Votary

by MK Hobson

One day Mom came home from work early. Votary found her sitting on the porch talking with Mr. Dubeck, the postman. He had his bag next to him, full of mail. He was bald and skinny, with neck muscles that stuck out and jumped around when he laughed. He had strong muscular legs, rippling and hard, and they had fine golden hairs on them that shone in the sun. He was sitting on the stairs below my mother, in the late afternoon sunshine.

She was sitting in the cool shadow, speaking quietly, her hands clasped together. The thumb of one hand was stroking the palm of the other. She was sitting back under the overhang of the roof; her face was darkened by the heavy shadow. Mr. Dubeck had his head inclined sympathetically toward her.

They weren’t talking about mail.

Ice

by Heather Hatch

Johnson looked out at the glistening white expanse, glad for the barrier between him and the snow covered ice. He noted the research ship’s position and speed in the log book – along with the calm emptiness of the Antarctic wasteland – and turned to Ivers, the man at the radar.

“Still no sign of Dr. Fenton?” Johnson asked.

“Nope. Nothing from Saunders – how much longer are we waiting out here?”

Johnson shrugged. “Captain says another day.”

Merlin’s Bane

by G.W. Thomas

She wasn’t nervous. She didn’t have a gun. Just a smile.

“You want the book, right?”

“Yup.”

“You won’t get it.” She waved a tantalizing finger at me. I tried to ignore the digit but for some reason it wouldn’t leave my eyes.

“I’ve heard that one before,” I said, pretending to be all ice.

“You think you’re a great sorcerer, a mage of the ancient knowledge, but it won’t make any difference.”

“Why not?” I should have thrown the glass dagger that was up my sleeve. Then and there. And there was that damned “Burning Desert Glyph” I never quite got around to.

“Because you are a man.”

Tumble

by Trent Jamieson

“My Daniel’s out there.” Mother Beet crossed her stick-thin legs, lit a cigarillo, then offered me one. I shook my head, staring into the black hollows where her eyes should be. Black hollows that held my measure, nonetheless, and stared back. Tiny brown cockroaches nested in the right orbit. They bubbled and hissed, irritated by the smoke perhaps. “I can feel him, sure’s the memory of spittin’ the bastard, bloody and blind-eyed, out of me womb.”

I sat, and her smoke-bound mutterings washed against me. Folk like that, their words are weighty. You listen and not without fear.