Tourist Season

By Deven Balsam

Sometimes the darkness becomes too familiar. Sometimes, love lights the way out.

One of Zeus's own children has a favorite office, hidden deep beneath the streets of Asheville, NC. Hades' existence, while satisfying, is due for a surprise when his path converges with that of Korey, a gifted art student.

Part of Seasons of Love Anthology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786452498

Deven Balsam

Deven Balsam is a single dad, resident DJ at Asheville North Carolina’s oldest running gay bar, and new author of sci fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction. He weaves a bit of romance, horror, and spirituality into everything he writes. Originally a Yankee from the New York metropolitan area, he currently lives on a mountain at the edge of 250 acres of Pisgah National Forest, and that suits him just fine.

Book preview

Korey

The sight of it reminded him of its scent, rain and wind, the split sky of darkness and blue. Bruised thunder burling and growling at its lover from across the contrail streaks, eggshell sunshine sweating its serpentine skin, a full-bellied, feathery snake preening above an unseasonably warm November landscape. The maples held their yellow coins in gnarled fingers. The oaks shivered as the death-sweet wind teased their vintage, book-paper leaves, trying to pry them loose like a banker pulls a deposit slip from a confused, old man.

Korey held his sketchbook with light fingers as he crossed Biltmore Avenue, where the 240 ramps rose and fell. He jogged a little faster when a green Mini came too close. The day was so beautiful that pedestrians had become invisible, and he was no exception.

The whimsical neighborhood of Montford reflected the patchwork sky. Shadows crept like wind-spooked cats across ribald facades. Korey passed green gingerbread, purple craftsman, petal-pink Tudor, all garish yet pleasing beneath the half-ink sky.

A crow balanced on a streetlamp wire, tipping forward and back, calling to its kin, graw graw graw. Its number and its signature. Crows numbered two and five quickly answered and joined three, and they all flapped away towards the blue side.

Then he felt the sadness come, sidelong grief clipping him like the green Mini almost had. He nearly dropped his sketchbook. He knew where to go now, where the day had tried to lead him. Down Cullowhee, right at the sign, up the inclining streets to greener, quieter hills.

He stopped to watch the shadows of the trees looming overhead. The clouds above raced before the rampant wind, yet the coal-hued arms of shadow upon the asphalt remained fixed.

Korey continued on, hurrying through the black iron gates of Riverside Cemetery.

###

Hello, Bell. Hi, Wilson. Howdy, Stern.

Something