Story in Triangulation: Parch –a little more about it

“An anthology of Short Speculative Fiction” from Parsec Ink. I’m thrilled by the literary quality of this tome. A little more about it:

The slick cover I think looks much better in person than the online image suggests.

The theme is dehydration.

Parsec Ink is a paying market.

The editor is Stephen V. Ramey. Here he blogs about Parch. He’s been published in places like Apocrypha and Abstractions, Every Day Fiction, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Glass Eye Chandelier, Gone Lawn, TJ Eckleberg Review, Polluto, JukePop, The Speculative Edge, Connotation Press, and many others.

Some of the other authors are Fruma Klass, Tinatsu Wallace, Chuch Rothman, Jetse DeVries.

The Mask of Sleep is Horror. It begins:

The man inside the mask can no longer see through the eye holes as the mask’s eyes droop into the last increment in the horrible progression of a month toward closure. It sleeps its wood, paint peeling off the edges of the visible world. He hates the darkness encroaching day by day. He hates the movement toward nothingness, the mask-blindness that makes him think continually about what he did to his tribe. He should never have released the strange perpetually thirsty animal from the wooden pen and let it fly. Once in the air, the creature widened, became soft and white, and turned into a cloud that grew larger and larger and ate all the other clouds in the sky. No rain fell for months.

Story in Axolotl Magazine

Secret in the Desert is available online now for your spooky pleasure.

I have so many publications on a regular basis, it’s hard to chose which ones to include in this blog, which is for people wanting to read my work, who aren’t necessarily interested in Literary, Experimental, or that side of the Interstitial styles as much as pure straightforward Genre. Pulp. Speculative. You got it.

This story is Paranormal.

It begins:

In the line to get into Parch, we drove past signs along the pale road which ran through the dried-up lake bed that reminded me of a canvas carried through the dust, spat on by the gods, and wiped off with robes made of thorn. In fact, it was just those gods we were each paying five thousand dollars to see. We hoped they would give us a fashion show some time during that week without water, hoped our very eyes would turn to dust enough that we could blink when the dust storms cleared, and we would see the truth.

I didn’t believe in truth.

One sign said: WHAT IS IN YOUR HEAD IS IN THE GROUND.

The next: OPEN YOUR EYES.

YOUR PUPILS GO STRAIGHT TO YOUR BRAIN.

YOU TURN YOUR WORLD UPSIDE DOWN COMPLETELY WITH YOUR BRAIN.

We knew Parch would turn everything we had ever believed on its head.

Eye Poison

Weird Horror story, Eye Poison, in No Sight for the Saved Anthology, print and e-book. “”Surreal journeys through landscapes of the angry and abandoned, the lost and lonely and the weak and wounded. These are the realms of the Dead End Collective.” The horror art of Niall Parkinson is used for inspiration for the short stories and poetry included in this anthology. This fully illustrated anthology is a wonderful collection of horror fiction inspired by horror art. Seeing is believing, and horror awaits.”

In the story, the family’s repressions begin to take shape.

Mask of Sleep

Weird Horror story, Mask of Sleep, at Parsec Ink’s Triangulation Anthology: Parch e-book and print.

The Coveted General Anzel Smile

Whenever I see lunar rays coming into my room on new moons, when I hear the catbird bark, and I feel my internal organs curling, jumbling up like chitlins and sweetmeats on a tray handed a dying man in the desert, weakening in the sun before he can reach up to take them, I suspect they are coming for me again, like they did, starting years ago, when I was transferred to command at the new Army base. Little did I know I’d be waking with scrapes on my arms, grass scattered around my pillow, spend my hours trying to understand my secret life. It wasn’t my idea. It was theirs. Whoever they are.

SF story, The Coveted General Anzel Smile, at The Strange and the Curious.

Projection Theater

Hannah and her friend Lewis crept toward the abandoned university theater through the tall grasses that slid against their skin, knocking spores into the air that stank of reproduction. They rose up to look for faux dangers, and bent back down, grinning in anticipation of the wondrous auditorium they’d heard about from the art school where they taught. They’d never talked about the place to anyone who had gone there, but had over-heard collages of conversation in the hallways. Hannah and Lewis thought they’d seen a photo of it on a bulletin board at the school, a clipping from the college paper, but could never agree on what it looked like. They wanted to paint it to enter a contest that would take one of the multitude of people who entered far away from that place to a new life. Or, at least Hannah really wanted to win it. Lewis was more interested in having a fun day with Hannah than winning the contest that would take the winner across the world from Knoxville, Tennessee to a career in London.

Weird SFF story, Projection Theater, at Lorelei Signal.

Mirror Tattoo

Somehow, it looks like water. You approach it, and it waves, it sparkles. More like mercury, liquid silver, something impossible. Something undeniable.

Her secret tattoo artist does very good work. If she let on who he was, he would be killed.

Weird Paranormal story, Mirror Tattoo, at Father Stars Than This.

Ocularity at The Strange and the Curious

Black obsidian looked back at Jason: a few feet from his face, the giant statue of his own eye hovered heavily above the canyon. The pedestal of the shining Ocularity jutted out at the tip of the narrow path of land jutting out over Colorado River’s millions of years. Around him, the red rock of Glen Canyon exuded sensation.  Roiling storm clouds led the indefinite grey horizon on a charge against the twilit cobalt sky.

My Weird SFF story Ocularity.