Paladin & Other Weird Tales

By D. Anthony Brown

Seven weird fantasy short stories. A woman haunted by the victims of her twin's atrocities, an ice sculpture princess bored of her life in the freezer, dragon magic cast upon a moonlight shroud, a cursed pillow is lost when a mysterious typewriter appears, a yellow scarf left at the scene of a crime, a werecat with something to say, and an ex-girlfriend in a compact mirror.

This collection includes:

Paladin
Lady Ice
Moonlight Shroud
Blue Satin Pillow
Orchids
Ball of Yarn
My Michelle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hermit Muse Publishing
• Release date: Sep 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301401307

D. Anthony Brown

D. Anthony Brown is a writer in Minnesota. He's been to school a few times, but now days he mostly teaches himself new things; such as how to play the guitar, tarot, and whatever topics interest him at any given moment. He is an avid reader and an addicted gamer. He may be contacted at his website: danthonybrown.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 D. Anthony Brown

Smashwords Edition

Lady Ice and Moonlight Shroud first appeared on the author's website, danthonybrown.me.

Ball of Yarn first appeared on Musings &Mythos, d-anthony-brown.livejournal.com

Dedicated to

Michelle Baran

Acknowledgments

To you, the readers - without you I'd be writing for myself, and that gets old fast. To my writing group: Lynn Flickinger and Mary Sutton, for critique and companionship. You people rock! And to the staff at Baker's Square, for pie and for putting up with our bullshit.

Table of Contents

Paladin

Lady Ice

Moonlight Shroud

Blue Satin Pillow

Orchids

Ball of Yarn

My Michelle

About the Author

Paladin

Don't judge me.

I can hardly judge myself, given what I think I've done.

But I can't say exactly what happened, because I've had the weirdest dreams, and I no longer see the line between dream and reality. I dream that my teeth are widely spaced apart and I have fangs, and when I wake up and my teeth are normal I wonder if I'm still in my dream. Once I was a man and I dreamed I woke up a woman - and vice versa. I'm falling or flying, I'm a child or an adult - none of this feels like fantasy and my days are spent unraveling the lucid yarns binding me to my inner world.

I'm told I had a twin brother, and I'm certain of that because I feel a piece of me that's missing and I remember the things that defined my brother - pale and unshaved skin, dry lips, sandy brown hair tied in loose greasy dreadlocks. And I can tell you the contrasts we shared - our genders, our music (him classical, me metal), his taste for fine European pastries, mine for coffee house donuts.

The things that happened inside my head, and the things that may have happened outside, I recall. It all began when I woke up from a vivid dream, like the many I've had since moving away from home, but this time different for the stark terror - the damp sheets, the moonlight making shadows across my bedroom furniture, the sensation of being sucked into my mattress. I always knew, deep down, that he was my dark half, the night to my day, the monster to be slain.

I loved my brother as he was a part of me, believe me.

I hated my brother for what he was.

And now, I'm not sure if he existed at all.

Last year, when I was living in Minneapolis, I started having the visions - torsos, feminine and curvy, dismembered and bloody. Heads on stakes, dismembered arms and legs spread out in patterns on the ground. The faces were never clear to me, they were just people in my mind's eye - a blond, a brunette, a redhead - but the eyes were always clear. Gazing outward, crystal dead, wide-eyed and frightened in their last moments, shocked that any man could be this cruel. The eyes scared me more than the blood, the