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Stories out in the Abyss [sent out but not yet sold] Blue Glass Pebbles Taped to a chair, with tape over her eyes and her mouth, Ria Hunter's struggle for consciousness was rewarded by the memory of her daughter hanging limp in her ex's arms. Mars was big planet when you're looking for a five-year old girl. And the universe was so much bigger.... (On Spec, Summer 2003) First Coupling She spun into his world like the Tasmanian Devil and only his fear kept him from letting go, his fear and that thing he thought he saw moving behind her eyes... ( The Fed Anthology, edited by Susan Musgrave, published by Anvil Press) The Wind Spits Rain Ira Garrett, self-proclaimed 911-junkie, left behind his dead-end street paramedic job in Seattle for a bigger thrill as a military medic. When he ended up training with the virtual combat unit, he figured there was no life like it. Until the souvenirs CandyAss was collecting stopped vanishing at the end of the sims.... (On Spec, Spring 2003) Will's Apocalypse He thought he'd just go outside into the backyard of the farm on Buckhorn Road and make a snowman while his parents played cards with their friends, but the quiet of the night drew him among the trees.... (TickleAce, Issue #39, Spring 2001) The Postmodern Man Lee was convinced that Garth, the concrete gargoyle Julia bought him as a garden-warming present, actually kept the deer out of his garden. And he could see that Julia was beginning to worry that he might be losing some of his marbles.... (On Spec, Fall 1999) Road Kill [Click on the title to read the full story!] There's one in every congregation, and in Reverend Dave's that one was Mrs. Miller. He figured the slime lamb that rose out of the sanctuary floor and attacked her right there in the pew was just another of those tabloid-style dreams he had about her. But he wasn't dreaming.... (On Spec, Summer 1999)If Giants Are Thunder My very first publication! A Calgary paramedic working on the moon begins to realize he may have bitten off more than he can chew.... (On Spec, Summer 1998)
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Chasing Goodbye (On Spec, Summer 2003)
I
open my eyes to the blunt darkness of the inside of the mask.
The dark unbalances me, as it has for a year now, with its full and
abrupt cue to the memory of tape over my eyes, over my mouth, pinching.
I have to remind myself to breathe to keep from panicking.
I lick at the tape, as if to loosen it; my arms are taped to the back of
a chair and my legs to the chair legs. This
memory is a toxin in my blood.
"Ms. Hunter, can you hear me?"
I startle into the present, the radiating warmth of the stasis-gel cupping my naked body. My skin, still sensitive from the hair removal, stings with the heat.
"Yes," I say, my voice hollow on the mask’s com, "yes, I can hear you."
Scattered whispers and tense bursts of laughter rise over the dead hum of the machinery. A child cries and my heart dry-heaves.
Skin to Skin (The Fed Anthology, ed. by Susan Musgrave)
The
ragged tearing of her breath into his neck as she bites him hard on the bone of
his shoulder. There’ll be a
small, ugly bruise there tomorrow. He
wants her, but he waits, not moving, letting his breath and hers cut at each
other, deciding who will move first, who will give in.
And finally he sees it, the thing he’s been waiting for, moving behind
her eyes, looking out with its own eyes.
She drives him backward with her body into the white Kenmore fridge, her mouth hard against his, kissing and biting. The fridge rocks into the wall.
The ice dispenser rattles. She grabs a handful, shoves it against his throat. He sucks in air, the ice shocking skin, then he pushes her away, scooping up his own handful of ice.
She steps back, watches him. He reaches toward her, but she twists, blocks his hand, and behind her the tequila bottle spins, falls, splashing yellow over the counter and the floor and her. She grabs at it, and he reaches up her dress, pulling at her underwear, slapping his handful of ice chips against her skin. She shoves him to the floor and he lies on his back, spilled tequila soaking through his shirt. She pulls off her underwear and stands over him, watching his face.
The thing that he thinks he sees behind her eyes looks down at him, and grins. He tells himself it’s only her, that it’s just about sex, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to believe it’s just her, wants to believe instead that she is alien, other, immutably beyond his reach.
She pulls her dress over her head and throws it on the counter. She drapes her bra over the tequila bottle, then lowers herself onto his hips, slapping away his hands as he reaches for her breasts. She grabs the front of his shirt and rips it open, buttons breaking, then leans down and clamps her teeth onto the skin just above his nipple.
No Life Like It (On Spec, Spring 2003)
Garrett
banged his bug-face with the heel of his gloved hand.
“It’s too goddamn hot,” he said and slapped the side of his helmet
again.
“Shut up, Doc, they’re coming,” CandyAss said over the company channel.
Through the snarl of vines, Garrett could see CandyAss’s long body about two-and-a-half yards ahead, working point. Fatigues blurring into the jungle floorcover. Dull black virtual combat helmet turning slowly as he scanned the target zone. CandyAss crouched, picked up a smooth stone, dropped it into a pocket, then eased ahead two more yards.
Garrett snorted. CandyAss liked to collect stuff. He had an odd assortment from the Middle East—stones, shell casings, coins, a piece of an Israeli helmet. And even though everything he took in a sim disappeared on the ride home in the hellevator, he still liked to do it.
“Damn heat regulator is screwing up again,” Garrett said, explaining.
“You heard him, Private.” Captain Braddock jerked a gloved hand across his throat. “Cut it!”
CandyAss dropped out of sight among the ferns. “Everybody down!”
Gunfire exploded out of the jungle.
Garrett tongued the sound clit, dampening the crack-crack of automatic weapons’ fire. He crouched low, waiting for instructions from Braddock. Sweat ran into his eyes as he scanned the bio-screens on the inside of his visor. Heart rhythms, brain waves, vital signs all combat-normal. Even for Michaels, the new guy. Raid, they called him. Kills bugs dead.
That Was the Night He Got Lost (TickleAce, Issue #39, Spring 2001)
He
had been trying to follow his bootprints back home like he had seen on TV, but
got them mixed up, and he was wandering through the forest of lodgepole pine and
Engelman spruce that all looked the same.
The night was close, the clouds so low he could have grabbed them with his handknitted mittens, which were too big and sloppy for his small hands—he was only five. He didn’t usually get to go outside at night but tonight his parents wanted to play cards and drink with their friends.
He crawled over white-blanketed logs, slogged through the knee-deep snow, retraced yet another set of bootprints.
Then he found himself back at the same log and so he sat down to wait. If you are lost, wait for help to come. He called out, startling the snowflakes, making them fall harder with his growing fear. He sat with his back to the log, snowsuited knees tucked up, wondering how long it would be before they came looking for him.
And he thought about them. They would be sitting at the kitchen table, not the one for company in the dining room, but the white-topped one in the grand white kitchen, with the blue geese with bright bows wallpapered in a strip near the ceiling, and the woodbrown cupboards with their pale blue plastic handles. They would be smoking a lot of cigarettes, and laughing very loudly, and swearing. “Holy shit, look at that! A goddamn red canasta. Read ’em and weep, ladies.”
He could read the names written on the bottles and cans. Vodka. Rum. Molson. Ice Beer. And he didn’t even go to school yet.
G is for Gargoyle (On Spec, Fall 1999)
The moment I saw Garth I was smitten.
Julia bought him for me right then and there.
“It’s three hundred bucks,” I said, protesting, but sounding much too gosh-darn-what-a-deal-for-me.
“A garden-warming present,” she said, sliding her MasterCard across the counter at Carlotta’s, “since it doesn’t look like you’ll ever get the house finished enough for a housewarming gift.”
I grinned. I had been fending off gifts of ceramic garden gnomes and earthy goddesses ever since I began building the garden.
Garth is molded concrete, dyed a flat dirty green, and weighs about sixty-five pounds. I lugged him out to the truck myself, and held him on my lap all the way home. Like a kid with a new puppy. I admired his round scales, and the neat way his wings tucked tightly into his back, making them almost invisible.
I put Garth out in the sitting garden at the side of the house, on the centre rise that overlooks the koi pond. Prominent, but a little hidden by the geraniums, so visitors would have to steal a second look to confirm that they hadn’t simply imagined seeing something peculiar.
The next morning, as I puttered around the garden, watering and picking off dead blooms, and Julia drank her morning coffee at the wrought iron garden table, I talked to Garth, tickled him under his beaked chin, stroked his upright ears.
“Jesus, Lee,” Julia said, looking up from the murder mystery she was reading, “you don’t pay that much attention to the cat.”
“It’s important to treat gargoyles with extra kindness,” I said. “They’re very sensitive creatures.”
"And cats aren't?"
“Of course they are. You see, gargoyles and cats actually evolved from the same ancestor. With gargoyles, some serious mutating took place early on.” Julia was ignoring me now, so I continued. “But in their hearts, gargoyles and cats aren’t all that different. Gargoyles are known to be more loyal than cats, though, and more protective. Which makes them prime companions. Perfect familiars.”
Julia refilled her mug from the white carafe and returned to her murder mystery.
“And besides,” I added. “It’s common knowledge that gargoyles are the best thing for keeping deer out of your garden.”
“In your twisted world, maybe,” Julia said.
“You like my twisted world. You said so yourself.”
“I lied.” She stuck her tongue out at me.
Chasing the Dragon on the Sea of Tranquility (On Spec, Summer 1998)
I
got kinda drunk last Saturday night.
Okay, very drunk.
I never drink when I’m on standby. Never.
Never before anyway.
My wife and I had just split up the night before and I was feeling like crap. She wanted my stuff out of the flat in forty-eight hours or she’d huck it all into the airlock and I could goddamn well pick it up off two hectares of moonscape.
So I got myself good and pissed. Started shooting tequila at BJ’s with some of the crew who’d been out at the substation when I was there. Roger and Donna and Kwan and that Quebecois hard-ass, what’s his name? Guy. Told war stories and drank ’til I couldn’t stand up.
Jesus. Hard to believe I’ve been here four years now.
The scenery's the shits, but the pay is great, and quite frankly, the rush is even better.