Plugs

Alex Dally MacFarlane’s story “The Devonshire Arms” is available online at Clarkesworld.

Read Daniel Braum’s story Mystic Tryst at Farrgo’s Wainscot #8.

Jason Erik Lundberg‘s fiction is forthcoming from Subterranean Magazine and Polyphony 7.

Kat Beyer’s Cabal story “A Change In Government” has been nominated for a BSFA award for best short fiction.

Archive for the ‘Pandora’ Category

Meet the Extraordinary Ordinaire

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

In terms of continuity, this is the first of the Pandora series. It is followed by 2) “The Bug-a-Boo Bear,” 3) “Chop Chop,” 4) “Byzantine,” and 5) “Long Live the Dead“.


She was just like us, but she was less than us, and she was more.

Pandora left the pantry door unlatched, the mead-stained beer steins in the sink, her clocks unwound.

She read the stars, some side-stitched journals stained by meadow grass, the minds of mortals (unreliably, it’s true).

Pandora had boxes–lots of them. She opened some and closed the rest. A magpie queen of hollow cubes, she mountained box on box, secreted box in box. She even slept in one. The boys perked up to hear how well she worked with boxes though she labored blithely blind to such potential perks.

She lived for untold years, for who knows what? She died, for who knows why (none cared to ask)? She altered lives, for good and ill.

So why are you, dear reader, unaware of her but for her famed faux pas?

Zoli Finds His Anima

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. Neurosis was his game and he was good at it, but he hadn’t counted on full-blown crazy.

“I’m telling you, I can’t date you. I’m here to find my animus,” the girl said. Her name was Padme? Pardoma? Ah, yes, Pandora.

Zoli wondered whether he should forsake Jungian practices altogether, but the paramythological interpretations were so convenient. Arguments could always be derailed away from his practical failings and into the terrain of the symbolic and abstract. Besides, sex with Freudians was kinkier than he cared for.

“I can be your animus, honey. For you, I can be anything you want,” he said.

The girl chuckled, shaking her head. “The animus isn’t a guy,” she said. “It’s the male aspect present in the collective subconscious of women”–she sounded like she was quoting something– “You should get in contact with your anima, honey, you might become less of a jerk.”

Zoli opened his mouth to proclaim himself innocent of jerkitude, but the woman scuttled closer on the bench and pressed his head against her chest. The proximity of the boob shocked him into silence.

“I’m opening your chakras,” the girl announced, caressing Zoli’s hair. “You have a beautiful anima, you simply need to let it out.”

The door of the office opened and the girl stood up, stepped in and left Zoli alone in the waiting room.

As soon as Zoli stepped out of the office, he noticed something was different. He turned heads. The women who looked at him weren’t prettier than the ones he usually attracted, but they seemed sharper, more together. Their eyes were everywhere. They held doors open for him.

The combination of gallantry and insult confused him.

He looked down at his body, fearing something drastic had happened to his sexual differentiation, but nothing had changed, as far as he could see. He was still a guy and he sighed with relief.

Suddenly, a knight appeared out of nowhere. Her hair flew in the wind, framing her face over her full-body armour. She shone like a diamond against the asphalt and skyscrapers. Without a word, she lifted Zoli up on her white horse and took him away.

End

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