Common Oddities Speculative Fiction Sideshow, Autumn 2014

By Provision Books

The Autumn 2014 issue of The Common Oddities Speculative Fiction Sideshow is an eclectic mix of science fiction, fantasy, and poetry by established and up-and-coming authors. All issues of COSFS are archived at www.commonodditiessideshow.com. Published by www.ProvisionBooks.com.

Jessica E. Thomas, Editor
Cover art by OddMrT.com

Contributors:
Melissa McDaniel
Lawrence Buentello
Mirtika
Andy Decker
Jill Domschot
Lou Antonelli
Ed Shacklee
Stoney M. Setzer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Provision Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311799661

Book preview

THE COMMON ODDITIES

SPECULATIVE FICTION SIDESHOW

Issue 3, Autumn 2014

Jessica E. Thomas, Editor

Cover art by OddMrT.com

Contributors:

Melissa McDaniel

Lawrence Buentello

Mirtika

Andy Decker

Jill Domschot

Lou Antonelli

Ed Shacklee

Stoney M. Setzer

^@~@^

PUBLISHED BY:

Provision Books on Smashwords

The Common Oddities Speculative Fiction Sideshow

Copyright © 2014 by Provision Books

www.provisionbooks.com

http://www.commonodditiessideshow.com

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Switches

The Bells that Rang for the Reluctant Sylph’s Wedding

Highlight on the Guided Tour of the Fairy Tale Museum

It Takes a Boring Person

Medieval Mars Review

Bigfoot Fruit

Will You, Cthulhu

The Biggest Man in the Universe

The Challenge

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THE SWITCHES

By Melissa McDaniel

The only thing I wanted were Helen’s hands. I would never be content without those elegant, tapering fingertips, those ten curling candlesticks of perfection. On hands like those, rings and bracelets hung themselves, like so many beautiful corpses. Hands like those were not like hands at all, but more like two golden paper fans, folded delicately in her lap. The moment I saw them, I was in love.

I met Helen when she came to one of The Flying Hampsters’ shows, back when seeing The Flying Hampsters was the only thing we ever did, back when they played at a little dive bar called Tubby’s. Tubby’s was the kind of place you went at three in the morning after everything else was slowly folding in on itself, the night’s last, desperate gasp.

On a rainy Thursday at nine o’clock, there was hardly anyone there. Just my friend Allison, the band, a few local groupies, and me. Allison and I sat at the bar doing shots with Josh the bartender, who was attractive despite his premature hair loss. The bar lights glowed through his thin hair like the sunrise spilling over a rain-starved field.

Allison was telling me about the last in her string of bad relationships. I haven’t even cried about it in a week, she said.

That’s good, I said, only half-listening. That’s really good.

Sometimes, she said, I have this dream that they’re all in the same room—all the boys I’ve ever dated, or might have dated, I mean. They’re all wearing matching sweaters, and I have to walk around in a blindfold and recognize them based on the smell of their breath.

I asked her how she knew they were wearing matching sweaters if she was always blindfolded.

I’m not sure how I know, she said. I guess in dreams, I’m never really weighed down by my body. My eyes kind of float aimlessly over the room, seeing everything all at once.

I have a dream that’s kind of like that, I said. Only in mine, all of my ex-boyfriends’ body parts are scattered in a pile on the floor. And I have to do Switches, pasting all the best pieces together to make one perfect boyfriend.

Allison sighed. That’s so you.

Allison didn’t care for Switches because she was pretty, even before Switches were commercially available. But I wasn’t jealous of her. I was only jealous of teenagers who had never suffered through adolescence with untamable frizzy hair or furry wrists that drooped like a gorilla’s. These days I spent all of my savings on buying Switches. I traded my dry elbows for smooth, soft ones; my murky brown eyes for deep, penetrating turquoise. My most recent prize was a set of full, pouty lips that I pursed nervously whenever Josh the bartender looked in my direction.

I told Josh he should Switch his scalp for a full head of hair, maybe something dark and wavy, like the bassist’s in The Flying Hampsters, but he just laughed and shook his head at me.

There are other things I’d much rather blow a paycheck on, he said, waving his eyebrows deviously.

You have to spend money to make money, I argued. Maybe with some more hair you could move up to a nice cocktail bar and call yourself a mixologist.

But once you make a Switch, Josh said, frowning, you can never Switch back again. The change is permanent.

That was true. The operation was fairly simple, severing the organic nerves and replacing them with artificial ones. Once you made your first Switch on any particular body part, whether it was an arm, a nose, or an ear, you could always upgrade. But the nerves would never listen to organic signals again. Your old arm, or ear, would not function if you tried to re-attach it.

Is that really such a loss? I asked.

I noticed Allison glaring into her glass, but Josh just laughed and shook his head at me again.

After he turned away, Allison told me she agreed with Josh. Switches are risky, she said. You should be careful. You can get all kinds of messed up diseases from them. A bad part can kill you.

I rolled