Bards and Sages Quarterly (July 2017)

By Aaron Vlek, Calvin Demmer, N Immanuel Velez and 14 more

Celebrating our 9th year in publication! Each issue of the Bards and Sages Quarterly is compiled to bring readers an eclectic and entertaining collection of works from both new and established voices in the speculative fiction genres. In this issue, stories by Mickie Bolling-Burke, David Cleden, Thom Clink, Calvin Demmer, Matthew Harrison, Malcolm Laughton, Shannon M Metcalf, Rob Munns, L.D. Oxford, Jay Requard, Rhema Sayers, Josh Schlossberg, Bill Suboski, Jeff Stehman, N. Immanuel Velez, Aaron Vlek, and J.M. Williams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386752394

Book preview

In This Issue

Drain by Josh Schlossberg

Karma by Calvin Demmer

The Shimmering Scale by Jay Requard

Yurisatto, The Son of Smokeless Fire by Aaron Vlek

Honey, I’m Back! By Matthew Harrison

The Alpha Predator of the Really Huge Woods by Thom Clink

Still Life by David Cleden

Sticks and Stones by Mickie Bolling-Burke

Second Floor by Rob Munns

Moving Lair by Jeff Stehman

Midgie Raker by Malcolm Laughton

Flight by L.D. Oxford

A Witness to Devilry by N. Immanuel Velez

Falling Home by Bill Suboski

The Tree Sign by J.M. Williams

Blank Face by Shannon M Metcalf

The Bureaucracy by Rhema Sayers

About the Authors

Drain

by Josh Schlossberg

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As I lay in bed, leafing through my old hardcover copy of Talking to Heaven, I felt a tickle on my wrist. Some sort of beetle the size of an apple seed, flat and brown, nonchalantly crawled up my arm, as if out for an evening stroll. I shrieked and blew it onto the nightstand.

Since I’ve lived in the city my whole life, only getting out into the country a handful of times over the years, I was never much of a fan of bugs. Spiders hunched in dark corners. Bloated worms rotting on the sidewalk after a rain. Fruit flies buzzing around the sink in a cloud of filth. I know insects are a part of nature, but so is the flu—just because something’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good.

I snatched a tissue from the box, draped it over the thing as it tried to scurry off the edge of the nightstand, and smashed it with the spine of the book. I wadded up the tissue and flushed it down the toilet. And flushed again.

Back in bed, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but an Internet factoid kept creeping into my mind, how the average person supposedly swallows eight spiders a year in her sleep. My throat scratchy, I scurried to the bathroom to get a glass of water, popped an Ambien, burrowed under the covers, and fell asleep.

I woke the next morning having forgotten about the encounter. I held a session across town, browsed the aisles at a bookstore, and spent my usual quiet evening at home, this time with a filet of salmon, a pint of mint chocolate chip, and a Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel.

Three days later, while stripping my bed sheets, another one bumbled across my mattress, like a cursor on a computer screen. Instinctively, I brushed it onto the floor with the back of my hand, and stomped on it, mashing it into the carpet with the heel of my slipper. I lifted my foot to make sure it was dead. Motionless, it stuck to my sole.

After a few deep breaths, I took off the slipper and brought it over to the computer. I typed indoor insects into the search engine, and sifted through a nightmare gallery of cockroaches, pill bugs, and centipedes before I had a match. A wave of nausea swept through my innards. It was a goddamn bed bug.

Weren’t bedbugs for messy people? But my apartment was spotless! Which meant they were coming from someplace else, like that meathead in the apartment next to me, the stink of a locker room seeping out from under his door.

I did some more research and learned the nasties had become increasingly common over the last couple of decades, which experts blamed on air travel and the banning of certain pesticides, like DDT. The only good news was that, although they could bite—sucking blood like mosquitoes and ticks—they weren’t disease carriers. Some consolation.

Though it was almost midnight, I called my absentee landlord, demanded that he send an exterminator the next morning, and hung up before he could make any of his excuses. I yanked off the sheets and shoved the mattress onto the floor, but didn’t find any more of the bastards. A couple of Ambien later, I curled up on the living room couch under the afghan and, scratching the occasional imaginary itch, watched I Dream of Jeanie reruns until I fell asleep.

A ring woke me. It took me a few seconds to figure out that it was my doorbell—sadly, it had been that long since I’d had visitors. I jolted up from the couch, raced to the door, and put an eye against the peephole. A man in a red and blue uniform stood there.

The exterminator told me I’d need to leave for the next six hours, which was fine, I had a session anyway. I got dressed and left, relieved to be escaping the infestation, if only for the day.

My client was a quivering Lithuanian widow whose sprawling Victorian smelled like onions. She wanted to speak with her husband, gone for almost twenty years. Her cold, dry hand clutching mine, I tried to establish contact for nearly two hours, but to no avail.

The spirit world is elusive, I told her. But we can try again tomorrow.

When I asked for my modest fee, she grunted up from her chair, shuffled to the closet, and came back gripping a broom. Jabbering in some foreign tongue, the awful woman literally swept me out of her kitchen, through the hallway, and out the front door, which the ingrate slammed in my face.

Clenching my teeth to hold back my rage, I took a cab to the pharmacy to refill my Xanax prescription, which, thankfully, was still good. I popped one on the way out the door and, feeling calmer than I had in days, strolled the sunny sidewalks for some window-shopping.

To distract my mind away from my vermin-filled home, I killed a couple of hours at a coffee shop, sipping a latte and browsing tabloids. A scruffy teenager played an acoustic guitar in the corner, his fingers scrabbling over the strings like the legs of a beetle. It might have been the amplifier, but when he sang I could sometimes hear what sounded like another voice in the background, faint and trembling, weaving in some off-key harmonies.

Before long, six hours had passed and it was time to go back to my apartment. But I didn’t want to. I dug my cell from my purse and called Arianne.

Can you hold on a sec, hun? said Arianne. I leaned against a lamppost with the phone against my ear, listening to roaring laughter and what sounded like a brass section in the background. Okay, I’m back.

So good to hear your voice, I blurted, tearing up a bit, happy to be speaking to the only person in the city I could honestly call a friend. First—and you won’t believe this—I found a bed bug in my apartment. An actual bed bug! So, of course, I got the place fumigated.

Really, Arianne said, barely audible over blaring trumpets.

And then one of my clients wouldn’t even—

Don’t you dare! Arianne screeched in my ear.

I held the phone away from my face. What?! I yelled.

Not you, hun. Someone else, said Arianne. Know what, babe? This really isn’t a good time. I’m in New York. With Gil. She whispered the last part.

I didn’t know who Gil was but figured he was the latest in Arianne’s series of paramours. Sugar daddies, she called them, which she explained wasn’t prostitution because she chose them, instead of the other way around.

I’m just really having a hard time here, I almost sobbed. Could I maybe stay at your—

Arianne sighed irritably. I can barely hear you. How about you just fill me in when you get back, okay? Love ya! A smacking kiss and she hung up.

I stood there with the phone in my hand, staring at the swarming traffic, berating myself for expecting anything different from her.

When I got back to the apartment, the exterminator was gone. The smell wasn’t bad, just a faint trace of something metallic. I opened the windows to let in the cool, early autumn air, switched on the ceiling fan, and lit a few vanilla-scented candles.

My heart crammed up into my esophagus, I tiptoed into the bedroom, as if sneaking up on an unfaithful lover. I inspected the top of the mattress, flipped it over. Reluctantly, I knelt down to look under the bed. All clean. I let out a deep breath.

Every day for the next week I scrutinized my bed, the carpet, my dresser drawers, and the closets for signs of the invaders. Nothing. They were gone. I could relax again.

Four days later I woke to find one of the horribles squatting on my pillow, inches from my face, like a chocolate shaving. At arm’s length, I carried the pillow out to the balcony, sliding the torn screen door open with my foot, and tossed it over the railing to watch it plummet seventeen stories to the street below. Suddenly exhausted, I crumpled into a ball on the cement floor of the balcony. I cried a little.

The exterminator came back that afternoon. Sorry, he said, with a sheepish smile. Must’ve missed some eggs on the first sweep. Mind if I take a look?

That’s your job, isn’t it? I wasn’t going to be taken advantage of again.

Sliding a flashlight from a hip holster, he slipped into the bedroom while I vacuumed the living room carpet for the third time that day.

After maybe fifteen minutes I noticed him standing there looking at me. I shut off the vacuum.

I didn’t find anything, he said, almost accusingly.

Must not have looked very hard.

Sure they were bed bugs?

Annoyed now, I clenched the handle of the vacuum. Positive.

There’s no sign of them. He scowled as if blaming me for his own subpar work.

You think I’m making this up?

He paused a bit too long before answering, which made me furious.

I don’t know, lady, he said, shrugging. If your landlord’s paying for it, I’ll bomb the place again.

Satisfied, I nodded. Make sure you get them all this time, I said and fled the apartment to catch a film.

The next week, I discovered two of the monsters on my headboard. The room swam for a moment before I got ahold of myself. Then I punched each of them dead with my bare fist, watched the blood trickle from a split knuckle.

On my hands and knees, I inspected the carpet. What if they were breeding under there? I crawled to the corner to see if I could pull up an edge. That’s when I noticed a few tiny, brown turds. For Christ’s sake, not only did I have bed bugs, mice were setting up shop, too!

I must’ve sounded like a madwoman when I called my slumlord, as he kept telling me to calm down, that he couldn’t understand what I was saying. I got ahold of myself long enough to insist he send another exterminator over right away or I’d burn the fucking place to the ground. I took a double dose of Xanax.

By noon, a new exterminator in a brown jumpsuit showed up, and I checked into a four-star hotel. I needed to feel clean, if only for a night. You better believe I scoured every inch of the room to make sure it was pure before I laid myself down on the ivory comforter.

I slept okay, despite the occasional grunt, groan, or sigh from the bathroom—like someone relieving himself—that startled me awake in the middle of the night.

My phantom urinator aside, I was comfortable in the plush and immaculate room, and in no rush to head back home. I ended up staying for three nights, which cost me almost a thousand bucks; half a month’s income during a good month. And it hadn’t been a good month.

With nowhere left to hide, I walked back to my apartment, dread scalding my insides as if someone had poured a pot of hot soup down my throat. I unlocked the door, sniffed the air, the metallic stink of pesticides stronger this time. Chewing my lower lip, I marched straight into the bedroom.

I’m proud to say I didn’t make a peep when I found five of the sons of bitches consorting on the nightstand. One at a time, I crushed them between my fingers and smeared their carcasses against the wall, as a warning to the others.

Obviously, getting rid of the wretched creatures was beyond the ability of some rip off exterminator. Like everything else, it was going to be up to me. I popped another couple of Xanax.

Back on the Internet, I spent hours reading up on the crawling freaks, eventually clicking on a page featuring high resolution close up photos of insects that looked like, but weren’t bed bugs. A cousin of bed bugs, bat bugs lived in caves and fed on the blood of roosting bats.

I thought back to the mice poop I had found in the corner. Could it have been bat poop? Were bats finding a way into the apartment—through my torn screen door, maybe—bat bugs hitching a ride on their veiny wings?

I did some more research, learned how there were over a thousand species of the hideous flying rats, how they were supposed to be so great because they pollinated flowers and ate mosquitoes, and how millions of them were dying from some fungus that grew on their faces. Good riddance.

As the night grew late, I found myself on a website about vampire bats, the South American species that liked to drink cow’s blood, and the occasional sleeping human’s.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamt of Casper, my childhood kitty, twining around my legs. Except when I bent down to pet him, a torrent of yellow maggots spilled out of his empty eye sockets and piled up in a squirming mass around my ankles. I woke up drenched in sweat, ran into the bathroom, stripped off my nightgown, and examined my entire body for bites. False alarm.

To figure out what the dream had meant, I logged onto Occultopedia, which explained how cats could be familiars for vampires. I laughed aloud. Still, for no other reason than to distract myself, I kept reading and learned that familiars didn’t have to be cats, they could be any sort of creature. Like insects?

Yes, I’m a medium who was born with the ability to speak to the dead. That doesn’t mean I believed in vampires. I turned off the computer, checked my bed—all clear, thank heavens—took two Xanax and two Ambien, and shut off the light.

I woke up in the middle of the night scratching my neck. I hit the light, flung off my nightgown mid-sprint to the bathroom to stare at my pale, goose-bumped flesh in the mirror. My eyes still blurry from sleep, it took me a few seconds to make sure what I was seeing was real.

Lifting my chin to get a better look, I traced a finger over a pair of red spots directly over my jugular vein. The bites, two inches apart, almost looked like fang marks. I sat down hard on the closed toilet lid.

I’m not naïve, but years of communicating with the dead taught me to have an open mind. If there were lost souls among us yearning for contact, then the undead was just as likely.

It was the middle of the night, but I had to tell the world what I had uncovered. I called Arianne but, of course, it went to voice mail. I rushed over to the computer, and typing in a frenzy, dashed off emails to the local TV, print, and radio media outlets explaining my revelation:

How it’s not only bats that are a vampire’s familiar, but bat bugs, too. How the bats find their way inside a home, transporting the bugs, which siphon off the victim’s blood and crawl back to their master for him to feast on.

After all, if you’re a hungry vampire, why go to the trouble of a restaurant when you can get home delivery, lying in bed (in coffin?) as you pop one blood-filled bug after another into your mouth like bonbons? I implored the journalists to do their jobs for once and report on what was happening before it was too late.

I shut down the computer, and paced around my apartment, smacking the side of my head, trying to get the thoughts to flow. I had to accept that, even if the authorities got involved, it wouldn’t be in time to save me. As always, I was on my own. I scratched the bites on my neck until they bled.

Clearly, it was pointless to try to stop the bats from coming in. The bugs were already there, breeding under the carpet, behind the furniture, in the walls. Like unwanted houseguests, as long as I kept the refrigerator full—in this case, my veins—they weren’t going anywhere. I laughed at the idea of the vampire bugs as some deadbeat relatives mooching off my hospitality. And kept laughing, until the answer came to me.

My