Strangelet Volume 1

By Strangelet Press

Celebrate Year 1 of Strangelet by getting all of the stories, poetry, art, and comics from the past year in one volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strangelet Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310258732

Strangelet Press

Strangelet is a journal of speculative fiction that publishes fiction, poetry, nonfiction, graphic stories/comics, and artwork six times a year with an anthology at the end of each year. We showcase the intersection where genre and literature collide. We want works to reveal compelling, universal truths that speak to us—from starship computers, from dragons’ mouths, and from everyday worlds tinged with miracles. Genres Strangelet primarily publishes short fiction but we also want exceptional artwork, essays, graphic stories, poetry, and reviews that explore the same space. We are looking for works of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and anything else that takes the reader to new worlds (or a shadowy corner of ours). Visit our submissions page for more information if you would like to be included in the journal. Visit our store and check out our subscription rates if you would like to purchase an issue. Inspirations Our inspirations include authors and artists like Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Emily Carroll, Madeleine L’Engle, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rod Serling, and Ralph Steadman, who have broken the bounds of genre and literature (and even form) to keep us transfixed. To find out current news about submissions, upcoming issues, or to see what’s inspiring us right now, sign up for our newsletter, follow us at Twitter, Facebook, and our Goodreads page, or use the contact info below.

Book preview

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Strangelet

Volume 1

Published by Strangelet Press

Boston, Massachusetts

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Volume 1 of Strangelet is a production of

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Strangelet is a new journal accepting speculative artwork, fiction, graphic stories/comics, nonfiction, and poetry. Strangelet is published 6 times a year.

We want to showcase works where genre and literature collide. We want pieces that situate the gravity of living amid the high energy of imagination to find compelling, beautiful, universal truths that speak to us—whether from starships, from dragons’ mouths, or from an everyday world tinged with miracles.

Visit strangeletjournal.com/subscribe to subscribe to Strangelet!

Submissions: We accept submissions year-round. We also accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your submission has been accepted elsewhere.

Published works appear in both the print and ebook editions of Strangelet. We may occasionally publish excerpts from accepted and/or published pieces on our website and social media platforms.

Our goal is to notify all submitters of acceptance or non-acceptance within four months of submission. We look forward to reading your work!

For more information, visit strangeletjournal.com/submit or go here.

Printed in the USA

Book design and production by Franco A. Alvarado and Chandra Asar

Ebook edition by Franco A. Alvarado

Cover art by Tom Williams

© 2015 by Strangelet Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations within critical articles and reviews. These pieces previously appeared in Strangelet Volume 1, Issues 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Strangelet

Volume 1, December 2015

Executive Editor

Casey Brown

Managing Editor

Leah Alaani

Design and Production Editor

Franco A. Alvarado

Creative Director

Chandra Asar

Content Manager

Andy Dost

Media Director

Tami Marie Lawless

Advisory Editors

Andy Dost, Timothy Ellison, Aaron Krol

Senior Reader

Chelsea Cohen

Readers

Franco A. Alvarado, Konstantine Dzugan, Rebecca Jones, Elizabeth Kotz, Lisa Markley, Kurt Newton*, Gabrielle Roman, Mikaela von Kursell*

*Joined as reader after publication

Fiction

The Better Angels of Parasites by Jarod Anderson

Running With by Peter Medeiros

Sunset 9037 by Daniel Kenitz

Start the Day with an Espresso by Steve Toase

The Man Who Lived in My Hair by Evan Mallon

The Secret Underground Tooth Economy of Boston by Will White

Rampion by Anita Felicelli

Small Seeds by Elizabeth Jenike

How to Break Up with Your Zombie Boyfriend by Jenni Moody

Delia by David Armstrong

The Last Laugh by Eric M. Bosarge

The Ragabash Foxtrot by Dorian Graves

The Black Madonna by Mikaela von Kursell

1348 by Russell Hemmell

Poetry

Houses in Space by Steve Toutonghi

visitors by Steve Toutonghi

Prophecy by Khadija Anderson

The Waves on the Lake Spell Danger to His Heart by Kurt Newton

The Lady of the Lake by Chelsea Eckert

Jacob: A Tiger by Chelsea Eckert

The Beard by Justin Hamm

Poem for Setting by Justin Hamm

The Messenger by Justin Hamm

The Friar’s Bones or the Messenger’s Bones by Justin Hamm

Comic

Saved by John Carvajal

Art

Down the Attic Steps by Denny Marshall

The Murder of Hypatia by Heather Gwinn

Panels Have Shone by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Contributors

Submission guidelines

Editor’s Note

Holy interdimensional space cows, what a year! Since the release of Issue 0 last year, we have published our first four issues (collected here in our Volume 1 anthology), had two of our authors win awards, attended several amazing conventions (if you have to get snowed in at a con, do it at Boskone), and met some awesomely friendly and helpful people at those conventions (shout-outs to Bill Campbell of Rosarium Publishing, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine, and Ian Randal Strock of Gray Rabbit Publications). This past year was very, very busy for all of us. Although we did not make it to The Tam nearly as often as we would have liked, we are very proud of our first four issues and this anthology. We hope that you find the art, poetry, and stories within these pages as fun and weird and interesting and strange as we did.

We will be publishing six magazines during 2016 (the contents of which will be anthologized next year in Volume 2). During Year 2, we will continue to toy with themed issues (which we first did for 1.4, The End of Things). We don’t plan themed issues (yet); they just kind of happen. For 1.4, we realized we had a great little collection of catastrophic narratives awaiting publication, so we bundled them together (if you enjoyed 1.4, I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum and Alexander Lumans). Volume 2, issue 1, due out in January of 2016, will also be themed: Women Writing Women: Transformations. This issue’s contributors are all women—from the cover artist in—and stories and poetry feature female protagonists. We are very proud of and excited about 2.1 and we hope you will be too.

Speaking of being proud, we are also very proud to announce that Brendan Buck’s A Messenger Will Soon Bring Good Tidings, which had previously won our It Came from Out of the Slush! short story contest, and Colin Wolcott’s The Summoner, both from Issue 0, were selected for publication in the inaugural Write Well Awards!1 If you liked these stories, we encourage you to pick up a copy of the 2015 Write Well Award Anthology, as, clearly, the editor of that series has good taste.

Finally, it is with sadness that we announce the departure of our friend Chandra Asar as she leaves the Strangelet staff to pursue interests in her new career field. Chandra was one of the first classmates I befriended at Emerson, as we would often ride the Red Line together after classes. Her wry sense of humor served as a great counterpoint to some of the ridiculousness encountered during a Strangelet staff meeting and her efforts as Creative Director influenced the look of our issues from covers to interior art and beyond. Thank you, Chandra, for the countless hours you poured into our collective flying, purple-tentacled, baby elephant.

May your day be just a bit strange.

Casey Brown

Boston, MA

Oct. 2015

1. http://writewellaward.com/

Jarod Anderson

The Better Angels of Parasites

The kid with the clean fingernails eyed my headgear like I had a coiled dog turd stuck on my forehead. His pale, baby-fat face looked like an unbaked roll, and by the scrunch of his doughy little nose I knew he was aiming a question my way. It was his first day on a job he was about to hate, so I did the neighborly thing and spit my tobacco juice on his new boots rather than where I wanted to spit it. The cart rumbled from the bunkhouse toward the main mine shaft with a metallic growl that nobody wanted to talk over. Nobody but him.

What’s that word on your helmet? he asked.

Proctologist, I said, quiet enough that I thought he’d miss it and give up conversation, but I guess his ears hadn’t been through what mine had.

What’s it say that for?

Because we work in an asshole, kid.

He laughed a weird little laugh that flopped his shaggy blond hair into a different shape on his round head, then he stuck out a hand to shake.

I’m Evan. I guess I’m just supposed to observe today, but I don’t know why I can’t start real work.

O’Brien, I said. You’ll see.

It isn’t actually an asshole, he added, as if I had asked for clarification.

Do tell.

I read up on the drifters’ anatomy before I took this assignment. They don’t have assholes. They’re more like planet-sized single cell organisms, absorbing radiation and matter from surrounding space and metabolizing it into organic substances.

You don’t say, I answered with mock interest. Gosh, I must have been confused. I don’t know why I thought we worked in an asshole.

The timing was perfect. I almost smiled. Just as I finished my sentence the cart tilted downward and we started into the weird pinkish light and high-pitched whine of the shaft. At the same time, a hot, wet, utterly indescribable stink hit us like a brick to the face. Most of us learned to shut off the part of the brain that registered it, but that takes time. Evan was fresh.

His face was comically expressive. Initial shock. Horror. Panic. That’s all I registered before he crumpled into a retching heap on the floor of the cart. When he finally looked up at me, shivering and glazed with sweat, I just poked my index finger towards the word on my helmet. Evan looked like he was about to sob.

When he finally spoke again, it wasn’t the question I was expecting.

What’s that noise?

I guess he’d given up trying to understand the smell. Immune response, I answered. At least that’s our best guess. Surprised you didn’t read about it.

The urge to break his balls further was diminished by the look of him. The rising dough of his face had been deflated. He looked like shit. I guess that made him one of the guys.

To his credit, he was able to transfer most of the vomit from his face onto his sleeve and get himself more or less upright again. I’d seen people do worse on their first time down. Hell, I had done worse.

I pressed a couple foam earplugs into place and handed Evan a fresh pack of spares, the pink ones my eight-year-old daughter Gwyn had given me last Father’s Day on my furlough back home. I hate pink, but I couldn’t bring myself throw them away. I figured Gwyn would want Evan to have them. She had a fondness for strays and sad sacks.

His earplugs in place, Evan fell to staring opened-mouthed at the walls of the shaft, the semi-translucent flesh with dark, branching patterns of vascularity, thicker than your arm, running off in all directions. Those damn veins and vessels were the reason we were down here. The machines couldn’t seem to differentiate them from the rest of the flesh, and if enough of them were severed, necrosis and even planet-death could occur, botching the job and losing the payload.

So, the corporation sent us. Surgeon-miners with sharpened spades like man-sized scalpels. The instruments pointed us in the direction of a calcium deposit or a bladder full of amino acids and we’d pick our way to it and pump it to the surface. Then we’d head back to the bunks for a delightful evening full of wondering what you just sneezed up and cataloging the different mushroom species that sprouted from the shit on your boots. Love what you do and do what you love.

When we rattled to a halt not far from the end of the track, a screen rose from the front of the cart and flickered to life. It displayed our location on a vague pinkish map that marked the main shaft with a dark blue line. The suggested path to the day’s goal was marked in neon green. Our wrist displays all blinked in unison as they synced with the cart’s systems and we started unsheathing the stainless steel blades of our spades. Some looked like shovels, others like brush hooks or long-hafted spears. We each had a shape for our function, each suited to certain situations and specific tissue types. It was all mind-numbingly efficient.

The goal was bladder full of long-chain fatty acids, liquid gold used in countless biological industries across the galaxy. We started cutting immediately, trussing up dark veins as we went and dragging lighting strips and pump hoses behind us. We all knew that if we got the hoses in place before quitting time we wouldn’t be able to start a new dig until the next day.

As we worked, the whine in the shaft rose to a deafening, quavering wail. I glanced at Evan. He was standing at the rear, covering his mouth with both hands. I couldn’t read the look in his eyes.

We had the pumps running and were back on the surface a good two hours early. A good day by anybody’s standard. I was nearing the end of my hour-long washing-up routine before I noticed Evan again. He hadn’t even changed out of his filth-spattered coveralls yet, and he seemed to have shrunk. He looked like a little boy wearing his father’s work clothes.

I sighed, summoned up all the patience I could find, and walked over to him.

You alright, kid? I asked. He jumped a little when I spoke.

How do you do that every day?

Oh, you know, with the help of a nutritious breakfast and plenty of fresh air, I answered. I started to slap him on the shoulder to punctuate the joke, but stopped short so I didn’t have to wash my hand again.

He turned and looked at me with big, wet eyes.

It was screaming. It just kept screaming, he said.

We were hacking a hole through its guts, what do you want it to do? I asked.

He flinched.

But… it’s inhumane, he said. His voice was shaky.

Yes, it is in-human. It’s not human.

It’s wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this, he said. I was a little impressed that he had the balls to say it so directly, so I thought he deserved a direct answer.

Bullshit, I said.

He paled, but kept his eyes fixed on mine.

Tell me why it’s wrong.