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Edition 13: Keeping An Open Mind by Dan Rabarts
When it comes to the question of what makes us individuals and where we can find that special spark, Josh thinks he has the answer. Dan Rabarts was third placed in the 2013 IFWG Publishing Australia Story Quest competition, winning the judges over with his clear style and dark storytelling. SY
Joshua knew he was guilty. He just didn’t know why.
There had been a time, before the accident, when it had all fitted together well enough. A time when things had made sense. There had been echoes of laughter and the glow that reminded him of late summer, good times remembered but fading. Sitting on the riverbank, sharing a durry, swigging from a glass flask, squeezing his eyes against the burn of cheap raw liquor—the best they could afford—and contemplating everything from the meaning of sunrise to whether or not there really was a Great Hereafter. They had reached an agreement, Joshua and those whom he had once called friends, that what lay beyond was whatever you believed it would be. He had, in the folly of his youth (not so long ago), believed that this husk of blood and bone and brain had the power to summon an afterlife of his choosing, simply by willing it so. He wished that he still held to such frivolous dreams. But he had seen what happens when a man is rent from jaw to spleen. There is blood, and bone, and the reek of copper and shit. He had seen the grey and brown that lurks within the skull, that frail temple that hides man’s concept of soul and lets him believe that after death there is anything more than dust or ash or the long devouring of worms.
Edition 13: The Girl in the Glass Bottle by Brian G Ross
Amy is in a desperate situation and seeks help by message in a bottle. When she starts to receive replies, Amy opens up and her friend across the sea helps her plan to thwart the evil in her life. SY
I rolled up the piece of paper tightly, until it was no larger in diameter than a fast-food milkshake straw. My favourite doll, Miss Louise, was squeezed under my arm. She couldn’t breathe, but even though she didn’t complain, I still tried to be quick about it anyway. As soon as I dropped the paper into the glass bottle, it immediately uncurled and filled the empty space inside.
Most of what I had written had been obscured by the curvature of the glass, but as I turned the bottle this way and that, I could make out some of the words. Hit. Broken. Scared. Need help. I wrote that bad things would happen if they didn’t act soon, and left my name and address at the bottom.
Edition 13: Catch of the Day by J. R. Johnson
Ray is a glorified smuggler, who finds himself in an untenable situation that can only be solved with some outside intervention. Full of tricks and betrayal to make the waters murky, Ray’s plan requires all his wits and cunning to get out of the game. SY
The last drops of morning rain skittered past me, chased by sun shining brutal and hot against a backdrop of dark clouds. Gulls crowded the Walmart parking lot where I stopped to make the call, their white and grey feathers highlighting a magnificent post-storm rainbow. The colorful illusion faded as I watched, leaving only birds fighting for crumbs and screaming. Yanking at my thinning hair, I tried to think of options that didn’t end with me dead.
Nope, nothing. Except to turn my back on everything I knew, everything I was, and make a play for a real life. One with Keri.
Edition 13: Stills by Jeremy C Shipp
The latest in home decorating style are the Stills, key to any successful social engagement. Their position requires time, patience, and only the very best will do. A great bizarro piece from our guest author, Jeremy C. Shipp. SY
You can imagine the shock to my nerves when I catch my son balancing on a wobbly barstool, placing a diaper on a woman’s head.
“Look, mama,” my boy says. “She’s a diaper queen. Mama, look.”
I cross my arms over my chest, so that he knows I mean business. “Take that off of her. And get down from there. Now.”
Steven leaps off the stool and I gasp. Thankfully he doesn’t break a leg or even twist an ankle. He rushes away from me, giggling, flapping his arms like a frightened chicken.
Edition 1: Rationalized by Larry Hodges
“Rationalized” was the winner of the 2011 Story Quest Short Story Contest. Dystopian short fiction has a long history, the modern era examples stretching back to the late 1940s, and some of the best science fiction fall into this sub-genre. The judges of the Story Quest contest determined that Larry Hodges’ piece, Rationalized, took a fresh approach, and carried a clear and brutal message. Hodges, a seasoned wordsmith, asks the question, what do I do if the odds are overwhelmingly against me? I’ll leave the answer to those who read his short story. GH
How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
It had been a long Saturday morning, but the training was over. Now Dr. Bruce watched Jeremy and his friend Lara as they played games and drank lemonade. Both actions were illegal.
He took a sip of the chemically-created lemonade he made himself. It was a break from the dreary diet of nutricubes and water, the only approved food or drink allowed or needed. He wondered if actual lemon trees still existed.
Jeremy came over. “Dad, where’s the puppy?” he whispered.
They’d “borrowed” it from the puppy farm.
“I kept it a secret like you asked, but when are you going to tell us what it’s for?”
“Soon,” Bruce said.
Edition 1: Nullus by Mitchell Edgeworth
Traversing the Nullarbor can make you think you’re alone in the world. But this time, it’s not just a feeling. An Australian twist on apocalyptic fiction that’s sure to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. SY
You didn’t think you’d have bad weather in summer, yet here are grey skies lying sulky over the Nullarbor in the middle of February. Nothing you can do about it. You take the tent down and stow it in the panniers before straddling the Kawasaki and continuing east. With luck, you might hit Ceduna before nightfall.
At Balladonia an Irish backpacker serves you coffee and a sandwich, and looks wistfully out the window at your bike parked by the petrol bowsers, the clutter of occy-strapped luggage teetering on the rear of the seat. “You take carr on dat boike, all right? Just take it easy.”
Ravens flutter and croak in the spindly trees at the edge of the road. The flat and barren landscape is broken only by the occasional road sign or ruined farmstead. You gear down every time a road-train approaches, lowering your head so the whoosh of displaced air doesn’t pick you up off the bike. At 120 kilometres an hour, the buzz of the engine levels out as a steady drone. The frigid wind picks out the exposed bits of skin between helmet and jacket. Still, the weather holds out.
Edition 1: The Witness by Laura Haddock
“The Witness” was third place prize winner of the 2011 Story Quest Short Story Contest. Laura Haddock is a newcomer to published fiction and the Story Quest judges noted a high level of maturity and polish in her writing. “The Witness” is, in many ways, a classic sci-fi, but projecting readers into a court-room drama, with a most interesting twist. GH
Of course there are ethical implications.
First, the procedure may never be used on children. The filter of childish perception would only confuse. The intellectually disabled are excused as well. And there is no “off” switch. It is understood that the court will wait respectfully for the duration. I think the record is six minutes.
From the beginning there were promising results with Alzheimer’s and neural trauma patients. The mechanical apparatus buzzed day and night in the research centers, with no shortage of volunteers. Once those crafty engineers discovered that the brain could be manipulated to reverse the erasure process—that memories could be rebuilt—there was no turning back.
I don’t know who first thought to use the machinery on corpses, but he must have been one macabre SOB.
Even now, most REBUILD subjects remain incoherent or don’t even revive. One of my own first cases filled screen after screen with gibberish until he finally powered down. After my “Mr. Harrell, I am prosecuting attorney Jack Sullivan,” I saw the lines scrolling at a frantic pace, saying nothing at all.
Edition 1: Neighborhood Watch by Jennifer Solomon
When kids start to disappear, local menace Jaden points the finger at his odd neighbors, the Spragues. Will he be able to stop them before there’s another friend on the menu? A classic thriller, but wait for the twist… SY
Jaden Conner-Sterling was an awful little boy. Not to his parents, perhaps, but certainly to most of the world. He was eleven; too old for his actions to be considered cute, and too young for them to be considered dangerous. He was smart in a sly sort of way; too small to be a bully at his school, he instead used his fast wits to become a lackey to the older, stronger kids.
It was Jaden who came up with the nickname “Fetus Face” for the soft, fleshy fourth grader named Douglas, and “Crotch rot” for the pretty, but extremely shy, Marilyn. When his friends found a dead cat by the side of the road, it was Jaden’s idea to put it in a used Chinese takeout bag and stow it in the locker of an Asian student named Takumi. “Enjoy your runch!” the gang shouted as the young boy (Japanese, not Chinese) tried not to cry.
Jaden was clever enough to modify his behavior among adults, though he didn’t fool everyone. His math teacher, Margaret Leonard, for example, watched him like a hawk. Forty years of dealing with unruly children had given her sharp instincts, though she was no longer fast enough on her feet to catch him in the act. Jaden referred to her as Grandma Moses. His neighbors across the street, the Fitzgeralds, had caught him chucking stones at their bird feeder. His parents reprimanded him vaguely, and Jaden was careful to check that the Fitzgeralds were out before resuming his target practice.
His parents, David and Laura saw Jaden in a different light. In their eyes, he was a highly intelligent, inquisitive little boy.
Edition 1: Toxic Sludge by Tom Ribas and Lee Lackey
When waste takes over, it’s left up to the animals to preserve the forest. Will Rat, Frog, and Badger be able to defeat The Sludge and save the world as we know it? A fantastical story of a future where our filthy past finally catches up with us. SY
In a hollow den of glass and steel, blue and black shadows spread across holes and hallways leading down divergent paths; they stood exposed under rows of effulgent fluorescent lights.
Badger motioned to hurry, dark eyes darting. Dim esoterica on the walls stretched to the edges of his abnormally keen vision, panes revealing no signs of the enemy. He held the machine gun tight in his piebald paws; he smelled vividly the acrid stench of pollution.
“I’m trying.” Rat’s claws clattered and fumbled against the primitive electric lock on the metal crate. Her eyes were wide and frantic; she knew what would happen if they were to be caught. Sweat formed and ran down her nose, on the palms of her hands, onto her fingers, making them slippery. The other two shifted in place the longer they were forced to wait. Every second that passed made them more and more afraid.
With an audible click and hiss, hydraulic rams moved inside to open the crate and show the stash of ammunition within.
“Got it—I got it.”
SQ Mag 
