Welcome to a new year and the eleventh issue of 10Flash Quarterly.
For those of your who are visiting for the first time, 10Flash is a quarterly on-line magazine dedicated to genre flash fiction — science fiction, fantasy, horror, suspense, crime capers and slipstream.
Each of this issue’s ten stories is a response to this statement — It’s the end of the world as we know it..
The stories were written by established and emerging authors in the flash fiction market — including such talents as Ken Liu, Shauna Roberts, D. Thomas Minton and Karina Fabian, who offers us another tale of Vern, her private investigator who also happens to be a dragon. This one is a story from Vern’s past. Each author was free to interpret the theme in any manner (and in any of the genres) he or she choose.
The result? A great bunch of genre stories for you to peruse this issue. We think they’re all great reads, so have at them.
Things That Matter
science fiction by Amanda C. Davis
My brother Rory hunched in the mouth of our cave and cut a groove in his index finger, like a spiral, from nail to base. He crooked it like a crescent moon and looked it over for a while; then he grinned at me and licked off all the blood.
I said, “Why did you do that?”
“Because it’s snowing,” he replied. “It’s really important.”
He does this every year. We ran out of plastic bandages so long ago I can barely remember using them, but our box of books is still plenty full. I tore out page 130 of The Lovely Bones to wrap around his finger. He took it off before he went hunting, though. I burned the paper in the fire, blood and all.
When Rory came back after checking the traps, he had three birds in his hands and one on his head, turned inside-out, a red cone with dirty white feathers entwining with the black of his hair.
I made him take it off, but he made me leave it by the fire while we plucked the others and set their meat to boiling. He kept looking at it like he wanted to put it back on. I combed the blood and feathers out of his hair. He twitched under my fingers.
“Somebody is supposed to wear it,” he insisted, and since he’s seven years older and was around before the New Winter I didn’t argue.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Wolf Eyes
fantasy by Shawna Reppert
I knocked back the shot with a lot less respect than Glenfiddich deserves. It had been a gift from an ex-boyfriend. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind.
My companion refilled my glass with a smile that showed canines just a little bit longer and sharper than normal. “Don’t be melodramatic. Nothing’s changed. You just have more information than you had yesterday. Think of it as learning that the earth isn’t the center of the universe.”
“Because that turned out so well for Galileo.” Not entirely relevant, but I felt entitled to be snarky.
Yesterday my wolf sanctuary held twenty wolves and wolf-hybrids. Or so I thought. Now I knew that it held nineteen wolves and wolf hybrids, plus the. . .thing that sat across from me. The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee and the pies I’d baked for a fund-raiser, normal scents out of place with the weirdness of my evening.
In the books, the heroine discovers that the myths are real and barely blinks. It wasn’t so easy for me to have reality turned upside-down. I was seriously creeped out.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Storm Front
science fiction by Greg Leunig
Victor had only known Dawn for three weeks when she showed up at his door that warm Saturday night in early September, wearing a heavy jacket. She pulled him by his hand to her car. In the distance, thunder rumbled and clouds pressed in from the east.
“Get in,” she’d said, her voice laced with urgency. Almost hyper-ventilating.
He could tell from looking at her something wasn’t right. It was a weird request, but he was already half in love with her. He got in.
Dawn was his exact type: small with long dark hair, and much smarter than him. She worked as a chemist for some government agency with a long and forgettable acronym name. She hadn’t told him what it was her agency did – she didn’t really like to talk about her work.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Ain’t No Gods Crying Down Here
science fiction by Michelle Muenzler
The railers sweat plenty on their tracks, heaving their metal arms overhead between pulls and dripping down an oily mess on those of us digging holes below. My mam said they crying for what they done to us, but I ain’t ever heard a railer cry for real. Nothing but their clinkety-clank echoing cavern-wide until you have to shove rocks in your ears to stop up the din.
Ain’t no crying allowed, anyhow, railer or otherwise. Soon as any of us otherfolk starts wailing up, the railers cart them off just like they do the oldfolk, and ain’t no amount of rocks that can stop up that caterwauling mess. Best just to sing, sing so loud your hands strain all a’trembly, and be glad it ain’t you heading up the line to the end of times. No good ever come of going up.
My mam told me that when I was first brought down, all newfolk pink and empty as air, and she weren’t never wrong but the once. And for that once, I got no choice but to hand her peace and let it go.
Wrong as she was, my mam told me there weren’t no rain underground. Just sweat and tears and everywhich shade between. Count our luck seven ways up and down we got light, she said, and leave it be at that.
I didn’t know about luck, but I learned about rain fast enough.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Base Instinct
horror by Rebecca Stefoff
I stopped to watch the beads of sweat roll on Lila’s tan shoulders when she swung the axe. “Poor zed,” she said without looking down.
Lila’s British. She’s the best-looking of the women who won’t sleep with me, which is all the women. The others were starting to say zeds, too, not zombs or zees like at first. Trying to be like Lila — or on her.
Meatbags is what I’d called the zombs, until I saw it wasn’t making points with the ladies. Not that I ever had a chance. Just my luck to be on delivery at a lesbian vegan organic anarchist collective when it all hit the fan. Sure, I was still alive, if you can call this living, but a man has needs, you know?
“Mr. McConroy?” Lila called. “The wood?”
I came up behind her and dropped my load with a grunt. “Here. And it’s –”
“Mac. Right.” A quick smile. Impersonal. Dazzling. Who says Brits have bad teeth? “Good job.”
Hells yeah it was. I can carry a lot of deadwood with a UPS packing strap as a tumpline. I piled branches around the dismembered remains. A chunk of wood knocked the head rolling, but I stomped on the blonde hair and kicked the head back onto the pyre.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
The Hamelin Event Horizon
slipstream by Jen Volant
Greetings all. The Head of Surveillance Engineering assures me we have enough scramblers to prevent any corporate transmitters from reporting their information for at least an hour, by which time we’ll have dispersed. Folded post-its are being passed around – they contain a riddle answerable only if you attended last month’s presentations. That answer is the location at which the Ongoing Academy of Sciences Conference will reconvene in one month for our next set of sessions.
This session is our banquet and keynote speaker, though unfortunately Dr. Griffin was ambushed by corporate interests just outside Cincinnati, so I will be speaking instead. Please be sure to take some of the energy bars and bread being brought around.
In lieu of Dr. Griffin’s speech, I will recognize the work of our colleagues, working at the cutting edges of their fields.
First, Drs. Chitteranjee and Goldblum, for their paper, “The Spread of Nanocytic Swarms across the Post-National Landscape” which the Academy feels is the clearest mathematical model of the way these bugs move from household to household, expanding from their origin points in New York, London, and Hong Kong. It confirms the first bugs were almost certainly released on the day the transnational corporations seceded from governmental oversight.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Clownspace
slipstream by D. Thomas Minton
Rene de Huygens’ has always appreciated a clowning challenge, but this time Peejay’s efforts to increase gate sales have gone too far.
“It can’t be done.” Paolo’s face is painted into a frown beneath a frizzy shock of purple hair.
Like Rene, Paolo is a clown. So are Johan and Mitchy and Angus and Beerface Betty, to name only six.
Forty-two clowns in all; one car much too small.
At least that’s Paolo’s assessment as he stares through the slit in the curtain at the garishly-painted, vintage VW beetle parked in the circus ring. “One hundred and seven cubic feet,” he says, citing the volume of the car.
Rene knows the number like his own name.
“Three cubic feet per clown,” Paolo continues. “That’s what? Thirty-five clowns?”
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Moonlight, Reflected in Dewdrops*
magical realism by Shauna Roberts
“Whatever is born, become, compounded is subject to decay,” the Buddha said. Despite my beliefs, I could not accept my father’s death. My teacher at the Buddhist center suggested I take photographs demonstrating annica, impermanence.
The series, showing Ohio wildflowers as buds, in bloom, and in decay, was now touring Japan. Reviews praised it for evoking mono no aware. Orders for prints poured in. But I was no closer to acceptance.
So in the fall, I headed for Shawnee State Forest to take more pictures. I never arrived. Driving south on Route 125, I saw a brilliant blaze of flaming scarlet. I clutched the steering wheel, for a moment back in Cincy watching a skyscraper burn, the skyscraper my father could not escape.
I blinked away tears and saw no fire, no skyscraper, only a grove of Northern red oaks in full fall glory. I had to capture it! A dirt road took me close. I spent hours fixing the fleeting display permanently on film.
Two months later, I bundled up against the icy wind and returned to photograph the oaks in winter, naked of leaves and reduced to stark silhouettes. But when I got to the turnoff, I screeched to a stop.
To my left, a new Arby’s stood on a spot carved from the rock. To my right, an asphalt road lined with house frames had replaced the dirt road. I parked and photographed the scarred hillside, the corpses of downed sassafras and hickory trees, and other destruction.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
Of Slings and Feeling Vexed (and Other Aztec Stuff)
“You want me to do what?”
“You will defeat the Aztec’s false god,” Cortez said.
“And bring these people to the True God,” Father Jose Dominguez added.
The conquistador ignored the little priest who stood next to him, and regarded me with a haughty glare. Although a small man, Cortez had presence.
That irked me. I was more the size of one of his dogs than the great dragon I once had been. St. George had spent forty days taking away just about everything that made me dragon, then forced me to serve the Church to get it back. At the time, I thought my wold had ended. Instead, it opened doors to a pretty interesting new one.
Of course, some days were more “interesting” than others.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I replied, with acid in my voice to replace the fire I no longer breathed. “I’m no heavyweight. Even when I was, I didn’t mess with demigods. What makes you think this will end well?”
He didn’t deign to answer.
“You will be as David against Goliath!” Father Jose said.
I snorted. And me without a slingshot.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]
The Last Summer
slipstream by Ken Liu
Eleven-year-old Eddie sat alone on the evening beach, surrounded by piles of fireworks.
Thirty, count ‘em, thirty roman candles were stuck into the sand, plus a whole army of miniature tanks, rocket launchers, space shuttles, and a battleship. They had cost him all the money saved from mowing neighbors’ lawns earlier in the summer.
The packaging for the battleship showed a goofy-looking kid marveling at the vessel — bigger and ten times better made than the crude ship-shaped cardboard contraption inside — zooming around, shooting exploding lasers every way.
He imagined Alex’s voice: That’s some camera they used to take that picture. If it could make a cheap toy look that good, imagine what it would do for you!
Ha-ha, he answered in his mind. Look, they spelled it battleskip!
He had been looking forward to shooting roman candles together into the night sky, pretending to be stalwart defenders manning the ramparts of a castle assaulted by monsters and dragons. They always did that on the Fourth of July.
But Alex wasn’t here tonight.
{Click on title to read the rest of the story]