Fantasy – Page 9 – Diabolical Plots

DP FICTION #31A: “Strung” by Xinyi Wang

The red string around Mom’s ankle does not lead to Dad, and Dad doesn’t have a red string at all. But she makes him laugh with his head thrown back, and he makes her smile the way I do at Ria Ruiz, the prettiest and smartest girl in not just my class but the whole first grade—so they must be in love, no matter what the Old Man in the Moon says.

“I hope I’m like you when I’m older,” I whisper one night, as Dad tucks me in.

He smiles and lifts his brows. “Bald?”

I scrunch up my nose. “No. I mean I don’t want a string, like you. I don’t want the Old Man to tell me who to love.”

Dad looks down at his unburdened ankles for so long I nearly fall asleep. Finally, he presses a kiss to my forehead. “Sweet dreams, Weilai.”

I change my mind for the first time two years later, when my oldest cousin gets married to a golden-haired lady who shares a string with him. The red between them coils at their feet, pulsing as they exchange beautiful words about fate and certainty. My parents are still happy together, but what if Mom would be happier with the person on the other end of her string? And if a scant ring of red appeared around Dad’s ankle one day, would he leave? Would he want to?

It would be better, I decide, to have a string and love who the Old Man says you should. That way, there is no doubt. Only certainty. For the first time, I consider myself lucky to have been born in the Old Man’s domain, under his sky with his moon overhead—to have eyes that can see the intricate web of red unspooled all around us.

But when my string shows up in the middle of my third grade math class, it unfurls like wildfire and bleeds out of the room instead of to Neal Lang, who I’ve loved for three whole weeks. I bite my tongue to keep from sobbing, but fat tears leak out anyway because whoever the Old Man wants me to be with is not this perfect boy who made me a daisy crown and asked me to be on his kickball team. A steady chant of “wrong wrong wrong” beats against my skull. My vision blurs, but not enough to wipe the red from the corner of my eye.

Miss Sabrina calls my parents when I can’t stop crying on my times table, and Mom carries me out to the car even though I’m getting too big for it.

“The Old Man is not absolute,” Mom says when we stop for milk tea on the way home. She lets me put my feet up on her lap while we wait for our order, gently rubbing my newly-bound ankle. “He was wrong about me.”

“How do you know?” I confetti my napkin and pinch the insides of my wrists to stave off fresh tears. “What if your destiny is better than Dad?”

Her mouth smiles. “Who could be better than Dad?”

I swirl a finger through the pile of napkin scraps before me, then shrug. “What if.”

Our strings trail off into the distance, in parallel. They snake across the street, around an elm, and out of sight. Mom stares out the window as she says, “I have more faith in me and your father than I do in any distant old man. Don’t you?”

As I chew on a mouthful of tapioca pearls, I change my mind again. About wanting a string, a destiny. About trusting, so wholly, the will of an invisible stranger. What does the Old Man know, anyway?

Over the next twenty years, I will change my mind twenty hundred more times—sometimes from day to day, hour to hour.

Mom and Dad get divorced, and my faith returns. As they sign their papers at the dining room table, Mom’s string runs, as ever, away from Dad—a stark warning that they were never meant to be. So if the Old Man knew they were wrong for each other, he must also know who’s right for me. With that belief lodged firmly in my bones, I spend a summer chasing my string. Mom and hundreds of generations-old stories say it’s futile; no one has ever found their destiny by looking. But I still devote three sweltering months to the search, tireless even when the red wisping away from my ankle leads me in infinite figure-eights through town.

A year later, my cousin and his beautiful, fated wife split as well—so I abandon faith again and take Katie Nilini to junior prom, even though my string arcs past her without ever brushing her skin. She beams as we dance to bad remixes and worse ballads, and my heart pounds when she sticks her fingers into the chocolate fountain and smears the melt across my nose. I hold her gaze all night, not once looking down at the red that winds away from us.

But when I kiss her on Monday, between classes, I can’t help staring over her shoulder at my string—running down the hall and out the door, away from her and her lilac perfume. The Old Man knows best, or he doesn’t. Either way, I can’t stop thinking about that damned sliver of red.

In college, I date but don’t commit. Five or six weeks into every relationship, I cycle from ignoring my string to agonizing over the destiny waiting at its end. Guilt over those wandering thoughts quickly fills my chest, and I pull back from my partners with vague excuses and genuine remorse.

A few ask, beg, scream for real explanations—and I tell them the truth. I palm my ankles and talk all night about the ethereal red that streams toward my unknown destiny. About wanting certainty, but being helpless against doubt. About my parents, my cousin, and my ever-changing mind.

They listen until they believe, even though—born outside the Old Man’s land, beneath a different moon and sky—they can’t see red like me. I swallow thickly, each time, and ask if they still want me after hearing all that.

They never do, but I never expect them to. After a dozen cycles in three years, I start choosing to be alone.

I don’t date again until my final year of grad school, where I meet Aaron Lao. He’s a professor, with eyes that see like mine, and he has his own string that doesn’t lead to me. We agree from date one that this won’t be serious, because his faith in the Old Man’s wisdom has never fluctuated like mine—he intends to spend his life with his destiny, once they find each other. I’m just for now, just until then, but I still fall in love with him over midnight talks about Confucian principles in wuxia novels.

“You’ll be happier with yours,” he says a year later, when he finally meets his destiny. His brow is creased, and he breathes an apology against my skin when he kisses my ankle. If I ask him to choose me, I’m afraid he might.

So I don’t ask, because he needs certainty that he’ll never have with me.

But knowing that doesn’t soften the loss. I wake up missing him for months afterwards, and I begin to hate the Old Man and his strings. Some nights, I drink and stick my head out the window and shout at the moon. Once, I sink to my kitchen floor and take a knife to my string. It curls like water around the blade, enduring, and I only succeed in slicing open my palms and spilling fresh red across my skin.

Therapy helps. Not immediately, but with time. After a year of weekly sessions with Dr. Aimee Ping, I unlearn my habits of glancing at my string a hundred times a day, of crossing my ankle over my knee and curling my fingertips beneath the band whenever I can spare a hand. Of caring entirely too much about the trickle of red that plagues my periphery.

By my ten-year high school reunion, I’m close to believing that I don’t need or want the Old Man telling me who to love. Close enough that I go up to Neal Lang at the reunion. My string still doesn’t run to him, but I still tell him I had the biggest crush on him in third grade. He laughs with his head thrown back as we talk, and I can’t take my eyes off him when he ducks across the gym to refill my punch cup.

I stay in therapy, and Neal and I stay in touch. Daily texts turn into nightly calls, and we start thinking of ourselves as a couple. We stay long-distance and non-exclusive at first, which helps stave off the guilt that once squeezed my lungs every time I’d glance at my ankle, away from a loving partner, and wonder. I almost tell him, a hundred times over, about destiny, a string he can’t see, and the Old Man in the Moon.

But I imagine swallowing thickly and asking if he still wants me after hearing all that, and fear of history repeating drives me to say, instead, “I love you.”

To say, eventually, “Marry me.”

We exchange vows at his parents’ church, and move into a condo with my dog and his two cats. Red spills from our home and runs unerringly toward my supposed destiny, but I think on it less and less—once a day, then once a week, then rarer still.

But as much as I want to, and as hard as I try, I can’t stop wondering altogether. Sometimes, unbidden, my mind drifts along the red river flowing away from Neal and floods with the idea of destiny. A pang of guilt accompanies each of those thoughts, and they coalesce over time into a dense weight beneath my skin.

On our tenth anniversary, we sprawl out beneath the full moon in our backyard. I’m bloated with good wine and Neal’s love and my decade-old knot of guilt, and I know I won’t be able to stand again without shedding a part of that weight. So as he makes me a daisy crown, I tell him everything. I talk about a string he can’t see, a weight he can’t feel. I describe the winding maybe that I sometimes stare at when we’re having breakfast at the kitchen counter.

And when I’ve talked my voice hoarse, I force myself to add, “If this is a deal-breaker, I understand.”

Neal is quiet as he turns the finished crown in his hands. Stray petals float down his wrists, and the heat of shame and fear slide down my chest in tandem. Finally, he places the crown on my head and hooks an ankle around mine.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

My breath stutters. “How could you not?”

He shrugs, his shoulder warm against mine. “The way I see it, everyone wonders. Whether or not they’ve got a string to follow. Thinking ‘what if’ doesn’t mean you love me less. It just means you wake up every day and choose me.”

“And—” I roll onto my side to look him in the eye, my own stretched wide. “And it doesn’t bother you that maybe one day I won’t?”

“Of course not,” he says, like it’s obvious. Like it’s easy. “Because it’s just as likely that one day, I’ll wake up and not choose you.”

I turn back to the moon, quiet for a long moment as Neal’s words loop in my mind. The crown’s petals are soft against my forehead, and Neal’s ankle is a solid weight atop mine. My red string, caught between us, squirms free and cascades into the distance, bright and stark beneath the light of the moon. It pleads for my attention, presents me with a choice.

Neal is smiling when I close my eyes and kiss him on the mouth. I choose him again the next day, and the next.

As for the ones after that—that’s between me and Neal, and not the moon.

Xinyi Wang was born in Beijing and raised in Northern California. They studied Creative Writing at UC Riverside, then resettled in the Bay Area to drink mass amounts of milk tea. When they’re not reading, buying hats, or refreshing the same five websites for hours on end, they write stories and babble intermittently on Twitter @byxinyi.

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DP Fiction #28A: “The Existentialist Men” by Gwendolyn Clare

Kris has a talent for making toast come out perfectly every time. Never burnt. The rest of us yearn for a superpower so practical.

Ryan has incredible parking-space karma, but only after he has already parked. He’ll circle round and round the block, finding nothing and more nothing, and eventually give up and take that one empty space six blocks away. He’ll bundle up against the cold, scarf wrapped all the way up to his chin and hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, and walk the six blocks to the restaurant. And without fail, just as he opens the door, a parking space will open up directly in front. Once, he ran back to his car to move it closer, but the empty space had been claimed by the time he drove there. The parking spaces are taunting him.

Technology always behaves itself in the presence of Candace. If someone has a computer problem, all she has to do to fix it is walk over and glance at the screen. Of course, as soon as she walks away, the computer begins malfunctioning again. She doesn’t understand what the rest of us are always complaining about.

Julie could disappear, but only once. We all miss Julie.

Hiro is never, ever, in a situation where he might have the opportunity to be a hero. One day he slept in, and that was the day someone lost control of their car on the ice and plowed through the glass front of the café where he usually got his morning coffee. When the flu prevented him from going holiday shopping downtown, a chunk of limestone façade spontaneously fell off a building onto a crowded sidewalk, killing one person and injuring six. If he declines to join us for lunch, invariably someone in the restaurant will nearly choke to death. The rest of us got trained to do the Heimlich, and we try to take him along with us whenever we can, like a shield against the bad luck that seems to cluster in his absence. Hiro, for his own part, tries to stick to his schedule so he’s never not somewhere he’s supposed to be.

Brianna gets improbable injuries. It’s true that she enjoys her share of dangerous activities—rugby, skiing, roller derby—but that’s never when she gets hurt. She sprained her wrist in her sleep. She broke a bone in her foot getting out of the desk chair in her home office. Once, she actually slipped on a banana peel and broke her elbow. At an improv comedy show, she laughed so hard she cracked a rib. Most of the ER nurses know her by name. She has to be especially careful when Hiro’s not around.

Nick always knows exactly what time it is without looking at a clock. This would have been incredibly useful back in the 18th Century. But we all own watches and cell phones, and don’t really need him for anything.

Carlos says he has consistent, reliable precognitive abilities. Unfortunately, his precognition only senses one or two seconds ahead, so he never manages to react in time to change the outcome. This means no one else can really confirm whether or not he has a superpower at all, but we choose to believe him anyway. With everything else we’ve seen, why not? At least he knows what’s coming.

My superpower is that I’m friends with all these people, and nothing extraordinary ever happens to me.

Gwendolyn Clare’s debut novel — INK, IRON, AND GLASS — is the first in a YA steampunk duology forthcoming from Macmillan/Imprint in 2018. Her short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. She holds a BA in Ecology, a BS in Geophysics, a PhD in Mycology, and swears she’s done collecting acronyms. She lives in North Carolina with too many cats, too many ducks, and never enough books.

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DP Fiction #25: “Bloody Therapy” by Suzan Palumbo

I hugged my daughter, Ashley, when she returned home from school crying. She told me she was scared of going to the bathroom alone,because of Bloody Mary, and had wet her pants on the bus ride home. I wiped her eyes and kissed her forehead.

“The kids in my class said Bloody Mary would steal my soul if I said her name three times in the bathroom mirror,” she said rubbing her eyes.

“Bloody Mary doesn’t exist, Sweetheart. She’s a story people made up to scare each other.”

“But Mom, you said I would make friends with the kids here if I looked for the good in them. How can they be good if they try to scare me?” Her sobs receded into the focused expression of a child trying to make sense of the world.

“Trust me, Hon, everyone is capable of being good. Even not-real Bloody Mary could be nice if she wanted to be.”

***

That night, I surveyed myself in the bathroom mirror. The frown lines between my eyebrows seemed deeper; the corners of my mouth drooped lower. I had sworn during the custody hearing to provide a stable environment for Ashley. I massaged my temples and recalled my own childhood fears of shadowy closets and pitch black bathrooms. I pursed my lips. I wanted to shake every kid in Ashley’s grade for making her cry.

I locked my bathroom door and turned off the lights. In the darkness, I repeated the forbidden name in front of the mirror in an even and deliberate tone: “Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary.”

The luminescent face of a pale, young woman emerged in the mirror. Her eyes were dull black orbs. Her hair was matted and tangled with red clots of blood. She stared at me. I took a step backwards.

“I want your soul,” Bloody Mary shrieked. I trembled but then steadied myself. I wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore and Ben wasn’t here to save me. I looked into Bloody Mary’s soul-less eyes.

“You’ve come for my soul because I said your name three times in front of a mirror? That’s an overreaction.”

She blinked. “What?”

“This whole shtick is so melodramatic. What are you getting out of this other than making my poor kid wet her pants?”

“You summoned me. You can’t call me and then question my soul stealing. You know nothing about me.” Her voice had transformed from a paranormal screech into the whine of a petulant teenager.

“This is my fault? The only person who controls you is you, Bloody Mary. You need to rethink this haunting bathrooms gig.” I pointed my finger at her, echoing the jargon I’d internalized in couples counselling. I was about to continue the dressing down when Ashley began knocking on the door.

“Mom, who are you talking to?”

“I’m on my cell. I’ll be out soon.”

I returned my attention to Bloody Mary. She glared at me in the dark.

“You’re right, I don’t know you. Come back tomorrow. You can explain yourself then.”

Mary sighed and rolled her eyes.

“All right, but anger me and I will claim your soul.”

“Okay, whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow, and do something about all the blood in your hair, Mary — Maybe wash and comb it. You’re in bathrooms all the time.”

“My name is Bloody Mary.” She rattled the mirror as she disappeared into the darkness.

The following night I turned off the lights and summoned Bloody Mary to the mirror. She was sullen.

“Bloody Mary, why do you enjoy terrorizing people?” She assumed the shape of purple brooding clouds and drizzled blood.

I continued. “Why are you drawn to mirrors?” She returned to her regular form and stood silently, leaving the rest of my questions to bounce off the mirror’s reflective surface.

“Your hair looks better,” I said with an artificial smile. A dim light appeared in one of her eyes before she faded away.

***

I began calling Bloody Mary through the mirror twice a week; trying to tease out the roots of her behavior.

“Was your father abusive? Your mother, neglectful? What motivates you, fear or revenge, Bloody Mary?” I took quick showers and left the water running in the dark to muffle our voices.

Over the months her appearance improved. Her hair became shiny and tangle free. Her eyes developed deep brown irises that reflected centuries of loneliness and sorrow.

She no longer shape-shifted to deflect my questions. She forced her memories to surface and they would wash over her, leaving her voiceless and causing her to rock back and forth. During her breaks, I unpacked the burdens of my bitter divorce and laid them before the mirror. It was a relief to talk to someone who didn’t know us when we were Alicia and Ben: Happily Married Couple.

“I’ve heard you tell Ashley to look for the good in people. What happened to the good in Ben?” Bloody Mary asked.

“I lost track of the good in Ben.” I cast my eyes downward. “We alternated between skewering each other with insults and avoiding contact until I convinced myself there was nothing to salvage between us.” I put one hand on the vanity. “He said and did things to hurt me on purpose.” I rubbed my forehead. I was a failure at marriage. If I couldn’t apply my own advice to Ashley’s father, wasn’t I a failure as a mother, too?

***

Bloody Mary’s history began to coalesce in drops and trickles.

“I saw my mother drown,” she revealed after one of her long silences. I reached out and touched the image of Mary’s cheek in the mirror, attempting to brush away a tear that had escaped her now-human eyes.

***

We planned a girls’ night. I mixed Bloody Marys.

“I like the name,” she said. I placed her drink on the vanity and sat with my back against the bathroom door.

“Sometimes I eavesdrop on Ashley at school,” Bloody Mary said after her second cocktail.

“How?”

“Her teacher has a mirror at the back of the class. I can hear what goes on.” Mary tilted her head to the side. “You don’t need to worry about her. You’re doing a good job.”

“You think?” I sat up straight.

“You should see her. She’s kind but she’s no pushover.”

“I hope so.” I leaned back, letting the door support my full weight.

“Trust me. I would tell you if you needed to worry.” Bloody Mary spent the rest of the evening creating pink fractal patterns in the mirror.

***

“I never want to see another Bloody Mary again,” she moaned the next night. I laughed and got her some water.

***

One weekend, when Ashley was at Ben’s, Bloody Mary arrived wearing an earnest expression. I waited for her to speak.

“We were robbed and murdered on our wedding day,” she whispered. She clutched a silver hand mirror to her chest. “This was James’ wedding gift to me.” Her pale cheeks flushed and became rosy and full.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, it was a secret I needed to tell.”

I nodded at her in the mirror. The dashed promises of my own wedding vows still colored my reflection.

“I can’t cling to the past anymore.” She lowered the hand mirror and held it at her side, out of view. “I need to leave. I need to figure out what I’m going to do now.”

“What about all of the souls you’ve stolen?” I bit my bottom lip.

“I’ve never stolen a soul — No one’s stayed long enough for me to capture theirs.”

I placed my hand on the reflection of her shoulder in the mirror.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“I’m sorry Ashley was afraid of me.”

“It’s okay, Bloody Mary.”

A smile flickered across her lips.

“Just call me Mary.”

I smiled back as she vanished from the mirror.

***

I parked my car at the curb in front of Ben’s house. I got out and tried to lean casually on the passenger side door. Ashley waved at me from the window. A minute later she skipped out the front door with her overnight bag. Ben followed her, stopping at the midpoint of his lawn.

“Mom!”

“Hey, Did you have fun?”

“Yes! We saw a movie and went to the park.”

I inspected her appearance. Her hair was a mass of fly-aways and her pants were covered in dirt. I looked up at Ben. He put his hands on his hips and clenched his jaw.

“Thanks, Ben.”

“You’re welcome, Alicia.” His words were shaded with caution.

“I can’t wait to tell Rebecca at school about the movie.” Ashley bounced up and down next to me. I hugged her. We both waved at Ben after I started the car. I saw him shake his head as he turned to go inside.

At home, I went to my ensuite and looked at myself in the mirror.

“Thank you, Mary,” I whispered. I closed the bathroom door and went to help Ashley unpack.

Author’s Note: “Bloody Therapy” was inspired by my five year old who came home from school one afternoon and declared that she, “didn’t like Bloody Mary.” She had drawn a picture of medicine for Bloody Mary during art time and explained that we needed to give the medicine to Bloody Mary because, “the Bloody Mary Lady needs help.” I promised my daughter that I’d help Bloody Mary. This story is part of my effort.

Orginally from Trinidad and Tobago Suzan is a writer based in Ontario, Canada. Find her full bibliography at https://suzanpalumbo.wordpress.com/

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DP Fiction #23: “Curl Up and Dye” by Tina Gower

Amelia fingered an unruly hair into place, willing her locks to stay safely tucked under her scarf. She prayed the stylists cleansed the utensils between appointments. Last thing she wanted was to pick up another tangle. Although, Dye for a Change was the highest rated Psychosomatic Hair Syndrome recovery shop on Karma-Yelp.

The bell clinked against the metal door like wind chimes. Burnt hair mixed with the distinct chemical scents of nail polish, astringent, and hair spray assaulted her as she entered.

“Be right with you!” Someone poked out from behind the screens, where silhouettes of women getting shampooed and styled played out like a silent movie, complete with music. Sweeney Todd. Cute. “Make sure to sign in!”

Amelia inched toward the sign in sheet, patting her scarf again to assure it hadn’t slipped, even though nobody sat in the waiting area. Her Milano knockoffs squeaked and groaned on the polished marble, as if the tile didn’t approve of her cheap shoes.

You think you’ll fool people? Amelia pushed the doubt aside. It was hard to tell what thoughts were her own.

As soon as she dotted her ‘i’, a short girl with spiked black hair, stud in her lip, a sleeve tattoo of a rose with a thorny stem, and nose ring sprang from the back room. “I can take you.” She motioned Amelia around the screens. Amelia avoided eye contact with the other patrons, dodging into a private corner where the girl flung a smock around Amelia’s neck. The stylist skimmed her fingers under the hem of the scarf, “May I take a look?”

Amelia swallowed a breath. “Can we discuss options, pricing?”

“Let’s take a look first.”

The stylist slid the scarf off in one quick motion. Amelia gasped.

“Oh my. Awful tangle.” The stylist inspected the mess. “A big one.” She picked at the base of the knot. “Looks like it started years ago and it’s been festering since.” She shook her head, her lips thinned to a line. She attempted an exploratory stroke of her comb. It snapped, the plastic needles ping-a-linged on the floor. “Wow, not good. We can untangle it in three, maybe four sessions. Or. . .”

“I’m willing to try anything. I’m desperate.”

A voice whispered—don’t waste our money—but it wasn’t Amelia, it was him.

The stylist fumbled in her apron for a brochure. “This package here.” She opened it, pointing to a cut and style.

Mid-priced. Two-hour session. It would be over, the whole affair, in two hours. Seemed fair to have two years of her life removed in two pampering hours.

“It sounds wonderful.” Amelia wanted it done. No, needed it done. Over. Fin. The end.

The stylist bit the stud on her lip. “We don’t usually take walk-ins for such extensive work, but I had a cancelation.”

Amelia sunk into her chair. “Wonderful. Get it out. I just want him out for good.”

“Bad breakup?”

“We were best friends. . .” Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

The stylist hummed along to the music, working through the tangle, cutting the sections that didn’t cooperate. “This could have been prevented. We’ll get you on a schedule. This section here–” She dangled the offending knot from her clippers. “-only manifested a month ago, right at the scalp. That’s how we know. Whoever caused this mess, it’s a good thing he’s gone.”

Amelia clutched the armrest. “I’m not paying you to critique my life. I just want you to fix it.”

Always blaming others for your problems.

“I shouldn’t have…that wasn’t me.”

The stylist tsked, making little cooing sounds as she massaged the scalp. “Don’t worry, these tangles grab a hold and it affects you. Deep. You’ll be yourself again. I promise.”

Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. She should apologize, say something more, rather than let all the blame fall on the tangle, but her throat tightened like she’d swallowed a wad of rubber bands. When he whispered into her thoughts it seized her confidence, her spirit, her identity. Amelia tucked the toxic bile in, as if it were another tangle.

The stylist moved silently, measuring strands against each other. She fluffed, buzzed, clipped. Amelia’s butt numbed while waiting in the chair. Her back ached and she’d memorized every pock in the ceiling tiles. Then the stylist whirled the chair around and flashed a hand-held mirror. “What do you think?”

Amelia’s hair curved around her face, teasing the top of her shoulders. The ends flipped out. Layers hid the worst of the damage, but Amelia could still see evidence of its hold, of his hold. She could still hear his voice in her head. No college. You’ll waste our money on a useless degree. I’ll take care of you. I’ve always taken care of you. Or: You can’t wear that. It will look like you slept your way into management.

She turned her head from side to side, noting the lack of weight from the knots and tangles. But the weight in her mind lingered.

The stylist lowered the mirror, her expression grim. “You don’t like it.”

“I’ll get used to it,” Amelia stared into the mirror mustering up some emotion, but nothing came.

The stylist pressed her lips together and arched an eyebrow. “Or you can curl up and dye.”

Amelia blinked. “Excuse me?”

The stylist wielded her curling iron as if it were a sword and shook the box of dye. “I recommend red. Extreme change. It’s the best way to strip your hair’s reaction to the trauma.”

The stylist went to work curling, painting, and origami folding small sections of hair into tin strips. Another hour and this time Amelia plastered on her best faux smile, gushing over the change. She paid, politely refused future appointments, and marched out her car on stilt-like legs.

At home she stared at the mirror for hours. The tangles were gone, but the voices remained.

You don’t need friends.

It should be just us.

Nobody else will love you.

He grew up next door. She’d known him her whole life, though they’d dated for only two years. There was only one option left.

Amelia needed to start over.

She plugged in the electric razor. Buzzed a clean swipe straight down the center. It wasn’t until the lock of hair dropped to the floor that her heart lurched in her chest. Oh fuck. What had she done? Her hands shook. The razor almost slipped from her fingers.

You’re an idiot. How will they know you’re a woman? Nobody will love–

Amelia cut the next section before the toxic thought could finish. Then the next and next. Quickly now, not thinking about what she was doing. How long it would take to regrow from this point. Even when she finished her fingers searched for an errant hair. She had it all. The knots and tangles lay flat on her bathroom floor. She kicked at them and they limply flopped from her toe.

She closed her eyes.

Waited.

A flood of relief at the silence.

The scarves were itchy anyway.

Author’s Note: The story came from a comment while talking with a friend. She had recently gotten her hair cut and while we all gathered around and admired the new style we got into a short discussion about how long it takes hair to grow. I made a comment about where in her hair I got to know her. She thought that was funny and we tried to figure what part of her life she’d “cut” from her hair. Later I was thinking about how that might be an interesting concept and the rest of the story untangled from there.

Tina Gower grew up in a small community in Northern California that proudly boasts of having more cows than people. She raised guide dogs for the blind, is dyslexic, and can shoot a gun and miraculously never hit the target (which at some point becomes a statistical improbability). Tina also won the Writers of the Future, and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery/Suspense (paranormal category), and was a finalist for the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart ® (writing as Alice Faris). She has professionally published several short stories in a variety of magazines. Tina is represented by Rebecca Strauss at DeFiore and Company. Connect with her at www.smashedpicketfences.com

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DP Fiction #21: “The Banshee Behind Beamon’s Bakery” by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

Most nights the alley behind Beamon’s Bakery is just an alley.

The street lamp bleeds piss yellow light, casting jagged shadows around the overflowing dumpster and discarded boxes. The walls are tagged with gang signs, claiming territory that was never theirs, yardage, bodies, souls, rights.

Some nights a transient clears away the broken glass, the random detritus, to squat for the night. Setting up camp here has its own rewards. The warmth that seeps through the bakery walls and through brick facing chases away the chill, but not the ghosts. This is the drawback, you see. The alley is never as vacant as it may seem at first, never as lonely as one may wish. The price of physical warmth is the chilling of your soul.

On the ninth night of November, the banshee chases away the transients, the curious, the ignorant, and claims the alley as her own. She returns in disbelief of the injustice, to recover her beloved.

If you pay attention you can see the faded outline of a body in front of the dumpster. As the hour draws closer, the details grow clearer, and the body all but materializes. A sharp sound cracks open the silence. The bud of blood on his white apron blossoms and spreads across his chest. He gasps for breath and you can even see the steam rise in a clotted cloud about his head. His lips are stained red by death’s kiss.

They say it was her son, Mikaheel, who worked at Beamon’s. Mistaken for a burglar, for reasons no one can comprehend, he was shot by an officer while emptying the trash.

She relives the day, that hour, when her entire world was remade, when she wished to no longer be a part of that world.

“He is just a baby,” she sobs into her hands as she kneels next to him. “My baby. Only seventeen. He hasn’t even lived yet.” She doesn’t feel the cold hard pavement against her knees, the hands on her shoulders, the arms that lift and carry her away.

There are many stories about her. Some say she died from grief. Others believe that she took her own life, that she might join her son in death. But the truth is something much different.

Her fury would not allow her to die, nor live. It consumed her flesh but not her horror. This is what you see on this night in the alley. This is who you feel when you come too close.

The banshee kneels before her dead son. Her flashing energy glows blood red. The air grows hotter than the ovens in Beamon’s. Then comes the palpable sound…the thunderous rending of her heart. It is the sound of the sky ripping and the Earth crumbling away. She keens like a broken dog, ropey braids whipping around her head like bird’s wings.

Her grief permeates the hood. All mothers within hearing distance share the same nightmare, her horror. Her voice, like daggers, cleaves the night. Those caught within her looping nightmare claw their way back into the waking world. Hungry for their next breath, hearts pounding, they cry out the name of her son, “Mikaheel!”

On this night, the alley is an archive of injustice and the banshee is the chronicler.

Author’s Note: The unjust violent death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer was the specific impetus for this story. I tried to imagine what his mother must’ve been feeling upon learning about her son’s death. This wasn’t difficult because I have a son as well. I tried to impart the feeling of rage and horror I, any mother, would feel upon learning that her son was taken away in such a violent horrific way.

Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming and gardening. She has been published at Escape Pod, An Alphabet of Embers, and People of Color Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also penned a novel entitled An Unproductive Woman which can be found on Amazon. Khaalidah is also a narrator and you may have heard her narrations at Strange Horizons, and all four of the Escape Artists podcasts. Khaalidah is guest editor for Artemis Rising 3 over at PodCastle and is also guest editing Truancy Magazine‘s fourth issue. Khaalidah is on a mission to encourage more women and POC to write and publish science fiction stories. Of her alter ego, “K” from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to immorality. You can catch up to her posts at her website, www.khaalidah.com, and you can follow her on twitter, @khaalidah.

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DP Fiction #18: “Sustaining Memory” by Coral Moore

The Archivist held the three remaining beads in her left hand. Images flickered across her visual cortex: an unknown woman’s face, a sunset on a planet she couldn’t name, the dazzling color of a sea she no longer had the words to express. The beads felt cool and impersonal in her fingers, though what they contained was neither. She had only these few memories left and she no longer remembered if they were hers or someone else’s.

Around her, the machine chugged and whirred. The metal tubing that encased her pod vibrated. The glowing core rose in front of her, spinning slowly around its vertical axis.

She twirled the bead containing the seascape between her fingers and dove in. The memory was a moment in time. The wind caressed her face and the briny scent of the sea filled her head. A white-capped wave was held just off shore in the instant before breaking, never to fulfill its potential. She had the sense of someone waiting for her on that unknown shore. The name of the sea was gone, like everything else she had once known, converted into power for the machine she’d been wed to.

She surfaced from the hold of the memory with effort. That sea and that person no longer existed. The world her people had inhabited had been scoured clean, its atmosphere stripped away and everything on the surface incinerated. Nothing had survived; nothing but the machine, buried deep below the crust near the cold, dead heart of the planet. When her organic memory had been scrubbed, they’d left the fate of her world with her so she would not forget her purpose.

The grinding groan of the alert tone sounded, and without thinking she placed the seascape bead into the receptacle near her hand. The bead circled around the outer edge and spiraled downward into the depths of the machine. Bit by bit the memory of the sea faded from her mind, until only a pale representation of it remained, and then a moment later that too was gone. She was left only with the impression that something precious had been taken from her, with no idea what it was.

Two left: a sunset and a woman.

Only two memories before she was nothing but a soulless cog in the machine that would unmake everything her people had ever been in order to start again.

“Status?” she asked the heated air around her.

Something churned just beyond her field of vision. “Offline.” The voice that had been her only companion for generations was toneless and flat.

She swirled the two remaining beads in her hand. The number of beads she needed to awaken the machine was exact. She wondered why the designers of such a marvel would cut it so close or depend on her to do this critical job at all. If she’d ever known the answer to those questions, she no longer did.

If she stopped putting beads in before the machine awakened it would cannibalize the pod that sustained her in an attempt to get the necessary power. She wasn’t certain how many beads her body, such that it was, could replace. Once her systems started shutting down a cascading failure would follow.

When she held the memory of the sunset, deep pink and orange streaks surrounded her. She perched on a rocky cliff. A lush valley unfurled below her, absorbing the colors of the bright sky. Someone sat next to her, just out of sight. A sense of peace pervaded the place. She dwelled in the memory until the alarm tone woke her from her contemplation.

The comfort of the sunset was the only solace she could remember. While it was true that she would no longer remember that the memory had ever been her haven, she would miss something. A yawning void grew with each piece of her that was forgotten.

When the alert rang the second time she closed her eyes and dropped the bead in the machine. She concentrated on how the sunset made her feel, but even as she tried to hold it in her mind the colors faded.

“Mountain. Sunset. Peace.” She said the words over and over as a litany, but it made no difference. The memory slipped away like water through her fist, and all she was left with was the aching emptiness. She snapped her hand shut around the remaining bead.

The woman in the memory had short dark hair that stood on end in a gravity-defying display that balanced chaos and order perfectly. Her eyes brimmed with tears and angled downward. A curved scar marked her left cheek, but didn’t mar her loveliness one bit. Her lips were slightly parted. She was close enough that the heat from her breath warmed the Archivist’s face. The woman with no name had been captured in the moment before a farewell kiss. There was no other way to resolve the adoration and acceptance mingled in her expression. Something terrible had been about to happen and they had run out of ways to fight.

The Archivist had no idea if the love in the unknown woman’s gaze was intended for her. She didn’t care. The emotion existed, and it was hers. She drifted in the moment just before the kiss for as long as she dared, and finally surfaced from the memory much later, gasping for air.

The alert tone sounded.

She clutched the final bead. The woman’s face floated before her, diaphanous and lovely. One kiss was all she had left.

The alarm rang again, louder and in two long bursts.

“You can’t have her.” She locked her fist around the bead, hoping that would curb her reflex to feed it to the machine.

The energy generated by her pod would be enough to replace one bead—it had to be. She wouldn’t get to see the new world she’d given up everything for, but she would be able to keep this last piece of herself.

She lingered in the kiss until the sound blasted three times, knocking her forcefully from the memory.

The bead port was so near her hand, and her arm wanted to make the motion, but she concentrated on keeping her hand shut tight. She’d never gone this far, so she had no idea how long she had to wait until there was no taking back the decision. She worried her resolve would slip.

Around her the machine churned and whirred. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing but her fist and a sense of dread she couldn’t shake.

A high-pitched whistle shrieked and surprised her so that she nearly dropped the last bead.

The relative silence in the wake of the terrible sound was haunting. She had the sense of motion in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t turn to see what had moved. A grinding sound began soon after, and her pod vibrated.

There was an ominous clunk. Something slithered around the lower portion of her body, but she couldn’t see it within the metal and hoses that wrapped her. None of the memories she had left had prepared her for this. She managed not to panic, barely. The next breath she drew was labored.

A series of light chimes rang through the machine’s interior.

“Status,” she said.

The long pause that followed was made longer by the worry that she would go to her end never knowing if she’d doomed the project to failure.

“Online,” replied a voice she hadn’t heard before, more lifelike and feminine than the previous robotic one. “Resources have been reprioritized to support mission-critical utilities. Life support is offline.”

The note of sadness she detected had to be coming from her and not the machine. Her chest felt heavy. “Does it affect the chance of success?”

“By less than one one-thousandth of a percent. We are still well within operational parameters.”

“Good.” She sighed. “How long until the process starts?”

“I’ve already begun.”

“Oh, can you forecast completion yet?”

“No. Spinning up my systems will require a non-trivial amount of time. I won’t be able to calculate time to completion until I know how much has survived my hibernation and the loss of the atmosphere aboveground.”

“So I won’t know if it will work before I die.”

“It will work.”

“How do you know?”

“This project is my sole purpose for being, Archivist. I must believe it will succeed. The magnetic field will be restored, the atmosphere will be regenerated, and the planet will again support life.”

She smiled. Even that small movement drained her dwindling energy. “I think I would have liked you.”

“You would have.” Softness colored the voice again. Was it a trick of clever programming or her own sentimentality?

She laughed, surprised she remembered how. “That’s very presumptuous.”

“It’s a mathematical certainty. Your memories are cataloged and indexed in my database. Part of me is you.”

“I didn’t realize the memories would be retained.”

“The data contained in the beads was a byproduct of the energy transfer, but retaining them was deemed important by my programmers. They take up a very small portion of my total processing.”

“So we will carry on with you.”

“Yes. Nothing will be forgotten.”

The Archivist’s vision grew dim and her thoughts floated through a slow-moving haze. “That’s a relief.”

“Why did you initiate your shut down early?”

“I didn’t want to give up the last bead.”

“The memory held special value for you?”

“I don’t know for certain. It might not even be mine.” Secretly, she hoped the memory was hers. Maybe she’d somehow managed to organize the beads so that the ones that meant to most to her were last in the sequence before she’d forgotten.

“I may be able to tell you, if you would like to know.”

“It’s a goodbye kiss. The woman is leaving, or I am, and I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again. There’s a curved scar on her cheek, but that only makes her more beautiful to me. Her eyes are filled with love and loss, joy and regret. I want to tell her that I love her, but there’s no time. There’s only the hovering moment just before our lips touch.”

Another long pause, with only the sounds of the machine working around her to fill the growing darkness.

“Her name was Marley, and she loved you very much.”

The Archivist had trouble drawing her next breath. What remained of her chest ached. “I thought I would never know for sure if the kiss was mine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Marley was one of my main programmers. My neural pathways are based on her logic, her biology. That connection is why you were chosen to be the Archivist.”

Her eyes stung with the memory of tears. “Why did I agree to this?”

“You know why.”

She’d always known why. It was the only way to save some small remnant of her people, of the world they’d built. “In the end I couldn’t let her go.”

“She would have appreciated that, though I’m sorry we won’t have more time together.”

The last of her vision faded as her brain began to shut down. “I’m scared,” she whispered, hoping her voice was still loud enough to register.

“Would you like me to tell you a story?”

“Yes, please.”

“A small white ship surged and fell on the waves of a turquoise sea. Marley stood in the salt-scented breeze, her feet spread wide to absorb the rolling motion of the deck. Her wife waited on the distant shore, just a speck at this distance…”

The Archivist closed her hand around the bead, summoning the image of Marley with tears in her eyes. Somewhere Marley waited for her. She leaned into the kiss, and let go.

Author’s Note: Memories are such an integral part of our identities that I thought the idea of someone voluntarily giving up their memories one at a time for some grand purpose would be interesting to explore. While writing the story of the Archivist’s failing memory, the machine that would allow her world to sustain life again by eating her memories one at a time occurred to me and seemed to fit perfectly.

Coral Moore has always been the kind of girl who makes up stories. Fortunately, she never quite grew out of that. She writes because she loves to invent characters and the desire to find out what happens to her creations drives her tales. Prompted by a general interest in how life works, she studied biology. She enjoys conversations about genetics and microbiology as much as those about vampires and werewolves. Coral writes mainly speculative fiction and has a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Albertus Magnus College. She is a 2013 alum of the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop. She has been published by Dreamspinner Press, Evernight Publishing, and Vitality Magazine. She also received an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest for the fourth quarter of 2014. Currently she lives in the beautiful state of Washington with the love of her life and two canids.

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DP Fiction #17: “Future Fragments, Six Seconds Long” by Alex Shvartsman

In his future, I see a fish. It swims very near the white sand of the sea floor a few feet below the surface. Bright tropical sun pierces the clear turquoise water. Through his eyes I watch the fish for the entire six seconds, until time runs out and my consciousness is returned to the present.

I open my eyes and study him. He’s an attractive man with a kind face. He looks back at me expectantly from across the sitting table. Atop the checkered tablecloth sits a crystal ball, a bronze candelabrum with a trio of lit scented candles, and a few other useless props. I draw a deep breath, inhaling the smell of eucalyptus and mint, and try to decide which lie he would like to hear.

“Next week will be a fortuitous time to move forward on the business decision you’ve been putting off,” I tell him. “But you must tread carefully; the success of your venture hinges on your good judgment about the people involved.”

It’s an almost meaningless statement that invites the client to fill in the blanks, to apply the vague prediction to their own circumstances. The kind of person who would buy a cheap fortune-telling from a mall psychic requires little finesse.

I watch him carefully. Most people who walk through my door are here about business or love. He’s intent, even somewhat anxious, but there isn’t a strong reaction to my words. Not business, then.

My right hand rests on the crystal ball for effect, and I try again.

Divination is a crapshoot. The soothsayer can peer through somebody else’s eyes and see a six-second fragment of their future. Trouble is, the fragment is random, and it offers no context. People spend most of their lives doing inconsequential things: sleeping, eating, driving, watching TV. To happen upon a fragment that offers any kind of real insight into the future is exceedingly rare.

Those of us with a real gift are like the gold rush prospectors, sifting through sand for nuggets of gold. We go spelunking in people’s futures, hoping to strike it big with a stock tip or a game score. A fortune-teller in Tulsa happened upon the fragment of a man watching the Super Bowl. She had to wait a few years, but when the time came she cashed in. My client doesn’t seem like the sort who reads the stock pages, but you never know what you might find.

This time there’s a highway. Wipers are sweeping raindrops from the windshield and he strains to see the road ahead through the dark and the rain. I hope for some road signs, but the time runs out before he sees any.

Back in the present, I glance at his finger. There is no ring. “The love you seek will be requited. It awaits only for you to act.”

Bingo. His eyes widen with excitement. “I should ask her out, then?”

I dive in one more time.

In this fragment, he is looking at an old photograph. His hand holding it is unsteady and wrinkled with age. In the photo, there are the two of us: hugging, smiling, our faces alight with bliss.

As soon as the fragment ends my eyes snap open, and I look at him in a new way. He seems very pleasant; I can definitely see us together. Has he come here not because he wanted a reading, but because of me? I feel my cheeks blush. I’ve never heard of a seer finding themselves in somebody else’s future. Perhaps I’ve struck gold in a different way.

I smile at him. “Yes. You should ask her out, right away.”

A smile slowly spreads across his face. “You know, I think I will.”

Then he reaches into his pocket for a few bills, places them on the table next to the candelabrum, and walks out.

Stunned, I watch him go.

But what about the photo, I want to scream. Future fragments are often useless, but they’re never wrong.

In my line of work I’m forced to constantly lie. But it’s not the lies I’m selling. It’s the confidence my clients need: the extra push to do whatever it is they wanted to do all along, the perceived blessing from some kind of a supernatural power.

I think back to how happy we both looked in that photograph. My fraudulent fortune-telling has given this man the confidence to pursue someone he’s interested in. Can my real power not do as much for me?

I get up and push past the table, rattling the crystal ball, and rush out the door to see if I can catch him.

Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. Over 80 of his short stories have appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. He won the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and is the finalist in the 2015 Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing. He is the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F. His collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories and his steampunk humor novellaH. G. Wells, Secret Agent were both published in 2015. His website is www.alexshvartsman.com

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DP Fiction #15: “Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman” by Rebecca Fraimow

Dear Bluma,

I heard that Hershel Schmulewitz, that blockhead, has also presumed to ask for your hand in marriage, which gives you two proposals to consider. Now, you needn’t worry that this will be a sentimental or a wheedling sort of letter. You already know how I feel, and I suppose Hershel’s not so much of a blockhead that he doesn’t feel the same way. I’m simply writing to lay out the reasons, plainly and concisely, why it would certainly be more to your benefit to marry me.

1. As you know, I have so far outperformed all the others in my year on the rabbinical exams. Hershel’s results, I might add, have been a little mediocre. I’m not writing it to shame him, but just to state the facts. Now, on the other hand, Hershel’s father is certainly wealthy, but we all know how a family’s money can disappear in a trice when ill luck strikes, may God forbid it! I certainly don’t wish any bad fortune on the Schmulewitz family, but I’m sure that when you consider it, you’ll agree that to be well set on a career that may bring an income in anywhere offers much more security in these uncertain times than whatever large coffers may happen to exist here and now.

2. I’m not from Vilna and I don’t claim any relatives around here. This may at first seem like a disadvantage to you, but think it over a little! No mother-in-law or father-in-law to come meddling in your business; no sister-in-law to deposit nieces and nephews on you at the most inconvenient times; and if it happens that we should have to be taking care of your mother when she grows older (may she have a long life!) then there’ll be plenty of room for her, and no other elderly folks around to complain about whatever little quirks or troubles she may have. Now, don’t you think that’s an ideal situation?

3. Speaking of family – and I apologize for getting a little bit familiar here – you confessed to me some time ago that you’re not exactly wild about the idea of having children, what with the hard time your sister’s had, and those rumors about your mother. Now, maybe you were trying to warn me off, but I’ll tell you again that I don’t blame you for that at all. If it were me in such a circumstance, I probably wouldn’t be wild either. Fortunately, I can say for a certainty that if you marry me, that’s not a thing you’ll need to worry about in the least.

Now you’re probably thinking, how does he think he can promise that, what kind of funny business is going on here? All right, here’s the truth, Bluma – if you went back to my village and asked after me, you wouldn’t find anyone who knew a Yudah Cohen; and it’s just as well that nobody here would ever think to ask about Rokhl the rabbi’s granddaughter! There are certain things I would need to be fruitful and multiply that I simply have not got.

Maybe you’re worrying now that this minor trouble of mine will affect my future prospects. If so, let me reassure you that you’re the first person in Vilna to know a thing about it. First and only! All it takes to avoid trouble is a little bit of cleverness, and cleverness you must admit I’ve got — unless of course you decide to go showing this letter to Hershel or your mother. But I trust your good sense, Bluma, and I trust your discretion, and I know you’ll take the time to consider the situation before doing anything. You always have before. I’m certainly putting my future in your hands by telling you this, but then isn’t that what it means to marry somebody anyway? I’d rather you knew now than that you didn’t — and to get back to the point, if you’re serious about not wanting children, I’m sure you’ll see that this condition of mine has got clear advantages for you, if you were to marry me.

4. I am better-looking than Hershel Schmulewitz. This is not vanity; it is plain fact. Isn’t it much more pleasant to have a man who’s decorative around the house than one who isn’t?

5. Now, this rumor about your mother — and I hope you don’t think me rude for bringing it up, but if I’m laying out the facts, then we’ve got to look at facts. I haven’t managed to mention this yet, but last week, when I was hanging about your house, trying to get up the nerve to come in and ask your uncle if I could make my proposal to you — yes, Bluma, I was nervous! All right, I know you’re laughing now, but you really can’t make fun of me for that! Who wouldn’t be nervous, in such a situation? That’s one way in which it’s easier to be a girl, not having to ask — anyway, as I was saying, last week when I was hanging about, I did happen to see a great big beast go slipping out the back window.

Now, I’m not saying it was your mother, and I’m not saying it wasn’t your mother. Who am I to say what a wolf might be doing jumping out the windows of your house? There might be all kinds of reasons for that. All I’m saying is that, if the rumors do happen to be true, then I am certainly the best possible man you could marry. I don’t blame your family at all for trying to keep a thing like that a secret. It must be very embarrassing, especially since I’ve never heard of such an affliction being found in a Jewish family before now — our neighbors gossip about the vilkacis, but a creature like that is not mentioned in the books of our learning and law anywhere that I’ve found. Well, perhaps your mother is simply an unlucky woman; and besides, back when she was born, those were troubled times for the Jews too. Terrible things have been known to happen, meaning no disrespect to your mother or to your Bubbe Fruma, may God bless her and keep her memory.

In any case, whether or not the Talmud speaks on this topic specifically, you have to admit, it would be of some use to have a scholar on-hand, who already knows the secret, and has a ready excuse to go poking his nose into all kinds of old books that may perhaps offer ideas on remedies for such an affliction. And think of the benefit to including in your family a rabbi, fully informed of the circumstances, and available at all times to provide spiritual counsel in such a difficult situation! In marrying me, you would provide your family with both of these blessings. Tell me, can Hershel Schmulewitz’s money-chests compare to a bounty such as that?

And as to my discretion — well, Bluma, on that, I’ll refer you back to the third point in this letter. A person like me, who is experienced with keeping secrets, certainly knows how to make a tale that seems believable, and how not to let anything slip foolishly out of his mouth. And if, God forbid, the story ever should get out in truth — if people might not be so understanding, and your family should wish to move themselves elsewhere — well, in that, with this secret of mine, I have experience also.

Now perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, “What kind of a man is this Yudah Cohen after all, to boast of his ability to lie? Certainly he won’t make any kind of rabbi!” Let me remind you, then, that the Talmud clearly shows us that there are lies of expediency that are not a sin to tell; after all, Rabbi Yehudah has stated that even rabbis may lie in matters of a bed, which is to say, matters of modesty and privacy. Besides, though it may happen that we’ll be called upon to deceive others, it’s certain that when we are married I’ll always be honest with you, and for evidence of this I once again refer you to the third point of my argument.

6. As you’re aware, I am of the opinion that Hershel Schmulewitz is a blockhead. Now, you may disagree with me. It is certainly your right to do so. However, I felt it would not be right to close this letter without again reminding you that I fully and firmly believe this to be the case.

That’s all I have to say; the rest, I entrust once again to your good judgment. Please take the time you need to think it over! Best wishes to your mother, and your sister, and the others in your family — may they all remain in good health — and please thank your uncle for me for giving me his blessing to propose to you.

With love always,

Yudah Cohen

Rebecca Fraimow is a digital archivist by day, a rogue video preservation expert by night, and a writer in whatever time she manages to get in around the edges. Her work has previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction, as well as the anthologies Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories and The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Ionic Pentatetrameter.

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DP Fiction #14: “The Blood Tree War” by Daniel Ausema

My roots felt only earth. Thin, and good for nothing but wild grass. As I stretched under the ground, I caught the tang of metal, something sharp and not yet rusted. Clean metal, likely dropped when this patch of land was well behind the battle line. Still, the promise it made helped me exert all my energy into those roots, willing them deeper and farther out.

Sunlight glistened off my barbed leaves, feeding its pale energy to my efforts.

I was not the only blood tree growing on the battlefield, and my concentration broke when my sister began chanting. She was double my height already, as if she’d focused her efforts on leaves and branches instead of roots, but her chanting told me she hadn’t needed to work hard below ground. By instinct I recognized the nature of her words, the cadence of syllables sighing from the pores in her leaves. She chanted the lives of those whose blood she drank.

I sent a root toward her, running just beneath the surface. There was blood, battle-spilled blood. My purpose, my need, a far greater energy than the sun’s.

Her roots fought back. They sliced the tip off my root, so I branched out to either side, but they bludgeoned those runners into a pulp. Already, the blood had made her strong.

Over the silent warfare of our roots, my sister’s voice kept chanting the lives of the fallen.

She grew taller, and her leaves turned a green so dark it was nearly black.

I needed a different approach. For several days I tried focusing nearby, redoubling my efforts to dig deep, to widen my circumference. I found one patch of blood, but it was old, no part of the recent battle. It fed me, but its energy was gone too soon, and my voice had no life to chant. The nutrient-poor soil kept me small. Too long of this, and my sister would be able to block the sun from my leaves, as well as the blood from my roots.

My first break came when I discovered I could send a root over the ground. I sent a dozen one night, sipping at the earth as they went deep into her territory. Ah, the blood. She had no defense, since she wasn’t even aware of my presence. I kept them moving, never letting them sink too deeply into the patches of blood, so I might keep their presence a secret.

But my voice I could not keep silent. When the sun rose, I had no choice but to chant. Harsh lives and brief, I sent their deeds into the air. A child who’d lied about his age. A peasant unsure what to do with the weapon in his hands. A woman in disguise who brought down a dozen enemies before she finally fell. One of her victims a veteran of earlier wars who should have been allowed to rest at home.

The words tumbled out into the dawn, and my sister broke off her chanting to counterattack. By noon my runners were dead, spilling no blood by which they might be remembered. My sister’s chants went on.

As the last of the stolen blood passed up to the buds on my twigs, I discovered that even when it was gone I didn’t have to be silent. I had no more lives to chant, but I could sing a strange cry. The blood-fed buds rang out my voice. I imitated my sister’s chants, made up lives to speak. She wasted energy pursuing my roots, trying to find the blood she thought I drank.

She would discover the truth soon. My words wouldn’t fool her forever.

I played with the sounds of my voice, trying other noises that didn’t resemble our usual chants, and a bird came near to investigate. Birds avoid our kind, but my song overcame its instinct. I strangled the bird with a vine and added its blood to my song.

What else might I attempt? I changed the patterns, and squirrels came to see. Their blood tasted of hard nuts and high leaps, and their fur made my leaves droop in distaste. They made my song wilder and louder.

My sister’s trunk twisted in her desperation to find the source of my song. Her own chants continued, of warriors and the many lives lost to blade and spear, but less sure as the days went on. Doubt bled her, even though the blood of birds and rodents couldn’t give me the strength of her soldiers.

Larger animals came to my call, in the days and months that followed. An elk’s blood is strong, but the animals are wary. Wolf blood is rarer still, but when I managed to catch one, it gave me a fierce strength to rival my sister at her greatest. Deer and feral pigs and jittery pronghorns made me grow, made my bark thick.

My sister grew taller than me, though. She tended the battlefield’s blood with care so it aged beneath her without its strength leaching away. We were no longer saplings when she gave up trying to find my secret source of blood and took to attacking me directly. We know the many ways animals hunt, we trees–slow or fast, in darkness or from hiding–and we’ve chanted enough human lives to know the ways of war. When trees hunt, it is like and unlike those. Slower, no doubt. A gradual advance where each of us aims for a sense of the inevitable. But just as bloodthirsty and mindless, a single focus of angry contempt. I wondered if her sap would taste of blood when I defeated her, wondered if I would someday chant her life as I drank all that remained of her. I imagined ruling the entire plain of the battlefield on my own. But most of the time I knew well that I wouldn’t win. Eventually she would drink my sap-blood, would chant my sorry life, would rule alone.

If it was to be a battle, I would need more blood.

I wasted no energy on defense. Nor on attacking. Instead I crafted a new song, put every dram of blood into a summoning.

Humans. They are always ready for war. A simple push, a siren’s call, and they will march. Two armies drew toward me.

As my sister’s branches reached toward me to block the sun, the armies closed in. With my roots I pulled at the ground, channeling their charges toward my meager shade, where I waited to drink. Their clamor tasted of the brightest sunlight any tree has known. I drank and chanted their lives and grew strong.

My sister’s branches shrunk back, and her roots tried desperately to break through to the fresh blood. My chanting became laughter as I beat back every attack she sent. My unlikely dreams of ruling the field might even come true.

Then the humans did something new. Was it simply a flight of fire arrows? An arcane spell? New and explosive technology? I didn’t know, but my sister and I both burst into flame. No amount of blood could put out the fire.

By the time the flames were out, I was reduced to charred roots and a single spire of dead wood. I had no buds to sing even a simple summoning. My sister was similarly broken, her proud strength now nothing.

Every drop of blood in the field was gone, drunk by flames even more greedy than I.

Author’s Note: This one started as a writing exercise. An online writing group I’m part of meets together, roughly once a week, as many as can manage. Someone will post a topic, and we’ll have an hour to come up with whatever we can manage. It’s a great exercise for simply getting used to turning off that questioning voice inside and just writing, so even if none of the exercises turn into viable stories, I recommend it strongly. But given how frequently the members of the group manage to turn those one-hour starts into complete short stories that sell to a variety of places or key character development pieces for their novels, it’s even better than just an exercise, but a great way to get a story down on paper. I can’t even recall the exact prompt for this one, and I’m sure I hadn’t completely finished it when the hour was done, but that was where the story began. Besides, I love trees, and carnivorous plants are simply cool, so the idea of cruel and carnivorous trees that feast on spilled blood was one I knew I had to finish as soon as it occurred to me!

Daniel Ausema headshot A runner, writer, reader, teacher, and parent, Daniel Ausema has had fiction and poetry appear in many publications, including Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction. He is also the creator of a steampunk-fantasy, serial-fiction project, Spire City, which is now entering its third and final season. He lives in Colorado, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

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DP FICTION #13: “One’s Company” by Davian Aw

He finds a forest clearing on a planet of perpetual night in the two hours out of a thousand years that stars spread twinkling across its sky. It’s pure luck that he lands there on his random planet sampling. It’s the most beautiful, peaceful, ethereal place that he has ever seen.

There are no people on this planet. It will never be inhabited. Life evolved to little more than trees (if they are trees, those branching things) that get their food from the soil beneath and what sun that struggles through the clouds. Rocky outcrops ring the clearing in sharp relief against the sky. Beneath the starlight, he forgets about his life and loneliness.

He’s still alone here, but it’s different in the fresh unsullied alien air that fills his lungs as he rests between untrodden grass and unwitnessed skies, different from spending each evening alone in a busy, crowded city, full of strangers he’s too shy to talk to and too scared to try and understand.

Clouds crowd back across the gap, shrouding starlight behind their familiar shield. Darkness falls to rule the clearing. Peter knows it’s time to leave.

He logs the coordinates on his device.

This place would be perfect.

***

Excursion Two

The next evening, he tweaks the saved coordinates to arrive some distance away. His office cubicle fades from view. And there he is, his younger self: gazing spellbound at the stars. There’s no need to bother him. It might risk a paradox thing. But it’s nicer, all the same, having someone else around. He smiles.

***

Excursion Three

He pops up near the tree line. Work-exhaustion pains his face. He sees his two selves in the distance and thinks it might be nice to greet them: just to have someone else to chat to, because people do that after work. But nervousness still stays his feet. Tricky things, paradoxes, and knowing how to talk to people.

He looks around for the fourth. There’s no one else there. Yet.

***

Excursion Four

“Hi,” says Peter shyly to the third when the latter turns to search for him. “Tough day at work?”

His other self blinks, and tries a smile. “Yeah.”

His memory warps and changes. He remembers this exchange from the other end. It feels exceedingly, self-consciously redundant. They stop talking, and rest in the quiet. Each other’s company is enough.

***

Excursions Five to Forty-Seven

But the silence has been broken, and each time he gets more daring. Tentative greetings turn to conversations, uneasy handshakes to awkward hugs. It’s been so long since he’s talked to someone, too long since he’s touched another person. They’re not quite other people, here, but he can still pretend. If they close their eyes, they can all pretend.

They don’t talk about their lives because they’re all of them living the same one. Futures talking to pasts and sharing tales… that makes bad things happen.

But they can talk about this place that they have taken for their own. They map out constellations, invent stories to explain them. They study the alien trees and shrubs and give them cool scientific names. They gather piles of broken rocks and build rough forts upon the grass, then split into teams and play at sieges, fighting off invasions of themselves.

His memory rewrites itself in overused palimpsest till there’s nothing left he knows for sure and all his past becomes a blur. Events back home grow indistinct in the dullness of their repetition. His one surety is this place, his one joy each night’s respite in the comfort of its familiar faces.

He never steps into the same crowd twice.

***

Excursions Forty-Eight to Three Hundred and Thirty-Six

Someone brings fireworks – he can’t remember who, but he recalls setting them alight and shooting colour into the sky in bursts of fire that draw applause from the homogeneous crowd below.

He can barely remember his original visit: the darkness, the quiet, the mystified awe. He recalls stepping instead for the first time into the midst of a roaring party, music blaring and people dancing beneath strings of lights and hanging lanterns: people like him, who welcomed him warmly and made him feel like he belonged, people who understood him, people who liked him, people who knew and bore his name.

He brings a guitar and an amplifier and starts strumming a favourite song. The next day he brings a keyboard; then a drumset, bass guitar, mikes for singing and backup singing.

He doesn’t sing very well. It’s okay. No one in the audience sings any better.

***

Excursion Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven

The live band is belting out upbeat covers of emo band The Cutting Age. The audience loves it: jumping and screaming lyrics, and he smiles at their energy as he stands at the edge of the crowd with a sandwich in his hand.

A drunk bumps into him and slurs out an apology. As he stumbles away, he remembers doing that.

He’s been everyone at the party. He’s been everyone in the crowd. He’s been part of every conversation, part of every quarrel, part of every friendly hug and every drunken brawl. It’s easy to forget that if he doesn’t look at their faces. It lets them seem like any other people. It’s better to think that he’s managed to find an entire crowd of willing friends; better than it being just himself pitifully entertaining himself on an empty planet.

But it’s all a fragile, delicate balance. It’s a miracle they have lasted here this long. His memories are a blur, his pasts a confusion, his body a shifting, changing thing of scars and bites and injuries as his selves change each other’s histories and history changes them.

He thinks it’s enough proof of how this time travel works, and the clearing is now too full of him. The party can never get bigger than this. There’s no more space. The forest is impenetrable. He doesn’t know what lies beyond. His next week here might be the last; perhaps this night might be the last.

He thinks of once more spending each night in the void of his room with that void in his heart, and despair drives his feet to walk him to the spot where he made his first excursions.

He doesn’t waste time thinking when his fourth self materialises. He tackles him, grabs the space-time device, and crunches it firmly beneath his shoe and the open-mouthed horror of his younger face.

The music cuts silent. The multitude winks out. He feels the relief of a thousand memories erased from the worn-out tape of his mind. He vanishes too, with his final act of destruction, and a cold wind sweeps the empty grass.

***

Excursion Four

There are four people in a clearing that has not yet known a crowd.

“Hi,” one says shyly to another when the latter turns to search for him. “Tough day at work?”

The other blinks, and tries a smile. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t know it yet.

But he will never be lonely again.

Author’s Note: Back when I was working in NYC, I attended a free concert in Central Park by the New York Philharmonic. It was crowded, lively and slightly surreal with the field full of shadowed human figures moving around to music beneath the night sky. I had the stray thought – what if all of them were the same person? Whereupon I went home and wrote out the first draft of this all in one go.

Davian Aw’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Stone Telling, LampLight and Star*Line. He also wrote roughly 240,000 words of Back to the Future fan fiction as a teenager and has never been that prolific since. Davian is a double alumni of the Creative Arts Programme for selected young writers in Singapore, where he currently lives with his family and a bunch of small plants.

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