Blog Archives
Edition 19: Trial By Fire by Richard Zwicker
When a god shows up at your door, you can’t exactly turn him away. Phokus is recruited by none other than the big guy himself, and sent on a merry little chase. All in the name of a little warmth. SY
A knock at the door roused me from frigid dreams. This being Athens, it was likely a thief ready to slit my throat, so I was disinclined to answer. On the other hand, it could be a disguised god who’d reward my inhospitality by turning me into a chew bone for Cerberus. So, I roused myself out of bed and threw on a lion skin over the leopard and bear skins I already wore. I looked like a walking food chain, but cold beats style in my home.
I opened the door, and a blast of wind cold-cocked me. When my vision cleared, I saw a slouching, bearded old man. The rags he wore were so tattered I wouldn’t have used them to wipe my chariot, if I had a chariot.
“Can you spare some food for a stranger?” he asked, his voice a mix of sand and icicles. If this guy wasn’t Zeus, I was the Cock, the Dog, and the Fox.
Edition 19: Final Journey by Stephen C. Ormsby
A last trip, the last time as nGeneer, the last of a bond with the metal behemoth. When one is relegated, removed from a position of usefulness, how do they survive? A finalist in the 2014 Story Quest competition. SY
I am a part of this train, and the train is a part of me: I am nGeneer. This steel behemoth is not just connected to me; it is part of my DNA.
My forefathers were engineers and ran the trains, but then scientists decoded the human genome and built the technology to create unfathomable cross bred machinery. At an early age, I showed the same aptitude as my father and grandfather, and my body became this joined beast of metal and skin, an nClass 21 diesel locomotive transporter unit.
It nourishes me and I guide it, and together we travel across the Australian landscape, supplying fuels and foodstuffs to the major cities. Merged, we separate only out of courtesy for the workers who have not grown accustomed to this interbreeding.
My smooth metallic panelling warms in the early morning sun, as the passengers board and shuffle for seats. Energy builds as my diesel engine heats, until I have the strength of a dozen machines. The hills will challenge my wheels and my axle yet again, but this will be the last time.
My final journey will begin in a matter of mere minutes.
Edition 19: All the Answers by Peter Medeiros
When her dreams of perfect scores and entry to college are ripped into teeny tiny shreds, Cassandra is not prepared to lie down and take it. She’s taking others down with her, she’s not going quietly… SY
When Cassandra opened her locker that morning, she saw her whole future disintegrating over the dim rectangular screen of a reader, and even a cursory look told her it was dead, gone, kaput. Her perfect GPA, her three, going on four, consecutive State-level victories with Debate Club, her four and a half minute mile, her summer internship as a lab assistant with Alden Alternative Technologies—she beat out a slew of college students for that one, or at least that’s what they told her—all of that was blown away in a second. All because of two words blinking at the top of the screen:
TEST ANSWERS
Edition 19: The Meet by Geoffrey Collins
This is the place where it will go down. Where back-up is not a precaution; it’s a requirement. Lines are drawn in the sand, in the face of oncoming darkness and despair. SY
In every evening there is a time when the city takes a stops to take a breath. The five o’clock exodus is over and the workers are home deciding what to be instead. Shop doors are closed and locked, streetlights blink on. As the tide of the day runs out, in the ebb of its last waves, you can find things that are always there but usually hidden.
I had found a neon sign with a name in Bauhaus script that pulsed red in the puddles on the sidewalk below. The sign fronted a bar, a sub-street level affair with a grey-stone office block squatting on top of it, a narrow courtyard in front with dwarf hemlocks in terracotta pots and some wrought iron settings with the sunshades dropped, chairs resting against the tables.
For a week I had been watching the place like a hunter in a blind, subsisting on coffee and bagels from the kosher delicatessen on the corner, skulking back to a bolt-hole hotel room before dawn. People came, people went; I watched. After a few days I had called for back-up, hoping I wouldn’t be thought overly cautious. When I saw who had been sent, I knew I needn’t have worried.
“You’ve become soft,” said a voice in my ear. “I could never have come up on you before.”
Edition 19: Riding a Runaway by Andrew Knighton
A runaway train hurtling toward the imperial palace. Dirk Dynamo and Timothy Blaze-Simms have to run the gauntlet of automated foot soldiers of a madman bent on vengeance. This pulp-fiction style steampunk was another finalist in 2014’s Story Quest competition. SY
Dirk Dynamo braced himself as the train roared towards him out of the darkness, the cacophony of its wheels and the harsh light from its lamps filling the tunnel. The air was thick with coal smoke and the smell of deep earth. He was tense, coiled, ready for action.
“What a splendid sound!” Timothy Blaze-Simms shouted to be heard.
“Get ready.” Dirk’s hand dropped instinctively to his belt. The reassuring cold steel of the Gravemaker was secure in its holster beneath his fur coat. Down here he was sweating like a Prussian in the sunshine, but he’d be glad of the warmth when they got back up into the Moscow snow.
Edition 18: Ears Prick Up By Laird Barron
Rex is the pinnacle of the war dog breed. No other can match the powerful snap of his jaws or the destruction he wreaks on a battlefield. The lifelong journey of a loyal friend and his commander, and where their path takes them. A sci-fi with a delightful Roman Empire flavour. SY
1.
My kind is swift to chase, swift to battle. My imperfect memory is long with longing for the fight. Gray and arthritic in the twilight of retirement from valorous service to the Empire, my hackles still bunch at the clink of metal on metal. My yawn is an expression of doom sublimated. I dream of chasing elk across the plains of my ancient ancestors. I dream of blizzards and ice fields that merge with the bitter stars. In my dreams, I always die.
2.
I traveled far from home in my youth. Dad and I slugged it out with a whole platoon of black hats one night as we strolled across the tundra of the Utter North. Military commandos hired to assassinate us; every man and dog marked with the mark of a secret gang, scents masked in case of failure. Poor, stupid fools. Probably sent by General Aniochles who figured Dad was gunning for his job. Bet my bottom chew toy the sonofabitch made the call. He gave Dad dagger eyes whenever they chatted at court. Bastard smelled guilty to me and that’s what I knew. Well, I knew right.
I wasn’t a pup then. I wasn’t approaching my warranty date, either. My eyes glowed red with atomic radiation. My fangs gleamed in a grin that would have made a T. rex flinch, appropriately enough, because they named me, my whole series, after the terrible king extinct these many eons but unforgotten. Dad papered the walls of my kennel with color photos of dinos and wolves and exploding missiles to give me the right idea about how I should behave when he cried, “Sic ’em, Rex!”
Edition 18: The Visitors by Michelle Ann King
Edging ever closer to a new horizon, after her unwilling combination with the visitors, she waits for the inevitable. Alone and afraid, unsure of what her future holds, the daughter waits. A flash of the dilemma of the end. SY
‘It’s all right,’ they told her, when it started. ‘You’re going to be okay.’
It was even possible they believed it, in the beginning. People still got sick, after all.
She wanted to believe it too, but she didn’t feel okay. She felt feverish and shivery, aching, coming back to herself sludgily with too many toxic dreams sweating out of her pores. It felt like she’d been weaponised in her sleep. Made into a time bomb, a booby trap, a layer of microscopic destruction under a ratty, stained duvet.
Edition 18: The Carbonite’s Daughter by Deryn Pittar
Highly regarded by all the judges of this year’s Story Quest Short Story competition, Deryn Pittar won with a story of emerging womanhood, in an unfamiliar, post-nuclear world. It was the detailed undercurrents of resistance of the status quo and the alienating effects of religion that truly allowed this piece to shine. SY
I keep a tight grasp of mother’s hand as we hurry down the sloping passage, deeper into the mountain. My small breasts bounce and tingle. They hurt and I wish I had enough boob to wear a bra. I will soon. The walls are warm and already my heavy coat is making me hot. I want to stop and take it off but we have a train to catch.
“When will we see Dad?”
Mother stops and puts her arm around my shoulder, whispering into my ear, “Shhh. The walls are listening.”
I look around. No ears in sight. She is talking in riddles again. I look into her dark brown eyes, her Welsh heritage she tells me, and I see fresh grey hairs around her temple. Today she looks older. She kisses my cheek and smiles. The sodium lights in the passageway pick out the fine lines around her eyes. Why haven’t I notice this before? My excitement for the last month has blinded me to everyday things, but I haven’t seen my father for two years. I whisper back.
“When, Mother?”
Edition 18: KFP By George Sandison
While waiting for his wife to arrive at the hospital, Mr Goldberg finds himself more and more perplexed with the world around him. The goings on in the ward, in his room, are beyond the probable. That’s when he starts to lose it. SY
I dreamt of you last night. You were on the other side of a canyon and walking away from me. It scared me. I don’t want anything to separate us, in sickness or in health. We know that health cannot be valued by something as crass as money. I wish you would see death differently though, take that gamble with me.
It’s an expensive clinic I’m in, for sure; all flashing lights, touch screen surfaces and devices I haven’t seen before. You know that smell people always talk about hospitals having? That clean disinfectant one that gets in your nose even after you’ve gone home? I don’t smell it. It doesn’t smell of anything here, except fried meat. I can see you wrinkling your nose already. Oh Susan, where are you?
They wheel him in on the second day. He’s in a thin-framed wheel chair, tall and lean, perfect physique. I’m eating breakfast, the same anonymous mush they gave me three times yesterday. It tastes fine but, damn it, I don’t know what it is. He’s got a bucket of fried chicken that he’s tearing into. It smells real good to me, I know you’d hate it.
The smell pours out of the red bucket he clutches and I can almost see the grease rolling through the room. He’s made the whole place feel dirty.
Edition 18: The Calling By John W. Oliver
Josiah has struggled to keep his distance from his family for a long time. But when cousin Zeke abducts Josie’s son, and the woman he loves is on his doorstep begging for his help, he is drawn back in again. A dark and supernatural tale about the dark secrets families keep and what we do to protect those we love. This work has also previously received an Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. SY
“Josie! Zeke’s taken Sammy,” Connie banged the screen door of my trailer, just in case I hadn’t heard her.
I opened the inner door and squinted out into the bright Nevada sun. My nostrils flared at her scent. I shoved the roast beef sandwich into my mouth, took a big bite and chewed.
“What do you mean he’s taken the boy?” I asked through my mouthful.
“He said he’s taking him home for his second blooding. Whatever the hell that means.” Connie fought back a sob and gave me a look that demanded an answer. She was caught on the fine edge between breaking down and blowing up.
I swallowed and paused before taking another bite. The force of the calling throbbed through me. I hadn’t stopped eating all day. My mouth watered at the sight of Connie. The Calling always enhanced my hunger, and I did my damnedest not to succumb. I tightened my fist, bread oozing between my fingers, and willed myself to take slow even breaths.
SQ Mag 
