.:ELECTRIC VELOCIPEDE:. Fiction Excerpts

I shot the sparrow because I was starving. Though truthfully, I was aiming at a pheasant; the silver snow and the silver birches played tricks with the light, and as if by magic, pheasant turned into sparrow.

When I saw what my arrow had done, I cried with empty eyes, too dry to make tears. The sparrow wouldn’t amount to a mouthful of grotty bones—and even a starving woman knows songbirds are sacred to at least one goddess.

My knees plowed into the snow beside the small creature. “How, how, how?” I fretted. “How did you become a sparrow, pheasant?” The bird did not answer, but when I reached to remove the arrow piercing its body, the accusatory glare of a beadish eye stopped me. A trickle of blood slid from its nares, and the bright eye closed.

“Do not be dead!” I cried. “I would give anything for you not to be dead.”

Enmity by K. Tempest Bradford

She is running, has been running for some time. Running from Ariastus? No, running from the serpent she knows is at her heel, ready to strike, waiting for an excuse. So she runs. She runs through the tall grass, through the canopied forest, through the fields of flowers. Running to the music, to Orpheus, away from the serpent, though even now she knows they are the same.

She has always known. Sometimes she forgets. In the forgetting she loses small bits of herself. In the forgetting she can’t remember to care. She remembers the serpent. Had she always run from him? It wasn’t always this way.

The Wind. There was something behind her, chasing her as she danced along the water she had just separated from the sky. She ran south along the water. Something followed. The Wind. She turned, caught it between her hands and saw that it was good. She rolled it, hands moving up and down, up and down, up and down, until . . .

The Serpent. She opened her hands and looked upon it. She saw that it was good, so she gave it—him—a name. Ophion. Serpent.

The Sandbox by Richard Larson

Claire went with her son, Sam, to the playground in the park near their apartment. The park had become the lair of the wives, all of whom stood solemnly to greet Claire and Sam as they approached. The wives owned the playground, like squirrels owned parks. Claire was not a wife, not anymore. Claire just wrote mysteries. She sent Sam over to join the other children, and then she sat down with the wives because there was nowhere else to sit.

The wives were talking about the zoo. “The zebras almost took Jeffrey,” said one of the wives. Jeffrey was her son, a fat boy whose nose was always running. “I had to physically fight them off,” the wife continued. “A crazy zebra grabbed Jeffrey’s arm and pulled him off the ground. I got his legs just in time and I had to poke the zebra in the eye to make it let go.”

“That happened to me with Danny the last time we went to the zoo,” said another wife, taking a long drag of her cigarette. Claire had forgotten which one was Danny. “Except it was the prairie dogs, and they didn’t grab him so much as try to coax him into their little field. I saw his eyes go all crazy and I knew something was up. I think the prairie dogs were chanting something, like really low so they didn’t think I could hear.”

“We have to do something,” said the first wife, patting the other’s back sympathetically with one hand while eating pretzel sticks with the other. The rest of the wives were quiet, perhaps paralyzed by images of inexplicably dangerous zoo animals. Claire glanced around the park, looking for clues. The detective in Claire’s popular novels, the beautiful and shape-shifting Madame Gagnon—known simply as Claudette to her close friends—was trying to solve the biggest mystery of her career. She would solve it as soon as Claire figured out what it was

The Leaf Gatherer by Damon Kaswell

The first time he saw the leaf gatherer, Kyle Burton was twelve years old. He watched through the kitchen window as the man crouched low, scrounging through a dirty pile of leaves. He looked just like any other homeless man, with his ratty coat, dirty beard, and cracked skin.

Amanda, his ten-year-old sister, wedged herself between Kyle and the window. “What’s that guy doing?”

“I dunno, doofus. Maybe he dropped something.”

Amanda watched the homeless man for a minute. “This is boring. When are Mom and Dad gonna be home?”

“They’ll be home at seven, doofus.”

Amanda turned away from the window and glared at him. She looked fierce with her strawberry blond hair pulled back in tight pigtails. “Don’t call me doofus, butt-head.”

“Fine, dweeb.” Kyle danced back from the window in time to avoid his sister’s lunge, then ran around the living room they’d already trashed, keeping her out of arm’s reach. Even though he was taller and stronger than she was, he knew she fought dirty. He also knew that if he actually hurt her at all, he’d be in big trouble. But it was too easy to get a rise out of her; he just couldn’t help himself.

Dear Annabehls by Mercurio D. Riveria

I’m concerned about the inordinate amount of time that my 13-year-old son “Jeff” spends with himself. A boy his age should be out and about, playing with friends, participating in sports and other after-school activities. I come from a very traditional family, and I have to confess that I’m concerned that this behavior suggests that Jeff may be gay.

My husband thinks I’m overreacting. What do you think?

Concerned Tuscaloosa Mom

Life's Rich Demand by Trent Walters

“If you begin, you must keep on beginning.”—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”

This is how it began. Or how it ended. Maybe it never begins or ends. Either way, this is how it happened. But this couldn’t be how it happened because people don’t behave like this. However people behave, this is how Robin Chin remembered it when she stopped long enough to remember to report it because if she didn’t report it as it had happened, who would?

Who? Robin had gotten an interview with senatorial candidate Braggadocio to juxtapose against a competing interview with Sentator Picklesnap. What? It was the pinnacle of her career at the . When? At the height of the election furor.

Where? A tableau of bright, candy-cane striped carnival tents the campaign committees used to show how much serious fun their candidate was up to. They even had picnic tables lined up for an apple pie eating contest which no eater seemed to have the appetite to enjoy despite the laughter of those who had cajoled the eaters into this pickle to raise campaign funds.

Callie, Robin’s poor calico, mewed miserably after the apple pie. Robin opened up a copy of the to keep Callie from sharpening her claws on the seat cushion. The paper opened to the middle with a full-page ad that read, “Come see a man consume an entire grocery store to benefit the hungry and prevent stomach cancer!” Robin shook her head and grabbed her purse. Some poor schmuck would have to cover that dismal spectacle. What kind of person would perform such an stupid stunt? The fool would have to be out of his mind.

An Elderly Pirate Recalls the Death of Love by Jay Lake

Ain’t no harsher mistress than the sea. Some says the moon is, but she’s only inconstant as any woman must be. Some says the Jolly Roger is harsh, but there’s something in a man that longs to be told what to do, and there’s something in a flag that longs to tell him.

But the sea. Now there a man has to think quick, and oft times act quicker than he can think. If God made the world—and I ain’t saying He did—He made the sea to test us all.

It’s you who flee her pounding grace who I pity most.

Hand me that mug there, will you?

Fool. ‘Tis not grog. And no loss either, I’m saying. You ever drink grog?

No, I didn’t think so.

Truth be, this shite tastes worse than grog ever did, but it’s what Auntie Bone forces me to drink thrice a day. Auntie, he’s good cuss for all I’m old enough to have done for his daddy.

Setting My Spider Free by Caroline Yoachim

Cool air swirled in through the window and carried with it the faint tapping of claws scratching against stone. A spiderling was climbing my tower.

Lilymiya stirred. She’d spent the daylight hours in her corner with all her legs fanned out across the floor, trying to ward off the summer heat. My poor spider. Her fur, so thick and comforting in the winter, was patchy and ragged. Clumps of it gathered along the base of the walls, and thick strands clung to the grimy sweat on my skin.

The spiderling appeared on my windowsill. It was medium-sized—bigger than a loaf of bread, but a hundredth the size of Lilymiya. I didn’t want it to disturb the webs that decorated my walls, so I reached up and grabbed it with both hands. The spiderling twirled its legs in the empty air as it tried to cool itself.

Mama had overburdened it. There was a chunk of dark chocolate fastened to one of its hindlegs, and Gran’s gathering box was tied to its back. The box was exquisite, covered on the outside with gray spiderleather. Gran had soaked the leather to make it soft and then carved each panel with delicate patterns. The designs were inspired by the webs of her first spider. I shifted the spiderling until its weight rested on my hip and untied the twine that held the gathering box in place.

All the Blue in the Mirror by Darin C. Bradley

Certainly, Sera had never seen a better blue. It ringed Johan’s throat in clusters, a circle of almost-violet blemishes. Tiny abrasions rouged the flesh between them—no doubt, the rope’s hemp fingers caused those.

She hadn’t known Johan well, but she remembered others who had donned the sinner’s torque before him—none had worn it so delicately, so subtly. She recalled that Johan Vesseled only last month. Sometimes, it went poorly.

“Can you see well enough?” her teacher asked.

Sera straightened, the heads of her classmates now occluding her view of the Tree.

“Yes, madam,” she said, tugging on her coif.

Sera glanced again at the Tree: the Reverend’s acolytes were struggling to coil the rope with which Johan hanged himself. Sera hated that Saphie found Johan first—earlier, they had approached the pond as a class, yet, somehow, Saphie wandered first to the Tree, where she discovered Johan. Sera wished it were Saphie instead. After all, Saphie had already Vesseled also. No one ever climbed the Tree before.

Saphie’s golden ringlets betrayed her quivering nerves as she stood nearby, studying Johan. Sera couldn’t help but notice the boys who, rather than study the suicide as their teacher had bid them, shifted and turned, moving however they had to for a glance at Saphie.

The Paper People by Cris Cox

I’ve seen some strange things since dad took me on in the family business, but I suppose that’s natural when you consider what we do. Ours is one of the larger stalls at the rear of the fairground, close to the iron fence that keeps people out of the graveyard beyond. We’re well away from the centre but you can see the lights and hear the music, so no one’s too unhappy when they find us. Sometimes there’s still exhilaration on their faces because they’ve just got off a ride or they’ve won something at one of the other stalls, but that soon goes when they see our price list. Most walk on as if they weren’t going to stop anyway.

One or two come over, the few who can afford it, and maybe half of them are brave enough to try the chair, its black vinyl seat ribbed and shiny and ready for them. It could be a dentist’s chair, or a barber’s; indeed it has a footrest, and it tips right back, so the customer is almost lying down. Try and get them to relax, dad told me, keep their mind off what you’re doing to them. The results are better that way, less self-conscious.

The very best results are achieved when a person is just waking up or just falling asleep, but we can’t do that very often. In a strange environment like this it takes at least an hour to get to the really interesting cycles, as dad calls them. But of course in that hour we could do half a dozen simple snapshots, and no one can afford to pay six times the fee, no matter how good the results of such extravagance might turn out.

The Fourth Horseman by Yoon Ha Lee

They’d abandoned the horses. This was not a loss. They carried the brimstone hooves and smoke-dream manes with them.

One of the men was missing. The two women considered this a problem, but hadn’t agreed on what to do. The remaining man, amused or indifferent, awaited their decision.

They sat in a dim cafe around a table that had seen better days. Nothing without teeth moved outside. There were more spectacular ways to end the world, but they were still shuffling the possibilities. They wouldn’t get a second chance.

Jenny Hawk straddled a chair. She was a loose-limbed woman with sharp eyes and a sweet mouth. She flicked down a card, face-up: the Glass Pendulum. “That tears it,” she said. “We have to find him.”

Donatien Wolf tore the card. It landed in longitudinal shreds between them. He sat across from Jenny, always smiling—always across, because she had never trusted him, and he had never believed in trust. His eyes were pale and ravenous. “Superstition,” he said.

Jenny Hawk opened her hand. The shreds became feathers; the feathers became the card; the card returned to her hand. She spun it between her fingers. This time it showed the Mouth of Days, and Donatien Wolf looked away. “Doesn’t change what we know,” Jenny said. She knew how to make him uncomfortable, too.

The Bear Dresser's Secret by Richard Bowes

Early one morning Sigistrix the Bear Dresser left the Duchess and her castle. He gave no warning before he slammed the golden tricorn hat, the sign of a Grand Master of the Animal Dressers Guild onto his head and picked up his suitcase.

He gave no reason, though as he walked through the gates he did remark to Grismerelda, the Duchess’ young maid, “A Bear Dresser answers to no one.” She watched the many snowy egret feathers on the Grand Master’s hat flutter in the breeze as he disappeared into the dawn.

The Duchess was having her hair done when they told her. “Faster, faster, silly girl,” she said. “Today is a disaster and I must look my very best.” Every morning Grismerelda spent hours getting her dressed and ready.

“It’s just like a Bear Dresser to leave like this. Dear Grandfather Fernando the Mad would have known how to handle him.” She enjoyed reminiscing about her distinguished ancestors; who among us doesn’t?

She summoned her chamberlain, her guard captain and her jester. “You see what must be done,” she told them. “The bears have no one to dress them and the Great Fair is one month from today.”

“Yes, your grace,” said the chamberlain.

“He never looked trustworthy to me,” said the guard captain.

“Take my life, please,” said the jester.

“We have entered our bears in the animal costume competition from time out of mind and with a few highly regrettable exceptions, such as occurred last year, we have always won first prize. And we will continue to do so.

“Sigistrix always dressed bears for me,” she said. “His father dressed them for my father. His grandfather dressed them for mine except for those times he escaped and had to be brought back in a cage. These things were much more easily handled in the old days before they had laws.

“I expect results from you three by his evening, or I will be most ANNOYED,” said the Duchess. “And you all know what that means.”

The Truth in Violet by M. E. Parker

Since the day Albert Montague announced his plan to construct a truth extraction machine from nothing more than a nine-volt battery, a coil of copper wire, a blood pressure cuff and his laptop computer, Violet followed him everywhere he went, except the bathroom and the doctor’s office where he had his feet scraped two weeks ago. She monitored his comings and goings taking careful notes on the people he spoke to and when. She even knew that he ate grits with peach crescents over a half pint of cottage cheese on Tuesday and skipped breakfast Wednesday to have his cholesterol checked by the Pharmacaide testing van parked between Coleman’s and the snow cone stand.

How else could she understand a man whose goal was to extract truth, a man who wanted to undress a liar, open all the windows and rummage through the underwear drawers ferreting out tidbits of a story from under the mattress and behind the dresser? She envisioned a man with bushy sideburns, Albert in a tweed suit, armed with a truth extractor spelunking in her closet, mining for truth with a pick axe in the shape of lady justice. He’d throw chunks of thought-ore onto a conveyor belt that would deliver it into his machine, magically deriving pure truth from the muck. But she couldn’t imagine what a “truth extractor” would even look like or why it would require a nine-volt battery. Violet needed to observe Albert Montague and find this device, learn how it worked, the entire process, even the psychology involved, if she had any hope of preparing a defense for its mechanisms, because the prey that observes the hunter unseen is rarely slaughtered.

He had made progress recently. She could feel it. Albert Montague was getting close. He labored in his garage with aluminum foil pressed on the windows, sometimes until three in the morning, or all night like he did last Saturday. He parked his car in the driveway, keeping the garage door closed, only cracking it open to sweep it out.

Grandfather Paradox by Katherine Mankiller

Ann stuffed her blood-spattered clothes into the next door apartment complex’s dumpster. He wasn’t dead, but it was harder to get a knife through someone’s chest than she’d expected. Maybe he’d bleed to death before someone found him. She didn’t care either way. She was a juvenile, so it wasn’t like she was going to fry.

She walked. The YMCA was open. She locked herself in the men’s room, curled up on the floor, and fell asleep.

The next morning, she stopped at an IHOP and told a grey-haired waitress, “I don’t have any money, but can I have a cup of coffee?” The waitress must have felt sorry for her: she bought her breakfast. Afterwards, she went to Safeway and hid a steak and a bottle of beer under her coat and walked out. And kept walking. Someone had a barbecue grill in their back yard. She took it, and the charcoal, too.

What she could really go for now was some mushrooms. She should swipe some Kool-Aid and find a cow pasture. Or maybe she could rob a veterinary clinic. Anything to get the thought of him touching her out of her head, and that beer wasn’t going to cut it.

Steak and beer. Almost luxurious.

The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finley

Laffy Taffy—July 7

“Quit digging, girl!”

This was before all of the cryin, before that black hole started suckin me in, and my wrist wasn’t so bad back then, neither.

I didn’t mean to scratch that hard. Momma had her back to me, but she heard anyway. I pulled my sleeve over the bad spot on my wrist and went at it again. My nail wasn’t sharp enough through the dress, though.

“Keisha.” This time Momma turned all the way around. Folded her arms. Ms. Bentley’s boyfriend watched Momma shuffle her hips and scratched under his chin.

“You know how impetigo spreads?” Momma said. “Now stop picking at your wrist before it gets raw.”

This wasn’t no mosquito bite, though. I couldn’t leave it alone, neither. But there was nuthin wrong with my wrist, far as I could see. I rubbed it down with lotion and put Vaseline on top of that. All that did was give me greasy skin. My wrist still itched. I wanted to get home so I could try alcohol like Momma used when I got chiggers on my legs, but Momma liked to hang around after weddings, even for people she didn’t know. This girl was the niece or granddaughter of somebody Grandmommy used to go to church with. That didn’t mean Grandmommy thought she had to come and drag me along. At least Momma wasn’t makin me wear them real lacy dresses no more. All the other 11 year olds—and some of the 10 year olds, too—had relaxers, and they could run a comb through their hair without worryin about breakin any of it off. But I was stuck with twist ties and barrettes. Momma got the hint I wouldn’t bother with em no more at the last weddin when I kept shakin my head and clankin those dumb barrettes together. Today she finally pressed my hair.

The Column That Held Up the Sky by Matthew Wanniski

Once I saw the Column that held up the sky. I wasn’t exactly looking for it, I just stumbled upon it one afternoon in spring when my dog got loose and was running amok on the other side of time. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s quite a feat of engineering, a marvel of architectural skill, like Brunelleschi meets Frank Gehry. It’s also not nearly as big as I thought it would be, considering the task for which it was set. You could walk around its base in the time it takes to sing “How Many Miles to Babylon.” Simply put, the Column didn’t seem able to handle the full weight of Heaven. Yet there it stood. Some people believe it was put there to hold down the earth, but they’re just superstitious.

I’d seen the Column before, but from a distance, never as close as on this day. From afar it looks immense, dwarfing Everest. But the closer you get, the smaller it grows, like one of those optical illusions. I hear the guy who built it likes that kind of thing.

You’ve heard about the Column, haven’t you? No? Let me refresh your memory: The Garden of Eden, way back when. Adam and Eve with their heads in the clouds, bumping them on the sky (an unexpected side effect of Creation. Nobody said it was perfect). That’s really why they left, you know. Something had to be done, so rather than junk the whole endeavor, it was decided the best thing to do would be to prop up the drooping firmament. The Column has stood there ever since, like the cane of Atlas.

In the Gingerbread House by Barbara Krasnoff

“Here we are, darling. Look—isn’t it exciting? This is where all the actors are when they’re not on the stage!”

Isabeau’s Papa and her big brother Willy have just taken her to what they explained is the backstage of the Berlin State Opera, and Isabeau (named, her mother told her, after a beautiful medieval Bavarian queen) doesn’t like it at all. She is just four years and six months and five days old, and although she is trying to be brave, there are too many strange adults around, some wearing bright costumes, some wearing ordinary clothing, some with their faces stiff and strange under heavy makeup. “Why is that man wearing lipstick?” Willy asks, and Papa says, “So he can be seen more clearly on the stage. He’ll take it off before he goes out of the theatre. Don’t point, Wilhelm, it’s rude.”

Isabeau definitely doesn’t like it here. It’s loud and frightening. She wants to go home, which has deep carpets, and the servants speak in quiet tones, and she can play with her bunny and her music box, and listen to Grandmama’s pet bird making comforting noises in its sleep.

“This way, Isabeau,” and her father steers her gently through the confusing mass of grownups. Her brother, who kicked her under the seat when she started to cry during the third act of Hansel and Gretel, now stares around wide-eyed. Perhaps, she thinks, he won’t take the head off her new doll like he threatened, because he is now obviously very happy with this strange adventure.

Jointed by Loreen Heneghan

Spanning the distance between your soft hip and mine is a large brass hinge. It’s been there a long time. We walk with a double limp whenever we go down to the supermarket.

Metal shifts against the threads of my muscles. I ache where the brass was bolted to my hip, but the feeling is so familiar it’s almost comforting.

Sometimes, when we are out with friends, you swing yourself toward me until our bones creak. Then we might look each other in the eyes—but only slantwise. I crane my neck and we kiss.

Lately, it seems that you only do this in public.

The Improbable Legend of Quick Johnny by Chris Roberson

Many myths and legends have grown up around the origins of the malicious non-entity known as “Quick Johnny,” each more implausible and surreal than the last. As is the case with all legends, however, there is a kernel of hard fact beneath the onion rinds of fabrication, which in its own way is more implausible and surreal than any imagined tale could ever be.

“Quick Johnny” is the sole offspring of an otherwise unremarkable boy named Cully Andrews. Young Cully was the youngest of four brothers, born the Seventh of November, 1945, six years the junior of the next youngest. As is customary in any such arrangement Cully was the target of habitual torment and endless pranks by the serried ranks of his older siblings. Far less outgoing and athletic than the rest of his mother’s brood, Young Cully soon gained a reputation as a bookish, withdrawn child, who preferred the company of books and his own imagination to the other children in his neighborhood. As he grew older, however, he developed—as all children do—a need for companionship. Turning then to the pages of his family library and his own overactive fancy, Young Cully solved the problem neatly: he simply created a companion.

The Spaces Between Things by Matthew Kressel

David was in love with his aunt Masha. In the months after his father died, she came over for dinner often. While she ate, he’d watch her chest rise and fall, and for long, uncountable minutes he’d stare at the soft, pink skin of her arms, wanting to run his fingers along her smoothness and squeeze her until he fell asleep. He’d stuff forkfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth and listen to his mother and aunt talk freely and harshly about people David barely knew. He’d study Masha’s green-within-green eyes, the chocolate folds of her hair, the funny way in which her nose curved just a little bit at the tip, as if God himself had laid a tiny imperfection upon her just to remind the world that she wasn’t an angel. But what most captured David’s attention, what his eyes wandered to as they’d finish dinner and move to the couch for coffee and cake, was the thick, brown leather belt that hugged her waist.

He knew the feelings in his body were the beginnings of manhood. But he was told that boys were supposed to like breasts and lips, butts and legs. And he did like those things—yet he couldn’t help but cross his legs when he saw her stomach bend under the thick leather strap, and nightly he dreamed of her smothering him as the heavy brass buckle pressed painfully into his groin. He pretended to listen to his mother and aunt, learning to nod his head when they looked his way, until he became skilled at predicting the paths of their eyes, at avoiding their gazes. And when the spell of conversation held the women in its thrall, when his mother’s words grew slow and stupid with wine, David stared deeply into the folds of Masha’s belt, studying the images stamped in its sides. He saw flowery jungles with fruit-bearing trees, a dozen birds hanging from limb and sky, and tufts of wavy, leafy vines that tangled throughout. Often, as the women talked, he imagined himself floating inside her belt, unable to escape its secret pull, forced forever to wander under its hot sun and glimpse out at all the world from the two-dimensional confines of her waist.

It was warm and safe there.

And so when his mother said, “Grandpa’s not doing very well. I need you to stay with your Aunt Masha for two weeks,” David nodded his affirmation as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. That year was 2056.