swelled as he took a deep breath. "Use this destruction, Leonides Homeros. Inspire men. We no longer matter." Thunder filled his voice. "Do not let them stray as did the Olympians."

The Achaian was about to respond, but his thoughts suddenly left him. At that moment the eagle screamed again. He shielded his eyes with a hand to watch it soar across the clear evening sky then . . .

Then he returned his attention to the battlefield where Akhillios stood upon a stone, roaring at the backs of the Trojans as they fled toward their city, the sun gleaming off his bloody sword. Corpses carpeted the plains of Ilios around him.

"Mark this well." Menelaos' voice startled Leonides. "Though this bloody battle was brief, I fear the war will be very long."

His words triggered something deep within the young poet-scribe, something he knew he must do. Contemplating both the living and the dead, he said, "Aye, my lord, but I am certain some good will come out of it — later, if not now."

"Let us hope so, Homeros." The king-general laid a hand on the poet's shoulder as they turned toward the row of tents being erected. The setting sun bathed the land in crimson. "Let us hope so."

Jeffery A. Sergent lives in a small town tucked away in the hills of southeastern Kentucky with his wife Kim and daughter Arwen. He has taught at the local high school for twenty-four years now, and has been a fan of science fiction and fantasy since grade school. For the past fifteen years, he have sponsored, edited, and contributed to the school's SF&F fanzine Fantasm. In the past, he's had a scattering of stories published, including "The Dragon" for Alienskin. This past September, "The Young God's Tears" appeared in Swords & Sorcery Magazine. He is also a contributor to Nerdbloggers.com, and Absent, his first novel, was published by Whiskey Creek Press.

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# The Vilkacis

by Konstantine Paradias; published December 24, 2013

Third Place Award, December 2013 Fiction Contest

"Pa! Billy-Bob is eatin' roadkill again!" said little Jemima, as she watched her older brother tear at the rabbit carcass that had been transfixed to the pavement by virtue of a passing eighteen-wheeler.

Jebediah Vilkacis, hard at work scolding his youngest son, stopped mid-rant and broke into a four-legged sprint at his eldest.

"What the hell you think yer doin', son?"

 "I was just getting me a bite to eat Pa, is all," Billy-Bob said, the rabbit-leg sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Jebediah willed his paw to shift into a facsimile of a hand, just so he could smack it upside his eldest son's head.

"Well we ain't eatin' things off the road! How many times do I gotta tell you boy, we ain't like that!"

"Grampa tol' me he done eaten things off the road. He tol' me you done eaten things off the road too!" Billy-Bob said, rubbing at the back of his head in mock pain, his muzzle buried against the asphalt. To Jebediah, the sight of his eldest son trying to pull off a puppy-eyed look was all the more infuriating.

"Well we ain't doin' that no more! We ain't like Grampa no more!" Jebediah snarled at the cringing Billy-Bob. Something inside him, something feral, urged him to lunge at his son, to sink his teeth in his ear and make him go belly-up in defeat. Jebediah summoned his near-endless reserves of strength and choked it down. "We are civilized. We are proper werewolves, ya hear?"

"Yes, pa." Billy-Bob said, unaware of the thrashing he'd just been spared. With a sigh, Jebediah went back to his youngest son, his rant half-forgotten. Somewhere behind him, little Jemima let out a little cry as Billy-Bob snarled at her for telling on him. He wouldn't dare raise a finger against her, of course. Like his Grandfather, Billy-Bob was a scaramoush, all bark and no bite.

Elijah, his youngest son, had remained seated on the jagged rock at the edge of the highway where his father had left him, impassively looking out into the desert. The events that had transpired had barely registered to the boy. To Jebediah it seemed, at times, that even his own life seemed to Elijah as a series of unconnected events, a crude precursor to adulthood.

He understood his son's way of thinking: his indifference was a defense mechanism rather than a personality trait, something to keep out his family life, his social circle, his own awkward and shifting destiny. Like him, Jebediah had also considered his childhood and teens a dream, a series of events tailored to someone else's specification, the waiting room to a better life just out of his reach. A life outside the pack. Jebediah had dreamed of life away from the desert. He'd dreamed of the big city, its spires agleam under the midday sun, set ablaze by neon at night. He'd dreamed of his very own pack, head of a motley crew of mangy creatures that would make that concrete jungle their own by tooth and claw. He'd dreamed of a secret life, a great life, one filled with adventure and peril.

But then reality slammed into Jebediah, shattering his fantasies into a million pieces by virtue of responsibility. His father had grown old and arrogant, a danger to the pack as well as to himself. Suddenly, the cub had found himself forced to confront the father, to best him in combat and then, having done that, to lead the pack. Then, to care for a brood of children. Afterward, to mourn those who were lost to the highway or to hunters and their snares. Once that was done, to care for those that had been left. To keep his job. To tread the twilight world between night and day.

Elijah, Jebediah knew, was too much like him for his own good. Which is what made this that much harder.

"So, where were we?" Jebediah asked.

"You were just about to start screaming at me, dad."

"What for?"

"'Cause I'd told you I didn't want to be a werewolf."

Jebediah's growl bubbled up from his throat before he even knew it, his fur bristling. He was on his hind legs the very next instant, his forelegs shifted into hands, a great clawed index finger pointing at the boy.

"You insolent cub! Where do you come off?"

The boy only shrugged, looking apathetically up at his father. Jebediah deflated once again, returning to his four-legged pose, his wrath quenched.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to snap atcha like that."

"It's okay, dad. I probably had it coming," Elijah said, stroking his dad's fur right at the base of his head just like his mother did, when she was soothing him from one of his tantrums. "I'm sorry."

"But why, son? What's wrong with bein' a werewolf?" Jebediah asked, his eyes half closed, his thoughts sloshing around inside his head in a pool of calm.

"There's nothing wrong with it, dad. Jemima loves it, Billy-Bob loves it, mom loves it, you love it; I just don't. That's all," Elijah said.

Jebediah looked at his boy: a child of fifteen, barely a man, not yet transformed. His first shift was coming soon, with the new moon. He would turn then, his body transmuting from man to near-beast, changing him into the thing that he and his father and his father before him had been. Unlike his sister, Elijah was going to be a late bloomer but Jebediah could tell that he would be a fine specimen, a proper alpha male.

"You know you don't have a choice," Jebediah said.

"Yes I do. I can just not go out into the moonlight. I can avoid it and then it won't happen, and I won't change, that's all." Elijah retorted.

"And what makes you think you could do that?" Jebediah said, the anger in him rising once again. "What makes you think you won't see the moonlight?"

"Well, because you'll agree it's what I want to do. Because you're my dad, and you're going to be okay with it, is all."

"And what if I drag you out, kickin' and screamin'?" said Jebediah, his voice a near-snarl.

"Then you won't be better than Grampa, I guess."

"Pa! Pa! Look what I found, Pa!" screamed little Jemima at the top of her lungs, a raven caught between her teeth, madly flapping.

"That's great, sweetie! Keep at it!" Jebediah shouted back at her.

"Pa! Pa! Look at me! Look at me!" Jemima said, as she let go of the raven once, then snapped it back in her teeth just as it beat its wings and tried to fly away.

"Way to go, sweetheart!" Jebediah said, dismissing her with praise, turning back to Elijah. "You know yer going to be a better werewolf than yer sister or Billy-Bob, don'tcha? And a better alpha than I could be?"

"I don't think so, dad. Jemima was born to this. And Billy-Bob ... well, Billy-Bob wants it more than I do, that's for sure."

"And what if I don't want you to be a normie, huh? What will you do then?" Jebediah said, ham-handedly attempting to threaten the boy.

"Then I guess you'll just have to get over it, dad." Elijah said. "But I'm still going to love you for it."

The perfectly rehearsed speech that Jebediah had been preparing over the last two weeks for just this occasion now died in his throat. His arguments, all perfectly chosen and painstakingly crafted, simply fell to a million pieces. Suddenly he knew that little boy with the auburn hair and the tarnished-silver eyes had won this battle, perhaps even the war.

"Jemima! You let go of that damn thing, we gotta get home!" Jebediah shouted at his daughter, who was hard at work chewing at the dead raven.

"But Paaaa!"

"No buts! Get Billy-Bob!"

His head hung low, Jebediah led his cubs back home to the desert, feeling (for the first time in a very long time) mightily uncomfortable in his own fur.

~~~~~

"So the boy doesn't want to be a werewolf. So what?" said Edna as she lay by her husband at the foot of the hill, spent after their lovemaking.

"Are you serious? Am I even hearin' this?" Jebediah squealed, his voice bordering hysteria.

"Don't shout, honey. You'll wake the kids," Edna said, laying her paw on her husband's muzzle. Jebediah couldn't help but notice the silvery sheen of her fur under the moonlight.

"Elijah can't not be the next alpha," Jebediah whispered. "I can't let him be a normie."

"And why not? Why can't someone else be the alpha? Billy-Bob is raring for it and so does Jemima."

"Billy-Bob ain't fit for it. Too much like my father, that one. And Jemima's a girl," Jebediah pouted. The look that Edna gave him made his tail tuck itself between his legs.

"And what's wrong with a female being an alpha? I'll have you know, _my_ mother was an alpha in her own pack!"

"Yes, sweetheart, but your pack was from Utah. This is New Mexico. You can't have a female alpha in New Mexico."

"Says who?"

"Says a hundred years' worth of history, honeysuckle."

"Well, history is written by the victors. And if Jemima kicks every other male's butt, then she can be alpha fair and square," Edna said.

"Yer changin' the subject, bottlebrush," Jebediah said. "The point is that Elijah doesn't want to be one of us."

"I can't blame him."

"Scuse me?"

"I said, I can't blame him. The boy wants to be his own man. You don't expect he'll want to spend his days in a trailer home, trawling round in the desert, scared of fringe journalists and truckers now, do you? Boy's got his own plans, Jebediah. He don't have to be an alpha if he don't want to. Let him be a normie, let him live in the big city, what's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong with that! It's wrong 'cause I tell him it's wrong and I tell you it's wrong! Because he'll go out there and be a boring little bastard, living in the big city while the pack gets torn apart! Because he'll go there and get lost in _their_ world, while we stay out here, forgotten!"

"You're shouting again."

"I'll shout all I want, woman! I gave up on _my_ dreams, when the pack wanted me to! I stayed here and I fought my father like I oughta, and I took a wife like I oughta, and I raised a brood, and I got stuck here in a damn trailer home in the middle of the damn desert like I oughta, and no one ever done asked me what the hell it was _I_ wanted to do, now did they?"

"Well, if that's how you feel about it..." Edna said and got up, walking back home.

"Where are _you_ going?"

"Back to our damn trailer to mind our damn kids. The ones you raised like you oughta. I'm gonna leave you with your dreams, if you don't mind," Edna said, a hint of venom in her voice.

"Cactus flower, I'm sorry, I just..."

"Ma? Was Pa shouting again? He woke me up and now I can't sleep," Jemima said in the darkness.

"Well then sweetie, why don't you go to Pa and ask him to take care of it." Edna's voice came from the darkness, her great form leaning over Jemima. "Like he oughta," she said. Jebediah's knees turned to jelly.

"Yay!" Jemima said, running at her daddy and laying on top of him. "Tell me a story, Pa! Tell me a story about hunting!"

Jebediah groaned. It was going to be a long night.

~~~~~

"The boy lacks discipline, same as you did." Grandfather grumbled, after hearing Jebediah's tale.

"Elijah don't lack discipline."

"Back in my day, we used to give those uppity little deviants a sound thrashing. Once, your uncle gave me lip. Know what I did?"

"You tore off his ear," Jebediah said.

"I tore off _both_ his ears! Then I done take his wife, too!" Grandfather growled, clawing at the dry earth.

"I'm not going to mutilate my boy, dad."

"Only way to raise a boy proper, Jebediah. I gave you hell and you grew up just fine," Grandfather said and Jebediah felt his hatred for the old man (a thing he had thought long since forgotten) rise back up to the surface.

"Maybe if you hadn't, I wouldn't have taken your eye." Jebediah spat at him.

"Maybe if you hadn't, I woulda wrung your neck!" the old wolf laughed back at him. "Boy needs to be taught his place. You need to be a proper alpha, not a whipped little cub no more, Jebediah."

"This conversation is over."

"Boy needs to be put back in his place!" the old wolf shouted at Jebediah, as he walked away. "For once in your life, he needs himself a proper man for a father!"

~~~~~

Jebediah had promised himself that he wouldn't let the old bastard poison him with his bile. He'd also promised himself not to ever take his frustrations out on his kids. One time, he even caught himself thinking he'd rather swallow a silver bullet than let himself be the kind of man his father was.

Now, as he was snarling at Elijah, tugging at his bedsheets so he could drag Elijah out into the moonlight, he found himself being exactly the kind of man his father had been.

"Dad, no! Stop!" Elijah screamed, holding fast at the edge of his bed. Above him, the moon's great idiot face peered from the cloud cover, shedding bone-white light upon the desert.

"Jebediah! You get off Elijah this instant!" Edna snarled at him.

"Pa? Pa, what's going on?" Billy-Bob asked, peering around the door with little Jemima peeking her muzzle underneath. The trailer rocked on its axles, as the older wolves clawed and bit at each other, baring their fangs and snapping at the air between them. The cramped little space in the trailer smelled of bile and anger and Elijah's sweat.

"Get outta here, Edna!"

"Let go of Elijah, Jebediah! This isn't what he wants! This isn't what _you_ want, either!" she snarled at him.

"Don't tell me what to do, woman! Don't you _dare_ give me lip!" Jebediah said, and he knew how much like his father he sounded. It made him sick to his stomach, this terrible new inflection, this venomous tone. "Back off!"

Edna was on him the next instant. Her teeth, strong as her mother's, went for his throat. Her claws, sharp as ever, aimed for his eyes. Jebediah howled and rolled with the blow, crashing through the trailer's walls out into the dusty ground. They were a mass of fur and dust, spiked with blood, that snarled and rolled around in the ground, a black-brown thing that raised a cloud of dust around them.

"Pa! Pa, stop it!" Jemima screamed.

"Ma!" Billy-Bob shouted, charging into the melee, his claws and fangs out to protect his mother, his own howls of pain joining those of his mother's, his own blood spattered on the parched earth.

~~~~~

Inside the trailer, hidden beneath his blanket, Elijah listened to the sounds of his little world crashing down around him. There was thunder in the desert. There was gnashing of teeth and snarls. His senses, honed to a fine edge by the prospect of transformation, translated the blood and the fear and the snarling into a coherent image.

Without seeing, Elijah could read his father's face, twisted by anger, pushed on by pride. His mother's muzzle, pulled back to reveal a row of teeth, ripping at her lover's fur and skin. His brother's claws, pawing at his father's back uselessly, struck down by a flailing backhand.

In his little refuge, Elijah felt his body tense up, as the wolf inside him called out for blood and violence, fueled by the light of the moon. Something primordial stirred in him, something that was pushing outward from deep within himself, something mad and hungry that was waiting for him to become it.

"Elijah?" Jemima's voice came from the other side of the blanket. He didn't have to peek out to tell that she'd shifted to her human form, so she could hide inside the trailer. He could smell her fear, which fed the thing in him, making it thrash madly. "Ma's hurt. So's Billy-Bob. I think Pa is going to hurt them real bad soon."

"I know."

"I'm scared."

"I know," Elijah said, and there was the faintest hint of something old and hungry in his voice. Jemima couldn't see, but she knew what was taking place beneath that blanket.

Outside, Billy-Bob was struggling against Jebediah's paw, pressed against his throat. Jebediah's lover, howling her son's name, was sinking her fangs into his shoulder, tearing at the flesh beneath.

"You got to save them, Elijah."

"I know," he said.

~~~~~

Jebediah's world was a great red blot now, stained with black. His paw pressed down on something soft that fought feebly. He could not fathom it being his son. There was a growing pain in his shoulder and a pair of eyes that were punching holes in the back of his head, but he could not have known they were Edna's.

There was only a voice in his head, a growling, howling thing that frothed at the mouth and whispered words of murder in his ear. There was someone hidden in the trailer whom he should rip open and expose to the world or tear his throat rather than suffer his existence. His spittle was hot and tasted like blood that he knew did not belong to him. His fur bristled and his muscles tensed. He burned with an unknowable fire.

With a flex of his mind, he changed his paws into functioning arms and stuck at Edna's muzzle, breaking her grip. He increased the pressure on Billy-Bob' throat until he felt his son's pulse beating at his fingers and then...

There was a scent that seemed familiar but he had never witnessed before. There was a howl with a familiar inflection. There was a shape in the air, shifting and growing until it seemed to outgrow the moon itself.

Jebediah raised his arms to protect himself from the coming attack, braced his hind legs against impact, but he knew he was outmatched. The great thing slammed into him, a mass of claw and teeth and black fur, knocking the breath from out of him. Teeth tore at his muscles, claws dug themselves in open wounds. He felt something trickle down his tongue; a taste of blood that seemed all too familiar.

It lasted only for a moment, the tearing and the howling and the screams. Jebediah was tossed around like a rag doll, dragged into the dirt. He struggled, but the black thing struck him once and one of his eyes darkened. He tried to get away and fire erupted in his sides.

The red subsided. The black pulled back. The starry sky loomed above him, the moon's great face illuminating his features. At the edge of his vision, something huge and mad followed his every move.

"Elijah?" he muttered.

~~~~~

Billy-Bob never challenged his brothers' place in the pack and neither did any of the others. There was, of course, a challenger as custom decreed, but the battle was a formality, a friendly spar in honor to Elijah.

Edna watched as her son stood at the head of the pack, a great black silent thing with eyes the color of silver. Little Jemima was there too, her head bowed, her muzzle resting against the ground for fear of meeting Elijah's eyes.

Jebediah was not there, on that day nor any other day since. He was, of course, provided with a share as custom dictated, and he accepted it with the proper show of gratitude. Unlike his family, he was not there when Elijah was proclaimed alpha. He had been with the old wolf who had welcomed him silently, having recognized his wounds, picking up the hatred that had soaked Jebediah's fur and very skin, same as he had been soaked in the spit of his son.

The old wolf died, alone and bitter. The only words he said to Jebediah were:

"You done good, boy. For once in your life, you done good."

And the old wolf perished, leaving Jebediah in his stead.

Konstantine Paradias is a jeweler by profession and a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in Third FlatIron's Lost Worlds anthology, Unidentified Funny Objects! 2 and Nightmare Stalkers and Dream Walkers by Horrified Press. People tell him he has a writing problem, but he says he can quit, like, whenever he wants, man! You can find him on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/konstantine.paradias) or follow him on Twitter (@KostantineP) or you can cut the middle man and go straight for his blog, Shapescapes (http://shapescapes.blogspot.com).

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# The Passage of Aldo

by Colin Heintze; published December 27, 2013

It was twenty years ago that Aldo came to this village. It was quite the event.

Usually we don't get more than five or six travelers passing through our village every year, and not since the oaks were acorns has one been a knight. After Jenny moved in, nobody would visit us.

 It was embarrassing knowing what we had become—a blank spot on the map. We had gotten the reputation of a place no traveler wanted to visit, and knew down to our marrow that Jenny was the reason for it. That's why when Aldo came prancing in on his pretty charger we made a point of putting on our best shirts and coming out to say hullo.

The women were crowding around him like a flock of hens when he took off his helmet. He shook out long, amber locks that fell over shoulders I could have yoked my plough to. He wasn't a heartbeat past twenty, his face fair as fresh snow.

Aldo dismounted and introduced himself. He bowed and held out a coin to whoever would board him for the night. We told him to put the money away, that we were good courteous folk and wouldn't hear of accepting payment for our hospitality. Everyone except that scoundrel Ralf, who would have taken Aldo's coin, and horse, and shirt off his back if given the chance.

I'd an extra room since my two youngest died, so everyone decided Aldo would pass the night at my cottage.

But, before I go on about Aldo, I should back up a bit and tell you about Jenny Green-Teeth.

No one knows how Jenny came to live in Erik's pond. Most people agree it happened during the flood, that when the river receded it left something behind, something big and green and nasty.

A few weeks after the flood one of the village boys came racing through town. He was wailing and crying, looking white as a sheet and just about as sturdy. When we got him calm enough to speak, he told us that he and his sister had been playing by Erik's pond when some green lady jumped out of the water and took his sister. Nobody was more shocked than Erik himself, and within minutes we'd grabbed our axes and bills and were marching to his farm.

The pond had taken a bad turn. Before the flood Erik kept it stocked with fish, but nothing lived there anymore, nothing except a crust of slimy pond-scum that bubbled and popped on the surface of the water.

The boy begged Erik not to approach the water, but Erik wouldn't listen. The moment Erik's foot fell on the bank, the water surged. A horrible, green woman came lunging out. Her arms were nearly the length of a man and her face had a bloated, fishy look to it. Broad, knobby hands wrapped around Erik's neck and pulled him under. The pond-scum bubbled a little more than usual until Erik stopped kicking.

That's when we knew we had a monster in our village. The boy buried his head in his mother's skirts and sobbed about those horrible green teeth, so that's what we called her: Jenny Green-teeth.

From then on everyone steered clear of Erik's pond. Erik's widow moved in with kin in Mayshire, and soon Erik's farm had gone to nature. Thistles reached up to a man's ears. Serpents weaved through their stalks like rabbits through their warrens. Except for a few boys that liked to throw rocks into Erik's, or now I should say _Jenny's_ , pond, nobody went near the place.

Still, Jenny got her share of victims. A three-year-old girl got lost and wandered up to the pond. Her mother grabbed her just as Jenny sprang. Both pulled. The mother got her daughter, and Jenny got the girl's arm. Years after, the girl swore she could feel pain in the missing arm, which we all figured was the times Jenny was gnawing on it somewhere under the water.

Then there was Heneric. Heneric was a mean, coarse fellow that kept the village up all hours with his drinking and carousing. One night he was boasting he could take any man in town. One of his friends suggested he try his luck with Jenny Green-Teeth.

"Ah, shut up, you," Heneric said.

"Of course, if you think you can't beat her..."

"Who says I can't! I'm not afraid of nuthin', not man or beast or even monster. Let's go!"

His friend laughed and told Heneric he was merely jesting. But Heneric had made up his mind. In a few minutes he was parading through the streets, his friend begging him to turn back. A crowd of people came out and followed him to Erik's farm. They held their breath as Heneric dipped a toe into the pond and launched a big glob of spit into the water. Nothing happened. Heneric started pacing around the banks, calling Jenny a coward and a fiend and other things I'll not be repeating.

He carried on like that for a few hours until he'd shouted himself hoarse. By then, just about everyone in the village was watching. A few even clapped as Heneric put his hands on his knees and wheezed out a few more oaths.

Then, she sprang. See, Jenny was smart, or at least had a sense of humor. Heneric was a big, strong wight, and she waited until he had tired himself out before dragging him under. It's a tragedy and all that, though I can't say anyone misses him.

A month later, Aldo visited our town.

We were in my cottage eating dinner. I had invited all my friends to entertain our guest, everyone except Ralf. That snubbing is where people say my feud with Ralf started, but that's a different story altogether.

Everyone was impressed with Aldo. He had manners, real manners, not the kind people use to spin gold out of lies. He was the picture of graciousness and courtesy, listening to our stories without interruption. He never pitied us for our poverty, nor did he pretend that we shared something in common. There was nothing false about him and even some of the rougher, coarser townsmen didn't snicker at his pretty face or fancy way of talking.

The candles were guttering on the table and we'd all had quite a bit to drink when I asked, "So, Sir Aldo, might I inquire why you are passing through this village?"

The young man's face flushed like a plum.

"You may, though I am no 'Sir'. I am not yet a knight, but a mere squire."

Everyone cried out at such an injustice, which Aldo silenced with a raising of his hand.

"As to your question," he said. "I am traveling the realm seeking adventure. If am to find a just and able lord to take me into his service, I must make a name for myself. Which, reminds me: you people have been so civilized and hospitable. Surely, there must be some service I can do for you? Perhaps you have some bandits that need cowing, or a cruel magistrate that requires justice?"

"There's a dragon," one of my neighbors slurred. "Up yonder mountain."

"Nay," said another. "Tis' a basilisk. One glance from that fiend will turn a man straight to stone."

"Let him alone and stop teasing!" I shouted. The table fell silent. After a moment, Eadwyn the Miller said, "There's Jenny Green-Teeth."

"Quiet!"

It was too late. A chorus went up around the table. I kept protesting, and they kept talking over me. By the time it was over they had lifted Aldo onto their shoulders and were carrying him towards the village.

I was there for the preparations. Aldo listened as they told him about everyone Jenny had killed in the past couple of years.

He nodded and fell into thought, breaking the long silence with, "Why do you suppose she waited so long to take Heneric?"

Some of us shrugged, others scratched our heads.

"Because," he said, thrusting up a finger. "He was _drunk_. She waited for him to sober up before taking him under. She must not like alcohol."

Everyone thought that was a right good explanation. He became very excited and turned to us, saying, "I'm going to need some of your carpenters, and as much wine and ale as you can spare."

A roar went up and everyone ran to get the things Aldo asked for. Even Ralf pitched in a cask of wine, though he insisted Aldo pay for it until we threatened to wring it out of his scrawny neck instead.

The next day we went to Jenny's pond. With us we had six casks of wine, three of brandy, and fourteen barrels of ale. The carpenters had worked through the night making the long chutes that Aldo had specified.

Groups of our strongest men picked up the chutes and placed the ends in the pond, keeping well away from the banks as they worked. From thirty feet away, we were able to pour all the beer and wine into the water. Within a few minutes, some of us had noticed that the level of the pond had risen.

We noticed something else, too: the water was bubbling. The more we poured in, the more the water boiled.

"Grappling-hooks, now!" Aldo cried.

Our men rushed forward and cast their hooks into the pond. When they didn't catch on anything, we reeled them in and threw again.

"I've got something!" Eadwyn the Miller shouted. The other men threw their hooks at the same spot as his. The ropes snapped taught. Our fellas threw all their weight into pulling. After a good ten minutes of struggle, the pond-scrum broke to show a sickly, green thing being dragged out of the water. The women screamed. The men cheered.

Jenny was the color of mushy peas. Ropey arms hung well past her knees. Her legs were long and folded-up like a frog's. Her fingers and toes were webbed, and by the way her ribs showed she hadn't had a good meal since dining on Heneric.

She was drooling and hiccupping, drunker than a friar. The men cheered and swarmed her, kicking and spitting as they cast their nets.

We tied her up and dragged her to the village. Aldo led, his sword held aloft and his armor glinting like a whole other sun.

Everyone came out to see Jenny Green-Teeth. Mans the butcher got a meat-hook from his shop and suggested we hang her from the post in the square. It took a good six men to lift her. Her mouth was hanging open, so we didn't have much trouble getting the hook in. It pierced the roof of her mouth and came out just below her eye. She started thrashing and gurgling as blood ran down her throat.

Jenny was dazed until she got the oil. One of the women had been frying cakes when Jenny was dragged past her window. She ran out and threw the oil on Jenny's face. _That_ woke her up. She screamed like the Devil and everyone threw up their hands and applauded.

A few boys cut birch-branches and ran up to Jenny. They lashed her body until the flesh had been flayed off. Some men approached with knives and sawed off her breasts, holding them over their heads and displaying them to the cheering crowd. The whole time, Jenny screamed.

The crowd encouraged the men further, so they took their knives and cut Jenny open at the belly. One of the fellas reached in and began piling her guts around her feet. She wasn't screaming anymore, just kind of moaning and tossing her head.

Two women ran up, one with a handful of manure, the other with a kettle of hot coals. They almost beat each other senseless arguing over who got there first until the crowd started chanting "Both! Both!" The women obliged and stuffed both coals and dung into Jenny's body. Jenny howled, tears streaming out of her cloudy, fishy eyes. Everyone pointed at her and nearly fell over laughing.

By now, Aldo's face looked about as green as Jenny's. I went up and put an arm around his shoulders.

"We can't thank you enough! You made all of this possible. You'll be a knight in no time, just wait an' see! If you don't, then there's no God in Heaven!"

He probably had too much to drink, because he only shook his head and muttered something to himself.

Eadwyn came up with a pair of pliers he'd gotten from the smith and twisted off pieces of Jenny's flesh. She was barely responding anymore, so we decided we'd had our fun and would put an end to her. We piled straw and faggots under her feet and set them alight.

I suppose Jenny had a little more fight in her, because when those flames licked her feet she jerked and let out a wail like Death itself. The skin of her feet crackled, rose, and turned white like parchment. Fat was dripping off her and sizzling on the ground.

Then, Jenny stopped thrashing. Her face showed a sudden calm. She looked through the crowd right at Aldo. Aldo hadn't moved a muscle since we'd hung Jenny up. Now, I can't be sure, but those cloudy, fishy eyes seemed to be asking Aldo something, almost begging him.

Aldo nodded and got up. The crowd quieted. He drew his sword and struck off her head with a single blow.

Everybody cheered as the body flopped onto the pyre. Everybody but Aldo, who just sheathed his sword and walked away. We found that a little odd, but all agreed he was simply too modest to stay for an ovation.

The only thing Aldo said to me was that he was sacking-in early. I begged him to join the celebrations, but he put up his hand and sulked away.

I didn't see him when he left in the morning. Nobody did. He must have mounted that pretty charger and left while the moon was still out.

We still celebrate Aldo's victory over Jenny Green-Teeth. Every year we make a Jenny out of straw and rags and hang her from the post in the square, lashing it with birch branches and cutting it open with knives. Only our finest boy gets to play the part of Aldo and deliver the killing blow. It's considered quite an honor.

Still, I wonder what happened to the young knight. I don't presume to know a knight's business, but I can say there was something very peculiar about the way he left. When I woke up I saw what he had left behind: his sword and armor. What could he have been thinking when he slunk away, not even a parting word, without the tools of his trade? I've nearly driven myself mad wondering about that.

That's why I have the things you see in my cottage, why I polish them every day until he returns. I hope he does, too. Everyone would love him to be here on the day we celebrate in his honor. That's my one regret about the whole episode, I suppose—that we never got to show him proper gratitude. Showing gratitude is damned important to us. After all, we're good, civilized people here.

Colin Heintze is a lifelong science fiction and fantasy fan whose work can be found in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Lore, and Fictionvale. Along with W.H. Minor, he also co-authored the epic space opera "Demon's Bounty," which will be available this spring.

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# Cthulhu Misspelled

by Clayton Snyder; published December 31, 2013

Everything was almost in place. Harold had read the book cover to cover, though some of it seemed unnecessary. Passages and passages on precautions, sigils and signs, secret names, and the proper way to flay a non-believer. There were diagrams and illustrations, and in one instance, an esoteric mathematical formula that was supposed to guarantee immortality, though to Harold, it looked suspiciously like a quadratic equation as applied to the alphabet.

 He came the _Necronomicon_ by accident, browsing eBay for rare books. It had been offered for little to no money, basically just next to the cost of shipping, and Harold hadn't thought twice about jumping on the auction before someone else could.

_"Only used once, smells somewhat of fish."_ It was the only description the seller provided, and Harold actually liked fish, so he couldn't see a downside. Also, it was an added bonus that the book was written for the sole purpose of summoning dark powers to do one's bidding. Harold had plans.

It had taken some time to gather all the things he needed for the ritual. Blood of a mature virgin for instance. It wasn't like he could go around poking spinsters with needles, so he ended up spending six months volunteering at the local blood bank, screening every applicant that came in. When he finally found it, he smuggled the chilled bag of blood out of the clinic in his underwear, while uttering a silent prayer to whoever was listening that his testicles would quickly re-descend.

Another hard-to-get item was the breath of a fish. He had stared at that sentence for some time, trying to puzzle it out. As far as he knew, fish didn't even have lungs. He spent a lot of time and money on goldfish. At first, he tried holding their little fishy lips to a bottle and squeezing them. That ended awkwardly. In the end, he took several, threw them in a plastic bag, and sealed it shut. After they expired, the bag puffed up, and he considered it good enough.

The last item was "a chunke of meate from the moste dangerous beaste." It was not pleasant, and cost him about a hundred dollars, but he got it. Shame about Homeless Joe's pinky finger, though. He actually felt pretty terrible about it, until he realized Joe had nine perfectly good other fingers, and he hadn't even named that one yet.

Then he waited another three months, until Sarah had to take a trip to her sister's, before he was able to finally put his plan in action. He kissed her goodbye and stood in the doorway, waving and watching her go, waiting until the silver Taurus rounded the corner at the end of the street. When she was gone, he went back inside, closed the door, and fished the plastic bag from the toilet tank where he stored his ingredients.

In the dining room, he pushed the table and chairs to one side, then rolled up the area rug and propped that against the wall as well. He snipped the top off the bag of virgin's blood, and with a basting brush from the kitchen, drew a circle in the center of the floor. Larger than a man, but smaller than an elephant, it was small enough to hold the entity he was summoning without risking his own safety, yet large enough to be comfortable. He didn't see the need to make the thing any grumpier than it needed to be, especially not if that mood were directed at him.

A few quick strokes with the brush painted the requisite symbols and signs at the cardinal points of the circle, with the beast's name at the top. Very carefully, he painted "CTHULU" in letters large enough to enforce his intention.

When he was done with that, he placed the severed finger on the east side and the rattling bag of dried goldfish on the west. Finally, he stood in the south, and hesitated.

He considered for a moment that he could very well be quite insane by now, driven there by years of whispers behind his back. He knew it was happening, and about him. Always about him.

He also considered the idea that this might work, albeit _too_ well, and he would summon something so powerful it would simply break free, devour him, and quite possibly the entire block. He grimaced. The homeowner's association would _not_ like that.

Harold took a deep breath, and decided the only way to know was to try. He closed his eyes, began to whisper the Lord's Prayer, then thought better of it. Probably best not to attract His attention. He remembered he had to prick his finger to start the ritual, and cracked his eyelids long enough to jab himself in the thumb with one of Sarah's sewing needles.

Blood welled up immediately on the ball of his thumb, and he squeezed it out, then let it fall just outside the southern border of the circle. It hit the hardwood with a wet "plop," sending little droplets out in a pattern.

That done, he closed his eyes again and began the chant the book had specified.

"Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! IA! IA! CTHULHU FTHAGN! PH'NGLUI MGLW'NFAH CTHULHU R'LYEH WGAH'NAGL FHTAGN!"

He said each sentence louder than the last, the unfamiliar words seeming to form themselves to his mouth with each iteration, his voice becoming stronger, ringing in the quiet house. When he was done, the last syllables echoed away into the empty rooms, and he opened an eye and peeked.

The circle was empty. Outside, a car drove by, tires crunching on loose stone in the street. Further off, a dog barked. Harold looked around the room, and deflated a little. He knew he shouldn't be surprised, or disappointed, and that hoping did not make something so, but still ... it had been quite a show, he thought, with all the chanting and the blood. He turned away from the circle to fetch the mop Sarah kept in the hall closet, and muttered under his breath.

"Ash was right. _Klaatu barada nikto_ , my ass," Harold said.

"It's not there! What do you mean, under the stairs? Margaret? Marga — oh."

Harold stopped in his tracks and spun around. Someone was standing in his circle, and he blinked.

"Hello? Hello? Excuse me, who are you?" the man said.

"Har— Harold." Harold struggled to speak for a moment. There was a man standing in the center of the circle, hands on his hips, looking perturbed. Mop forgotten, Harold sat in the chair he had set just south of the circle and stared at his visitor.

He had hoped for a big bad. Someone or something that could put a hurt on the world, someone who could avenge all the wrongs of his miserable life. What he got was, well, not as impressive.

He found himself staring at a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. He was dressed in chinos and a white button-up shirt, with the sleeves rolled back, exposing what looked like an old tattoo of an anchor on the left forearm. His eyes were too small, almost beady, and nearly black. A scraggly mustache sat above thin lips, and Harold could tell it hadn't been trimmed recently, as there were several patches of hair that hung down over the man's upper lip like tentacles.

The man glared, and Harold realized with a start that he hadn't said anything since his name.

"Who are you?" Harold asked.

"Bob Cthulu. Not that you should know," he said. He started to walk across the room, and stopped short, as though running into a glass wall. He rebounded as if struck, and his glare grew even more annoyed. After a moment, he sighed.

"I see. You were trying to call up some demon, some greater power, right?"

Harold nodded.

Bob turned a circle, looking at the things Harold had placed at each of the cardinal points. When he reached the north, he stopped, and snorted through his mustache.

"God damn it," he muttered, and shook his head. He turned back to Harold, and walked as close as he dared to the edge of the circle.

"You spelled it wrong, you twit," he said, and Harold heard judgment in his tone.

"Uh, what?" Harold said.

"Come see."

Harold eyed Bob, and a thought flitted through his head. _Maybe this is a trap. Maybe he thinks you look tasty, and you won't know until his head flips up like a trashcan and turns into a giant leech._

Bob sighed. "Look, circle." He pointed at it with a toe. "Can't get out." He pressed his palms to the air and appeared to mime being stuck in a box. "I'm in a glass case of emotion!" he wailed.

Harold eyed him. "What?"

Bob dropped his hands and stepped back from the border of the circle. "Anchorman?"

Another blank look from Harold.

"No? You don't get cable here? Okay, fine, whatever — look, just look over here." He walked back to the head of the circle and waited.

Harold followed him around, and looked where Bob was pointing. He read it: CTHULU.

"You're missing an 'H', genius. The second one."

"Well, I don't — how?" Harold said.

Bob shrugged. "Happens. Now, how about you break this circle, and let me out?"

Harold walked back to the chair and sat down. He shook his head.

"How do I know you're not going to eat me, or worse?" he said.

"Ew. No. But I will be very cross if you don't let me out. Not to mention my wife. I'm supposed to be finding pickles."

Harold thought about it. "Why can't you just get out? I mean, if you're not a monster, can't you just walk out?"

Bob sighed again. Harold thought he must be either very tired or easily annoyed.

"Fine, look. Cthulhu is my cousin. I have a bit of the old family blood in me, and it makes it more than inconvenient when people go about misspelling names and painting circles around me. It doesn't mean I'm going to go on a murderous rampage, or traipsing off across the countryside, squashing cottages."

Harold thought about it, and shook his head again. "How about a deal instead? You do something for me, in lieu of your cousin, and I'll let you out. I'll even pay you."

Bob appeared to consider it, and when he didn't answer, Harold went on.

"I have uh, enemies."

Bob let out a snort. "What've you done? Irritated the other accountants?"

Harold pretended to ignore him, and continued. "They taunt me, and generally make my life miserable. You make their lives miserable, and I'll pay you, and let you out when you're done."

"Taunt?" Bob said, as though tasting the word. "Who says that?" A look of mild distaste crossed his face. It passed, and he seemed to consider. "They made you miserable?"

Harold nodded. "Yes."

"Did you paint a circle around them? Because I can see how that might annoy a person."

"Please?" Harold pleaded. "I've only got one shot at this, and I need to know there is justice in the world."

Bob turned away to mutter to himself. After a moment, he turned back, and regarded Harold.

"Fine, I can help. First, bring me a toaster."

Harold stared at him, not sure he had heard right.

"A toaster?"

"Yep, two slots, lever on the front, makes bread crispy."

"Why?"

"You want this done, right?"

Harold nodded, and got up. He walked to the kitchen, and unplugged the toaster. He considered emptying the crumb tray, then reconsidered. For all he knew, whatever curse Bob might cast could very well require a 'crumb for every bit of misfortune.' He carried the toaster to the circle.

"Okay, now hand it over." Bob said.

Harold stretched out his arms, then snatched them back at the last minute. He had almost broken the plane of the circle. He caught Bob smirking at him, and smiled weakly back, then tossed the toaster underhand to him. Bob caught it lightly.

"Thanks." He said.

He placed it on the ground on one side, so the slots were facing the wall. Harold watched him intently.

With a shout, Bob jumped into the air and landed on the toaster. It crumpled under his weight, and pieces spilled from the bread slots. He jumped on it again and again, until it was a crumpled mass of plastic and metal. When he was done, he stepped back, and leaned over, hands on his knees. When he had caught his breath, he stood and grinned at Harold.

"What was that?" Harold asked.

"That _was_ a perfectly good toaster. Now let me out of the circle!"

"Monster," Harold muttered.

"You should try bringing me a hairdryer next," Bob said, still smirking.

Harold sat down. His cell phone rang, and he picked up.

"Hello."

"Hi, honey. Just wanted to let you know my sister's sick, so I'm coming back. I should be there in a bit. You need anything?"

"Um, no, thank you. Was just going to finish up some chores and watch some TV," Harold said.

"Okay, see you soon, then. Love you."

"Love you too, Pook."

He hung up, and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He looked at Bob, who was no longer smiling. The man just stood there, watching him.

"Gonna have a hard time explaining all this, Harry," Bob said.

"Yeah." Harold got up, dejection sitting in his chest like a lead weight. He walked over to the circle, and with a heavy sigh, smudged the line that separated him from Bob.

"Go on, get out of here," he said, then turned and headed for the mop.

Behind him, there was a sound like wet paper tearing. He looked back, and wished he hadn't. Bob's head had flipped back, and in the gap between his neck and chin were teeth. A _lot_ of teeth. _All_ of the teeth.

Not-Bob stepped out of the circle.

Harold barely even felt the first bite.

Clayton Snyder was born and raised in Michigan, and moved to North Dakota about twelve years ago. Over the years, he has worn more than a few hats, from landscaping to web development. He dabbled in painting — landscapes, mostly — and occasionally picked up an instrument and played it poorly. He currently works for an advertising agency out of Bismarck, and in his free time he writes, which has always been his first love. To date, he has been published by Before Sunrise Press, and Garbled Transmissions Magazine.

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# About Fiction Vortex

Fiction Vortex, let's see...

A fiction vortex is a tornado of stories that pick you up and hurl you through a barn to find enlightenment on the other side. It's a whirlpool of fascinating tales so compelling that they suck you in, drag you down to the bottom of your mind, and drown you with incessant waves of glorious imagery and believable characters.

Nope.

A fiction vortex is an online speculative fiction magazine focused on publishing great science fiction and fantasy, and is run by incredibly attractive and intelligent people with great taste in literature and formidable writing prowess.

Not that either. But we're getting closer.

Founded in the 277th year of the Takolatchni Dynasty, Fiction Vortex set out to encourage people to write and publish great speculative fiction. It sprang fully formed from the elbow of TWOS, retaining none of TWOS's form but most of its spirit. And the patron god of writers, the insecure, the depressed, and the mentally ill regarded Fiction Vortex in his magic mirror of self-loathing and declared it good, insofar as something that gives writer's undue hope can be declared good. Thereafter, he charged the Rear Admiral of the Galactic 5th Fleet to defend Fiction Vortex down to the last robot warrior.

Now we're talking.

Take your pick. We don't care how you characterize us or the site.

Fiction Vortex focuses on publishing speculative fiction. That means science fiction and fantasy (with a light smattering of horror and a few other subgenres), be it light, heavy, deep, flighty, spaceflighty, cerebral, visceral, epic, or mundane. But mundane in a my-local-gas-station-has-elf-mechanics-but-it's-not-really-a-big-deal-around-here kind of way. Got it?

Basically, we want imaginative stories that are well written, but not full of supercilious floridity.

There's a long-standing belief that science fiction and fantasy stories aren't as good as purely literary fare. We want you to prove that mindset wrong (not just wrong, but a steaming pile of griffin dung wrong) with every story we publish. It's almost like we're saying, "I do not bite my thumb at you, literary snobs, but I do bite my thumb," but in a completely polite and non-confrontational way.

We've got more great stories online, with a new story twice a week. Visit our website FictionVortex.com, follow us on Twitter: @FictionVortex, and like us on Facebook: FictionVortex.

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