Mythic #16: Spring 2021: MYTHIC, #16

By Shaun Kilgore

Mythic #16: Spring 2021 includes fifteen original short stories from talented writers stretching across the vastness of sci-fi and fantasy fiction plus nonfiction essays, reviews, and more. Inside you'll find stories by Jean Graham, JR Gershen-Siegel, Bo Balder, Andrew Kozma, D.A. D'Amico, Mike Adamson, E.L. Bates, Dylan T. Jeninga, Tom Jolly, Arnaldo Lopez Jr, Matthew Hooton, Stephen Pimentel, David Scott Anderson, Dawn Vogel, and Calie Voorhis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Founders House Publishing LLC
• Release date: Apr 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781386354307

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

Editor’s Note | Shaun Kilgore

Killing Ground | Jean Graham

A True Believer in Skepticism | JR Gershel-Siegel

Grey-Blooming Nightmare | Bo Balder

The Prom Monster | Andrew Kozma

Sand Trap | D.A. D'Amico

The Headsman of Garth | Mike Adamson

The Last Defense | E.L. Bates

NONFICTION: Why Not Out There: Possible Life on Extra Solar Planets | D.A. D'Amico

NONFICTION: Is Genre a Four-Letter Word? | Joshua Grasso

Pirates of Titan | Dylan T. Jeninga

The Tree and the Wind| Tom Jolly

Takeout | Arnaldo Lopez Jr.

Mr Edison’s Explorers | Matthew Hooton

The Eyes of the King | Stephen Pimentel

Hedions | David Scott Anderson

Fiddle in the Middle | Dawn Vogel

Ibn and the Djinn | Calie Voorhis

REVIEW: The Bone Shard Daughter | Stephen Reid Case

REVIEW: 10 Billion | Frank Kaminski

Special Thanks

Copyright Information

MYTHIC

A SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE

ISSUE #16 | SPRING 2021

Editor’s Note

Shaun Kilgore

HELLO AGAIN, EVERYONE. Since Issue #16, there have been some changes to what was to be the new format for the magazine. Instead of the planned bi-monthly version, I’ve scaled back to bi-annual issues. There will be a spring and fall issue of MYTHIC every year and each on will include between fifteen and twenty short stories as well as essays, articles, reviews, and other content. This change comes in responses to changes in the rest of my life and other responsibilities so I’ve had to adjust the balance accordingly. I think by concentrating the content into two thicker issues will be a nice bonus for those who love short fiction.

The other piece of news is that thanks to all of the support the Kickstarter/subscription drive received, MYTHIC will now be able to pay authors 4 CENTS A WORD for original, unpublished fiction. This is a great move in the right direction. Honestly, I places MYTHIC halfway to professional market status according to the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, which is 8 CENTS A WORD.

As always, my deep, heartfelt thanks go out to the many people who have support MYTHIC over the last four years and I hope I can count on you in the coming years as we regain our footing and prosper. I believe we can forge a new path and eventually achieve the goal of becoming a professional short fiction market.

Killing Ground

Jean Graham

MAMA HAD DEMONS.

This house is where they’d first whispered in her ear, and where they’d first told her to do The Terrible Thing.

You’d never know, to look at it today. Middle class suburban tract house on a corner lot. Two car garage, rose bushes, philodendrons. And a wrap-around lawn, more brown than green right now, thanks to the perpetual California drought.

For an hour, I’d been staring at that lawn from my car, which I’d parked across the street in front of what used to be Pastor Hale’s church. The church had a new name and a new minister these days. It was a good bet that the neighbors were all new, too. The Terrible Thing, after all, had happened forty years ago, and no one wanted to remember it.

No one except me.

The For Sale sign looked dirty and shopworn, as though it had been there for years. Probably had.

Gee, tough house to sell, you think? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe somebody else did remember.

I got out of the car, and took my time crossing the street to the lawn’s edge. I didn’t walk on it, though. Not yet. I needed to remember just where the spot, the killing ground, had been. There, or... No, it was there, about where the real estate post stood, leaning slightly, its sign creaking every time the breeze stirred.

I stepped onto the lawn. Parched grass crunched under my feet. Four paces in, and I knew I’d been right. It was here.

Here, on a sweltering June day filled with water sprinklers, ice cream trucks, and kids playing on bikes and skates, Mama’s demons had made her do it.

I sat down on the lawn, my back against the sign post. Didn’t give a damn what any passers-by might think of the weird woman with a large red shoulder bag sitting there on the ground.

I had reason.

I spread my fingers and put my right hand on the grass. On the spot.

And heard the screams.

Peter and I hid under my bed when it started. Mama yelling that she meant to kill us all was how it always started. She’d do it this time, though. We’d watched her get the big butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer. Before she turned around again, we ran into the bedroom, twisted the lock and scrambled under the bed’s dust-ruffled box spring.

Mama hadn’t been far behind us. We heard her body-slam the door, shrieking our names.

Peter! Trisha! Another slam against the door, then a string of profanities, and, You get out here, damn you! Get out here right now!

Shaking, we just hugged each other and stayed put while Mama’s assault on the door went on and on, until...

More screams—coming through the thin wall from the bedroom next to mine. Coming from the babies.

My door rattled one more time. Then, footsteps. The sound of the next room’s door being opened. And the babies, crying even louder.

I hugged Peter tighter and started to cry, a tear-choked mantra. No, Mama, no, Mama, no, Mama, noooooooo!

Babies screaming. Mama screaming. Thumps, thuds, more footsteps, and the click-bump of the front door being opened.

A few moments after that, the screaming stopped.

A rapid knocking on our door, now, and a man’s voice, frantic. Trisha! Peter! It’s Richard Hale! Open the door!

Pastor Hale! I crawled out, dragging a still-sobbing Peter with me, to unlock the door. The instant it came open, the pastor wrapped strong arms around us and rushed us down the hall, through the front door. Into hell.

He tried to shield our eyes with his hands. Don’t look, he said, and guided us down the porch steps to the right, toward the church. Don’t look.

But I had to look.

At the neighbors gathered in clumps on the street, murmuring, gaping, some of them crying.

And at Mama, standing frozen on the lawn, the butcher knife still in her hand. And on the ground...

I screamed.

The pastor swept us away then, escaping the carnage just as the first of a squadron of police cruisers wailed around the corner.

Blood. Oh, God, there had been so much blood.

My hand rested now on the exact place where the blood had soaked into the thirsty grass. Didn’t have to guess anymore. I knew precisely, because... well, because ever since that day, Mama’s demons had been whispering in my ear, too.

Slumming, Trisha?

I jumped, and the bag slipped off my shoulder to land in the grass beside the thing that had spoken. A very small, spiky thing. A horned toad.

Yeah, slumming, I said, glaring at it. Then I had to ask. Which one are you?

Stitch. His needle teeth formed a grotesque rictus. Lizard’s smile. We knew you’d come.

That’s a comfort. I pulled the fallen bag into my lap, looping the strap back over my shoulder. Doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here, though.

Stitch’s spiked head tilted to one side. We knew you’d come, he repeated. "And we knew why. You came because forty years of therapy hasn’t done a damned thing. You came to use that paring knife in your purse to open your veins. You came to feed the killing ground."

Little bastards had been reading my mind again. Go to hell, I said stupidly, and you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard a lizard laugh. He laughed so hard that his clawed feet danced him in a little circle, and the scaly flap of skin under his chin danced, too.

Any time now, he snorted. Then the laughter finally stopped and he became, literally, dead serious. But you’ll be coming with me.

Annoyed but acquiescent, I reached into the bag and pulled the paring knife free, running my thumb lightly over its razor sharp edge. That was my plan, I said.

Still is. Yellow-rimmed eyes greedy with blood lust, Stitch did miniature push-ups in the grass, repeating himself with each lift of his scrawny legs. Still is. Still is. He darted abruptly away then, running a short distance across the lawn in pursuit of... what? I saw the fly just as his tongue lashed out and snatched it from the air. As he downed it with a satisfied gulp, then turned to amble back toward me, I wondered how he could possibly know that the fly hadn’t been one of his own kind. Probably didn’t matter. You couldn’t kill them, whatever form they took, and if you tried, they only returned later on as something else—rat, spider, dung beetle. They weren’t particular.

When Stitch came back from his snack, he kept on coming, crawling onto my jeans at the knee and up my thigh to the spot where my left hand rested, holding the knife.

Nice blade, he opined. Shall we get on with it?

I didn’t.

You couldn’t get the babies, though, could you? I looked down at my right hand, still on the spot where all the blood had been. Pastor Hale always said that babies were innocents. Hadn’t reached what he called ‘the age of accountability.’ So they go to Heaven, no matter what.

One quick slash on each wrist, he advised, completely ignoring everything I’d said. That’s all it takes.

Funny thing is, I’d completely forgotten the other thing he told me, until just now, I said, ignoring him back. He told me you wouldn’t get Mama either, when her time came. Bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic. Not her fault. Like the babies, not accountable. So after all the terrible things you made her do...

One wrist will be enough. Slash just one, then.

With the fingers of my left hand, I turned the paring knife over, then over again. Such a tiny thing. So unlike the huge butcher knife Mama took from the kitchen drawer that day.

Maybe, I said, "I should have paid more attention back then to all the other things the good reverend had to say."

I’d never known that horned toads could hiss. It’s totally painless, he lied. Simple. You cut, I drink, and then...

You take my soul, I finished. The same way your kind took Peter’s soul three years ago, when he couldn’t kick the cocaine habit and shot himself. Seems therapy never did him any damned good, either.

Want to see him again? Stitch’s claws flexed, pricking through my jeans and into my thigh. Just do what you came here to do.

And what if I say no? What if I decide I’d rather go where the babies went, and in my own good time?

He hissed again, the claws digging into me deeper. Bitch! I don’t need your consent, you know! And those sharp teeth sank into the flesh of my thumb, instantly drawing blood.

Get off! I swatted him, hard, sent him tumbling head over horn-tailed ass across the lawn. Get away from me! I shouted at him. "And stay away. All of you!"

But he came scuttling right back, tail lashing side to side and blood—my blood—staining that mouth full of razor teeth. He launched himself at my sandals, aiming for the new blood supply of my bare toes.

He didn’t make it.

I snatched him up in mid-leap, and well... did what I had to do. I couldn’t kill him. But I could sure as hell screw up his lizardly incarnation, at least for a little while.

Before I drove away, I slowed just long enough to bid them all good riddance: house, killing ground, Terrible Thing... and pinned with a small paring knife to the post of a faded For Sale sign, the husk of a dead horned toad.

About the Author

Jean Graham’s fiction has appeared in the anthologies Alternative Apocalypse, Memento Mori, Misunderstood, Time of the Vampires, and Dying to Live, as well as in Weirdbook and Mythic Magazine. A member of both SFWA and HWA, she resides in San Diego, CA along with 5000 books, five cats, and one husband.

A True Believer in Skepticism

JR Gershen-Siegel

DENISE NEVER REALLY saw the fair assembled. One day it wasn’t there, and then the next, it was. It was held in a vacant lot near her office. Nobody knew who owned the lot, so there was no one to object.

It was a great deal like an old-fashioned circus, minus the animals. There were jugglers and trapeze artists, foods of all kinds, and games of skill and chance.

Denise took in none of that, hurrying to either go to work or come home. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened in her humdrum life, and she liked it that way.

The fair had been going on for months before she ventured inside. The main tent was crowded with fairgoers and vendors and it felt too close and claustrophobic for her all too sensible tastes. She retreated to a wall.

There was a booth which she had not noticed amidst the crowds. A fellow was seated on a stool, wearing a turban. There was a banner at the front top of the booth which said, ‘The Great Reynaldo Will Tell Your Fortune.’

Denise laughed a little. Fortune tellers were just so much hokum, the product of willing believers who were so chatty they would give their secrets away willingly. A scam artist merely needed to be good at reading body language, asking leading questions, following up on the answers, and convincingly recover from unexpected or out and out wrong answers.

You are skeptical, the Great Reynaldo commented, Miss Czechowski.

Denise was careful not to react, instead confining the double take to her thoughts. How did he know my name? What did you just call me?

I called you by your name. Or would you prefer Denise? I’m only trying to be respectful.

You saw my driver’s license when I paid for my, my ticket. Involuntarily, she fidgeted a little.

I have been back here the whole time. And we both know you didn’t need a ticket to get in here. Even the main tent has free admission.

You saw one of my credit cards when you sold me a soda.

I haven’t sold you anything.

I mean you, the fair, collectively. You’ve got accomplices everywhere, advance scouts. I’ve seen how fake faith healers work. I know all about your little tricks and scams.

So you believe I have confederates?

I don’t just believe it. I know you do.

I see. And so, Denise, you’re here because you’re finally admitting your life is boring.

What?

It is. Your life is utterly dull. It’s a parade of endless gray or tan or brown pantsuits, accented with prim, high-collared blouses, and sensible flats which would be orthopedic if they were any duller.

How rude!

I’m not finished, Denise. You punctually arrive at your office and spend your time answering and filing meaningless correspondence for others. You eat your brown-bagged lunch of shaved ham on white bread, with a small apple on the side, always between 11:30 AM and noon sharp. Then you send out even more meaningless correspondence, tidy your already tidy desk, and depart, punctually, at five on the dot.

I—

You walk straight home, always taking precisely ten minutes to go a block down Taylor Street and then a sharp left onto Hoover Street and number 29.

You’ve been spying on me!

We only got to this town a few months ago. I’ve been here the whole time, either in the main tent or on the fairgrounds. We never go into the towns we visit.

While Denise realized she had never seen a stranger at the market or the office or on the street, the whole thing still felt strange and wrong. You’re still a stalker.

First I was a spy, and now I’m a stalker? Seriously, Denise—and with all due respect—but you’ve got nothing, and you do nothing, that anyone would ever want to stalk.

If the whole encounter had been a movie, she would have slapped him then and there. Instead, she announced, I’m leaving. I don’t need to be insulted.

Look, I apologize, all right? Your life may have a great deal of sameness, but it’s still your life. I shouldn’t have judged it so harshly.

Apology accepted.

As Denise turned to brave the crowds again and leave, the Great Reynaldo called out, Wait! I can make it up to you.

How?

I’ll tell you your fortune.

I’ll pass; those are always fakes.

No, no, Denise! This time, it’ll all be true. So what do you say?

She hesitated before answering. It was already getting dark, and her daily supper of baked cod with steamed cauliflower was going to be late. I refuse to pay for whatever it is you think you’re going to predict.

No charge, Denise.

Then why do this?

Like I said; it’ll be to atone for my sins. Here, why don’t you sit down? the Great Reynaldo hopped off the stool and, standing, his body did not seem to be correctly proportioned.

Denise stared for a moment and then remembered that it was rude to do so. Well? she asked.

I’ll start with tonight. You’ll go home, taking the usual route, but this time there’ll be a mugger. Your sensible flats will come in handy. You’ll be able to outrun him.

So you’ll get an accomplice to pretend to try to mug me tonight. Right.

Like I said, we stay in the tents or on the fairgrounds.

Wait—how do you get groceries?

Haven’t you ever heard of delivery, Denise? Now, in a week, you’ll reflect back on our chat and the near-mugging. The incident will convince you to get into better shape. You’ll take up jogging and even sign up for a self-defense class, but you’ll only go to it twice.

Right, right.

You’ll competitively race a few times. It won’t be anything big, but you’ll enjoy it. You’ll change your diet in order to get better at your new hobby. Ham on white bread and plain baked cod with steamed cauliflower just isn’t going to be enough protein or carbs. You’ll cook whole chickens for the first time in years, and will brave a touch of ethnic cooking. You’ll be better at Mexican-style cuisine than Asian.

Sure. As if that would ever happen. Ethnic food was always far too spicy, and it always upset Denise’s digestive system. Staying away from it had been a sensible precaution for years.

In a little less than four years, you’ll meet a couple during one of your jobs. You’ll be friends for a few years, going to movies together, that sort of thing.

I despise the cinema.

You’ll go anyway. And it’ll all go swimmingly until the affair. You’ll break up their marriage.

Now I know you’re crazy. I would never take up with a married man.

"Who said anything about your affair