Plugs

Susannah Mandel’s short story “The Monkey and the Butterfly” is in Shimmer #11. She also has poems in the current issues of Sybil’s Garage, Goblin Fruit, and Peter Parasol.

David Kopaska-Merkel’s book of humorous noir fiction based on nursery rhymes, Nursery Rhyme Noir 978-09821068-3-9, is sold at the Genre Mall. Other new books include The zSimian Transcript (Cyberwizard Productions) and Brushfires (Sams Dot Publishing).

Ken Brady’s latest story, “Walkers of the Deep Blue Sea and Sky” appears in the Exquisite Corpuscle anthology, edited by Jay Lake and Frank Wu.

Sara Genge’s story “Godtouched” may be found in Strange Horizons.

she is where she is or Why She Boarded the Shuttle for the Station at Lagrange Point Seven

by Trent Walters

She is unhappy with herself because she is two months pregnant with his child, she is two months pregnant with his child because he didn’t wear a condom, he didn’t wear a condom because he was too horny to think straight, he was too horny to think straight because she had really turned him on, she had really turned him on because virginity embarrassed her, virginity embarrassed her because her mother had laughed when she’d asked what a penis felt like, her mother had laughed when she’d asked what a penis felt like because her mother’s mother had slapped her mother when her mother had asked her mother’s mother the same question, her mother’s mother had slapped her mother when her mother had asked her mother’s mother the same question because her mother’s mother had felt only one penis which was her mother’s father’s who had gotten her mother’s mother drunk off a whole mason jar of moonshine and left her mother’s mother two months later when her mother’s father heard her mother’s mother was pregnant with her mother’s father’s child.

Posted: 1 Comment » Categories:  Trent Walters

Whether Gauge

by Edd

Rain fell in buckets. Laura watched from the safety of TexBank’s reinforced windows, glad she’d stepped in to cash her paycheck.

The smallest buckets were barely larger than thimbles, and bounced high when they hit the pavement. Larger ones, some as big as wine casks, split and splashed water for yards around.

Shop windows shattered, cars were crushed, and people were struck down. Laura gasped as a pedestrian running for the bank was hit by a bucket the size of a coffee cup. The man went down, dazed, then scrambled to his feet and dove for the entrance. An immense vat cannoned into the sidewalk behind him as the security guard yanked him into the air-conditioned bank.

The injured man collapsed into a seat near Laura. He regarded the downpour. “I hear a weatherman’s to blame,” he said. “Two weeks ago it was ‘raining cats and dogs’, then last week we had ‘pea soup fog’. Now this.”

“Those poor people,” said Laura. “Flattened by figures of speech.”

A sudden wind pulled at the bank’s front door. The security guard hauled at it. “What’s next?” he said. “Pennies from heaven?”

The window bowed out, and Laura put a palm to it. It was getting colder by the second. She looked up.

Lightning split the sky open.

Posted: 1 Comment » Categories:  Edd Vick