Tuesday Freebies

Late starting this week, but start things must. Quite a bit of good free fiction. Today's illustraion is from 19 Nocturne Boulevard's audio story below.











@Daily Science Fiction: "Where Sea and Sky Kiss" by Dan Campbell

"I screamed into the world amidst this grief. Many took my birth as an omen: some good, others bad. It all depended on who had lost, and how much, as to whether they shunned or smiled on me and my family."

@Daily Science Fiction: "Wider and Deeper" by Carma Lynn Park.

"The sorcerer was young, still with a downy beard, his power small and flickering. He set his mind to obtaining greater strength, and after much study he decided to lure the creature of living darkness, whose energies he could then tap. The creature would need a pit, deeper than the lowest basement of his castle, deeper than the copper mines of the Frostshadow Mountain, deeper than the Everquiet Caves."

@Fantasy Magazine: "Absolute Zero" by Nadia Bulkin.

"It sat on a tree stump the way neighborhood men sat on bar stools, surrounded by a cavalry of thin, burned trees. Max almost recognized this nightmare place as Digby Forest, a festering infection of wild land on the edge of Cripple Creek."

@Kasma "Penrose" by Ashanti Luke.

"The man pulled through the lev run alongside the Retroburger and stopped next to the window as the level three lev-pad slowly lifted their mag-lev to match the window of the cashier who was already handing them their meal..."

@Lightspeed: "The Little Bear" by Justina Robson.

"She felt without a shadow of doubt that the expanse of outer space was a bagatelle kind of nothing, compared with the space she’d become aware of as it grew inside her mind: the distance between herself and her husband Guy."

@Lovecraft eZine: "The Stranger From Out of Town" by John Prescott.

"Dorian Searls looked out over the lake as the setting sun slowly fell behind the trees to the west. It had been a good day like many others over the past seven years."

@Ray Gun Revival: "Ballad" by Barton Paul Levenson.

"The two wore UFN Aerospace Corps blues as they stalked each other through the firing range, a vast, blue-plastic floor covered with obstacles of all shapes and sizes. So far neither had managed to score any laser tag points. They could see the icy crags and boulders of the big moon the base stood on through the transparent dome around them."

@Strange Horizons: "The Fourth Board" by D J Muir.

"Today, the Tyrant will ask Jinli's father to bring out the hao ryl set, sit down with him, and play a game. When the game is decided, the Tyrant will ask Father to bring Jinli before him, and to have her read his future. And Jinli knows that things will not happen this afternoon quite as anyone has planned."

@World SF Blog: "Maun of the Dead" by Sarah Lotz.

"And why is the supermarket even open? There’s very little of any¬thing on the shelves. A few jars of peach jam (now rolling around in my basket), a lonely and tattered box of rusks, a display of Frisco and a solitary roll of one-ply toilet paper. They’ve even bothered to turn the generators on"

Now Posted: Crossed Genres #34 - Monsters.
"The Fire" by Timothy T. Murphy.

“Come watch him work, Marissa.” Leanna smiled at me, gently tugging at my hands. Her smile was as infectious as ever, even with the black eye darkening one side of her face. There was fresh paint highlighting her hair, yellows and oranges running through the Irish ginger in wild streaks. I could only assume that he’d kissed her after punching her.

"Inhuman Resources" by William Gerke.

"She must have weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, but she was a ton of trouble. Power crackled and oozed off her like water from a damp basement wall. I’m about as psychically sensitive as a dump truck, but even I could feel it. My boss could, too. Vern hunched in his big leather chair in the same defensive half-crouch he used during audits."

"Waiting in the Light in the Hungry Months" by Megan Engelhardt.

"We drove out to the dunes early one winter evening, before the rest of the village came. It was warm enough that Pa had thought to bring little Bete and Tan and me to see the suns set before this year’s show. The small golden globe of the second sun had just begun to follow its larger brother below the waves when the rumble of an engine broke the stillness."

"Skin and Scales" by Rachel Bender.

"Coils of red and blue scales held him in place, pinning him almost all the way up to his hips. He moved, writhing, whimpering, but not to get away. The man worked his hips mindlessly, thrusting blind, seeking a place to sink his sex that simply wasn’t there."

"Monsters Monsters Everywhere" by Carrie Cuinn.

“Certain?” Paco asked. “Very good meat.” Maybe if I hadn’t already heard the story of how they’d found the goat, freshly spilled blood still steaming in the night air, after scaring off something larger just outside the village. “You are certain you can kill this monster?” he asked, and I nodded.

Serial Fiction
Author's Site: "The Journals of Doctor Mormeck’s Avatar–#15" by Jeff VanderMeer.

"Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds"

@Kat and Mouse: "Into The Woods - Part Three" by Abner Senires.

"The Airpark Cafe occupied the second floor of a two-story building that sat next to a gray aircraft hanger with its doors closed. The ground floor housed the Benton Field Aviation Office, just beneath a wooden staircase."

Audio
@Beam Me Up: "Mr. Bronze" by Phil Voyd, adapted by Kit St. Germain, performed by full cast.

"Ben, the 'star' of tonight’s outing is a consummate body builder, working all the way from a literal 90 lb weakling to wining the Mr. Bronze trophy. Everything was going right in his world, that was until he found this weird photo album, then things got decidedly worse."

@Cthulhu: "The Damned - part 4"

"Another week, another episode of the Cthulhu podcast. This week's show contains the next part of "Through the Brazilian Wilderness", and the next chapter of "The Damned", don't get scared!"

@PodCastle: "Braiding the Ghosts" by C.S.E. Cooney, read by Kara Grace.

Reshka liked to say, “I’m not above keeping ghosts in the house for handmaids and men-of-all-work. There must be ghosts for sweeping, for scrubbing, ghosts for plunging the toilets or repairing the roof, ghosts to fix the swamp cooler and to wash and dry the dishes.

Serial Audio
@Author's Site: "The Starter - Episode #35" by Scottt Sigler.

"Second-to-last episode, Junkies! Quentin and his fellow gridiron warriors square off against the Mars Planets -- winner stays in Tier 1, the loser is sent back down to Tier 2. The time for talk is over (except, of course, for a rousing pre-game speech by Quentin himself). Let's get it on!"

@19 Nocturn Boulevard: "The Dunwich Horror - Part 1" by H.P. Lovecraft, adapted by Julie Hoverson, performed by full cast.

"A trio of professors uncover something dreadful in a backwater town."