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Edition 8: Eyes of the Child by Robert Harkess
Alice is thought to be psychic and she revels in her power over other people. Why then is she chilled to the bone from one chance encounter with a stranger? She will be called on like she never has been before, and will have to use her abilities to prevent a tragedy. SY
“So you don’t agree with people who say you are the reincarnation of Doris Stokes?” Last asked. She had expected the weasely little reporter from the Hertfordshire Weekly Gazette to be scratching at a pad with a pencil, but instead he was waving some kind of fancy mobile phone under her nose to record her. She wondered if the clicking of her knitting needles would make the interview difficult to hear. Part of her hoped it would.
“Oh, no, dear,” said Alice, clickity-clackety and a little sharp jerk to pull more wool from the bag at her feet. The reporter ran his finger behind his collar again. She liked to keep the flat toasty warm, and he was still wearing his outdoor coat despite her suggestion that he take it off when he arrived. “You won’t feel the benefit when you go back outside,” she had said.
“No, not Doris. Doris was a bit flashy for my taste, if you see what I mean. All that nonsense with television shows, and places like the Albert Hall, and all those things she did abroad. No, not for me. I just like to meet people and pass on any important messages.”
Edition 8: Dreaming of You by Felicia A. Lee
Mira begins to dream of a house and family that aren’t hers. She dreams of them constantly, and it becomes scarily real, especially when her own reality seems to be slipping away. When Mira’s mother suggests that she is not who she thought she was, the dreams worsen. Does her mother’s secret hold the key to escaping the tedium of her oppressive nightmare? SY
Back in Serbia, people never talked about their dreams. Nana said that to do so was not only rude, but bad luck—and, as she always said, wasn’t there already enough bad luck in the world?
But here in Los Angeles, it sometimes seems as though people can talk of nothing else. In high school I took a psychology class and one day the teacher asked each of us to share a recent dream. This was just after we moved here, and I didn’t know Americans liked to talk about their dreams. For me, this felt like being asked to stand naked on top of my desk. When it was my turn, I lied and said I couldn’t remember any.
I was scared too for another reason: the teacher asked this of us just after the dreams started. It was as if she somehow knew.
Now that I’ve been here a few years, I don’t mind talking about my dreams so much. Amy and Caitlin, my roommates at UCLA, said that talking about their dreams made them feel better. I hope you don’t mind.
Edition 8: Tea In The Secret Garden by Emma Newman
Leonie and Geoff delight in their afternoon tea in the secret garden. Sometimes, when people want to keep their secrets, it’s best to leave them alone. A hard lesson, for some. SY
Leonie wondered whether to start with an attack, and then be soft, or whether to draw him close and then, when he was truly relaxed, deal the vicious blow. Both had their merits, but neither was original. So she simply stirred in the sugar, picked up the tea cup and saucer and sat back in the chair.
She crossed her legs, making the nylon rasp, drawing Geoff’s eyes to them. It made her smile as she took her first sip. Exquisite; both the tea, and the hunger he couldn’t hide.
“Do you want to keep the corporation running?” he asked. “Or are you going to break it up and strip the assets?”
Years of cigar smoking and whisky had made his voice husky. Ignoring the bags beneath his eyes and the waddle of fat hanging from under his chin, she could still sense his vitality.
Edition 8: Fairest Fowl by J. B. Rockwell
When you offend the gods and snub tradition, things can go badly wrong, and they can occur in the most unlikely places and circumstances. Rockwell’s story was a worthy finalist in the 2012 Story Quest Short Story Contest and it was worth the wait to include her story in this special edition. GH
All the world was burning, and as she stared at the devastation below, Keiko knew that her beloved chicken was to blame.
She’d found him on the lower slopes of the mountains, huddled miserably in a stand of bamboo, his feathers dull and dirty, missing in places as if he’d molted out of season, and torn away in others where he had fought with some other creature and survived at least, if not won. She’d taken pity on the poor, half-starved bird, and tucked it under one arm as she turned and followed a narrow path back to the village that was her home.
The hills were steep hereabouts, and were densely covered with cedar and pine and cypress, and the ubiquitous stands of bamboo. She could just see the roofs that marked that sprawling collection of homes and barns and shops as she descended toward the flatter lands where the village and the surrounding fields lay. She supposed it wasn’t really a village anymore. What had started as a small farming community had grown over the past few decades to become a bustling market town. But Shimizu was still a farmer’s town at heart, and she a farmer’s daughter.
Edition 9: Cattails by A. P. Sessler
The speculative fiction market, including SQ Mag, doesn’t publish enough pieces that have humorous bents, or are light but twisted. Not easy to execute well in my estimation. A P Sessler’s ‘Cattails’ fits the bill perfectly. We have a story that opens almost like a Stephen King meets Brothers Grimm, but read on, and it becomes something so much more… GH
‘The Duende’s Garden’ © A P Sessler
The stiff, wide-eyed opossum traversed the rugged rows of severed wheat stalks that remained of the early September harvest. With flashing teeth and swiping claws frozen in time, the critter’s gray body glided across the harsh grooves of furrowed earth much like a snake would, only one without a limber bone in its body.
Edition 10: Shoe Shine by Robert Datson
Sam keeps meaning to clean himself up and make a new start, but somewhere between the buff and the polish it all goes awry. There’s a wonderful subtlety in this supernatural short. SY
“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
—Elvis Presley, 1935 – 1977
The early sun glints off a silvered building. A cooling breeze soothes the streets, and Sam’s eyes flicker open. His body is warm and relaxed, oscillating between asleep and awake, and his mind is at peace with the day.
He turns his head to one side and sees his sleeping buddy tucked under thin grey blankets against the wall of the open verandah they had selected the night before.
Concrete lies under Sam’s thin sleeping bag and he keeps still, knowing the moment he moves, bones will push through the thin material and his comfort will disappear, bringing him firmly into contact with his current situation.
Edition 11: The Poet and the Lily by Julia August
A foreigner in the Isles, returning. They leave her to herself, in the place where there was plague, except the young poet. She is happy in her solitude but he seeks her out. There is a value to politeness and leaving well enough alone. SY
She came back to the Isles in the spring mist. She was left on a pebble beach by a ship from the south, which sailed off without even stopping to resupply. A nearby fishing village took her in for a week, after which she went quietly away and the next anyone heard was that she had made a home in what remained of a hamlet abandoned a hundred years ago or more. And there had been plague there, so no one cared to visit, although she did come back to barter southern coins for food.
Eventually people stopped caring. Foreigners were all mad anyway. Who knew why any of them did anything?
~~~
The stream was the same, clear water spilling foam-flecked between brown stepping stones. There were foxgloves still, and green hollows below undercut banks, and here and there the bronze of dead leaves shed by the beech trees coming into their spring growth. Mist crept like a white ghost over the grass.
Edition 11: Serial Fiction: Intangible (Part 6 of 6) by A. A. Garrison
The end has come. All Hack’s machinations hang on this moment. All Jeannie Tuttle can think about is her mother, dying in the sterile hospital bed. How will it all end? SY
Man – Energy Body – Aura (Copyright Deosum | Dreamstime.com)
IX. March, 1990
Hack hangs over the hospital bed, spectating, unseen. The subject’s mother lies motionless, her bleak aura reflecting her health. The subject herself kneels before the woman, that jade energy pulsing brilliantly. Her cries upset the nether, like cartoon lightning bolts rising from a wound.
Waiting patiently in his secret space, Hack studies her burning aura, the love pulsing there, ripe as a honeydew: she is ready for harvest. All that lies between him and the energy is a psychic barrier: Free Will, a wall impenetrable by even the mightiest magician. But that will soon be no more, and of her own volition.
Edition 10: Serial Fiction: Intangible (Part 5 of 6) by A. A. Garrison
Meet Marcy Dillsmore, and her strange relationship with the Utah Penny. GDH
Man – Energy Body – Aura (Copyright Deosum | Dreamstime.com)
Enter Marcy Dillsmore.
Born Marcy Darby in the faceless year of 1951, the woman lived a mundane childhood, completed a mundane education, and, at eighteen, married a young man by the name of Franklin Maurice Dillsmore III, who, despite his grandiloquent title, was, also, quite mundane. Her defining moment was placing second in the ’69 Miss Georgia pageant. She should have won, would have—the white tramp who took the trophy had hips like a bent trashcan—but the night before, she’d developed a grade-A case of bad hair. Terrible hair, in fact, bride-of-Frankenstein bad. But the woman refused to let it bitter her, even as she settled into a mundane middle-age. Marcy couldn’t complain. She may have put on a few pounds—twenty-two and three-quarters, but who’s counting?—and developed a pie-shaped office-butt, but she was still beautiful, and Frank did a fine job of reinforcing that fact. Her chestnut eyes, unblemished skin, and selfsame hair combined into a comely, uniform complexion; when in the nude, Frank often commented that she resembled a human chocolate bar (always followed by double entendres involving “eating” and “melting”). Her two children, Kyle and Tia, also helped her steer clear of the funks so common to midlife. Between a supportive husband, two wonderful children, and the uncommon extension of her beauty, Marcy Dillsmore found life full and rewarding, if as mundane as the preceding seasons of her existence. Like a certain motorcycle thief who had lived and died far outside her experience, she felt she couldn’t lose.
Edition 9: Serial Fiction: Intangible (Part 4 of 6) by A. A. Garrison
Hack’s machinations continue to influence Jeannie’s life. She seeks to help her mother’s failing health with her radio prize money. As an aside, we follow the strange existence of a Utah penny… GDH
Man – Energy Body – Aura (Copyright Deosum | Dreamstime.com)
VII. January, 1990
The hospital was in Pemberton, Ford’s sister town. The doctor dimpled in smile, and shook Jeannie’s hand.
“I’m Doctor Mills. How do you do, Miss Tuttle?” he asked robotically. He was middle-aged and small—not so much short, just insubstantial. Like a sandwich missing the meat, Jeannie thought.
SQ Mag 
