*We’re now, hopefully, fixed at home till Spring, save for maybe day trips. We’re down to two kittens, one of which — Circe — we’re keeping, and the other — Toast 2.0 — adopters will be getting after thanksgiving. Circe is on my shoulder, as I type this. But this post isn’t late because of the kittens and travel (except second order effects of much travel). It’s late because as some of you know, I’ve been feeling “off”. It manifested as a massive ear infection on my birthday. I’m on antibiotics and just well enough to do this and hopefully finish chapters. The ear infections are a risk of traveling and getting new and exciting allergies in fall, because my ear canals are a mess from birth. Anyway, am better, no pain anymore, just slow and tired. Will be okay – SAH*
Book promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM JERRY BOYD: The Butler Did It (Bob and Nikki Book 40)
The fleet manages to catch the Squirrel responsible for the horrible things they’ve seen recently. That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it? Turns out it’s only the beginning of their troubles, as their journey to collect a bounty on him turns into an adventure. Follow along, as Bob and the fleet get the best of the situation.
FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Hunter and Horseman: Familiar Generations Book Four
Undying love or cruel obsession?
Devon County, a quiet rural corner of Pennsylvania. That is, until two brothers refuse to take “no” for an answer. Malice and magic pull Jude Tainuit, the lone Hunter, into the fray. When a tornado rips through the county, leaving pain and twisted power in its wake, the Hunter and his allies face two foes – one in the open, and one who lurks, patient and deadly. A blood-path magic worker hides in the storm, one who hunts Hunters.
Worse awaits. Aunt Martha goes to visit relatives, leaving Jude in charge of the farm … Or as in charge as his Familiar and Martha’s cat will allow.
Jude Tainuit will need all his skills, and the help of allies great and small, to face the storm when twisted power awakens the phantom Horseman.
FROM MAX COSSACK: Khaybar, Minnesota (The Wilder Bunch Book 1)
Terrorism comes to the rural Midwest heartland—can one ordinary man stop it? Islamist terrorists frame small town Minnesotan Nat “Hack” Wilder for the murder of his friend Amir Mohammad. Hack must survive a January blizzard, elude the police and F.B.I., track down the real killers, infiltrate a terrorist gathering, and stop a terrorist attack on his nine-year-old daughter’s school. This is a suspenseful fast-paced action thriller that is often disturbing, sometimes surprisingly funny, and always PC-indifferent. Some sample reviews from real people (who are not Max’s friends):
FROM MARY HARE: Down Pad
A few years from now, reusable spacecraft provide routine, daily access to space. And as always, it’s the enlisted boots on the ground that keep everything going. They need a special combination of people, both laser-focused detail-obsessed computer jocks and the oil-stained salt-of-the-earth folks who just make things work.
Space Force enlistees go to boot camp in Boca Chica. That’s also where the Space Force operates its workhorse, the Shrike, the military version of the SpaceX Falcon 9. The landing pads are nicknamed down pads, a name reflected in the local military hangout, The Down Pad, which provides food, drink, dancing and gaming.
But not everyone who wants to join the Space Force will make it. Jake Blacksmith, a detrans man, has to fight to get in. Camden Tanner, more comfortable with computers than people, has to fight to fit in. As Blacksmith and Tanner rotate between the base and The Down Pad, each must navigate his own path in life. Where will it lead each of them?
Novella: approximately 23,000 words; mature language
BY GREYE LA SPINA, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Invaders from the Dark (Annotated): The weird pulp classic
When Portia Differdale invited her maiden Aunt Sophie to live with her, Sophie little expected to be caught up in a struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness. But meeting the exiled Russian Princess who moved into the neighborhood somehow clued her into the uncanny forces in play, and before too long, policemen would vanish, children would be kidnapped or worse, and she would be facing… Invaders from the Dark!
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.
FROM VARIOUS CLASSIC AUTHORS, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The iktaPOP 2023 Eerie Collection: Free culture weird fiction and horror.
From iktaPOP Media, another prime selection of free culture, public domain weird fiction, just in time for Halloween!
Within this book you will find zombies, hamadryads, spectre cowboys, dismembered wizards, werewolves, vampires, and oh, so much more!
- This iktaPOP Media collection contains introductions that give the stories historical and genre context.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow over Leningrad
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.
He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.
So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.
FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly
What lies behind a reflection?
Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains. Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.
When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape. All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT (NIFTY NEW COVER): Gentleman Takes A Chance (The Shifter Series Book 2)
Family! Can’t live with them and can’t eat them.
Tom Ormson, owner — with his girlfriend — of The George, a diner in downtown Goldport, Colorado is well on his way to becoming a responsible and respectable adult, despite his rough start and the fact that he turns into a dragon.
But then the unpredictable Colorado weather, the ancient leader of a dragon triad and an even more ancient shifter-enforcer combine to destroy his home, put his diner at risk and attempt to kill him.
All this, of course, has to happen while Tom’s friend, Rafiel, is trying to solve a series of murders-by-shark at the city aquarium, and Tom’s newly-reconciled father is attempting to move to Denver.
Fasten your seat belts, a wild ride is about to begin.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: Horses
According To Hoyt 
Feel better soon.
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A very fitting writing prompt when the Promos includes “Hunter And Horseman”. :grin:
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Oof! That sucks: I suffered multiple and frequent ear infections when I was a kid. They would knock me flat even back then. Rest up! I hope you feel better soon.
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Me too. And I had more than my kids, when they were little. It’s the ear canal shape.
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Sorry for the “Halloween in Mid-November” thing, guys. This one was only somewhat my fault. I was on time to have the horror stuff out by the end of October (originally wanted it out in the beginning of October, thus my partial fault), and then Amazon decided to suspend my account for following the rules (yes, really), and it took two weeks to get my account reactivated and the Eerie Collection and Invaders published.
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Gollum said “ladieses of the nightses, yes, very nice!”
“Whores” said Gandalf.
“Yes, horses!”
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Carpapult team, stand by:
Basic load, one carp.
Aiming.
Twaang!
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For some reason that nobody ever explained to me, the logic that the upper classes in Italy had was “girls love horses, girls are obsessed with horses, and they love everything to do with horses.”
(Insert your favorite sex joke here about stallions and young girls here.)
Belladona wasn’t obsessed, but she made it clear that if we were going to have some time together today…it was going to be on horseback. “I found you a good horse for a beginner,” she smiled cheerfully. “All you have to do is hold the reins loosely, keep your feet in the stirrups, and let me lead.”
And to be fair…Rocco was a very gentle horse. Very happy to have me riding him, the saddle was comfortable and I’m athletic enough that I could climb into the saddle on my own.
I still got wear and chafe marks from riding him nearly five miles. And blisters that were not fun to deal with later.
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The notion is that gels, that’s what they call them, can become interested in only boys, horses, or religion. Thus, all the gels area1 put up on ponies as soon as they can walk since that will tide them over until they become women and can make good decisions,
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Clearly that process failed in Belladona.
She makes great decisions, wonderful ones even. You can trust her judgement, trust her with money, trust her with your boyfriend and girlfriend, and trust her with pets and small children.
Just…well, the most apt description I can think of her is “Mary Poppins as a Cenobite.” She’s faithful, chaste by Dawn Empire military nobility standards (i.e. “she doesn’t gossip and won’t create a scandal and won’t talk about you in front of people that don’t know in the first place”), cheerful, a loyal Roman Catholic, honorable, trustworthy, reliable, and violently homicidal with a love of old pagan rituals that involve a great deal of blood, pain, body parts, and not-fun sadism.
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Sigh, I am obtuse. Still, we did put our daughter up on a pony as soon as she was able and recommend it for any daughter real or …. imagined. The other choices remain boys or religion.
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worse, science fiction ;)
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She reads it, but has shown no inclination to write it. She does keep cats though and that seems to be entryist.
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Um…. see, mom refused to let me keep a cat, so I had to write Science fiction.
Imagine that meme of the conspiracy guy with all the string on the board.
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The stable-keepers all said that the horses with solid coats were faster then the ones without.
The one grazing ahead of him looked good – solid brown except for the white blaze on its nose. He sneaked through the grass, planning to leap onto its back, and had about a second to dive away when it startled and kicked out at his head, fleeing.
He groaned as he stopped rolling, and rubbed his shoulder – the horse’s hoof hadn’t missed him entirely. “Note to self, duck flatter.” He stood up, and dusted himself off.
“Maybe I should just try standing out in the open with an armful of apples.” He murmured, continuing the long walk across the plains.
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Lizzie stared at Rosa. “What do you mean you don’t want a horse? They’re so much fun!”
Rosa shrugged. “Uncle Heinrich has horses. They take a lot of work, they eat even more than my brothers do, and ground is hard when you fall on it.” Anything you had to stand on a ladder to brush was a bad pet. They were worse than her granddad’s dairy cows that way.
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Although she had been concerned that the architectural differences here at Elmswood might make it difficult, Anastasia Burinskaya recognized the stables at once. Having been around horses since childhood, she recognized the odor even before she saw the long white building with the weathercock atop the cupola.
The door opened with an unnerving creak, but the horses must’ve been used to it. A couple of them turned their heads, but none of them raised the alarm.
How different these big steeds were from the Dons and Budyonnys her father raised. They would’ve been trained for fox hunting, although now that the traditional practice had been banned on the grounds of cruelty, the hounds would instead follow a “trace,” a scent laid down by various means.
Did Renee Gale ride to the hounds, as the English said of those who participated in a fox hunt? The horsemanship she’d displayed in the ring both at Luhansk and Moscow suggested those skills were learned in a rougher school than the average dressage school.
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Story-starters that might earn me a box of carp.
A talking horse walks into a bar and approaches the manager. “Excuse me, good sir,” the horse says, “are you hiring?”
The manager looks the horse up and down and says, “Sorry, pal. Why don’t you try the circus?”
The horse nickers. “Why would the circus need a bartender?”
Did you hear about the man who was hospitalized with six plastic horses inside him?
The doctor described his condition as stable.
A guy is walking through the country when he spots a sign that reads, “Talking Horse for Sale.” Intrigued, he walks up to the stable to check it out.
“So what have you done with your life?” he asks the horse.
“I’ve led a full life,” the horse answers miraculously. “I was born in The Andes where I herded for an entire village. Years later, I joined the mounted police force in New York and helped keep the city clean. And now, I spend my days giving free rides to underprivileged kids here in the country.”
The guy is flabbergasted. He asks the horse’s owner, “Why on earth would you want to get rid of such an incredible animal?”
The owner says, “Because he’s a liar! He never did any of that!”
A pony goes to the doctor and tells him, “Doc, I think I’m dying. I have this terrible sore throat.”
The doctor assures him, “It’s okay—you’re just a little horse.”
A horse sits down in a movie theater and the woman next to him asks, “Excuse me… are you a horse?”
“Why yes, I am,” replies the horse.
“What are you doing at this movie?”
The horse says, “I really liked the book.”
A Desperado rides into town and downs a few drinks at the saloon. When he steps outside again, he finds his horse has been stolen. The Desperado swears, steps back into the bar, and fires a round into the piano. The room goes dead silent. “I’m gonna have one more beer,” the Desperado bellows to the terrified crowd, “and if my horse ain’t back where I left him when I’m done, I’ll do here what I had to do in Houston.”
The locals murmur uneasily as the Desperado sips his drink. Lucky for them all, when he steps outside again his horse has been returned. As the Desperado saddles up, a local can’t help but ask, “Sir, what exactly was it you had to do in Houston?”
The Desperado narrows his eyes and hisses at the man, “I had to walk home.”
Two racehorses are in a stable. One says to the other, “You know, before that last race …”
“The one that you won?” asks the other horse.
“Yeah, before that race, I felt a pinch in my hindquarters.”
The other horse says, “Funny, I felt a pinch in my hindquarters before the race that I won.”
A dog walking by says, “You idiots, you’re being doped. They’re injecting you with a drug to make you faster!”
The first horse turns to the other and says, “Hey, a talking dog!”
A cowboy buys a horse from the town pastor. The pastor explains, “to make the horse go, you gotta yell, ‘Thank God!’ And to make it stop, yell, ‘Hallelujah.’” The cowboy rides off. He rides all day and starts to nod off in the saddle when he notices he is about to ride straight over a cliff. Searching his memory, he yells to the horse, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” The horse grinds to a stop just at the edge of the cliff. The cowboy wipes the sweat off his forehead. ”Phew!” the cowboy sighs. “Thank God!”
A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey.”
The horse says, “Buddy—you read my mind!”
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Nice selection and your book was EXCELLENT!
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“Mommy! Horses!”
June groaned inwardly as Susan tugged her across the toy store toward the shelf of plastic model horses. Still, her daughter’s birthday was coming soon and June had promised that she could pick out her own gift. In the last six months Susan had become fascinated with all things equine; her parents had repeatedly explained that a horse would not fit in their backyard, and no, the city would not make an exception.
“You already have two, Susan. Do you really want another horse?” But the fanatic gleam in her daughter’s eye told June that she was fighting a losing battle. With a sigh she looked around for a distraction: “Here, how about that paint set you said you liked?”
“I want a horse instead, Mommy.”
Just then June felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Fairley Brooks smiling at her. “It’s no use. My daughter went through that stage.” Fairley’s children were a few years ahead of Susan in school, the oldest in junior high. An old hand at PTA politics, she was married to the manager of the development’s country club; Fairley’s social expertise made her an asset both to the PTA and club events.
Today instead of her usual relaxed demeanor, she looked stressed and tired. Before June could ask if something was wrong, Fairley asked: “Did you hear about the fire at the clubhouse dining room the other night?”
“Hear about it? I was there. No one was hurt or anything that I saw, and they refunded our dinner cost,” June said, hoping to reassure her.
“Mike is getting raked over the coals. He met with the board last night. It didn’t go well…” the other woman abruptly stopped speaking, as her worried expression deepened.
“Did Doug Adams talk to Mike? He and Lurie went to dinner with us that night. Doug is a fix-it man. He went back to the kitchen to see what was going on and he said he thought the fusebox might have been sabotaged.”
“I’ll ask Mike.” Fairley’s expression lightened a bit. “At least that means it isn’t a maintenance problem. But things keep going wrong at the club and we haven’t been able to find out why. Mike’s starting to worry about losing his job.”
June quickly wrote down the Adams’ phone number. “Here you go. Give Doug a call later. Susan, have you made up your mind yet?”
Susan, clutching a palomino plastic horse, headed to the cash register.
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Nothing stirred. No skeletons were visible. If the rafters were free of hanging dried herbs, half a dozen tables held books and papers. Another doorway led into a turning corridor, but Autumn thought sunlight shone down it.
“Horses to bear us off would be better,” said Felix, “but not bad.”
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Stay safe and healthy, Sarah.
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Lord Andrew road behind the Princess’ party and watched as the Princess tried to ignore her official guest Prince Draco.
Andrew didn’t blame her as Prince Draco had made himself an unwelcome guest of the Kingdom and to nobody’s surprise his father’s attempt to get Draco married to the Princess was going nowhere.
Then Prince Draco started bragging about the Royal symbol of his father’s Kingdom as compared to the White Horseman of Hestur. He proclaimed that their Dragon could defeat the White Horseman of Hestur.
That did it Andrew thought and road forward.
“With all due respect Your Highness, when was the last time anybody saw your family dragon”, Andrew asked?
Prince Draco sputtered “When was your White Horseman last seen”?
Andrew replied “Fifteen years ago and while just a boy I witnessed his appearance. My uncle, who was my father’s youngest brother was making a nuisance around our King’s younger brother.
“He challenged the Prince to a race after ensuring the Prince’s horse went lame. Well the Prince arrived at the meeting place for the race riding a White Horse that nobody remembered being in the royal stables.
“It was a splendid Horse and the Prince easily won the race.
“Well, my late unmourned uncle had a terrible temper and attacked the unarmed Prince.
“Nobody was sure exactly what happened next, but one moment the Prince was mounted on the Horse and the next moment he was standing behind the White House.
“Mounted on the White Horse was a rider wearing White Armor with a drawn White Sword.
“My uncle fled on his horse and the White Horseman gave chase.
“Nobody witnessed the final encounter but my uncle was found later with no wounds and a look of fear on his face.
“Nobody then and now doubts that our White Horseman is real and will make an appearance when needed.”
Prince Draco was silent for the rest of the ride and Andrew shared a laugh later on with his Princess.
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Also, I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but it isn’t a vignette. Sickeningly, it’s quite real. I fellow I know vaguely from an Elder Scrolls Games message board just lost his daughter. It turns out she was murdered, and the investigation is ongoing. A GoFundMe has been set up to help with the investigation. Would it be okay to link to it here?
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of course it’s okay to link here. Also in the diner, if you’re on facebook, and tell them I gave you permission.
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Thanks, Sarah. The young woman’s name is Cathleen McGrath. She’d been missing for some time, and her body was found last Wednesday. If you Google the name plus “New Jersey,” you’ll be able to find what little information there is right now.
Here’s the link to the GoFundMe
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“And the message was too urgent to be left to messengers, even with teams of horses. It was sent by spell, that he had done no such thing.” Bayard’s eyes narrowed. “Unless you know some way that he could smuggle squires into his study and knight them there, without aid.”
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“…We’ll have to eat the horses.”
The horses in question were already dead. They’d screamed loud enough to wake the dead when the ambush hit. Broken legs to a four footed, nearly eighteen hundred pound beast likely hurt a lot. The noise they’d made had drawn bloodbeasts to the ambush site.
Faced with mortal bandits and ravening beasts, the entire group was down to five survivors. Five living survivors at least.
Halveric was down to eight effectives from twenty. The other twelve were de-limbed or mauled enough to be functionally useless. For now.
Undeath had its advantages. The other twelve would be back in the fight not long after they made it back to the Stone. It’s magic made the miracle of rejuvenation nothing more than a light chore to be done. Only the soul repository needed to be saved, at the very least.
But reanimated soldiers tended to bitch about lost gear, so Halveric had his men gather up what weapons and decent armor survived and pack it along. They’d drop it in a fight and pick it back up later.
“-you! Dead man! We’re moving on as soon as Eric finishes butchering the horses. Keep an eye out for more beasts while we work.”
“And try and spot them before they get the drop on us this time, eh?”
That last comment set off a bout of grumbling amongst the troops. Not that the living heard anything.
“How was we supposed to do that, eh? Damn bandits had an illusionist. They expect us ta smell ‘em out?” Dury tossed his head about as if sniffing through the gash in his face where a blade bit him. The bandits had been smart enough to hide from man and undead alike, but dumb enough to fight the guards like they were still alive.
A good troop would take a mace to the face with a smile as long as he could get a kill out of it. All damage was temporary. Duty and the honor of the company was eternal.
He let them natter on for a bit. Even good troops bitched when things were going moderately well.
Nothing assaulted the diminished group save for flies. After a time, the humans were ready to go. Scorp and Manny took point while the rest spread out to cover their struggling charges. The fallen troops were rigged onto a travois, those with functional hands keeping the more damaged ones in place.
Evening fell and nightfall loomed. The humans showed no signs of stopping, though they were slowing. One of the living seemed to notice his regard and waved Halveric over.
“It’s the forest. Not a good place to be at night. Word is there’s demonspawn been sighted wandering the forest’s edge. We’re hoping to make it to The Tower. It’ll be safe there.”
It wasn’t.
*
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“Hold them back, damn your eyes!”
Manny’s flaming spear flickered at the blight troll’s face as flinched away, but that was the only thing going right. Implings harried their flanks while Oxlotl swooped in to try and rend anything they could catch with their claws. Halveric’s half-gone troops were even in the mix, stabbing low at any Implings that tried to squirt through his thin battle line.
Manny and Scorp stabbed and blocked, covering each other on the left flank. Otto and Beetle were doing the same thing on the right, and Halveric stood at the fore with Tork, Eel, and Jim. The five humans were in the center, with the Tower’s ruined wall at their back.
The night was black as pitch beyond the light of their lit spears. Most things hated fire. The company, not being commanded by fools, equipped the men with flaming weapons. The fight would have been much worse without them. But the things seemed endless.
A massive form swung down as if to drive him into the wet ground like a nail. Hal stepped back and to the side. Then stabbed the limb before it could recover. It burned. The corrupted tree spirit on the other end of the half rotted limb screamed.
It swung again and this time there was no where to go. Jim took it on his shield, flexing and compressing to blunt the force. Halveric braced him, with Tork on his right. Wet wood hit blessed oak and steel. The latter won. The tree screamed again. Spawn hated the touch of faith, too.
Things got rather spicy for a bit after that. The Implings eventually stopped coming, as their own larger allies were stomping them into paste. Either that, or they truly ran out of Implings. The little things weren’t very bright. The troop couldn’t envelope the larger foes without uncovering their vulnerable charges.
The Implings were replaced by a pair of Chorks. The eight foot tall, spiny creatures tended to use weapons and fight like men, but bigger and nastier. They also were slightly fire resistant.
Otto muttered something about all their luck being bad. The rest of the squad cursed him into silence, but the gods must have heard that brief lapse in security.
Three more Chorks appeared behind the first two. One of them had a crossbow.
*
“Are you certain it’s worth the risk?”
Hand sign was what the undead used to communicate with the living. Well, that and actual paper and ink. It worked, like the best of things, most of the time.
Dawn had found the troops victorious. But at a cost. Eel was gone.
The only way to truly kill one of the undead and keep them down was to shatter the spirit. Eel wasn’t dead, but his soul repository was missing. Some sort of spell had swallowed him up, leaving nothing behind but a few inches of his spear that the inky cloud hadn’t covered.
Halveric was not happy about that.
His charges were more or less whole. A bit less flesh, more than a little blood loss here and there. But they were alive. Living things tended to bounce back on their own after a while. A busted up troop stayed busted until they made it back to the Stone.
Only five of his troops were left standing after the long battle ended. He argued that the expedition should be scrapped. At least for now.
The scruffy looking man nodded vigorously.
“Yes, of course. We’re so close now! Only three more days. Just three more and we reach the… our destination! I promise you, whatever the Guild paid you will double, at least, if not more once we get there!”
“And back,” he responded. “The job was there and back. We’ve been afoot for one day, and another two traveled before the ambush. A week to make it back, at least, after we reach your destination.”
Halveric looked the smaller man square in the face. The living did often not enjoy the direct attention of the undead.
“I cannot adequately protect five wounded men with five troops. I will not be leaving my wounded behind.”
“But the reward-”
“-Is useless if it cannot be spent. The job was protection. Protecting you means making it back to a safer place than this. Not a side trip into the unknown.”
“Also, you have next to no food. That should be a concern for you, yes?”
They went back and forth for a time after that. But he knew from the looks the other living men were giving him, at least one other knew hand sign. And the rest, they knew the food situation. The group agreed to return after they rested.
The troops did not need any rest, so they waited. And complained, as all soldiers did since time immemorial. The humans slept.
Several hours later, disaster struck yet again.
“Looks like he snuck out through this crack here, into the Tower and out the back. Manny was the closest, but he didn’t see or hear a thing.”
Halveric swore. The contract was five live bodies. As of that moment, there were only four.
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I want to read all of this story. Is it done? Is there a story that came first?
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Ah. Well.
To be honest, that storylet was conceived and written in a blistering hour and only stopped because I had to have at least five hours sleep before work.
It’s supposed to be a short story. Really. I promise. (glares around at laughing writers- I know who you are. I see you!). A short story! Like, maybe ten chapters, tops.
It was butchered down into short, choppy bits to get under the WP “too much text” limit that I seem to hit with depressing regularity.
There might be some time over Thanksgiving break. I’ll see if I can’t clean it up and give it a proper go. But!
Unlike last time (or the time before that) it’s only supposed to be a short story. Maybe twenty chapters, tops. If that. Probably less. A lot less, even.
Maybe.
Thanks for the interest, though. Writing what people want to read is what a writer strives for. Always good to hear feedback, so poke your favorite author every now and again and tell ’em good job. Those are author cookies, and totally aren’t crack cocaine (unlike what your lying eyes might tell you).
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Time: A couple weeks before USA Thanksgiving…
“Now hold your horses. We can’t NOT play Christmas music in store. Everyone coming in is expecting it, even if it is tiresome to us.”
“Listen, it’s not that we never play it. We simply have a bit of time we don’t, and we can make it look like we’re doing it for our customers.”
“How’s that? It’s not that this isn’t a majority Christina area. Sure a few Jews, and a smattering of folks that are ..lapsed… as they say.”
“We don’t bring up religion. Or even that it’s Christmas or ‘holiday’ music. We simply say we are cutting out the music, all of it, for an hour or two a day, as a favor to those with ‘sensory issues’.”
“We can get a respite, at least little, AND be seen as being good doing it? What’s the catch?”
“We have to start doing it before the ‘holiday music’ starts, so it looks a bit less obvious.”
“Issue a press release and start immediately.”
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…and then they find the store gets much busier during those quiet hours… :-P
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“…and good for business!”
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“I don’t get that Hank, don’t get it at all” Chester said.
“What he was a bad guy trying to rob a bank, of course I shot him” Hank replied.
“Ya, but it’s what you said” Chester replied.
“What I said?” Hank asked.
“Ya, you’ve never met the guy so what have ya got against his horse?” Chester asked.
“You mean you’re upset because I said And the Horse you rode in on?” Hank asked.
“Ya, the horse never did anything to you” Chester said.
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“So,” started Tom. “You’re a shifter.”
“Yes,” murmured the small man as if the word hurt to speak out loud.
“And you want me to… fix it?” asked Tom. “I don’t think you understand.”
“No, you don’t understand,” said Percy. He hunched his track suit clad shoulders even more and slumped down in his seat, pushing his uneaten salad to one side. “It’s… embarrassing.”
“Show me.” Tom stood up. “It’s no secret. Everybody here tonight is a shifter. We can go outside if your form is too large.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just… Well, I suppose.” The small man got up from the booth, removed his shoes, made sure his sweat pants were fastened, and changed in one smooth motion.
Tom was more than a little surprised. “You’re a horse,” he said, looking down and resisting an urge to scratch behind equine ears, or run his fingers through the pale blue feathers of the broad wings shifting uneasily on the pony’s back as everybody in the place turned to look.
“A pegasus, actually,” said Percy. “But that’s not really the embarrassing part. It’s–”
With a mutual squeal of joy, every woman within eyesight surged forward to do the ear-scratching that Tom had resisted, along with petting and close examination of each wing.
“See!” managed Percy from behind the solid mass of chattering women.
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