Far Fetched Fables

“Too Poor to Sin” by H.L. Fullerton(Originally published in Mysterion.)Grandfather squandered our family's fortune on forgiveness, forcing Father to enlist in the Legion and serve the angels. This was before he met Mother and they had me, though the angels' war still rages. Father doesn't say much about his years of service, except that it would've bankrupted us had he bought an honorable discharge. Instead he quit, kept his wages and is banking on God's leniency. He says he amassed those sins in God's name -- he only killed those the angels ordered him to -- and that should count for something, despite the angels' claim that sin belongs solely to the sinner. Father says God knows you can't climb to heaven without breaking a few bones.H.L. Fullerton writes fiction — mostly speculative, occasionally about angels — which is sometimes published in places such as Lackington's, Daily Science Fiction, and Tales to Terrify. On Twitter as @ByHLFullerton.About the Narrator:Devin Martin is just starting out as a w

“Penelope's Song” by Samuel Marzioli(Originally published in The Third Spectral Book of Horror Stories.)Penelope gazed through her bedroom window, mesmerized by the motion of the night. Flowers trembled, grass ruffled and trees swayed, flailing their branches. The sight of it unsettled her. In fifteen years she hadn’t learned much about the world, but she did know this: when the wind was absent like it was tonight, a garden wasn’t supposed to move an inch. It could only mean one thing; the Gnasher had returned.Samuel Marzioli is an Italian-Filipino writer of mostly dark fiction. His work has appeared in numerous publications and podcasts, including The Best of Apex Magazine (2016), Shock Totem, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Pseudopod. For more information about his current projects, check out his blog at marzioli.blogspot.com.About the Narrator:Margaret Essex lives “the good life” on a small piece of rural New South Wales, Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, all the usual b

“Avarice” by Michael Rimar(Originally published in Darwin's Evolutions.)Shadow blocked the glare of Uttum’s twin suns. Saleem looked up at the source, a man dressed in robes pale as bleached bone.“Offering for the poor?” Saleem kept his tone weak and pitiful, offering his wicker basket to the stranger.“I have more than offerings for you, my young friend.” The stranger crouched down to look Saleem face to face. Eyes green as palm fronds regarded him with benevolence. Strands of ebony hair poked from underneath a spotless turban.Saleem tensed. Anyone who called him friend usually wasn’t. Yet he didn’t run. Anyone foolish enough to run in the heat brought attention, and in the City attention equaled guilt. “Have I offended you in some manner, Isha?” He hoped to flatter the stranger by using the formal address.“Isha?” The man flashed straight white teeth and looked about as if to see no one overheard. “You may call me Hendari. I am told I should talk to you.”Saleem’s eyebrows rose a fraction. Hendari. The god of

“In the Late December” by Greg van Eekhout(Originally published in Strange Horizons.)Here's a secret of the North Pole: Santa powders his hands with talc before donning his thick red mittens.It is a small secret, true, but some would give anything to steal even that. A secret is a detail, and here in the late December, a detail is as precious as a true name.Santa, a red exclamation in a white world, walks the reindeer line, stroking sugar-and-cinnamon fur. The reindeer shiver and snort and stamp their hooves, the lines connecting them to the parcel-laden sleigh jingling. Santa looks over to his candy-brick castle and waves good-bye, but no one stands in the doorway to wave back. With a sigh, he climbs onto the sleigh's driver's seat, the bench creaking beneath his weight. He pauses, holding the smooth and supple leather reins, and considers how to start the team. Onward? A-heya? Giddyup? Ho-ho? No, he's already used those. He makes a point of uttering a different word to inaugurate every outing, because he's

“M” by Russell Hemmell(Originally published in Not One of Us.)We look like them, Christian thought, admiring the fresco in the charnel house and its ghastly figures, scary and eerily beautiful. He adjusted the heavy cloak over his shoulders. The evening was damp and cold, and he was tired after a whole day on the move. But he could not avoid that feeling of elation. He had followed her for too long, and days had become months. Years. Winters, summers, clear starry nights of patient stalking. Across desolate lands and overcrowded cities, poverty and luxury, holy retreats and dangerous havens. And now he was back to square one, where all had started. Incidentally, his birthplace, that glittering Paris so cherished and hated. Isn’t fate... ironic? Because God, for sure, has no business here. Or has He? Christian was sure about one thing, though: the place he was standing on at that precise moment was not a surprise. Where else could that creature ever find a better sanctuary? He kneeled down, covering his face w

“Customer Service Hobgoblin” by Paul R. Hardy(Originally published in Unidentified Funny Objects 5.)Beeep."Good morning, you're through to Robin. How may I receive your prayer?""Oh. Hello? My name is Bishop Augusto de Figueroa. Am I speaking to God?""No, sir, my name's Robin. How can I --""Well, young man, I wanted to talk to God. You see it's very important that I speak to him.""Yes, of course, sir. You've come through on the Methodist line, is that --""No, no, no, this is wrong. I am Catholic.""Well, sir, it would help if you chose the Catholic line to start with, but I can --""Are you a saint?""No, sir. I just work here. But if it's not a Methodist prayer then I need to --""If you're not a saint then I don't need to talk to you.""Sir, in any case you're not going to be able to talk to God. That's not how it works.""Good afternoon, you’re through to Paul R. Hardy’s biography. Please listen carefully to the following options: For a humorous anecdote about his employment history, press 1. For a tedious list o

“The Man Who Did Nothing” by Karen Traviss(Originally published in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection.)Hursley Rise, May 2There was a boy – five, maybe six – sitting on half a discarded mattress by the kerb as Jeff drove down the road. At first he thought the child was trying to open a bottle of pop, but the closer he got, the better he could see that the boy was making a petrol bomb.Jeff slowed to a crawl and then stopped. He didn't dare switch the engine off, not here. A daffodil nodded in the grass at the side of the road and the whine of a power-drill competed intermittently with music throbbing from an open window. The normality didn't reassure him; he opened the car window about six inches.The child was trying to thread some rags into the neck of a beer bottle, pausing every so often to hold the bottle up to the light, sigh, and resume his task of working the rag into the neck of the bottle with his index finger.For a moment Jeff thought about getting out and taking the

“Psychopomps” by Judith Field (Originally published in The Colored Lens, Summer 2014.) Mark’s next door neighbour and business partner Pat kept telling him that power flowed through his veins. He took a breath and closed his eyes, trying to will the power back out again and into the ash wand in his outstretched hand. He pointed it at Pat’s door. A narrow beam of blue light squeezed out of the end and hit the lock. Nothing happened. Sighing, he folded the wand and put it in his pocket. He took out his key and let himself into her house. He heard her moving around in the kitchen, back from sorting out the invasion of reptilian arsonists in a garden in Llandudno the day before, while he had expelled a banshee from a pub in Macclesfield. This morning’s job was to sort out an elderly-care home with a spirit infestation. Mark opened the kitchen door. Pat coughed, wafting her hand at a cloud of green fumes. ‘Damn, they’re still moving,’ she said. Judith Field lives in London. She’s a pharmacist and medical indexe

“The Tavern at the Ford” by Dave Smeds (Originally published in Sword and Sorceress XXVIII.) Until that awful night, Azure had always assumed she would live out her entire life in the village. That’s how it had been for generations. Grandpa had shared the history one day while standing with her on the old stone bridge. “There used to be a ford there,” he said, pointing to the willow flats where Coil and Azure liked to play. Grandpa’s great-grandmother Cinnamon had drowned there while crossing the river. Her husband Fleet had built the bridge in her memory, working through his grief by making sure no one else would die that way. Dave Smeds has authored novels, short fiction, comic book scripts, and screenplays in a variety of genres including science fiction, contemporary fantasy, superhero, martial arts, horror, and erotica, but he is particularly at home when writing imaginary-world fantasy, as in his novels The Sorcery Within, The Schemes of Dragons, and the forthcoming The Wizard's Nemesis. He is even m

“Unraveling” by K.G. Anderson (Originally published in Triangulation: Beneath the Surface.) "Sarah -- he's using you!" My voice rose into the whine my daughter loathed, but I couldn't stop. I pressed the phone to my ear. "You're 16. I absolutely forbid -- " My runaway daughter informed me that she hated me. "Have fun with the old witches," she said, and hung up. I climbed out of the car, slammed the battered door, and slumped against the sun-baked metal. Gradually my heartbeat slowed, but still felt frighteningly uneven. Fail-ure, fail-ure, FAIL-ure, it thumped. K.G. Anderson grew up listening to her elders, many of whom held to the ways of the Old Country. What they talked about — and what they refused to discuss — inspires much of her fiction. You’ll find K.G.’s stories in anthologies such as Second Contacts, The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories, Triangulation: Appetites, and Alternative Truths, as well as online at Metaphorosis, Ares Magazine, and Every Day Fiction. K.G. attended the Viable Parad

“Mouth of the Jaguar” by Evan Dicken (Originally published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #20.) Hummingbird was to be the final sacrifice of the day. The man before her struggled on a raised stone slab, chest heaving as a flock of blood-spattered priests pinned his arms and legs. Sunlight glittered on the Cazonci's obsidian dagger--curved like a jaguar's claw to better hook bone and tear flesh. The crowd around the ziggurat waited, caught in the anxious pause between lightning and thunder. The blade fell, but Hummingbird's gaze was not on the shrieking victim. Above, the sun was white-gold in a sky clear as the eastern sea. Lake Pátzcuaro sparkled in the light, the riot of sedge and cattails along its banks flecked with motes of bright color as wading birds combed the shallows for fish. The breeze shifted, cutting the heavy pall of incense with scents of wood smoke and cooking meat from the city below. Although they had been the enemies of her people for generations, the Tarascans shared much with the Azteca.

Main Story: “Perchance to Dream” by David Morrell (Originally published in Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy.) Dr. Baker. Dr. Baker. He came to my office on a Friday afternoon. Tall, slender, and sandy-haired, he had a thin, aristocratic face that might have been handsome if it weren’t so haggard. His eyes looked puffy. Red streaked their whites. I was surprised when I later learned that he was forty. He appeared at least ten years older. He said his name was Jody Cooke – he spelled his last name, emphasizing the final “e” – and when I introduced myself as Dr. Gerald Baker, he frowned. “Baker. We’re both in that nursery rhyme.” “Nursery rhyme?” “The baker, the cook, and the candlestick maker.” “You’ve got it slightly wrong,” I said. “Wrong?” “In the nursery rhyme, it’s the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.” “Ah, yes, the butcher,” Jody said, his raw eyes looking pained. David Morrell is the author of First Blood, the award-winning novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a Ph.D. in America

“The Hour of the Rat” by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt (Originally published in Cirsova Magazine #1.) shigururu ya               winter rain nezumi no wataru      a mouse runs koto no ue                  across the koto -- Yosa Buson (1716-1783) Nezumi's heart pounded as she pressed against the wall. She willed herself to be as invisible as the night all around her. She put a hand over her mouth so that the puffs of her breath would not give away her position. Within the estate beyond the wall, a guard approached her position. Nezumi whispered under her breath. "Namo amida butsu. Namo amida butsu..." She used the prayer to keep time. Two hundred repetitions between the passes of the guards as they made their rounds. Not much time to get over the wall. Nezumi shivered. It was going to rain. She didn't know how she knew, but she always knew. There. One hundred. The guard would be at his farthest point away. Nezumi pulled out the rope she had hidden in the folds of her dark kimono. It took tries, but the rock tied to

“The Demi-Arcanist's Will” by Jakob Drud (Originally published in The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Volume 2.) The cabinet was all but invisible in the fumes, except in the spot where Jarn Dinaris wove his grounding seam into Master Elosivan's seam of transmission. There the metal hissed and glowed in dark purples as they wove the commissioned refrigeration pattern. Jarn's focus on the pattern was so complete that he didn't immediately detect the failure in old Master Elosivan's concentration. He only became aware that something was amiss when a searing whipback knocked the old man down. Deep pain wrenched the old man's kind wrinkles, only to be replaced by a look of utter confusion that made Jarn's own chest hurt as if he'd been the one struck by the whipback. Twenty years of routine kept Jarn from cutting off his grounding seam, which would have resulted in another whipback aimed at himself. He slowly let go of his grounding source and sought a push flow to open the window, venting the ste

Flash Fiction: “The Banshee Behind Beamon's Bakery” by Khalidaah Muhammad-Ali (Originally published in Diabolical Plots #21.) Most nights the alley behind Beamon’s Bakery is just an alley. The street lamp bleeds piss yellow light, casting jagged shadows around the overflowing dumpster and discarded boxes. The walls are tagged with gang signs, claiming territory that was never theirs, yardage, bodies, souls, rights. Some nights a transient clears away the broken glass, the random detritus, to squat for the night. Setting up camp here has its own rewards. The warmth that seeps through the bakery walls and through brick facing chases away the chill, but not the ghosts. This is the drawback, you see. The alley is never as vacant as it may seem at first, never as lonely as one may wish. The price of physical warmth is the chilling of your soul. Khalidaah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas, with her family. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times, she juggles, none too successfully, t

“Princess Cosima and the 1,000 Cats” by Sarah L. Byrne (Originally published in Betwixt #4.) "Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will not fear even that void." -- Johannes Kepler, 1610 The red palace was home to a thousand cats. Or so people said. Princess Cosima, twenty, beautiful and bored, walked through the courtyards until she saw a lithe sandy female sunning itself on the flagstones. She slipped into the cat's mind and sent it prowling across the square, scrambling up the red stone wall onto a tiled canopy and darting over the battlements above towards the nearest tower. Sarah L. Byrne is a scientific editor and writer in London, UK. Her short speculative fiction has appeared in various publications, including Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and Best of British Science Fiction 2016. She can be found online at sarahbyrne.org/fiction. About the Narrator: Tatiana Grey is a critically acclaimed actress of stage, screen, and the audio booth. She has been

Main Story: “The Tower of Morning's Bones” by Hal Duncan (Originally published in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy.) “Once upon a time, the land of Shuber and Hamazi, Many tongued Sumer, the great Land of princeship’s divine laws, Uri, the land having all that is appropriate, The land Martu, resting in security, The whole universe, the people in unison, To Enlil, in one tongue gave praise." — Samuel N. Kramer (trans.), Enmerkar and The Lord of Aratta Daybreak in the Underworld A dream, astream, a babe asleep, alone by babbalong of riveron, past shimmer falls & hinter springs, we finned a wolfchild in invernal wildwoods—where? See there? we say. A marblous youth carved out in white & green of mirrormoon & veins of vines: a singer slain. Muses & furies dance around him in an Amazon of maize. The winged horse of his sylph sups at the water lapping, slapping, at his feet. Flowers & leaves form almost a blankout over him. What is his name? we quiz. If we could kissper it in hi

“The Seal of Sulaymaan” by Tracy Canfield (Originally published in Fantasy Magazine, July 2010.) Back when there were other ifriit to talk to, I’d tell them Morocco was as far as you can get from Mecca without leaving civilization. In Agadir, with its casinos and five-star hotels and nightclubs filled with Moroccan tourists sporting European fashions too daring to wear at home, even these most fractious of beings could not have argued; but here, a mere twenty miles out of town, I could barely have spoken the words myself without laughing. A thousand and one trashbags flapped and snapped on the branches of the argan trees, blown by the June breeze from every dump in the country. A plastic Ayn Sultaan bottle arced from the window of a passing truck, trailing a mist of carbonated mineral water, and bounced in the dust. Except for the bags, the bottle, and the asphalt road, the landscape was much as I had always known it: rolling hills and twisted gray-green trees, dust and blue sky. One tall tree had been cle

“The Breeding Dust” by Dennis Mombauer (Originally published in Outliers of Speculative Fiction.) Silent, angular houses with white plaster, a sand-suffocated well and a couple of stunted palms huddled together on the low ground, a once bustling city that only the ghostly desert wind inhabited now. The sun gleamed down without mercy, hanging in the sky as a swirling ball that made the air flicker, and the small caravan decided to rest in this ancient oasis. The camels were led down the loose sand dunes and racked up in the shadow of the ruined walls, while the men sought refuge in one of the best-preserved buildings. Scattered sunbeams fell in through holes in the roof and illuminated dusty rubble, but it was comfortably cool compared to the heat outside. Everyone looked for a place to sit, drank freshly cooked tea and tried to pay as little attention as possible to the wind, which seemed to carry along doleful whispers from a prouder time. The men agreed to wait for nightfall or late afternoon before th

“Where There's Magic” by Michelle Ann King (Originally published in Kaleidotrope, April 2016.) The witch had a favourite saying: where there's life, there's magic. There was a second part -- where there's magic, there's death -- but she usually kept that to herself. She placed the newborn into the father's arms. He gazed upon the babe with wonder, then upon his wife with concern. "Why does she still scream?" he said. "Can't you ease her pain?" "There is still pain because she carries twins. There is a second part of this birth to come." The mother lifted her head from the sweat-soaked pillow and shrieked louder. The witch went back to her work. They called the first child Heavenly Gift. She had clothes and toys and kittens awaiting her, all stamped and stitched and branded with her name. There was also further coin for the witch, to perform magical blessings for her good fortune. Her twin, unexpected and unasked for, had none of these things. They called this girl Second Part. "That's not going to en