He wasn’t a special man. He was just a guy with an above average trashcan. It might merit an even higher title than “above average.” Consider it magical. Yes, magical.
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Category: Fantasy
Louis Lovelace and the Salvation Economy by Zachary Arama
September 8th
The idea came to Louis Lovelace after a phone call informing him of the end of the world.
He groped for an excuse to end the call, but his mind was foggy from the smoldering joint in the ashtray. He’d been burning through the severance from his last job for almost five months now, and the truth was he had nothing better to do than listen.
“Louis, it’s Sheldon. We went to college together, remember?” the hopeful voice on the other end of the line said.
“I know this seems strange, but it’s urgent.”
Louis remembered Sheldon as a devoutly religious student who shared his notes whenever Louis was too hungover to take his own. They had hardly been friends, and in the fifteen years since graduation, Louis hadn’t thought about him once.
Mr. Terrence by Rick Moss
“Sorry?” The young man looks up from his reading.
“That a mystery?” the visitor says again. Odd for a July night, the tweed overcoat. It’s fraying at the cuffs, and stains, smudges on the one shoulder, soot all down that side, the extra long scarf rounding the throat then across his chest, wrapped like a royal sash, and beneath it a t-shirt, yellowed at the belly.
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The Soul Counter by Charles Sutphin
The cross looked small from the back of the nave. Flanked by emblems of the Alpha and Omega, the Celtic Cross, called the Cross of Iona by the church fathers, appeared disfigured in the stained-glass light. Holling Krannert, statistician of the Second Presbyterian Church for more than fifty years, had a decision to make. Having spent the night in a pew, meditating upon the sins of the world, he would decide the fate of the church—whether the building he loved and served so faithfully should live or die in flame.
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Lunalae By Robert Reece
The first thing to disappear was the dull, half-moon circle on the fingernail of his left index finger. He’d never considered that spot in his life except for the day that he noticed it was gone. Then he remembered that he had thought about it once before. He smashed his fingernail with a mallet when he was a kid. He was trying to nail a novelty license plate that said “Future” to the back of his soapbox derby car. He made the license plate a carnival in Idaho for 1 dollar, and he made the soap box derby car in his garage one summer because he wanted to feel like he was living in the 1950s while every other kid was atrophying into gelatinous blobs playing video games. He didn’t want his dad to scream at him for using his special rosewood mallet he’d received at a Toastmasters convention instead of the old hammer in the toolbox, so he never mentioned that he took it to nail that license plate from Idaho. Even when his fingernail turned greenish purple and eventually fell off, he kept that hand hidden from his parents.
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Spared by a Sign by Matias Travieso-Diaz
He gave their crops to the grasshopper, their produce to the locust.
Psalm 78:46
Once, in a remote corner of the world, two tribes dwelt in nearby settlements along a plain that opened beneath towering mountains. The land was fertile but its expanse was narrow, and the tribes were ceaselessly at war with each other, jockeying for control of one strip of terrain or another. After countless deaths and great devastation, both sides remained bloodied but resolute in their determination to overwhelm, and if possibly annihilate, each other.
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The Recurring Donor: It Started with a Kidney by Jack Powers
I mean, crazy, right? My kidney in America’s greatest president? The only one to care about the little guy? And the one who still might, if she comes out of her coma, lead us out of the Killer Vaccine Apocalypse.
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Time Was by David Calcutt
Time was you could walk the whole length of the world going from island to island across the bridges raised high above oceans and mountains, deserts and forests, sometimes alone, or with a single companion, sometimes one among thronging multitudes, of merchants and hunters, explorers and sightseers, the clamour of whose voices drowned out even the howling of the winds and the screeching of the giant eagles.
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Simply Sinsational by Leila Allison
After eating, drinking and making more of themselves, Raccoons live to roller derby. It comes naturally. You don’t need to use magick to make them like it. Just bring a pack of Raccoons to a roller derby track, supply a generous heaping of beer and snacks, place Rachel Welch’s brilliant Kansas City Bomber on the dvd and the critters know immediately what to do without spell casting or even training.
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How to not keep a Vampire out of Your House (in Eight Easy Steps) by Bob DeRosa
STEP 1 – When the undead thing scratches at your window and asks if it can come in, say no.
STEP 2 – When the thing says something that stirs your soul and awakens your senses, and when it promises that it doesn’t want to hurt you, it just wants to be with you, and when it asks to come in so you can have a really good talk about it, say no again.
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