All Stories, Fantasy

A Whale of a Time by Kelly Hossaini

The parking lot was empty.  But that wasn’t unusual, partly because it was midnight and partly because, since the sparkling new Saver General came to town, Dan Burns’s General Merchandiser rarely had any customers anymore.  Dan learned with dread the coming of the Saver General and he knew that, slow or fast, the death of his store was probably imminent.  Before he had closed up earlier that evening, he stood looking out the front door onto the empty lot.  It was getting cold.  Winter was certainly coming and in a high desert climate it would be dry and cold for months.  Dan didn’t mind that too much.  In the not-so-distant past, the chill would keep the townspeople coming in for heaters, batteries, warm socks, and hatchets to break icy ponds so livestock could drink.  Now the cold seemed to make things more desolate and hopeless.  Dan turned from the front door and left out the back to his truck.  At least the truck was paid for.  That would help him survive a bit longer.  Probably.

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Fantasy, Short Fiction

Slow Walking Out of Babylon by Deborah Prum

One day, I meet Beelzebub standing ahead of me in line at the To God Be the Glory Soup Kitchen. Bathed in the glare of the fluorescent lights that flicker above us, the man glistens. Shards of hard white light reflect off his glimmering jacket, obscuring my view.

But that one glimpse gives me the shivers.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall

The bones spoke to Angelina the way other women heard gossip over garden fences. Snake vertebrae whispered of rain coming from the east. Coyote teeth predicted claim jumpers and cattle thieves. But it was the human bones that spoke loudest, and those she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, wrapped in red silk stolen from a dead Chinese merchant’s shop. Each bundle reminded her of her own lost child, the daughter whose bones she’d never found to read.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Three Swans by Alex Faulkner

That year, swan-operators were in short supply.

The work of a swan-operator is hard and unrewarding, apart from the admiration and praise, like other professions I shall refrain from mentioning. There’d been a falling off in applicants in the year before the great day. Recruitment was difficult. Working conditions are somewhat cramped and the hours are long.  There are risks. It’s understandable.

Swans are designed, as isn’t obvious from their behaviour, primarily for flight. Air is, in fact, their best medium. Well, you’ve  seen them in the air, right? Magnificent.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

The Man with The Frozen Clock by Georgia Xanthopoulou 

On Sunday! See you on Sunday! I await you all. He called out, his voice brimming with unrestrained cheer.

What’s happening on Sunday? Someone would ask him with a mocking smile.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

The Enormous Pacifier by Alice Kinerk

You’ve probably heard about this already, but one day some kids dug up an enormous pacifier, and in doing so pretty much brought chaos into the world. Apparently the kids were playing in the strip of woods by Route 42, just poking sticks in the embankment there, no thoughts of upsetting nesting bees, preventing future mudslides, or their moms having to pretreat their laundry stains afterward. Because where the dirt fell away, they uncovered something that shouldn’t have been there. A large, old, manmade hoop.

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