Tag: fantasy fiction

All Stories, Fantasy

Relics by Michael Helvaty

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When I stirred from my slumber, one of my arms felt like it had been trapped beneath my body for several months, and I shook it back to usefulness as the door opened.  The last three heroes to visit had been males of their respective races, so a thrill ran through me as a young woman appeared on the threshold to my chamber.  Her need had summoned my room, connecting it to her world through an otherwise ordinary door and calling me to action as the angel of lost relics.

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All Stories, Romance, Short Fiction

Week 317 – ‘Manners Maketh The Man’ Is Just A Saying And Not A Singularity, Opening A Door Is Just Manners And Emily Dinova’s Saturday Special.

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Well here we are at Week 317.

This week is like the old saying about buses. (For all the kids reading this – A bus is not your mum or dad giving you a lift somewhere, it is a big long vehicle that takes loads of you as long as you pay. Paying is when you give your own money to someone in exchange for items or services that you need / want)

I like to teach the youth of today – From a distance that is. I’d hate to do something radical like talk to the wee mutants. To be fair, I don’t think they can hold a conversation without typing it badly. I like to teach the youth of today – From a distance that is. I’d hate to do something radical like talk to the wee mutants. To be fair, I don’t think they can hold a conversation without typing it badly.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Historical

One Last Act by Gail Boling

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The execution notice tacked to a wooden fencepost flapped in the wind as early morning light crept through the tree branches. Soraya tried not to slow her pace or even to glance at it. She already knew the details and her heart grieved for her only son. Pulling the faded cotton scarf tighter around her head, she walked in a hunched-over manner befitting her age, taking a circuitous path to make sure she was not being followed. The Janissaries had posted notices of the execution for today. They intended a very public message that rebellion and insurrection would not be tolerated. The Sultan of the Ottoman empire had spoken.

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All Stories, Fantasy

June’s Miniature Mart Off Highway 101 by Sage Tyrtle

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Her box on the shelf at June’s Miniature Mart is getting dusty. She watches through her plastic window on the world as her aisle is put on sale. “50% off! Get ’em before they’re gone!”

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Grim Morass by David Samuels

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They say you’re a paladin, but all I see is a fool.

Look at you: armored like a crawdad with the brains to match. One wrong move on that poleboat and you’ll sink to the base of the swamp.

Gimme your hand. Let’s get you back on solid ground—if you can call this pier solid. The stilts wobble in the sludge, so watch your step.

Not a talker, clearly. Don’t bother unrolling that scroll. I know all about your oath of silence. Word travels fast among us Marshmen. As the village shaman, I was among the first to learn about your little quest. You seek redemption, yes?

Then go home. Adopt a war orphan and get on with your life. Truth be told, you’d have better luck floating in that platemail than slaying the Bogroth.

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Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Horror

The Truth Will Set You Free by Alex Sinclair

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He couldn’t remember much, not even his own name, but what he could recall from the previous evenings jaunt with the ever elusive they, the them that had occupied his thoughts for as long as he could remember, came in silent camera flashes that appeared somewhere behind his eyes; the men in the masks and all the pretty butterflies floating in silent dances that tickled his face and arms.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon by Leila Allison

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I am a Pen Name, which means (unlike it is for “real” writers) there are little cracks in my mind that lead to places where strangely imagined circumstances are reality. Within one such crack turns a world exactly like our own except for one significant difference: On “Other Earth” the post WWII nuclear testing conducted by the US military out in the American southwest desert did result in the creation of  the gigantic ants, mammoth scorpions, huge tarantulas, scores of Godzilla-sized lizards and a smattering of profoundly effed-up human beings that we see only in 1950’s science fiction films. Among the traits these creatures have in common (besides experiencing the enlarging effects of extreme radiation) are an immunity to conventional weapons and insatiable appetites for murder and destruction.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Strutting Hog by James Hanna

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The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.

                                                                           -Bob Dylan

You are alive to the moment—nothing more. And the moment is not alive to you. The shrunken path you walk, the fogbanks swirling around you, the overgrown forest that slows your stride offer neither cheer nor condolence. Rather they make you feel perishable, as though you have stumbled here in your sleep.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Cormorant and the Misophonyx: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Leila Allison

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Prelude 

There are three music Spirits. First you have the Tintintinabulator. Tins were classically trained pianists in life who haunt specific keyboards (pianos, organs, harpsichords, etc.) in death. Tins are generally friendly, but being artists they are hypersensitive to criticism and require reassurance full time. Next we have the Chimespeak. Best described as self-taught travelling minstrels/buskers in life, Chimes are nomadic Spirits who wander from here to there and affect anything from the grandest church bells on down to kazoos fashioned from handkerchiefs and combs. Tastes aside, these two Spirits classes are equally talented even though the Tins tend to look down on the “prolish” Chimes, who in turn wonder how a Tin can look down on anything with “its” head so firmly tucked up its own buttocks.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Mary and the Photobomb Fairy:

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An Epic Season Finale Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Leila Allison

Mary and the Photobomb Fairy 

Mary was lying on a couch at a psychiatrist’s office, getting her head explored. It was your typical wood panelled and diploma-laden psychiatrist’s office, the kind you see in films, TV and  New Yorker cartoons. There were the already described walls, the couch containing Mary, an occasional table on which lay a box of Kleenex, and a seated shrink, who, if she resembled Dr. Melfi from The Sopranos one atom more, might prompt a lawsuit. No creativity was spent on the presentation of this office, for it was borrowed from the Public Domain Library for use in this story. In fact the sloth in this paragraph alone is so prevalent that your author hasn’t bothered to look up whether Dr. Melfi is a psychiatrist or a psychologist. It’s because all that’s required of this paragraph is for the author to get across the image of a woman named Mary getting her head explored by a professional in that field (from here, “Dr. Morley”) at a place where such explorations normally take place.

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