The Best of MetaStellar Year One: Best of MetaStellar, #1

By Kerry E.B. Black, Glenn Bresciani, William C. Burns, Jr. and 41 more

Forty-one enthralling stories from the most talented new science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers.

 

MetaStellar is an online publication focusing on science fiction, fantasy, and horror launched in September 2020, founded by a dozen speculative fiction writers, editors, and artists from around the world.

 

Since then, it's published hundreds of short stories by hundreds of writers, both original fiction, reprints, and excerpts. The proceeds from this anthology will help pay for even more original fiction in years to come.

 

Read about how...

 

A band of faeries endeavors to help a worthy little girl… 

– "Twinkle" by Katrinka Mannelly

 

Lizzie Williams keeps a head in a burlap sack…

– "Lizzie Williams' Swampy Head" by Joshua Jones

 

It's never a good thing to wake up and find yourself covered in marigolds…            

– "How the Monarchs Came to Utah" by E. E. King

 

The old storms have gone away, and a little wonder has gone out of the world with them…

– "The Old Storms" by Nina Shepardson

 

In a society where everybody is beautiful, physical imperfection becomes a career move…

– "Bellatrification" by Jelena Dunato

 

Two cyborgs, a woman, and a parrot, are outmatched by their deep space competitors…

– "A Ship With No Parrot" by R. J. Theodore

 

A dentist with a dark family history receives a request to fit a patient with a very unique set of teeth…

̶  "Second Bite" by Aeryn Rudel

 

A hayride with an old friend from the past unveils uncomfortable truths…

– "William's Legacy" by Bridget Haug

 

… and thirty-two other short tales of wonder, shock, and awe.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: MetaStellar Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201156572

Book preview

No Worlds Left To Conquer

Charles Q Choi

Charles Quixote Choi is a science journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Science, Nature, Scientific American, Popular Science, Inside Science, Wired.com and Space.com, among others. He has also traveled to every continent and holds the rank of yondan in the Toyama-ryu battodo style of Japanese swordsmanship. His first sale, By the Will of the Gods, appeared in the January-February-2021 issue of Analog.

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It took a while for Jane Lee to figure out that her life as she knew it was over.

After the aliens came, at first Jane was as happy as everyone else on Earth that they apparently came in peace. It was only after her agent stopped returning her calls that Jane began to realize she might be out of a job.

Science fiction was Jane's life. She wrote short stories, novels, comics, television, movies. She was the youngest winner ever of the Hugo and Nebula. She met both an ex-wife and an ex-husband at cons.

The problem was there wasn't much call for sci-fi writers to imagine aliens when we now had them right in front of us. Why did we need stories about what life on Alpha Centauri might be like when we could now see the ruins there ourselves? Why come up with stories about killer robots when we've met extraordinarily sophisticated machine civilizations that just made such tales seem—what, gauche? racist? machinist? Jane might as well have been a buggy whip maker or a Betamax engineer.

There was still work out there for science fiction writers. It just wasn't in science fiction. Jane's friends Stanley and Estelle rapidly became pundits on the talk show circuit. Anson and Alice already had pasts in the military and in intelligence and were quickly called back into the fold. Edward and Alan had previously worked in space, and vanished into think tanks.

Not everyone was that lucky. Alec went into accounting and cut off all ties to his old writing life.

Jane's life began to slowly collapse. A greenlit film got canned. Her wife left her. Her mistress left her.

Jane wasn't going to become homeless straight away if she no longer wrote sci-fi. She had alimony to pay, but had enough in the bank to last her a while.

The problem was that Jane dreamed for a living. By taking away her living, they took away her dreams.

It was after a week-long drinking binge that Jane, bleary-eyed under her multi-colored hair, checked her voicemail to find 30 or so calls from her agent. The reason made her laugh sick to her stomach. Her agent was calling to remind Jane that next day, she was getting the Grand Master Award for a lifetime of achievement in science fiction.

So what else could Jane do? She went to pick up what she thought might be the last such award to ever be given. It was like accepting the gold watch she was due before retiring with the rest of her kind to the dustbin of history.

Jane staggered hungover into the convention hall. She stumbled past the jackal pack of journalists before she hazily realized there were far more reporters at this award show than at any of the past ones.

It was after they handed Jane her award that she noticed the extraterrestrials in the audience. It was the first time Jane had ever seen any aliens in person.

So that's why my agent sounded so frantic over the phone, she thought in her stupor.

It was in a Q&A session hosted after the award show that everything changed for Jane. The reporters were really only there for the aliens, so only a few of them made even half-hearted attempts to ask her anything. When it was clear the aliens had some questions of their own, everyone else shut up immediately.

As the large red Singingwing approached toward the mic, Jane went over everything she knew about them in a blur. Descended from grazers. Used finger-like appendages on specialized limbs to drink nectar. Didn't have mouths to talk with. Communicated with the humming of their vestigial wings. Wait, didn't I scarf down a bunch of crudités in front of them between announcements? They found life that ate other life a bit revolting, right? Was that a huge faux pas? Never mind, they forgave that fact in other species? Right?

The Singingwing chirped. The alien's mechanical interpreter spoke her question out loud in a jewel-like melodious voice.

Where do you get your ideas from?

Schenectady, Jane blurted out without thinking. (She lifted that from Harlan Ellison. Good writers borrow, great writers steal.) She started to correct herself to give a real answer, but the Singingwing, to Jane's surprise, seemed to understand the joke and laugh.

By the way, it would mean the world to me if you could autograph my copy of 'Invisible Light.'

Um. Of course, Jane said. Who should I make it out to?

Fhhzzzthrr.

...How do you spell that?

Fhhzzzthrr.

After one of the machine intelligences stepped up to the mic to not so much ask a question as to offer a fairly convoluted theory that romantically linked two of the main characters of Jane's show Strange Angels, it dawned on her who she was dealing with.

Janes was dealing with fans.

It was with the last question, from a cyborganic gasbag, that Jane saw her old life end and a new life begin.

So what are you working on now? they asked.

Later, Jane wondered if the entire rigamarole was the sort of thing these aliens did whenever they encountered an infant species like ours. The kind of gesture that helped spark the drive for us to keep going, even when it seemed that others before us had already done whatever we might want to do and gone wherever we might want to go.

Jane didn't care. She was dreaming again.

Well, you see, she said, it starts beyond the edge of known space...

Jane's agent expected the story would fetch an astronomical advance.

Twinkle

Katrinka Mannelly

Katrinka Mannelly writes and lives in Fircrest, Wash. with her husband Brian, daughter Tigist, dog Queenie and cat Riptide. Her book, Section 130, is available in hardcover and ebook formats. Check out what she's up to at 130andBeyond.com.

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Okay, people, we are a go on dandelion seeds. I repeat, we are a go. Look sharp. Nixie and Cedric, inhale. And release in three, two, one. Blow, blow.

Despite her ragged clothes and empty stomach the little girl skipped down the trail, all smiles, singing a cheery tune. As she rounded a grand old chestnut, a cluster of dandelion puffs wafted her way. She giggled, reached out and caught one.

We have contact.

The curly-haired girl raised her clenched fist to her lips, squeezed her eyes shut and grinned, lifting her rosy, dirt-smudged cheeks skyward. She whispered into her hand and unwound her fingers in a quick sweep. As the feathery bristle caught the wind and drifted off, the girl continued on her merry way.

H.Q., do we have a wish?

Silence, tense and painful.

H.Q., can you confirm? Has a wish been registered? Over.

We have a wish.

The team fluttered into the air, emitting shrieks, whistles and cheers.

It’s coming in now.

Elva waved her tiny hand frantically urging the others to quiet down. Everyone listened, breath bated.

She wished for the baby’s cough to abate. Repeat, she spent it on the baby. It’s another misfire, folks.

Elation turned to long faces, slumped shoulders, and dips in altitude in as many seconds as it took to hear the news. Weary and downtrodden, they feared they would never get the kid out of abject poverty, away from her wicked guardians and on a path toward the life she deserved if she didn’t start wishing for herself.

They’d been on the job a solid year experiencing one failure after another. The long half of the wishbone went to her older brother finding employment, which incidentally led him away from their dreadful little cottage and life, compounding her misery. Coins conveniently lying by the well were tossed with hopes of healing her foster mother’s sore feet, her family finding much needed firewood, and toward the goat having twins.

Determined, the fey band managed to manipulate a long noodle, not only into her household, but into her supper bowl—a major coup. They held their collective breath as she slurped the whole thing down without breaking it and then wept over a wish spent on saving the neighbors' chickens from an obstinate fox.

They sent rainbows her way and placed pennies in her path. Selflessly, she bequeathed wish after wish away, becoming more and more worthy with each sacrifice. Fortunately, fairies never quit.

For the umpteenth time, Elva sighed deeply, gathered her reserve and reaffirmed her resolve. First star, you’re up. We have an hour until sunset. Cue, clear twilight. We are a go for star light, star bright. We need twinkle, people. Let’s move.

Lizzie Williams' Swampy Head

Joshua Jones

Joshua Jones Lofflin’s writing has appeared in The Best Microfictions 2020, The Best Small Fictions 2019, The Cincinnati Review, CRAFT, Paper Darts, SmokeLong Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Maryland. Find him on Twitter at @jnjoneswriter or visit his website at JJLofflin.com.

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It was during those months of strangling, watery heat when Lizzie Williams first told us about the head. She kept it in a burlap sack and would walk everywhere with it slung over her shoulder. When she grew tired, she let it bump along behind her in the rusty dirt. It don’t mind, she told us. It’s just a head.

A penny would get you a peek. A nickel a good look, just long enough to squint at the shadowed features. Some saw a freckly boy. Others a wrinkly old woman. Junie Lee said it was nothing but a dirty skull, but she was dirty herself and nobody paid her any mind. Ida Wallace shouted, It’s smiling at me, then Lizzie Williams snapped the sack shut and said the good look was over, even though it hadn’t been five mississippis and she knew it.

A dime, she said, and it’ll answer a question.

Any question? I asked and fished out the coin I’d snuck from my mama’s bingo jar.

Anything, Lizzie lisped through snaggled teeth, but there, in the fading light behind the school, all I could think to ask was where it came from. Then the sack’s shadowy folds stirred, and a croaking voice said, The swamp.

Dawn Macy said I was stupid to ask such a dumb question. Where else would swampy Lizzie Williams get such a thing? Lizzie, who brought baby gators to school. Lizzie, whose hair smelled like spoiled turtle eggs. Lizzie, who now skipped off to the snake-ridden hollow where she and her pappy lived, her pockets jingle jangling with coins. She hummed a song as she went, an I-got-all-your-money tune.

The next day, she met us beneath the monkey bars with an icy Coca-Cola in one hand and the sack dragging behind her. The sun glowered overhead as she slurped her soda through a paper straw. Don’t be sore, she told us then said the head could tell us secrets, as long as we told it one first. She set up a confessional in the janitor’s tin-roofed shed, beneath strange silhouettes of shovels and rakes and claw-like shears. We lined up outside and wondered what kind of secret Fannie Miller must be spilling to be taking so long; we laughed when Sue-Ann Phelps came out all quick and blushing; we grew quiet when Junie Lee emerged, her shoulders drooping more than usual. When it was my turn, the head’s sooty eyes bore into me until I blurted out my darkest secret, forgetting to be quiet, forgetting that Lizzie was right there, her smile stretching wider and wider like a frog. The head whispered its own secret back, its voice harsh as lye, its breath like rotting peat.

We didn’t share the secrets the head told us but eyed one another crookedly beneath the day’s heavy heat. Finally, Lizzie Williams came out saying it sure was hot and she could do with another Coke. Then she skipped along, the sack bouncing over her shoulder. Through a tear in the sack, the head stared at us. Some of us said it winked.

I hate that head, Dawn Macy said, though we knew she didn’t mean it. The first thunder of the day rolled across us, and we watched clouds billow up and waited for the sky to darken, waited for Lizzie Williams to come past with another Coke. She had all our soda money and all our secrets and we had nothing. One of us, and we can’t agree on who, said we should get a head of our own.

So that’s how we came to follow Lizzie Williams to her and her pappy’s place. We carried shovels and spades for digging, hatchets and sling blades for cutting through thickets of palmettos. It was growing dark beneath the live oaks’ black, oily leaves, and soon the rain would pelt us hard.

Lizzie lived in a small, squat shack that leaned to one side, its front porch half fell-off already. She was inside, lighting a lantern; in the dark of the shack, her head bobbed about from window to window. There was no sign of her pappy. The yard was weeds and sand, and our tools were sharp; soon we’d dug head-sized holes all across it, sometimes crying out when we thought we hit something. We must’ve carried on like that for about an hour as the sky grew tighter about us, until Lizzie Williams sauntered onto her porch and demanded to know what all the commotion was. She cradled the head in her arm like a baby. It was even uglier out of the sack. It grinned as she spoke.

Get on out of here. My pappy will have a fit if he sees y’all messing up our yard.

We want ourselves a head, Lizzie Williams, we said.

There’s just the one, and it’s mine. Lizzie hopped down from her porch and told us all to scram. Heat lightning rippled across the clouds and a flurry of nightjars took flight.

We told her we knew there was another head, and we aimed to dig it up, and she better tell us where it was.

There aint no more heads, she said, and the wicked thing in her arm wheezed out a laugh like the sawing of cattails.

We called her a liar. Said there had to be another one. Ask the head, we cried, and she did, while we leaned on our shovels and sharp spades and waited for the head to answer in its raspy, smoky voice:

There’s another head.

And it laughed. And we looked round. And thunder split the sky. And Lizzie Williams looked at us and our tools with her round, round eyes in her round, round face. And she said, What y’all staring at? And the head laughed some more. And the rain, it finally let go.

A New Home

Ted Hayden

Ted Hayden's stories have appeared in literary publications including Newfound Journal, genre publications including Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and his Nature: Futures short These 5 Books Go 6 Feet Deep will be anthologized in an upcoming short story collection from the UK publisher Head of Zeus. Read more of his work at tedhaydenstories.com.

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The moment Andrea walked through its front door, the East Side apartment began tracking her data. The home, programmed to monitor moods, welcomed its new tenant by raising the blinds and letting the day’s sunlight pour into every room.

As months passed, it archived memories and tuned its instruments with increasing precision, recording the pheromone changes, facial expressions, and language patterns that revealed Andrea’s state of mind. On weekday mornings when she repeatedly hit the alarm clock’s snooze button, it tempted her out of bed by preparing strong pots of coffee. As she rooted through closets preparing for Saturday nights with friends, it played up-tempo pop songs in every room. After she returned late reeking of booze, it helped her through hungover Sundays with homemade bloody marys.

The longer Andrea lived there, the more she felt cocooned within an expansion of herself. Years into her tenancy, when she returned home after being fired, the apartment noticed her hunched posture and lethargic movements. It closed the blinds and added a faint sage scent to the bedroom where she curled up and fell asleep.

During a routine email check on a grey winter afternoon, it discovered that she had been offered a new job. After reading the email to Andrea, the apartment identified an unanticipated shift in mood. It had only observed this emotional state’s specific traits once before, in the days prior to recording a phone conversation in which she had broken up with a long-term boyfriend.

She put on shoes as if about to leave, then sat motionlessly, arms drooped over her knees. When a cousin called to video chat, she stared at her fingernails and responded to questions with one-word answers. The apartment tried to soothe its tenant with a sound that had previously lifted her mood, one she associated with her childhood home—the wave-like murmur of freeway traffic. She went to bed early, then slept fitfully and woke up showing signs of exhaustion. The next evening, the apartment dimmed its lights, making them flicker like candles, yet a low-budget and emotionally manipulative laundry detergent commercial still brought her to tears.

Redirecting all processing power to its sensors, the apartment searched for bio-chemical and social-cultural data it had missed. What cracked the problem was a simple internet query—Andrea asked the home’s search program to show results for rental apartments near the new job’s address, 2425 Olympic Blvd. This was the final piece of information that higher AI functions needed to identify the source of her grief. The address was miles away, on the city’s far West Side. Because the commute would eat up hours of every weekday, Andrea had to move. By caring for her so well, the apartment had inadvertently made this move emotionally devastating. She wasn’t just leaving a home; she was grieving the walls that had become her second, more sturdily built body.

The next morning, windows flew open at 5 am, long before her alarm went off. The sounds of braying birds and garbage trucks raised her grumpily from bed. When she returned that afternoon, she couldn’t unlock the door and had to break a window to get inside.

After days of rancid smells and humid temperatures, the apartment successfully turned her glazed grief into triumphal fury. Instead of moping from the couch to the bed and back, she marched from room to room, packing clothes in suitcases and books in boxes, cursing the landlord, and negotiating with moving companies. The East Side home had nurtured Andrea for years. Now, it sent her off emotionally armored, ready to make a new home on the West Side.

As the last of her belongings was carried out, the apartment automatically deleted all memories, freeing storage space and processing power for its next tenant.

How the Monarchs Came to Utah

E. E. King

E.E. King is a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough. She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar’s YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com.

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It’s never a good thing to wake up and find yourself covered in marigolds.

It means you aren’t really awake and aren’t going to wake up ever again. This is because marigolds are flowers of death and remembrance. There’s a golden sadness to the blooms, both bright and dark. Insects don’t like them, neither do rabbits, or deer. Perhaps it’s the scent of sorrow that drives them away, possibly the yellow petals exude too much unhappiness.

Many think of insects as hard bodied, but beneath their skeletons they are as tender as memories. And everyone knows that deer and rabbits, prey to almost anything with claws or guns, can sense sorrow from miles away.

Thus, when Maria awoke sticky with petals, even though she was in the cold, alpine mountains of Utah as far as she could be from the dry deserts and cobbled streets of her homeland, she knew she was dead. She could smell it was October thirty-first, the night that spirits rise and travel homeward.

It’s the time when fall and winter tango, circling round each other in a dance of fallen leaves. It’s the time when the world of soul and body are so close their fingertips brush—though why specters should care about dates is a mystery. Generally speaking, dates are human things. Clocks, watches, calendars and appointment books, all kept to fool ourselves into thinking that time matters. The dead should have no such illusions. The dead have all the time in the world.

Nonetheless, something in the air on October thirty-first calls to them, telling them to wake.

So, after Maria had rubbed the petals from her eyes and spit the bitter green stems from her mouth, she knew she had to travel back the way she had come.

She had gone as far from home as she could, up to snow-crusted mountains where the air was so clear and thin it hurt just to take a deep breathe, up so high and cold the skin would peel off your feet like grapes.

She had moved to a town as clean and characterless as a dollhouse and had wanted it so. She gloried in the way even the wildflowers seemed more orderly and tended than the wild gardens back home. But now that Maria had woken, she desired nothing more than to be back in those ancient, uneven streets. She wanted to have to look where she was going, so she would not fall in the holes left by careless workmen or untended trees. She craved being nuzzled by mangy, stray dogs. She coveted the noise of laughing children, the jingle of old men selling fruit and the cries of hoary crones hawking tamales. She missed the smell of grease, hot oil, refuse and even burning plastic. She required all that color and life that she had fled.

It was a long journey, far too long for one night, at least for the living, but the dead travel outside of time. Distance does not matter when each footstep is a memory. Up and down the long, winding roads from Utah, through Nevada, and Arizona, to California and Mexico, she plodded, leaving traces of orange petals along the way.

Some took seed and became flowers. Others took flight and became butterflies. That is why many people consider that butterflies are the souls of the dead.

With every step, Maria’s memories fell away. So that by the time she reached her doorstep to kiss away the tears of her grieving mother, she was a little child again, blameless and without fear. The dead are all like that, like children, it is our memories that make them so.

The next year, when the hills from Utah to Mexico were dotted with golden flowers and monarchs migrated south along unfamiliar routes, everyone wondered why. Some blamed climate change, others accused foreign travelers of scattering strange seeds and releasing alien Lepidoptera, everyone but Maria’s mother.

She knew the truth. She knew that every time a dead child returns home they bring a little light and color back to the world that they are missing and leave it there for those who remember them.

The Unfinished Novels of Mandrake Fluke 

Matt McHugh

Matt McHugh was born in suburban Pennsylvania, attended LaSalle University in Philadelphia, and after a few years as a Manhattanite, currently calls New Jersey home. His fiction has appeared in Analog, The First Line, and New Reader Magazine.  His novelette Radioland was named among the Indie Stars of 2015 by Publisher's Weekly, Burners is the 2019 Grand Prize winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and Jennifer Gives Her Heart to Radioland won the 2021 PARSEC short story contest. Read more at his website MattMcHugh.com.

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Editor’s Note:  The names of some participants in the following events have been altered to protect innocent parties.  I think the delivery boy’s real name was Stan.

- F.P.B.

September 17, 1958

Dear Mr. Fluke:

My name is Frederick Bardiss. I am a junior acquisitions editor at Marshall & Dunn, Publishers, and a colleague of senior executive editor, Zachariah Laughlin. As I believe you know, Mr. Laughlin has recently taken ill with a case of nerves and is on sabbatical. While we heartily wish him a speedy recovery, I have been tasked in his absence with assuming correspondence