Kilgore's Five Stories #1: August 2020: Kilgore's Five Stories, #1

By Shaun Kilgore

Kilgore's Five Stories is a new, monthly mini-publication featuring stories by author, editor, and indie publisher, Shaun Kilgore. Each issue includes short fiction from a range of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, contemporary, romance, mystery, and so on. This debut volume includes the following original stories: "The Deadline," "Duty and Devotion," "The Fire," "The Pale Man," and "That Sleepless Wonder."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Founders House Publishing LLC
• Release date: Oct 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393290360

Shaun Kilgore

Shaun Kilgore is the author of various works of fantasy, science fiction, and a number of nonfiction works. His books appear in both print and ebook editions. He has also published numerous short stories and collections. Shaun is the editor of MYTHIC: A Quarterly Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. He lives in eastern Illinois.

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

The Deadline

The Fire

The Pale Man

Duty and Devotion

That Sleepless Wonder

About the Author

Kilgore’s Five Stories

#1 August 2020

Original Short Stories Every Month

Shaun Kilgore

Copyright © 2020 Shaun Kilgore

Published by Founders House Publishing, LLC

Cover art © Philcold | Dreamstime.com

Cover design by Founders House Publishing LLC

www.foundershousepublishing.com

www.shaunkilgore.com

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any semblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Introduction

I’ll admit it. There has been some back and forth about whether to launch this project. Back in 2010 I got the idea of doing five-story collections of my short stories from Dean Wesley Smith. I ended up doing three little volumes, Five Stories: Volumes One, Two, and Three, that bundled the original fifteen stories I wrote and self-published, regardless of genre, which you can still find online today. After that, I abandoned the idea of the short collections and focused my efforts elsewhere. I wrote other sci-fi and fantasy stories and put them in larger collections called that I’ve called Other Realms.

I was prompted again, by Dean Wesley Smith’s continued ideas and innovations within the indie publishing realm. He published his own monthly magazine that contained strictly his works, Smith’s Monthly. This led to the creation of my my quarterly magazine of sci-fi and fantasy, MYTHIC.

More recently, I was prompted to consider a return to short, five-story collections, but this time in the form of a regular mini-publication. This time, I decided to call it Kilgore’s Five Stories and I’ve determined that I would put out new issues every month. Yep, a true monthly magazine of only my work, kind of like Smith’s Monthly—only smaller!

Originally, I was going to limit this new project to only my sci-fi and fantasy stories, but I’ve decided I didn’t want to be limited to one or two genres. Rather, I figured why not go for it and just put whatever kind of stories I wanted in each volume. It would be a place for experimentation and practice as I tried new genres or new approaches to the familiar ones.

That’s what you’ll find in this first issue of Kilgore’s Five Stories: a collection that includes fantasy, contemporary, and a touch of horror. With that, I’ll let you get started reading. I hope you enjoy my stories.

Shaun Kilgore

August 2020

The Deadline

JACK, YOU’RE KILLING me here. Where are the pages? You said you’d have three stories for me this week. I’ve got deadlines to meet. You are putting me in a tough position here. So? What’s the deal?

The restaurant was bustling at lunchtime, a perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke made it hard to see and the dim lighting didn’t help either. Sitting across from me was Walter Felding, the editor of Tales Of Suspense, one of the popular pulp rags that churned out exciting adventure stories for the masses. He was also my boss. He was always squinting behind those thick glasses he wore and liked to brush his finger across a moustache so thin it looked like he might have penciled it on.

Well, they’re not finished yet. Kind of hit a few roadblocks.

Roadblocks? What the hell do you mean? Come on, Jack. I don’t want to hear those kinds of excuses from you.

The air was stifling, the ceiling fans doing little to relieve the heat. Another late summer heatwave to leave you soaked in your best suit.

I reached inside my coat pocket for a cigarette. There were none left in the pack. Damn. I need a smoke.

Walter was waving a cigarette around while he went on about about deadlines and how he and the other editors wondered why they bothered to pay hack writers like me a penny and a half a word to put out stories week in and week out. He took random drags, tipping his head back to blow out the smoke adding it to the larger cloud. My eyes hurt a little and the urge to bum a cigarette off Walter was bigger than the need to slap him for insulting me.

Walter, can I get a cigarette?

Walter stopped midsentence, his mouth wide open and ready to continue his tirade. What? Or yeah, sure. Here you go.

He handed me the cigarette and even proffered a light. I leaned back and took a long, slow drag on it, letting the smoke just sit in there and burn in my chest before I let it out. Just like that I’d broken some kind of spell. Walter sipped his scotch and looked at me, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t want to get into it now. I was ready to go back to my apartment and crawl into bed. Not a wink of sleep the previous night.

Listen, I began, pausing to rub my eyes. I’ll have the last of the pages to you before tomorrow’s deadline. Okay, Walter?

Walter looked ready to argue, but said, Fine. I want them on my desk tomorrow at five. We’ll make it work, Jack. After all, we don’t want to disappoint the Maxwell Dunn fans.

Maxwell Dunn. The name of my alter ego, my nom de plume, the pen name I used for so