Jimmy the Wizard and I stand in front of a large apartment complex. Jimmy says that somewhere behind this wood and stucco facade my guardian angel shimmers. It waits to be released. Jimmy takes two steps back.
“Examine the walls,” he says.
Category: Fantasy
Low Visibility by Matt Harrison
My wife was born invisible, but she told me that it’s only at my high school reunion that she feels invisible.
A small percentage of Americans are born invisible each year. Naturally, this number is very hard to track.
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A Certain Vood,by Geraint Jonathan
This Vood.
I have it on good authority that he recently scooped lumps of coal on to his dinner plate, believing them to be potatoes. Had it not been for the intervention of a scullery-maid, he would have eaten the lot! This is the kind of creature we’re dealing with here. It bears thinking about. Already I’ve heard tell of households where fractious children are hushed by mere mention of his name. ‘Bedtime now, or the Vood will come get you.’ I’d say that’s a worrying development. He’s acquired the definite article. People are afraid. These are decent people. When some of the children spoke of this Vood’s wearing , and I quote, “a hat of fire”, well, I was skeptical, naturally. But a hat of fire I’m afraid is exactly what this Vood has been observed to wear on several occasions! By those not given to voicing fancies, I might add. What to make of such a thing? Some demonic form of halo? Who knows. I suspect something stranger. This much, however, is clear: when this Vood is on the prowl, even the dogs of the town grow unsettled. His name alone carries implications. I shouldn’t wonder if it’s not already sprouted a suffix or turned into a verb. Or both. He’s already entered drunkards’ ditties. That can only bode worse.
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Rock and Roll Lamb School 666 by Leila Allison
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Obnoxious is What Obnoxious Does appears to be the student motto at The Lamb School of Saragun Springs. A superior percentage of the juvenile Ewes and Rams at Lamb School are spoiled, mouthy brats who show no appreciation for their homeland. You can tell them that if they were born anywhere else but Saragun Springs, they would neither talk nor think beyond the undemanding standards nature has set for Sheep, and they will laugh at you. And dare toss the prospect of New Zealand at them, they merely fake a yawn and launch into a new groundless complaint to counter your empty threat.
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Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher
“I am the Seven Wonders of the World … I am the Endless Ocean and the Garden of Eden … I am the Mountains and Valleys and a Great Desert.”
Gabriella has a complex system for organizing the loose pieces. What might look like a haphazard pile of small cardboard shapes is a clearly thought-out symmetrical pattern waiting to be employed in a system of elimination “far too sophisticated for even the Venezuelan postal service to figure out”, she used to tell her little boy when they sat together day after day working on a new puzzle, waiting for him to die. “It’s like DNA,” she’d say, “every piece unique onto itself.”
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Shakespeare: Made Man by Geraint Jonathan
In the year 1588, twenty-four-year-old Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza, fearing for his limbs at the hands of the Inquisition, fled his native Sicily for the sceptred shores of England.
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The Time Machine That Was and Wasn’t at the Same Time by Jonah Jones.
Several years ago or yet to be, Frank Fullie had written on a whiteboard in his garage:
“You can jump forward in time by falling asleep.”
“You can jump backward in time by looking at old photographs.”
“Sideways in time by having empathy with another.”
“Outside time by dying.”
As an afterthought he’d written “Does the Higgs field come into it?”
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The Insolence of the Lambs: A Feckless Fable by Leila Allison
Our cast
Re-education Story Lady………Dame Daisy Kloverleaf
Truant Officer Aye………………Beezer Baw
Truant Officer Nae…………… Barkevious Baw
The Lamb Sextuplets…………..Themselves
Principal …………………………Penrose the Flying Weasel
The Bogey-Sheep……………..Juan Gee
Superintendent Renfield………Herself (actually drunk, a method actress)
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Anita Knows by Leila Allison
Act One: What Goes Up Eventually Leaves a Crater
Nowadays, the amazing comeback of the boy band, the billigits, is all the rage in Saragun Springs. The cycle of fame travels extremely fast in fantasy realms. For six weeks the boys (natives of the Springs) were flying high, superstars in the Springs’ sister realm called Other Earth; launched by the spectacular success of their debut album, meet the billigits (billigits do not use capital letters). Yet six weeks later, the band imploded, and the billigits were just another pockmark in the town of hasbeenville.
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Katrina by Richard Krause
What is immoral is simply what we don’t want people to do. If anything is expeditious to us, of benefit, if it accords with our own plan, we will not only sanction but applaud what would otherwise outrage us.
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