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 decay enough for now. 

“I’m going to need more charms,” he said aloud, the phosphor glow of his computer monitor rendering his fingers blue.

Darin Bradley is the author of three novels: Noise (2010), Chimpanzee (2014), and Totem (2015). With a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. in Literature and Theory, he works as an acquisitions and production editor at Resurrection House, having previously spent a number of years teaching writing and literature at several universities. He also worked as the full-time video-game writer at id Software for two years and served in various editorial and design capacities for a number of independent presses and journals. He lives in Texas with his wife, where he dreams of empty places.

You can find him online at darinbradley.com.

Second Story: “The Secret of Calling Rabbits” by Wendy N. Wagner

The breeze shifted as Rugel ran, and he caught a scent upon it, sweet and strong, a scent that reached into the depths of his memories and twanged them. He lost his footing at the power of it, and he threw himself into a bush beside the path, gasping. He preferred running to hiding, but he couldn’t run with that scent thickening the air.

His pursuer shouted again. “Wait! Show me how you did that!” Her voice distracted him from the smell of the past; it focused his mind on the pressing problem of survival. He should have never come back to this place.

She came closer, and Rugel peeked out at the little girl in the path. At his eye level, her knees, bared by her too-short shift, were scabbed and grass stained as she spun a slow searching circle. The little man — no, dwarf, although “dwarf” was a generous measure of someone his size — crouched further down inside the currant bush. He had a gift for going unseen. Perhaps the girl would lose sight of him.

“Please!” She stopped in front of the bush, picking out his gnarled face from the tangle of undergrowth. “I saw you call the rabbit.”

Rugel cursed to himself. He should never have summoned the hare, or at least if he called it, he ought to have killed it. Now he’d go hungry, and this Big creature had seen him.

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of Skinwalkers, a Pathfinder Tales novel inspired by Viking lore. Her short fiction has appeared in many anthologies, including Shattered Shields, Armored, and The Way of the Wizard, and the magazines Beneath Ceaseless Skies and The Lovecraft eZine. She is the guest editor of Nightmare Magazine‘s Queers Destroy Horror! special issue, due out October 2015, and the nonfiction editor of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction!, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2014. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family. Her next release is a story in Cthulhu Fthagn!, a Lovecraftian anthology due out in mid-August, edited by Ross Lockhart.

Visit her at winniewoohoo.com.

About the Narrators:

Alex Weinle (@alexweinle) writes short fiction for magazines and podcasts and author of of the anthology of shock-comedic-tragic stories, The Decapaphiliac, and science fiction novel Border. A long-time Sofanaut, he has finally got up the courage to narrate. He lives in Fulbourn, England, in a cottage that consumes bulbs of unusual wattage.

Rish Outfield is a writer, actor, and podcaster that can be heard as host of The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, which presents genre stories with a full cast. He also performs audiobooks for Audible, and occasionally becomes a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.

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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 facebook.com/michelle.muenzler.

Main Story: “Guns of the Wastes” by Django Wexler

The six days it took the mail cutter to traverse the pass at Rusthead were the longest of Pahlu Venati’s life. The slope and the rocky ground cut the landship’s speed to a crawl, her eight fat tires bouncing and shuddering in their pods at the ends of her long, articulated legs. The ceaseless chug of the engine was his constant companion, faster than a heartbeat, broken every so often by the whistling hiss of venting steam.

Vegetation petered out as they gained altitude, the scrub woods along the side of the road turning to weedy grass, which became patchy and finally disappeared altogether. At night, shielding his eyes from the ship’s lanterns, he could see a great wheel of stars marching overhead, far outshining the handful he’d been able to make out from his window at the Academy. They seemed distant and cold, and he would have gladly traded the view for the smoky, overcast sky of home.

On the fourth day, they began descending again, the cutter’s engines straining to keep her from careening wildly down the rock-strewn slope. Pahlu was surprised to see grass on this side, too, and even a few stunted trees; this was the edge of the Waste, after all. But of course it was only the edge, and few of the Enemy ever made it as far as the passes.

Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the university in artificial intelligence research. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts. He recently released the fantasy novel The Price of Valor.

You can find him online at djangowexler.com and via Twitter as @DjangoWexler.

About the Narrators:

Nicola Seaton-Clark lives in the wilds of (almost) Eastern Europe with her long-suffering husband, phenomenal children and a grumpy cat. Trained as an actress and singer, she has worked in entertainment for over 20 years and currently splits her time between writing speculative fiction, helping her husband run their voice-over company, Offstimme, and voicing everything from commercials and documentaries to public transport announcements.  She also hosts this podcast…

Eric Luke is the screenwriter of the Joe Dante film Explorers, which is currently in development as a remake, the comic books Ghost and Wonder Woman, and wrote and directed the Not Quite Human films for Disney TV. His current project Interference, a meta-horror audiobook about an audiobook… that kills, is available free on iTunes and at Quillhammer.com.

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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 local animal rescue and is editing an anthology, A Quiet Shelter There, which will benefit homeless animals and is due out in 2015 from Hadley Rille Books. She can found online at gerrileen.com.

Main Story: “The Thief of Precious Things” by A.C. Wise

Their shadows are crows.

They are two men, standing at the mouth of an alleyway, watching the night with dark, guarded eyes. Their long, black coats flap in the wind, and their shadows have wings. They have feathers and beaks and claws.

When the moon reaches the apex of the sky, they crush their cigarettes against the bricks. Their shadows break into a dozen birds each and take flight.

They have been waiting for her.

She is a fox-girl, running swift over the close rooftops. Up here, the world smells of dust and feathers. Fresh-washed laundry hangs from obsolete radio relays, satellite dishes, and cellphone towers, which sprout like mushrooms atop every building. Sheets and shirts flap in the wind, flags to mark her passing.

A.C. Wise’s short fiction has appeared in numerous publications over the years, including Apex, Shimmer, Uncanny, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2015, among others. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story and contributes a monthly Women to Read: Where to Start column to SF Signal. Her debut collection, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, will be published by Lethe Press in October 2015. Find her online at acwise.net and on twitter as @ac_wise.

About the Narrators:

Nicola Seaton-Clark lives in the wilds of (almost) Eastern Europe with her long-suffering husband, phenomenal children and a grumpy cat. Trained as an actress and singer, she has worked in entertainment for over 20 years and currently splits her time between writing speculative fiction, helping her husband run their voice-over company, Offstimme, and voicing everything from commercials and documentaries to public transport announcements.  She also hosts this podcast…

Sarah Frederickson was born in Oregon in the United States, and was raised in beautiful Minnesota. At a young age she realized her passion for musical performance and the creative arts. Sarah spent most of her childhood singing and acting – both onstage and off – and affecting various accents for fun.

She soon found herself competing in local, state and national forensics competitions (that’s competitive speaking). Her experience and awards landed her a forensics scholarship to Bethel University in St.Paul Minnesota, where she continued to compete as well as train other speakers at the collegiate level. Sarah graduated with a degree in Music business and Audio Production. Shortly after graduation she traveled to Australia for a one-year holiday. During that time she became smitten with an Australian man who asked her to stay, and four years later the couple live and work in Australia, going on adventures, writing music and reading stories to their cat.

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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 writing them. He’s written nearly a dozen novels, ranging across a number of genres, and his latest effort is the non-fiction guide, Jumpstart Your Novel. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with many books and one cat.

Learn more about him at markteppo.com.

Flash Fiction: “The Sorcerer’s Unattainable Garden” by A. Merc Rustad
Wrought iron fences loop around the gardens: six deep, the outer three progressively higher, more elaborate, and with more spikes atop, while the inner three create a mirror effect. Say you make it over all six fences without impaling yourself or falling or getting trapped between iron bars that suddenly constrict or twist or move. Say you avoid the fourth fence, the electric one, or the second one with the poisoned varnish, or the sixth one with a taste for blood.

A. Merc Rustad is a robot in disguise who lives in the Midwest United States. Between college, filmmaking, and playing video games, Merc writes stuff. Their fiction has appeared before in Daily Science Fiction, as well as Flash Fiction Online, Scigentasy, and Ideomancer. You can visit Merc at their website (amercrustad.com) or on Twitter as @Merc_Rustad.

About the Narrators:

Matthew Frederickson is in his mid-30s, living in Memphis, Tennessee, with a rockstar plastic surgeon wife. He reads and writes and runs in his spare time. He loves to brew beer, and he’d love to make that his career. He will soon start the second season of his podcast, Freddy’s Fan Fiction. You can find him on Twitter as @swami.

Cynthia P. Colby is a Canadian voice artist whose career began by winning an international public speaking contest while she was still in high school. She then spent 15 years as a radio news announcer, reaching a national venue. Her voice was so flexible that she began doing commercials at the radio stations and her ability for doing character voices was recognized. Now as a freelance voice artist and script writer, she lends her voice to numerous short stories, books, game characters, training programs, videos, commercials, phone answering services and accessible websites. She can be reached at [email protected].

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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 with her fiancé. She blogs about dog ownership at The Elka Almanac and about writing and whatever else catches her fancy at Authorized Musings.

Main Story: “As the Wheel Turns” by Aliette de Bodard

In the Tenth Court of Hell stands the Wheel of Rebirth.Its spokes are of red lacquered wood; it creaks as demons pull it, dragging its load of souls back into the world.And before the Wheel stands the Lady.

Every soul who goes to the Wheel must endure her gaze. Every soul must stop by her, and take from her pale hands the celadon cup, and drink.

The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales shed from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget, for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell.

No soul.

Save one.

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. In her spare time, she writes speculative fiction: her Aztec noir trilogy Obsidian and Blood is published by Angry Robot, and her short stories have appeared in markets such as Clarkesworld Magazine, Asimov’s, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. She has won a Nebula, a Locus, and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Her latest release is the Vietnamese space opera On a Red Station, Drifting. Visit aliettedebodard.com for more information.

About the Narrators:

Sarah Frederickson was born in Oregon in the United States, and was raised in beautiful Minnesota. At a young age she realized her passion for musical performance and the creative arts. Sarah spent most of her childhood singing and acting – both onstage and off – and affecting various accents for fun.

She soon found herself competing in local, state and national forensics competitions (that’s competitive speaking). Her experience and awards landed her a forensics scholarship to Bethel University in St.Paul Minnesota, where she continued to compete as well as train other speakers at the collegiate level. Sarah graduated with a degree in Music business and Audio Production. Shortly after graduation she traveled to Australia for a one-year holiday. During that time she became smitten with an Australian man who asked her to stay, and four years later the couple live and work in Australia, going on adventures, writing music and reading stories to their cat.

Nikolle Doolin is a writer and a voice actor. Her fiction, poetry, and plays have been published and presented; and her voice has appeared in various media. Nikolle has performed numerous narrations for a number of popular and award-winning podcasts, such as The NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify, and Far-Fetched Fables. She also narrates classic literature by the likes of Austen, Poe, James, and more in her own podcast, Audio Literature Odyssey. To learn more about Nikolle, visit her website at nikolledoolin.com.

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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 time Rachel is there beside me, asking about my nightmares.

“I have a wife,” I explain. “I love her to death…”

The Dream Doctor holds up a palsied, skeletal hand. Again he adjusts his glasses. “Cash or credit?” he asks politely.

Malcolm Chandler‘s fiction has appeared on Every Day Fiction, hackwriters.com, Bewildering Stories, and elsewhere. His indie short, “Vampire Brides from Planet Hell!” is available on Amazon.com. He lives and writes in Western Pennsylvania.

You can find him online at malcolmchandler.com.

Main Story: “And Such Small Deer” by Chris Roberson

Letter to Frédéric Lerne, student, c/o University of Paris, Sorbonne, July 15, 1860

Monsieur Lerne, I am writing in regards to your recent correspondence on the inheritance of characteristics from one generation to another. I would like to thank you for your kind and insightful words, and I only wish that my recently published paper had been as well received here at home in England. Sadly, it was not, and I am forced temporarily to look beyond the arena of pure research for employment. Luckily, I have received an offer to practice medicine in the Dutch East Indies, and has only this past week accepted. Bidui luminosua praeursionis, in my bad, schoolboy Latin. Brighter days ahead!

                                                                                                                                  – F.A.M.

Abraham Van Helsing’s Journal (translated from the Dutch)

1 Mar., 1861. Belawan – After a journey of several days from the northern coast of Borneo, past Singapore and through the Strait of Malacca, I arrived this morning at the newly built port of Belawan, in the North Sumatran province of Deli. The region has only recently come under the colonial jurisdiction of my countrymen, so I had hoped to find some relative comfort in my brief stay here. The ship which makes the regular circuit between the Dutch East Indies and India, though, is not due to arrive for another week, and I am finding conditions less hospitable than I might have expected. I wonder now whether I might have been better off waiting in Sarawak for the next ship to England, but to do so would have meant another week in the company of the mad Raja Brooke, and any deprivation is better than that.

Chris Roberson is a New York Times bestselling writer best known for the Eisner-nominated series iZombie, co-created with artist Mike Allred; for multiple Cinderella mini-series set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables; his creator-owned series Edison Rex with artist Dennis Culver, and his work on Superman, Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, and Elric: The Balance Lost, among others. He has written more than a dozen novels, three dozen short stories, and numerous comic projects. Chris and his wife, Allison Baker, are the co-publishers of Monkeybrain Comics, and the couple lives with their daughter in Portland, Oregon.

Learn more about him at cmxl.gy/cRoberson.

About the Narrators:

Rish Outfield is a writer, actor, and podcaster that can be heard as host of The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, which presents genre stories with a full cast. He also performs audiobooks for Audible, and occasionally becomes a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.

Anthony Babington is a voice in the internet’s head. he looks almost, but not quite, exactly how you expect him to. he currently resides in Houston, Texas, but hastens to add that it was not his idea. He can be found on Google Plus.

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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 short story collection Stay Awake (2012), which was a finalist for the Story Prize. Other works include the national bestseller Await Your Reply and Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon’s short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. A new novel, Ill Will, is due out in Summer 2016.

Learn more about him at danchaon.tumblr.com.

About the Narrator:

Eric Luke is the screenwriter of the Joe Dante film Explorers, which is currently in development as a remake, the comic books Ghost and Wonder Woman, and wrote and directed the Not Quite Human films for Disney TV. His current project Interference, a meta horror audiobook about an audiobook… that kills, is available free on iTunes and at Quillhammer.com.

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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 andrewmckiernan.com.

About the Narrator:

Kenny Park is is a video editor by trade, but having trained and worked as an actor, director and writer, he maintains it’s all just storytelling. He’s been involved with Starship Sofa since the early days of Tony and Ciaron, filming their interview with the legendary Michael Moorcock in Paris, and he still does narrations and wee video intros when Tony can pin him down.

New artwork this week is courtesy of Daniel Kamarudin and is called Shyvana. Daniel lives in Brunei and specializes in fantasy-based concept art and illustration, but is flexible with the subject matter. Kind of a mysterious guy, but an absolutely kick-ass artist! You can see more of his art by going to his Facebook page or following these links: thedurrrrian.tumblr.com and danielkamarudin.artstation.com.

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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 his beard.

“The boy? What do you say, Benjamin? Should we give the boy his first tumble?”

Peter M. Ball lives in Brisbane, Australia, where he manages The Australian Writers Marketplace and coordinates the biennial GenreCon writers conference. His most recent book is Frost, the second novella in the Flostam series about Ragnarök and the Gold Coast, and his short stories have appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Eclipse 4, and Daily Science Fiction. He can be found online at petermball.com and on Twitter: @petermball.

Second Story: “The Green Square” by Donald V.S. Duncan

Soon enough it would all be sorted out.

The giggle came again followed by more rustling.

“Katie, what are you doing?”

Katherine’s response lilted through the interposed green, ignoring the command implied in her father’s tone. “Playing with my friend.”

Donald V.S. Duncan lives in the fine city of New Westminster, British Columbia with his wife and a mischievous cat. He holds degrees in English and Landscape Architecture but life has taught him far more than university ever could. Ask about his stories and he will tell you that they are all true, though not factual. Make of that what you will.

More information can be found on his web page, dvsduncan.com/speculative-writing.

About the Narrators:

Matthew Frederickson is in his mid-30s, living in Memphis, Tennessee, with a rockstar plastic surgeon wife. He reads and writes and runs in his spare time. He loves to brew beer, and he’d love to make that his career. He will soon start the second season of his podcast, Freddy’s Fan Fiction. You can find him on Twitter as @swami.

Graeme Dunlop is a software solution architect and voice actor living in Melbourne Australia. He is the co-editor of the fantasy podcast Podcastle, and used to host the YA podcast Cast of Wonders. You can find him on Google+ and he occasionally tweets as @kibitzer on Twitter.

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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. Fultz lives in the North Bay area of California, but grew up in Kentucky. His latest novel, The Testament of Tall Eagle, arrives in June 2015 from Ragnarok Publications. John’s Books of the Shaper trilogy includes Seven Princes, Seven Kings, and Seven Sorcerers (Orbit Books). His first short story collection is The Revelations of Zang, a series of interrelated tales born in the pages of Weird Tales and Black Gate. John’s work has also appeared in Year’s Best Weird Fiction (Vol. 1), That Is Not Dead, Shattered Shields, Lightspeed: Year One, Way of the Wizard, Cthulhu’s Reign, The Book of Cthulhu II, and other fine publications.

Learn more about him at johnrfultz.com, or find him on Twitter as @JohnRFultz.

About the Narrator:

Eric Luke is the screenwriter of the Joe Dante film Explorers, which is currently in development as a remake, the comic books Ghost and Wonder Woman, and wrote and directed the Not Quite Human films for Disney TV. His current project Interference, a meta horror audiobook about an audiobook… that kills, is available free on iTunes and at Quillhammer.com.

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