The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater

by Robert T. Jeschonek

How’d you like to go through life looking like a werewolf, right down to the hair on your palms?  All thanks to the miracle of hypertrichosis, the disease that blasts hair growth into perpetual overdrive.

Welcome to my world.

Imagine the constant ridicule and abuse I put up with from day one.  Imagine being abandoned by my parents at age three, then juggled like a hot potato from one foster family to the next.  Always the freak, always the outcast, always the dog-faced boy.  Growing up to scrape by as a home-based telemarketer.  Hardly ever leaving my apartment, and then only with everything under wraps.  Always just hanging on to life and sanity by the skin of my teeth.

Imagine living like that, and maybe you’ll get it.  Maybe you’ll understand just how happy I was with Stan and the bears.

And why it hurt so unbelievably bad when I lost them.  Why that birthday party turned out to be my last happy night on Earth.

Balfour and Meriwether in the Adventure of the Emperor’s Vengeance

by Daniel Abraham

“Assistant Curator Olds,” the man said. “I was working with Lord Abington on behalf of the museum. I was supposed to have been present at the unsealing, but Lord Abington ordered me out at the last moment.”

“Lead on, young Mr. Olds,” Meriwether said. “There may not be a moment to lose.”

The halls of the museum rose above the men in a gloom darker than the autumn sky. The scent of dust and still air gave the great triumph of English culture the unfortunate aspect of a necropolis. Their footsteps echoed against the marble and stone, dampening even Meriwether’s gay affect. Mr. Olds led them down a long corridor, up one long flight of stairs, and then another to a hall designed around a pair of great oaken doors. Two other men, clearly minor functionaries of the establishment, huddled in the harsh light of a gas sconce. The hissing of the flame was the only sound. Balfour stepped immediately to the closed doors, scrutinizing them with an expression so fierce as to forbid speech. Meriwether paced back and forth some length down the hall, his pale eyes moving restlessly across every detail, his footsteps silent as a cat’s.

(Continue Reading…)

The Beautiful Coalwoman

by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud. Translated by Edward Gauvin

“Sire, if it pleases you to take your rest here, this house is yours.”

“Thank you, old man. Heaven will be grateful for your hospitality toward its humble servant, for I am a Christian knight.”

The old man crossed himself at once. In school, Maxence had been taught the how to pay his way in the coin of word. The oldest of the children reappeared, ewer in hand.

“My thanks, boy. Tell me, would you know how to look after my steed?”

The boy gazed at his grandfather without answering.

“Of course he does, sire!” said the old man. “Off you go—you know where fodder can be found, and make sure you give the horse a good rubdown!”

The boy walked toward the horse. Maxence told him he could ride it instead of leading it to fodder. The boy smiled at last. Maxence plunged the ewer into the spring’s fresh water.

“It’s good water, it is, sire,” the old man said. “It’s kept me in good health for seventy years, it has!”

“Upon my word, seventy years! It must be good indeed—you seem quite sprightly still!”

On hearing these words, the old man couldn’t keep from contorting his face in a grin. Maxence saw he would have food and shelter tonight for a trifle.

Something Wicked This Way Plumbs

by Vylar Kaftan

It happened last year.  I’d come into the office early, because I was on deadline–and a month behind on bills.  To make things worse, my girlfriend had the flu, and I’d promised to be there by 5 to take her boys trick-or-treating.  So here I was in the men’s restroom, at 7:30 on Halloween morning.  I shook out a few drops, zipped my pants, and went to the sink.  It’s one of those two-faucet deals with handles on each side and a wide central spigot.  I turned the cold water tap.

Candy streamed out of the faucet like the entrails of a slaughtered piñata.  The sink filled with Skittles, candy corn, and jellybeans.  They rattled against each other as they spilled over the basin’s edge.  Startled, I turned the faucet off.

I hoped someone was playing a Halloween prank, because the alternative was disturbing.  Or maybe I wasn’t awake yet.  I glanced at the mirror.  In dreams you’ve always got weird things about your face, like snakes crawling from your eyeballs.  But I looked normal.  A bit scruffy, and my sleepy eyes were bloodshot.  Neither of these were a problem for a freelance writer–in some circles, they might count as street cred.  I looked at the sink.  Still candy.

I went to my office for a paper bag.

The Whistling Room

by William Hope Hodgson

“‘The whistling started about ten o’clock, on the second night, as Ibsaid. Tom and I were in the library, when we heard an awfully queer whistling, coming along the East Corridor–The room is in the East Wing, you know.

“‘That’s that blessed ghost!’ I said to Tom, and we collared the lamps off the table, and went up to have a look. I tell you, even as we dug along the corridor, it took me a bit in the throat, it was so beastly queer. It was a sort of tune, in a way; but more as if a devil or some rotten thing were laughing at you, and going to get ’round at your back. That’s how it makes you feel.

“‘When we got to the door, we didn’t wait; but rushed it open; and then I tell you the sound of the thing fairly hit me in the face. Tom said he got it the same way–sort of felt stunned and bewildered. We looked all ’round, and soon got so nervous, we just cleared out, and I locked the door.

Black Feather

by K. Tempest Bradford

Exactly one year before she saw the raven, Brenna began to dream of flying.  Sometimes she was in a plane, sometimes she was in a bird, sometimes she was just herself–surrounded by sky, clouds, and too-thin-to-breathe air.  In the dark, in the light, over cities and oceans and fields, she flew.  Every night for a year.

Then, on the twelfth day of the twelfth month, the dreams changed.  They ended with a crash and fire and the feeling of falling.  Most nights she almost didn’t wake up in time.

Exactly one year from the night the dreams began, Brenna struggled out of sleep, the phantom smell of burning metal still in her nose.  She reached out for Scott–he was not there.  He was never there.  He had never been there.  She fell back onto her pillows and groaned.

Another dream of flying, another reaching out for Scott; she wished she could stop doing both.

Kingspeaker

by Marie Brennan

The king had come to Anahata.

I met him for the first time in the sacred garden of the Temple.  Passing through an archway of fire, I found myself on a path of flower petals, which bruised delicately beneath my bare feet.  Two attendants clothed me in a robe of more petals, fragile silk holding blossoms of the flowers for which the days are named.  Still barefoot, I proceeded, marking along the path the measured steps of my dance.

For that moment, they say, I was the Goddess Triumphant, but I felt no difference.  Only nervousness, that I might misstep in some way.

They had removed the wax at dawn, and even the tiny, faint sounds I had heard since then were a balm for my mind and soul.  Soon, I would hear more.  A new voice awaited me.

Bespoke

by Genevieve Valentine

Martin Spatz, the actor, had gone Vagabonding in 8,000 BC and killed a wild dog that was about to attack him. (It was a blatant violation of the rules–you had to be prepared to die in the past, that was the first thing you signed on the contract. He went to jail over it. They trimmed two years off because he used a stick, and not the pistol he’d brought with him.)

No one could find a direct connection between the dog and the mice, but people speculated. People were still speculating, even though the mice were long dead.

Everything went, sooner or later; the small animals tended to last longer than the large ones, but eventually all that was left were some particularly hardy plants, and the butterflies.  By the next year the butterflies were swarming enough to block out the summer sun, and Disease Control began to intervene.