Far Fetched Fables

First Story: “They Would Only Be Roads” by Darin Bradley Prester fingered the chain–he’d pulled it from the tank behind one of the commodes downtown, in Idio, the old feed-mill turned nightclub near the depot. The chain had absorbed such faith in the dank water, pulling endlessly as expected–as the clubbers believed it would. Prester imagined each flushing synapse exhausting its neural blast all the way through the chain and into the water, where it rippled gently into the lime-scarred porcelain. Idio’s clubbers had no doubt empowered the chain to degrees that, no matter how he found his gnosis, Prester would never fully measure. The tarnished scars on the delicate chain’s aged links reminded him of flowers, complete with rusted stems and lines of calcium like pale roots. He took a deep breath as he eased out of his reverie, now acutely aware of his apartment’s water-stained breath. With a cough, he eased the chain back into his pocket–it had invaded his thoughts with...  See acast.com/privacy for

This month’s cover art is “The Mechanic Magmin” by Kyle Anderson Flash Fiction: “This is the Story That Devours Itself” by Michelle Muenzler This is not a regular story. This is a hungry story, built of words with tongues of glass and cracked marbles for eyes. You think you know this story, you think you’ve heard it before… but you haven’t. Michelle Muenzler also known at local conventions as “The Cookie Lady,” writes fiction both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. Her fiction and poetry have been published in magazines such as Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres, and Electric Velocipede, and she takes immense joy in crinkling words like little foil puppets. Find her online via

Flash Fiction: “One Hundred Years” by Gerri Leen She wanders the castle late at night like a haunt.  She startles the servants when she finds them flesh to flesh in the darker corners of the place.  She doesn’t mean to interrupt their trysts; she just can’t sleep. She slept for a hundred years.  Most thought that was the curse of the evil fairy, but it wasn’t.  Not for her, at any rate.  The years passed in a heartbeat, dreams keeping her company as she lay unchanging behind the forest of thorns while the world grew colder and uglier. Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. She has stories and poems published or accepted in Escape Pod, Grimdark, Spellbound, Sword and Sorceress XXIII, Spinetinglers, She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror, and others. When she’s not writing, she volunteers at a...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Main Story: “The One That Got Away” by Mark Teppo A haven for raconteurs and fabulists, the Alibi Room was a velvet-lined sanctuary where suggestion and persuasion were the watchwords and truth was such a devalued coin that it couldn’t purchase a condom from the dispenser in the men’s room. Once through the unassuming door and the voluminous coat check where racks of costumes, disguise and false uniforms waited, the patrons redrafted their pasts and invented possible futures. The promise of narrow stools at the mahogany bar, the graceful and discrete staff, the liars grouped around lacquered tables or sprawled on plush brick and the old growth timber was the fantasy. The only reality that mattered was the invented one wrapped in velvet drapery and limned with orange light. Mark Teppo is the publisher of Resurrection House, an independent genre publishing house. When he’s not making books, he’s...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flash Fiction: “Adventuring” by Jennifer Donohue Sometimes, you can stop to breathe. Sometimes, you repack that worn leather pack, which has been with you longer than any companion, and find the detritus from when you started, from before you bled so much. From when you were just goofing off in an inn, or at a trail marker. A whetstone, from before you had a magical sword which never needs honing. That last bottle of lamp oil. A forgotten healing potion, always a fortuitous find. A cheap trail ration, long hardened beyond edible use. The dog-eared book you meant to keep a diary in, or writer letters home. Did you ever write letters home? Maybe on holidays. Did you ever return home? Not even for a visit. Jennifer R. Donohue has a degree in psychology, though she’s mostly used that to teach her Doberman useful and amusing tricks. She works at her local library in central New York, where she lives...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flash Fiction: “Frankenstein’s Monster” by Malcolm Chandler I want Mandy out of my head. They say the Dream Doctor is the man for the job. He is a small, hunched man of vaguely Central European origins. He wears small rectangular glasses perched on the end of his nose. He is the timeless kind of withered man who could be 70 years old or 7,000. “Her name, again?” he asks, adjusting his glasses on the end of his nose. “Mandy.” “Mandy,” he repeats, pecking at a tablet with his crooked index fingers. “Symptoms?” “I can’t sleep without dreaming about her.” It used to be one or two nights a year. Then once a week. Now it’s every night. Every night the same dream. Mandy on the beach with the wind teasing her straight, black hair. Mandy smiling her thousand watt smile. Mocking me. Or maybe inviting me. Impossible to tell which. Each time I wake in a cold sweat, trembling. And each...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Story: “The Bees” by Dan Chaon Gene’s son Frankie wakes up screaming. It has become frequent, two or three times a week, at random times: midnight — 3 AM — five in the morning. Here is a high, empty wail that severs Gene from his unconsciousness like sharp teeth. It is the worst sound that Gene can imagine, the sound of a young child dying violently — falling from a building, or caught in some machinery that is tearing an arm off, or being mauled  by a predatory animal. No matter how many times he hears it he jolts up with such  images playing in his mind, and he always runs, thumping into the child’s bedroom to find Frankie sitting up in  bed, his eyes closed, his mouth open in an oval like a Christmas caroler. Frankie appears to be in a kind of peaceful trance, and if someone took a picture of him he would look like he was waiting to receive a spoonful of ice cream, rather than emitting that horrific sound. “The Bees” is from Dan Chaon’s most recent book, the...  See acast.com/privacy for priva

Story: “Calliope: A Steam Romance” by Andrew J. McKiernan Her voice is of a host angelic, but fallen. Her every breath breeds melodious paeans that tear at my soul — in ways both tender and cruel — and I weep with pain and joy to hear them. For, as surely as Eros struck Apollo and Daphne, am I so sorely wounded by her song. But be that barb of gold or lead? Ah, now therein lies the tale. I first saw her down at the Quay or, more rightly should I say, I heard her… Andrew J. McKiernan is an author and illustrator from the Central Coast of New South Wales. First published in 2007, his stories have since been short-listed for multiple Aurealis, Ditmar, and Australian Shadows awards and reprinted in a number of Year’s Best anthologies. Last Year, When We Were Young, a collection of his short stories, won the 2014 AHWA Australian Shadows Award for Collected Work. He can be found online at 

First Story: “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga” by Peter M. Ball She enters my name as Tobias Truman. I watch her ink the delicate curve of the capitals, the ostrich feather quill dancing as she writes. My name is entered below Mr. Drummond’s, his below the Captain; two of the three marked with the swooping X that denotes status as paying guest, a true patron of the house rather than tagalong visitor. The Madam ends with a final flourish that leaves the quill poised above a well of ink. Her needle-sharp eyes study me, peering through the thick veil of her lashes. I fidget beneath her gaze until she smiles and turns towards the Captain with a raised eyebrow. ‘And the boy?’ The Captain spins on his unsteady legs, stares at me through the haze of rum and ruin that accompanies him whenever we put ashore. He considers the question for a few moments, mocking finger to his pursed lips, the barest hint of a smile visible through the tangled mane of...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out infor

Story: “The Key to Your Heart is Made of Brass” by John R. Fultz Wake up. Something is wrong. Greasy orange light smears the dark. Only one of your optical lenses is functional. The walls are slabs of corroded metal with rust patterns like dumb staring phantoms. You lie awkwardly across the oily flagstones of an alley where curtains of black chains obscure the night. Bronze lanterns hang from those chains, but most of them are dead. Lightless. Like your left optical. Struggling to hands and knees, you realize your porcelain face has been shattered. White shards gleam on the alley floor between puddles of greenish scum. You lift a gloved hand to explore your ruined visage; the upper left side took the brunt of the blow. Your fingers brush across the silver skull beneath the missing porcelain. This won’t do at all. To be seen without one’s face. It could damage your reputation. It might even be illegal. John R....  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Story: “From the Clay of His Heart” by John D. Brown The golem was a thief. Nothing in the village, nothing in the whole vale for that matter, was safe. It was forever stealing and bringing its thefts to Braslava’s door, laying them on her step like a cat lays down dead birds and mice. One day it was the Butcher’s blue and white Turkish stockings, the next it was cranky Petar’s new pitchfork. And then the golem would stand there, looking down upon her, and all she could say was, “You think you’re doing me favors? Take your inscrutable face and go sit.” And the golem would go and sit in the shade of her spruce, the sap sometimes falling to speckle the red clay of its bald head and shoulders. Braslava did not know, was this God’s curse? Was it his blessing? The golem was anatomically correct in every way, except for the missing belly button. But if God was going to go to all that trouble, why not just send a man instead? John D. Brown is...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informat

First Story: “Lazy Taekos” by Geoffrey A. Landis Once there was a boy named Taekos who lived on a heart farm. His parents were hardworking people: they grew new hearts for old men, and tiny hearts for babies; they grew strong hearts to plant into young men who had crashed their air-scooters and needed replacements; and they grew rugged working hearts for androids who were grown in a vat.  But Taekos didn’t want to live on the farm.  He was lazy, and wanted to do something that was more fun and less like work. One day he slung his pack over his shoulder and told his parents he was off to seek his fortune in the big city.  He hitched a ride with a passing businessman driving an old-fashioned one-wheeled gyro-car, and in a few minutes he was in the big city. Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist and a science fiction writer. As a scientist, he is researcher working at the NASA John Glenn Research Center. He works on projects related...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flash Fiction: “Caul” by Vajra Chandrasekera I only love girls who love to swim, but I don’t like to see them in the water. Like the sea just fine with nobody swimming in it and me with dry sand under me and a cold beer in my hand. They tell me I’m missing something, but I won’t budge. Maybe that’s why they don’t come back. Vajra Chandrasekera lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed and Black Static, among others. You can follow him on Twitter via @_vajra or find more of his stories at vajra.me.   Main Story: “Two-Headed Girl” by Paul G. Tremblay I have to keep swinging an extra fifteen minutes before I can go downtown and to the Little Red Bookstore, because Mom wants to run the dishwasher and the blender tonight. I wonder if my time on...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “The Frog King, or Iron Henry” by Daniel Quinn What is to be remembered, I suppose I remember; everything else dissolves and vanishes: breath on an icy mirror. I am alone now. There is no one. A rectangle of moonlight blazes on the floor like a shield—this is all that’s left of my visitor. Nevertheless, without any real feeling of hope, I call out into the darkness: “Iron Henry?” His departure is something I feel in my blood, now dry as dust in my veins. Beside the window, a shadow stirs in the darkness, and it is he, slipping away into the night. “Iron Henry,” I whisper, knowing that, for all that he loves me, he will not stop for my sake: “Please.” He hesitates and mutters, “I may not.” “Speak to me more.” “It will soon be dawn,” he says, “and the queen will be sighing in her bed.” “That hardly matters, Iron Henry; what little I haven’t actually forgotten has...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  Main Story: “Where There’s Smoke” by Michael H. Payne Sudden crackling twitched Cluny’s ears, memories sparking through her of harvesting termites from the fallen trees back home on her parents’ nut farm. The sound kept growing louder, though, its vibrations taking on a supernatural edge that prickled her fur and pulled her out of her notes. Looking up from the floor in front of the bookcase where she lay sprawled across Magistrix Gosstelain’s treatise on the numenistic forces inherent within the mind/brain interface, she said, “Uhh, guys? I think we might have a–“ A cabbage-sized mass of flame burst into the air above Crocker’s desk, made him cry out and nearly tip over in his chair. “The fools!” came a shout, and Shtasith whooshed from the fireplace, his black and gold wings flaring. “They shall rue this attempted invasion of our inmost sanctum!” Michael H. Payne’s stories about Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel have appeared in every...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “Too Delicate for Human Form” by Cate Gardner A trail of dead goldfish wound towards the pool where Jenny’s aunt drifted face down. Her aunt’s silver chain, its pendant an iron key, dangled from the prongs of a leaf rake. Jenny put the chain around her neck and wondered if the fish had tried to save her aunt or themselves. The iron key dangled between her breasts, irritating her skin. Following the trail back into the house, she phoned for an ambulance. To the coroner, the fish were a suicide note. To Jenny, they were family. Cate Gardner is a British horror and fantastical author with more than one hundred short stories published. Several of those stories appear in her collection Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits (Strange Publications 2010). She is also the author of four novellas: Theatre of Curious Acts (Hadley Rille Books, 2011, Barbed Wire Hearts (Delirium Books, 2011), In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Story: “The Tower of the Elephant” by Robert E. Howard “You are no soldier,” hissed the stranger at last. “You are a thief like myself.” “And who are you?” asked the Cimmerian in a suspicious whisper. “Taurus of Nemedia.” The Cimmerian lowered his sword. “I’ve heard of you. Men call you a prince of thieves.” A low laugh answered him. Taurus was tall as the Cimmerian, and heavier; he was big-bellied and fat, but his every movement betokened a subtle dynamic magnetism, which was reflected in the keen eyes that glinted vitally, even in the starlight. He was barefooted and carried a coil of what looked like a thin, strong rope, knotted at regular intervals. “Who are you?” he whispered. “Conan, a Cimmerian,” answered the other. “I came seeking a way to steal Yara’s jewel, that men call the Elephant’s Heart.” Robert E. Howard is considered by many as the father of the sword and sorcery genre. Born to a traveling country physician in...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flash Fiction: “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Monsters” by Alex Shvartsman It isn’t easy being green, scaly, or abominable these days. Humanity turned the tables on the apex predators of the food chain, and has been exterminating us with extreme prejudice. We’re still faster and stronger than they are, but we’re prone to defeat by bad judgment. Heed the lessons of our vanquished brethren; learn from their mistakes and remain successful, extant, and satiated. Don’t Rely on Henchmen   Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, New York. More than 60 of his short stories have appeared in Nature, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other venues. He’s the winner of the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction. He edits Unidentified Funny Objects, an...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “Space Operetta” by Adam Browne It’s the tenthday of March in the year of our lord 1453 and Cardinal Bessarion is lofting on rotors of gold and spun silver like some godlet in his Romanesque conch shellicopter, dazzling his way over the Alps, from upper airs to lower, purposed to drop in on Vienna, where he visits with Frederick III, Holy Emperor of Germany, Prussia and Austria. And although Frederick’s happy to see the Cardinal, receiving him with splendours of many types and fruits artificed to exhale mists of auspicious reverie, the Cardinal, who’s not much of a merry andrew at the best of times, is in no mood for such diversions. He’s here to request German military assistance against the Turks, who took Constantinople the month before… Inconstant Constantinople! — a city due for a name change, thinks the Emperor, who has got a trifle less hail-fellow-well-met. He’s very (shall we say) respectful of Turkey, mainly due to what he’s been...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-o

Story: “The Guardian of the Egg” by Christopher Barzak My sister was the girl with the tree growing out of her head. You’ve probably heard of her. You might have seen her on TV. Her picture was plastered all over the place for a while. That shock of wheat ruffling around her face like a great golden mane, the weeping willow tree growing out of the top of her head, her skin white as chalk and smooth as porcelain, those tiny tiger lilies that grew between her eyelashes. And all of those geese she kept under her mossy cloak! A freak show, really. I understand why everyone thought she might be working with a foreign government, or that she’d been irradiated by the local nuclear power plant. But, really, she was just another ordinary teenager under all of that flora. I know because she was my older sister. Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award-winning novel One for Sorrow, which was made into the major motion picture Jamie Marks is...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-ou