September Stories Update 2

Ten more short stories I read

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1. The Private Investigator Out Of Body by Jack B Bedell in Gooseberry Pie

The Private Investigator is in the van, watching the door. So long as the camera is in focus she can let her mind drift. She can imagine herself anywhere, doing anything.

A six sentence story of being in all places, while stuck in one.

Read This: Six sentences for a whole life – and more
Don’t Read This: She’s just stuck in a van

2. The Mirror Of Winter by Sarah McPherson in Crow And Cross Keys

There is a splinter in their heart. They are cold and never satisfied. They went searching for whatever was missing.

They met a woman in spring, and a woman in summer and a woman in autumn. Each of the gives them a gift. In winter they will meet another woman, and perhaps in the mirror find an answer.

Read This: The Snow Queen’s mirror from a fractured, unexpected perspective
Don’t Read This: You have no interest in fairy tales, changed or otherwise

3. Handle With Care by Eleanor Luke in Roi Fainéant

On a plane journey the narrator sits next to someone afraid of flying. Rather than tell him a plane crash is better than a car crash, they admit they’re nervous of banjos after a childhood incident.

The seat neighbour has a banjo case with them, for some reason not in the hold. The narrator has their own bag, very heavy, also not in the hold. There’s a reason for that.

Read This: A story of a plane flight and two strangers who meet and don’t, quite, connect
Don’t Read This: The car crash was a tragedy

4. Metadata by Edith-Nicole Cameron in Roi Fainéant

Claire is married to David in Minneapolis, they have children and she runs a program at an arts centre. Her ex- from college has made a film. Allie, her college roommate tells her it’s on Netflix, and that she will just die watching it.

She rehearses how she got here, her time at college, when she met Blake, her ex-. How she didn’t go into acting, like Allie, or making films like Blake. How she took the job that got her furthest from California where Blake is now dating Beth. When she met David, who actually paid attention to her, who is a serious man who earns much more than her.

The time, shortly after she and David got married when he belittled her at his boss’s party and she went back to California to interview for a job there. Stayed with Allie. Met Blake on her last night there.

She’s seen Blake’s sitcom, about three men in California, and the way their lives in the arts swing up and down. And how the women are side characters. The film is not from her point of view. It’s from Blake’s and how he saw events.

Read This: Claire and Blake and Claire and David and how and why she’s at the centre with one and an adjunct to the other
Don’t Read This: Woman is attracted to two different men, one man makes a film about it, there’s a bad joke (which he steals from the woman)

5. Sidekicks by Julián Martinez in HAD

Foglifter is the sidekick of superhero El Nocturno, and having two jobs – one at night chasing villains, and one in the day as an office receptionist – is tiring him out. El Nocturno is unsympathetic. Worse still, the pay as a sidekick is poor, the conditions hard. And the moment one of them gets promoted to full hero, they enforce the same practices.

Things could be worse. Two dozen evil goons tried to unionise, and now there are two dozen less evil goons. Still, things could be better. And Foglifter’s got a plan to do it.

Read This: Real employment problems intersect superhero entertainment
Don’t Read This: Apparently the two dozen evil goons are hanging out waiting to be hired, which makes the villains slightly less evil than some real employers, though maybe that’s the point

6. The Everlasting Wound Of Polythemus by David Anaxagoas in Factor Four

The doctors tell Polythemus his eye has healed. But he still bears the mental scars of his encounter. Of how everyone saw him, a cyclops, as a monster. He keeps the bandage on his eye. But he has a job now at the museum, and his social worker Gale to encourage him.

He won’t take off the bandage, not unless something changes.

Read This: Hurt person must learn to accept themselves
Don’t Read This: Again a legendary being is thrust into the modern world

 

7. Bone-Eater Earth by Emma Burnett in Uncharted

Taylor is a tech-billionaire; on a flight the bones in a finger vanish. Vanishing Bone Syndrome, it effects people who fly on planes. The more you fly – especially on private planes, the greater the likelihood a bone vanishes. Some think it’s a revenge for climate pollution, a penalty hitting those whose wealth creates emissions.

Taylor decides to solve this. Reclaimed carbon nano-tubes to replace bones. The work done in solar-powered data centres. Even after his partner dies from losing bones. Even after he loses a foot – the carbon not ready, the investors having to be met in person, flying commercial (first class of course).

Some people think he’s the devil. But he’s doing what he does best. Saving the world, making it safe, making a profit. If he can’t make a successful tech launch from the revenge of Mother Earth, what good is he?

Read This: Grim story of greed and comeuppance
Don’t Read This: Very silly fable with bad things happening to unpleasant people

8. Lies From A Roadside Vagabond by Aaron Perry in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A man meets a vagabond by the road; the vagabond claims he never used to even understand the concept of lies. He asks if he can try out a lie in return for giving a ring that makes him imperceptible. The lie he tries is that he hates smoked herring; as it happens the man’s cart is loaded with fish and he tries one to discover he loves it. Nevertheless he gives him the ring.

His wife thinks he’s been tricked to the man’s annoyance. Then things become strange. People do not seem to understand or remember or intuit what he says and does unless he says it clearly. His wife does not know he is doing the accounts. The bank clerk does not know what the writ of withdrawal he offers is for, though he has done this many times before. His neighbour does not understand his hints about dinner. It’s as though he’s unknown to them, invisible, or perhaps… imperceptible.

The man, honest and not given to mischief, cannot find a way to use the ring. Until his wife tells him of a peculiar challenge. The king has ordered his war-strategist to sit in the market square of the capital and play anyone who challenges at chess, with a thousand ducats if anyone beats him. Here it seems is somewhere he might use the ring, for though he has not done anything to support the rebellion, he has no love for the king.

And yet here there is a mystery. The war-strategist is a fearsome opponent, one without equal in chess or war. Yet the rebellion makes progress, the king’s forces fall back. Can even this ring, that makes his motives, his presence unreadable allow him to triumph? And why has the king chosen this as a punishment?

Read This: Clever story of lies, magic and deception
Don’t Read This: Prominently puts down ideas only to never pick them up again

9.  White Crane, Red Fox by Chezza Lee in Heartlines

Li’er’s father is from the White Crane clan, the wisest and most long lived of the beasts. Their mother is from the Red Fox clan, wild and rumbunctious, known to work with mortals. Li’er is not quite disciplined and respectful enough for the White Cranes, can’t hunt in the forest with the Red Foxes because of their wings. They are the Red Crane, the only one.

But they can find their own way. After all the White Crane’s elder, Li’er’s grandfather, is the Black Crane. For the last hundred years the only time they’ve been seen is at Li’er’s parents’ wedding, and at the birth of Li’er. They are a White Crane AND a Red Fox.

Read This: Lovely fable of family, difference and acceptance lifted by animal magic
Don’t Read This: Animals squabble until the grandfather comes and tells them off

10. Daughter of Kart-Hadash by Rebecca Buchanan in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

Romans lie, yet they wrote the histories. They wrote of Il’issa’s father, and his death. None of them are true. After his death she kept his sword, with Tanit’s symbol, a symbol burned on her arm.

Fabia, wife of the Roman general who trapped him, she comes for the sword. For the symbol. For her tongue. Fabia is a witch, but Il’issa is a daughter of Kart-Hadash.

Read This: Sharp-edged piece of historical swords and sorcery that packs so much into a short space
Don’t Read This: You don’t care about what happened to Hannibal Barca